Japan is pushing ahead with a fuel source that’s exacerbating climate change. //

The reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant automatically shut down in response to the earthquake, but the tsunami overtopped the plant’s seawall, stalling the backup generators that were providing vital cooling to the idled reactors. The lost coolant led to meltdowns and explosions at the plant, releasing dangerous radioactive material.

In response, more than 150,000 people were evacuated from the region. While there were some increases in ambient radiation exposure, the main harms from the disaster stemmed from relocating so many people, ranging from worsened illnesses from loss of access to health care to mental health problems like post-traumatic stress disorder.

Meanwhile, Japan’s entire nuclear power fleet, providing one-third of the country’s electricity, was taken offline for safety inspections and updates. Before the disaster, Japan was looking to ramp up its share of nuclear energy to 53 percent.

The impacts of the disaster rippled out other countries too. Germany was also preparing to build more nuclear power plants before the 2011 earthquake. After the Fukushima disaster, Germany pulled a 180 and decided to embark on ending its use of nuclear power entirely.

Nine years later, the impacts of the earthquake continue to rock Japan. The country has or will decommission 24 reactors, 40 percent of its total. Of the remaining reactors, fewer than half have been restarted. Nuclear’s share of electricity generation has now fallen to 3 percent, with fossil fuels largely filling the void. //

The Japanese government is more worried about the economy than the environment //

But across Japan as a whole, solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower generation provide just 17 percent of the country’s electricity. As a densely populated island country, Japan has run into land use constraints around deploying large-scale wind and solar plants. //

That pretty much leaves nuclear as Japan’s remaining option for carbon-free electricity. But the public is resolutely against it. “Nuclear has a pretty bad reputation in Japan,” said Scott Harold, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. //

The rise of China threatens Japan, and so it wants to use coal to solidify and expand its influence
Behind India and China, Japan is the world’s third-largest coal importer. About two-thirds of Japan’s coal is from Australia, a country that is also facing climate-linked disasters and is struggling to curb its economic reliance on coal.

But Japan is also a major exporter of coal technology, and its government has used these power plants as a means to exert soft power. Through government institutions like the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the government has financed new coal power plants in countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.