CONSULTING

• Local political and public opposition;
• Impact of electricity deregulation and intensified market competition.
At the same time, however, Japanese utilities are insisting on, and the government has granted
and reinforced, the right to refuse cheaper renewable power, supposedly due to concerns about
grid stability—hardly plausible in view of their far smaller renewable fractions than in several
European countries—but apparently to suppress competition. The utilities also continue
strenuous efforts to ensure that the imminent liberalization of the monopoly-based, vertically
integrated Japanese power system should not actually expose utilities’ legacy plants to real
competition. The ability of existing Japanese nuclear plants, if restarted, to operate competitively
against modern renewables (as many in the U.S. and Europe can no longer do) is unclear because
nuclear operating costs are not transparent. However, the utilities’ almost complete suppression
of Japanese wind power suggests they are concerned on this score. And as renewables continue
to become cheaper and more ubiquitous, customers will be increasingly tempted by Japan’s
extremely high electricity prices to make and store their own electricity and to drop off the grid
altogether, as is already happening, for example, in Hawaii and Australia.
Of the 19 reactors currently with applications outstanding before the NRA, not all will restart, with
many questions and disagreements over seismic issues (including active fault status), and many
plants far back in the review and screening queue. At the present rate of review, restart of 3-4
reactors each year from 2016 onwards remains a possibility but also a challenge, with the major
uncertainty that even restarted reactors will be shut down through the courts.
New-build Projects
The situation of new-build projects is another illustration of the level uncertainty surrounding the
future of nuclear power in Japan. After the 3/11 events, Japan halted work at two ABWR units,
Shimane-3 and Ohma, which had been under construction since 2007 and 2010 respectively. In
September 2012, METI approved the restart of construction in Shimane-3 and Ohma-1 plants, but
there was little sign of any resumption of work. Officially, construction “partially resumed” at
Ohma in October 2012 636 and Shimane-3 has remained “under construction”, according to the
Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF) 637 and IAEA statistics. In the case of Shimane-3, it was
94 percent complete by March 2011 638 . Since then, Chugoku Electric, the plant owner, completed
a 15 m-high sea wall around Shimane-3 in January 2012, and then extended the seawall to a length
of 1.5km. 639 The utility began work to install filtered vents during 2014-2015, and other
modifications “pursuant to the new regulatory requirements”. 640 No startup date has been
636 J-Power, “2014 Annual Report”, August 2014, see http://www.jpower.co.jp/english/ir/pdf/2014.pdf,
accessed 11 June 2015.
637 JAIF, “Nuclear Power Plants in Japan”, 22 May 2013.
638 Sang-Baik Kim, Jan-Horst Keppler, “Case Studies On Project And Logistics Management In Nuclear New
Built The ABWR Project at Shimane-3”, NEA OECD, Nuclear Development Division, as presented at the
OECD NEA Workshop on Project and Logistics Management, Paris (France), 11 March 2014, see
http://docplayer.net/13785016-The-abwr-project-at-shimane-3-japan.html, accessed 2 July 2016.
639 NEI, “New-build now. Part 2: Asia”, 9 July 2014, see http://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurenewbuild-now-part-2-asia-4313945/,
accessed 2 July 2016.
640 Chugoku Electric Power Company, “Annual Report 2015—Year ended 31 March 2015”, see
http://www.energia.co.jp/e/ir/report/pdf/ar15/ar15.pdf, accessed 2 July 2016.
Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt et al. 161 World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016