Japan's Last Nuclear Reactor Shuts Down 452
AmiMoJo writes "Japan's last active reactor is shutting down today, leaving the country without nuclear energy for the first time since 1970. All 50 commercial reactors in the country are now offline. 19 have completed stress tests but there is little prospect of them being restarted due to heavy opposition from local governments. Meanwhile activists in Tokyo celebrated the shutdown and asked the government to admit that nuclear power was no longer needed in Japan and to concentrate on safety. If this summer turns out to be as hot as 2010 some areas could be asked to make 15% power savings to avoid shortages, while other areas will be unaffected due to savings already made."
Good job japan! (Score:2, Insightful)
That's securing your nation's future in the post-oil world! /s
Greenies have won while the majority in Japan lost (Score:3, Insightful)
While nuclear can be done safely, there seems to be no effort to do so - as it would deny environmentalists a chance to remake the power grid in their own way.
Environmentalism - as practiced today - has been about control versus the original intent of cleanliness and efficiency.
Save Face, not Environment (Score:5, Insightful)
You have it wrong --- this is "we can save face if we blame the problems we had with our nuclear reactor on nuclear energy being inherently unsafe, not the fact that we totally f**ked up the safety management and planning in multiple ways".
BTW, at least one of these errors is being made practically everywhere in the world: stopping research into new, possibly safer reactor designs because of the public's knee-jerk fear of technology. (Maybe not so much in China, though.)
Re:Greenies have won while the majority in Japan l (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Greenies have won while the majority in Japan l (Score:3, Insightful)
How about the simple fact that "environmentalists" are celebrating the shut down of nuclear reactors while ignoring the coal and oil based power plants?
When solar and wind power becomes widespread then we can celebrating shutting down nuclear power plants. Until then, all you're doing is trading one evil for an even greater evil.
Alternatives (Score:3, Insightful)
And despite what the greenies say, wind and solar aren't always reliable, especially near the ocean -- clouds come and go, as do storms, and wind fluxuates, whereas power demand is constant. Not only that, but the efficiency of solar panels isn't high enough yet to be a replacement in an urban area -- panels have to be installed outside the city and cover large tracts of land. That may work in America, but it will not work for an island city-state.
Japan is taking a step backwards here because of political pressure and disinformation about the safety of nuclear power: Fukishima wasn't a failure of engineering, it was a failure of management, and it's something every government has to contend with when they hand over to capitalists and industrialists anything that can go boom; They are asked to balance profit with safety, but invariably when the two conflict, profit wins.
Re:Greenies have won while the majority in Japan l (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course he doesn't have any evidence. The pro-nuclear crowd wants to pick and chose the best parts about nuclear... they want to pretend that each plant lasts for 40-60 years--so that the cost of nuclear is competitive with coal,etc.. and then when those 50 year old reactors are found to be unsafe, they say it's because they are out of date.
Well... if they were rebuilt every decade with the latest safety improvements, they would not be cost competitive. So chose: unsafe reactors... or uncompetitive energy prices.
There are reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh Great (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't convince the anti-np crowd or conspiracy theorists with facts. They just keep on repeating the same misinformation hoping it will eventually override all the evidence.
Re:Greenies have won while the majority in Japan l (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it is not uncommon for air monitoring alarms to go off in a nuclear plant from the effluents from and adjacent coal plant when the wind is wrong. Japan probably had a spinning reserve of about 15% just like the US but now even with all of nuclear units down there is no reserve even with a massive conservation effort and there is a significant shortfall that will have to be picked up by coal. Wind and solar have a place but they cannot be the baseload. Energy storage is extremely difficult and costly rendering them appropriate for peaking but not much else. Nuclear plants have an incredible safety record when it comes to direct industrial safety and I would bet that there are far more injuries playing on windmills than in the entire nuclear fuel cycle in a given year. Are solar panels made out of toxic materials? I would expect so. Without subsidies use of solar panels to produce electricity works out to about a dollar a kilowatt. Nuclear about a nickel at the bus bar (poor performer). The news emphasised the scary nuclear plant which had 3 fatalities (2 drownings and 1 heart attack) at the expense of a human tragedy that cost 18000 people their lives. A large area was exposed to numerous chemical carcinogens that are a part of modern life that probably exceeded the risk from radiation. In a couple of years a lot of the area quarantined may be reclaimed. The nuclides that are causing the concerns are Cesium and Strontium both of which have about a 30 year half life but both of which are relatively soluable, weathering will result in quite a bit of removal over time. The bigger concern for the area would be the social stigma for those that moved back into the area because of ignorance.
Re:Greenies have won while the majority in Japan l (Score:5, Insightful)
It sort of looks like these environmentalists are celebrating the fact that ALL nuclear power plants have been shut down in Japan. While I will admit there might be some bad plants that needed to be shut down and that some changes needed to happen, was it necessary to shut all of them down at the same time?
Keep in mind that the celebration is over the last of the nuclear power plants being shut down. They are celebrating the death of even the concept of nuclear energy.
If there was a real concern about the environment, they would be far more worried about increasing dependence on coal and oil for electrical power. Heck, just by restarting some of these older coal power plants they are going to be introducing more radioactive debris into the environment than had they simply left the nuclear power plants running. These environmentalists are in that way celebrating a nuclear future AND the destruction of the environment on a massive scale, where many more people will die because these plants are being shut down.
If you were genuinely concerned about safety, you would be insisting that these nuclear power plants be restarted ASAP. If you look strictly at deaths directly caused from mining coal to replace these nuclear power plants, I think that would more than offset any potential deaths caused from even casual handling of spent nuclear rods, much less the risk of having another Fukushima-type disaster happening in the next few years.
Re:Save Face, not Environment (Score:1, Insightful)
"It's just a flesh wound!"
At what point does a knee-jerk fear of technology become a justified rejection? The high tech country Japan can't handle real world implementations of nuclear power, and the high tech country Germany avoids a disaster through sheer luck while trying out "inherently safe" reactor technology: AVR Jülich, the small scale test for the THTR-300 (which also had problems) is the basis for the HTR-10 design that was sold to China.)
The people who think that nuclear power can be affordable and safe at the same time are drinking the Kool-aid.
Re:Good job japan! (Score:5, Insightful)
Adding to this:
At current LNG prices Japan pays additional $200 billion a year for its elecricity generation from gas compared to what nuclear generation would cost. The anti-nucreal crowd can calculate the cost of Fukushima disaster as they want, but in no way they can deny the fact that cheaper elecricity would cover the cost of the disaster in few years. The bigger economic cost was not the nuclear disaster itself, but that the reactors shutdowns afterwards.
Biggest social disaster in millenia. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thorium Nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? Liquid Sodium cooled reactors are nothing new [wikipedia.org].
And none of them have been run successfully as a commercial unit. If someone could build one successful sodium cooled power reactor, and have it run for a decade with decent availability then sodium-cooling might be viable. Based on current evidence, the technology for a successful plant does not exist.
Re:Greenies have won while the majority in Japan l (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Greenies have won while the majority in Japan l (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good job japan! (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter if its coal, gas, wind, hydro, solar, nuclear, tidal, or anything else these people are always there protesting its construction.
There is a way for NP to thrive (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time this topic comes up, there is the same string of irrelevant nonsense. Wake up.
There are only two long-term, large, successful, safe nuclear power projects on Earth - the U.S. Navy's and France's. Last year, the Navy logged its 6,500th reactor-year of experience w/out a single serious accident - nuc subs Thresher and Scorpian went down for reasons unrelated to their power plants. Both the Navy and France use a high degree of standardization between plants, rigorous operator selection and training, and procedures enforced by iron-fisted independent regulators - anathema to the unregulated free-market mavens designing and selling reactors and the natural-monopoly privatized power companies either trying to maximize profit or with guaranteed profit margins regardless of efficiency. The U.S. nuc power system failed as much because of the heterogeneous designs afoot - and resultant inability to insure standardized reliable performance and procedures, as because of the political resistance. But, the two are highly related - that is, there was good reason to be skeptical of promises of safe, long-term operation. A small, compact variation of the Navy's system is being marketed to U.S. communities for local power production at this time, but its adoption is meeting strong resistance in the regulatory agencies and congress due to big power and big energy special-interest influence - i .e. corruption.
So yes, there is a way to have safe, long-term nuclear power right under our feet and it is only our inept corrupted political system that keeps us from realizing it.
Re:There are reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good job japan! (Score:5, Insightful)
You speak the truth. Coal fired power plants have spewed more radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere than all the nuclear disasters ever did.
The only rational thing to do is ignore the radical environmentalists and get on with building the next generation of nuclear plants.
Renewable energy remains a sick joke, coal and oil aren't going to last forever, nor should we wait until it reaches a crisis point.
Re:Save Face, not Environment (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does it have to be nuclear? Why are you so intent on using nuclear, even if better options exist ...
What better option?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not just misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble with Hydro power is the disasters are so bad, and sooner or later the dams get privatized and some wealthy jackass cuts funding to safety.
See what I did there?
Heres a tip, find every stat you can on nuclear deaths. Go ahead, even include the hypothetical assumptions about who got cancer but might not have. Now compare it to a single hydro dam failure. Or to estimated coal mining deaths.
All of a sudden it starts to look a lot less terrible.
Re:Greenies have won while the majority in Japan l (Score:2, Insightful)
Solar power is also ridiculously expensive compared with anything else
Only if you fail to account for the cost of cleaning up the mess of using other kinds of power.
Re:Alternatives (Score:3, Insightful)
The main alternative to nuclear is coal. Most people who oppose nuclear power don't realize the amount of radioactive material that is raining down on them near a coal plant. It's enough to trigger radiation alarms if they aren't recalibrated from 'nuclear' to 'coal'.
They understand, and this is not their concern. They are worried about accidents.
Fukishima wasn't a failure of engineering
Yes it was. The original design didn't take into account a very large earthquake causing a very large tsunami, or the prospect of the emergency cooling generators being flooded and no other power source being available.
There were management failings as well, but the designers and engineers are not blameless.
And despite what the greenies say, wind and solar aren't always reliable, especially near the ocean -- clouds come and go, as do storms, and wind fluxuates, whereas power demand is constant.
No, there is always enough wind available offshore in Japan to supply its entire power needs. All year round, 24/7, no exceptions ever. There is also geothermal and hydro, both of which are as or more reliable than fossil/nuclear.
Re:It's not just misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why we don't build very large dams much any more, unless absolutely forced to. Perhaps you can agree that the same logic should apply to nuclear power.
In a lot of the world, large dams aren't being built because the suitable sites either already have a dam or have a large number of NIMBYs in residence. The geology matters; build in a limestone area, and your reservoir will never hold water as the rock will always be too permeable. (Put the dam itself in a bad area and it will collapse. That's occasionally happened, until everyone learned not to do that, and far more died from that "learning" than have ever died due to nuclear accidents.)
Look, we don't claim that nuclear power is 100% safe (it clearly isn't) but we do claim that you're putting a falsely low estimate of risk on the alternatives. Remove those rose-tinted glasses!
Death is not the only consequence of a nuclear disaster. Look at the economic damage and the cost of fixing the problem. A large area of Japan is uninhabitable, a large number of people were displaced and are now jobless and living on benefits just outside the exclusion zone. You can argue all you like about whose fault it is and if the actions taken were justified, but none the less it happened.
But most of that is due to excessive caution and fear-mongering. If you can't measure the radiation or the chemical pollution, by what possible standard is it unsafe? Mystic karmic vibration disturbance?
If Fukushima had been a geothermal plant, if instead there had been large off-shore wind farms, even if there had been a coal plant on that very same spot this would not have happened.
That is true. It is also the case that the pollution produced by that plant's normal operation would have caused many cases of respiratory diseases and low-to-medium levels of chronic poisoning. Furthermore, the cost of importing all that coal (Japan has none to speak of domestically) would have resulted in the Japanese people having significantly less money to spend on other things (such as healthcare, but it's really a long list of missed opportunities). As I said before, take off those rose-tinted glasses; don't just see the downsides of one alternative, look the others fairly too and weigh them all in the balance.
Re:It's not just misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
The coast would have still been fucked up to hell and back by that little tsunami, that you know did all the minor damage that killed over 30.000 people, left hundreds of thousands homeless and a whole lot of other bad things.
But let's whine about Fukushima instead. Because radiation is scarier then big ass waves and earthquakes, since we can see big ass waves and earthquakes. Actual lethality and damage potential is irrelevant when faced with illogical feeling of fear of something we cannot see!
Re:Greenies have won while the majority in Japan l (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear isn't done so much in the US because of litigation. The instant somebody announces they're going to be looking at building a nuke plant anywhere, the lawyers come out from the rocks and start burying the courts in paperwork, trying for injunctions to stop any and all nuclear construction.
Nuclear plants are expensive. They wouldn't be nearly as expensive if it weren't for the legal fees associated with the word 'nuclear'. When you have an activist-lawyer go in front of a camera and say "The only phisics I know is Ex-Lax', you know you're dealing with idiots.
Just read the history of the Perry Nuclear Plant. Most of the 'construction time', the plant was idle, nothing was moving due to the injunctions. They weren't even allowed to do maintanance on what they already had up, so when the injunctions lifted, they got the construction crews in there to inspect 100% and replace anything that even LOOKED like it had a rust spot, or they wouldn'tve received their operating license. And they had to keep full construction crews on the payroll even while they were waiting for the injunctions to crawl through the courts because if they didn't, the crews would vaporise off to other jobs with no guarantee of getting them back. Half the time they just barely got through with the inspection and maint before they got hit with yet another injunction. The lawyers made tons of money on that project.
All told, Perry cost $6 billion and took 9 years to build, mostly due to the injunctions. They never did finish the #2 Unit because of cash flow problems from all the litigation. Even though all but the containment vessel is done for #2, they stopped construction on it in '85 & 'abandoned' it in '94. They still have to do maintanance on the empty building in order to keep their license to operate since it's considerted legally to be 'one complex'. It could have gone online with both reactors at half the cost and within 3 years of groundbreaking if it wasn't for all the injunctions.