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On January 1, Hiroaki Nakanishi, president of the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren), gave press interviews on business prospects. At one point, the discussions turned to nuclear energy.
Mr. Nakanishi is also chairman of Hitachi Ltd., a leading supplier of nuclear technology, and said that the commercial opportunities of nuclear energy in Japan, both for the "customers", the electricity companies, that for the "sellers", the manufacturers of facilities such as Hitachi, were more and more limited. If customers can not make a profit, the sellers will not, and this will continue to be the case as long as the public will oppose nuclear energy. Industry can not impose nuclear energy on citizens of a democracy.
The main media were likely represented in the interviews, but only one media outlet, All-Nippon News Network (ANN), reported Nakanishi's comments on nuclear power. January 1 was a holiday for newspapers, which means that no newspaper was published on January 2, but his January 3 speech has still not been mentioned. On January 5, journalist Hajime Takano commented on the lack of interest in Yukio Hatoyama, former prime minister, on the latter's Internet channel for his institute of the East Asian community. The president of Hitachi, a key company in the field of nuclear technology, had said that the nuclear energy sector was impossible without public support. Since nuclear energy is a national policy, the ramifications are enormous, said Takano, but no other major media has covered the talk or the ANN report. Were they afraid to upset the government?
As Takano pointed out, the Tokyo Shimbun, which as a regional newspaper can not be described as a "major media" and tends to question the government's nuclear policy, actually mentioned Nakanishi's remarks to the a January 5, suggesting that Hitachi 's president was no longer aligned with the administration on nuclear power. Nearly eight years after the disaster of the No. 1 Fukushima nuclear power plant, no nuclear power plant in eastern Japan has been put back into service and, without economic justification for nuclear power, this policy is futile.
But Tokyo Shimbun also said Nakanishi said Japan does not have an environment conducive to renewable energy. This qualification seemed to imply that nuclear energy was always better, but only if the public could be persuaded to accept it. Thus, even if part of Nakanishi's remarks may give the impression that the Japanese nuclear industry is throwing sponge, it should be placed in the broader context of Hitachi's activities.
The Nikkan Gendai newspaper, published on Dec. 19, reported that Hitachi had run into a wall regarding its planned construction of a nuclear reactor on the coast of Wales. Nakanishi had given a press conference saying that Hitachi was struggling to find an additional investment for the project and that as a result, the company had reached its limit, suggesting that it could abandon it. The initial cost estimate of 1.5 trillion yen has since doubled.
The problem with the Wales project is that Hitachi only wanted to build the plant, but can not find anyone to run the reactor afterwards. Hitachi should therefore badume the operations itself to obtain construction approval. In this respect, he needs the financial support of the British government, which could not be guaranteed as a result of the Brexit fiasco. Two other Japanese companies, Toshiba Corp. in the United States and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. in Turkey, have encountered similar problems. These two companies eventually withdrew from their respective foreign nuclear construction projects.
Since the expansion of the Japanese nuclear power plant stopped after the Fukushima disaster, the government has made nuclear development abroad a growth strategy, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as representative international trade. However, the proposed projects in Vietnam, Taiwan and elsewhere were blocked one by one. The collapse of the British project, officially announced Thursday, may well be the last nail of the coffin.
With this in mind, Nakanishi's words for the New Year sound fatalistic, but the experts hear something different. Nikkan Gendai interviewed Shigeaki Koga, former head of the Ministry of Commerce, who pointed out that nuclear energy actors in Japan depend on the government. Without support, it was impossible for private power companies or suppliers to make money from nuclear power. They basically persevered because it was a national policy. Nakanishi's remarks, Koga said, were veiled threats to the government: if you do not help us legally and financially, we will have no choice but to withdraw from the nuclear sector. If you want us to continue, he added, it's up to you to convince the public that nuclear energy is worth it.
The recent incursion of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings into wind energy, which the Yomiuri Shimbun, a strong supporter of official policy, described in detail on January 1, is in reality, according to Koga, only a means of attract the attention of the government. Understanding that renewable energy such as wind is probably the future, Tepco needs to enter the market, but that does not mean it is pulling out of the nuclear sector. In response to this type of comment, Nakanishi said on January 15 that Keidanren still supported nuclear power.
For what is worthwhile, the proponents of nuclear have always said that the main obstacle to nuclear energy is public opinion, which they consider poorly informed. Nuclear energy is not as dangerous as people think, he says, and is far less harmful to the environment than fossil fuels, which currently supply most of Japan's electricity needs. The government, they insist, must influence the public.
However, in the January 13 edition of Tokyo Shimbun, Motoko Mekata, a professor at Chuo University, said his people were right to reject the "mythology" that nuclear power was "safe, clean, and cheap," and was disappointed by Nakanishi's words.
As soon as Hitachi realized that nuclear exports were economically unfeasible, they said they could not do it without public support, Mekata wrote. The nuclear industry has not changed its position, she said, but it is just blaming the other person for their miscalculation.
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