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 As few as a third, and at most about two-thirds, of the reactors
will pass today's more stringent safety checks and clear the other
seismological, economic, logistical and political hurdles needed to
restart, a Reuters analysis shows.
This means Japan is likely to remain heavily reliant on imported
fuel to power the world's third-largest economy, straining a trade
balance that has been in the red for nearly two years. Electric
utilities will face huge liabilities to decommission reactors and
pay for fossil fuels.
Hokkaido Electric Power Co and Kyushu Electric Power Co, both facing
a third year of financial losses, are seeking capital infusions
totaling nearly $1.5 billion from a state-owned lender. Kyushu
Electric shares dropped as much as 7 percent on Wednesday to an
8-week low. Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power Co was bailed
out by the government after the March 2011 disaster.
Continuing indefinitely to burn more coal and gas also means Tokyo
will find it much harder to meet targets for reducing greenhouse-gas
emissions.
"A VERY GOOD GUESS"
Japan had 54 nuclear reactors supplying about 30 percent of the
nation's electricity before an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in 2011. The six reactors at
that plant are shut forever, slated for decades-long
decommissioning.
Of Japan's remaining four dozen reactors, 14 will probably restart
at some point, a further 17 are uncertain and 17 will probably never
be switched back on, the analysis suggests. As a result, nuclear
energy could remain below 10 percent of Japan's power supply.
The Reuters analysis is based on questionnaires and interviews with
more than a dozen experts and input from the 10 nuclear operators.
It takes into account such factors as the age of the plants, nearby
seismic faults, additional work needed to address safety concerns,
evacuation plans and local political opposition.
It's impossible to say how many reactors will eventually pass safety
inspections and win local approval to restart, but the Reuters
analysis constitutes "a very good guess," said Tatsujiro Suzuki, who
stepped down this week as vice chairman of the government's Japan
Atomic Energy Commission.
Japan previously had the third-highest number of nuclear reactors,
behind France and the United States. In Asia, China currently has 21
reactors and South Korea 23.
A number at the low end of the Reuters calculations could make it
impossible for Japan to reinstate nuclear as a "base-load" power
source — enough to feed a constant minimum supply to the grid — as
specified in a draft national energy plan that the government may
adopt as soon as this week.
In a measure of the keen interest in, and lack of hard information
about Japan's nuclear restarts, shares of uranium producers such as
Canada's Cameco Corp and Australia's Paladin Energy Ltd jumped as
much as 15 percent last month just on news that Tokyo had compiled a
final draft of the energy plan.
HARD SLOG AHEAD
The public has turned against nuclear power after watching Tokyo
Electric (Tepco) struggle to deal with the Fukushima disaster.
Recent polls put opposition to nuclear restarts at about two-to-one
over support.
Abe's government, which reversed the previous government's policy of
phasing out nuclear power by 2030, has set no timetable for
restarting nuclear plants, saying the process is in the hands of a
tough, more independent safety regulator set up after Fukushima.
Some power companies have business plans that assume restarts by
this summer, but — with the possible exception of two reactors in
southern Japan — that looks highly unrealistic, as the Nuclear
Regulation Authority (NRA) says the utilities aren't taking the
process seriously enough.
Eight power companies have requested safety inspections to allow the
restart of 17 reactors at 10 power stations. The NRA has
fast-tracked two reactors at the Sendai plant in southern Japan
after operator Kyushu Electric Power Co broke ranks with its peers
and said it would provision for far greater seismic shocks to the
plant.
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Three reactors in southern Japan are considered next in line, among
11 pressurized-water reactors at five plants run by Shikoku
Electric, Kansai Electric and Hokkaido Electric being actively
vetted by the regulator. "I think the government is incredibly
clever by doing the restarts in the most modern, advanced places
that have the most local support and are yet far from centers of
political activity," said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies
at Temple University's Japan campus. "Then you use that to create
momentum for the agenda of restarting as many reactors as possible."
Even after the NRA says a reactor is safe to restart, the government
will defer to local areas for the final decision. Some of the
front-runners have local governments strongly behind nuclear power
and the wealth it brings to communities through jobs and government
subsidies.
FAULTY TOWERS
Other communities may balk at disaster preparedness. A survey of 134
mayors of towns and villages near reactors by the Asahi newspaper
found that 10 of the country's 16 nuclear plants do not have
evacuation plans to cover a full 30 km (18.6 miles) radius — the
size of the Fukushima exclusion zone.
Some reactors can essentially be ruled out, like Tepco's Fukushima
Daini station, which is well within the Daiichi plant evacuation
zone and faces near-universal opposition from a traumatized local
population. Also highly unlikely to switch back on is Japan Atomic
Power Co's Tsuruga plant west of Tokyo. It sits on an active fault,
according to experts commissioned by the NRA.
Twelve reactors will reach or exceed the standard life expectancy of
40 years within the next five years, probably sealing their fate in
the new, harsher regulatory climate. These include reactor No. 1 at
Shikoku Electric's Ikata power station.
The outlook is less clear for about a third of the other 48
reactors.
Tepco's Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant on the Japan Sea coast north of
Tokyo, the world's biggest nuclear station by output capacity, faces
a politically fraught process. Although two of the 7 reactors look
likely to restart on technical grounds, the head of the local
prefecture has accused the operator of "institutionalized lying" and
says Tepco cannot be trusted to operate another facility.
Chubu Electric Power Co's Hamaoka plant on the Pacific coast 190 km
southwest of Tokyo has been branded by one Japanese seismologist as
the country's most dangerous nuclear facility as it is located in an
area where four major tectonic plates meet. Any restart would face
significant opposition from local legislators even in Abe's own
party, and the prefectural governor supports a referendum on the
issue.
The government will probably revise Japan's energy framework in the
next three years, and if Abe's party is still in power, it may push
to build new reactors to replace aging units, said Suzuki at the
Japan Atomic Energy Commission.
"They may say it's better to replace older reactors with safer new
reactors, and the public may accept it."
(Additional reporting by Taiga Uranaka and James Topham;
editing by
Billy Mallard and Ian Geoghegan)
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