Japanese politics was dominated by energy in the wake of the disaster of 11 March, 2011. The decision to shut-down all the remaining 48 nuclear units introduced real concerns of brownouts, previously unthinkable in Japan’s gold-plated power system. The parliament commissioned the first independent inquiry in Japan’s postwar history, and gave it the task of finding out what happened, and how a similar event can be avoided. In the recent election for Japan’s House of Representatives — which returned the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to power with a thumping majority — energy was relegated to a secondary issue. This is despite the fact that polling suggests a large segment of the Japanese population don’t trust the Abe government to apply the lessons of the Fukushima disaster to nuclear policy moving forward.
Japanese politics was dominated by energy in the wake of the disaster of 11 March, 2011. The decision to shut-down all the remaining 48 nuclear units introduced real concerns of brownouts, previously unthinkable in Japan’s gold-plated power system. The parliament commissioned the first independent inquiry in Japan’s postwar history, and gave it the task of finding out what happened, and how a similar event can be avoided. In the recent election for Japan’s House of Representatives — which returned the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to power with a thumping majority — energy was relegated to a secondary issue. This is despite the fact that polling suggests a large segment of the Japanese population don’t trust the Abe government to apply the lessons of the Fukushima disaster to nuclear policy moving forward.