Japan’s new leaders set to work Thursday on dismantling plans to rid the country of nuclear power by 2040, pledging to review a post-Fukushima policy.
The pro-business Liberal Democratic Party-led government also said they would give the green light to any reactors deemed safe by regulators, indicating shuttered power stations could start coming back online.
“We need to reconsider the previous administration’s policy that aimed to make zero nuclear power operation possible during the 2030s,” Toshimitsu Motegi told a news conference.
Shinzo Abe, who was elected as prime minister and unveiled his cabinet line-up on Wednesday, appointed Motegi as his economy, trade and industry minister, also in charge of supervising the nuclear industry.
Abe’s LDP won a landslide victory in the December 16 election, returning to power after a three-year break.
Despite anti-nuclear sentiment running high in Japan following the Fukushima disaster, parties opposing atomic energy made little impact at the ballot box.
Motegi said he was ready to give the go-ahead to resuming generation at nuclear power plants “if they are confirmed safe”.
Given that the LDP was swept back into power, Japan's voters are clearly far more worried about Japan's stagnant economy than nuclear safety. To their credit, the LDP is already proposing big infrastructure projects to rebuild the damaged northeast coast of Japan and to put people to work immediately (something the US should emulate). That stimulative rebuilding effort is going to include nuclear plants however.
I wish Japan would consider other power sources, but it's hard for me to complain when the US lacks the will to even try to rebuild anything at this point because the greatest country in the world "can no longer afford expensive boondoggles" like, you know, roads, bridges, schools and power lines.
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