The nuclear option

Japan will restart more idled nuclear power plants and explore the idea of developing next-gen reactors for future use, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Wednesday, marking a major energy policy shift for the island nation.

⏩ Driving the move… Kishida cited the war in Ukraine, rising energy prices amidst uncertain market conditions, and Japan’s commitment to carbon-neutrality by 2050 as reasons for embracing nuclear energy.

🗾☢️ Background: Japan imports 90+% of its energy supply due to lack of natural resources. Prior to 2011, it supplemented those imports with electricity produced by nuclear reactors… until the Fukushima incident.

• In March of that year, Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in its history (9.0-magnitude) that, along with a resulting tsunami, caused meltdowns in three of the six reactors at a nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan.
• It ranks as the second-worst nuclear accident of all time on the International Nuclear Event Scale (behind only Chernobyl) – though it caused no fatalities, and only a “comparatively small” amount of radiation was released.

All of Japan’s nuclear plants were shut down in the aftermath, and most have remained idle ever since. A handful were restarted beginning in 2015, and more could soon be on the way. Public support for nuclear energy currently stands at over 60%, the highest level since 2011, per the former director of the International Energy Agency.

🌎 Zoom out: Roughly 10% of the world’s electricity comes from nuclear power, with some countries more reliant on it than others. For example: nuclear plants provide over 70% of all electricity in France, more than 40% in Sweden, and about 19% in the US.

+In other nuclear news: Ukraine's state nuclear company said the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia power station was fully disconnected from the grid yesterday "for the first time in the history of the plant," though it was reportedly later reconnected. (Inside the battle at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.)