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Japan to review nuclear policy, targets

TOKYO: Power-hungry Japan said on Friday it would begin a sweeping review of its energy policy, a move that is likely to lead to cuts in plans to build as many as 20 new nuclear reactors by 2010.

It was the first time a cabinet member had said publicly it might be difficult to achieve the current nuclear expansion target amid growing public opposition to this type of energy after a fatal accident last year.

Trade Minister Takashi Fukaya told reporters that a one-year review -- which would have in mind an energy policy conversion -- would be started in April. Fukaya said circumstances facing the energy industry and the country had changed since 1998, when Japan adopted a target of building 16 to 20 nuclear reactors on top of the 51 currently in operation.

Nuclear energy covers about one-third of the nation's electricity demand.

"I have doubts about hitting our target to build 16 to 20 nuclear reactors by 2010," Fukaya said. "I feel that we will have to change the plan."

As reasons for the decision, he cited in particular a decline in domestic energy consumption, Japan's worst nuclear accident last September and a decision last month to scrap a 37-year-old plan to build a nuclear plant due to strong local opposition.

Friday's government decision parrots what energy experts and anti-nuclear activists have been saying.

They have said that Japan's target is far too ambitious and at best it could probably hope to only build 10 more nuclear reactors, given growing opposition to nuclear energy.

Only four nuclear reactors are under construction at present.

Numerous nuclear accidents since 1995 have led to growing public distrust of nuclear power plants.

The nation's worst accident last September killed one uranium plant worker.

The government's energy programme has been criticised for not taking into account the slowdown in the economy which has led to a decline in demand for electricity.

MITI said on Friday that the nation's energy consumption fell 1.1 percent in fiscal 1998/99 from a year earlier.

It said it was the first year-on-year decline in energy consumption in 16 years.

At an informal meeting of cabinet ministers on Friday, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi also touched on the subject of energy policy, saying there was a need for a broad review.

Kazuya Fujime, managing director at Japan's Institute of Energy Economics (IEE), said a key question the government will have to address when undertaking the review is how it plans to maintain a 1997 global pledge for an average six percent cut in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

The government had hoped largely to achieve the target through the construction of nuclear power plants.-Reuters