The picture taken on February 3, 2020 shows the central control room for the unit one reactor at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture. KAZUHIRO NOGI AFP TOKYO - Japan's industry minister said restarting Japan's idle nuclear reactors would help prop up the economy as the yen's weakness is further inflating energy imports.
As the reboot of each reactor would mean 1 million tons less natural gas would need to be imported to resource-poor Japan, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told a press conference that pressure to sell the yen for the US dollar could be dreaded as the rebooting of each reactor would mean 1 million tons less of liquified natural gas.
Nishimura said that this would be a countermeasure against the depreciation of the yen.
The yen has been persistently weak against the US dollar recently, to the point that Japan intervened in the currency markets to support the yen on Sept 22 for the first time since 1998 to redress one-sided, rapid yen moves, as described by financial authorities here.
Japan warned of further market operations on Tuesday as the yen remained weak, near a 32 year low around the 149 line against the US dollar in Tokyo.
The Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in Parliament that the yen's rapid depreciation is problematic and that the government will work with the Bank of Japan BOJ to take appropriate steps.
The yen's weakness has seen energy imports and material costs soar, with the higher prices now weighing on Japanese households and firms, and set to worsen as winter and colder temperatures approach.
In the wake of the 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeast Japan, the majority of Japan's nuclear reactors are offline.
Businesses have been calling for more nuclear reactors to be restarted and Kishida has said that up to nine idled reactors will be restarted to deal with rising power demands during the winter.