Japan will reverse its ten-year-old aim of reducing its reliance on nuclear power in its upcoming Strategic Energy Plan, resulting in the country’s energy policy going forward.
“Japan will minimize its dependency on nuclear power” was included to the seventh Strategic Energy Plan in 2014, three years after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant accident, and it is announced that the economy ministry will take it out.
The document will be presented by the ministry at an experts’ meeting as early as possible, preferably the next week itself, as per the announcement.
In order to “minimize its dependency” on nuclear power and to adopt “not to overly depend on specific power or fuel sources,” it is finalizing the draft of the country’s energy plan.
Approximately every three years, the Strategic Energy Plan is updated and renewed.
“Japan will review from scratch the energy strategy that it mapped out before the Great East Japan Earthquake,” the 2014 plan said. Japan will reduce its dependency on nuclear energy.
The line “the government will try to reduce its dependency on nuclear power as much as possible” has been retained in subsequent plan versions.
However, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida altered Japan’s energy policy to encourage nuclear power generation after the energy prices increased during Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
As a guideline for economic and fiscal management, Kishida said in June 2022 that the government will maximize nuclear power generation in the Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform 2022.
In the Cabinet’s resolution on the Basic Policy for the Realization of GX in February 2023, Kishida also made clear his position on going back to nuclear power generation.
Rebuilding nuclear power reactors was restricted by the GX fundamental strategy to locations where nuclear power reactors had been designated for decommissioning.
However, it is ironic that the future Strategic Energy Plan allows for the reconstruction of nuclear power reactors on the grounds of existing nuclear power plants, provided that the same electric company is in charge of those locations for the same number of decommissioned reactors.
According to the seventh Strategic Energy Plan, nuclear power generation would only make up 20% of the country’s electricity supply in fiscal 2040, down from 30% before the Fukushima tragedy in 2011.
In order to compensate this, the next Strategic Energy Plan will place thermal power generation between 30 and 40 percent and boost the proportion of renewable energy to between 40 and 50 percent.
