Japan Needs Nuclear Power to Offset High Gas Costs, Tanaka Says

Japan, which pledged this year to scrap nuclear power by 2040, needs to keep atomic fuel in its electricity mix to offset rising energy costs and a possible military conflict in Iran, according to the former executive director of the International Energy Agency.

“Without nuclear, we have a very serious problem,” Nobuo Tanaka, now a global associate for energy security at the Institute of Energy Economics in Japan, said in an interview today in Singapore. He predicts that atomic power may contribute as much as 30 percent to the nation’s future mix and said phasing it out will prove to be “impossible.”