Nuclear Japan

JAPAN relies on nuclear power for nearly a third of its electricity, and a lack of local sources of energy, coupled with a national commitment to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, imply that this figure will have to rise to 40% over the next few years. But deep suspicion of nuclear energy and its regulation is not helping. Local opposition has, since 2003, forced three utilities to shelve plans for new nuclear plants. Now, on March 24th, a court ordered the newest and biggest of the country's 55 reactors, at the Shika plant in western Japan, to stop operations, barely a week after it had come onstream. The court upheld a case brought by residents who argued that the reactor's design took too little account of the risk of big earthquakes. The power utility plans to appeal.

About a fifth of the world's nuclear reactors sit in what are reckoned areas of “significant” seismic activity; in Japan, make that 100%. To date, the performance of Japan's nuclear plants has been exemplary during earthquakes; they have either sailed through unruffled, or reactors have shut down automatically. Nonetheless, human errors and cover-ups have generated unease. An accident in 1995 has kept one reactor closed to this day. In 1999, at a facility outside Tokyo, workers mixed enriched uranium by hand to save time, and caused a runaway chain reaction, killing two workers and irradiating hundreds of villagers. In 2002, details of falsified inspection and repair reports forced the temporary closure of 17 plants. And in 2004, steam from a broken pipe that had not been inspected for two decades killed five workers in western Japan.

Still, Japan's nuclear programme is not completely off the rails. This week the governor of Aomori prefecture gave his blessing to Japan's first commercial nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant. Given its distance from the country's industrial areas, northern Japan does not lightly turn away business—even of the nuclear sort.

Nuclear Power