THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
December 12, 2024 at 16:24 JST
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture in June 2023 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
In a reversal after 10 years, Japan will end its stated goal to reduce nuclear power reliance in its next Strategic Energy Plan, which charts the direction of the nation's energy policy for the coming years.
The economy ministry will remove the statement “Japan will minimize its dependency on nuclear power” from the seventh Strategic Energy Plan, which was added in 2014 three years after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant accident.
The ministry will propose the draft at an experts’ meeting that will be held as soon as next week.
It is finalizing the draft to remove “minimize its dependency” on nuclear power and to adopt “not to overly depend on specific power or fuel sources” in the nation's energy plan.
The Strategic Energy Plan is revised about once every three years.
The plan released in 2014 stated, “Japan will review from scratch the energy strategy that it mapped out before the Great East Japan Earthquake. Japan will minimize its dependency on nuclear power.”
Since then, subsequent revisions to the plan have maintained the phrase meaning the government will try to reduce its dependency on nuclear power as much as possible.
However, after energy prices rose after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida changed Japan's energy policy to promote nuclear power generation.
In June 2022, Kishida stated that the government will make the most of nuclear power generation in the Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform 2022, which serves as a guideline for economic and fiscal management.
In February 2023, Kishida also clarified his stance on returning to nuclear power generation in the Cabinet’s decision on the Basic Policy for the Realization of GX.
The GX basic policy limited rebuilding nuclear power reactors to within the sites of nuclear power reactors that have been deemed for decommissioning.
In the next Strategic Energy Plan, however, nuclear power reactors can be rebuilt on the premises of other nuclear power plants as long as those sites are under management of the same electric company for the same number of decommissioned reactors.
The seventh Strategic Energy Plan aims for nuclear power generation to constitute 20 percent of the nation's electric supply in fiscal 2040, which is less than the 30 percent it accounted for prior to the Fukushima accident in 2011.
To compensate for this, the next Strategic Energy Plan will increase the ratio of renewable energy to between 40 and 50 percent, and put thermal power generation between 30 and 40 percent.
(This article was written by Chinami Tajika and Taro Kotegawa.)
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