Will Japan Embrace Geothermal Power to Move Away from Nuclear?

By John Daly | Mon, 31 December 2012 18:52 

Despite the recent victory of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, which is pro-nuclear and won a nationwide parliamentary vote on 16 December, issues surrounding the country’s nuclear energy policies will not go away.

In the aftermath of the 11 March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis, the then ruling Japanese government Democratic Party of Japan took the country's 54 nuclear reactors offline and subsequently restarted two reactors at the Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture.

An additional element for broadening the country’s energy options has now come from a country half a world away – Iceland.

During a 5 December speech at the United Nations University (UNU) Headquarters in Tokyo, Icelandic ambassador to Japan, Stefan Larus Stefansson, gave an upbeat assessment of Japan’s enormous untapped geothermal energy potential, citing Iceland’s 85-year history of success in this area as a model.

It was not the first time that Stefansson had spoken on the topic at UNU, as he had also addressed the Japan-Iceland Geothermal Forum in November 2010, four months before the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe.

At the 2010 forum Icelandic Minister of Foreign Affairs and External Trade Ossur Skarpheoinsson delivered the keynote address, during which he emphasized the great similarities between Japan and Iceland as geothermal countries, both island nations situated where natural resources could be harnessed to provide for an ever increasing proportion of national energy output. After citing many countries that have untapped geothermal power potential, including those in East Africa, geothermal power could help to bridge their existing energy shortages and provide electricity to those currently without it, declaring, “the age of the geothermal is just beginning.”