The News Journal

Japan should consider building new nuclear power plants, prime minister Fumio Kushida said on Wednesday. This could be a controversial policy shift after the nation suspended many of its nuclear plants in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. But Mr Kishida said the Ukraine war and soaring energy costs highlighted the need for diversifying energy sources. He added that nuclear power may be needed to meet Japan's target of going carbon neutral by 2050. Aside from considering building next-generation nuclear reactors, the government will also look to restart existing plants that are currently offline and extend their lifespans, Mr Kishida said at an energy policy meeting. Japan had a nuclear emergency in 2011 when a powerful earthquake triggered a tsunami, flooding the reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on the country's east coast. Read More : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62659007

 For close to four decades, one Japanese company has been trusted to move silicon wafers around the factories of the world’s biggest chip manufacturers. Now it is going back to the drawing board and redesigning its ubiquitous overhead conveyors to handle an exponential surge in data use and global chip demand. Daifuku has, over its 85 years in business, gone from ferrying documents between offices and hospital wards to handling the world’s most delicate microelectronics, making the conveyor belts and boxes that zip across the ceilings of modern semiconductor plants. Those containers and rails, which shuttle chips to different parts of the fabrication process at speeds of more than five 5 metres per second, will within years need to bear 100 kilograms — or five times their current load — chief executive Hiroshi Geshiro said. “Many in the industry are optimistic that growth is here to stay, as the amount of data that society must deal with has increased exponentially,” he told Bloomb...