Tokyo Hopes To Lift No Go Zone Order In Fukushima In Next Five Years

By the end of the 2021 fiscal year, the Japanese government intends to repeal an evacuation order on the remaining “no go zone” around the Fukushima no.1 nuclear plant, the site of one of the worst nuclear accidents in history.

Tokyo announced Wednesday that it aims to conduct infrastructure restoration and radiation clean ups in reconstruction bases built within the zone, which was highly contaminated when the plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. (TEPCO), was shut down during a March 2011 tsunami and earthquake.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at a joint meeting of the Reconstruction Promotion Council and Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters, where the proposal was adopted, said, “Based on the basic policy, we will embark on reconstruction work in the zone as soon as possible.” In June 2015 the government decided it would lift the ban on areas of Fukushima with lower contamination levels by March of 2017.

Headquarters also announced that the decontamination of Fukushima would be paid for with state funds. It was estimated in 2013 that cleanup would cost upwards of 2.5 trillion yen (about $24 billion), and the decontamination efforts would be financed with funds collected from selling state-owned shares of TEPCO.

Tokyo hopes to profit 2.5 trillion yen from selling the shares, but TEPCO stock would have to trade at about 1,050 yen for that to happen, and shares are currently valued at around 360 yen. After evacuation and some rearranging, Tokyo has been gradually lifting no-go zones restrictions in Fukushima since 2013.

53-year-old Toshiko Yokota, who was able to return to clean up her home in Naraha in 2015 said, “My friends are all in different places because of the nuclear accident, and the town doesn’t even look the same, but this is still my hometown and it really feels good to be back. I still feel uneasy about some things, like radiation levels and the lack of a medical facility,” she said. “In order to come back, I have to keep up my hope and stay healthy.”

According to Jiji Press, the public cost of decontamination and cleanup of the nuclear accident exceeded 4.2 trillion yen by the end of the 2015 fiscal year. Factoring in costs for reactor decommissioning, compensation payments to people and organizations affected by the accident and radioactive decontamination, the government spent about 33,000 yen per capita.
http://sputniknews.com/asia/20160902/1044873179/tokyo-lift-no-go-zone.html

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Energy efficiency – theme for July 2019

Energy efficiency represents the single largest potential contributor to global emissions reduction, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2017). It should be a key part of the global energy strategy, for several reasons:

It could reduce global electric demand by more than 20 per cent, based on current rates in the U.S. power sector, while maintaining high levels of services such as heating and lighting.
It avoids the need for increased energy, capacity and grid services, making it the least expensive way to decarbonise at scale.
It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes.

A dramatic example of the power of energy efficiency is lighting. In 2017 the United States passed the milestone of 1 billion LED and CFL lights installed, avoiding 142 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions, at a cost of about $7 per ton of avoided carbon dioxide. In contrast, the cumulative installed capacity of rooftop solar reached 8,000 MW in 2017, saving 8 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, at a cost of $360 per ton. Lighting efficiency thus yielded almost 18 times the avoided carbon dioxide, at about 2 per cent the cost per ton of rooftop solar.

Google provides another example of the power of energy efficiency. Its data centers now use 50 per cent less energy than the average data center, according to the company. Google also developed an improved chip, the TPU, which performs 83 times better than standard CPUs. The new chip allowed Google to reduce power consumption at its data centers by a factor of 30—far exceeding the effect on Google’s carbon footprint of all of the company’s renewable energy purchases. ” – John Woolard, Eco Business, 10 June 2019

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