I thank Ellis Kraus for bringing to our attention the Foreign Policy essay by Amory Lovins, which shows that Japan is not the only country that has been providing massive subsidies to the nuclear power industry (2012/04/07). Perhaps we might have gone down a different path, or at least come down this path differently, if we had had the ability to foresee what the relative costs and availability of the various energy sources would be. But we didn't, and Lovins'
argument tells us little about what we should do with the nuclear power plants in operation or nearing completion. In fact, if cost were the only concern, I'm sure that Lovins would agree that the power plants should be fired up or finished as soon as possible.

And since we are discussing Lovins' essay (or rather, the excerpt therefrom), there are a few things that need some 'splainin'. First, Lovins mentions that coal-fired power plants are not being built in the United States because they are too expensive. Yes, but compared to what? Not renewables, that's for sure. In fact, US utilities have access to cheap pipeline gas, whereas we in Japan must use expensive LNG, which makes coal the cheaper option for us. Second, Lovins writes:
"Investors are shunning their high costs and financial risks in favor of small, fast, modular renewable generators." Maybe, but I suspect that investors in the US are putting even more money into gas-fired power plants. And Lovins doesn't mention that the allure of those "small, fast(?), modular renewable generators" is vastly enhanced-in fact for the most part generated-by their own set of subsidies, explicit and implicit.
Finally, though this is a trivial point, Japan has one nuclear power unit near completion and another one with substantial groundwork completed, so not all plants under construction had been bought by "central planners" at the time of the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster.

Amory Lovins does provide an interesting piece of information about nuclear power in the United States, but he does so as part of a cleverly crafted but what I judge to be deliberately flawed pitch for renewables (for which Japan, alas, is climatically poorly situated). Japanese EPCOs can tell him what happens when you bend the means to serve your ends. And that's the post-3.11 takeaway that anyone can appreciate, regardless of what their views are on energy and the environment.