Recently appointed Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida saw the government coalition win the parliamentary elections on Sunday (October 31). This comforts him to apply his program, which does not exclude a return to civilian nuclear power. However, the subject is very sensitive in the country, ten years after the Fukushima disaster. a earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident hit Japan causing death or disappearance of 18,500 people. Tens of thousands of Japanese have also been displaced.
Despite what is the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, the new Prime Minister believes that civilian nuclear power is unavoidable. “It is crucial to restart nuclear power plants”, he thus affirmed in front of the Parliament on October 11. Fumio Kishida also pleads for the introduction of small modular reactors.
Since the Fukushima disaster, all of the country’s nuclear power plants have been closed. Only a few installations were brought back into service, such as reactor number 3 at the Mihama power plant, in the center of the country, in June. While the plant had been completely shut down in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident, this over 40-year-old reactor was relaunched with new safety standards.
A total of ten reactors are currently active in Japan, up from 54 ten years ago. As a result, the share of nuclear power in electricity production was only 6.2% in 2019, compared to 30% before 2011. In fact, thehe country is largely dependent on fossil fuels, such as coal or liquefied natural gas, the latter being imported on a massive scale. In 2019, theJapan was therefore the fifth most CO2 emitting country in the world, according to the Global CO2 Atlas platform.
The Japanese government therefore wants to rectify this situation and has set itself the objective of carbon neutrality in 2050. On that date, it therefore wishes to emit no greenhouse gases. Japan has notably aligned itself with the European Union’s calendar. Tokyo has also set itself an intermediate objective of reducing CO2 emissions by 46% by 2030.
Fumio Kishida will have to reassure on these points during his trip to the COP26 in Glasgow, which symbolically constitutes his first trip abroad. But the question of the means to meet the set objectives remains unanswered. It will of course be necessary to increase the share of renewable energies. It will also be necessary to put an end to the activity of the 140 coal-fired power stations: those built before the mid-1990s, the most polluting, but also those deemed to be “ineffective” by the Japanese authorities. Finally, the Japanese government seems determined to grant nuclear a 20 to 22% share in its energy mix by 2030, whatever the legacy of Fukushima.