Japan rethinks phasing out nuclear power

Opposition comes from businesses, host communities.

TOKYO — In an abrupt turnabout, the Japanese government Wednesday stopped short of formally adopting a goal it announced just last week to phase out nuclear power by 2040.

The reversal came after intense opposition to the plan from business groups and communities that host the country’s nuclear power plants, which have warned that abandoning nuclear power will damage Japan’s economy.

The Cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda instead endorsed a vague promise to “engage in debate with local governments and international society and to gain public understanding” in deciding Japan’s economic future in the wake of the 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

The Cabinet Wednesday said only that it would “take into consideration” the goal to eliminate nuclear power by 2040, laid down in a policy docu- ment released last week.

That document said Japan will seek to eliminate nuclear power through greater reliance on renewable energy, conservation and use of fossil fuels.

Nuclear critics called the government indecisive and weak-kneed. “We’ve only seen the government strike compromise after compromise with the business community,” said Hideyuki Ban, secretary general of a nuclear watchdog, the Cit- izens’ Nuclear Information Center.

National Strategy Minister Motohisa Furukawa, who announced the original strategy last week, defended the Cabinet’s omission of the 2040 deadline, saying the gov- ernment still intended to use the goal as a reference point.

“It is just a matter of decision-making, and there is no real change to content,” he said.

But to critics, the Cabinet’s failure to officially adopt the 2040 deadline cast into further doubt Japan’s commitment to ending its nuclear power program, first made by former Prime Minister Naoto Kan in July 2011 as the Fukushima nuclear disaster raged.