Thirteen nuclear reactors are clustered along 60 kilometers (38 miles) of shoreline in Japan's nuclear heartland in Fukui Prefecture where the community's fortunes are inextricably linked to the power industry.

The death of four workers in a non-radioactive steam leak at a reactor in Mihama Monday caused few ripples among residents grateful for jobs and familiar with the risks.

Mihama means "beautiful beach", and one day after the accident it was business as usual for many of the holiday-makers, hotel and restaurant owners and fishermen.

"We are piggybacking on the nuclear power business," said Matsuo Yamaguchi, 64, who has owned an inn for 30 years near the sandy beach across the waters from the Mihama Nuclear Power Station.

"I believe about 80 percent of the young people in this neighbourhood work for the nuclear plants," he said, criticising press coverage of the accident in which there was no radiation leak or threat to the local community.

"The media coverage might have been too much. I saw seven helicopters hovering above the plant like flies when the accident happened," he said.

Although now known as the site of Japan's deadliest accident at a nuclear plant, residents echoed the fatalism in Tokyo residents over the spectre of a major earthquake -- there is no point worrying because when it does happen, there is nothing that can be done about it.

"One of the biggest employers is Kansai Electric and its subcontractors," said taxi driver Noriko Nishino, a resident of the neighbouring city of Tsuruga which has its own nuclear plant.

"None of the people here are worried about the presence of nuclear power generation," she said. "When something big happens, we will all die."

But she has some regrets about recommending her son, now 27, to get a job at Mihama plant when he graduated from high school.

He was working near the accident site and knew one of the dead workers well.

So what would make the locals and visitors really worry?

"If there is a radiation leak, we would just close the shop and pack up and leave," said a 23-year-old Junichi Enomoto from Osaka in western Japan who works at a beachfront cafe that has a great view of both the emerald green waters of the Sea of Japan (East Sea) and the troubled power plant.

The happy-go-lucky attitude was shared by a 55-year-old man who used to work for a maintenance subcontractor at the Mihama plant for 30 years.

"For us, news that there was no radioactive leak was good enough to make us think life goes on as normal," said the man, who declined to identified.

He said the neighbourhoods were dependent on the benefit of having nuclear power stations, but that he wished the operators of the plants had provided more information about the accident to locals.

"That's the problem about Japan's nuclear policy," said Masaru Nakagawa, 44, who trains corporate chiefs on environmental management in Tokyo, referring to the perceived lack of transparency in the industry.

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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