"From a windswept corner of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, Japan Steel Works Ltd. controls the fate of the global nuclear-energy renaissance."

So there's something slightly disturbing, in a "this is profane" and also something a little reassuring in a "nuclear cores are made in a sacred place" kind of way about this story.

So the only place in the world that can made the steel core of the nuclear reactor in one place is in Hokkaido, Japan. And the other thing this company is famous for? The fact that part of the foundry is a wooden hut on a hill, where the entrance hangs with Shinto symbols of the sacred (shide: a paper streamer) and a guy makes hand-made samurai swords.

So there's definitely a story in there for me about some old, twisted guy who saw the bombs drop on Tokyo

(just for anyone reading this who doesn't know, the fire bombing devastation of Tokyo killed more people than the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. About 100,000 people (and most scholars think that a low estimate. )That's more than the population of Beaverton wiped out. 50% of Tokyo destroyed. Imagine if that happened to New York or Rome or Paris?)

and makes swords on a hill overlooking corrugated metal buildings where nuclear reactors are built.