Japan Will Decide Next Year on Nuclear Energy Share

Japan aims to decide the percentage of electricity to be generated by nuclear power by late 2015 when a U.N. climate conference is to be held in Paris, the industry minister said Tuesday.

All of Japan’s nuclear reactors are shut down for one reason or another in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in 2011, while the Japanese government and society debate how large a role, if any, atomic power should play in the so-called energy mix of the world’s third-largest economy.

In a revised national energy plan adopted in April, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared nuclear power generation an “important base-load power source.”

But no breakdown for the proportion of power to be generated by nuclear power was included in the plan amid difficulties foreseeing how many reactors may resume operation amid widespread public concern over nuclear safety.

On Tuesday, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Tokyo “would like to deal with the matter in time for COP21,” or the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in the French capital at the end of next year.

Speaking at a government meeting held to discuss national energy policy, the minister said it is important to decide the energy mix “urgently” and discussions “should not take as long as two or three years.”

via Mainichi

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