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"The voices of opposition have drastically decreased," Yanase said in his office in Tokyo. "They obviously won't say they totally support" nuclear power, "but they are giving a tacit consent."
Industry advocates say the old complaints about nuclear technology have been addressed with simpler and cheaper designs, faster regulatory review, improved security and more operating experience.
A supervisor inspects one of two nuclear power plants under construction in Bulgaria, this one near Belene. The country has four operational nuclear plants. (By Petar Petrov -- Associated Press)
"Things have changed," said Adrian Heymer, director of new plant deployment for the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington. The industry expects U.S. companies to apply for 11 construction permits by the end of the decade. "When you put it all together, nuclear becomes an attractive package," he said.
Companies and countries that build nuclear plants are riding that pitch. Westinghouse Electric Co., which has made about half the world's reactors, signed a deal with China in December to help in construction of four nuclear plants there.
"There is a lot of opportunity now -- in Southeast Asia, in the Near East and Europe," Valery Arabkin, an official at Rosenergoatom, the Russian entity that competes with Westinghouse, said in an interview in Moscow. "These are good markets for Russia."
Russia is building two reactors in China, two in India and one in Iran. It just signed a $5.1 billion deal to build two reactors in Bulgaria and is sniffing out business in Finland, Indonesia and Egypt.
Russia's own nuclear industry is rebounding after years of neglect. President Vladimir Putin wants to sell the country's natural gas abroad and offset the exported energy by increasing nuclear power production, now provided by 31 reactors. That involves an ambitious program to build 42 more reactors in Russia by 2030, Sergey Kiriyenko, director of the Federal Nuclear Agency, or Rosatom, said in testimony before parliament last month.
"I don't think it can be done," said Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of Ecodefense, which has been urging the government to use more of the country's natural gas at home and develop wind and hydropower.
Critics say that when the emissions from uranium mining and plant construction are counted, nuclear power is not "carbon-free," as advocates assert. Such environmental concerns have put Germany on an opposite course from most European countries. Six years ago, Germany committed to shutting down all of its 17 nuclear power plants by 2021, prodded by the Greens party, then part of the government.
The most populous country in Western Europe, Germany will be hard-pressed to compensate for loss of its nuclear power while also meeting promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut back on gas and oil deliveries from its chief supplier, Russia. Some people are calling for an extension of the nuclear deadline.
But nuclear power remains unpopular among Germans, who often express strong pride over the giant windmills that are an increasingly common sight on the country's plains.
"There really is no support in Germany to rely on nuclear energy as a means to help get rid of fossil fuels," Reinhard Buetikofer, co-chairman of the Greens, said in an interview. "We would have to build another 50 to 60 nuclear power plants in Germany. This is unthinkable."
Contributing to this report were correspondents Peter Finn in Moscow, Craig Whitlock in Berlin, Manuel Roig-Franzia in Mexico City, Monte Reel in Buenos Aires, Kevin Sullivan in London and Molly Moore in Paris; special correspondents Karla Adam in London, Natalia Alexandrova in Toronto and Akiko Yamamoto in Tokyo; and researchers Corinne Gavard in Paris and Mariko Yasumoto in Tokyo. |
