Alex Luta wrote":

"Come fall we'll see just how anti-nuclear the Japanese public REALLY is, when they will start having to pay for their perceptually safer, heavily CO2-polluting fossil-powered electricity."

When rates rise it is not at all clear that the Japanese public will accept the explanation that this is due to fossil fuel costs. This is first and foremost due to huge distrust of the EPCOs and regulators.
This huge trust deficit in turn largely reflects the track record of both up to now, and the lack of transparency when it comes to electricity rates.
Indeed, there are other causes behind rising electricity rates, not least of all the cost of cleaning up the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and to a lesser degree the new Feed-in-Tariff for promoting renewables.

As I have posted here in the past, in national opinion polls a large majority has answered that it is willing to pay more for electricity in order to promote the transition from reliance on nuclear power to reliance on renewables. In Kansai polls large majorities have responded that they are willing to spend more for electricity, implement stringent conservation measures, and even endure rolling blackouts in order to avoid restarting nuclear power plants. The public is thus signaling that it is willing to pay a high price for what it regards as a safer means of generating power (and that safety trumps longer term environmental concerns as well).

Finally, it is worth noting that electricity rates have been high in Japan relative to other countries for decades, including compared with countries that burn a lot of fossil fuels, so clearly there are other causes for high rates and rate increases.
Probably the biggest cause is a lack of competition among the regional monopolistic EPCOs. Therefore, perhaps the public will respond to higher rates by demanding a faster breakup of these monopolies,especially the separation of grid ownership from power generation.

Paul Midford
Norwegian University for Science and Technology