Japan Concerns with Its Energy

As a month have passed since the United States and Israel started attacking Iran, Japan eventually appears to be suffering from energy shortage. Although government of Japan has been making effort to stabilize gasoline price or secure alternative route to obtain energy resources, they are not working very well. Japan reveals its inherent vulnerability to securing its own energy. 

Japan is supposed to have one of the biggest oil reserves in the world, amounting to 470 million barrels, which corresponds to its domestic oil consumption for 254 days. It depends over 90 percent of its crude oil to be supplied from the Middle East, which needs to pass the Strait of Hormuz. The strait is effectively blocked by Iran since the war started. Not only oil but liquified natural gas (LNG) to Japan cannot go through the strait.

 

Sanae Takaichi government began releasing national oil reserve on March 23rd. To keep gasoline price at 170 yen per litter, the government started subsidizing for the retailers. It is considering to raise the share of thermal power generation burning coal to compensate shortage of other fuels such as oil or LNG. Although combustion of coal emits large amount of carbon dioxide, the government decided to rely on this fuel.

 

An alternative energy, nuclear power generation, is highly unreliable in Japan. Only 14 reactors out of 54 are recently working. Others are still in the process for resuming its operation, having examination of governmental authority, or destined to be decommissioned. The share of nuclear power in Japan is less than 10 percent. It is unlikely that nuclear power generation will compensate energy shortage caused by Iran war.

 

Failure in resumption of reactor #6 in Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant represents incredibility of nuclear power. The reactor stopped with a malfunction on January 23rd, two days after it resumed its operation for the first time in these 14 years. Although it restarted on February 9th, it again stopped its operation on March 13, due to some errors. No viable schedule to resume it has determined.

 

Loss of confidence is not only originated by technological reasons, but by uncertainty in disposal of nuclear waste. Japan does not have a facility for storing used nuclear fuels produced from each nuclear reactor. The government asked the village of Ogasawara to accept a literature survey around Minamitorishima island, which is necessary to determine the place for building a disposal facility of nuclear fuels. However, it would take more than a decade to finish the research and build that facility.

 

Consequently, Japan has to heavily rely on fossil fuels. Unlike European countries, Japan has not been very active in introducing renewable energy. It is making efforts to open new routes to transport oil. One is to send the oil through pipeline to outside of the Strait of Hormuz and another is to use Suez Canal to turn around the African continent en route to Japan. But it is clear those options will require high cost. After all, the government of Japan has not found a way to deal with shortage of oil.

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