Suggestions are presented in the following article that it was not merely the ossified leaders of Keidanren (who gained their offices not by innovative thinking but by surviving their entry year peers in large bureaucratic corporations) but also the U.S. government that quashed a Japanese cabinet decision to establish an official target for abolishing nuclear energy:

http://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/s/article/2012092290070744.ht
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Among U.S. concerns is that reprocessing spent fuel would result in an accumulation of plutonium (So stop doing it), and a decline in nuclear technological ability (There aren't too many VHS technicians around anymore either. Seeking better alternatives tends to degrade capability in obsolete technologies.) In addition, I doubt the U.S. nuclear village would be happy if anti nuclear activists there looked at examples in Germany and Japan and actually imagined they could push or pull American energy policy out of the Cold War.

Greg Johnson