Japan Leadership Race Needs Nuclear Debate, Ex-IEA Chief Says

(Bloomberg) -- Japan needs more open debate about nuclear power in its leadership race if it wants to ensure long-term economic prosperity and national security, a former International Energy Agency chief said.

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There’s a lack of debate within the Liberal Democratic Party ahead of a Sept. 27 vote to choose who will become Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s successor, according to Nobuo Tanaka, former IEA executive director. That’s because politicians fear stirring up public fears about nuclear catastrophes and hurting their chance of election, he said.

“We have three traumas: Fukushima, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, so to overcome this, we have to have some kind of very different narrative about nuclear,” he said Wednesday in Seoul. “If politicians do not talk about nuclear risks and benefits, the public do not understand.”

Japan is still heavily reliant on fossil fuel imports for its energy needs. While leading Japanese politicians have turned more friendly toward the nuclear industry in recent years, the country is still well behind in its efforts to achieve a 2050 net-zero emissions goal with the help of nuclear energy, according to BloombergNEF.

Japan has faced a series of delays in its nuclear restart program with little time left to build new capacity before 2030, a headwind for the long-term development of power-thirsty semiconductor factories and data centers for artificial intelligence.

So far roughly one-third of Japan’s operable nuclear reactors have restarted under post-Fukushima safety rules. The Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world’s largest, is currently sitting idle on the northern coast of central Japan.

Among the major candidates aiming to become prime minister, Digital Minister Kono Taro and former Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi have made comments in recent weeks suggesting they are more pro-nuclear than they were in the past. Kono’s policy document released Thursday said he will seek restart of reactors that are deemed safe.

Former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, on the other hand, said he will do all he can to reduce nuclear energy use to zero, during a press conference declaring his candidacy.

Tanaka, who began his career in the Japanese government and now teaches energy policy at the University of Tokyo, said Japan stands to suffer on national security as well if it remains reluctant to push the nuclear agenda more aggressively. While calling for the use of a reactor that would make it harder to extract plutonium for military use, he said a diminishing industry of commercial plants risks phasing out a pool of young, talented scientists in the field.

“If we gave up nuclear totally, what would China and North Korea think about us?” Tanaka said. “To have a capability is a kind of deterrence.”

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