Nuclear Safety

As widely anticipated, Japan’s new pro-business Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - led government has said it will allow any nuclear reactors deemed safe to be brought back on line, indicating a reversal of the previous government’s promise to move away from nuclear power by 2030.

South Korea – one of Asia remaining true believers in nuclear power –  is facing power shortages as it shuts down two reactors because of the use of uncertified parts. While the Knowledge Economy Minister Hong Suk-woo said they were non-core parts, they were not allowed under industry certification.

Beijing this week announced it would resume construction of nuclear power plants, restarting a program that had been halted for 20 months in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster.

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.

China and Taiwan have put a cross-Strait nuclear power safety agreement into effect today. The mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) are prepared to implement the agreement, according to an ARATS statement.