A year later, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown in Japan continues to depress the global nuclear power industry, while pushing up Asian natural gas prices by more than 40 percent. But many analysts say a surprising outside force could intrude and overshadow Japan's shakeup of Asian energy -- the U.S. shale gas boom.

One potential impact of the export of U.S. shale gas to Asia is a moderation of China's surging consumption of coal, and of its projected long-term emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Last March 11, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake triggered a tsunami and overwhelmed Fukushima, a 1960s-era nuclear reactor in northern Japan. The outcome was the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986 -- three reactors melted down, and nuclear material was released into the atmosphere. Only in December -- nine months later -- were Japanese workers able to stabilize the Fukushima plant.

In Japan, which until the disaster relied on nuclear reactors for 30 percent of its electricity, Fukushima has wholly undermined public support for nuclear power. The government has shelved plans for a new rollout of plants, and the final two of the country's 54 already-running nuclear reactors are to be shut down by May for maintenance. None of the plants may be open for the country's typically blistering summer, with its high demand for energy-sucking air conditioning, Japan's trade minister said last week.

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An occasional series looking at the political and policy -- and literal -- fallout from the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan.

The trouble has been that, to fill in the gap, Japan has turned massively to liquefied natural gas, increasing imports by 28 percent, according to January Trade Ministry figures. So have many of the world's other big economies -- where piped-in gas is short or unavailable, there has been a Fukushima-led global boom in LNG demand. China, which froze the approval of new nuclear reactors, has sharply increased LNG purchases to make up the difference. India's LNG purchases have ballooned as well.

As a result, almost all of Asia's spare production capacity has been erased. Japan has been paying LNG prices averaging $16.63 per 1,000 cubic feet, compared with about $11.50 before Fukushima, a 44 percent increase, the country's Trade Ministry reports in the most recently available numbers. Spot LNG prices have touched $18 per 1,000 cubic feet.

One beneficiary of the tight market has been Australia, which is on track to surpass Qatar as the world's largest LNG exporter in a decade. Australia will quadruple its current production of 20 million tons of LNG to 80 million tons, said Kim Beazley, Australian ambassador to the United States, speaking at a recent Washington, D.C., conference sponsored by General Electric Co. The volumes have already been contracted by eight Asian nations, including China and Japan, he said.

No local answer to this tightness seems immediately visible. Japan's thirst for LNG appears likely to go on unabated, and the fast-growing Chinese and Indian economies will require more and more imported gas.

But the three countries are seeking pricing relief from a heretofore nonplayer in Asian gas: the United States. They see salvation in the glut of U.S. shale gas, whose price -- below $2.50 per 1,000 cubic feet on Monday -- is close to a 10-year low. The hope is that such fire-sale U.S. gas, to the degree it can be imported across the Pacific, will puncture Asia's LNG prices.

The Obama administration has received permit applications to build eight LNG export terminals. It has approved one so far -- for Houston-based Cheniere Energy Partners -- but there is political uncertainty as to how many, if any, of the others will be OK'd.

Cheniere has already signed deals to deliver the annual LNG equivalent of about 20 billion cubic meters of natural gas for 20 years. In December, Cheniere signed a deal with India's GAIL for 4.8 billion cubic meters of natural gas for a reported $10 to $11 per 1,000 cubic feet. In January, the company signed an agreement with Korea Gas for the same volume. Last week, Japan said it is talking with Cheniere about buying a large volume of LNG as well; last fall, Japanese officials directly asked U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu to help expedite an LNG export permit.

These deals are on top of an agreement by Cheniere in November to provide 5 billion cubic meters a year of gas for 20 years to Spain's Gas Natural Fenosa, and the same volume to BG Group.

It is China that is watching such contracts with the greatest attention, said Trevor Houser, head of the energy practice at Rhodium Group in New York, who visited China for two weeks in November. "The one question every government official I met with asked me was, 'Is the U.S. government going to export LNG?'" Houser recalled.

The reason, Houser said, is that China is at a political inflection point: It is confronting rising public complaints about choking pollution caused by coal-fired electric turbines. But China's rulers also are worried about inflation, about which the public perhaps has even less tolerance. So if the arrival of relatively cheaper U.S. LNG can prick a hole in Asian LNG prices, that could be sufficient for Communist Party officials to make big new decisions on China's energy diet without risking public ire from price inflation.

If that takes place, one possibility is to retrofit coal-fired power plants ringing the country's biggest cities with natural gas-fired plants. "In Beijing, you've got an air pollution problem that is causing the government pretty significant embarrassment," Houser said, "and the only way to make a significant near-term dent in that is to replace coal-fired power plants around like a 200-kilometer ray around the city with natural gas."

On nuclear power itself, it is not clear how Japan ultimately will turn -- will its politics permit the reopening of the 54 effectively mothballed plants, or will they be decommissioned? Certainly, a previously planned nuclear expansion seems out of the question for the time being.

But the rest of Asia is different. Analysts say China and India will move more slowly in nuclear plant development but are still likely to proceed with a large scale-up of reactors for base-load power. In China's case, nuclear power is a way to supply base-load industrial and residential power without pollution.

What China does will be paramount. Over the next decade, Beijing plans to build between 320 and 480 gigawatts of new nonfossil power-generating capacity, according to Rhodium figures. As context, plans in the United States call for about 80 gigawatts of electric-generating construction in the same time frame. China's buildup constitutes more than half the planned increased energy-production capacity for the entire world.

To the degree that China builds nuclear- and fewer coal-fired plants, and makes a bigger shift to natural gas, its emissions of CO2 will be lower than an intense projected rise. That would reverse China's current status as one of the world's worst industrial polluters.

"China, the world's biggest consumer of energy, has made a lot of improvement but is still one of the least efficient energy users in the world, with big consequences for environmental concerns as well as economic issues," Fred Bergsten, chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said at the GE conference.