1. Ishiba As New PM Made It Clear To Dissolve The House Of Representatives
Ruling LDP’s presidential election was held on September 27 and no candidate was able to secure a majority share of the effective votes in the first round.
In its succeeding runoff, Mr. Shigeru Ishiba, who received the second largest ballots in the first voting was able to come from behind Ms. Sanae Takaichi to win the party presidency.
Although Ishiba had been against LDP’s mainstream groups like the Aso faction and the former Abe faction, who rather seemed to cast their votes for Takaichi in the runoff, most of the other groups including PM Kishida’s that supported their own individual candidates in the first voting decided to vote for Ishiba in the runoff.
Ishiba as new President of LDP was elected as the 102nd PM in the extraordinary Diet session on October 1 and formed his first cabinet on the same day.
He has already announced his political schedule that he would dissolve the House of Representatives on October 9, followed by a general election on October 27.
Ishiba explained that he would dissolve the Lower House to make an appeal to the confidence of his cabinet.
Yomiuri reported the result of the public survey yesterday that the first Ishiba Cabinet’s approval rating was 51%, which is one of the lowest ever for a newly elected PM.
This might represent that the public is still dissatisfied with LDP’s way of concluding the political fund scandal issue.
How Ishiba as party leader would approve or not approve the party members of the House of Representatives who were involved in the scandal as official candidates of the general election is yet to be seen.
2. Japanese Destroyer Sailed Through Taiwan Strait For The First Time
As reported last time, China recently repeated military provocations against Japan such as its military plane’s violation of Japan’s airspace, Chinese Navy vessel’s intrusion of Japan’s territorial waters and its aircraft carrier’s passage of Japan’s contiguous zone.
On September 25, Japan Maritime Self Defense Force’s Destroyer “Sazanami” sailed through the Taiwan Strait for the first time since the end of the WWII.
The narrowest portion of the strait has a width of around 130 km, which is much wider than the 22 km territorial water line from the coast, thus the Japanese government recognizes anybody has freedom of sailing there without causing any international issues.
Later, the media reported that according to a Japanese government source, Chinese military vessels chased “Sazanami” throughout its passage of the Taiwan Strait.
After the passage of the strait, Sazanami participated in a joint exercise on September 28 together with the fleets of the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Philippine in the South China Sea.
On the same day, China immediately conducted its own exercise in the region by the navy and air force for scouting and patrolling operations.
3. Spent Nuclear Fuel Moved To Interim Storage Facility For The First Time
Yomiuri reported on September 27 that 69 units (12 ton) of nuclear spent fuel were transported on September 26 from the Kashiwazaki Kariha Nuclear Power Plants of Tokyo Electric Power Company to an interim storage facility in Mutsu City of Aomori Prefecture.
It was the very first transportation and storage of nuclear spent at the interim storage facility.
According to Recycle Fuel Storage, who takes care of the interim storage facility, the spent fuel that was transported had been placed in a storage pool of No. 4 Power Plant of the Kashiwazaki NPP.
The nuclear spent fuel was contained in a metal cask and transported by a special vessel.
The interim storage facility plans to receive 96 ton of nuclear spent fuel in total by 2026, while eventually, it would store as much as 5,000 ton of spent fuel.
The interim storage facility’s buildings’ useful life is set as 50 years as maximum.
Although TEPCO intends to resume No.6 and No.7 power plants of the Kashiwazaki Kariha NPP, the storage ratio of the pool of the two power plants exceed 90% respectively.
So, even if the operation of the two plants is resumed, they have to stop it again in around four years unless their individual spent fuel is not moved out of the pools.
Mr. Masahiro Sakurai, Mayor of Kashiwazaki City has set declining the storage ratio of the pool of No.6 and No.7 power plants to 80% or below as a condition to allow the operation to resume.
4. Softbank To Invest In OpenAI
The media reported on September 30 that Softbank Vision Fund (SVF), an investment fund run by Softbank Group would invest US$500 million to OpenAI.
SVF was founded in 2017 by Mr. Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank as a venture capital.
The fund’s outstanding investment amount exceeded US$150 billion in 2021.
Its investment portfolio includes ICT and life science related ventures like Uber, NVIDIA, WeWork, Grab, Arm Holdings, Xiaoju Kuaizhi of China and so forth.
It is now shifting its investment toward AI.