Author: Toshio Aritake

TOKYO, Feb. 13, 2022—The disaster-stricken Fukushima nuclear power station is in the midst of disassembling work for decommissioning, giving a semblance to Japan’s total energy denuclearization in the next century. The country, according to the general anticipation, would build more solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable power sources to ultimately become a net-zero society with no reliance on fossil fuel too. But it’s not going to happen, Japan decided, changing a tack sharply from the view. On the contrary, Japan will enter into an age of fast reactors that can generate far more electricity than existing nuclear reactors by burning enriched spent fuels spitted out of those furnaces. Part of the enriched uranium – into near-bomb grade plutonium – can be used for nuclear bombs that Japan wants to build contingent to the amendment of its pacifist constitution that bans owning atomic weapons and formal U.S. consent. (follow-up to Jan. 9 and 28, 2022 articles.)
On Jan. 31, 2022. TerraPower, a Bill Gates company based in Bellevue, WA, confirmed that it had exchanged an MOU with Japan Atomic Energy Agency and two Mitsubishi group companies to ‘share data and resources) to the development of advanced sodium fast reactor technology.’ TerraPower late last year said it would build a SFR demonstration project with GE Hitachi in southern Wyoming jointly with the U.S. Department of Energy.
The statements effectively meant the U.S. policy on nuclear power, which to date, had been to phase out nuclear reactors to replace it with renewables, will be reactivated. With the bilateral undertaking as leverage, Japan too will strive to reopen more of its some 50 existing nuclear power reactors, from 10 or so now with U.S. encouragement, and may build new reactors.
Ultimately, Japan wants to burn enriched nuclear fuels by mixing with virgin uranium, called MOX fuels, at those and yet-to-be-built plants. The MOX-burning fast breeding experiment had been held at the experimental fast breeder reactor Monju plant that is currently in the process of decommissioning after the 1995 tainted sodium leakage accident. Joyo, which also burns MOX fuel and was Japan’s first FBR but much smaller in size, also developed a serious accident and has been kept idle since 2007. Joyo is being repaired and undergoing safety examinations for restart.
The two FBRs would be decommissioned but the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry is ensuring that the R&D will be continued to carry on the experiment results, the reason why it approached the DOE and TerraPower to encourage that joint U.S.-Japan research in the United States.
The U.S. government accepted the Japanese idea of continuing the SFR, but TerraPower announcement said that the company reminded Japan that the reactor to be built is ‘a commercial power source that will utilize once-through high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel and is not intended for either breeding fissile material or for working in tandem with a reprocessing program.’ So the United States does not want to burn enriched highly uranium that can be used for nuclear weapons.
But METI and governing Liberal Democratic Party politicians think that the TerraPowewr agreement meant that Washington had Japan more freedom of what to do about spent fuel enrichment processing at the northern Japan plant being built by JAEA and is scheduled to open later this year.
With the amendment of its pacifist constitution that bans holding nuclear weapons while developing nuclear bomb technology (it already has), Japan ultimately wants to join the global nuclear weapons club as having been demanded by former prime minister Abe and right-wing lawmakers. The United States, together with European countries as well as China and Korea, had been wary about Japan’s nuclear defense argument but in the face of growing global presence of China and North Korea’s advancing missile technology, it has not voiced strong opposition, and that was part of the reason for going ahead with the TerraPower project.
Japan currently holds 46 tons of plutonium extracted from spent fuels, far more than it can reprocess and enrich for firing its nuclear reactors.

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TOKYO, Feb. 11, 2022—Japan’s central bank Feb. 10 affirmed its zero interest rate policy will continue by announcing ‘unlimited’ purchases of long-maturity Japanese government bonds at 0.25%.
The Bank of Japan said the liquidity adding operation to the money market is aimed at keeping 10-year JGB interest rate ‘around zero percent.’ The open market purchasing operation is the first time since July 2018. Feb. 10 afternoon 10-year JGB secondary market yields were at 0.23$, the highest since Jan. 22, 2016, Reuters said.
BOJ Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda, a former Ministry of Finance bureaucrat, is in tune with the ministry to keep rates as close to zero as possible to keep the refinancing cost of maturing JGBs. The aggregate JGB issuance far exceeds 1,100 trillion yen (about $10 trillion).
The BOJ operation is likely to nudge the yen lower against the U.S. dollar and other currencies as other countries are poised to tighten monetary policy to fight inflation. The January US CPI jumped 7.5% year-on-year, the steepest since February 1982, and 0.6 percent from December. December year-on-year rise was 7.3 percent.
The dollar-yen rate was about 116.10 yen Feb. 11 Tokyo time. Japanese financial markets were closed for a legal holiday.
The U.S. government and the Federal Reserver, which had cast a curious eye on the modern monetary policy, are now in the throes of reorientation back to the authentic monetary and fiscal policies as prices began surging from last year. Japanese financial and monetary policymakers, essentially with socialist inclination, have never detailed from the authentic theories but finding themselves without options to continue accommodative policies in light of the huge government debt.

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TOKYO, Feb. 8, 2022–Senior Toyota Motor Corp. executives are quitting the company before retirement in an effective boycott of long-serving CEO Akio Toyoda for his nepotism of his son Daisuke, a Japanese weekly magazine reports.

‘Senior executives that are fed up with the ‘dictatorship’ (of Akio Toyoda) are leaving (the com-any) en mass,’ Hisao Inoue, the weekly Shikan Gendai article writer wrote. But ‘Even so, for CEO Akio, his son’s succession (as CEO) is everything…’ Akio’s son, Daisuke, works as a senior vice president of a Toyota subsidiary, Woven Planet Holdings.

The magazine’s teaser ad named CFO Kenta Kondo, senior board member Koji Kobayashi, and Naoki Miyazaki, board member of Toyoda Gosei.

That Toyota doesn’t retain senior executives even before retirement age is far from surprising as CEO Akio thinks the company needs to rejuvenate management for confronting new auto business terrains such as autonomous driving and EV technologies, among many. Whether the retiring executives are against promoting Daisuke is not all that clear from the article.

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TOKYO, Jan. 28, 2022—The Japanese trade bureaucracy, forced to abandon several years ago for serious accidents, are striving to reactivate fast nuclear reactor R&D for their survival as a key ministry that’s being threatened by a rapid shift to renewable energies from nuclear and fossil fuels, the change that is diluting the ministry’s administrative authority.

The two countries have exchanged MOU, the Yomiuri newspaper reported Jan. 28. It was signed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ Terra Power and the Japanese government’s Japan Atomic Energy Agency and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, it said.

Whether the project moves on aside, it was apparently initiated by the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry bureaucracy whose authority has been eroding in recent years to the development of renewable energies that’s being administered by the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport and several other government entities, instead of METI as the singular authority like for fossil fuels and nuclear.

‘We have changed so much,’ a senior METI official told me, referring to the weakening of the ministry’s authority

(Details of the MOU are available at yomiuri.co.

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TOKYO, Jan. 18, 2022—The Bank of Japan, the central bank, Jan. 18 raised its consumer price index outlook to plus 1.1 percent in fiscal 2022 starting April 1, from the previous level of plus 0.9 percent the bank set in October. The bank also revised upward real GDP growth outlook to 3.8 percent from 2.9 percent in fiscal 2022 while revising down the fiscal 2021 outlook to 2.8 percent from 3.4 percent.
Since as early as 2021 spring, consumer prices have been crawling higher with hardly any respite as energy prices rose stubbornly upward in response to the easing of COVID restrictions globally. CPI registered steeper growth over the October-December quarter to January as oil and other energy prices climbed further. Grocery prices are soaring reflecting the rise of imported food produce prices. The corporate goods price index the bank reported earlier for December rose 8.5 percent year-on-year after jumping 9.2 percent in November.
The reason why the bank released such a low CPI outlook is simply for facilitating smooth distribution of Japanese government debt. If the bank said CPI would rise, say, 3 percent next year, the Japanese government would have enormous difficulty refinancing Japanese government bonds at present yield levels of 0.13-14 percent. The last JGB sale on Dec. 6-27 for retail investors disappointed the market, Reuters had reported.
‘Mr. (Haruhiko) Kuroda (who previously was the Ministry of Finance vice minister for international finance) is paying respect to the MoF Treasury Bureau (which issues JGBs),’ a retired executive of a Japanese securities company told The Prospect. ‘MoF is more important than tightening money for him.’
Today’s BOJ decision, he said, is ‘a national embarrassment.’ Other countries, especially Korea, which earlier raised its benchmark lending rate, would view BOJ as incompetent that could end up stoking inflation and make it out of control, he said. Backing up his view, Kuroda told a news conference this afternoon saying the BOJ policy board did not discuss raising interest rates.
It must be a joke!

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TOKYO, Jan. 18, 2022—INPEX, a Japanese-governmental oil developer, Jan. 17, 2022 announced it would start exploring a Japanese offshore well that is believed storing oil and natural gas reserves 1.4 times more than aggregate domestic reserves. The well is located 130 to 150 kilometers off the Japan Sea coast and nearly at a mid-point between Japan and Korea, the two countries that have been exchanging diplomatic tussles over the war-time Japanese army’s use of Korean women as conform women and sovereignty dispute over Japan’s Takeshima Island.
Exploratory drilling will be held between March and July 2022, the company’s announcement said.
INPEX has been researching and exploring the areas around the well, located off the coast of Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan since 2016, it said. A spokeswoman told The Prospect that the area is located well within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, thus there’s no concern that it would be embroiled in dispute with Korea and other countries.
An official of the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry reportedly has said that the well might store as much as 140 percent more oil and gas reserves than aggregate Japanese reserves. The spokeswoman declined to confirm the size and said that it is something that exploratory drilling can find out. Japan’s domestic oil and gas production accounts for a fraction of its consumption.
The INPEX project is believed to be the first such undertaking in Japan in years and illustrates the Japanese government’s concerns over the country’s energy security, which was almost brought down to the knees by the 2011 Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power explosion and ensuring massive radiation leakage.

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TOKYO, Jan. 17, 2022-At about 6 percent of total domestic employment, Japan’s population of public-sector workers ranks the lowest percentage among OECD countries, far less than Norway’s ratio of nearly 30 percent. Is Japan the most liberal unbureaucratic country among the 36 OECD economies? In a bizarre twist, the country is probably one of the most bureaucratic members.

Government directories list only a couple of dozens of governmental enterprises: Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Narita International Airport Corporation and others invested by the national and municipal governments. The 6 percent figure also includes former governmental companies in which the national government continues to hold full or partial equity stakes, such as Japan Post and East Japan Railway Corporation. But the figure does not necessarily include numerous nonprofits, obscure funds and other forms of entities both the national and local governments manage that employ retired public servants. There also are countless trade and industry associations and lobbies that install former public servants that retired in mid-career or served up till retirement age, typically of central government ministries and agencies, as figurehead executives who loan their names in exchange for remunerations and grafts.

In all, the real bureaucracy and ex-bureaucracy population against Japan’s total employment of approximately 55 million should be about 10 percent.

That notwithstanding, the ratio is far humbler than Norway and other European countries, many of them far more liberal and free-wheeling.

The enigma of Japan’s bureaucratic societal structure, which is the reason why Japan is lagging behind China and Korea in the global digital economy, lies in the revere-and-fear-government mindset (known as ‘kami’) dating back for centuries and imbedded deeply in the Japanese people. It is sapping creativity and risk-taking letting the people to entrust complicated matters such as politics and government administration to kami (an invisible hybrid concept of god and government).

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TOKYO, Jan. 9, 2022—Over the year-end to new year of 2022, Japanese news reports said Japan and the United States would imminently seal an MOU by end-January 2022 a next-gen fast-breeder nuclear power reactor development project.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ TerraPower would sign a formal contract with the Japanese governmental Japan Atomic Energy Agency and the key undertaker Mitsubishi Heavy Industries by this summer, according to Yomiuri newspaper reports over the new year.
Both countries surely need to review their energy policies and possibly revisit nuclear power. And yet, Washington had been wary about Japan acquiring advanced nuclear power technology that Tokyo could hone to enriching uranium to nuclear power fuel levels. China and other major nuclear powers also have been on occasion expressing opposition to Japan’s spent nuclear fuel processing, development of MOX fuels, and fast reactors to discouraging Japan from developing nuclear weapons.
The reports seem to imply that Washington is putting that lukewarm policy aside, at least for now, enabling Japan to advance enrichment technology to prepare for encroaching Asian regional and global political tensions jointly as a key ally.
Former International Energy Agency executive director Nobuo Tanaka said in May 2018 in the Japan Atomic Energy Society Journal that Japan needs to develop nuclear power beyond generating energy.
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The Yomiuri Shimbun (Jan. 9, 2022)
Japan and the United States will work together to develop technology related to core equipment and systems of nuclear reactors in a next-generation fast reactor project, according to the outline of a memorandum of understanding.
The memorandum is expected to be signed later this month by U.S. nuclear start-up TerraPower, LLC, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. They also plan to sign a confidentiality agreement on sensitive technologies. After the Japanese side receives design information from the U.S. side, they will sign a formal agreement, perhaps this summer.
According to sources, the candidate areas of cooperation will include equipment for placing new fuel in a reactor and removing spent fuel; a system for locating damaged fuel while a reactor is in operation; a technology for pumps and heat exchangers to circulate liquid sodium, which serves as a coolant that extracts heat from the core; and a technology related to in-core structures such as plates to block radiation. Based on the design of the fast reactor, the two sides will discuss technical details regarding each area.
With support from the U.S. Energy Department, TerraPower plans to begin construction of the reactor in Wyoming in 2024 and will aim to put it into operation in 2028.
On Thursday, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Koichi Hagiuda held a videoconference with U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, during which he mentioned the Japanese government’s intention to support the technical cooperation. Granholm expressed her high hopes for Japanese technology.
The envisaged fast reactor is designed to transfer heat, which is generated in the core, to a heat exchanger using sodium, and the heat will be used to convert water into steam to activate a power generation turbine. Liquid sodium is silvery-white and opaque, unlike water, which is used as a coolant in mainstream nuclear reactors, so the fuel and structures inside a reactor cannot be directly seen by a camera.
Of particular interest to the U.S. side is the technology to safely remove fuel and replace it as planned. This is essential for the stable operation of fast reactors and the efficiency of maintenance and checkups. If damaged fuel can be identified, it would be possible to restore operations promptly and prevent an accident.
Since the 1970s, the United States has kept its distance from full-scale fast reactor development, producing sparse achievements in the field. On the other hand, Japan has operated fast reactors for a cumulative 250 days with the Monju reactor in Fukui Prefecture, where decommissioning work is underway, and for about eight years with the Joyo reactor in Ibaraki Prefecture, which is currently not in operation pending safety screenings.
Even after Monju’s decommissioning was decided in 2016, JAEA and other entities have continued their research on related technologies. They are developing compact equipment to handle fuel that requires lower costs.
Damaged fuel has been usually confirmed by shutting down a reactor and moving the fuel to another location. Currently, research has been carried out on a system that can identify and locate damaged fuel with high accuracy, while the reactor remains in operation. The envisaged system will use a sensor inside the reactor to detect gas emitted from fuel if it is damaged, according to the sources.
The Japanese parties have also developed a system to detect sodium leaks quickly based on the lessons learned from the 1995 Monju accident in which sodium leaked from a pipe.

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Tokyo, Jan. 6, 2022—In the Tokyo Olympics Village in August 2021, a Tokyo Paralympics judo athlete with vision impairment was hit by a driverless vehicle, e-Pallet, operated by Toyota Motor Corp. On Jan. 6, 2022, Japanese police exonerated the automaker for the accident and instead indicted a Toyota employee whose role was the watchman of the vehicle that was operated at level-2 autonomous driving mode.
Level-2 mode means the driver, not the vehicle, is responsible for accidents, so the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department leveled the slap-on-wrist punishment to the driver, exonerating Toyota of any responsibility, according to Japanese media reports. Japanese media reported the MPD decision in a tone of defending Toyota.
But was the automaker really not responsible at all for the e-Pallet that it touted as fully driverless at motor shows? Why Toyota presented the vehicle to the Olympic Village as totally safe, driverless (watchman was aboard to make extra sure of safety) vehicle, and why the Japan Olympic Committee bought Toyota’s claims for safety?
Police nevertheless determined that Toyota was not responsible at all. For the simple reason that Toyota is the most powerful, biggest company in Japan with intricate connections with government, including police – which uses mostly Toyota Crown passenger cars as police cruisers.

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TOKYO, Dec. 28, 2021—China no longer hides its claws in dominating the world with its industrial and consume products. On Monday, Dec. 27, 2021, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission announced Beijing will be lifting investment restrictions on foreign automakers in their Chinese joint ventures, effective Jan. 1, 2022, according to Japan’s Nikkei newspaper English language website (https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/China-scraps-foreign-investment-curbs-in-auto-sector) Dec. 28.
While the dereg is part of the April 2018 decision to open up the Chinese auto market in phases, t’s a demonstration of confidence in Chinese automotive battery technology. Tesla is currently installing Chinese-made lithium iron phosphate (LFP) on its standard-range models. European automakers also are believed to be following the lead, in addition to lithium-ion batteries. U.S. and European battery makers as well as automakers rely Chinese suppliers for automotive batteries. China accounts for 95 percent of global LFP batteries and substantial portions of minerals including cobalt and nickel used for LFP batteries. Chinese EV buses account for more than 90 percent of global bus fleets.
Traditional foreign automakers that currently hold 50 percent stake in Chinese automakers under the current regulation can buy out what their Chinese counterparts own but they have to rely on CATL, BYD and other Chinese battery makers for core vehicle energy sources.

Nikkei Dec. 28, 2021 report:
BEIJING — The Chinese government has abolished limits on foreign automakers’ investments in the passenger vehicle sector, effective next year, sweeping away the last major restriction on global players.
Passenger vehicles will on Jan. 1 come off the so-called negative list restricting investment by foreign corporations, according to Monday’s announcement by the Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission. Local media characterize the step as China further opening up to the world.
The move makes good on an April 2018 announcement that China would open up its automotive sector in phases. New-energy vehicles, such as electric vehicles, received the treatment that year, followed by commercial vehicles in 2020. The remaining segment, passenger vehicles, accounts for 80% or so of the auto market.
A foreign automaker can currently operate in China only through a joint venture in which its stake is capped at 50%. It can establish up to two such ventures, though this limit does not apply in new-energy vehicles.
Many outside China had called for the government to swiftly open up the world’s largest auto market.
After the investment restrictions on EVs were lifted, Tesla set up a wholly owned Chinese subsidiary that began to build EVs in 2019. Volkswagen raised its 50% stake in an EV joint venture to 75% in 2020.
Now, BMW is expected to raise its ownership in a 50-50 joint venture in Liaoning Province. It had long planned to level up to a 75% stake in the unit in 2022.
Japanese automakers Toyota Motor, Honda Motor and Nissan Motor also have 50-50 joint ventures in China. Although removing the investment cap promises more managerial freedom, many in the Japanese camp are hesitant.
“Considering the importance we place on having trusting relationships with our Chinese partners, we will think carefully about raising our investment ratio,” an executive at a major Japanese player said.

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