Japan’s Nuclear Safety Regulation Policy

Abstract

The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) was created in reaction to the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in March 2011. The new nuclear safety agency set out to regain pubic trust by strictly regulating the safety of nuclear power plants. Defying expectations of collusion, the NRA asserted itself as an independent regulatory agency. It has warded off pressure from the Abe administration to speed up the restart process, and its enforcing of new safety standards has meant that electric utilities have faced the need for expensive investments, expensive enough to render some nuclear reactors economically unviable. As a result, the maximum feasible share of nuclear power in the country’s energy mix by 2030 will be approximately 15%, as opposed to the 20–22% the Abe administration has set as a target. However, independent safety regulation has not been enough to convince the majority of Japanese people that nuclear reactors should be restarted. Lawsuits by citizens challenging restarts have in some cases added to the already high costs of nuclear safety by prolonging the restart process. Overall, the NRA’s independent nuclear safety regulation turned out to be a game-changer for Japan’s nuclear policy—and Japan’s climate policy goals, unless the gap in electricity generation can be quickly filled with renewable energy sources.

I would like to express my gratitude to the editors Paul Midford and Espen Moe for the invitation to a book workshop in Trondheim in 2018. I am immensely grateful for the comments I received from the editors and workshop participants’ comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, although any errors are my own. I thank Fiona Kinniburgh (Technical University Munich) for assistance with English language editing.