Saying that nuclear power was essential in Japan from an energy security viewpoint, Sawa pointed out the following as conditions for maintaining nuclear power over the medium and long terms:<\/p>\n
He described the current state of nuclear power in Japan as being on the “verge of crisis.”\u00a0Comprehensive solutions, he said, include the following:<\/p>\n
In response to a question about costs from JAEC Vice-Chairman Nobuyasu Abe, Sawa emphasized that the Power Generation Cost Verification Working Group only calculated the costs of power generation. In selecting nuclear power, however, the concept of “business risk premium” comes into play \u2014 the idea that the initial investment will have to be recovered consistently over a long period.<\/p>\n
In that respect, he said that it was likely that nuclear power would lose to thermal power. Citing cases in the United Kingdom and the United States, he said there would be more incidents of decommissioning due to financing problems than those resulting from anti-nuclear movements.<\/p>\n
Sawa also called for an institutional plan to secure compensation for damage equivalent to the current fully-distributed cost method, or limited liability for damage compensation, even after power system reform is implemented.<\/p>\n
Finally, he repeated that restarting fully depreciated, existing NPPs was a good “shortcut” to lowering power rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saying that nuclear power was essential in Japan from an energy security viewpoint, Sawa pointed out the following as conditions for maintaining nuclear power over the medium and long terms: The political conviction (national and municipal) that nuclear power is “especially” necessary for Japan. Solid, long-term, stable financing and risk allocation (including a nuclear damage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,6,8],"tags":[115,78,30,18,392],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-npps","category-policies","tag-electricity-system","tag-finance","tag-jaec","tag-restart","tag-sawa"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t