Nobuo Ikeda argues that Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, created by the Democratic Party, functions as an “idiot wall” preventing nuclear restarts through an extralegal “Tanaka private proposal” that effectively makes all nuclear plants retroactively illegal. As a highly independent Article 3 Commission, the NRA operates without oversight, blocking Japan’s energy security while daily fuel costs soar. Former PM Naoto Kan even admitted the Democratic Party intentionally left behind a system that “cannot easily be reversed.” A critical analysis of Japan’s self-imposed energy paralysis.

The “idiot wall” left behind by the Democratic Party—the Nuclear Regulation Authority.
The Tanaka “private proposal” is nothing more than a personal memo that is not even a committee regulation.
August 5, 2024

The following is an article I found while searching further regarding Sakurai Yoshiko’s must-read column for all Japanese citizens.
“Democracy’s ‘Idiot Wall’: The Nuclear Regulation Authority,” by Ikeda Nobuo, Newsweek Japan, February 5, 2014.

In the Tokyo gubernatorial election, former Prime Minister Hosokawa and others are calling for blocking nuclear restarts, while the Abe administration’s policy is that “nuclear plants recognized as safe by the Nuclear Regulation Authority will be restarted.”
But as I have written before in this column, there is no such thing as a “restart examination.”
What the NRA is conducting is a safety examination under the new regulatory standards established in 2013, which is separate from plant operation.
Safety examinations can be conducted while the plant is operating.

However, Chairman Shunichi Tanaka of the NRA wrote in his “Basic Policy Toward the Implementation of the New Regulation (Private Proposal)” that plants must “possess all necessary functions for design-basis accident measures and severe accident measures (including those caused by major natural disasters or terrorism) at the stage of implementing the new regulations,” and that “nuclear power plants that do not meet the regulatory standards should be judged as not fulfilling the prerequisites for restarting operation.”

The new regulations (safety standards) took effect in July 2013, but no power plant possessed “all necessary functions” at that point.
Thus, none met the conditions for restart.
In other words, the NRA required utilities to file new design-change applications and undergo screening from scratch, making it impossible for any plant to operate until completion.

Let me explain with a simple analogy.
Suppose your house is a 40-year-old building that does not meet current seismic standards.
One day, officials come and say, “From today, all houses must meet all necessary seismic standards. Submit a new building confirmation application. Until you pass the screening, you must vacate your home.”
You would become homeless.
That is exactly what Tanaka is saying.

Retroactive application of new law is prohibited by the Constitution.
In the case of nuclear plants, backfitting new standards may be allowed only when public safety gains outweigh the utility’s burden, and only if special provisions are explicitly written into law.

But Tanaka’s private proposal includes no such legal basis or safeguards and simply makes all nuclear plants uniformly illegal.
Worse, the proposal is not even a committee regulation—it is a private memo.
If such arbitrary administrative guidance is accepted, the NRA can do anything.
If it wants to shut down a disliked utility’s nuclear plant, it can create safety standards to make it noncompliant and declare, “From today, you are in violation.”

When I show this Tanaka private proposal to former bureaucrats, they are shocked.
It is not even in the form of an official document.
Tanaka, who comes from an engineering background, likely does not understand that backfitting is a regulation bordering on unconstitutional.
This was not simply his personal idea but reflected the intent of the then–Democratic Party government.
In an interview with Hokkaido Shimbun on April 30 last year, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan said:

“If you think things will go back to the way they were, they won’t.
Restarting 10 or 20 reactors is impossible.
The Democratic Party left behind a structure that cannot be easily reversed.
The symbol of that is the abolition of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and the creation of the Nuclear Regulation Authority.
… The LDP also supported establishing an independent regulator.
It cannot be reversed now.”

As he says, the Nuclear Regulation Authority is a highly independent “Article 3 Commission,” meaning no government ministry can control it.
Because the vast human resources of Kasumigaseki cannot be used, the NRA members operate like “individual shops” doing whatever they please.
The NRA is the “idiot wall” the Democratic Party left behind to preserve “zero nuclear” even after leaving office.

The LDP supported it because LDP member Yasuhisa Shiozaki drafted the establishment law.
Anti-nuclear groups supported his ideal of creating a “Japanese version of the NRC,” but METI did not cooperate at all.
Thus, Shiozaki, who could not write the law himself, outsourced the drafting to a private company.
In Japan, knowledge is accumulated in ministries, which is why independent regulatory agencies of experts do not function—this NRA is proof.

Meanwhile, Japan loses 10 billion yen in fuel costs every day, and its economy is sinking.
The Prime Minister’s Office seems finally to realize something must be done, but Tanaka’s private proposal can simply be ignored.
No law or cabinet decision is necessary.
Prime Minister Abe can simply hold a press conference and say, “From today, please operate nuclear plants in accordance with the law.”