Japan Press Weekly

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2013 December 18 - 24 [ENVIRONMENT]

Inviting of opinions on gov’t nuclear energy policy begun unnoticed

Inviting of public comments on a new basic energy plan placing nuclear energy as a key power source has already been in progress with a deadline of January 6, 2014 with most of the public kept unaware.

The government began inviting the general public to offer their opinions on December 6 about the basic energy plan which will serve as the guideline for Japan’s midterm energy policy.

The draft plan abandons the previous goal of a “zero” nuclear power society which the Democratic Party-led government announced in September last year and instead returns to the country’s reliance on nuclear power generation. Prime Minister Abe expects to have it adopted in a Cabinet meeting in early January.

Regarding the quiet start of public comment procedure, Yamagishi Naoyuki of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Japan said, “I can’t see any indication of government willingness to hear opinions from the general public.”

The draft plan states that nuclear power ensures a stable supply of energy and has excellent efficiency, and that operating costs are low plus it produces no greenhouse gas emissions during operations.

The draft plan gives a boost to nuclear energy as if the severe economic impact of the rolling blackouts did not exist in the wake of the nuclear accident in Fukushima. It touches little upon the enormous amount of compensation money to nuclear disaster victims, extra expenses the government has to pay for radiation decontamination and reactor decommissioning, and the ongoing spread of radiation contamination.

In contrast, the draft plan states that renewable sources of energy have various problems in terms of stable supply and cost.

The draft plan even seeks to promote as energy education the picture of the superiority of nuclear energy versus the inferiority of renewable energy.

Many environmental organizations as well as WWF-Japan have made reliable calculations that a society in which renewable sources of energy can cover the electricity demand will be possible in the near future. However, the government panel having discussed the basic energy plan did not even consider such projections.

One panel member proposed that the opinions of both sides be put down in the draft plan but was flatly rejected because many members critical of nuclear power had been replaced with nuclear promoters. Soon after that, the public comment procedure started without giving adequate notice to the public.

The then DPJ government had adhered to the continuous use of nuclear power generation, but 90% of 89,000 public comments posted forced the DPJ to announce a “zero” nuclear power Japan.

Momoi Takako of the Kiko Network, an NGO working on climate change issues, said, “We will again send as many messages as we last time did to express citizens’ anger at the Abe government’s basic energy plan.”