Center for a New American Security

Japanese officials shutdown the last of 50 nuclear reactors late Saturday evening, taking the country off of nuclear power for the first time in more than four decades. Most of Japan’s nuclear reactors will remain idle for the foreseeable future as they undergo stress tests to determine their ability to stand up against a major disaster, a measure introduced after the March 2011 triple disaster that crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant and left the country’s nuclear-power future in a tailspin.  

Japanese officials remain concerned that the country could experience electricity shortages during the peak summer months without nuclear power, which previously provided approximately 30 percent of Japan’s total electricity demand. A panel of experts reported to Japanese policymakers in April that nine utilities could see electricity shortfalls in August. As a result, Japanese officials may power up two reactors during the summer in order to meet electricity demand. The Japanese Times reports that “Last month, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and key members of his Cabinet decided that firing up the No. 3 and 4 reactors at the Oi power station is essential to ensure a stable supply of electricity in the Kansai region in summertime,” even as the country continues to reduce its reliance on nuclear power. It is not clear if those two reactors will be back online by the summer.

This is a new feature to highlight the top tweets of the week to hit my Twitter feed (@wmrogers).

From The Hill’s Energy and Environment Blog @E2Wire: “News bites: White House to promote ‘bioeconomy’ bit.ly/JXftuf.”

The Hill’s Energy and Environment Blog discusses the White House’s announced release of a new National Bioeconomy Blueprint on Thursday that is expected to make a broad push for investments in biotechnology, including renewable biofuels.

From Circle of Blue @circleofblue: “Soon, water may be more important that oil to #China @Forbessu.pr/1mAIOg #water

Circle of Blue links to a report in Forbes that discusses the growing strategic importance of water in China, driven in part by increasing demand as well as mismanagement of existing resources. According to the report, “The country’s water supply is smaller than that of the U.S., yet it must meet the needs of a population nearly five times as large. Industrialization has taken its toll on this already limited resource. Industrial and biological pollution has contaminated almost 90 percent of the underground water in Chinese cities.”

There is a lot of chatter this morning about the potential for gas prices to hit $4 or $5 a gallon by Memorial Day, which could undermine stronger U.S. economic growth. Here are a few stories from the weekend that provide some of the geopolitical back story about why oil and gas prices are climbing. 

Perhaps the big story over the weekend was Iran’s announcement on Sunday that it will suspend oil shipments to Britain and France in response to their embargo against Iranian oil, which – along with the rest of the European Union (EU) – is set to take effect in July. The announcement was seen as more symbolic than significant, given that Britain and France are not nearly as dependent on Iranian oil as other European countries are. According to The Huffington Post, “Analysts said Iran's announcement would likely have minimal impact on supplies, because only about 3 percent of France's oil consumption is from Iranian sources, while Britain had not imported oil from the Islamic republic in six months.”

It is unclear to what extent Iran would continue to restrict exports to Europe in advance of the July embargo, when existing contracts with the EU are set to expire. The New York Times reported that, “Iran may also be reluctant, when its economy has been damaged by existing sanctions, to deprive itself of revenues from its larger European customers.” What is more, Reuters announced on Monday that China’s Unipec – one of two major buyers of Iranian oil – is expected to purchase less oil from Iran in 2012; how much less oil is not clear from the initial report. That announcement could have an impact on Iran’s strategic calculus.

The announcement from Tehran on Sunday contributed to higher oil prices on Monday, pushing the cost of a barrel of oil to a nine-month high. On Monday, The Huffington Post reported that, “By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark March crude was up $1.91 to $105.15 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the day, it rose to $105.21, the highest since May. The contract rose 93 cents to settle at $103.24 per barrel in New York on Friday.”

CNAS is just several weeks away from publishing a major study on the South China Sea (look for it sometime early in January 2012). But with U.S. and other East Asian leaders preparing to meet in Bali on November 19, and the South China Sea likely to be a focus for some of those world leaders, it is important to keep track of the trends developing in the region.

Just yesterday, the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, Vice Admiral Scott Swift, raised concerns that minor territorial disputes in the South China Sea could precipitate greater conflict in the region. “There are lots of positive examples that people are reaching for dialogue as opposed to defense to solve these problems,” Swift said. Nevertheless, “A ‘miscalculation’ on the part of one actor could lead to the point where ‘presidents and premiers are engaged in a discussion to ensure it doesn’t escalate to something that nobody in the region wants,’” Swift cautioned, according to The Wall Street Journal.

There are a lot of smart people in Washington and around the world evaluating the threat of nuclear proliferation against the backdrop of growing civilian nuclear energy use. In an October 18 post, I commented on a report by Dr. Charles Ferguson who addressed this challenge in the current issue of Foreign Policy. (Ferguson’s report is worth reading in full.)

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that some in Japan are advocating that the country maintain its civilian nuclear energy program, in part to keep its edge with the technology in case Japan ever needs to develop nuclear weapons.  “I don't think Japan needs to possess nuclear weapons, but it's important to maintain our commercial reactors because it would allow us to produce a nuclear warhead in a short amount of time," said Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister. But, as The Wall Street Journal noted, this is a minority view in Japan. Most of the public remains skeptical about continuing nuclear energy generation, especially in the wake of the March Fukushima disaster: “Recent public-opinion polls show the Japanese public turning against nuclear energy after the March Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.”

On Saturday, The New York Times reported that Japan continues to reel from the radioactive fallout from the March Fukushima nuclear disaster. According to the Times, Japanese citizens groups have started to monitor for radioactive hotspots in Tokyo after they learned that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government had no plans to monitor radioactive fallout in the city. “Like Japan’s central government,” the Times reported, “local officials said there was nothing to fear in the capital, 160 miles from the disaster zone.”

Yet citizens’ testing has uncovered a worrying number of radioactive hotspots around Tokyo, which “were contaminated with potentially harmful levels of radioactive cesium.” As a result, experts have criticized the government’s efforts to understand long-term radioactive fallout from Fukushima. “The government’s failure to act quickly, a growing chorus of scientists say, may be exposing many more people than originally believed to potentially harmful radiation,” according to The New York Times. “It is also part of a pattern: Japan’s leaders have continually insisted that the fallout from Fukushima will not spread far, or pose a health threat to residents, or contaminate the food chain. And officials have repeatedly been proved wrong by independent experts and citizens’ groups that conduct testing on their own.”

Tomorrow, CNAS will formally launch Hard Choices: Responsible Defense in an Age of Austerity, at an event at the Newseum beginning at 8:30 AM. If you’re in downtown Washington, I strongly recommend stopping by. Along with the authors LTG David Barno, USA (Ret.), Dr. Nora Bensahel and Travis Sharp, Thomas Donnelly (of AEI) and Gordon Adams (of the Stimson Center) will discuss the critical question facing policymakers on Capitol Hill today: How can the United States responsibly and effectively maximize its security in this era of growing fiscal austerity?

Hard Choices does yeoman’s work in highlighting the implications of tough budget cuts on America's military capabilities and is a must-read for anyone who truly wants to understand the debate that is playing out on the Hill and across the river at the Pentagon. The report outlines four scenarios for defense budget reductions, with each scenario reflecting more defense cuts, and analyzes the strategic implications for the U.S. military under each example.

For me, one of the hallmarks of the report is the emphasis on the need to rethink U.S. defense strategy as it currently stands and the careful articulation of where U.S. priorities should be. “The United States has pursued a remarkably consistent military strategy over the past 65 years, although different American leaders have adopted varying approaches to national security,” the report states.

In terms of the news, we all have to agree that this was a pretty awful weekend. Dozens of Americans and their local counterparts were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. S&P downgraded the United States.

I’ll start this wrap-up with the coolest natural security-related news from the weekend: the Navy has sent some submarines to the Arctic on exercises to do who knows exactly what, but surely in part to signal the U.S. presence in the region.

If there is one thing we should be able to agree on this week, it’s that tsunami early warning systems are a good investment. A few weeks back we began examining how the pending federal belt-tightening may affect how the government addresses natural security concerns.