The U.S. Department of Energy was informed by Japanese officials that the world's third-largest economy risked a catastrophic power failure as it prepared to close its last operating nuclear reactor last year.
Those warnings, detailed in redacted documents released to Bloomberg by the U.S. Energy Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, still reverberate as Japan's only operating reactor was shut down this week for routine repairs.
The initial caution came in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, when the last of Japan's 50 undamaged reactors was being switched off and reliance was growing on natural gas-fired power plants. Those plants would depend on a caravan of liquefied natural gas tankers steaming across the oceans, leaving the country vulnerable to supply disruptions.