The workers were killed and seven others injured by a leak of non-radioactive steam in a turbine room at the plant in the central Japanese town of Mihama, 350 kilometres (220 miles) west of Tokyo.

Despite a deep-rooted aversion to nuclear facilities in Japan, the only nation to suffer an atomic bomb attack, atomic power is seen as a necessary evil by many here.

By an uncomfortable coincidence, the latest accident happened on the 59th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

There are 52 nuclear reactors operating in Japan, which, according to the Paris-based Nuclear Energy Agency, provide one quarter of the electricity needs of a nation with virtually no natural energy resources.

Public unease turned to alarm in September 1999 when three workers at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, set off a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, causing the country's worst-ever nuclear disaster.

Many Japanese shuddered when the plant's loose operating procedures were exposed.

The three had been using steel buckets to pour uranium into a precipitation tank and added too much -- 2.4 kilograms (five pounds) -- setting off the reaction.

The accident in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, was classified as the world's worst since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.

It exposed more than 600 people to radiation and forced around 320,000 to shelter indoors for more than a day. Two of the three workers later died from their injuries in hospital.

Other nuclear accidents that shocked the nation include the December 1995 shutdown of the Monju fast-breeder reactor in western Japan after a massive sodium leak.

In March 1997, 37 people were exposed to radiation following a fire at another nuclear reprocessing plant in Tokaimura.

The following month, a tritium leak at the Fugen advanced thermal reactor in western Japan exposed 11 workers to low-level doses of radiation.

Tokaimura was in the news again in August 1997 with the revelation that 2,000 drums of nuclear waste had been leaking for 30 years.

In July 1999 more than 80 tonnes of primary cooling water leaked in one of the country's worst spills, in Tsuruga, western Japan, close to the site of Monday's accident.

A year later a nuclear reactor in Fukushima, north of Tokyo, was shut down after a suspected interior radioactive leak, the third closure in the area after a big earthquake struck five days before.

The most recent black mark on the nuclear industry's record came when Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the world's largest private utility company, was forced to close all 17 reactors for checks in mid-2003 after scandals over the systematic cover-up of inspection data showing faults in reactors.

TEPCO was forced to admit it had covered up the appearance of cracks including those in steel "shrouds" enveloping the reactor core at its nuclear plants for years, although it was later independently confirmed they did not pose an immediate threat to the safety of nuclear plants.

The International Energy Agency urged Japan last November to regain public trust in its nuclear energy programme damaged by a series of accidents and scandals.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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