The new administration of Prime Minister Abe in Japan is bullish on nuclear power. Although the majority of the Japanese people do not want to restart the Japanese nuclear reactor fleet that has been shut down since the Fukushima disaster in 2011, the Abe government has been very insistent that nuclear power has got to part of the Japanese energy mix if they are going to expand the Japanese economy in the coming years. Abe has purged a lot of nuclear energy opponents for the inner circles of the Japanese national government. Abe’s focus on nuclear power is not restricted to Japan. He is traveling outside of Japan to other countries to advertise Japan’s interest in increasing exports of Japanese nuclear technology. Abe has pledged to triple Japanese infrastructure exports to three hundred billio, partly with nuclear components.
In May, it was announced that Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and France’s Areva are expected to win a twenty two billion dollar contract to construct a nuclear power plant in Turkey. The plan is for four pressurized water reactors to be constructed at Sinop on the Black Sea. The four reactors will produce over four million kilowatts of electricity. This will be the second nuclear power plant for Turkey and the first rector is expected to start producing electricity in 2023.
Last week, Japan and France announced that they were entering into a partnership to capture a bigger share of the global marked for nuclear technology. France gets eighty percent of its electricity from nuclear power and it is very important for them to support a thriving global nuclear technology industry. Japan is hoping to substantially expand their economy with nuclear exports. In addition, France has said that it will assist Japan with their spent fuel reprocessing and fast breeder projects that have been plagued by problems.
Recently Japan attended a conference with the leaders of four ex-communist countries in Poland to push Japanese nuclear products. The Visegrad Group consists of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. At Japan’s first summit with the Visegrad Group, Abe called for increase cooperation, especially in energy policies. Following the meeting, a joint statement was issued that said that there was interest by private parties on both sides in cooperating on nuclear power.
The Japanese Atomic Energy Commission has been criticized for being a victim of regulatory capture by the private Japanese nuclear companies. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is one of the leading Japanese nuclear technology companies at the forefront of efforts to expand nuclear exports. They manufactured two new steam turbines for the San Onofre reactors near San Diego. The new turbines failed in two years due to design flaws. Japan has a lot of problems with their nuclear industry which tends to motivate skepticism about their ability to successfully export safe and reliable nuclear reactors. While the Japanese government is working hard to convince the people of Japan that their future prosperity depends on nuclear power, there are tens of thousands of anti-nuclear protestors expressing their disagreement in major Japanese cities.
