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Japan’s green future requires returning to its nuclear past

InternationalMar 14. 2021Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (Tepco) Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant seen from Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, on March 8, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Toru Hanai.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Tsuyoshi Inajima, Stephen Stapczynski, Shoko Oda

About once a month, the same group of two dozen Japanese government officials, company executives and professors file into a bland white and beige conference room at the nation’s economy, trade and industry ministry to plot its long-term energy future.

Each has a printed agenda, tablet computer and carton of green tea neatly laid out before them, and politely flips over a rectangular name card to request a turn to speak. Beneath the rigid formality, there’s an increasingly divisive debate: what’s the role of nuclear energy a decade after the Fukushima disaster.

Since Japan pledged in October to become carbon neutral by 2050, many among the advisory group have reached the same conclusion. To meet its global climate commitments, the country will need to restart almost every nuclear reactor it shuttered in the aftermath of the 2011 meltdowns, and then build more.

That’s a daunting technical challenge that will require the nation to rapidly accelerate the resumption of idled operations and find a permanent solution to the meddlesome problem of storing radioactive waste. Equally difficult for Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s government will be persuading wary regulators and a wide sweep of Japan’s public who harbor deep concerns over safety.

“We had better hurry and rebuild trust in nuclear power,” said Masakazu Toyoda, a member of the 24-strong government panel that’s devising new policies. “This is a matter of energy security.”

Japan must have 27 of its remaining 36 reactors online by 2030 to hit its obligations under the Paris climate accord, according to Toyoda. Other estimates put that figure at closer to 30. So far, only 9 units have been fired back up since a program of restarts began in 2015.

Nuclear now accounts for about 6% of Japan’s energy mix, down from roughly 30% of the Fukushima disaster. In the immediate aftermath, Japan closed all its 54 reactors, around a third of which were permanently scrapped.

More than 160,000 people were evacuated from the region surrounding the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant after a magnitude 9 earthquake in March 2011, the biggest ever recorded to hit Japan, caused a massive tsunami that overwhelmed the facility, shut off power to cooling systems and led to meltdowns of three reactor cores.

The incident convinced some governments that nuclear power’s risks far outweighed its benefits, and prompted some including Germany and Taiwan to set deadlines to close down their fleets of plants. Mammoth costs of building new facilities, and frequent delays, have since served as other deterrents to the fuel’s revival.

Still, China plans to have 70 gigawatts of nuclear generation capacity by 2025 as it aims to zero out emissions by 2060. That’s the equivalent of adding about 20 new reactors.

Nuclear energy produces about 10% of the world’s electricity, down from a peak of 18% in the mid-1990s, and the construction of new plants lags far behind the pace of closures, according to the International Energy Agency.

On many fronts, nuclear power remains an almost perfect solution for a resource-poor island nation like Japan: it requires minimal overseas fuel, takes up little land-unlike solar and onshore wind-and produces carbon-free power around the clock. In fact, the government was targeting atomic energy to eventually be its main source of electricity right up until the Fukushima disaster.

Yet some 39% of Japanese people want all nuclear plants closed, according to a February survey. Many local, prefecture-level governments-which must sign off on reactor restart plans-have been reluctant to wave through approvals, while courts have supported requests to temporarily shut some operating reactors.

That opposition is problematic for a Japanese government that’s promised to lower emissions 26% by 2030 from 2013 levels under its Paris commitments, and is slated to review those targets this year and potentially make them stricter. “Japan will change its attitude toward nuclear builds somewhere on the road toward net-zero emissions,” said Frank Yu, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

Carbon dioxide intensity in Japan’s power sector surged in the years after the Fukushima incident as the nation turned to more polluting alternatives, according to IEA data. Today, fossil fuels such as liquefied natural gas and coal are used to generate most of Japan’s electricity.

Meeting the Paris goals alone will need Japan, the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, to hit an existing target for nuclear power to make up 20% to 22% of its energy mix by 2030. The more ambitious pledge for 2050 may require atomic power to claim an even greater share.

“Utilizing a certain amount of nuclear will be necessary for Japan to become carbon neutral,” Tomoaki Kobayakawa, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc., owner of the crippled Fukushima plant, said in an interview.

How far Japan should go in building out a large nuclear sector, and how feasible that would be, is a current source of disagreement among the government’s advisory group. It will recommend new targets this year.

“No one believes the 2030 goal is attainable,” said Takeo Kikkawa, a professor at International University of Japan and a member of the panel who’s skeptical on the prospects for nuclear energy. “The industry doesn’t believe it is possible, but they won’t admit it.” Nuclear is likely to account for 15% of Japan’s energy, at most, in 2030, he says.

So far, utilities have applied to restart 27 reactors-25 of which are operable, while 2 are currently under construction. Toyoda says that, at the very least, those 27 units must be online if there is a chance to hit the 2030 goal.

In December, the economy ministry said nuclear energy and thermal facilities with carbon capture and storage technology may represent 30% to 40% of combined power generation in 2050, without offering specific details.

It means that Japan should already be preparing to build new reactors over the next three decades, Akio Mimura, chairman of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told the government panel last month. Based on a 60-year lifespan, Japan will have 23 reactors in 2050 and 8 by 2060, according to a government presentation in December.

“The government must clarify its position,” Mimura told the advisory group. “If we don’t start planning this now, we won’t have enough nuclear power capacity by 2050.”

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At least 10 killed as Myanmar anti-coup protests escalate

InternationalMar 14. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg

At least 10 people were killed in Myanmar after violent crackdowns on anti-coup protesters on Saturday, making it one of the deadliest days since the military regime took power last month.

Four protesters were killed, and 19 others were injured with nearly half of them in critical condition in Sein Pan ward of Mandalay, the nation’s second largest city, according to the Byamaso Emergency Clinic. Witnesses and local media outlets said three protesters were killed in Yangon overnight, two died in the Bago region and one protester was shot dead in the Magway region.

The death toll was 81 as of Friday, according to the UN Human Rights Office, with the latest fatalities yet to be tallied. On March 3, 21 protesters were killed, while 12 died in crackdowns on March 11.

Demonstrators continued to take to the streets in Mandalay on Saturday evening, with tens of thousands of engineers and engineering students chanting for an end to military dictatorship and the release of detained leaders including democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

“Security forces are trying to scare us from joining street protests in the coming days,” said Aung Myo Nyunt, a 20-year-old student protester in Mandalay. “Their efforts will be in vain.”

Myanmar’s police detained 36 protesters in Mandalay on Saturday, according to state broadcaster MRTV. The television station accused Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy of instigating protests and spurring unrest.

Soldiers and riot police have forced striking public servants and employees in certain sectors to return to work as the civil disobedience movement threatens a collapse in services including banking, healthcare, education and transportation. The junta asked all banks to reopen on Monday, and said actions would be taken if lenders fail to obey.

The junta’s lead spokesman, Zaw Min Tun, reiterated on Thursday that minimal force was used to disperse protesters, even as witnesses say live bullets continued to be utilized.

Zaw Min Tun said security forces will continue to enter some properties to search for protest instigators in some townships, which he added was “to ensure safety and the rule of law.”

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Exporters take unusual steps to ease container shortage

InternationalMar 14. 2021Shipping containers next to gantry cranes at the Yangshan Deepwater Port in Shanghai on Jan, 11, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Qilai Shen.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Ann Koh, Rajesh Kumar Singh

Some of the world’s biggest exporters in Asia are intervening to alleviate a shipping container shortage that jeopardizes their overseas trading.

Government-owned Indian Railways has moved empty boxes to inland depots like Delhi from seaports for free. South Korea has deployed an extra nine vessels on the Trans-Pacific route to help local manufacturers while China’s state-owned shipyard, Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry, has converted at least one freshly built paper-and-pulp carrier to transport the containers.

The state-backed companies and governments are working quickly to smooth disruptions on the supply side of global trade to avoid losing business, even as clogged ports like Los Angeles trigger import delays and freight costs remain high. Asian economies remain deeply reliant on exports to Europe and North America to line government coffers.

“The state has a far bigger role within shipping in Asia, with equity stakes in numerous shipping lines, shipyards and terminals,” said Simon Heaney, senior manager of container research at Drewry Shipping Consultants Ltd. “That influence is much less prevalent elsewhere in the world.”

Indian Railways is discussing if its current 25% discount for moving empty containers inland along some routes needs to be extended beyond March, according to Manoj Singh, executive director for freight traffic and transportation. The carrier offered free carriage at least twice last year and hasn’t ruled out waiving all charges again when it reviews the situation at the end of the month, he said.

Container Corp. of India Ltd., on whose board Singh sits, is also moving containers to neighboring countries such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to help ease the shortage, he said. Typically the company would only move the boxes to facilitate domestic shipments.

That coincided with a turnaround in India’s trade, with both exports and imports witnessing two consecutive months of growth since December after record declines last year due to the pandemic.

“Exporters and their industry groups are noisier and more active lobbyists on these types of issues,” said Daniel Richards, a senior analyst at Maritime Strategies International Ltd., a shipping consultancy. “When you add to that the importance of the export sector to most Asian economies you can see why these governments have at least made efforts to be seen to be proactive.”

But even countries less reliant on exports than powerhouses like China or South Korea are looking at ways to unclog global trade arteries.

The UTLC Eurasian Rail Alliance reduced tariffs last April for transporting empty containers via its Europe-China link. The company jointly formed by the state railways of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus said that this would help “avert the shortage of containers for loading in China.”

“There’s a lot of stress with container availability, costs, schedule reliability” in the market, said Ng Baoying, global managing editor for container shipping at S&P Global Platts. “This could persist through the first half of this year.”

To some extent, state intervention can run counter to steps corporations have taken in response to disruptions driven by the pandemic. For instance, Hapag-Lloyd is raising freight rates next month to ship boxes from Europe to India’s Nhava Sheva port, the company said this month.

Government role is limited and market forces will ultimately determine how things pan out, said Ajay Sahai, director general at the Federation of Indian Export Organisations.

“The best thing governments can do is ensure rapid and effective vaccination of their populations so that landside logistics labor capacity and productivity can be restored to pre-pandemic levels,” said Heaney. “That will do a lot to improve the circulation of containers.”

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U.S. push for peace in Afghanistan has new ‘urgency.’ Some Afghans fear it could backfire.

InternationalMar 14. 2021Forward Operating Base Lightning was a U.S. Army base in eastern Afghanistan. The base is now abandoned. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Lorenzo Tugnoli.

By The Washington Post · Susannah George

DOHA, Qatar – The United States has launched its most aggressive push yet for a political settlement to end two decades of conflict in Afghanistan, but some Afghan officials are warning the campaign could backfire: deadlocking talks, undermining theelectedgovernment and plunging the country deeper into violence.

The approach – nicknamed “moonshot” by some U.S. officials referring to its lofty ambitions – is an attempt to reach a peace deal within weeks by applying unprecedented pressure to negotiating teams on both sides of the conflict, the Taliban and the Kabul government.

After the two sides met in Qatar’s capital, Doha, to begin historic peace talks last year, little progress has been made at the negotiating table. Meetings stalled for months while Afghanistan violence began to soar with the Taliban expanding its territorial influence and control.

The Trump administration’s focus was on the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. The Biden team is applying greater pressure on the diplomatic front. U.S.-Afghanistan policy is under review, and the U.S. special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, embarked on a regional tour last month to spearhead the new approach.

But Afghan officials fear the tight timeline and the threat of withdrawing all U.S. troops without a political settlement risks repeating the mistakes of the 1990s, when Afghanistan descended into civil war on the heels of the Soviet withdrawal. The sweeping battles for power helped giverise to the Taliban movement, which was driven from power by the U.S.-led invasion after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Afghan officials, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with journalists. The Afghan officials acknowledged that current levels of violence and the political stalemate in Doha are unacceptable, but disagreed with the Biden administration’s attempted reset.

“The consequences for us are the collapse of the state, sudden destruction and a very long and intense civil war,” said one Afghan official with knowledge of the talks, referring to the increased U.S. pressure.

“The fact that it has happened in the past once shows it could happen again,” he said.

A second official said “pushing the peace now with this new initiative very rapidly” risks undermining the country’s military. He said he fears “bringing back the old mujahideen at the expense of the Afghan security forces,” referring to the militia factions and irregular fighters who fought the Soviet forces, then turned on each other during the civil war.

The accelerated push is occurring amid growing indications that the United States is considering postponing the withdrawal of U.S. troops – a move aimed at pressuring the Taliban to reduce violence and comply with the terms of the deal it signed with the United States last year. But Biden administration officials have also said a final decision of the future of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has not yet been made.

During a regional tour involving meetings in Kabul; Doha; and Islamabad, Pakistan, Khalilzad delivered a draft peace plan to the Afghan government and Taliban leadership. Along with the draft proposal, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani received a letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressing him to accelerate peace talks and reach an agreement with the militants.

“The United States has not ruled out any option,” the letter warned. “I am making this clear to you so that you understand the urgency of my tone.”

A spokesman for Ghani’s office rejected the suggestion that the president is under greater pressure now from Washington to reach a peace deal. ” If there is any pressure that we feel, it is the pressure from the Afghan people who have been terrorized” since the Soviet pullout in 1979, said Fatima Murchal, Ghani’s deputy spokesperson.

Taliban representatives in Doha also dismissed that the change in approach would have an effect on long-stalled talks.

“Pressure from the United States never works,” said Mohammad Naeem, the spokesman for the Taliban’s political office. “We know this because they have already tried all forms of pressure for 20 years.”

Naeem said the group does not expect the United States to walk away from the 2020 deal, but if it does, “there will be problems, and they will be responsible for that.”

U.S. officials say the potential risks of inaction outweigh an opportunity to accelerate the process.

The new approach of “moving at a faster pace toward a political agreement,” said one U.S. official, is “the best option for moving forward.”

“Given where we are, the alternative is more dangerous,” he said.

But for many officials in Kabul, the letter and the draft peace proposal – first made public by Afghanistan’s ToloNews network – came as a shock.

“It’s not what we have been promised,” said the Afghan official with knowledge of the talks, who described the tone of the leaked letter as “upsetting” and contrary to the more consultative approach Kabul was expecting from the Biden administration.

The Afghan government had called on the Biden administration to conduct a “full review” of the peace process and to apply more pressure on the Taliban before committing to the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

“They were hoping for a miracle,” said Fatima Gailani, referring to the members of Ghani’s government. Gailani, one of the lead negotiators, said Afghan leaders should not have been surprised by the U.S. pressure campaign, given President Biden’s past comments on his desire to end the war in Afghanistan.

Now, she said, the leaked document “brought reality out into the open” and could act as a wake-up call to unify Afghanistan’s political parties.

Rustam Shah Mohmand, a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan, also supports the new approach from the United States, but warned that some of the specifics outlined in the U.S. draft peace deal – such as detailing the structure of the interim government – were a potential “distraction” that “could make matters more complicated.”

Reaction in Kabul already appears to be exposing widening political fault lines, rather than signaling moves toward consensus. Ghani’s main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, welcomed the new U.S. proposal.

“It is a positive starting point to boost the peace process and the peace talks,” said Abdullah spokesperson Mujib Rahman Rahimi. Abdullah and other political rivals of Ghani’s administration have the most to gain from the establishment of an interim government, one of the draft’s key elements.

“We do not consider the proposal a setback or a step to destabilize the country. Rather, it is a step forward,” Rahimi said.

Afghanistan is in one of the deadliest conflicts in the world. Last year, violence killed more than 3,000 civilians and wounded nearly 5,800, according to a United Nations annual report. Those numbers represented a drop in overall civilian casualties compared with the year prior, but U.N. data showed that, as the year wore on, deaths began reaching record levels.

“Ask anyone, and they will tell you a story about losing a son or a husband or a father,” said Ihsanullah Sediq, a peace activist in Ghazni province, one of the country’s most volatile. Sediq, also a member of a conservative, religious Afghan political party, said “from a humanitarian view, it’s not acceptable for this war to continue.”

“The only way to find an end to this war is to create a new political environment, whatever you want to call it,” he said. “And it must come with international pressure. Because without it, the leaders in Kabul will not tolerate each other for even just a single week.”