Japan’s new environment minister has wasted no time in contradicting the government’s long-standing policy on nuclear power, using his first press conference to declare that he intends to scrap the nation’s atomic energy plants. 

Appointed on Wednesday, Shinjiro Koizumi told his inaugural press conference that nuclear power has been one of his concerns since a magnitude-9 earthquake and a subsequent tsunami caused the meltdown of three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in March 2011.

“I want to study not about how we can keep them, but how we can scrap them”, Mr Koizumi said. “We must never have another accident. If there was another disaster, we would be doomed”.  

His position is in stark contrast to the government’s policy of gradually restarting reactors that have undergone thorough safety checks and improvements. 

Before the Fukushima accident, the world’s second-worst nuclear disaster after Chernobyl, Japan operated 54 reactors across the country, supplying around 30 percent of the nation’s electricity. Six reactors have been returned to operational status but nearly half are scheduled to be decommissioned. 

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Work continues at the Fukushima plant to make the three crippled reactors safe, a task that the government estimates will take around 40 years. A large area around the plant is still uninhabitable. 

Mr Koizumi was a surprise addition to the cabinet of Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister. Mr Koizumi has expressed sharp differences with senior members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party since he was first elected in 2009 and supported a rival in the most recent election for party president. 

The son of Junichiro Koizumi, who served as prime minister for five years from 2001 and has also been an outspoken critic of nuclear energy, Shinjiro Koizumi is 38 years old and the third-youngest politician to be elevated to the cabinet since the end of World War Two. 

Mr Koizumi is regarded as a skilled debater and is tipped as a future prime minister of Japan, with Mr Abe’s decision to bring him into the cabinet seen as an effort to give a new generation of politicians an opportunity to learn the ropes of government.