THE LAST of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors goes offline this weekend, signalling the start of a major debate over the country’s nuclear future that is likely to resonate across the planet.
Nuclear power accounted for about a third of Japan’s energy generation before last year’s huge earthquake and tsunami triggered a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
Over the past 14 months, the nation’s reactors have been shut down one by one for routine checks and have stayed offline, amid increasingly fractious discussion over whether they can be made safe from future seismic disaster.
The Tomari nuclear plant on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido is the last to be switched off today, leaving the world’s third-largest economy nuclear free for the first time since 1970. Anti-nuclear campaigners are celebrating the move.
“A nuclear-free Japan is a safer Japan,” said Junichi Sato, director of Greenpeace Japan. “Hundreds of thousands of people continue to suffer the consequences of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.”
Greenpeace and other groups plan anti-nuclear protests this weekend in Tokyo and other cities.
However, Japan’s biggest business lobby, the Keidanren, and Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda say the nuclear plants must be brought back online quickly.
Several utilities have warned that, without them, the nation faces a long, hot summer of power shortages. The country escaped power cuts last summer after factories worked weekends and nights, schools closed and millions of Japanese voluntarily cut electricity use.
But the $100-million-a-day cost of importing oil and gas to fill the energy deficit helped contribute to Japan’s biggest annual trade deficit on record last fiscal year.
Mr Noda has declared two reactors in the Oi nuclear power plant, in west Japan, safe to restart, but local authorities remain doubtful of government assurances.
Public scepticism has been worsened by revelations since the Fukushima disaster began, including one that the operator of the Daiichi plant repeatedly ignored warnings from seismic experts.
Kansai Electric Power, operated of the Oi plant, has warned that Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe will have to endure electricity cuts in July unless the reactors are switched back on.
Mr Noda’s predecessor, Naoto Kan, called for a nuclear-free Japan last year, saying the world “could not be safe” with so many reactors.
