Japanese Energy Policy after Fukushima Daiichi: Nuclear Ambivalence

Extract

THE TRAGIC EVENTS OF 11 MARCH 2011 dealt a major blow to Japanese energy policy. Just the previous June, the government had adopted a new long-term energy plan that called for a substantial increase in Japan’s reliance on nuclear power over the next two decades. Then the catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station resulted in the immediate destruction or shutdown of 10 reactors and cast doubt on the entire future of nuclear power in Japan.

Successive Japanese governments struggled to deal with the consequences. The first order of business was to make up for the sudden loss of so much nuclear-generated electricity, a problem that was compounded over the next 14 months as the nuclear power plants still in operation successively went off-line. But an equally important, if less urgent, task was to develop a new long-term vision for Japanese energy policy, especially concerning the role that nuclear power would play.