Japan needs more time to decide whether to restart two offline nuclear reactors, the trade minister said on Tuesday, as concerns about a summer power crunch vie with safety worries in the wake of last year's Fukushima crisis.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda will not make any immediate decision on a restart date, Trade Minister Yukio Edano, who holds the energy portfolio, told reporters.

Japan's emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fuel rose 4.4 percent in the year that ended in March from the previous year to 1.122 billion tonnes, the trade ministry said Friday, as a recovery in the economy and an unusually hot summer boosted the use of energy.

It was the first annual rise since 2007/08, when emissions climbed 2.8 percent to a record 1.218 billion tonnes. The environment ministry is expected to announce preliminary 2010/11 data for of total greenhouse gas emissions based on Friday's data in the coming weeks.

Japanese utilities will largely avoid power shortages this winter despite prolonged reactor shutdowns amid public concerns over nuclear safety, but hurdles remain for next summer, the government said on Tuesday.

It also unveiled ways to bridge the gap next summer, when peak-hour demand is expected to exceed supply by 16,560 megawatts, compared with the biggest gap this winter of 2,530 MW in one area, if no reactors restart by then.

A Japanese mayor has called on the government to decommission the nuclear reactor in his village, 110 km northeast of Tokyo, the first local leader to urge scrapping a reactor as Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda tries to rehabilitate the tarnished nuclear sector to help meet the nation's power needs.

The reactor at Tokaimura, where Japan's commercial nuclear power industry was born in the late 1950s, has been shut since a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan on March 11. It entered routine maintenance in May and is not due to restart until August 2012.

Japan's lower house of parliament passed a bill on Tuesday to promote investment in solar and other renewable energy sources as politicians took a step toward the prime minister's goal of reducing reliance on nuclear power.

Damage and the radiation leak at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has shattered the public's confidence in the safety of atomic power and plunged the country's energy policy into disarray. Ahead of the disaster, Japan had planned to build enough reactors to raise nuclear power supply to meet 50 percent of demand by 2030 from 30 percent.

Japan's lawmakers have the opportunity to show how strong their support is for boosting renewable power supply to replace nuclear reactors with the passage of a green energy subsidy scheme likely within days.

The country is struggling to overhaul its energy policies after the March quake and tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster that shattered the public's confidence in the safety of the atomic industry and delayed the restart of idled plants. Costly oil and gas imports have soared.

More than 500 beef cattle that ate feed contaminated by radioactive material from Fukushima have already shipped to other parts of Japan, an initial result of inspections on the area's farms showed Monday.

Separately, Yomiuri newspaper said Japan's central government is expected to announce restrictions on shipments of beef cattle that might have eaten contaminated feed Tuesday at the earliest.

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan is expected to announce a drive toward renewable energy, including slashing the cost of solar power, when he meets fellow leaders of the G8 rich nations group later this week, media reports say.

One target will be to increase the use of solar power 15-fold by 2030, according to the Asahi newspaper, while the Nikkei business daily said every new building, includi

A water leak from Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear power station earlier this month resulted in about 100 times the permitted level of radioactive material flowing into the sea, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said Saturday.

TEPCO said the leak discovered on May 11 at a storage pit outside the No.3 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi had started in the early hours of the previous day and lasted f

Japan has no objection to buying more carbon emissions rights from Ukraine as its checks have shown that money Tokyo previously paid for permits has been properly accounted for, a government official said Thursday.

Ukraine's current government has accused the former prime minister of misusing the funds.

"We sent people to Ukraine twice last year and in November confirmed the full amount of m