Japan To Be Without Nuclear Power After May 5

mdsolar writes in with a Reuters article about the continued fallout of Fukushima on the nuclear industry in Japan. "Japan will within weeks have no nuclear power for the first time in more than 40 years, after the trade minister said two reactors idled after the Fukushima disaster would not be back online before the last one currently operating is shut down. Trade Minister Yukio Edano signaled it would take at least several weeks before the government, keen to avoid a power crunch, can give a final go-ahead to restarts, meaning Japan is set on May 6 to mark its first nuclear power-free day since 1970. 'If we thoroughly go through the procedure, it would be (on or) after May 6 even if we could restart them,' Edano told a news conference, adding that whether they can actually be brought back online is still up to ongoing discussions. The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where a huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 triggered radiation leaks, has hammered public faith in nuclear power and prevented the restart of reactors shut down for regular maintenance checks, with all but one of 54 reactors now offline."

Comments

Re:Who Would Have Thought?

[jmorris42]

> Fukushima has cost Japan a hell of a lot and it's still early days in term...

Isn't it nice how some folks obsess over the reactor in Fukushima and totally forget the trillon or so in 'normal' damage suffered during the same earthquake and then want to attribute almost all of the losses to the nuke part. Japan got it's ass kicked, the reactor meltdown was only a minor part of their problems that horrible day. But being Japanese they have bounced back from most of the rest of it; they buried their dead, cleared the debris away and are getting on with rebuilding. Also being Japanese this incident appears to have increased their existing fear of the N word over their normal practicalility regarding the need to have electricity to power their civilization.