The Abe administration plans to say in a draft of the national medium-term energy plan that nuclear power should continue to be "important" in supplying electricity despite the Fukushima nuclear crisis, sources said.

The draft was to be presented Friday to a meeting of a panel tasked with compiling the so Basic Energy Plan before the end of December. The plan will become official after securing Cabinet approval, possibly early in the new year.

According to the sources, the draft will say nuclear power should be seen as an "important source of electricity," because relying too much on thermal power generation would mean having to import more fuel and damaging the trade balance.