A new Japanese government energy strategy, drawn up in the wake of the nation's worst atomic accident, is to lower the proportion of nuclear-generated electricity, local media reported Friday, according to dpa. The draft of the strategy, which the government hopes to have approved by the end of the year, also included a set of measures to cope with power shortages since the nuclear crisis, the Kyodo News agency reported. The reports did not specify how deep the reduction in nuclear-generated energy would go. The policy was drafted after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 250 kilometres north-east of Tokyo, began releasing radiation since it was hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Tens of thousands have been forced to leave the area, and the national electrical grid has suffered shortages. The draft policy also mentioned the merits of other measures, including the corporate separation of electricity generation and transmission, Kyodo said. A basic energy policy agreed on in June 2010 aimed to boost the ratio of nuclear energy to 53 per cent of the country's consumption by 2030 from around 30 per cent at the time. The nuclear accident has made the public sensitive to the danger of nuclear reactors in the quake-prone country, prompting the policy change. Japan "should work towards a society that will not depend on nuclear power," Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on July 13. Also on Friday, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), met with executives of Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which runs the damaged Fukushima plant. He urged them to ensure information transparency as people all over the world are concerned about the accident. "Sufficient information failed to reach the IAEA in the initial phase of the accident," Amano, a former Japanese diplomat, told reporters after the meeting. "We exchanged views on the importance of information." The IAEA has offered to cooperate with TEPCO in decontaminating facilities, reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and handling fuel rods inside nuclear reactors at the plant, said Amano, who visited the complex for he first time Monday. "We would like to take advantage of knowledge from various countries to resolve the accident," said TEPCO president Toshio Nishizawa, who met Amano.
