After Fukushima Daiichi disaster Japan shut down all it's reactors and switched to fossil fuels, not renewables, and this is the most tragic outcome of the disaster.
Neither nuclear nor renewables could entirely replace fossil fuels, we desperately need both. Hopefully Japan is restarting it's nuclear reactors (5 reactors were restarted in 2018) and investing in renewables, but I'm afraid it's still not enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan
I don't think the sentiment on nuclear power, even after Fukushima, is as clear cut as you're presenting.
And your claim that Japan is planning on growing might mislead some readers to think that they are expanding the nuclear capacity in Japan. Which is not the case at all. They signed the Paris agreement and unlike the US they try to keep their promise. But they are not expanding any capacity to do this. They simply restart their reactors (which by the way if they might be able to do so is to be seen).
What actually happened is that they started to decommission the Genkai 1, Mihama 1 and 2, Shimane 1 and Tsuruga 1 reactors while they completely abandoned the plan to build Fukushima Daiichi Unit 7 & 8 for obvious reasons among others.
So if anything than the exact opposite can be said that you implied: Japan is slowly but surely phasing nuclear energy out.
I'm about as pro-nuclear as they get, but the Wikipedia articles seem to support a story of the Japanese government shutting down nuclear and being very tentative restarting the existing reactors [0].
It is difficult to guess what is going on in a country that doesn't report in English, but the info in Wikipedia (mostly a little dated) seems to support a rollback of nuclear. Reduced generation, limited new developments. Either they are using less energy or something else is filling the void left by nuclear plant shutdowns.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Nuclear...
The reality is that solar is a tiny part of global energy and even in countries like Japan it did not even come close to replacing nuclear.
Japan will have nuclear future because they simply have to much capacity already. However the poplar nature of nuclear politics makes it a problem, they will continue to be import depended and fossil fuel for many years to come.
> A second key to deep decarbonization brings up an inconvenient truth for the traditional Green movement: nuclear power is the world’s most abundant and scalable carbon-free energy source. Although renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind, have become drastically cheaper, and their share of the world’s energy has more than tripled in the past five years, that share is still a paltry 1.5 percent, and there are limits on how high it can go. The wind is often becalmed, and the sun sets every night and may be clouded over. But people need energy around the clock, rain or shine. Batteries that could store and release large amounts of energy from renewables will help, but ones that could work on the scale of cities are years away. Also, wind and solar sprawl over vast acreage, defying the densification process that is friendliest to the environment.
The reason why it totals 1.5% is because it costs money to replace existing power sources and the lobby power of the coal industry is still huge. It has nothing to do with solar energy itself.
You may call it "the lobby power" but there seems to be no choice for the heavy industry than to use coal, thanks to nuclear phase-out.
It's actually become something of a political issue (because of the lost jobs).
In 2010-2013 renewables apparently couldn't keep up. Since 2014 they appear capable of replacing all other end of lifed power plants.
The renewable parts of that is bound to go down: As part of the push to renewables, when spinning up capacity, you get prices guaranteed for 20 years. The different to market rates is spread across the whole market ("EEG Umlage", "renewable energy law contribution").
But: that law is approaching 20 years now and so in 2021 the first installations will drop out of that subsidy scheme. Prices and guaranteed rates were dropping ever since, and so will the subsidies - with a delay of 20 years.
> there seems to be no choice for the heavy industry than to use coal
Comparing the numbers in 2000 and 2017 (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromerzeugung#Bruttostromerze...), coal used to account for more than 50% of power generation in 2000, down to 36.6% in 2017. Even in absolute numbers to account for the rise in total power production, coal is less in 2017 than in 2000. Petrochemicals are up from 9.5% to 14.1% though.
Non-regenerative power was 436.5 TWh in 2017, down from 538.7 TWh in 2000.
And no realistic fuelcell technology or disrributed grids.
If France were forced to disconnect from its neighbors, its electricity would be more expensive and/or more emissions-intensive. It would need more fossil combustion to deal with seasonal demand swings and/or it would get less utilization out of its nuclear reactor fleet. The same goes for Germany, of course: electrically isolating itself would also increase costs/emissions. Germany and France both rely on international electrical connections to improve utilization of their non-combustion electricity sources. Both use imports to meet part of their electricity demands. Both are net electricity exporters over the course of a full year.
Fukushima has been a lesson here. Strategically, Japan has to import it's energy, except for solar energy. With a float of trains electricity is already at the core of their transportation system.
Here, at least, nuclear doesn't look like it's the future.