Japan’s idled nuclear plants increasingly eyed as a clean energy source

Japan’s idled nuclear plants increasingly eyed as a clean energy source

BY: BILL SPINDLE


Read this article and more of the latest on climate & tech at ciphernews.com.


TOKYO — In a small town on the west coast of Japan, the world’s largest nuclear plant sits idle, caught in limbo between regulators’ thumbs up to resume operations and popular worry over restarting the plant.

In a world scrambling for carbon-free electricity, nuclear power has stormed back into vogue, touted by the incoming administration of Donald Trump, pursued by energy-hungry technology companies such as Amazon and Google and coveted from China to Saudi Arabia.

But nuclear reactors don’t get built quickly or easily. The most recent addition to the United States nuclear fleet took 15 years to generate power. Long-shuttered plants in the U.S. are slated to come back to life, while new reactor designs are being developed with promises they can be built more quickly than their hulking predecessors.

But all these options need, at the very least, half a decade to deliver at scale.

This article is the second in a series Cipher is running this week about Japan’s energy plans. Check out the first article on Japan’s strategy for its many coal- and gas-fired power plants here.

That’s where Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant stands out, along with another two dozen or so facilities like it in Japan, all of which were shut down after a 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at the nuclear reactor in the city of Fukushima.

Together, these idle nuclear facilities make up one of the largest pools of ready, carbon-free energy potential in the world. They also present an opportunity for Japan’s resurgent technology industry to boost the country’s long-struggling economy and global standing.

“Our new semiconductor factories will use huge amounts of electricity,” says Nobuo Tanaka, a former head of the International Energy Agency and fellow at the Institute for Energy Economics in Tokyo. “Without nuclear power, they cannot get enough green or decarbonized energy.”

Japan remains heavily dependent on coal and natural gas for electricity generation, all of it imported. As part of a national review process, the Japanese government is revisiting previous forecasts that energy demand would steadily fall in the coming years, officials say. Now, some experts project demand could remain steady and perhaps even increase slightly.

As a result, a new energy strategy to be unveiled next year is expected to put renewed emphasis on nuclear power. That could mean not only restarting plants, but also completing a handful of large-scale reactors where construction was halted, and even building new nuclear generators, including small modular reactors that could possibly come online more quickly if acceptance grows over time, officials say.

Potential and pitfalls

The stakes go far beyond Japan; it is among a select few Western allies with the expertise to potentially support the manufacturing of the super-advanced semiconductor chips needed for artificial intelligence and national security applications.

When Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., currently the world’s sole maker of these chips, opened its first factory outside of Taiwan, it chose southern Japan, where solar and wind power is plentiful in the country. A different group of investors is planning another semiconductor factory on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, where wind turbines are proliferating off its blustery shores. Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and other companies hope to spend tens of billions of dollars building energy-intensive data centers in Japan, even as they vow to cut their greenhouse gas emissions dramatically.

Adding more nuclear capacity would likely push fossil fuel generation lower in Japan, as restarting more than a dozen reactors already has done so far.

The Japanese government’s energy plan currently envisions nuclear providing 20% of Japan’s power in 2030, compared to about 6% today. That would still be well below its 30% share before the 2011 accident at Fukushima, not to mention the government’s lofty 40% goal at that time.

But in the wake of the disaster, ushering nuclear back hasn’t been easy, and likely will continue to be a struggle.

Members of the Fukushima prefectural government’s expert committee responsible for monitoring the reactor decommissioning effort at the plant, inspect the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on April 9, 2014 in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan. Photo by The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images.

Public anxiety over nuclear remains high after a major earthquake rocked western Japan last year. And Japan’s national political leadership, which has gradually reversed course and embraced nuclear again in recent years, was unsettled by a snap election in October, in which the ruling party took a drubbing. It is unclear what the shake-up will mean for nuclear’s future.

Meanwhile, Hideyo Hanazumi, the governor of the Niigata prefecture, where the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is located, has yet to give his blessing to restart the plant, recently expressing concern over the evacuations of residents during the earthquake down the coast.

“I would like to deepen the discussion on restarting the plant and carefully assess how the people of the prefecture will perceive it,” he told a Japanese news service in March.

Building momentum

Still, powerful bureaucracies, like the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and leading politicians are now strong advocates of nuclear. That’s a major contrast from the years after the Fukushima meltdown, when Japan announced it would work to phase nuclear out altogether, a response to fears after the accident.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who as a legislator advocated for renewable energy over additional nuclear, has expressed support for expanding nuclear power since becoming Japan’s leader.

These days, polling shows popular concern generally easing.

In October, the Onagawa nuclear plant on the east coast of Japan became the thirteenth reactor to come back online after almost a decade of upgrades, safety reviews and persistent efforts to build acceptance in the local community and surrounding prefecture.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa continued to operate in the aftermath of the 2011 quake and tsunami. But as its individual reactors came up for scheduled maintenance shutdowns, they were not turned back on.

In recent years, Tepco, the largest electric power company in Japan, has put in place a series of additional safety measures at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, including taller sea walls around its seven reactors, more emergency power backup and a fresh-water reservoir that could be tapped in an emergency to cool the reactors, according to a company spokesman.

Tepco announced earlier this year that it hoped to begin restarting the facility in November. Regulators have signed off on the decision. Local political leaders in the cities where the plant is located support restarting the reactors. Still the plant sits idle.

All eyes are on prefecture governor Hanazumi now. He hasn’t set a time frame for giving an opinion on restarting — a decision considered the final hurdle for bringing the first of the plant’s reactors back to life.

Shannon Seideman

Purchasing and Office Administration

1w

It's clean until it melts down. Stop it!

Like
Reply

How soon we forget . . . 

To view or add a comment, sign in

More articles by Cipher News

Insights from the community

Others also viewed

Explore topics