nuclear-news

In the nearly nine years following the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the country’s reliance on atomic power for electricity generation has plummeted to between 3 and 5 percent from about 30 percent before the disaster, according to the Tokyo-based Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center.

And despite a period of uncertainty in the immediate aftermath of the meltdowns triggered when Fukushima’s cooling systems were overwhelmed by the tsunami created by the magnitude 9.0 undersea earthquake, the world’s third-largest economy has shown it can function with radically less nuclear power. 

The public mood turned dramatically after Fukushima and the national trauma that ensued and combined with the increasing costs from aligning ageing plants with stringent post-disaster safety requirements, it is unlikely the nuclear industry will return to previous levels, according to experts, even as the government envisions nuclear power accounting for about 20-22 percent of electricity generation in 2030.

“It is obvious that it is very difficult to meet this target,” said Hajime Matsukubo, secretary-general of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center.

And while experts say while the anti-nuclear movement may seem to have quietened down, anti-nuclear feeling is firmly entrenched.

‘They say no’

“Japanese people’s sentiment (has) changed after Fukushima Daiichi and it is continuing until now,” said Matsukubo, whose non-profit organisation was established in 1975 by concerned atomic scientists to gather and publicise nuclear information and raise public awareness on the industry.

He said that even if people appear not as focused, if they are asked pointedly if they agree with nuclear power: “They say no.”

Before Fukushima, Japan had 54 operational reactors and for a brief time in the accident’s aftermath, not a single one was in operation. So far, nine have been restarted and authorities are considering the cases of a dozen more, according to Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry figures. A further 24 are either under decommissioning or lined up for it…..

Safety costs

Japan’s mass-circulation newspaper Mainichi Shimbun in an editorial after the Onagawa decision cited the newspaper’s own research that found 11 top power suppliers had spent in excess of 5 trillion yen ($45.7bn) on nuclear safety since Fukushima.

“As costs balloon, it is becoming increasingly difficult, even absurd, for the government and power companies to maintain the argument that nuclear power is ‘cheap’,” the editorial said……..

“There’s a sort of built-in time limit to how long the industry as a whole can continue,” said Alexander  Brown, currently a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science international research fellow at Japan Women’s University.

He also emphasised, however, that Japan’s turn against nuclear energy had also coincided with a key change in its domestic economy; less industrially robust and therefore not as hungry for energy as before.

“Why have the lights stayed on,” Brown asked rhetorically. “One is, yes, increased fossil fuel use, but another is there’s just less demand than there was in the peak time of manufacturing onshore in Japan.”

Brown calls that an “uncomfortable truth” for much of Japan’s ruling establishment – including the prime minister and his eponymous “Abenomics” economic revitalisation programme – which clings to a belief in a model of vigorous growth.

“And I think one of the amazing things when I look at the anti-nuclear movement, to me, was it was full of people looking at what are other ways that we can live,” he said.

“How can we embrace other values other than high consumption, high pollution, extreme overwork and look at things like de-growth economics.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/japanese-turn-nuclear-decade-wrought-fukushima-191220000003532.html