Japan faces season of peak power demand without nuclear plants

Japan faces a long, hot summer without nuclear energy as power companies warn they will effectively have nothing in reserve when seasonal demand peaks.

"We have managed to secure the minimum necessary power surplus thanks to the support of other utilities companies," said Jiro Kagawa, the vice-president of Kansai Electric Power. "But we have virtually no extra power supply."

Kagawa's comments are seen as a thinly veiled plea to the government and nuclear-industry regulators to hasten the approval of modifications at atomic power plants across the country.

All of Japan's reactors remain offline as regulators examine plants for defects highlighted by the disaster at the Fukushima plant in March 2011. Work is still under way at the site to get four crippled reactors under control and to clean up the radiation that escaped when it was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami.

And while Japan managed to make it through the last three summers relatively unscathed, analysts fear that fading public consciousness will mean people forget to rein in their power consumption, while demand from the industrial sector is rising as the national economy picks up again.

"It is not only the power companies that want the reactors restarted, but manufacturing firms are also pressuring the government," said Tetsuo Kotani, a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs.

"I'm sure the government would like nothing better than to be able to do that, but approval for the plants has to come from the regulators," he said. "And their priority is safety rather than the needs of companies."