OPINION | DAVID HESS
The world needs you, Japan
The world needs more experienced reactor vendors willing to sell their technologies abroad. Is it time for Japanese reactor vendors to step up to the plate, again?
David Hess, Senior VP DeepGeo
HERE’S NO DOUBT THE Japanese nuclear sector took a beating after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. The aftermath of that event saw the whole national reactor fleet progressively idled as the regulatory system was reformed and local and regional officials withheld permission to restart. A country which
once proudly generated about 25% of its electricity from nuclear sources prior to 2011 saw this go to zero within three years. The Japanese nuclear industry entered a period of shock, introspection, and remorse. Utility executives stopped turning up to events or when they did it was to apologise for the accident and the impact on people and the global nuclear sector. It was a profound change, and one can only wonder if an unprecedented natural disaster had caused a nuclear accident in another country whether the response would have been anything like it. And yet while construction stopped at home it continued
overseas for Japanese reactor vendors. Toshiba, which had bought Westinghouse in 2006, took on a guarantor
accident and both projects saw first concrete poured in 2013. They were hailed as the beginning of the US nuclear renaissance at the time. Both Toshiba and Hitachi became involved in the UK new nuclear programme, taking on some of the sites selected by the Blair government for new nuclear development. Toshiba took Moorgate and backed the NuGen project, again intending to build AP1000s, while Hitachi invested heavily into Wylfa as part of the Horizon effort to build ABWRs. Not to be forgotten, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries also partnered with Areva in efforts to build the ATMEA reactor in both Turkey and Vietnam. In short, Japan was set to become a major reactor
©Alexy Kovynev
export player and enjoyed bright prospects. These all evaporated at some point in the late 2010s. Pivotal to this, of course, was the disastrous experience in the USA with AP1000 construction – an experience which echoed that of the French EPR in Finland – and showed just how significant the erosion of construction experience had become in these countries. The subsequent bankruptcy of Westinghouse and near bankruptcy of Toshiba apparently spooked the other Japanese vendors who all became more cautious and ultimately pulled back from their overseas projects, in Hitachi’s case having spent almost £2bn (US$2.7bn) on Horizon. The history of Japanese nuclear projects overseas has
After Fukushima Daiichi, I realised that working at a nuclear power plant is really a dream job
role for the AP1000 construction projects at Vogtle and VC Summer in the USA. Progress continued unabated after the
14 | March 2026 |
www.neimagazine.com
so far been a bit of a disaster, leading to the obvious question – why? There is no doubting the country’s domestic nuclear construction experience. To this day the record for fastest-ever gigawatt scale nuclear power plant construction is held by Kawishazaki Kariwa 6. This was completed in a shockingly fast 39 months (first concrete to grid connection). While there has been some romanticising of this project it is nonetheless an extraordinary feat which much of the industry wishes were the benchmark today. The construction project prowess of the country is the stuff of legend. In 2014 some 1200 workers in Tokyo allegedly moved an entire set of train tracks from an elevated platform to an underground subway line in just one night so as to avoid disrupting commuter schedules. Other countries could only dream of achieving something similar. While the world is now in awe of China nuclear power plant construction performance and South Korea
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