John V. Roos, appointed US Ambassador to Japan by President Obama about three and a half years ago, has been a very effective ambassador. He was recently in town as part of his western US tour to celebrate the strong ties between the US and Japan. Direct flights between the two countries link Tokyo and five US cities—Boston, Seattle, San Diego, Denver, and San Jose. San Jose was the last to be connected with All Nippon Airways as of January 11, 2013. Actually, there was a direct flight between San Jose and Tokyo/Narita by American Airlines, which stopped the service in 2006.

Ambassador John Roos at the podium with Mayor Chuck Reed

Ambassador Roos is no stranger to the Bay Area. He grew up in here and graduated from Stanford Law School. Incidentally, Mayor Reed revealed that he was his classmate at the law school. Ambassador Roos was CEO of Silicon Valley–based law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati before he was appointed ambassador.

Mayor Chuck Reed

Mayor Reed has been in many clean tech meetings and emphasized the growth of business with entrepreneurship in San Jose. For more details, check with San Jose Green Vision.

Also, Carl Guardino, President and CEO of Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG), gave a speech, as did the Japanese Consul General in San Francisco, US embassy staff, and others.

 I have been involved in several of SVLG's activities. SVLG deals with many issues to make Silicon Valley a better place to live and work in. Certainly, the new direct flight from San Jose to Tokyo welcomes an even closer tie with Japan, the third largest economy in the world.

Carl Guardino of SVLG

The following is a summary of Ambassador Roos's speech, with my comments (indicated by ZK).

The ambassador began by saying how closely the US and Japan have aligned in the area of security and economy. After all, with the US the number 1 economy and Japan number 3, the close collaboration between the two countries is good for the entire world. The close collaboration is in effect at the government-to-government level, as in the smart grid experiments in New Mexico and Hawaii. On the way is laboratory-to-laboratory collaboration, as with National Renewable Energy Laboratories.

Ambassador Roos then talked about Japan's nuclear disaster. I have reported on this disaster in several previous blogs. Roos said that Japan had decided to increase its dependence on nuclear power from 30% to 50% before the disaster. But after the disaster, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the ruling party then but the loser of a general election last December and no longer in power, decided to phase out reliance on nuclear power by 2030 and increase the generation of power by renewable energies to as much as 30% of the total. Renewables now generate 10% of Japan’s power, and hydro produces 80% of that; other sources, like solar and wind, account for less than 2%. With this policy change, the DPJ projected the renewables field may grow to be a $600B market by 2020.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), returned to power with DPJ’s defeat, may reconsider this policy. However, the FIT program is on for 20 years, regardless of who the administration is, and the ambassador thinks the renewables market will grow in such areas as solar and smart grid.

(ZK: Jeff Miller, Energy Attaché of the US Embassy in Tokyo, said that the new administration probably would not release its policy on energy until summer. He did not say why. The reason is that the LDP now has a majority in the Lower House of the Diet, which is similar to the US Congress, but does not have a majority in the Upper House. And they probably would like to avoid any controversial issues until an upcoming Upper House election in July.)

The ambassador then said that it was important to plan and conduct business with Japan for the long haul. He also said that he saw a strong new trend in entrepreneurship in Japan since the disaster of March 11, 2011. At the time of the disaster, the US deployed 24,000 soldiers to give a hand to disaster-stricken areas and people. The operation, known as Operation Tomodachi, was a success, and people in the disaster area really appreciated the help. Now Operation Tomodachi has become the Tomodachi Initiative, which attempts to more closely link young people in both countries in the areas of education, culture, and entrepreneurship.

One of the people who spoke after the ambassador was Hiroshi Inomata, Japan’s General Consul in San Francisco.

Hiroshi Inomata, General Consul of Japan in San Francisco

He echoed the ambassador's message of the close collaboration between the two countries beyond clean tech issues. He said that Japan is uniquely positioned in the APAC region and can be a launching pad into the rest of the Asian markets because

Japan provides:

• an innovation hub of new research and R&D

• solid business platforms consisting of favorite business environments, a safe society, and good transportation

• a rich domestic market

In the rest of this blog, I only report some of the things I heard from other speakers. I am sure that I missed some other worthy comments.

The US embassy attaché listed some promising areas of clean tech that Japan may want to adopt:

1. Tidal power generation. (ZK: Because Japan is an island nation surrounded by oceans, there is good potential for this type of generation. However, it is still many years before it can be put into production, and it will cost a lot of money to implement. I am skeptical about whether this is suitable for a private company to tackle with without the backing of large companies and/or the US government.)

2. Bridging two frequency areas. (ZK: As the attaché pointed out, there are two major power grids serving the eastern (Tokyo and Yokohama) and western (Osaka and Nagoya) parts of Japan. The AC power in the eastern part is 50 Hz (as in most of Europe), whereas the western part uses 60 Hz (as does the US). Because of this separation, excess power in one grid cannot be utilized for another. See my old blog for the Japanese power grid infrastructure. One such solution can be the application of the technology used at Tres Amigas to unite three major power grids in the US. The three grids all run AC power in 60 Hz but are not synchronized and cannot be connected directly. So at Tres Amigas, each AC is first converted to DC then reconverted to AC and connected to the other grids with synchronization.

A vendor in the smart meter segment asked for advice about what they can do to grow their software sales in Japan. He was saying that utilities like TEPCO tend to purchase software from Japanese vendors over foreign vendors. Wearing my second hat, I assist US companies to enter the Japanese market, and I encounter this problem constantly. Think of it this way. If you were a US utility company and needed to purchase software, would you prefer to buy it from a US vendor or a foreign one? The answer is very straightforward. In order to sell in Japan, you need to overcome name recognition, marketing and technology documents in Japanese, technical support in Japanese, contracts and other agreements in Japanese, in addition to the Japanese language, business etiquette, and other things. Even in the world of IT, it is often hard to penetrate into the market. As in the US, utilities are very conservative in Japan and do not want to run the risk of adopting a technology from a foreign no-name vendor. There is a solution for that, but it is beyond the scope of this blog.

There has been a lot of discussion about whether power generation by nuclear energy will stay in Japan’s energy mix in the next 20 years. Immediately after the earthquake and the tsunami disaster, antinuclear sentiment seemed unstoppable. However, the pronuclear power camp, including some politicians, utilities companies, and local governments that host nuclear power plants, pushed back this trend a little bit. With that, the Japanese government restarted two of the fifty reactors that had not been restarted as usual after being stopped for their annual checkup. However, without a formal process, these two of the nuclear reactors were restarted in spite of a lot of opposition in July. This sparked weekly demonstrations against nuclear energy everywhere, but the one that attracted the most attention was the one in front of the prime minister's office (similar to the White House).

As the current administration loses support, it tries to regain popularity. It has reversed the old policy of keeping nuclear power in the energy mix for 2030. If that were all, it wouldn’t be a problem. However, the government just gave the OK to restart construction of a plant that was put on hold after the disaster. It will probably be another 10 years before this plant will be available for power generation, but if nuclear power is excluded from the energy mix, its life is only 10 years or so.

There are a lot of factors involved in the exclusion of nuclear energy, including pressure from business groups and the US and those who stand to gain a lot in continuing nuclear energy. I think banning nuclear energy completely from the mix is a mistake. What the Japanese government should do is to make all the data and discussions open and make the decision process fair. The government used to have two agencies under the same minister. One was to promote the nuclear industry and the other was to control and guarantee the safety of nuclear reactors. So it has decided to make the control agency, known as the Nuclear Regulation Authority, independent like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US. Japan has a long way to go before it finally can decide on the energy mix that is right for it.

I have covered this subject for some time and will reference some earlier blogs in this one. As two of Japan’s 50 currently stopped reactors will be restarted shortly, it may make sense to write an overview to put this matter into perspective. Before the four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi (by the way, "daiichi” means number 1; number 2 is nearby) nuclear plant got destroyed, there were 54 reactors in Japan. The US has 104 reactors, and Japan has more than half that number in its tiny territory (one twenty-sixth that of the US).

After the enormous jolt, all four of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors were automatically shut down but were standing without major damage to the cores. Hitting all the coastal areas near the epicenter, the tsunami reached the plant shortly after the earthquake. The tsunami did some damage to the compound and surrounding areas but did not critically damage the reactors. However, seawater flooded backup generators that were housed underground. The decision to house them underground copied US emergency measures for avoiding damage from tornadoes. Backup power is necessary, when power from the grid is lost, to cool fuel rods because they get very hot even when reactors are not in operation. The lack of backup led to hydrogen explosions and the rest is history.

At the time of the crisis, TEPCO (the utilities company serving Tokyo and surrounding areas) and the government did not communicate well, and chaos ruled the entire country. Rumors of radiation reaching Tokyo made people very nervous. On top of that, rolling blackouts were conducted to save the collapse of the entire grid, handicapping train service and stranding millions of people. Adding insult to injury, aftershocks of various scales were felt very often during that time, making people sleepless and scared.

Now it is revealed that the Japanese government and the US forces in Japan had accurate information on radiation cloud flow at the time. However, that information was not shared with people close to the damaged reactors. Some people were evacuated along the very route of the radiation cloud flow and received some dose of radiation. One thing I was surprised by was that there were no clear emergency evacuation guidelines about which agency of the government should do what or who should evacuate. In the US, NRC has clear guidelines and plans for emergency evacuation. For example, the 5-mile radius is considered within direct threat of radiation, and 50 miles is considered the possible reach of indirect contamination via food and drink.

Many Japanese people felt that foreigners, including Americans, overreacted and became hysterical, exaggerating the disaster as if the entire country were destroyed or blanketed with radiation. The US embassy in Tokyo issued an advisory to US citizens in Japan to evacuate beyond the 50-mile radius of the damaged reactors. The embassy simply followed the NRC guidelines and also had more accurate data about radiation than the average Japanese population. Yes, there were some overreactions on the part of non-Japanese, but the Japanese government did not release pertinent information in time, much less in other languages, making those people worried about the worst.

During the following dozen months, antinuke sentiment was in full bloom, and everyone (Japanese and people outside of Japan) believed Japan would abandon nuclear power. Any other opinions were shut out because it was the right thing to do. But how did that change and why is Japan restarting some reactors? Time is usually a healer and also contributes to fading bad memories. People started to forget how bad it was. However, a power shortage was on everyone's mind. See my earlier postings on this.

• Power Shortage in Tokyo: Firsthand Experience, Part 1 (July 11, 2012)

• Power Shortage in Tokyo: Firsthand Experience, Part 2 (July 13, 2012)

• Power Shortage in Tokyo: Firsthand Experience, Part 3 -- Very Confused State of Energy Policies in Japan (July 15, 2011)

• Power Shortage in Tokyo: Firsthand Experience, Part 4 and Final (July 21, 2011)

• Load Shifting to Combat the Power Shortage in Tokyo (August 01, 2011 )

• Japan Ends Mandatory Power Conservation (September 09, 2011 )

• What Will Tokyo Do with Its Power Supply as Winter Approaches? (November 11, 2011 )

• How Is the Power Supply in Japan These Days? (December 06, 2011 )

• Does Japan Have the Power to Cope with Summer? (February 29, 2012)

• Japan under Power Crunch (March 14, 2012)

Prime Minister (PM) Kan, who was in office at the time of the disaster, was adamant about getting rid of nuclear plants and promoting renewable energies instead. He was very unpopular for other reasons and tried to use this slogan to survive a no-confidence vote. He delayed restarting all the reactors that were halted for annual checkups by introducing a new requirement as a condition for a restart. While this was going on, operational reactors were not stopped for this new requirement. Finally, he made a deal to step down in exchange for passing a feed-in-tariff that was subsequently passed and will be in effect on July 1.

His successor is PM Noda, who has not made his position clear on what to do with the disabled reactors and other reactors. One by one, reactors were shut down for their annual checkup. But none of them were restarted even after the successful checkup. And at the end of April this year, all the reactors were shut down and there were no reactors in operation to supply power to the grid.

However, towards his first anniversary in office, PM Noda made a move. He may have been motivated by the coming summer power crunch, expected especially in the Kansai area (Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, and Nara). Their reliance on nuclear power was close to 50%, and none of the reactors were in operation. Long story short, he abruptly formed a committee to decide security and safety measures for nuclear reactor operation. Even though it had been more than a year, nothing had been done up to that point. Surprisingly, his committee came up with the measures in a matter of a few days. The security and safety measures were not shared with the general public, and I am not sure if experts in the field contributed to them. The measures were approved, and the stage has been set to restart two (at the Ooi plant) of the halted reactors in the Kansai area.

Governors and mayors close to the Ooi plant opposed restarting the reactors without well-thought-out safety and security measures. But in the end, they were forced to accept the restart. With no more formidable opposition, the government gave the go-ahead to KEPCO, which serves the Kansai area. The restart of the two reactors is imminent.

This oversimplified journal gives you the story on what has happened in the pursuit of restarting nuclear reactors in Japan since the quake. I am not against the restart of the reactors as long as real safety and security measures are discussed with scientists but not by politicians. My prediction is that a good number of the remaining 48 reactors will be restarted soon. There is no longer a barrier to restarting them.

The year's election in California includes a referendum to halt two nuclear power plants in the state until permanent nuclear fuel process plants are built. After Japan's disaster, public sentiment in the US moved against nuclear power. But as time goes by, people forget. The US and other countries are building more nuclear power plants. See A US Nuclear Power Renaissance? (February 12, 2012).

Interested readers may want to refer to my blogs on Japan's nuclear power:

◦ Is Japan Really Getting Out of Nukes? (January 20, 2012)

◦ What’s Next with Japan's Nuclear Power? (March 25, 2012)

◦ Should Japan Restart Any of Its Nuclear Reactors? (April 09, 2012 )

◦ More on Japan's Nuclear Reactors (April 25, 2012)

◦ How to Fight Peak Power Demand in Japan (May 15, 2012)

◦ Japan Restarts Two Nuclear Reactors (May 31, 2012)

Smart grid has been proposed to provide more stable power and reduce transmission loss, from generation all the way to consumers. The imbalance between the ever-increasing demand and the lack of resources in transmission lines and generation as a result of environmental concerns, coupled with high fuel costs, makes us wonder whether we have and will have enough power for our needs in the US. We have already seen that some data centers, which are notorious for consuming a lot of power, could not expand, because they could not source more power for the expansion. But overall we have been lucky in the US. We have, more or less, enough power for our everyday lives.

What would happen to the US if 30%–50% of generation sources disappear? It is hard to imagine. We will see something like that in the industrialized country of Japan this summer. I have repeatedly written about it. On May 5, the last operating nuclear reactor was stopped for an annual checkup without a firm restart date. This was celebrated as a victory by some groups of people who are against nuclear power. But other people are worried.

Now all 50 nuclear reactors in Japan are halted without any firm restart dates. Each reactor was stopped for a routine checkup but never restarted. About 30% of Japan’s entire power generation came from nuclear plants, so the country is now running its power grid with a 70% power supply capacity. This still works now, in spring, when demand is relatively low. But come summer, with the increased use of air conditioners, power demand may surpass power supply. The Tokyo area, which is served by TEPCO http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html, went through a power shortage last summer with intensive conservation, and TEPCO managed power demand without rolling blackouts. With four reactors decommissioned in Fukushima and seven reactors (a total of 8,212 MW of generation capacity) halted in another plant, TEPCO will have to do some maneuvering to get through this summer without any blackouts. TEPCO has announced it would implement time-of-use pricing to curtail power usage during peak hours. (Note that PG&E indicated time-of-use service will start in 2014.) So far, TEPCO has installed about 1 million smart meters, but the total number of households is 28 million. Does this work? Twenty-seven million meters cannot distinguish time-of-day pricing, and their owners have no incentive to conserve. Moreover, I am sure TEPCO charges extra for the meters and their installation and adds the cost on top of the power price for every consumer to share. Some people think they receive free meters and free installation and are very happy without knowing the utility’s pricing structure.

This is bad enough, but the KEPCO territory—Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and Kobe—will suffer from an even worse power shortage because of their heavy dependence on nuclear power (some 50%). Currently, the central government and KEPCO are playing tug-of-war with local governments. They want to restart two of the reactors, while the local governments question the safety of those reactors because neither the central government nor KEPCO has provided reliable information about their safety or actual power capacity. The central government and KEPCO have been using scare tactics, saying that not reactivating the reactors means rolling blackouts. Their most recent figures on power capacity are as follows.

Without nuclear power or additional pump-up generation, KEPCO projects a power shortage of 4,450MW in the coming summer. With the reactivated nuclear reactors (an additional 2,360 MW) and pump-up generation (2,100 MW), it can guarantee a reliable supply of power.

People are skeptical about these figures because:

• Additional power and expected shortage almost (conveniently) balance, with a positive 10 MW.

• KEPCO stated that power produced by pump-up generation was much less before.

Of course, I have no intimate knowledge regarding these figures, but I have a suspicion like everyone else that the numbers are cooked to justify restarting the nuclear reactors.

I wonder what would be the reaction of an American if the same thing happened in the US? I am not sure Americans would be as receptive as the Japanese to this explanation. In any event, it looks like it is going to be a very hot summer in KEPCO territory.

As of April 9, there was only one nuclear reactor in operation in Japan. The last one will be shut down for a checkup on May 5. As summer is coming in three months, the Japanese government seems to be adamant about restarting two of the halted nuclear reactors in the Kansai region, which is KEPCO territory and includes Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, and Nara.

The problem is that it is really difficult see what is going on and how the decision about the nuclear policy is being worked out there. Unlike the previous administration, the current administration is determined to restart some of the halted nuclear plants. It is easy to blame Japan for restarting them after such a big accident. But Japan does not seem to have any other choice, unlike the US. The US has several options for energy. In the worst case, it can suspend its policy of protecting the environment and drill for oil and coal. Natural gas is plentiful and priced very low compared with the world market. For example, natural gas costs more than four times as much in Japan as in the US.

Japan imports virtually all of its energy. Japan decided to adopt nuclear power because it:

1. Is relatively cost-effective compared with other fuels.

2. Has no GHG emissions.

So it is understandable that Japan would restart some of the halted reactors to get ready for summer, especially in KEPCO territory, which has depended on nuclear energy to meet 44% of its total power demand. However, the process and transparency of how the restart is planned and carried out are awfully flawed. Most Japanese people are very skeptical about government announcements after having watched how the nuclear disaster was handled. Most people believe that the government withholds much information about the disaster and its aftermath. Many people are afraid and worried about nuclear reactors. The government does not seem to be able to wipe out their mistrust and suspicions. On top of that, it does not seem to have a clear plan or the will to carry out an energy policy.

Bypassing the regaining of trust and not showing the safety of the nuclear reactors makes it appear that the government plans to restart the plants without providing adequate safety measures and processes. Some time ago, a stress test was a condition for restarting the reactors, but it was not really described to the public. The first phase of the test was a computer simulation, and the second phase was to prepare for all possible problems. Then a few days ago 13 interim safety measures for reactors were announced and, thus, the conditions for restarting them. On April 9, the government issued three major conditions for the restart:

• Mechanisms to guarantee power supply in case all the internal and external domestic imported power is lost.

• Readiness for earthquakes and tsunamis.

• Several safety measures, including satisfying the stress test.

The conditions keep changing and are very confusing.

In addition, some key members of the cabinet seem to have some reservations about restarting the reactors, even if these conditions are met. Also, the central government cannot move quickly because local governments and people are concerned about restarting the reactors without clear evidence of their safety. The way things are going, Japan will suffer from another power crunch this summer.

The best thing the government can do is to release all the information, including power needs and availability of other power sources, and convince people about what needs to be done. It may take longer, but in the long run it is the only way. If the central government forces a restart without any good evidence of the reactors’ safety, the backlash could be enormous.