nuclear-news

TEPCO and Japan’s nuclear lobby under siege from Tokyo’s mayor

Anti-Nuclear Tokyo Mayor Challenges Big Utilities, WSJ, By George Nishiyama, 6 Feb 12,  Tokyo’s Setagaya ward is over 260 km away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a long way from the evacuation area imposed bythe Japanese government after last year’s March 11 disasters….

But Setagaya’s mayor is determined to turn this city ward of 840,000 people, the largest in Tokyo, into the front-runner of a movement that will put an end to Japan’s reliance on atomic power and accelerate the use of renewable energy.

Nobuto Hosaka campaigned and won the mayor’s job on an anti-nuclear
platform last April, just over a month after the magnitude 9.0
earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns and explosions at the
Fukushima plant, spewing radioactive substances into the environment.

Now, the 56-year-old former journalist is hoping to break down the
monopoly on local power supply held by Tepco, the utility that
operates the troubled plant, by inviting little-known independent
power companies to take part in an auction to provide electricity to
111 public facilities in the ward, like schools and local government
buildings…..
Although Japan began allowing big energy users to buy electricity from
independent providers as long ago as 1999, various restrictions and
high levies for using the utilities’ power lines have hindered new
entrants. Currently, Japan’s 10 regional utilities both generate and
transmit electricity, and they’re the only ones with to operate power
cable networks…..
The mayor said that if more companies were to enter the power
business, it may also lead to greater use of renewable energy. “If an
age comes when people can choose power companies, we’ll see a
situation where some people may choose a company because it uses more
renewable energy in generating electricity even if the rates are
high,” he said.

“I want to show them that electricity is a product that you can
choose, it’s not something sacrosanct that only the utilities can
touch.” http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/02/06/anti-nuclear-tokyo-mayor-challenges-big-utilities/

February 7, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, politics