In the three years since the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan has strived and partially succeeded in replace nuclear energy with fossil and alternative fossil fuel supplies. But costs are relatively high, leaving many Japanese politicians contemplating switching its reactors back on. The information war between Moscow and the West about Ukraine has put Tokyo in a geopolitical quandary. Pressure from the US and to a lessor extent the EU is making it more difficult for Japan to continue to import so much fossil fuel from what it seen as an economic enemy. What will the Japanese government do? Voice of Russia's Eco Plus programme host John Harrison speaks to Vladimir Slivyak, the co-chair for the Russian environmental group Eco Defence, about this issue.
Will Japan re-start its nuclear program?
It is very hard to say. Japan is balancing between the nuclear phase-out and the nuclear restart. It is very hard to say anything about the Japanese future, because what they’ve got after Fukushima is a really big public movement against the nuclear power which they have never had before. And this movement has been successful in preventing the restart of the nuclear power plants for several times already.
So, it is very hard to say, because usually the Japanese politicians a way sensitive to the public opinion. In this case they also have a very big pressure from the industry which wants to restart, or a part of industry wants to restart the nuclear reactors. So, the politicians are under pressure from both sides and it is very hard to say what is going to happen in Japan even in the very short time future.
But, at the same time, we have to say that Japan was more or less managing without the nuclear power, switching on different sources of energy and also putting a lot of money into the development of renewable sources of energy. Basically, I would say that if Japan started developing the alternative renewable sources of energy earlier, the situation today would be better. But they started too late and it gets more expensive for them.
I believe in the case of Japan, it is very much mixed. Three years after Fukushima happened still there are a lot of different movements from public, from the industry and the politicians in between. So, all we can say, it is very much unclear.
I think that Japan is a special case because it is the second largest fossil fuel importer in the world. Basically, it has no resources.
There is a very big resource which is not yet used in Japan, which is renewable energy and energy efficiency. On the one hand, you do not consume that much electricity as before or that much energy as before, you are running new programs of energy efficiency all the time, you are making more efficient homes, you are making more efficient facilities for the industry and all that. And on the other hand, you are replacing dirty energy with clean energy from the renewable sources of energy.
I mean, it can be complicated, it takes time, it takes money but we are really talking for many decades ahead. In this regard we can compare it a little to Germany, because Germany declared phase-out, but they of course still have to use some fossil fuel. They still use coal and gas, but they have a very clear program of how they are going to go from here, how much money they are going to put into the renewable energy efficiency, how they are going to develop their smart grids and all that stuff. They took the decision and it is very good that they implement the decision. They have a pretty good future.
My worry is that the situation that we are now faced with may tip governments, who are doubting in the first place, to go back to their nuclear programs? We’ve talked about Japan, what about Germany?
Vladimir Slivyak:I don’t think it is going to happen. In the case of Germany, I'm pretty sure it will not happen. In Japan, as I said before, I don’t know what will happen in this very controversial time for this country. Nobody knows what is going to happen there. But in Germany we can be more or less sure that they will not be back to nuclear and it is not because the politicians took the decision or not only because the politicians took the decision, made a legislation for this and all that, it is because over 90% of the German population strongly supports nuclear phase-out.
It is because Germany is one of the very few examples in the world where people are really effective in influencing their government. And it is also because Germany has already invested a lot of money into the renewable energy and they have a program to invest more. In total, they are planning to invest like 250 billion euro in the development of renewable energy. They are sharing the first place in this market of producing equipment for solar power, for wind power and they have a very strong position in the market. They are already making a lot of money. They not only invest in it, they already get some money back.
So, basically, they invested a lot of money and they got back two things. One is the improvement in their own energy security. And the second thing is that they are already making money on it, because they are selling technologies to other countries, they help other countries to switch on the renewable energy. So, it is economic.
But public opinion is something that can be manipulated. Imagine a situation that the supply of gas is basically turned over, reduced dramatically. The public opinion can be swayed. You know, business people can come up on the TV or whatever and say – look, we’ve got to become independent, we can’t compete internationally, we won’t be able to sell our goods, we are going to lose our jobs unless we create our own energy; let’s go back to nuclear, because it is fast, it is immediate, it is there right now.
That reminds me of another situation that happened in Germany several years ago, that happened soon after Fukushima exploded. Merkel took the decision, demanded by the vast majority of Germans to switch back to the plan of shutting down all nuclear reactors by 2020.
So, the representatives from the Russian nuclear power industry came to the German Government and said – look, you are switching your reactors…if you remember, like several months after Fukushima Germany switched off half of their reactors. This country was getting 30% of its energy from nuclear reactors. Just think for a moment – it is the fourth largest economy in the world and 30% of energy is a lot.
So, the Russian nuclear industry came to the German Government and said – okay, we understand you are phasing-out nuclear power, it is you decision, it is your situation, okay, but we can supply you, because you would need power. You are shutting down the reactors, you would need more power, we can supply you more electric power, because we are building nuclear reactors right on the border of the EU.
They said like – okay, we can sell you cheap energy from these nuclear plants. And Merkel publically said like – no, we don’t need this energy or any other additional energy, we are doing okay with the renewable energy, because, as I already said, they invested really a lot of money into it and they get power from it. Right now, if there is a sunny day, Germany can provide half of their needs only from solar power plants already today.
