Expert: Economic reasons behind Japan’s decision to restart nuclear power plants

Economic considerations played an important role in the Japanese government’s decision to resume the operation of nuclear power plants. The opinion was voiced by Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Alexander Bychkov, who cited international experts, during the online conference hosted by the BelTA website on 23 June.

“Japan has encountered high prices for energy resources, which entailed a large increase in electricity prices that in turn was a blow for the Japanese production sector. Up to two thirds of Japanese reactors are expected to resume operation. Although certainly now it is a rather complicated process for the Japanese production sector,” noted Alexander Bychkov.

As a positive example of the return to nuclear power generation the IAEA Deputy Director General mentioned the UK: the country once again intends to develop nuclear power engineering using a new model. Instead of the state the private sector will take care of building new nuclear power plants. The state will guarantee purchases of electricity. It will enable conditions for stable investments while the construction of new nuclear power plants will be a purely commercial project, explained Alexander Bychkov.

In his words, the energy balance of Europe is now rather specific. “It is not so important for Western Europe countries to build new nuclear installations now. Energy effectiveness in view of the rising share of renewable sources of energy is more important for them. The share of nuclear power engineering is large, for instance, in France there are 58 nuclear reactors that supply electricity not only to French consumers. It is a very important factor for the energy industry of the region as a whole. Things are different in Eastern Europe: Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland plan to build or are already building new reactors. I’d like to add that for many years the United States didn’t start the construction of nuclear reactors while last year the USA started building four reactors at once,” said the Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency.