¹ A useful compilation of recent NHK English-language broadcasts on the incident is available here.

² One of the best articles on this crisis and its implications is Patrick J Kiger, “Fukushima's Radioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know,” National Geographic, August 7, 2013.

³ On this, see The Sankei Shimbun (in Japanese) “Clean-Up Costs in Fukushima Prefecture as Much as YEN 5 trillion,” July 24, 2013.

⁴ On this, see (in Japanese) “Whither Japan? Energy and Nuclear Restarts in the Wake of Abe's Electoral Triumph,” Mainichi Shimbun, July 26, 2013.

⁵ On the scale and implications of the nationalization, see “Tepco's nationalization: State power,” The Economist, May 11, 2012.

⁶ Some estimates suggest it will be about YEN 30 to 40 billion (about USD 350 million). See (in Japanese) “(the flow of contaminated water) Hoping for a quick response from the central government,” Fukushima Minpo, August 10, 2013.

⁷ Patrick J Kiger, “Fukushima's Radioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know,” National Geographic, August 7, 2013.

⁸ See the very good work on this by Antoni Slodkowski and Mari Saito, “Fukushima cleanup turns toxic for Japan's Tepco,” Reuters, July 30, 2013.

⁹ On the 1990s crisis and the policy response, in comparison with Sweden, see Sven Steinmo, Emre Bayram and Andrew DeWit “Bailing out the Bankers or the Banking System: Comparing Sweden's Response to Financial Crisis,” February 14, 2014 (under review).

¹⁰ For the details, see “Tepco to be nationalized on July 25 with YEN 1 trillion transaction,” Japan Times, May 22, 2013.

¹¹ “The most thorough treatment of this comes (in Japanese) from Keio University Professor, and former member of the National Commission on Nuclear and Other Power Costs, Kaneko Masaru, in “Nuclear is More Expensive than Thermal Generation,” Iwanami Booklet No 880, August 3, 2013. Kaneko's work deploys the modeling used to calculate power costs, and determines that the vast majority of the nuclear reactors are uncompetitive, especially when one adds in the costs of new safety measures, new costs for decommissioning, and other expenses that keep mounting up.

¹² In fact, fast action reduces the far more expensive costs of adaptation as well as has the potential for first-mover advantage. That's one reason the core agencies of the Obama Administration are collaborating with the US military to get around Congress and test-bed as well as deploy the world's most advanced renewable and efficiency-related equipment.

¹³ Even experts at Japan's nuclear-friendly Institute of Energy Economics suggest the first restarts may be as late as July 2014. See Osamu Tsukimori, “Two years on from meltdowns, experts predict July 2014 restart for some reactors,” Reuters, August 6, 2013.

¹⁴ A nice summary of the deregulation and its context can be found at Daniel P Aldrich, James E. Platte, and Jennifer F. Sklarew “What's Ahead for Abe's Energy Agenda?” Asia Unbound Blog, Council on Foreign Relations, July 30, 2013.

¹⁵ This option is already being discussed in political and bureaucratic (not to mention business) circles. For one exponent's arguments, see (in Japanese) LDP Diet Member Kohno Taro's comments in “Before Restarts, Decide a Cap on Nuclear Waste,” Toyo Keizai, July 18, 2013.

¹⁶ As noted in the first paragraph, even the METI authorities are warning that the facilities could topple. That risk implies that the fuel pools are in danger as well.

¹⁷ The interview with Kimura is in the August 5 edition of the Japanese weekly Distributed Generation, and is titled “Aiming at a Further Expansion of Renewables Via Stable Management of New Energy Policy.”

¹⁸ See the interview with Yamamoto (in Japanese) in the June 5 edition of the weekly newspaper, Decentralized Energy.

¹⁹ See the Vice-Minister's February 19, 2009 comments here.

²⁰ See for example Jeff St. John, “AutoGrid, Austin Energy and the ARPA-E Home Challenge,” GreenTech Media, February 26, 2013.

²¹ On the Yokohama Project, see here.