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."

I wonder if it's an either nuclear or fossil fuels choice. The public's rejection of the former certainly is leading to greater reliance on the latter in short run. But at the same time, Japanese central and local governments are pumping an enormous amount of money, via FY 2012 budgets, in renewables, efficiency, storage and next-generation green tech.

Don't forget that in the wake of the March 11, 2011 Fukushima disaster and ensuing restrictions on electricity supply, Japanese prefectures, large cities and other governments have sought to build local resilience and distributed energy. Their incentives include the desire to alleviate undue reliance on highly centralized power generation infrastructure, get around the monopolized utilities, enhance the capacity of local green energy innovation clusters, and maximize local SME, farmer, household opportunities afforded by the national feed-in tariff that came into effect on July 1, 2012.

But their core incentive is the fact that close to 30% of the country's power-generation capacity, nearly 50 nuclear plants, remains off-line in the summer of 2012 due to what seem pretty legitimate concerns over nuclear safety.

In order to cope with the immediate challenge of double-digit power cuts, Japan's local governments increased their energy efficiency and conservation and are deploying as much solar, wind and other renewable generation capacity as possible. The mechanisms they're using in order to achieve these ends include very low-interest loans directed at SMEs in particular, local ordinances and other regulatory changes that simplify procedures for becoming a power producer, special tax measures that enhance economic incentives for businesses to locate solar and other power-generation assemblies in the local community, and an extensive array of subsidies and direct spending that encourage efficiency and the deployment of renewable power. Some of this spending is directed to local government facilities and is used to replace conventional lighting with highly efficient LED lighting as well as install solar capacity on the roofs of public facilities such as schools and event centers.
Other spending is used to defray the costs of area businesses' and residents' purchases of power-generation equipment, energy management systems, LEDs, and other devices for increasing renewable power generation as well as decreasing demand where possible.
Total spending by Japan's 47 prefectures and 20 designated cities (cities with more than 500,000
residents) for renewable energy, efficiency, storage and related innovation in the initial FY 2012 budgets amount to USD 563 million. These figures are being increased significantly at present by a string of supplementary budgets. They were also backed up by at least USD 25 billion in central agencies' FY 2012 spending nationwide on immediate deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy as well as investment in next-generation technology and other measures.
Moreover, the feed-in tariff was expected to cost power consumers roughly USD 2.5 billion to USD 3.8 billion in its initial year, directing these monies to renewable energy producers.

If investing in renewables and efficiency rather than restarting nukes seems absurd, then one might be eligible for a spot in the Noda cabinet, which is at present working, with the LDP and Komei, on a porkbarrel stimulus. Here we are in the midst of an IT-energy-biotech revolution, and Noda's at work on old-style pork-barrel stimulus package rather than say a big programme of efficiency/conservation retrofits that would have massive multiplier effect in the present as well as reduce energy costs into the future.
More road-work just means more cars. That Japan has plenty of room for efficiency improvement is demonstrated, in great detail, the the ACEEE July 2012 International Efficiency Scorecard:
http://aceee.org/press/2012/07/aceee-united-kingdom-top
s-energy-eff

Compare the Noda "pour on the pork and risk Fukushima 2" approach with that of the American Navy, to take just one example. The Navy adopted a new "Shore Energy Management Instruction" on July 10, 2012, one that completely revises their previous management instructions of 1994. The very ambitious goals of the Navy are animated by the concern to reduce energy consumption as well as shift to renewable energy sources. Other motives are the desire to reduce the bases' vulnerability to power outages resulting from natural disasters and accidents (ie, just like Japan's local governments learned from Fukushima). The specific goals of the new management instruction include a 50% reduction in energy consumption by 2020, securing 50% of energy from alternative sources by 2020, making 50% of shore installations net zero energy consumers by 2020, and reducing the energy intensity of operations by 30% by 2015. These objectives for shore installations include the diffusion of smart meters, smart grids, solar energy, energy management systems, and other components of the green city paradigm.
Moreover, these projects come in tandem with a commitment to securing 50% of fuel needs from sustainable biofuels by 2020. These goals have caused considerable political controversy, among conventional-energy sector supporters in Congress, over whether the U.S. Navy, and the military in general, should be involved in seeking to drive the diffusion of renewable energy sources. That the US military elite is willing to risk the criticism of congressional actors is both an indication of their level of commitment to reducing their resource intensity and increasing its sustainability as well, perhaps, as being an indication of the degree of risk they perceive in continued reliance on conventional energy as well as the undue cost of the nuke alternative. The Navy authorities are also quite explicit in their desire to be the source of demand that leverages a larger energy revolution in the American political economy (Washington, like Tokyo, being busy coddling vested interests). Ray Mabus, the secretary of the Navy, and others frequently make reference to the fact that military demand has been critical in previous energy transitions such as from wind to coal and from coal to oil and oil to nukes as well as in the creation of the Internet, the development of global positioning systems, the innovation of flatscreen televisions, and other profoundly disruptive technologies.

Restart those nukes in Japan, and you likely blunt this country's incentives to move fast in this accelerating industrial revolution. That the US military isn't looking to nukes, in spite of intense pressure from that sector and its reps in Congress, to power their bases seems a pretty good indication of which energy options are the most promising. The US military can hardly be labelled "anti-nuke."

Japan's additional risk is that the incompetence of the political class in the central government leaves it inadequately incentivized to get out of this renewed reliance on gas, oil and coal as fast as possible.
Especially in the wake of Fukushima, Japan should be way out in front of the green revolution.

Best,
Andrew