Keidanren, also known as the Japan Business Federation, will also request that periods in which nuclear plant operations are halted be excluded from their operating life spans, the sources said Friday.
The requests will be announced by Chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi, also chairman of Hitachi Ltd., at a news conference Monday.
Keidanren, the country’s biggest business lobby, regards nuclear power as an energy source essential for the country to move toward the decarbonization of the power sector.
In the requests, Keidanren will stress that the use of existing nuclear power facilities that have been confirmed safe is important, according to the sources.
Japan effectively limits the service life of nuclear plants to 40 years. Under the current rule, the period may be extended by up to 20 years if state approval is given.
How global climate change is already devastating Banglades
Climate change threatens millions of Bangladeshi children, warns UNICEFSBS News A new report shows environmental disasters linked to climate change are threatening the lives and futures of more than 19 million children in Bangladesh, including prompting many families to push their daughters into child marriages., BY CHARLOTTE LAM, 5 Apr 19,
Climate change in Bangladesh could impact the lives of more than 19 million children, according to a new UNICEF report.
The humanitarian agency said on Friday that the country’s flat topography, dense population and weak infrastructure makes it “uniquely vulnerable to the powerful and unpredictable forces that climate change is compounding”.
The report author, Simon Ingram, said the danger was “flooding is extreme and it is almost on an annual basis”.
The report, titled “Gathering Storm: Climate change clouds the future of children in Bangladesh”, showed about 12 million children currently live in and around powerful river systems, which flow through Bangladesh and regularly burst their banks.
A further 3 million Bangladeshi children live in farming communities, which are facing increasing periods of drought.
The report also found a link between climate change and child marriage, child labour and access to education is evident in various parts of Bangladesh.
“Climate change is undoubtedly increasing the number of children who are pushed into the workplace, where they miss out on an education and are terribly exposed to violence and abuse,” UNICEF Bangladesh Child Protection specialist Kristina Wesslund said……….
Mr Ingram said there were already six million climate refugees in Bangladeshi cities, a number that could double by 2050.
South Asia’s Overlooked Nuclear Crisis, While few were watching, India and Pakistan may have just narrowly avoided a nuclear confrontation. The Nation, By Dilip Hiro 5 Apr 19,It’s still the most dangerous border on Earth. Yet compared to the recent tweets of President Donald Trump, it remains a marginal news story. That doesn’t for a moment diminish the chance that the globe’s first (and possibly ultimate) nuclear conflagration could break out along that 480-mile border known as the Line of Control (and, given the history that surrounds it, that phrase should indeed be capitalized). The casus belli would undoubtedly be the more than seven-decades-old clash between India and Pakistan over the contested territory of Kashmir. Like a volcano, this unresolved dispute rumbles periodically—as it did only weeks ago—threatening to spew its white-hot lava to devastating effect not just in the region but potentially globally as well.
The trigger for renewed rumbling is always a sensational terrorist attack by a Pakistani militant group on an Indian target. That propels India’s leadership to a moral high ground. From there, bitter condemnations of Pakistan are coupled with the promise of airstrikes on the training camps of the culprit terrorist organizations operating from the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir. As a result, the already simmering relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors are quickly raised to a boiling point. This, in turn, prompts the United States to intervene and pressure Pakistan to shut down those violent jihadist groups. To placate Washington, the Pakistani government goes through the ritual of issuing banning orders on those groups, but in practice, any change is minimal.
And in the background always lurks the possibility that a war between the two neighbors could lead to a devastating nuclear exchange. Which means that it’s time to examine how and why, by arraying hundreds of thousands of troops along that Line of Control, India and Pakistan have created the most perilous place on Earth.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
The Kashmir dispute began with the birth of the kicking twins—Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan—as independent countries. They emerged from the belly of the dying British Raj in August 1947. The princely states in British India were given the option of joining either of the new nations. The dithering Hindu ruler of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir (its full title) finally signed a legally binding instrument of accession with New Delhi after his realm was invaded by armed tribal raiders from Pakistan. This document offered that state’s citizens the chance to choose between the two countries once peace had been restored. This has not happened so far and there is no credible prospect that it will………..
while India has long been in a nuclear arms race with Pakistan, it is no longer sticking to the same race course. In late March, Modi announced that India recently launched a rocket successfully shooting down one of its satellites. This creates the possibility that, in a future nuclear war with Pakistan, it could preemptively “blind” the Pakistanis by destroying their space-based communication and surveillance satellites. A race of another kind could be in the offing.
The central motive that drove Pakistan to develop its nuclear arsenal, however, remains unchanged. It was the only way Islamabad could deter New Delhi from defeating it in a war waged with conventional weapons……….
Pompeo hopes North Korea’s Kim does ‘right thing’ on nuclear weapons in parliament speech, David Brunnstrom, WASHINGTON (Reuters) 5 Apr 19, – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday he hoped North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would use a meeting of the country’s parliament next week to state publicly “it would be the right thing” for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly is due to hold its first meeting this year on Thursday and could feature the first public comments from Kim about a second summit between him and U.S. President Donald Trump Hanoi in February that collapsed………..
Pompeo said he was “confident” there would be a third summit between Trump and Kim but did not have a timetable although he hoped it would be soon.
Pompeo stressed though that economic sanctions would not be lifted until North Korea gave up its nuclear weapons.
……..North Korea has warned that it is considering suspending talks and may rethink a freeze on missile and nuclear tests, in place since 2017, unless Washington makes concessions.
Evacuees can return next week to parts of Okuma, host of Fukushima nuclear plant, but few likely to. Japan Times, 5 Apr 19, KYODO The government formalized on Friday its decision to partially lift from next Wednesday a mandatory evacuation order for residents of a town that jointly hosts the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The town of Okuma — which saw all of its roughly 10,000 residents evacuate after one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters, triggered by a deadly earthquake and tsunami — will allow former residents to return for the first time in eight years, the government decided. The decision was said to be based on the lower radiation levels achieved through decontamination work.
Futaba, the other town that hosts the plant, remains a no-go zone.
Despite the decision, a very small number of residents are expected to return to Okuma. As of late March, only 367 people from 138 households, or around 3.5 percent of the original population of 10,341, were registered as residents of areas where the order will be lifted. …..
Reuters 2nd April 2019 China will fall short of its nuclear power generation capacity target for
2020, according to a forecast from the China Electricity Council on
Tuesday. Total nuclear capacity is expected to reach 53 gigawatts (GW) next
year, below a target of 58 GW, council vice chairman Wei Shaofeng told the
China Nuclear Energy Sustainable Development Forum in Beijing.
China is the world’s third-biggest nuclear power producer by capacity, with 45.9 GW
installed by end-2018 and 11 units still under construction, but its
reactor building program has stalled since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear
disaster in Japan.
No new approvals have been granted for the past three
years, amid spiraling costs, delays for key projects and safety concerns
about new technologies. Environmental impact assessments for two new
projects in southeast China were submitted to regulators last month,
however, paving the way for a resumption of its atomic energy program.
SIXTH TONE, Li YouApr 02, 2019 Energy official’s announcement comes after the Fukushima disaster in Japan led to new nuclear power projects in China being halted.
China will begin construction on several new nuclear power projects this year, according to Liu Hua, deputy minister of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and head of the National Nuclear Safety Administration.
Liu’s announcement — made Monday during the China Nuclear Energy Sustainable Development Forum in Beijing and later reported by Economic Information Daily — marks an end to the country’s three-year halt to approving new nuclear projects. Since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, China has been circumspect in approving new projects. From 2016 to 2018, the country did not greenlight a single one…….
ACROnique of Fukushima 26th March 2019 25 people from Fukushima, who resettled in Ehime Province on Shikoku
Island, took legal action for better compensation. They claimed a total of
137.5 million yen (1.1 million euros) with the main argument that this
disaster could have been avoided if preventive measures had been taken to
protect the plant following the re-assessment of the earthquake risks. and
tsunami in 2006.
They believe that the compensation received is
insufficient in view of the harm suffered which has separated families and
cut ties with the community. They claimed 5.5 million yen (€ 44,000) per
person to cover stress, loss of property and relocation.
ACROnique of Fukushima 31st March 2019 According to the Asahi , Orano is preparing to send MOx fuel to Japan from
2020. It is intended for the Takahama power plant , operated by Kansai Electric in Fukui province. The previous shipment dates from 2017. There are 32 nuclear assemblies that should sail to Japan. The amount of plutonium contained in these fuels is one tonne.
KEPCo will have yet to repatriate 10 tons of plutonium in the form of MOx fuel to clear its stock.
And Japan must also drastically reduce its stock in order to hope to start its reprocessing plant in Rokkashô mura, which is already 24 years behind schedule . However, only four reactors currently operate with MOx in Japan: Takahama 3 and 4, Genkai-3 and Ikata-3 ( see the state of the Japanese nuclear fleet ).
A panel of doctors in Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority says iodine tablets should be distributed in advance to residents under 40 to mitigate the effects of radiation exposure due to a nuclear accident.
The panel compiled the proposal on Friday.
Iodine tablets are used to prevent the thyroid gland storing radiation.
World Health Organization guidelines say iodine tablets should be distributed to children and pregnant women first because they may face high risks of thyroid cancer after radiation exposure in a nuclear accident.
Iodine tablets are distributed mainly to residents within five kilometers of nuclear plants. But actual distribution is very slow, making it urgent to put children first.
The panel proposes that in principle iodine tablets should be distributed in advance to people under 40 as well as pregnant women and lactating mothers.
It also says people aged 40 or over can ask for the tablets if there are sufficient supplies, even though it has not been proved that cases of thyroid cancer due to radiation exposure will increase among this age group.
Around the world, nuclear energy has taken a back seat because of the risks that reactors bring with them. The report that the US will help build six nuclear power plants in India should be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. When it comes to the US, inter-governmental declarations are not how business gets done. It requires working through a labyrinth of terms and conditions with companies and financial institutions. And, the nuclear-reactor business is not too healthy in the US.The six reactors to be set up in Kovvada, Andhra Pradesh are Westinghouse-designed AP1000 Pressurised Water Reactors (PWR). Westinghouse has just emerged from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy settlement on account of the construction of four AP1000 reactors in Georgia and South Carolina.
The announcement, which came during foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale’s visit to the US, seems aimed at pleasing Washington at a time when bilateral trade ties appear to have hit turbulence. It is also a token genuflection towards the Indo-US nuclear deal of 2008 that was justified by the US desire to promote civil nuclear cooperation. This deal, with its commitment to promote US nuclear reactor sales to India, came unstuck after India passed a stringent liability law that made the manufacturers, rather than the operator, primarily liable for damage in the event of an accident.
India has 22 functioning reactors, most of them pressurised heavy water reactors (PWHRs), which provide three per cent of the country’s electricity. Seven units, one of them a prototype fast breeder reactor, are under construction.
India’s nuclear power sector was coddled by the government because it served the dual purpose of providing the capacity to produce nuclear weapons and also the promise of limitless sources of energy. This was premised on Homi Bhabha’s three-stage plan that involves making fast breeder reactors (FBR) to use plutonium reprocessed from the spent fuel from the first stage PWHR plants.
Stage 2 FBRs will use a mixed oxide fuel to produce more plutonium than they consume.
In Stage 3, thorium would be used to blanket the reactor to yield Uranium 233 for the third-stage reactor, which can be refuelled by abundant natural thorium after its initial fuel charge.
Nuclear energy received the bulk of the government’s research and development (R&D) funding during the 1950-1970 period. It got some 15 per cent in the 1990s, at a time when Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) got 20 per cent and renewables got less than one per cent. While ISRO achieved world-class launch and satellite capability, despite embargoes, the department of atomic energy found it hard to even scale up the 220 MWe Canadian reactor it had got in the 1960s to 700 MWe. We have just about managed to get one going in Andhra Pradesh’s Kakrapar in 2018. The world norm for power reactors is 1,000-1,500 MWe.
The country was promised a 10,000 MWe capacity by the year 2000, but even now it has only touched 7,000 MWe. After the nuclear deal there was talk of boosting nuclear energy to 63,000 MWe by 2032. But in 2011, following the blow-back from the nuclear liability legislation, this was scaled down to 14,600 MWe by 2020 and 27,500 by 2032. We will be lucky if we meet the 2000 target in 2020.
In contrast to nuclear power, India has usually exceeded its targets, at far lesser investment, in the area of renewable energy. The country’s installed wind-power capacity is 34,000 MW, hydropower 44,000 MW and solar power 25,000 MW, with a target of 100,000 MW by 2022. Wind and solar power have not been provided the kind of investment that has been made in nuclear energy.
Around the world, nuclear energy has taken a back seat because of the risks that reactors bring with them. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima have dampened the ardour of the developed world. The US, which has over 100,000 MWe capacity, stopped issuing licences for nuclear plants between 1979 and 2012. Even now, just two are under construction, while 34 have been shut down.
It is not safety alone that is a concern. The economics of nuclear power is another issue. Huge sums of money go into setting up of power plants. Most face delays and cost over-runs. Operating costs per unit of electricity tends to be higher than alternative energy sources.
There are a range of experimental reactors that promise greater safety and economy but they are yet to reach maturity. China is investing big in new reactor technologies. The stakes are huge. Nuclear technology has always had two faces—the promise of incredible bounty and its enormously destructive capacity.
As of now, India remains fixated on its three-stage plan. We will reach Stage 3 only by 2050 or so; we’re still mainly in Stage 1. Caution is needed, especially since the record of our nuclear R&D and industry is not great. We need to hedge our risks by working on alternatives, not just in the field of nuclear energy, but also renewables, where our performance has been much better.
Saddled with massive outlays following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the parent company of Tokyo Electric Power Co. is only able to keep going through the injection of public funds.
Yet, it has emerged the company now feels it is in a position to donate about 200 million yen ($1.8 million) to a village in Aomori Prefecture through a special tax program that allows firms making payments to receive a corporate tax break.
The donations would underwrite the cost of three projects totaling 800 million yen that the village of Higashidori hopes will revitalize its economy. One program is for branding local farm and fishery products.
TEPCO gained approval in January 2011 to construct a nuclear power plant in Higashidori, and the initial plan was to begin operations in March 2017.
But the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami that triggered the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant led to an indefinite postponement of construction work. The village had anticipated property tax revenues after the nuclear plant was constructed, but has had to undertake stiff fiscal belt-tightening instead. A number of inns in the village have since closed.
TEPCO Holdings on March 29 proposed the donation for fiscal 2018 to the village and also indicated it was prepared to make another donation for fiscal 2019.
Its largesse is at odds with the fact that TEPCO is effectively under state control, given the huge amounts of public funds pumped into the utility to keep it afloat.
It also faces crippling costs in decommissioning the stricken Fukushima plant and compensating victims of the nuclear accident.
Given the situation, eyebrows will likely be raised if donations are made to local municipalities that play host to nuclear plants seeking to resume operations or serve as candidate sites for new plants.
University students participate in a job seminar featuring nuclear power-related companies.
March 28, 2019
With the nuclear power industry buffeted by headwinds, hiring and training personnel has become an urgent priority.
The suspension of a Hitachi Ltd. project to construct a nuclear power plant in Britain is also casting a shadow. The nuclear power industry, which is responsible for supplying stable electricity, is now struggling to secure human resources.
The job-hunting season for university students planning to graduate in 2020 has begun, and an employment seminar featuring nuclear power-related companies was held in Tokyo on March 3. Major power companies set up booths and energetically touted themselves to attendees, but students’ interest in major power companies that operate nuclear power plants has been somewhat lacking.
“I want to work for a company that deals with radiation measurement and management,” a 21-year-old male student majoring in nuclear power at Tokai University said. “I wasn’t considering a major power company.”
Factors such as the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and delays in the resumption of nuclear power generation have reduced student interest in nuclear power-related companies. In fiscal 2010, before the Fukushima disaster, over 1,200 students attended the seminar, but the number this year was 213, almost 50 fewer than last year.
The Nuclear Human Resource Development Network, composed of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum Inc. and other entities, will launch in April a new organization called the “strategic working group to strengthen recruitment and personnel training.”
The organization will aim to strengthen links between industry, academia and the government; provide a venue for the exchange of ideas with the government; and promote human resource development strategies.
Post-Fukushima, Japan turns against nuclear power, Witf, by Susan Phillips/StateImpact Pennsylvania | Mar 29, 2019 In Fukushima, farmers and residents put their stock in solar
(Futaba, Japan) — The partial meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in central Pennsylvania 40 years ago in March did not lead to large releases of radiation, but it helped turn public opinion away from nuclear energy. In Japan, an even more catastrophic nuclear disaster occurred eight years ago this month. And like many Pennsylvanians, the Japanese have largely turned against nuclear.
The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown is known in Japan as simply “March 11.” And everyone knows where they were on March 11, 2011.
Yuji Onuma was in the town of Futaba, where he grew up and was living with his wife, who was pregnant with their first child. Their home was about 3 or 4 kilometers from the Daiichi nuclear power plant.
But right now, he’s living away from the coast in another prefecture, and he says he wants to settle in a town that is about as far away from any of Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants as he can possibly be.
During an interview, Onuma showed a picture of when he was about 12 years old and getting an award from the Mayor of Futaba. A teacher had asked the kids to come up with a town slogan. In a place where everyone depended on the nearby nuclear plant for work, Onuma’s entry won:
“Atomic power: energy for a bright future” became the slogan on an archway over Futaba’s main street.
“I was very proud because this is my first ever award by the town,” Onuma said through a translator. “And all the town people praised me and said, you are very great. So I was so proud of that.”
Then he showed another photo. It’s only a few months after the accident, and no one is left living in Futaba. This time, he’s wearing a protective Tyvek suit and mask, he’s standing below the sign holding up a placard that changes his slogan to:
Nuclear Energy Policy after the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: An Analysis of “Polarized Debate” in Japan, Intechopen, By Tatsujiro Suzuki February 6th 2019
DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.83435
Abstract
The Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in 2011 was a turning point for Japan’s nuclear energy and overall energy policy. In reality, Japan has reduced its dependence on nuclear energy drastically despite the government’s policy to maintain nuclear energy as a major power source. Even with sharp drop in production from nuclear energy, Japan could achieve carbon reduction of around 60–70% by 2050 even without nuclear power. But the biggest impact of the Fukushima accident is the loss of public trust. The policy debate on nuclear energy is now divided between “pro” and “anti” of nuclear power. The aim of this study is to analyze why such “polarized debate” has not been resolved and find a way to restore public trust. This study analyzes three important nuclear energy policy issues, i.e., decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, spent nuclear fuel and waste management, and plutonium stockpile management. The analysis of these three cases suggest that lack of independent oversight organizations is a common cause of impasse of nuclear energy policy debate. The author argues that Japan needs to establish independent oversight organizations in order to gain public trust and solve important policy issues regardless of the future of nuclear energy………. https://www.intechopen.com/online-first/nuclear-energy-policy-after-the-fukushima-nuclear-accident-an-analysis-of-polarized-debate-in-japan?fbclid=IwAR1UJO5oepfNQeoUK82tXQzZUDRwvP9GQclVPkI2ONiq3dQ56w4LBRhbQIY
