Exclusive economic zone of Japan
Japan has the eighth largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the world. The total area of Japan is about 377,973.89 km². Japan's EEZ area is vast and the territorial waters (including: the Seto Inland Sea) and EEZ together is about 4.48 million km².
Geography of Japan
, 46.1% of energy in Japan was produced from petroleum, 21.3% from coal, 21.4% from natural gas, 4.0% from nuclear power and 3.3% from hydropower. Nuclear power is a major domestic source of energy and produced 9.2 percent of Japan's electricity, , down from 24.9 percent the previous year. Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami disaster in 2011, the nuclear reactors were shut down. Thus Japan's industrial sector became even more dependent than before on imported fossil fuels. By May 2012 all of the country's nuclear power plants were taken offline because of ongoing public opposition following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, though government officials continued to try to sway public opinion in favor of returning at least some of Japan's 50 nuclear reactors to service. Shinzo Abe’s government seeks to restart the nuclear power plants that meet strict new safety standards and is emphasizing nuclear energy’s importance as a base-load electricity source. , two reactors at Sendai are likely to restart in early 2015. In August 2015, Japan successfully restarted one nuclear reactor at the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in Kagoshima prefecture, and several other reactors around the country have since resumed operations. Opposition from local governments has delayed several restarts that remain pending.