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Japan’s Annual Trade Deficit Surges, Hit by Energy Needs

April 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

TOKYO — A dispute over islands with China that led to boycotts of Japanese goods, coupled with rising energy purchases to compensate for idled nuclear plants, gave Japan a record annual trade deficit last year, the government said on Thursday, in another sign of a steadily worsening trade situation for this onetime export juggernaut.

In the fiscal year ended March 31, imports exceeded exports by a margin of 8.17 trillion yen, or $83.4 billion at current exchange rates, the Ministry of Finance said. That was almost twice as large as the previous year’s deficit, also a record, and the largest shortfall since the ministry started keeping such data in 1979.

Japan’s trade balance has been hit hard since the accident two years ago at the Fukushima nuclear plant forced the nation to shut down all but one of its nuclear plants and prompted it to try to cover the resulting energy shortfall by importing more natural gas and other fossil fuels.

But even before the accident, Japan had been experiencing a steady erosion of the huge trade surpluses that it long enjoyed with the rest of the world, as Japan’s once faithfully nationalistic consumers grew increasingly hungry for low-cost manufactured goods from China. According to the ministry, surging imports of Chinese-made smartphones and computer chips helped give Japan a $40.7 billion bilateral trade deficit with China last year.

At the same time, exports to China dropped 9.1 percent as a flare-up in tensions over disputed islands in the East China Sea prompted violent street demonstrations by Chinese citizens and anti-Japanese boycotts. The declines were particularly painful for Japanese manufacturers as the fast-growing Chinese economy surpassed the United States in 2009 as the largest foreign market for Japanese-made goods.

By contrast, sales of Japanese automobiles and auto parts led a 10.4 percent rise in exports to the economically recovering United States, the ministry said. Those gains were enough to push the United States back ahead of China for the first time in three years as Japan’s largest overseas market. Japan recorded a $54 billion two-way trade surplus with the United States, the ministry said.

Thursday’s figures surprised some analysts by showing that Japanese exports did not receive a noticeable lift from the sharp depreciation of the yen under the economic recovery plan put forth by the new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who took office in December.

A weaker yen usually helps bolster Japanese exports by making the nation’s goods less expensive than in other currencies. The ministry said that despite the yen’s declines, however, Japan recorded a trade deficit last month of $3.7 billion, more than four times as large as the trade shortfall in the same month the year before. It was the largest deficit ever recorded in the month of March, the ministry said.

Over all, Japanese exports fell last year by 2.1 percent to $652 billion while its imports rose 3.4 percent to $736 billion, the ministry reported.

Imports of fuel, which account for more than a third of Japan’s total imports, surged last year as the nation’s atomic plants remained idled from the March 2011 nuclear accident. The ministry reported a 14.9 percent increase in imports of liquefied natural gas, much of it from Qatar and Australia, and a 5.3 percent rise in imports of petroleum from nations like Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/business/global/japanese-exports-rise-but-demand-for-goods-is-lackluster.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Finnish Nuclear Plant Won’t Open Until 2016

February 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment

PARIS — The troubled Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant in Finland will probably not start operating before 2016, the power utility behind the plant said Monday, another delay to a project that is already four years overdue.

The Finnish utility for which the plant is being built, Teollisuuden Voima, known as TVO, said recent progress reports received from the plant supplier, the Areva-Siemens consortium, suggested that a previous forecast of a 2014 start was unlikely to be met.

A failure to gain timely regulatory approval for the reactor’s digital instrumentation and control equipment has also delayed the start of operations, TVO said. The International Atomic Energy Agency describes so-called IC equipment as “the nervous system” of a nuclear facility, providing operators with a way to monitor operations and respond to developments.

Areva, the French nuclear company, and Siemens, the German industrial conglomerate, are building a giant 1,600-megawatt facility, big enough to supply 10 percent of Finland’s electricity needs, on an island in the Baltic Sea. The project was to have been finished in 2009.

TVO said it had asked the consortium “to update the overall schedule and provide a new confirmation for the completion date.” The company is battling the builders over who will ultimately bear responsibility for the cost overruns. The case is in arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce.

The Areva-Siemens consortium fired back, saying in a statement that both the French and British nuclear safety authorities had already largely signed off on the equipment, and blaming TVO for the delays.

“Over the course of the past year, the consortium has asked for significantly more active cooperation from TVO in order to obtain the final approval of the detailed IC architecture,” the statement said. “The Areva-Siemens consortium regrets that TVO continues to not fulfill its obligations to allow for the project to advance properly.”

On completion, the Olkiluoto plant, employing a new-generation European pressurized reactor, will be among the most powerful nuclear facilities ever built. A second E.P.R. plant, being built in Flamanville, France, for EDF, is also significantly over budget.

There are, as yet, no examples of the new reactor type working anywhere in the world, but there are two such plants under construction in China, at a site in Taishan, Guangdong Province; the consortium noted Monday that construction at Taishan “is advancing twice as fast as the Finnish project.”

Jouni Silvennoinen, a TVO spokesman, declined to comment on what the final cost of the plant was likely to be or how much it was now over budget. As a privately held company, TVO does not have to make such information available to the stock market. Mr. Silvennoinen said the announcement Monday had been necessary to meet disclosure obligations to the Nordic electricity market.

Mr. Silvennoinen said a visitor to the site would see what appeared to be a completed power plant, with about 75 percent of the installation work at the nuclear reactor finished and most of the major equipment installed. The turbine facilities, the other half of the facility, are essentially finished, he said, “and just waiting for the steam to come from the reactor.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/business/global/finnish-nuclear-plant-wont-open-until-2016.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Nuclear Power Emerges as Election Issue in Taiwan

January 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Although the presidential race has mostly been about pocketbook concerns and, to a lesser extent, Taiwan’s relationship with China, the leading challenger has made the elimination of Taiwan’s reliance on nuclear energy a central plank of her campaign. Pollsters and analysts say that the challenger, Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party, has a good chance of unseating the incumbent, Ma Ying-jeou, whose party has long been a reliable backer of nuclear energy.

In recent months, Ms. Tsai has vowed to retire the island’s six aging reactors and has said that she would seek to mothball a problem-plagued nuclear plant that has been under construction since the late 1990s. The plant, whose price tag has nearly doubled to $9.3 billion, was supposed to begin operating this year, but further delays appear likely.

“After Fukushima, our society has realized that nuclear power is not only expensive but also unsafe,” Ms. Tsai said recently, referring to the nuclear disaster in Japan last March that contaminated a large area around the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The repercussions from Fukushima have been pronounced in Europe, where the governments of Germany, Switzerland and Belgium have promised to abandon nuclear power in the coming decades. However, countries across Asia continue to embrace it. China has 28 plants under construction, and India is building seven reactors and has plans for 20 more. And despite its proximity to Japan, South Korea, with 21 active nuclear reactors, is moving forward on 18 more. Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand are all actively seeking to join the nuclear-power club.

But Taiwan — an island devoid of oil, gas and coal reserves — appears to be losing its appetite for the atom. Last spring thousands of protesters in Taipei demanded an end to the construction of the latest plant, the Lungmen nuclear project, or Nuke 4. Soon afterward, one of Taiwan’s richest tycoons joined the antinuclear chorus: Chang Yung-fa, chairman of the Evergreen Group, one of the world’s largest shippers.

Opponents say that there are a number of active seismic faults across the island and that more than five million people in northern Taiwan live within an 18-mile radius of two nuclear plants. For the 23 million people living on an island the size of Maryland and Delaware combined, there would be few places to run in the event of a disaster.

“Taiwan is simply ill suited for nuclear energy,” said Tsui Shu-hsin, secretary general of the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance, which has been waging a lonely battle against atomic power.

Through the years Mr. Ma’s party successfully beat back efforts to kill the Lungmen project, but he has lately softened his stance. Adopting Ms. Tsai’s talk of a “nuclear-free homeland” at a news conference in November, Mr. Ma eased away from a government proposal to extend the life of the existing plants, which were built in the 1970s when Taiwan was led by the Kuomintang under martial law. He also insisted that Nuke 4 would become operational only if it met much stricter safety guidelines.

Environmentalists have been heartened by such pronouncements. “Before, no one was interested in talking about the problems of nuclear power, but now it feels like history and politics are on our side,” said Gloria Hsu, a professor of atmospheric sciences at National Taiwan University and a former chairwoman of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union.

Proponents of nuclear energy say all the talk of a nuclear-free Taiwan neglects one important detail: how to replace the power generated by the reactors. Taiwan produces about 1 percent of its energy supplies and relies on a mix of imports: oil from the Middle East, coal from China and Australia and natural gas from Indonesia and Malaysia.

Ms. Tsai speaks of increased conservation and of shifting the Taiwanese economy away from power-hungry manufacturing. Part of her “2025 Nuclear-Free Homeland Initiative” also calls for the construction of gas-fired turbines and an expanded reliance on solar and wind power.

But Wey Kwo-dong, an economics professor at National Taipei University, said none of those options could quickly replace the loss of nuclear power. “Taiwan has to import 98 percent of its energy needs, so I’m not sure where people expect to get their electricity from,” he said. “The issue has become so political, no one is considering the impact on Taiwan’s economy.”

Mia Li contributed research.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/asia/nuclear-power-emerges-as-election-issue-in-taiwan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Japan Finance Minister Noda Chosen by Party as Next Premier

August 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

It was a surprise victory for Mr. Noda, who had been seen as running a distant third before the internal vote by the Democratic Party. During the campaign, Mr. Noda presented himself as a pro-business fiscal conservative who could rein in Japan’s ballooning national debt while also taming the soaring yen and battling deflation.

However, political analysts said his victory was as much about seeking a fresh start for the Democratic Party, which has floundered since taking power in a historic election two years ago. The choice of Mr. Noda, who has no large power base within the party and is not one of the Democrats’ founding members, appeared to signal an effort to move beyond deep divisions that have undermined the party.

Analysts said that he may represent the last chance for the unpopular Democrats, who seemed to have lost their way under the indecisive leadership of Naoto Kan and his predecessor, Yukio Hatoyama. Mr. Noda was seen as having an opportunity to heal a deep division in the party over its scandal-tainted kingpin, Ichiro Ozawa, because he was neither a supporter nor a sharp critic of Mr. Ozawa.

Mr. Noda will take over the daunting tasks of leading Japan’s recovery from the deadly earthquake and the cleanup of radiation from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, while also overcoming the challenges of two decades of economic stagnation, an aging population and the rise of neighboring China.

Mr. Kan failed to galvanize Japan after the disaster in March or point a new direction for this seemingly rudderless nation. It remained unclear whether the relatively inexperienced Mr. Noda, who has held only one cabinet-level position but is seen as quietly competent, will fare any better in ending Japan’s drift.

“Can we do what is best for Japan, protect the livelihood of the Japanese people, revive the Japanese economy?” Mr. Noda, 54, asked in a speech. “This is what we are being called on to do.”

Mr. Noda defeated the trade minister, Banri Kaieda, by 215 to 177 votes in a runoff election on Monday, after a first ballot failed to produce a clear victor from a field of five candidates. Mr. Noda will be formally elected prime minister by the full Parliament as early as Tuesday; the Democrats control the more powerful lower house.

Political analysts are divided on Mr. Noda’s chances of overcoming the political paralysis in Japan, which has gone through six prime ministers in five years. They said that while the choice of the relatively youthful Mr. Noda represents a much-needed changing of the guard in the governing party, he will face the same fiscal constraints and resistance to change that had stymied his predecessors.

“Mr. Noda’s biggest battle will be overcoming the vested interests that have made it so hard to bring change in Japan,” said Norihiko Narita, a political scientist and president of Surugadai University outside Tokyo. “It will be extremely difficult for him to fare any better than those who came before him, to say the least.”

One of his biggest challenges will be a divided Parliament, where opposition parties like the Liberal Democrats have used control of the upper house to block the Democrats, in hopes of forcing an early general election. During the campaign, Mr. Noda signaled a greater willingness to compromise with the opposition than did the other candidates, or Mr. Kan.

He also appears to mark a departure from Mr. Kan on the crucial question of the future of nuclear energy.

While Mr. Kan called for ending what he called Japan’s dependence on nuclear power, Mr. Noda has followed the business community in saying that the nation needs nuclear power to prevent electricity shortages that could further cripple the economy.

In foreign affairs, he has said he will maintain close ties with Washington and support an existing deal to keep the Futenma air base on Okinawa.

However, he is a social conservative who, analysts warn, might provoke neighbors like China with comments like one he recently made, saying that Japan’s wartime leaders were not war criminals.

During the brief campaign, Mr. Noda tried to set himself apart by displaying a sense of humor in an otherwise drab race, comparing himself to a loach, a less than attractive fish that scours the mud for food.

“I will stink of mud and work until I sweat on behalf of the people,” he said.

Whether his self-depreciating style will charm voters remains to be seen. Analysts said his lack of recognition could work in his favor by not building up expectations in the beginning that he cannot fulfill.

“He won’t start with strong approval ratings, which will put less pressure on him to deliver right away,” said Hirotada Asakawa, an independent political analyst.

“Let us end the politics of resentment,” Mr. Noda said. “Let’s make a more stable and reliable political leadership.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/world/asia/30japan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Nuclear Company to Compensate Evacuees in Japan

April 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Masataka Shimizu, the company’s president, said individuals would receive about $9,000 and larger households would receive about $12,000. Only people who live within a radius of 19 miles of the damaged power plant, who were initially evacuated, will be eligible for the payments.

The government on Monday ordered the evacuation in the coming month of people in five additional communities that lie farther from the stricken power plant but received higher levels of radiation than elsewhere because of wind and rain patterns. Once residents of these communities have been certified by the government as also qualifying as victims of a nuclear disaster, the company will make the same payments to them, Mr. Shimizu said. Tokyo Electric Power Company officials had no immediate data on how many people might qualify from these communities.

The government said the company acted after a request from Banri Kaieda, the minister of economy, trade and industry. The utility’s full liability for the nuclear accident has not been established and will depend heavily on whether the government characterizes the earthquake and tsunami on March 11 as an exceptional event that could not have been readily anticipated.

No decision has been made on possible compensation to farmers and fishermen who may have lost their livelihoods at least temporarily because of the nuclear accident.

Repair efforts continued slowly at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. An announcement late Thursday of sharply rising temperatures at the base of Reactor No. 3 had provoked brief concern, but regulators said Friday morning that the readings appeared to have come from a malfunctioning thermometer.

In another development, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Japan had reported that 28 of the approximately 300 workers trying to stabilize the nuclear plant had received high radiation doses. The 28 workers have accumulated doses of more than 100 millisieverts, the agency said, though none have received a dose of more than 250 millisieverts.

Japan’s Health Ministry said on March 15 that it was raising the legal limit on the amount of radiation to which each worker could be exposed to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts. That is five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuclear plant workers.

In a sign of a return to normality on Friday, Tokyo Disneyland reopened with limited hours, after closing a month ago to conduct repairs and conserve electricity. Throngs of people showed up outside the amusement park’s gates before opening time, vying to be among the first to return.

The United States government, saying the situation at Fukushima Daiichi has become less perilous, lifted its travel warning for Tokyo and said it would allow dependents of government employees to return to Japan.

The travel alert issued by the State Department on Thursday said that although the situation at the nuclear plant “remains serious and dynamic,” the health risks in areas outside the 50-mile evacuation zone recommended by the American government “are low and do not pose significant risks to U.S. citizens.” It said that even in the event of an unexpected disruption at the plant, harmful exposures to people beyond 50 miles were “highly unlikely.”

The State Department said the new policy was based on the assessment of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Energy Department and the unanimous opinion of American scientific experts in Japan. It came three days before Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was scheduled to visit Japan in what is described as a show of support for the Japanese people.

The State Department had authorized the voluntary departure of dependents of government employees in Tokyo and some other areas on March 16 and had advised American citizens to defer nonessential travel to the Tokyo area and to northeastern Japan, where the nuclear plant is located.

In its new alert, the State Department said the situation at the plant “is dramatically different today than it was on March 16, when we saw significant ongoing releases of radioactivity, the loss of effective means to cool the reactor cores and spent fuel, the absence of outside power or fresh water supply for emergency management, and considerable uncertainty about the condition of the site.”

Now, it said, the efforts to cool the reactors and spent fuel were “ongoing and successful,” power and water were partly or fully restored and planning had begun to control radioactive contamination and mitigate future dangers.

Moshe Komata and Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=83533db7b77233819259fc38762cdf35

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Resistance to Jaitapur Nuclear Plant Grows in India

April 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

They stood to lose mango orchards, cashew trees and rice fields, as the government forcibly acquired 2,300 acres to build six nuclear reactors — the biggest nuclear power plant ever proposed anywhere.

But now, as a nuclear disaster unfolds in distant Japan, the lonely group of farmers has seen support for their protest swell to include a growing number of Indian scientists, academics and former government officials. “We are getting ready for bigger protests,” Mr. Gawanker said.

While the government vows to push ahead — citing India’s energy needs — Indian newspapers recently reported that the environment minister wrote Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to question the wisdom of large nuclear installations. And a group of 50 Indian scientists, academics and activists has called for a moratorium on new projects. “The Japanese nuclear crisis is a wake-up call for India,” they wrote in an open letter.

Opponents note that the area was hit by 95 earthquakes from 1985 to 2005, although Indian officials counter that most were minor and that the plant’s location on a high cliff would offer protection against tsunamis.

The heated debate shows how the politics of nuclear energy may be changing, not only in the United States and Europe but in developing countries whose economies desperately need cheap power to continue growing rapidly.

For Indian officials intent on promoting nuclear energy, the partial meltdowns and radiation leaks at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan could not have come at a worse time. Currently, India gets about 3 percent of its electricity from the 20 relatively small nuclear reactors in the country. But it is building five new reactors and has proposed 39 more, including the ones here in Madban, to help meet the voracious energy needs of India’s fast-growing economy.

Only China, the other emerging-economy giant with a ravenous energy appetite, is planning a more rapid expansion of nuclear power. Beijing has indicated that it, too, plans to proceed cautiously with its nuclear rollout.

By 2050, the Indian government says a quarter of the nation’s electricity should come from nuclear reactors. And the project here would be the biggest step yet toward that ambitious goal. The planned six reactors would produce a total of 9,900 megawatts of electricity — more than three times the power now used by India’s financial capital, Mumbai, about 260 miles up the coast.

So far, workers on the site are simply digging trenches, as a dozen police officers provide round-the-clock watch. Protesters, including Mr. Gawankar, have been arrested at various times, and state police officials have banned gatherings of more than five people in the villages near the site.

Prime Minister Singh has been so committed to atomic power that he staked his government’s survival in 2008 on a controversial civil nuclear deal with the United States. That agreement, completed last year, opened the door for India to buy nuclear technology and uranium fuel from Western nations that previously would not sell to it because of India’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Most of India’s reactors have been indigenously developed, but it is now building two reactors with Russian help. The proposed nuclear plant in Madban will use a new generation of reactors from the French company Areva. Projects using technology from the United States, and from Japan, are also planned.

Government officials have said that India will conduct more safety reviews to make sure its existing reactors and new proposals are safe. But they reiterated their commitment to nuclear projects, including the one in Madban, which has been named the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant, after a nearby village.

Many Indian scientists, though, remain distrustful of India’s nuclear establishment. And they criticize the decision to use Areva’s new reactors, saying they are unproved.

Heather Timmons contributed reporting from New Delhi.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4f6e32fc8e8143f5b2315310553c44c7

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