Nuclear News from Japan, Part 2:

An Interesting Rumor

In my last blog, I reported on some of my observations during my recent meetings in Japan.  In this blog, I will continue my report.

I have many friends and acquaintances in Japan, both inside and outside the nuclear field.  This wide circle of friends sometimes gives me an opportunity to get insights into non-nuclear aspects of Japanese society, or to get views of nuclear issues from a Japanese perspective outside the industry.

My recent trip to Japan gave me such an opportunity.  At this point, I would have to classify what I learned as unsubstantiated.  Still, I think it is worth mentioning my conversation in this forum.

Over lunch one day during the trip, one of my acquaintances from outside the nuclear field, after pumping me for my views on various aspects of nuclear power, suddenly turned to the subject of Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the support he has expressed for the reopening of some of Japan's idled nuclear power plants.

This acquaintance noted that Abe was very pro-nuclear.  However, he said, there are local elections scheduled in the coming months, and furthermore, the Prime Minister is putting forward some controversial proposals to amend the Japanese constitution to modify the provision that "renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation" and promises that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained."

Since nuclear power is very unpopular in Japan at the moment, and since Abe's Liberal Democratic Party needs the support of other parties to pass this amendment, he opined that Abe might want to have nuclear power keep a low profile until after the elections and after the constitutional amendments are finalized.

Hence, despite some approvals for restarts from Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), my friend suggested that any actual restarts might be delayed until after these issues were resolved.

I want to hasten to say that he was unclear on whether this was his personal view or a widespread view, whether there were any signals from the Abe administration to support such a view, or how such delays might be assured.  (There are opportunities for delay in the local approval requirements, but my understanding is that there are differing views in different local jurisdictions.)

My friend does dabble in Japanese politics, so he certainly knows more than I do about such matters.  However, at this point, I have no other educated views on the subject.  Therefore, I am only passing this information on as a factor that Japan watchers may want to keep in mind as events unfold in Japan in the coming months.

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The Tokyo Election:

What it Means for Nuclear Power in Japan

The election results are in for the hotly contested election for governor of Tokyo, and the "nuclear-neutral" candidate has prevailed by a significant margin.  Since the election had seemingly morphed into a plebiscite on nuclear power, one could reasonably now ask what this vote may mean for nuclear power in Japan.

My own assessment is that it may mean less for nuclear power than the pro-nukes might wish or the anti-nukes might fear.  Perhaps what it means most is simply that the electorate of Tokyo acted rationally and decided that nuclear power wasn't really an appropriate election issue for Tokyo.

By explanation, let's recap the election briefly.  The winning candidate, Japan's former Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe, is a former member of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party.  He was running against former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, who had made opposition to nuclear power the central issue of his campaign.  By contrast, Masuzoe had not made energy policy a key issue, although he did state an interest in reducing the use of nuclear power in the medium to long term.  This was consistent with Abe's position on nuclear energy.

So, does this mean that the population of Tokyo backs nuclear energy?  Hardly.  In the first place, Masuzoe's didn't really support nuclear power, so much as indicate he felt Japan needed to tolerate it for the time being.  This position probably resonated with the electorate.  In the second place, surveys have shown that the public continues to be against nuclear power, but they are more concerned about jobs and the state of the economy.  Masuzoe's platform focused on these issues.  It should also be noted that there was a pro-nuclear candidate on the ballot--he came in a very distant fourth.  (A further possible factor is that voter turnout has been reported as low.  The role of the snowfall in Tokyo the day before, which was nearly a 50-year record level, is being debated.)

What the election results really mean is that the Tokyo public put their economic interests above their concerns about nuclear power.  In reality, since there are no nuclear power plants in the Tokyo area, it would have been foolish for them to make nuclear power their primary issue anyway.  [*This is in contrast the significance of the issue of nuclear power in other parts of Japan.  See note at end of blog.]  Voting for an anti-nuclear ticket in Tokyo might have been a "feel good" vote for an anti-nuke, but it was unlikely to have any practical value.  Therefore, in my view, the vote mainly means that the Tokyo electorate voted based on reason, and not on emotion.

As a result, it would be unwise for either the pro-nuclear camp or the anti-nuclear camp to make too much of the results of this election.  It is not a ringing endorsement of nuclear power.  The anti-nukes are not going to feel their cause is lost and slink away in defeat.  The path to restarting the shuttered nuclear power plants in Japan is still not clear or easy.  What happens in the nuclear arean will continue to depend on the on-going dialogue between the utilities the Nuclear Regulation Agency in Japan and on the local jurisdictions around each of the power plants.

Likewise, had the vote gone for Hosokawa, it would unlikely have had much impact on the activities already in process to try to gain approval to restart some of the idled plants.  However, it certainly would have reinforced the image that the Japanese population put their highest priority on shuttering the existing plants, and in that sense, would have created an additional psychological hurdle.

Therefore, the fact that vote went the way it did provides a ray of optimism for the future of nuclear power in Japan.  It demonstrates that nuclear power isn't the key issue for the general population, and it gives some hope that, if plants are restarted and run smoothly, the anti-nuclear sentiment may become less and less of a priority among the voters of Japan.

[*Note:  In contrast to other countries, local jurisdictions in Japan do have a role in decisions on nuclear power plant operations--and other industrial or infrastructure-related activities--in their areas.  Therefore, this type of vote could have an impact in areas of Japan that host nuclear power plants.]

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