This week the president of the world's largest privately owned utility, Tokyo Electric Power, resigned over an alleged cover-up of safety problems at nuclear power plants.
On Monday, radiation levels 100 times the normal level were found in one of ten nuclear power plants in Fukushima prefecture, thus throwing the $230 billion industry into crisis.
The scandals have weakened the public's fragile confidence in the nuclear power industry and will almost certainly throw into doubt plans for 13 new nuclear power plants, creating a massive energy shortfall.
"In the short term this will help Australian coal exports, and in the medium term it will improve the outlook for natural gas," an industry insider said.
Australia supplies 60 per cent of Japan's thermal coal needs, 10% of its natural gas imports and also provides 25% of uranium for Japan's nuclear sector.
Japan's giant neighbour, China, has told the World Summit on Sustainability that it will ratify the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas reductions, which will commit the world's second largest polluter to binding targets and compliance rules on reducing global-warming greenhouse emissions.
Russia has also indicated it too will ratify the protocol before the end of the year, bringing the treaty into force. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien told the summit that a Kyoto ratification bill would come before parliament before the end of the year - leaving Australia and the US as the only two developed countries opposing the treaty.
