“After seeing what happened in Okuma, Futaba and Iitate, we cannot just turn these things back on,” said Shinobu Tokioka, the mayor of Ohi, naming evacuated communities near the Fukushima plant. He said he thought the reactors would eventually be turned back on because his and other host communities need the plant-related jobs and other revenues.

Image Correction: March 11, 2012: A chart on Friday with the continuation of an article about the state of nuclear power in Japan a year after the country suffered a nuclear disaster misstated the number of Japan’s 54 commercial reactors that have been shut down since then. It is all but two, not two. Credit... The New York Times

In many respects, Japan is already on the road to recovery from the huge earthquake and tsunami, which killed as many as 19,000 people, and to a lesser degree from the nuclear accident. The northeastern coastal towns that were flattened by the waves have cleaned up millions of tons of debris and are beginning to rebuild.

But it is the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi that looks likely to have a more lasting impact, even though it has yet to claim a single life. Japan is just beginning what promises to be a radiation cleanup that will last decades of the evacuated areas around the plant, where nearly 90,000 residents lost their homes. The nation is also groping to find effective ways to monitor health and protect its food supply from contamination by the accident, which government scientists now say released about a fifth as much radioactive cesium as the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Then there are the new feelings of distrust in technology and in the government, which many Japanese now blame for hiding the true dangers of the nuclear accident. At the same time, this resource-poor nation also knows that it has few realistic alternatives to nuclear power, at least in the short term.

This has left many Japanese torn about whether to continue using nuclear power. These conflicting feelings are apparent in host communities like Ohi, a once-impoverished town that has prospered from the jobs and the $450 million brought by the nuclear plant since the 1970s. After first installing indoor plumbing for most residents and improving roads, the town moved on to flashy public works projects, and now boasts a hot springs resort, a sports complex with an indoor pool and lighted baseball diamond, and an indoor children’s playground featuring a full-size mock sailing ship on a sea of rubber balls.

It is a similar story at other communities along this stretch of coast in western Japan’s Fukui Prefecture, which is known as Nuclear Alley because it has three other plants in addition to the Ohi plant.