nuclear-news

Nuclear free Japan – the end of an industry

 The end of nuclear, CLIMATE SPECTATOR, Matthew Wright, 8 May 2012 It happened at 5pm on Saturday the 5th of May: Tomari Reactor number 3, operated by Hokkaido electric, ceased production. This means that Japan is now nuclear free for the first time since 1966.

But life is going on. Japan now has 54 mothballed or destroyed nuclear reactors. Prior to the Fukushima disaster there were 47.5GWe of nuclear generation capacity, the equivalent of twice Australia’s entire baseload capacity.

….. Pro nuclear evangelists…. claim that countries like Japan have no option available besides nuclear. But Japan is now operating completely nuclear free. We heard claims that Japan would have widespread blackouts through last summer (they didn’t) and that this will occur this summer (they will not).

Japan still continues to electrically heat its toilet seats, light the
highest number of neon signs per capita in the world, and run their
ubiquitous vending machines – despite repeated warnings of a possible
power crunch by vested interests and government.

In fact we’ve heard these kind of nuclear dependency claims before and
they’ve been wrong time and time again. The pro-nuclear evangelists
claimed that Germany would be importing electricity from its
neighbours last year, after switching off half of its nuclear reactor
fleet.

Instead of importing electricity, Germany exported 6TWh of electricity
and what’s more, it reduced its carbon emissions by two per cent.

It is possible now that Japanese nuclear plants may never be
restarted, or if some do, the many remaining will be mothballed. But
unfortunately it’s not so easy to completely mothball a nuclear plant…..
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/nuclear-power-and-Japan-end-of-nuclear-Fukushima-d-pd20120508-U3UUW?opendocument&src=rss

May 10, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general