That's especially important for densely populated Japan, where air pollution is already a problem. A properly managed and regulated network of nuclear power plants makes economic sense here. Trouble is, there have been disturbing signs of lax regulation by the government, and that undercuts the tenuous public support for nuclear power in Japan. If official Tokyo is ever going to sell ordinary Japanese on the strategic need for nuclear power, it'll have to deliver on its side of the bargain. When things go bad a nuclear reactor, they really go bad.
Government inspectors ought to be crawling over every reactor on a regular basis.
What's more, Tokyo's fixation with nuclear power may be skewed. For one thing, the grandiose plan to build 20 extra nuclear reactors was hatched in the 1970s, when the economy was growing robustly. So, perhaps it makes sense to scale back a bit on development of nuclear power. To offset such a move, Japan needs to deregulate its energy market to better allocate its existing power supply. For years, power companies have had monopoly control over their regions.