Tokyo:  The utility at the heart of Japan's nuclear crisis, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), faced pressure yesterday from angry shareholders to shut all its reactors in a sign of growing Japanese opposition to nuclear energy.

Activist shareholders may struggle, however, to convince long-term institutional investors, which own most of the stock, to approve a resolution to abandon atomic energy. Dai-ichi Life Insurance is the biggest shareholder of Tepco, as the company is known.

Many shareholders at a rowdy annual general meeting in Tokyo heaped scorn on the utility's executives over their handling of the March disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the company's subsequent slide to near bankruptcy.

In May, Tepco reported an annual loss of $15 billion and since the disaster, its shares have plummeted 85 per cent, its corporate rating has fallen to junk status and $36 billion has been wiped off the company's market value.

"They're going to have to give up nuclear power in the next few years. Construction of new plants is going to be impossible," said a 37-year-old man from Nagano, who asked not to be identified.

Tight security

Security was tight yesterday as shareholders and protesters converged on the Prince Park Tower Hotel in central Tokyo.

The meeting started with thousands of stockholders packed into the venue and several hundred unable to find seats.

The vote on the anti-nuclear proposal is expected late last night.

The binding resolution, which requires a two-thirds majority vote to be approved, asks that the utility scrap its nuclear reactors. It does not give a timeframe.

Although put forward annually by anti-nuclear activist shareholders, the proposal this year takes on greater resonance with radiation still escaping from damaged reactors at the utility's plant in Fukushima, 240 kilometres north of Tokyo.

Three reactors went into meltdown after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit the plant on March 11, forcing 80,000 residents to evacuate as engineers battled radiation leaks, hydrogen explosions and overheating fuel rods. The earthquake and tsunami left nearly 24,000 people dead or missing.

The utility's chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, opened the meeting with an apology.