Five years after the 11 March 2011 Fukushima accident, which put Japan’s nuclear power industry under intense scrutiny, official policy is still a shambles. In June 2011, the then prime minister Naoto Kan announced that Japan was phasing out nuclear power in the long run only to backtrack a few days later. Current Prime Minster Shinzo Abe announced a restart of all reactors within three years in his 2013 New Year’s Address. But after prolonged energy policy deliberations a new Basic Energy Plan published in 2014 still failed, for the first time ever, to include numerical targets for Japan’s future energy mix.
Five years after the 11 March 2011 Fukushima accident, which put Japan’s nuclear power industry under intense scrutiny, official policy is still a shambles. In June 2011, the then prime minister Naoto Kan announced that Japan was phasing out nuclear power in the long run only to backtrack a few days later. Current Prime Minster Shinzo Abe announced a restart of all reactors within three years in his 2013 New Year’s Address. But after prolonged energy policy deliberations a new Basic Energy Plan published in 2014 still failed, for the first time ever, to include numerical targets for Japan’s future energy mix.