nuclear-news

What is not well known is that Japan has considerable wind power, and that its string of wind turbines continued to function throughout the 2011 tsunami disaster.

Work starts on Fukushima floating project  Wind Power Monthly 25 June 2013 by Martin Foster,  JAPAN: Installation of wind turbines in the testing phase of the biggest offshore floating project to date will finally get under way this week, 20 kilometres off the coast of Fukushima. Two 2MW downwind floating turbines are scheduled to be towed from shipyards belonging to Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding in Chiba prefecture to Onahama port on 28 June, according to a new schedule released by Takeshi Ishihara a civil engineering professor at the University of Tokyo and technical adviser to the project…….

The cable is scheduled to be loaded on ship, laid and sunk in the seabed from the end of July until the end of August. It is planned to connect the cable some time in the month of August, with the project due to start generating power in mid-September.

The massive floating wind farm project, which is being developed by an 11-entity consortium lead by Marubeni Corporation, may eventually see 132 floating turbines come on line. It has been named Fukushima Mirai, literally the future of Fukushima, and has been planned as part of post-nuclear disaster recovery efforts in the area.

The project fulfils a ten-year dream for Ishihara.

“I feel that we have taken the first real step towards finally realising the dream I have embraced for the past ten years. I am really pleased,” he told Windpower Monthly. http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1187536/work-starts-fukushima-floating-project