Japan’s Economics Minister, Seiji Maehara, said on Friday that nuclear reactors can be restarted if a new regulator deems them to be safe.
Maehara, whose ministry had led debate in the cabinet on energy policy, said a new law empowered the regulator to endorse bringing reactors back on line. He said the idle reactors could be a key source of power generation for now, a notion certain to anger Japan's growing ranks of opponents of nuclear power.
South Korea shut down two of its nuclear reactors due to malfunctions yesterday, adding to public concerns about nuclear safety. The shutdown at Younggwang Nuclear Power Plant was the seventh this year, coming just hours after Shin-Kori Nuclear Power Plant witnessed the sixth. It is the first time two reactors halted operation on the same day according to The Korea Herald.
Only five days after a Japanese cabinet panel put forward a plan to phase out nuclear power in the country by 2040, the government has been forced to back down in the face of intense lobbying by business groups and political unease ahead of an election expected by year-end.
Yesterday Japanese lawmakers only partially endorsed the government’s energy strategy document, removing any mention of the deadline, which was the most strongly supported option in the two-month public consultation on which the document was based.
The Japanese government on Friday endorsed a plan to end the use of nuclear power before 2040 as part of a new energy policy that calls for emphasizing conservation and renewable energy sources.
The new policy also calls for converting the Monju experimental fast breeder reactor into a test bed for treating nuclear waste. The plan calls for decommissioning the reactor once those studies are complete, but sets no date, according to website ScienceInsider.
Even as Japan is preparing to release its new energy plan, expected to expel nuclear power by 2030, the country continues to pursue a plan to reprocess spent nuclear fuel in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture.According to the Kyodo News, the latest development suggests the government intends to delay any decision to scale back its current program of recycling spent nuclear fuel, despite its new goal of ending atomic power.
Japan’s prime minister has hinted that the government will announce that it will eventually abandon nuclear energy when it issues its new energy policy this week. News reports say the premier and Cabinet ministers have already agreed to the new policy.
Japan today failed to table a plan as expected to negate or reduce the country’s dependence on nuclear power and draw more from renewables, further inflaming the row between proponents of nuclear power and anti-nuclear activists.
The president of cash-strapped Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the utility behind the disaster at tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant, says the company is unable to fund a move into renewable energy
Speaking to the Associated Press, TEPCO’s Naomi Hirose, called the government’s announced intentions to move to a zero nuclear energy mix "quite troubling." He added, however, that TEPCO would follow whatever energy policy Japan adopts.
Japan’s environment Minister Goshi Hosono unveiled a new strategy Friday to boost power generation capacity of four primary renewable energy sources — offshore wind, geothermal, biomass and tidal power — by more than by 2030.
The plan, if successful, is aimed at eliminating all nuclear power plants.
Announcing the Innovative Strategy for Energy and the Environment after the day's Cabinet meeting, Hosono said his ministry plans to increase the combined annual capacity of electricity generation through the four key renewables to as much as 19.41 GW by 2030
Japan’s Research Institute of Tsukuba Bio-Tech, which is a partner of US cleantech company OriginOil, has received government funding for an algae biofuel program, the institute said in a statement this week without mentioning the amount of funding it has received.
The Korea Herald reported late last week that the construction of 10 nuclear power plants and one tidal power plant scheduled to be completed between 2013 and 2027 has been either put off or canceled.
The 11 plants, if completed, would together amount to 12.7-GW of generating capacity, equivalent to about 6.4 percent of the nation’s power supply. The decision to postpone or cancel them has therefore raised concern about looming power shortages.
Sources of clean energy generated 106.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in July, up 31 percent from a year ago, according to figures released by China’s State Electricity Regulatory Commission on Tuesday.
A second nuclear power company in China is planning a stock market flotation. China Nuclear Engineering Corporation Ltd, a subsidiary of state-owned China Nuclear Engineering Group, is planning to apply to the China Securities Regulatory Commission later this year.The company has take the first step by filing an application with the Beijing municipal securities authority, the 21st Century Business Herald reported.
A comprehensive new study has been published by Australia’s new Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE), providing “the best available and most up-to-date cost estimates” for 40 utility-scale electricity generation technologies between now and 2050, albeit under Australian conditions.
In a move to get back on its feet following economic losses that were partly a result of its environmental disasters last year, the Japanese government is putting “green growth” at the core of its recently approved long-term economic revival plan.
The USD15.1 billion cash offer by China's CNOOC to acquire Canada's Nexen Inc is the latest sign of Canada's shift away from the US as its traditional trading partner and main export market for its abundant natural resources.
The sale, if it goes through, is just one of series of deals that demonstrate Canada's intentions to cozy up to China as a major buyer of its resources, particularly oil and gas, as the US political climate continues to disappoint its northern neighbor.
In yet another development, a new trade pact was announced on Monday that vastly increases the amount of Canadian uranium that domestic companies are now able to sell to China.
The Chinese government said it will accelerate the pace of solar power installations after 2015, part of a program including funds from the state to cap carbon emissions while satisfying the nation’s demand for electricity, according to a report in Bloomberg.
China is ready to resume nuclear power project approval, suspended last year in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, according to the former head of the National Energy Administration, the China Daily reports.
The Japanese government plans to launch a new regulatory commission for nuclear safety on September 3, along with a nuclear regulatory agency that will act as the commission's secretariat, the Asia News Network reported ‘informed sources’ as saying.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has announced that it will pull back from the nuclear power plant in Vietnam to focus on overhauling its tsunami-crippled Fukushima after the atomic disaster in March 2011, according to Vietnam news sources.
This report by the World Bank spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
Companies in Asia reveal expectations that regulations that could lead to rising costs for reporting and reducing GHG emissions will also be the main sources of climate-related business opportunities.
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