Japan nuclear plants' safety costs could jump to $40b

These were brought about by post-Fukushima safety standards.

Each year, Japanese utilities are required to update their estimates on safety spending. According to the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun, safety and security measures at domestic nuclear power plants were expected to cost JPY4.41tr (approximately US$40bn) to their operators as of July 2018, when these costs were reevaluated and raised by JPY582bn (US$4.5bn) compared to the previous year.

Such measures integrate the latest post-Fukushima safety standards along with counter-terrorism measures. The newspaper questioned the eleven Japanese operators on their annual estimates of the anti-terrorist measures, which now reach an average of JPY79bn (US$710m) per reactor. Safety measures must be deployed within 5 years after the implementation of post-Fukushima standards and their average total cost per reactor is close to JPY180bn (US$1.6bn).

These costs are increasing year by year and could undermine the government's claim that nuclear energy will be the cheapest source of energy in 2030.

This article was originally published by Enerdata.