Abe is known to be favourable to nuclear power and defended Japan's new Nuclear Regulation Authority, basically saying that the nation's nuclear power plants will be given permission to restart after 'the most rigorous set of safety regulations in the world' have been drawn up and enforced.
He predicted that it would take about 10 years before the nation decided the 'best energy mix'.
There was also the claim that Japan was developing renewable forms of energy and making new sources of energy available such as methane hydrate. He proceeded to talk up methane hydrate quite a bit, and indeed lately this stuff has been getting quite a bit of coverage in the media.
So just what is it and can it help anybody's energy problems?
Methane hydrate is a fossil fuel, originally created by decomposing bacteria, deposits of natural gas trapped within the crystalline structure of frozen water...300 meters or more below the sea.
It is estimated that there is a lot of the stuff around the world - more than the world's estimated reserves of conventional gas, for example. And Japan has a great deal.
The question is whether methane hydrate could be accessed in a commercially viable way. Last Tuesday it was announced by Japan's Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry that a team had succeeded in extracting natural gas from a methane hydrate bed 1300 meters under the sea off the coast of Aichi Prefecture.
Yet there is no promise yet that this new fuel can be economically viable. The best guess I came across was that it would be 4 times the current cost of conventional gas. Not really something to change the world.
Hopefully.
Because it appears that methane hydrate, apart from being an expensive boondoggle and a way for the LDP to divert attention from real energy issues, may be an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. Methane is highly carbon-intensive, and it is estimated that methane hydrates contain more carbon than all the world's other fossil resources combined.
And while it is hoped that technology may be developed to prevent that carbon reaching the atmosphere, as yet there is no guarantee this is possible.
In any case I will not be holding my breath waiting for methane hydrate to come and rescue Japan. Abe can talk in NHK interviews about 'magic hydrate', renewables, and other fantasies as much as he likes. He knows and we know that Japan's choices come down to ...
...conventional fossil fuels versus nuclear.
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