Two goals - mutually exclusive

Due to the ongoing fears of the Japanese people due to the Fukushima reactor catastrophe, the government is now promising the people that they will work to phase out nuclear power generation in the country by 2039.   Unfortunately, Japan has a technologically sophisticated populace that likes its electronics, and even though they have a low population growth, they still have  a big population.  And the populace has evinced concern over climate change.   As I have opined many times before, phasing out nuclear doesn't work with the goal of realistic making a dent in the climate change trajectory.

New York Times:  Japan sets policy to phase out nuclear power plants by the 2040

And Mark Lynas, a better and far more well-known writer than I'll ever be, makes this same point.

The Guardian UK: Without nuclear, the battle against global warming is as good as lost

 An excerpted section:

"Japan is already backing away from its own climate change targets. As a participant in the UN climate negotiations last year, I watched this happen. Under the 2009 Copenhagen accord, Japan pledged to reduce CO₂ emissions by 25% by 2020. The plan was to increase nuclear to half of national electricity in order to facilitate the carbon cuts, supported by an increase in renewables to 20% by 2030. To reach the same targets without nuclear is impossible:  wind and solar combined meet barely 1% of electricity production today in Japan, and there is no way they can be deployed at sufficient scale to meet the gap. So the climate targets will be dropped, as Japan re-carbonises its economy.

It is nothing short of insane that politicians around the world, under pressure from populations subjected to decades of anti-nuclear fearmongering by people who call themselves greens, are raising our collective risk of catastrophic climate change in order to eliminate the safest power source ever invented."

As a nuclear power advocate and employee of the industry, and someone who is rightly concerned about climate change, his statements are logical and hard to argue against.  With nuclear in the mix, until there is a fantastical breakthrough like controlled fusion, we still have a chance to slow down the global warming train. Without nuclear -- we do not have a chance.  At all.