Nuclear-Free Japan Braces for Severe Power Shortages

TOKYO (Reuters) - The shutdown of Japan's last working nuclear power plant and the government's failure to convince a wary public about restoring production at dozens of reactors leaves the world's third largest economy facing another summer of severe power shortages.

Hokkaido Electric Power Co shut its nuclear plant late on Saturday - the last of Japan's 50 reactors to go off line - marking the first time since 1970 Japan has been nuclear power-free.

Japan's $5 trillion economy has relied heavily on nuclear power for decades, with its reactors providing almost 30 percent of electricity needs, but last year's massive earthquake and subsequent nuclear crisis spurred a public backlash against atomic energy.

Cabinet ministers have largely failed to win over the public to allow the restart of the country's plants - shut one by one for scheduled maintenance and unable to resume operations because of concerns about safety.

Japan's Asahi newspaper said public sentiment was "wavering between two sources of anxiety" - fear over the safety of nuclear power and doubts on whether Japan can live without it.

"The public shouldn't just criticize (the government) but make its own decision on energy policy that involves burden and responsibility, such as through cooperating in power saving," the paper said in an editorial on Sunday.

The government hopes to come up with an estimate by mid-May of expected shortages this summer, and will then produce a plan to conserve energy that could include compulsory curbs on use of power, Japanese media say.

But setting a long-term energy policy or a clear timeframe for restarting the plants will take time given strong public opposition and a divided parliament that has paralyzed policy-making, analysts say.

WIDESPREAD pain

Policymakers are worried about the damage to the budding economic recovery as the power shortages are expected to be more severe and widespread than last summer, when many areas in Japan were still running nuclear reactors.

Some also warn of the long-term fallout as the rising cost of electricity, coupled with a strong yen, hits production and could prompt companies to shift operations overseas.

"Depending on the weather, power supply could constrain output during the summer," the Bank of Japan said.

"But we must be mindful not just of such short-term effects but the chance (the power shortages) could hurt Japan's medium- and long-term growth expectations," the central bank said in a twice-yearly report on the economy issued on April 27.

Japan managed to get through the summer last year without any blackouts by imposing voluntary curbs on the use of power in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that left thousands dead.

Factories operated at night and during weekends to avoid putting too much stress on the country's power grids. Many big firms are already preparing to take similar steps this summer, but some also plan to generate power themselves to cut costs.

The last time Japan went without nuclear power was in May 1970, when the country's only two reactors operating at that time were shut for maintenance, the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan said.

Microsoft Bets Big on B&N's Nook

Amazon and Apple dominate the e-reader market. But Microsoft and Barnes & Noble are teaming up to make a serious run at the leaders. Microsoft is investing more than $600 million in Barnes & Noble's efforts to launch a digital book and textbook subsidiary called Newco, and to help the bookseller to expand its online business globally.

In return, Barnes & Noble will create a NOOK e-reading app for the new Windows 8 tablet and PC operating system and for smart phones running Windows Phone 7. The deal also settles a patent dispute between the companies.

The arrangement helps fund Barnes & Noble's efforts to compete with Amazon's Kindle business, which accounts for 60 percent of the e-reader market. Meanwhile, Microsoft wants to give Windows a better chance of competing with Apple iOS and Google Android as an e-reader operating system.

Here's where it gets really interesting: Would Microsoft and Barnes & Noble come up with a Windows-based NOOK tablet to go head-to-head against the Kindle Fire, which runs on Android? Neither company has committed to it—but they haven’t ruled it out either.

The Tablet Really Is Killing The E-Reader

E Ink Holdings, the firm behind the allegedly easy-on-the-eye daylight readable electronic paper that once made your Kindle or Nook so great, has just reported its first loss in 10 successive quarters. 

The company made a net loss of NT$787 million (a little under $27 million) for the first three months of 2012, after it saw a 63% slump in revenues from the previous quarter to NT$3.84 billion. The company says it's due to "off-season effects and inventory adjustments at clients." Yes, we're inclined to believe that the shift from the always-lucrative holiday season quarter to the dim, wintery first three months of the year could quite definitely adjust how many e-reader devices the average consumer buys. But a 63% slump in revenues is pretty enormous.

Because what we think is happening is that the era of the e-reader as a must-have device is drawing to a close. Back in March some research suggested that expectations for e-reader sales for the quarter were way down on the previous year's, and those predictions now look to have been right on target.

In fact, we called this back in 2010, though we thought 2010 itself was going to be the "Only Year Of The E-Reader," and the phenomenon bathed a little longer in the limelight than we thought.

The reasons why that time is over are a perfect storm of innovative competitors. It starts with Amazon's own Kindle Fire, a full-featured tablet PC at a bargain-basement price, sporting a forked version of Android beneath Amazon's own content-centric UI and thus capable of playing nicely with apps. You know, those lovely toys we like to play with for gaming, social networking, emailing and whathaveyou...all making the most of the full-color LCD screen. Amazon's sold so many of these that they now make up over 50% of all Android-powered tablets. Which, since they only were launched at the latter half of 2011, is a storming success.

The thing is, say e-ink afficionados, those Fire screens don't really work in the daytime, nor are they as gentle on the eye as e-ink, which is supposedly closer to the look and feel of real ink on real paper partly because of its high contrast, and partly because of the smooth edges e-ink can give to digital fonts. 

And that's where the iPad 3 comes in, of course. Its high-resolution LCD screen is astonishing, and it packs more pixels than probably any computer display you've used--e-book text on its screen is so flawless it's like reading a slightly glowing magazine page. And Apple has sold a ton of them, alongside its already hugely successful iPad 2.

Then there's the rumors of a super-low-price Google-branded Android tablet coming sometime soon. Would you hand over cash for an e-ink e-reader, knowing that for only a few dollars more you'd soon be able to buy a tablet that not only can display e-books, but also play videos, let you browse Facebook, get your Angry Birds game on, do some Instagramming, even, crazily, actually generate some content for work? The e-reader isn't going away overnight, of course...and its sales trajectory will soar onward for a few years yet. It's just that rocketing above it, faster, higher and more powerfully, is the tablet PC. Innovation in action.