On October 27th, Hiroshige Seko, secretary general of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, said that Japan should next consider building nuclear power plants that use new technologies and restarting nuclear power.
According to a report from the Japan Broadcasting Association (NHK) on October 27, Hiroshige Seko said that Japan should now consider building nuclear power plants using new technologies and restarting nuclear power.
Seko Hiroshige served as the Minister of Industry and Economy and is currently the Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party Senate. He said that nuclear energy can provide a lot of energy without emitting carbon dioxide. Therefore, the Japanese government should consider building new nuclear power plants on the premise of ensuring maximum safety.
According to a report from Kyodo News on October 26, Suga Yoshihide delivered his first policy speech since he became the prime minister of Japan on the same day. He stated that Japan will achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Kyodo News previously analyzed that in order to implement these plans, the government needs to tighten environmental protection requirements for companies in the power, metallurgy, and automotive industries. In addition, the Japanese government will support initiatives aimed at promoting the use of renewable energy, and plans to implement these measures so that by 2050, the greenhouse gases emitted by Japanese industries will be equal to the annual recovery of the recycling process.
The Japanese government has previously emphasized goals such as “cutting emissions by 80% by 2050” and “achieving a decarbonized society as soon as possible in the second half of this century.” However, since it did not give a specific number of years for reducing emissions to zero, the response was unclear, and it was criticized for “a negative attitude towards environmental issues.” Japan is currently the fifth largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world.
In December 2015, nearly 200 parties to the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” unanimously adopted the “Paris Agreement” at the Paris Climate Change Conference, which came into effect in November 2016. This is the second legally binding global climate agreement after the “Kyoto Protocol”. The goal is to control the global average temperature within this century at 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than before the industrialization period.
Among developed countries, countries such as France, Canada, and the United Kingdom that have put forward the goal of getting rid of carbon coal have positioned nuclear power as an important power source, but Japan’s nuclear reactor restart has been slow to make progress.
