Cabinet Office Releases Results of Study on Economic Scale of Radiation Applications in Fiscal 2015

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On August 29, the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC), under the Cabinet Office, released the results of a study conducted in fiscal year 2015 (April 2015 to March 2016) on the economic scale of radiation applications in Japan.

Calculating the market prices of products and services using radiation in such areas as industry, medicine, and agriculture, the study put the total at JPY4,369.8 billion (USD39.7 billion at USD1 = JPY110), about six percent higher than the JPY4,111.7 billion (USD37.4 billion) found in the previous study, which was conducted one decade earlier.

A breakdown of the results in FY15 showed that industrial applications accounted for JPY2,221 billion (USD20.2 billion), or fifty-one percent of the total, while applications in medicine and medical sciences stood at JPY1,909.4 billion (USD17.4 billion), or forty-four percent, and agricultural applications at JPY239.3 billion (USD2.2 billion), or five percent.

Meanwhile, a comparison with the FY05 survey reveals that semiconductors and ICs—accounting for the largest share of industrial applications—had declined about JPY100 billion (USD0.9 billion) to JPY970 billion (USD8.8 billion). That stemmed from a decline in domestic semiconductor manufacturing, though the Asian market for the same product grew.

At the same time, radiation applications in medicine and medical fields increased substantially, up twenty-four percent from a decade before. On the other hand, agricultural use of radiation was almost unchanged over the same period.

The study also looked at the economic scale of energy applications, including nuclear power and the export of nuclear plant components. Compared with a total of JPY4,741 billion (USD43.1 billion) in the FY05 study, the latest total of JPY84.2 billion (USD770 million) was just two percent of that, because so many domestic nuclear power plants (NPPs) remain out of service.

In FY15, operations were resumed at the Takahama-3 NPP, owned and operated by the Kansai Electric Power Co. (Kansai EP), and the Sendai-1 and -2 NPPs, owned and operated by the Kyushu Electric Power Co. In contrast, the capacity factor for all domestic NPPs had been 71.9 percent in FY05.

In calculating the export value of nuclear plant components, data were used from the fact-finding survey of the Japanese nuclear industry conducted by the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF).