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Committee Offers Scenarios for Japan's Energy Future
ananyo writes with a story about more concrete plans for a reduced or nuclear-free energy future for Japan. From the article: "It's official: nuclear power will have a much smaller role in Japan's energy future than was once thought. Since the meltdowns and gas explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in March 2011, all of Japan's remaining reactors have been shut down for inspections and maintenance. The government offered a glimpse of their future, and that of the country's nuclear power in general, when it published an outline of four ways to satisfy Japan's future energy demands. One scenario recommends using a market mechanism to determine the nuclear contribution. Under the other three, nuclear power would supply at most one-quarter of Japan's energy by 2030 — and in one case, none at all. The scenarios come from a 25-person advisory committee to the industry ministry. The sharp reductions in the nuclear power part of the country's energy mix mean that Japan will struggle to reach the 31% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that it had planned by 2030 (PDF)."
1) Reduced nuclear
2) Reduced coal, oil, and natural gas
Any third option for the foreseeable future is a hippie pipe dream (unless you count regular, sustained blackouts as an option). And if anyone thinks that solar panels and wind turbines are going to supply Tokyo with even a fraction of its power needs, you've obviously never been there.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
So in other words Japan will make nuclear power taboo so there will be little research/upkeep on the remaining reactors making another Fukishima more likely. Wonderful!
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
They haven't built a new reactor in a very long time. This announcement is not much different to the German government one - letting the existing plants run down and not putting in a huge amount of capital to revive an almost abandoned reactor construction industry to build new ones. Everyone involved in building the previous ones has long moved on and spare expertise outside of their country is scarce.
Any third option for the foreseeable future is a hippie pipe dream
I don't get it, all the free market preachers are promising that my energy problems will shortly be solved by the free market but your view is such a fatalistic-don't-even-try-jaded response that you seem to doubt the free market can provide.
And if anyone thinks that solar panels and wind turbines are going to supply Tokyo with even a fraction of its power needs, you've obviously never been there.
I haven't been there. But no one's asking those solutions to go from zero to powering Tokyo over night. Look how gradually it's taken wind power to start in the United States (current numbers here). Japan is comparable at our state level and is looking at connecting with Korea, China, Russia and Mongolia power grids to buy more renewable energy. So why call these hippie pipe dreams? If these are hippie pipe dreams, when will our innovation kick in and 'save us' from nuclear and coal?
(unless you count regular, sustained blackouts as an option)
Did you hear that Japan did actually make small adjustments following Fukushima and called the movement setsuden?
I don't think the situation is as dire as you describe it and, frankly, dismissing all the alternative efforts really undermines what we should be working toward which are transitional phases until some breakthrough comes in fusion or an unforeseen source.
My work here is dung.
"struggle to meet their emissions targets."
I think they misspelled the word struggle, it should be spelt FAIL.
We need nuclear power generator technology that can be safely run by corrupt liars. Most government and regulatory agencies are run by corrupt liars, as we saw in the handling of the Fukushima crisis.
Look nuclear could lead to bad scenarios, but civilization destroying climate change is the Worst Possible Thing. Why not spend the money to build them better? They knew beforehand that their older gen nukes were vulnerable. It has to be at least one option. It's great that there are super incentivized to find sustainable alternatives but is incentive what is lacking on the part of researchers or is it now time we're running out of ?
Systematically lower carbon emissions- at the point of gun if necessary. Full throttle research into green technology - using deficit spending if necessary. Conservation and maximum usage of current alternatives , by law if necessary. That's what's got to happen and it will the only question is will we do it in time?
If you want to replace just Fukushima Daiichi with solar power, you'd have to blanket the whole evacuation zone with one huge solar power plant like that one. (Notice the incredible environmental friendliness of solar power in that place!). But in fact, you'll lose about half of that energy due to storage issues or inefficiency.
In order to replace all Japanese nuclear power plants with solar power, you need ten of those power plants - if you ignore storage losses.
wind requires such a large area
No land is needed for wind power. Japan is an island nation at a latitude that has plenty of trade winds. Wind turbines can be located at sea, where the wind is steadier and twice as strong as on land.
When I first went the country wasn't very disability conscious. Skip a few years later ..... every main sidewalks, rail and subway stations had bobbled track bright yellow of floor ties. Braille on hand rails - lifts and loads of other bits. Social conscience has drive there too. If you can make it cool people will want them. Tax breaks for the supply chain and many more false economy drivers can be put in place. The tax make work they use builds good infrastructural items. Use the trillion yen subsidy for power stations corruption money and hand out contracts to install panels.
Japan (and Korea and the coastal areas of SE and E Asia) are in a monsoon area. The heat is due to the humidity. The sun does not magically shine stronger there (if anything it shines less due to the pollution from China).
Once you subtract out government subsidies, solar is currently almost an order of magnitude more expensive per kWh than fossil fuels. Wind is a much better choice, at a bit less than 2x the cost. Nuclear is the best scalable option, at roughly the same cost as fossil fuels, but is a political hot potato. Hydro and geothermal are the best choices (cheaper than fossil fuels). But hydro is tapped out in most modern countries, and geothermal is limited in where it's available.
Why is cost so important? Because our modern standard of living is based on cheap energy. In medieval times, the average person had to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week in the fields just to generate enough productivity not to starve. Our modern standard of living is achieved by using cheap energy as a productivity multiplier. Instead of using nearly all our productivity to feed ourselves so we can produce more food, we spend a fraction of our productivity (money) on cheap energy. The energy powers machines which we then use to provide the majority of our productivity. People directly or indirectly just "work" by controlling those machines, thus generating enough productivity (income) to feed themselves in about 1 hr a day. The rest of your productivity (money) is spent buying a house and car and various entertainment -- things that would be considered lavish luxuries by medieval standards.
Take away cheap energy and you can't run those machines as much. The average productivity per person plummets, and a greater portion of their workday is needed to generate enough productivity to feed themselves. That means less income left over for a house, car, and entertainment. Our standard of living goes down.