The nuclear accidents at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku-Pacific region have given Japan second thoughts on the wisdom of pushing nuclear power generation. In view of the havoc wreaked by the nuclear plant crisis, Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced in late May in France a new policy goal of generating 20 percent of Japan's electricity from renewable sources by the early 2020s.
However, a draft of a new energy policy written by the government's national strategy bureau still lists nuclear power as a key part of Japan's energy strategy. It fails to mention how the nation should decrease its reliance on nuclear power or even whether the need to reduce this dependency is an issue.
The authors of the draft seem to ignore the fact that the Fukushima crisis has shown the vulnerability of nuclear power plants built in earthquake-prone Japan and that the technology to safely dispose of high-radiation spent nuclear fuel has not yet been developed.
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