On Dec. 6 the Japanese government released a new draft Basic Energy Plan for public comment. This will replace the 2010 BEP, which is still legally current despite the fact that its foundations were blown away by the March 11, 2011, nuclear accident at the Fukushima No. 1 plant.
In September 2012, the then Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government issued an "Innovative Strategy for Energy and the Environment," which set the unprecedented goal of phasing out nuclear power by 2039. But this did not have the same legal status as the BEP, and when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won back power in the December 2012 election, it declared that it would review the DPJ's strategy from scratch, stating that it did not support a nuclear phase-out.
The recently released draft BEP goes as close as possible to preserving the pre-Fukushima nuclear status quo, but with all nuclear power plants currently closed down and public opinion still strongly in favor of a nuclear phase out, it was unable to set ambitious targets for nuclear energy.
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