Tokyo,Dec., 22- The death late Tuesday of a worker exposed to radiation in Japan's worst nuclear accident brought renewed calls today for curbs on the country's atomic energy program.

The worker, Hisashi Ouchi, 35, was hurt on Sept. 30 in an accident at a nuclear fuel plant near Tokyo that also critically injured two other workers. Scores of nearby residents were exposed to radiation.

"He was a victim of a myth perpetrated by the national government and the nuclear power industry that nuclear energy is safe," said Tatsuya Murakami, the mayor of Tokaimura, where the accident took place. "We must speak frankly to the government and to the industry if we are to coexist with nuclear energy."

Japan's nuclear power industry has been on the defensive since the accident, opening a rare chapter in this country's history in which citizens have effectively brought pressure to bear on the tacit coalition between government and business in a major industry.

In a front page commentary today, Asahi Shimbun, a leading newspaper, noted that the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 had lead to the end of the expansion of nuclear power in the United States.

After the accident in Tokaimura,the paper said, the Japanese people "are starting to feel genuine horror and concern about nuclear power generation, perhaps for the first time in their lives."

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi offered his condolences to Mr. Ouchi's family and said, "The government has been working so that such an accident will never be repeated."

Far more than in most countries, large numbers of people in Japan have associated all things nuclear with death and destruction, a legacy of the atomic bombings of their country by the United States in 1945. The nuclear power industry, which supplies more than 30 percent of Japan's electricity, was able to thrive only after unstinting efforts to cultivate an image of extraordinary safety.

For many here, the Tokaimura accident, which resulted from procedural lapses, not only shattered the safety myth, but also, because Mr. Ouchi died after months of gruesome suffering, brought back memories of the bombings.

Recent pressure by civic groups and a strong shift in public opinion have already forced several of the largest nuclear power plants to cancel or postpone plans to upgrade their operations.A particular target of opposition has been the planned use of a hybrid fuel containing uranium and plutonium by so-called light water plants that were originally designed to use uranium only.

The Tokaimura fuel reprocessing plant, where Mr. Ouchi worked, was a cornerstone of Japan's ambitious program for plutonium use, which stems from a dream for national energy independence in a country that has no oil reserves.

Nuclear energy experts have long warned that that the mixed fuel increases the risk of rupture inside the cores of power plants.Moreover, they say, in case of a catastrophic accident, plutonium and it's byproducts are far more lethal than uranium.

What few foresaw, though, was the kind of blunder that occurred at Tokaimura, where poorly trained workers were following crude shortcuts, mixing nuclear fuels by hand with steel buckets.

In the end, those short cuts, some of which were included in an illegal manual distributed by the plant's management, led to a miscalculation in which more than seven times the normal amount of fuel was poured into a container. A result was a nuclear chain reaction that took nearly a day to bring to a halt.

In the space of a few minutes, Mr. Ouchi, the worst injured worker, was exposed to 400 times the maximum amount of radiation a nuclear plant worker is allowed to receive in an entire year.

Perhaps in part because of dread of the backlash against nuclear power, the government went to extraordinary lengths to save Mr. Ouchi's life. Although he had not regained consciousness since mid October, doctors at the University of Tokyo Hospital were ordered to spare no effort to save him. According to the doctors involved in his care, 10 liters of blood were transfused into his body daily in recent weeks.

In late November the patient had to be resuscitated after his heart failed. Since then, his doctors said, his skin, which suffered severe peeling after the accident and never heeled, was oozing more and more fluid.

Doctors said that despite the administration of huge amounts of pain killing drugs, and even in his unconscious state, the patient winced and showed other signs of agony when receiving treatment.

"We learned a lot from 81 days of unprecedented treatment," said Kazuhiko Maekawa, the doctor who lead the team reating Mr. Ouchi. "But we were also made aware of the limits of today's medical science."