Japan's Nuclear Energy Industry Nears Shutdown

mdsolar sends this quote from an article at the NY Times: "All but two of Japan's 54 commercial reactors have gone offline since the nuclear disaster a year ago, after the earthquake and tsunami, and it is not clear when they can be restarted. With the last operating reactor scheduled to be idled as soon as next month, Japan — once one of the world's leaders in atomic energy — will have at least temporarily shut down an industry that once generated a third of its electricity. With few alternatives, the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has called for restarting the plants as soon as possible, saying he supports a gradual phase-out of nuclear power over several decades. Yet, fearing public opposition, he has said he will not restart the reactors without the approval of local community leaders."

Comments

Low Power

[Eggbloke]

My dad was saying that Tokyo is depressing, apparently there are power shortages so most of the signs and escalators are turned off and the city is dark. How are they supposed to make up their energy requirements if they stop using nuclear?

Re:Low Power

[Tsian]

That is not really true. There was a period of (planned) rolling blackouts, but in the end energy conservation (and increased generation) meant that, except for immediately after the quake, the lights didn't go off.

However, many buildings (and stations) reduced lighting and took some escalators out of service. However, even those measures have mostly been abandoned, with escalators and the like operating as before (partly due to the fact that it wasn't practical to block off escalators in many of the busier stations). Many stores and offices, however, continue to turn off some of their lights.

That said, even at "reduced" lighting, most Japanese stations are still incredibly well lit. We aren't talking about platforms half shrouded in shadow so much as a slight reduction in the overall brightness level.

It will be interesting to see, however, what happens as we once again approach summer (and the increased energy demands due to A/C) combined with the current shut-down of nuclear power plants.

Re:energy rations?

[ommerson]

The Japanese have been very successful in curbing demand. I was over in Japan for a week on a business trip last year, and it was interesting to see how they did it. This included absolutely all hand-driers in toilets being switched off, less air-conditioning (room temperature was set for 28C in the office), the business week of large corporations shifted to reduce peak-week-time demand and increase that on the weekend, and a move to more relaxed corporate dress-code - which included in many cases, a small towel attached to the waistband with which to mop off the sweat form the oppressive environment. There were no doubt more measures that I wasn't aware of, but life definitely carries on as normal without power cuts.

Our suspicion is that this state of affairs will become the norm.

Re:Need login to read an article?

[icebraining]

It's the NYT paywall - you just need to change the '_r' parameter in the URL to 0 instead of 4.