Slashdot Mirror
Fukushima Disaster Leads Japan To Backpedal On Emissions Pledge
mdsolar writes with this excerpt from the New York Times: "Japan took a major step back on Friday from earlier pledges to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, saying a shutdown of its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster had made previous targets unattainable. The announcement cast a shadow over international talks underway in Warsaw aimed at fashioning a new global pact to address the threats of a changing climate. Under its new goal, Japan, one of the world's top polluters, would still seek to reduce its current emissions. But it would release 3 percent more greenhouse gases in 2020 than it did in 1990, rather than the 6 percent cut it originally promised or the 25 percent reduction it promised two years before the 2011 nuclear disaster."
Fear has caused their inability to act responsibly, when if they had the will to do what was right, they'd have been able to solve the real problems with Fukushima and move on.
I swear, we need a gom jabbar test for politicians.
Nuclear energy reduces greenhouse emissions, according to Japan.
OK, so is the most important thing to be anti-nuclear, or to actually save the environment?
A little irony in this, I keep seeing TV commercials for the comeback of nuclear power here in the US, and it seems the Fukushima plant only brought back fears of the "what if" among US citizens. Despite the steps the US has on placing 6'+ thick domes over the reactors to prevent fall out from contaminating the air, and water table.
What should piss off Japan and everyone else is these plants are US plants, Westinghouse and Japan didn't follow the same standards for US nuclear plants, otherwise this whole thing wouldn't be were its at.
Anyone watching what happened must be aware the Japanese took one helluva hit.
I, for one, am extremely impressed with the Japanese, making do despite such a setback.
My take: Salute them and cut them some slack. A lot of slack.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Just don't seem to go together.
Global warming is a load of crap anyway.
Australia just elected a government on an unapologetic anti-carbon tax platform.
France has thousands of truckers shutting down the major roads protesting carbon taxes, and the people support them widely.
Japan is all done indulging carbon caps; reality has imposed itself and they have other priorities now.
I don't know whether our CO2 is going to Venus the Earth. And neither do you. What I am absolutely certain of is that we're going to find out — people will not subject themselves to energy poverty and they are no longer in doubt about the consequences of carbon caps and carbon taxes.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Regardless of the safety of modern reactor designs, Japan's seismic instability and high population density makes it an inherently inappropriate location for nuclear power plants.
The back-pedalling on previous emission pledges and blaming it on idled reactors is all about convincing the domestic electorate to approve nuclear power. The LDP is responsible for putting Japan on the path of nuclear power dependency in the first place, and now that they are back in power they want this particularly bad idea resuscitated.
Japan has a long way to go before exhausting its latent solar, wind, geothermal and conservation potential. With plenty of industrial capacity to embark on leading the world in non-nuclear, non-fossil-fuel energy infrastructure, the LDPs obsession with nuclear is a clear sign of their lack of wisdom and cozy relationship with the like of Mitsubishi.
Despite how many cheerleaders in the US nuclear may have, the reality is that nuclear power as it stands right now is a damn liability, profitable only to those that benefict from the short-term gains, and not-competitive if we include costs and risks down the line. When we estimate that, due to human negligence we may have to evacuate whole countries due to one meager nuclear power plant, then its better to start considering alternatives, be it renewable or, if you keep hammering the nuclear key, just go thorium or fusion already (peak uranium/plutonium is already knocking at the door as production can't keep up with demand).
In my perspective, greed-versus-safety, the only safe place for present technology nuclear power plants to be place is in sterile, out-of-the-earth environments.
Put those dirty eyesores on the moon and just tight-beam the energy to earth. How competitive with plain solar power would that be then?
CO2 isn't one of them.
www.climatedepot.com
One day, man discovered fire.
Then, man burned his fingers.
Man decided never to use fire anymore.
At night, man was cold and eaten by a grue.
Funny how having something serious to worry about cuts through superficial bullshit like "anthropomorphic global waming" and "carbon taxes". The ex-hippies have had life way too easy. They need an existential challenge.
There are a couple of big ways in which nuclear power does a bad job on greenhouse gas emissions. First, it is expensive and slow. So much so that its opportunity cost is bloated and when effort is ill spent on nuclear power, alternatives which are faster, cheaper and better are hindered. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly
Second, as we are seeing here, one accident can lead to a massive pullback from nuclear power, both in the affected country and around the world. Even France has announced a planned pullback. When the pullback is rapid, then relic fossil fuel plants rather than new clean energy replacements are pulled into service to make up the difference in generation. This makes nuclear power not just a slow response to climate change, but a retrograde response since these bad accidents are inevitable.
There are other ways it has a bad influence as well, such as pretending to be a silver bullet to the adolescent mind for example, so much time is wasted on fantasy scenarios. But these two big ones are bad enough.
They should just restart all nuclear reactors in japan. i mean why listen to the voice of reason? ... and ...and ...
obviously there are still people around that witnessed and survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki and simi valley
and Chernobyl and 3 mile island and
nuclear pollution is not CO2. it cannot be absorbed by lil tiny green engines in the ocean
or massive living self-multiplying crystal pillars.
the only way to get ride of nuclear power is a massive influx of reactors and their unavoidable
catastrophic breakdowns that will annihilate the users. it's WIN-WIN for the anti-nuke camp really!
The people of japan just need to have no electricity at all and no quality of life... for the earth. Everyone will submit to the climate religion.
For crying out loud. The Fukishima disaster should never have happened... period. No reactor should be allowed to be so close to the ocean, period. ESPECIALLY in an area that is prone to tsunamis.
I, for one, am surprised that the UN would allow such a monstrosity to be built on the shores of the pacific in the first place. (OK, not really...) Perhaps the length of time to clean that shit up should be considered a precursor to war? Seriously, the disaster happened nearly three years ago, is not sealed, and continues irradiate the Pacific basin's waterways. It's past time that we walk in - regardless what Japan says, and clean it up for them, slap sanctions on the country and sink the country into the ocean filth they created.
Fukushima: Tokyo Electric Admits Total 80 Spent Fuel Assemblies Had Damages Before the Nuclear Accident
NOVEMBER 16, 2013 EX-SKF
It was revealed that 70 fuel assemblies in the Reactor 1 at Fukushima had had damages before the March 11, 2011 earthquake/tsunami.
The damaged assemblies are about one-quarter of the 292 spent fuel assemblies stored in the pool.
There are three damaged fuel assemblies inside the Reactor 4.
The Reactor 2 has three damaged fuel assemblies, and the Reactor 3 has four, making the total of damaged fuel assemblies 80.
Technologies to remove damaged fuel haven't been established.
Tokyo Electric has postponed the removal of the damaged assemblies as it is difficult to remove them in a normal manner.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2013/11/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-tepco-admits.html
5% before 1990s emission. Mainly through replacing coal electricity with gas electricity. And bit from increased auto efficiency.
If China and India keep building coal fired plants it won't matter what the west does any more than if algore stopped farting.
Only nations like Canada, USA, Australia, etc. are continuing to lower their emissions.
BUT, Europe and Japan, in fact the west, are NOT the issue. It is the nations who continue to increase their emissions.
China, India, Brazil, South Africa etc. are building out massive new coal plants and running these without pollution controls. These plants will exists for 50-70 years. And these are growing faster than the west can shut down ours.
Not only do we need to get nuke power going quickly, BUT, we need to force all nations to partake in lowering their emissions, or at least keeping it low.
The funny thing is, that emissions are tied to GDP, not ppl. Businesses burn up far more energy than does anything else. As such, focusing on emissions PER CAPITA is about the worst idea going. Instead, it should be about emissions per GDP (real, not PPP). In addition, it should be measured for real, rather than estimated. For CO2, we can do that via satellite. OCO2 will lets the world know next year which nations are emitting what and how much it really is (china is going to be a real shock to the world).
We, esp. the USA who is the worlds largest importers, needs to put a tax on ALL goods (local and imported), based on where it, and the parts come from. If it comes from a place with high emissions/GDP, then the tax is high. If all parts are from nations like france/sweden/iceland, then the tax will be low to nothing. OTOH, if coming from nations like China, Vietnam, India, South Africa, etc. the tax would be high. Why? Because these nations have massive amounts of emissions in terms of their real GDP and NOT the PPP GDP.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Tony Abbot, in Oz is dismantling Green, Renewables ans AGW crap at an amazing rate, Japan and Canada a dipping a tope in the Political water, soon you yanks will be the only ones caught up in the warmist lie.
There is a deeply ingrained attitude around here: Slashdotters are smarter than TEPCO.
I thought it came to a head in this story. A sampling of comments:
I'm starting to get the impression that TEPCO only hired idiots
The people working there are probably not very qualified or intelligent
It is difficult to understand why TEPCO is still in charge
TEPCO couldn't be trusted to take care of your fishtank
I hear circus music every time I read a story about TEPCO
The boys should not be trusted with nuclear anything
This is what happens when all the smart people stay well away.
This suggestion had some small merit:
We should send the NSA employees over to work on the dangerous reactor cleanup
But it would probably have been better said like this:
We should send all those fucking smart-arse slashdotters over to work on the dangerous reactor cleanup.
I agree it was an accidental side-effect of new technology rather than any committment by the US government. Sadly environmentalism is so polticized that many groups refuse to celebrate this achievement. Got to keep developing alternative technologies for when this one runs out.
I think we are cutting emissions and will get to that target before too long. But maybe not this year and already too late to be in compliance. One big advantage that we've got for ourselves is that we can lay the liability for climate damage on China now. As with an auto collision, the person with their foot in the brake is less at fault than the one with their foot on the gas. We've found some safe harbor from the coming storm of blame. I think we should be putting tariffs of imports from China to cover increased flood and crop insurance payouts domestically and to cover emergency assistance in the Philippines.
"Japan, one of the world's top polluters..."
Says the country that has people so fat they need motorized scooters to shuffle them from the big box retail to their ford excursions.
Shouldn't you be invading some country for their precious right about now?