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Japan's Last Nuclear Reactor Shuts Down
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."
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.)
According to this Fukushima 4's fuel was removed soon after the disaster and therefore has been shut down for some time.
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 and then when those 50 year old reactors are found to be unsafe, they say it's because they are out of date.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.
I know we are all supposed to point out how foolish they are being but they do have reasons for such a strong reaction. Up until Chernobyl they were the only country to deal with major contamination in heavily populated areas. Even Chernobyl was in a rural area not two major cities. It badly scarred them not only physically but mentally. The recent disaster effectively killed a chunk of the country and Japan already has a shortage of land especially farmland. It may have been smarter to phase it out but the fear of a second such disaster was too great. Japan is fairly new to nuclear power and they are in a unique situation. The country is very active geologically and earthquakes are commonplace and it has a lot of potential for similar disasters. None of us can know the real position they were in. The accident happened because they got sloppy and after reviewing other plants they may have seen shortcomings in the other plants that could have lead to disasters and the upgrades would take too long. I'm just saying there may be more to it than we know and Japan has a lot of pride and it's hard for them to admit they got sloppy. It's easy to say all the disasters are human error but it's impossible to take human error out of the equation. Growing up I heard there would statistically be one disaster every thousand years. If statistics were accurate we would be safe for the next three thousand years. Human error will always be a factor. As costs rise also there's a tendency to cut corners increasing risk. That's what caused the gulf oil spill. All the reactors in this country are rapidly approaching the end of their projected lives and many have already passed it. The nuclear materials have a corrosive affect on the pipes so the risk keeps going up on existing plants. The point I'm trying to make is it isn't as cut and dry as most think. There are a lot of pros and cons. Fusion makes a lot more sense but in truth I've never heard anything to convince me it'll ever be practical. For all it's potential every test so far takes nearly as much energy as it produces. We need safe, stable, long term solutions and there is no magic bullet one size fits all solution. In the near term we need all of the sources including coal and oil but a critical part of the puzzle will be that ugly word, conservation. Trust me, the Japanese will be hearing that word a lot over the next few years. Used wisely conservation is a powerful part of the puzzle. Obama got laughed at for suggesting properly inflated tires would save as much oil as the arctic reserve would contribute. As funny as some found it the fact is he was right. If everyone embraced conservation they wouldn't have to change their lifestyles significantly and we could put off new power plants for a decade or more. That would buy us time to make the needed changes including building more nuclear plants if that's the solution. I'll predict this, Japan will become the world leader in conservation. It's the only way they'll survive.
The activists have a point. The reactor designs are relatively unsafe compared to modern designs, though it took a hell of a lot of punishment to show it.
Here's hoping Japan makes the switch to thorium.
Except the Activist are against the building of newer safer designs.
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.
don't worry, the day you prove p=np they will all bow before you. /mutates & /ducks
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.
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.
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.
This comment is very far off.
Unlike molten salt reactors, a class of fast breeders utilize liquid sodium, which reacts violently with water- and has been a bit of a problem (very costly) when heat-exchangers, reheaters, and similar equipment fails.
Molten salt reactors, like the one prototyped at Oak Ridge National Laboratories back in the 60s, ran for years. The corrosion issue stems from the inadvertent production of tritium (from an undesired isotope of lithium in some formulations of the salt) which can combine with the fluorine (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor/LFTR) to produce a strong acid. These and other problems appear to have very viable solutions (from listening to the relevant scientists and engineers), and should not be used to disparage the technology.
To compare this fission technology that has already been demonstrated in principle with a prototype, to fusion which has not even achieved break-even demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of the issues involved. The primary advantages of the molten salt reactor to energy production are the following:
- based on fission which is a well-understood phenomena; U-233 liquid-fueled reactor already demonstrated in principle decades ago (found to be very reliable)
- a liquid fuel system that operates at low pressure and high temperature which allows for very high levels of safety and efficiency
- the above which contribute to the high likelihood of low-cost reactors
- low cost reactors will dramatically lower the cost of carbon-free energy
- high temperatures allow for more efficient cogeneration; example: ammonia synthesis which could be used as an energy carrier on the scale of petroleum, which would address both concerns about fuel supply and carbon emissions
- high temperatures also allow for the use of dry cooling (as opposed to "wet" cooling which uses a lot of water), necessary for an efficient thermodynamic cycle
- thorium fuel is about as abundant as lead (3-4 times more abundant as uranium), and so very low cost
- fissile startup requirements are minimal (less than a tonne of 20% enriched U-235 is possible)
- system is very proliferation resistant (lots of technical details in the specifics)
The disadvantages:
- we must face our fear of nuclear energy
- more R&D (substantially less than $10 billion) will be required before this technology is a commercial reality
- bureaucratic and industry resistance to a new technology (they've already committed themselves to something else which is not suited for solving our systemic problems)
- the general public remains woefully ignorant of the risks it is facing by foregoing nuclear energy
The potential is that we have a nuclear system that is so safe and efficient that it may have the convenience, but at lower cost, than modern and ubiquitous natural gas plants. We are looking at perhaps the greatest technology humanity has ever developed, at best critical to our transition to a sustainable existence, and at worst, an essential technological step to reduce the risk we currently face. The United States may lack the technical leadership to step into a new era of low-cost carbon-free energy, but its rivals are seriously looking at this approach (China is apparently putting around $100 million annually into this), and if it proves viable on a commercial scale (all signs so far showing absolutely "yes"), the US will be left behind. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this issue to national security. Our economic well-being is dependent upon the cost and convenience of energy, and "farming" low-density energy sources dramatically increases our risk in this area. Lower the cost of energy and you will facilitate wealth creation, otherwise we face recession and decline.
These activists seem to be against ALL forms of power
No matter if its coal, gas, wind, hydro, solar, nuclear, tidal, or anything else these people are always there protesting its construction.
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.
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.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
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.
I suggest Japan switches to powering itself with Activists.
An average size activist has a mass of approximately 70Kg (counting the younger people and women into the average).
70Kg of a raw unadulterated activist contains about 6.3 Ã-- 1018 J, which translates to 6Ã--1015 BTU, or 1.7Ã--1012 KW/hr.
Thus only one activist fully converted into energy should in principle be sufficient to power Japan for about 25 years.
Of-course this is assuming that an activist can be fully converted into energy, but since an average activist is against all forms of energy that people actually need to live, we can also conclude that activists are generally against human survival, and thus they are self-defeating. If the activists get their way, there will be no humans, but there also will be no activists, so by converting activists into energy even in less efficient ways (an open fire stove), would still provide us with some energy and bring the Earth closer to the blissful moment, when the people are removed from it, starting with the activists.
You can't handle the truth.
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.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
They want modern clean technology like wind and geothermal.
Instead of just guessing what they want why not try simply listening to them.
Though, I'm not originally from here, I live in Japan. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
I talk to Japanese people every day. They are against nuclear power. At best, people don't mind wind power. At least most people don't actively complain about the new windmills being put up (and there are a lot going up). But nobody is calling for them as far as I can tell. But people here do NOT want geothermal. There is a fear that it will somehow destroy the onsens (hot springs). This is a major problem, because we have *no* domestic base load generation capacity except geothermal. Even now, as far as I can tell, there is *no* move to find new geothermal wells.
There is, unfortunately, a media fuelled misconception that solar power will solve all the problems. Granted, where I live, it is quite feasible to run most of your house on solar power. But we still need base load generation and we don't have it.
Don't get me wrong. As far as I'm concerned, nuclear was only a stop gap for Japan. It gave us some time to sort out new technologies. It's not like Japan has a domestic supply of nuclear fuel. But by shutting down all the reactors, it really puts the pinch on. I just hope we end up going the right direction in the end...
A lot of the is policy and radiation fears.
They are people (quasi-illegally) living in the exclusion zone.
And they aren't all dropping dead of cancer. Imagine that.
If the US became as radioactive as the exclusion zone, and smoking decreased by 5% and people exercised 5% more, and 5% more people would get colonoscopies the overll cancer rate would PLUNGE.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!