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It’s a problem for all intermittent energy sources. Nuclear power is critical for a manufacturing economy like Japan, as atomic plants operate at higher capacity factors than either renewable energy sources or fossil fuels.Īccording to a 2018 paper “Why nuclear power must be part of the energy solution,” published by Yale School of the Environment, “Capacity factor is a measure of what percentage of the time a power plant actually produces energy. In crisis-control mode in the wake of the earthquake-tsunami-meltdown disaster, Tokyo shut down reactors across the country. In terms of regulations adopted after 2011, reactor age was a key issue and remains central to Japan’s nuclear dilemma.Įnergy-hungry Japan – which has virtually no native supplies of oil or gas, but needs ample power to feed its vast manufacturing base – operated nuclear 54 reactors before the catastrophe struck. “But Japan really strengthened regulations after Fukushima and Japanese people are willing to accept, in the end, what the government tells them – so now it is about nudging the public to accept it.” People take part in an anti-nuclear protest outside Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) headquarters in Tokyo on March 11, 2021, on the 10th anniversary of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake which triggered a tsunami and nuclear disaster. “There is definitely going to be pushback,” Tosh Minohara of the Graduate School of Law at Kobe University told Asia Times.
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And there is going to be more opposition going forward.
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The various political hoops that had to be jumped through to reach Wednesday’s decision were erected to appease the public distrust of nuclear energy that soared after 2011. On Tuesday, Industry Minister Hiroshii Kajiyama told Sugimoto that Japan would continue to use atomic energy “sustainably into the future,” and promised some 2.5 billion yen (US$23.1 million) in grants to restart reactors older than four decades.