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US industry skeptical of Japan's call to phase out nukes
The Nuclear Energy Institute believes there is reason to be skeptical that Japan will carry out plans to phase out nuclear power by the 2030s.

"Today's intentions may not be tomorrow's realities," Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Steve Kerekes said Sept. 14. Earlier that day, a panel convened by Japan's Cabinet, the country's executive branch, called for phasing out nuclear power by sometime in the 2030s, The Associated Press reported. According to the World Nuclear Association, before the meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, nuclear energy accounted for about 30% of Japan's total electricity production.

But Kerekes said other countries have announced plans to get rid of their nuclear reactors and then failed to follow through. "Sweden, back in 1980, indicated they'd have reactors offline by 2010," he said. The World Nuclear Association reports that Sweden still gets about 40% of its electricity from 10 operating reactors. The country's Parliament voted to repeal the planned phase-out in June 2010.

One obvious difference between Sweden and Japan is that the Scandinavian country has not experienced a problem with a nuclear plant nearly as severe as the Fukushima disaster. The tragedy of that experience has strongly turned the Japanese people off nuclear energy. And, according to the head of a U.S. antinuclear group, the Japanese government's plans are actually conservative.

"When you have the public solidly against a nuclear program, it just becomes too difficult politically to try to keep something like this going," Nuclear Information and Resource Service Executive Director Michael Mariotte said Sept. 14. "The government bowed to some pressure from some of the nuclear interests. In reality, the timeline [for phase-out] is going to be a lot shorter."

Japan is not the first nation to react to Fukushima by promising to get rid of nuclear power. Germany and Switzerland have both said in the past year they aim to phase out their plants. "You have major industrial economies that are now over the next decade going to be leading the way in clean energy," Mariotte said. "America is going to be falling behind."

The U.S. response to Fukushima has been much less drastic than these other countries, with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission declaring not long after the incident that it believed the country's plants are fundamentally safe. A series of new regulations based on "lessons learned" from what happened in Japan has been proposed, but it does not include some of the costliest measures recommended by some observers, such as a speedier movement of spent nuclear fuel to dry casks.

During the summer, nuclear plants across the country began a series of "walkdowns," or in-depth inspections, to begin assessing how the plants could hold up during a severe earthquake or flood, one of the main new recommendations from regulators. The industry also is spending about $600,000 to $1 million per plant on new emergency equipment.

http://www.snl.com/Interactivex/article.aspx?CdId=A-15822530-12596