Can Japan recapture its solar power? — MIT Technology Review

” It’s 38 °C on the Atsumi Peninsula southwest of Tokyo: a deadly heat wave has been gripping much of Japan late this summer. Inside the offices of a newly built power plant operated by the plastics company Mitsui Chemicals, the AC is blasting. Outside, 215,000 solar panels are converting the blistering sunlight into 50 megawatts of electricity for the local grid. Three 118-meter-high wind turbines erected at the site add six megawatts of generation capacity to back up the solar panels during the winter.

Mitsui’s plant is just one of thousands of renewable-power installations under way as Japan confronts its third summer in a row without use of the nuclear reactors that had delivered almost 30 percent of its electricity. In Japan people refer to the earthquake and nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, as “Three-Eleven.” Radioactive contamination forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate and terrified millions more. It also sent a shock wave through Japan’s already fragile manufacturing sector, which is the country’s second-largest employer and accounts for 18 percent of its economy.

Eleven of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors shut down on the day of the earthquake. One year later every reactor in Japan was out of service; each had to be upgraded to meet heightened safety standards and then get in a queue for inspections. During my visit this summer, Japan was still without nuclear power, and only aggressive energy conservation kept the lights on. Meanwhile, the country was using so much more imported fossil fuel that electricity prices were up by about 20 percent for homes and 30 percent for businesses, according to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI).

The post-Fukushima energy crisis, however, has fueled hopes for the country’s renewable-power industry, particularly its solar businesses. As one of his last moves before leaving office in the summer of 2011, Prime Minister Naoto Kan established potentially lucrative feed-in tariffs to stimulate the installation of solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy. Feed-in tariffs set a premium rate at which utilities must purchase power generated from such sources.

The government incentive is what motivated Mitsui to finally make use of land originally purchased for an automotive plastics factory that was never built because carmakers moved manufacturing operations overseas. The site had sat idle for 21 years before Mitsui assembled a consortium to help finance a $180 million investment in solar panels and wind turbines. By moving fast, Mitsui and its six partners qualified for 2012 feed-in tariffs that promised industrial-scale solar facilities 40 yen (35 cents) per kilowatt-hour generated for 20 years. At that price, says Shin Fukuda, the former nuclear engineer who runs Mitsui’s energy and environment business, the consortium should earn back its investment in 10 years and collect substantial profits from the renewable facility for at least another decade.

Overnight, Japan has become the world’s hottest solar market: in less than two years after Fukushima melted down, the country more than doubled its solar generating capacity. According to METI, developers installed nearly 10 gigawatts of renewable generating capacity through the end of April 2014, including 9.6 gigawatts of photovoltaics. (The nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi had 4.7 gigawatts of capacity; overall, the country has around 290 gigawatts of installed electricity-generating capacity.) Three-quarters of the new solar capacity was in large-scale installations such as Mitsui’s.

Yet this explosion of solar capacity marks a bittersweet triumph for Japan’s solar-panel manufacturers, which had led the design of photovoltaics in the 1980s and launched the global solar industry in the 1990s. Bitter because most of the millions of panels being installed are imports made outside the country. Even some Japanese manufacturers, including early market leader Sharp, have taken to buying panels produced abroad and selling them in Japan.

How Japan­­—once the world’s most advanced semiconductor producer and a pioneer in using that technology to manufacture photovoltaic cells—gave away its solar industry is a story of national insecurity, monopoly power, and money-driven politics. It is also a tale with important lessons for those who believe that the strength of renewable technologies will provide sufficient incentives for countries to transform their energy habits.

In Japan, for most of the 2000s, impressive advances in photovoltaics were ignored because the country’s powerful utilities exerted their political muscle to favor nuclear power. And despite resurging consumer demand for solar power and strong public disdain for nuclear, the same thing could happen again. Will a country with few fossil-fuel resources and bleak memories of the Fukushima disaster take advantage of its technical expertise to recapture its position as a leading producer of photovoltaics, or will it turn away from renewable energy once more? ”

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Japan to restart nuclear reactors — The Guardian

” Japan’s nuclear watchdog has given the green light for two reactors to restart but the operator still has to persuade local communities they are safe.

Widespread anti-nuclear sentiment has simmered in Japan ever since an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 caused meltdowns at the Fukushima power plant, sparking the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl.

The country’s nuclear reactors were switched off after the catastrophe. Two reactors were briefly restarted last year but all of Japan’s nuclear plants are currently offline.

The go-ahead from the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) for two reactors at the Sendai plant in southern Japan comes after it issued a more than 400-page safety report in July and follows a month-long public consultation period.

But any restart is unlikely before the year end as the operator, Kyushu Electric Power, is also required to get two more NRA approvals for other facilities at the site.

More challenging, perhaps, is gaining the consent of communities living near the plant in south-western Kagoshima prefecture, who must sign off on the restarts before they can happen.

Much of the job of convincing a sceptical public will fall on the shoulders of new industry minister Yuko Obuchi.

“If people say they are worried, I think it is only natural. If you are a mother, I think it is a kind of feeling that everyone has,” Obuchi said soon after being appointed as Japan’s first female industry minister. “The central government must offer a full explanation to these sentiments.”

Obuchi has highlighted the importance of earning the “understanding of hosting communities” who may be hostile to the prospect of firing up nearby reactors, despite beefed up safety rules.

The minister has reportedly dispatched five central government officials to help local bodies in Kagoshima draw up evacuation plans in case of an accident.

Communities living right next door to nuclear plants, who often enjoy grants from utility companies and depend on the power stations for employment, are frequently sympathetic to restarts.

However, there is often hostility from those living further afield who enjoy no direct benefits but see themselves as in the firing line in the event of another accident like Fukushima.

Greenpeace Japan, which is campaigning for Tokyo to abandon nuclear power completely, said the government of the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, appeared to be glossing over the last year, in which Japan has survived without nuclear power.

“The government … is ignoring the lessons of Fukushima and attempting to prevent the renewable energy revolution, trying to take the nation back to its dependence on dangerous and unreliable nuclear power,” said Kazue Suzuki for the organisation.

Abe has been trying to persuade a wary public that the world’s third largest economy must return to an energy source that once supplied more than a quarter of its power.

Obuchi visited Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Sunday, wearing a protective jacket and face mask to observe work at the crippled facility. ”

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Kagoshima nuclear plant gets safety OK, moves closer to resumption — The Japan Times

” A nuclear plant operated by Kyushu Electric Power Co. obtained a safety clearance from regulators Wednesday, becoming the first to meet new regulations imposed following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

With the approval from the Nuclear Regulation Authority, the two reactors at the Sendai power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture moved a step closer to restarting. Currently all of the nation’s 48 commercial reactors are offline.

The pro-nuclear government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is eager to bring reactors back online amid a surge in fossil fuel costs for thermal power generation, which has made up for the absence of atomic power.

A restart of the Sendai plant, however, is not likely to happen before December, as Kyushu Electric must still finish paperwork needed to complete the NRA screening process.

The regional utility must also obtain consent from local authorities and undergo on-site operational checks.

On Wednesday, the watchdog’s decision-making panel approved the final version of its screening report, which included public comments.

The NRA said Aug. 19 that it had received some 17,000 comments from the public on the draft version of the report the panel completed on July 16.

The nation’s 48 commercial reactors, including the two at the Sendai complex, have not been allowed to resume operating amid safety concerns after being shut down for mandatory regular checkups or other reasons.

The new, more stringent safety standards introduced in July last year set a higher hurdle for reactors to operate in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami.

The Sendai plant, located on the southwestern coast of the main island of Kyushu, emerged in March as the leading candidate for resumption after clearing key hurdles related to earthquake and tsunami hazards that could affect the plant.

So far, power companies have applied for regulator’s safety screening of a total of 20 nuclear reactors at 10 nuclear power plants. ”

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Japanese public seen as biggest obstacle to nuke restart — Bloomberg

” Japan is facing the toughest test yet in its effort to restore nuclear energy more than three years after the Fukushima disaster: scrutiny from a skeptical population.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority vouched last month for the safety of two reactors in Sendai, the first to pass inspections. Still, with Japan going through its first summer in 48 years without atomic power, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is among those predicting more delays to restarts as government approval becomes increasingly dependent on public opinion.

Japan’s energy bill has ballooned as reliance on fossil fuels such as liquefied natural gas fills the power gap, contributing to record trade deficits. The focus is now on city and prefecture governments and whether they will approve the restart of the Sendai units. More than half of the population remains opposed to resuming nuclear generation after the March 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi reactors.

“Restarting the Sendai plant is dangerous,” said Osamu Mikami, 73, an anti-nuclear activist who is among protesters that have camped for almost three years on the grounds of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Tokyo. “I don’t want such a reckless act to be carried out,” he said in an interview on Aug. 15, vowing to continue demonstrations until Japan gives up plans to begin atomic operations again.

17,000 Comments

Kyushu Electric Power Co. is among 10 companies that have applied for safety inspections on 20 reactors, according to the NRA. The Fukuoka-based utility is following procedures that will allow its Sendai units to run safely during normal operations, as well as during accidents caused by earthquakes or other outside causes, a July 16 draft report from the regulator shows.

About 17,000 comments have been made on the report during a monthlong period for public response that ended Aug. 15, Masaya Okuyama, a Tokyo-based NRA spokesman, said Aug. 22 by phone. The final version will be compiled taking into account these views, he said.

“It seems unlikely that more than these two units will be operating by the end of this year,” Jonathan Hinze, a senior vice president at Ux Consulting Co. in Roswell, Georgia, which provides research on the nuclear industry, said by e-mail on July 22. “We’ll see how quickly the remaining political and regulatory decisions are made.”

All of Japan’s 48 operable reactors are shut for safety checks or maintenance, with the last plant idled in September.

Chernobyl Disaster

The earthquake and tsunami in 2011 caused the meltdown of three reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima plant, forcing the evacuation of about 160,000 people because of the threat of radiation contamination. It also prompted other nations to reassess nuclear as an energy source.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the shutdown of some of the country’s oldest reactors as a safety measure in March 2011 in response to the crisis in Japan and then determined safety checks were needed for all the reactors.

EON SE, RWE AG and EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG halted units as a result. Vattenfall AB’s two reactors were not operating at the time because of technical faults and never returned to the grid. The country will phase out all atomic plants, which have been the backbone of German energy policy, by 2022.

Nuclear power in Japan, once Asia’s largest producer, remains unpopular more than three years after the worst civilian atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. Fifty-nine percent of respondents to a poll in July published by the Asahi newspaper opposed the restart of the Sendai units.

Local Government

The central government needs to guarantee the safety of the Sendai plant and get “the understanding of local people” before a restart of the facility, Shunro Iwata, an official at the nuclear safety control division of the local Kagoshima prefecture, said yesterday by phone.

The Kagoshima government plans to consider the opinion of Satsumasendai city officials and the prefecture’s assembly before making a decision on whether to approve a restart, he said. Nobody was available to comment at the nuclear safety control office of the Satsumasendai city government.

“The term, guaranteeing safety, is absurd — no one can promise such a thing,” said Tomoko Murakami, a Tokyo-based nuclear analyst at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan, who predicts difficulty in securing local government approvals.

“If a person says, ‘OK, I will approve the restart,’ and something goes wrong, he will be made responsible for it,” Murakami said yesterday by phone. “A person in a position to make a final decision may be so scared now.”

Nuclear Outlook

Delays are prompting a reassessment of Japan’s nuclear outlook. JPMorgan cut its forecast in a July 28 report to 31 reactors to restart by 2019, down from 42. Two-thirds of Japan’s pre-accident fleet may never resume due to damage, seismic conditions that don’t meet NRA guidelines and local opposition, financial adviser Raymond James Ltd. said in a June 19 report.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying to drive the country out of two decades of stagnation through aggressive economic policies known as Abenomics and any delays will be a setback to his government. The reactor shutdowns caused the nation’s household electricity charges to increase by about 20 percent, according to the trade ministry.

Further Inspections

The approval of the Kyushu Electric units may speed up the assessment process for other utilities seeking restarts. The inspection of other plants using the same pressurized water technology as those at Sendai will go “more smoothly,” NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka told reporters on July 16 at a press conference in Tokyo.

Half of the nation’s reactors use pressurized water technology, according to the Federation of Electric Power Cos.

The NRA’s review process for other reactors “may be accelerated by using that for the Sendai plant as a model,” Yuji Nishiyama, a Tokyo-based analyst at JPMorgan Securities Japan Co., said by phone Aug. 25. Still, none will resume this year due to delays in submitting documents such as construction work plans, he said. Last month he had forecast one restart.

The Sendai units may receive NRA approval to restart in November, Reiji Ogino, a Tokyo-based analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co., said in an Aug. 25 interview.

Ogino, who last month predicted that the plant might resume in October, now foresees a January start because getting support from local governments will take at least a month.

Reactors Return

Kyushu Electric shares, which have lost 20 percent this year, fell as much as 1.3 percent to 1,070 yen today in Tokyo.

“Nuclear is incredibly important to the Japanese economy,” Rob Chang, the head of metals and mining at Cantor Fitzgerald in Toronto who predicts the Sendai units may restart in November at the earliest, said by e-mail yesterday. “We expect 32 reactors to return online in Japan by end of 2018.”

The extent to which nuclear plants can restart and operate has “huge impacts” on the Japanese economy, the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan, said in a report last month.

The nation’s bill for fossil fuels surged by 60 percent from 2010 to about 27 trillion yen ($260 billion) last year, increasing the country’s trade deficit to a record, the trade and industry ministry said in June.

“People shouldn’t take a short-range perspective in which fuel costs would fall,” Mikami said at the camp in Tokyo, which has become a base for weekly rallies in the Nagatacho and Kasumigaseki districts. “We will remove these tents only if the government declares it won’t restart reactors.” ”

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