JAPAN'S nuclear industry faces tougher safety norms and higher costs for new plants but blasts and radiation leaks at a quake-crippled complex won't soon displace nuclear from its key role in the nation's energy mix. Less clear is whether the government will scale back a 2030 goal of boosting nuclear power generation to half of national electricity output from nearly 30 percent now, a target that could come under pressure. Chugoku Electric Power Co said Tuesday it would put on hold steps to build a new nuclear plant, plans for which had begun in 2009, despite decades of resistance from local residents. Safety reviews, tougher and costlier design standards and likely longer approval steps in quake- and tsunami-prone Japan, as well as an expected surge in public opposition to new plants could lead to further delays, analysts say. This could boost investment in gas-fired and cleaner coal power plants and renewables. “A single big accident can entirely change the trend for nuclear power plants,” said Kuniharu Miyachi, an analyst at Nomura Securities Co. in Tokyo. “The latest development poses a turning point – demand will naturally rise for highly efficient thermal power,” he said, referring to combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal plants, for example. These are cheaper and quicker to build, but could pump out a substantial rise in greenhouse gas emissions. In Japan, building a CCGT plant costs about half the price of an IGCC power station, on a long-run marginal cost basis over an asset life of 30 years. The gas plant also has a thermal efficiency of 57 percent compared with about 40 percent for the coal plant, according to a ThomsonReuters report, “Power generation in Asia-Pacific, will Asia step on the gas?” A fire broke out Wednesday at the six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi complex owned by TEPCO , Asia's No. 1 utility. Winds have carried low levels of radiation into Tokyo in the past 24 hours in a crisis that has heightened safety fears over nuclear plants. “There's clearly going to be a review and there are clearly going to be probably further design assessments of some of these plants,” said Fiona Reilly, head of nuclear services for global law firm Norton Rose, which specializes in the areas of energy, infrastructure and commodities. “I don't think Japan will ever stop having nuclear,” she told Reuters from London. “There will still be investors.” But she said new plants will have to be designed to meet even tougher seismic standards after Friday's magnitude 9 quake and devastating tsunami. The crisis has exposed how other plants in Japan and elsewhere could be vulnerable and shows the global dilemma of where and how to build nuclear power stations. “It is inevitable that confidence in nuclear power declines,” said Tsutomu Toichi of the Institute of Energy Economics of Japan. “Japan's nuclear renaissance, as a best option scenario, in terms of economy, environment and energy, has deadlocked, due to the Fukushima accident,” said Yu Shibutani, director of Energy Geopolitics Ltd. of Japan. Whither green goals? Japan last year set a 2030 goal of achieving 20 percent of energy output from renewable sources, 10 percent each from coal and LNG and less than 10 percent from oil, with nuclear making up the rest as way to cut globe-warming carbon emissions. Fossil fuels are almost all imported, costing Japan about 3 percent of annual gross domestic product. Renewables, including hydropower, make up about 10 percent now and that share is expected to rise, fed by government subsidies. The government wants to boost nuclear capacity by about 9,000 MW in the next decade to meet a pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. A greater switch into gas and coal-fired generation will make that hard to meet and drive greater purchases of UN carbon offsets. “The area of the nation is small, so the ability to collect alternative energy is small, so they really have to look at nuclear,” said Stephen Lincoln, who teaches nuclear chemistry at the University of Adelaide in South Australia.
