Regarding the law on the life of reactors, this was part of the 2012 law that created the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (now called Authority instead of Commission). Everything I've read says that the law says the life of the reactors is, in principle, limited to 40 years but that the NRA can grant one extension of
20 years if the reactors meets safety standards to be set by the NRA. Most recently, the Nikkei wrote on Sept. 20 (http://tinyurl.com/97uacs5)

The revised law on nuclear reactors that set the 40-year rule allows an extension of up to 20 years if safety is confirmed.

And the day before (http://tinyurl.com/9z4ksf7)

Tanaka said the new organization's role is to ensure that the use of atomic power would not cause harm to people's lives and environment, but concerns linger that the new rule to limit the reactors' operation to
40 years could be watered down as a related legislation also allows up to 20 years of extension.

Paul Midford:

And this week the Noda cabinet used the 40 year rule as the basis for announcing its intention to close the Mihama reactors.

RK:

I've been unable to find any info on this. Can you elaborate?

I'd like to reframe my question on the reform potential in Japan. Maybe a better question would be: what kind of reforms would make regulation effective, and how likely are those particular reforms?.

For example, I can easily think of a dozen measures that would drastically reduce the severity of the next popping of the US financial bubble. Had they been in place, the global recession would never have been as severe. Most affect conflicts of interest, politically vulnerability of regualators, and incentives to market players to commit fraud and take excessive risks with other people's money. They don't require a big institutional overhaul of the US, but they do require beating back the Wall Street lobby which funds so much of both political parties, and which has so many academic defenders.

Similarly, there are presumably reforms in Japan that might make regulator truly more independent, more expert and more powerful: e.g. staffing the NRC not only from the existing Ministries by people who are amateurs in nuclear issues, but also by genuine nuclear engineers and scientists; perhaps sending officials overseas for a while to see how other nuclear power powers operate; perhaps an international agreement that allows the IAEA to supervise the safety regimes in all the countries using nuclear power.

Once we've discussed what measures might be more effective, it might be easier to discuss which are politically feasible or what would need to be done to make them politically feasible.

Richard Katz
The Oriental Economist Report