TOKYO — In an abrupt turnabout, the Japanese government on Wednesday stopped short of formally adopting a goal it announced just last week to phase out nuclear power by 2040.
The reversal came after intense opposition to the plan from business groups and communities that host the country's nuclear power plants, which have warned that abandoning nuclear power will damage Japan's economy.
The cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda instead endorsed a vague promise to "engage in debate with local governments and international society and to gain public understanding" in deciding Japan's economic future in the wake of the 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima.
The cabinet on Wednesday said only that it would "take into consideration" the goal to eliminate nuclear power by 2040, laid down in a policy document released last week.
That document, called the "Revolutionary Energy and Environment Strategy," says Japan will seek to eliminate nuclear power through greater reliance on renewable energy, conservation and use of fossil fuels.
Japan will craft its post-Fukushima energy policy "with flexibility, based on tireless verification and re-examination," the cabinet's resolution read.
Nuclear critics called the government indecisive and weak-kneed. "We've only seen the government strike compromise after compromise with the business community," said Hideyuki Ban, secretary general of a nuclear watchdog, the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center.
National Strategy Minister Motohisa Furukawa, who announced the original strategy last week, defended the cabinet's omission of the 2040 deadline, saying the government still intended to use the goal as a reference point.
"It is just a matter of decision-making, and there is no real change to content," he said.
But to critics, the cabinet's failure to officially adopt the 2040 deadline cast into further doubt Japan's commitment to ending its nuclear power program, first made by former Prime Minister Naoto Kan in July 2011 as the Fukushima nuclear disaster raged.
Mr. Noda, who succeeded Mr. Kan in September, has instead pushed to restart the energy-poor country's shuttered reactors while making vague promises to "reduce Japan's nuclear dependence."
The announcement last week that Japan would seek to end nuclear power by 2040 appeared to be a break from the past, although the target year was later than had been expected and the plan contained loopholes that could keep nuclear power going well beyond that deadline.
Japan got about 30 percent of its electricity from 54 reactors across the country before a powerful tsunami in March 2011 triggered multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and led to a massive radiation leak. The government had planned to eventually raise Japan's nuclear dependence to 50 percent.
Mr. Noda was forced to consider a nonnuclear option after a series of public hearings held by the government showed overwhelming support for a phasing-out within two decades, as well as crippling mistrust of the government's ability to oversee nuclear safety after the Fukushima accident.
A nascent anti-nuclear movement also opposes plans to restart the country's 50 remaining reactors, all but two of which remain closed in the wake of Fukushima.
But business groups had criticized the idea of moving away from nuclear power as impractical and a death knell for Japanese manufacturers, which in recent years have already lost much of their competitive edge to cheaper rivals in Asia.
On Tuesday, the chairmen of Japan's most prominent business associations, including the influential Keidanren, called a rare joint news conference to call on Mr. Noda to abandon the 2040 goal. On Wednesday, they praised the government's decision to mothball it.
The deadline "was not a viable option in the first place," Tadashi Okamura, chairman of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said at a news conference, calling the government's move "welcome."
Mr. Ban, the nuclear critic, said bickering over energy policy decades into the future was not productive and that the country should focus on promoting clean energy sources, like wind.
The no-nuclear-power goal had also worried communities across Japan that host nuclear facilities. The communities fear losing government subsidies, tax revenues and jobs, and worry that they will become the final dumping ground for spent nuclear fuel stored at their plants.
The government's backtracking came as it officially opened a new agency to oversee the nuclear industry on Wednesday in a bid to regain the public's trust. Japan scrapped its previous nuclear regulator after criticism that it had long been drawn into a cozy, collusive relationship with plant operators and had failed to take the necessary steps to prevent a disaster like Fukushima.
But that plan has already come under fire, with criticism focusing on Shunichi Tanaka, the head of a five-person committee that would set nuclear policy and retain oversight over the new agency.
Mr. Tanaka is considered suspect by those who favor tighter regulation because he helped lead a former government commission tasked with building a strong nuclear industry, raising fears that the new regulator will be as lax as the previous one.
Yukio Edano, the minister of economy, trade and industry, said that the new regulatory framework ensured that there was "a strict separation between those who regulate nuclear power and those who use it."
The government will help create "the highest-level regulations and disaster-preparedness plans in the world," Mr. Edano said.
By NICOLA CLARK 19 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/world/asia/japan-backs-off-of-goal-to-phase-out-nuclear-power-by-2040.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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