Japan’s nuclear embrace is looser but not yet broken

[FBaggins]

Last week, anti-nuclear campaigners’ hearts beat a little faster when Naoto Kan, the prime minister, announced the abandonment of Japan’s previous target of relying on nuclear power for half of electricity generation by 2030. Plans needed to be discussed “from a clean slate”, he said. So far, however, the Fukushima Daiichi crisis seems to be having less effect on long-term official policy in Japan than it has in distant and geologically stable Germany, where the government is now retreating from plans to delay a phase-out of nuclear power until 2036.

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While some observers seized on Mr Kan’s remarks as signalling a halt to all of the 14 new reactors planned or under construction, the premier insists no decision has been made on individual projects or the fate of nuclear power in general. There is also much less than meets the eye to the abandonment of the 2030 target, which had depended on hefty cuts in energy consumption and “maximum” use of renewable energy. The reactor construction schedule that the target required included two new units at Fukushima Daiichi that are clearly now impossible to build.

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On Wednesday, Mr Kan made clear that nuclear power would remain a “pillar” of energy policy. Influential colleagues in his Democratic Party of Japan are already pushing for new reactors to be brought on line as planned. After visiting one northern plant in Aomori prefecture, Katsuya Okada, the DPJ’s secretary-general, noted that its reactor would be ready to operate in only two years. “I don’t think something that is so close to completion should be scrapped,” Mr Okada said.

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For their part, officials and policymakers take it for granted that there is no choice but to rely on nuclear to reduce resource-poor Japan’s dependence on imported fossil fuels. They say nuclear’s basic generation costs remain far below those of renewables such as solar and wind.

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