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Fukushima Watch: Looking for New Nuclear Revenue — A Spent Fuel Tax?
Fukushima Watch: Looking for New Nuclear Revenue — A Spent Fuel Tax?
By Mari Iwata
The town of Genkai on Japan’s western island of Kyushu is one of many in this country whose livelihood depends on the nuclear reactors it hosts. Since those reactors have been shut down for nearly six months, with no restart in sight, the town is proposing another way of squeezing revenue from the power plant: tax it.
That at least was the idea proposed by Hideo Kishimoto, Genkai’s mayor, in a municipal parliament session on Monday. One specific suggestion: a tax on the storage of the Genkai plant’s spent nuclear fuel rods.
“We can’t avoid a future drop in revenue, so we have to think of new taxes in order to maintain services for residents,” Mr. Kishimoto was quoted as saying in local media.
Genkai’s revenue problem is acute. All of the four nuclear reactors in the Genkai power plant are now offline — as are Japan’s 46 other reactors — as utilities hold off on restarting them to assuage public fears raised by the Fukushima Daiichi accident in March 2011. The Japanese government is expected to order the first two back online since the accident on Saturday.
The idling has pummeled finances at small, out-of-the-way communities...
By Mari Iwata
The town of Genkai on Japan’s western island of Kyushu is one of many in this country whose livelihood depends on the nuclear reactors it hosts. Since those reactors have been shut down for nearly six months, with no restart in sight, the town is proposing another way of squeezing revenue from the power plant: tax it.
That at least was the idea proposed by Hideo Kishimoto, Genkai’s mayor, in a municipal parliament session on Monday. One specific suggestion: a tax on the storage of the Genkai plant’s spent nuclear fuel rods.
“We can’t avoid a future drop in revenue, so we have to think of new taxes in order to maintain services for residents,” Mr. Kishimoto was quoted as saying in local media.
Genkai’s revenue problem is acute. All of the four nuclear reactors in the Genkai power plant are now offline — as are Japan’s 46 other reactors — as utilities hold off on restarting them to assuage public fears raised by the Fukushima Daiichi accident in March 2011. The Japanese government is expected to order the first two back online since the accident on Saturday.
The idling has pummeled finances at small, out-of-the-way communities...
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/06/15/fukushima-watch-looking-for-new-nuclear-revenue-a-spent-fuel-tax/
