On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami that struck the east coast of Japan, devastating Japan's nuclear power industry. The disaster resulted in 20,000 deaths, the destruction of 120,000 buildings, and triggered a partial meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, directly causing global panic about nuclear safety.
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02-13, 2025The meltdown and mass evacuation caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident triggered global panic, and several countries, including Germany, announced that they would close their nuclear power plants. Japan also immediately shut down its domestic nuclear reactors. However, as time has passed and new energy crises have emerged, nuclear energy has gradually recovered and re-entered people's field of vision.
Before the Fukushima nuclear accident, Japan had 54 nuclear reactors, providing nearly 30% of the country's energy. According to the International Energy Agency, as of 2023, only 14 reactors have been restarted, and nuclear energy accounts for less than 9% of Japan's electricity supply. However, the Japanese government is planning to rapidly expand the nuclear power industry and build "next-generation" reactors. The latest Strategic Energy Plan no longer emphasizes reducing reliance on nuclear power, but sets a goal of nuclear energy accounting for 20% of the national grid by 2040.
Climate change, energy security, growing energy demand, and industry encouragement are all factors driving nuclear energy back onto the agenda. Palu Bhakshi, a visiting scholar at the Tokyo Future Initiative Institute, pointed out that the Ukraine crisis and the ensuing turmoil in the global energy market have also highlighted the risks of Japan's heavy reliance on imported fossil fuels. She said: "Japan relies on imports for almost 90% of its fuel, so while Japan is not heavily dependent on Russian natural gas, it is re-evaluating its view of energy security."
As Japan seeks to strengthen its electricity supply, the country is preparing to meet a surge in electricity demand driven by the rapid growth of data centers. These power-hungry facilities are critical to the operation of growth industries such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Hokkaido Electric Power Company stated that it can meet the growing demand by restarting its nuclear reactors, and Google's parent company Alphabet has also expressed support for nuclear energy to help decarbonize its vast technology empire. Dr. Hiroyuki Oikawa, President of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, said that global support for net-zero emissions and concerns about energy security are "major factors changing people's views on nuclear energy."
Nuclear energy advocates often argue that nuclear power plants do not produce greenhouse gases during operation, making them essential for addressing climate change. However, critics point out that nuclear power plants require a lot of water, produce toxic waste, and are vulnerable to natural and geopolitical disasters, which makes nuclear energy's environmental credentials questionable. Anti-nuclear advocate Aileen Mioko Smith believes that nuclear power will ultimately delay climate action, as was the case after the world's first emissions reduction treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, was signed in 1992. She said that it should have been a great opportunity to end nuclear power and truly commit to renewable energy, efficiency, and conservation, but the government planned to build 21 new nuclear power plants by 2010, and as a result, only 8 reactors were built, wasting a decade on more active use of renewable energy.
Today, Smith and her advocacy group "Green Action" are one of many organizations that have filed lawsuits against the restart of almost all nuclear reactors. Florentina Koppenburg, an energy policy researcher who wrote a book about how the Fukushima disaster affected the politics of safety governance, said that anti-nuclear activities have become more organized. She said that there have always been lawyers who opposed nuclear power plants, but after the Fukushima accident, they formed an association to cooperate nationwide, share lessons learned, and study which methods work and which methods do not. While advocates are working with local residents, some communities facing population and economic decline are calling for the restart of their nuclear reactors to help revitalize the local economy.
After the Fukushima accident, Japan established an independent nuclear safety agency to develop stricter safety standards and oversee the restart of nuclear reactors. This has caused trouble for power companies, as they now have to deal with an independent regulator instead of the pro-nuclear Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Before obtaining restart approval, power companies need to complete a series of safety upgrades, from backup power supplies to huge tsunami seawalls. Koppenburg said that many nuclear power plant operators "completely underestimated" the cost of meeting the new standards. She said: "Safety costs have risen sharply, which will certainly affect the economic viability of nuclear power as a business. The government still pursues a pro-nuclear policy, but some of the operators who bear the brunt of the costs are quietly withdrawing from the nuclear power business."
These economic and legal challenges explain why Japan's nuclear power industry has recovered slowly after the Fukushima accident. Of the 54 nuclear reactors operating at the time of the disaster, 27 have been decommissioned or have not applied for restart permits. At the same time, the Japanese government hopes that power companies will invest in new generation reactors. Five key technologies have been identified, including small modular reactors designed to be built quickly and cheaply, and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors to power energy-intensive industries such as steel production. Dr. Oikawa said that Japan is also cooperating with France and the United States to develop sodium-cooled fast neutron reactors, which use liquid metal instead of water as a coolant. He said: "We have a [600 MW] experimental fast neutron reactor, Joyo, in Kyoto Prefecture, which is currently being renovated to comply with the new regulations."
With increasing investment in new nuclear technologies, experts say that Japan is running out of time to achieve its net-zero emissions targets. According to Japan's 2040 target, 40% to 50% of energy will come from renewable energy, 20% from nuclear energy, and the rest from thermal sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas. If Japan fails to meet its renewable energy or nuclear energy targets, the country may be forced to burn fossil fuels to make up the gap. Koppenburg suspects that the government continues to support nuclear energy because "they simply lack a Plan B." She said: "Saying that the strategy of betting on nuclear power over the past decade has not worked is not a very appealing topic politically."
Dr. Oikawa said that in terms of renewable energy, Japan's geography and limited land make it "challenging to provide renewable energy cheaply, safely, and unaffected by the weather." He said: "Currently, our position is to utilize all available resources while focusing on prices and domestic supply chains." But Smith said that if Japan wants to address climate change, it needs "fast, cheap, and reliable" solutions. She said: "Fast means you can't talk about pie-in-the-sky new reactors that won't be realized for 20 or 30 years, that will be too late."
