The country is rapidly moving to restart reactors as artificial intelligence increases electricity demand and foreign wars choke gas supplies.<\/p>\n
The central control room at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant on Jan. 21. | Jiji Press\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, Japan \u2014 Fifteen years ago, this mountainous region on Japan\u2019s northeast coast suffered one of the world\u2019s worst nuclear power accidents.<\/p>\n
Abandoned homes, offices and shops still dot the landscape \u2014 remnants of the evacuation after an earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and released radiation. In the accident\u2019s aftermath, nuclear power\u2019s future seemed bleak, with Japan shutting off all its reactors as public opinion soured against the technology.<\/p>\n
But the country is now rapidly moving to restart nuclear power plants, as artificial intelligence increases electricity demand and foreign wars throttle natural gas supply. Japan relies on natural gas for 30 percent of its electricity, almost all of it imported. The Iran war has further helped the case for nuclear, which can displace some of the liquefied natural gas that is stuck in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n
This week, Japan will open its 16th reactor since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident \u2014 at a nuclear plant run by the same utility that oversaw Daiichi during the meltdown.<\/p>\n
Toyoshi Fuketa, former chair of Japan\u2019s Nuclear Regulation Authority, said the debate over whether to go back to nuclear power took years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the accident, we had furious discussions,\u201d Fuketa said in an interview. \u201cOne of the most influential issues was the war in Ukraine. This country heavily relied on the natural gas imported from Russia, and all the energy sources are coming from the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Japan stopped expanding its use of Russian gas when the country invaded Ukraine, and aims to become less reliant on those imports. Now, the Iran war risks forcing the country to cut back on its gas imports from other countries.<\/p>\n
About 10 percent of Japan\u2019s LNG imports come through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran all but closed after the U.S-Israel attacks began in late February. Washington and Tehran announced Friday that the strait is reopening<\/a> for commercial shipping, but the chokepoint remains for roughly 20 percent of the world\u2019s oil.<\/p>\n The Northeast Asia LNG benchmark, which captures deliveries to Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan, reached a three-year high<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi hopes to double Japan\u2019s nuclear power production by 2040. But Japanese residents aren\u2019t fully sold on nuclear power. Polling by Hiroshi Yamagata, a researcher at Nagaoka University of Technology, shows that only 37 percent of Japan supports restarting nuclear power plants, compared with 23 percent opposed and 40 percent uncertain. Only 24 percent support building new plants.<\/p>\n Those tensions were tested as Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, put reactor 6 at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant into commercial operation Thursday \u2014 the company\u2019s first return to nuclear since the Fukushima nuclear accident.<\/p>\n Environmental groups, like Friends of the Earth<\/a>, joined some local residents and protested the restart, citing Tepco\u2019s handling of the Fukushima disaster, security management at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa and control rod malfunctions that delayed the planned restart earlier this year.<\/p>\n But even in Iwaki, the nearest big city to the 2011 disaster, these nuclear resurrections aren\u2019t black and white.<\/p>\n \u201cThe new plant is in Niigata prefecture, it\u2019s not in Fukushima, and the people around the plant agreed to have the reactor. We cannot make that decision,\u201d said Yujiro Igari, speaking through an interpreter. Igari is the manager of Iwaki\u2019s Crisis Management Division, which directs citywide disaster preparedness. \u201cPeople in this area just hope for the Japanese government to take care of the reactor and take responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Futaba is nestled in the shadow of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Built on coal mining in the 1890s, it was reborn as a nuclear power town in the 1970s. That\u2019s when Tepco began construction on the \u201cDaiichi\u201d and \u201cDaini\u201d plants, which translate as \u201cfirst\u201d and \u201csecond.\u201d<\/p>\n The utility put time and money into getting community buy-in, even sponsoring contests where children made pro-nuclear posters that are now on display at the Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum.<\/p>\n One sixth grader designed a massive sign that was erected over Futaba\u2019s main street in 1991. It read: \u201cNuclear power: the energy for a bright future.\u201d<\/p>\n The nuclear power plants brought stability to the old coal town. While Fukushima prefecture\u2019s population declined by about 5 percent between 1970 and 1995, Futaba \u2014 anchored by the plants\u2019 jobs \u2014 grew by roughly 12 percent.<\/p>\n That all changed on March 11, 2011. That day saw a 9.1 magnitude quake \u2014 the worst in the country\u2019s history \u2014 spawning waves that crested at 13 meters. That\u2019s 3 meters higher than the region\u2019s previous record \u2014 and 7 meters higher than architects had designed the nuclear plants to withstand.<\/p>\n Daini was successfully brought to a safe shutdown. But at Daiichi, rising core temperatures melted fuel capsules into hydrogen gas.<\/p>\n The next day, the trapped hydrogen gas exploded in the Unit 1 building. By March 15, two other reactors had suffered the same fate.<\/p>\n The initial 2-mile evacuation order grew to 12 and finally 19 miles. But people struggled to get out of harm\u2019s way \u2014 partly because the tsunami\u2019s destruction made it difficult to deliver gasoline.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were evacuating by car, [and] cars need gas, so people lined up at gas stations,\u201d said Kenichiro Hiramoto, head of planning and public relations at the museum. \u201cBut the tsunami\u2019s destruction was preventing resupply.\u201d<\/p>\n Hiroshi Aita, assistant manager of Iwaki\u2019s Crisis Management Division, remembers that week vividly. One day last December, he drove with Igari through his hollowed-out hometown of Tomioka, which is home to the Daini plant.<\/p>\n The town, just south of Futaba, was known before the disaster for its cherry blossom festival. Aita turned down a street flanked by columns of leafless sakura trees waiting for the spring.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter I graduated from kindergarten, we moved to Iwaki,\u201d Aita said through an interpreter. \u201cWhen I heard the news of the accident, I thought of this area. At that time, I didn\u2019t imagine I could come back here \u2014 and finally I can.\u201d<\/p>\n Igari recalled how firefighters gathered at a beach in Iwaki as a makeshift response center, while nuclear crews took short breaks for sleep at a nearby soccer training facility.<\/p>\n In the six years after the disaster, the government assembled 70,000 workers and cleared 16 million cubic meters of contaminated topsoil. Bales of radioactive dirt are still encamped along the highway.<\/p>\n The Sakura Festival returned to Tomioka in 2018, and in 2022, restrictions on Futaba were lifted, allowing people to return. But Tomioka\u2019s population is still down 90 percent from 16,000 residents in 2011. Only 100 residents from a pre-disaster population of 7,000 returned to Futaba.<\/p>\n \u201cThe evacuees have already established a new life in a new area, a new town. They got a new job, and then their children also started to go to school,\u201d said Noboru Takamura, the museum\u2019s director.<\/p>\n By April 2011, the Daiichi plant was under control. The country moved to shut off all nuclear reactors as investigators searched for what went wrong in Fukushima and the public debated whether nuclear power should be part of Japan\u2019s future.<\/p>\n In the eyes of most of Japan\u2019s nuclear sector, there was a central takeaway: The regulatory body overseeing the nuclear industry must be independent.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the government sector responsible for promotion of the nuclear industries and the regulation of nuclear were in the same department,\u201d said Fuketa, the former Nuclear Regulation Authority chair. \u201cWe did not have an independent regulatory body, and there were lots of conflicts of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n Japan\u2019s legislature, known as the Diet, released an official report of the incident<\/a> finding that regulators let operators apply regulations on a voluntary basis and colluded with the industry and the political ministry.<\/p>\n The report recommended creating a new nuclear regulator that would be independent from operators, politics and organizations promoted by the government. The Diet responded by creating the Nuclear Regulation Authority.<\/p>\n The U.S. is going in the opposite direction<\/span>, with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission now only making major decisions with the consent of the White House or the Department of Energy. President Donald Trump has overhauled the agency, firing a Democratic commissioner and replacing the NRC chair.<\/p>\n The Trump administration is also pursuing a \u201cwholesale revision\u201d of the nuclear regulator\u2019s rules as it funds next-generation nuclear reactors \u2014 technology with little traction in Japan \u2014 and supports the restart of retired nuclear plants.<\/p>\n Fuketa believes the U.S. is in a \u201ccritical situation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat should not happen in [Japan],\u201d he said of politicians firing regulators. \u201cThe most important difference between before and after the Fukushima Daiichi accident is the independence of the regulator.\u201d<\/p>\n By 2022, the appeal of a robust nuclear sector was impossible to ignore. Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine threatened Japan\u2019s natural gas supply, and inflation jumped nearly tenfold<\/a>.<\/p>\n That year, Japan\u2019s prime minister pledged to reactivate 16 nuclear reactors by the summer of 2023. While the timeline slipped, the message was \u2014 and remains \u2014 clear: Japan is getting back into nuclear energy.<\/p>\n The coal and gas plants that supply 60 percent<\/a> of the country\u2019s electricity are fed by imported fuels that are subject to price changes and restrictions beyond Japan\u2019s control. While Japan also imports all of its uranium, the element is plentiful worldwide and incredibly energy dense, meaning missing a few shipments won\u2019t shock energy markets as severely.<\/p>\n The Iran war has put that energy calculus in sharp relief. One analysis estimated<\/a> that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz could reduce Japan\u2019s GDP by up to 3 percent this year, in large part due to reductions in natural gas supply and corresponding increases in electricity prices.<\/p>\n