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."

Comments

Re:LDP setting stage to restart reactors

[nojayuk]

A few corrections:

Fukushima Daiichi took a magnitude 7+ Richter hit from the Great Tohoku earthquake, it was magnitude 9 at the epicentre out at sea. The plant's buildings got through that shock pretty well though (there may have been some damage to some internal equipment in the reactor buildings, it's too difficult to inspect them properly at the moment). The reactors at Onagawa further up the coast and closer to the epicentre rode out the earthquake and tsunami safely with no problems.

The tsunami killed about 20,000 people, not 30,000. Nearly all of them died because the towns and cities along the Tohoku coast weren't as well protected from the tsunami as the Fukushima Daiichi plant and other nuclear plants like Onagawa were.

Japan is currently burning mostly natural gas for its electricity generating needs. It has to import all of its fossil fuels and NG is as easy to transport and handle as coal and burns a lot cleaner. It's still releasing a lot of CO2 and causing an increase in smog and air pollution. Efforts are being made to bring about a dozen reactors back online this winter, whether that happens or not is in the lap of the gods.

Re:Nuclear energy reduces greenhouse emissions

[MrKaos]

One important thing would had been competent people handling the plant.

This has never been shown to be an actual problem at Fukushima. I've complained about this attitude since shortly after the disaster happened. Where's the evidence that TEPCO acted incompetently? Instead, I see now as I did back when, that TEPCO recovered well from a huge disaster.

The evidence to the contrary has been examined by appropriately legislated independent Japanese bodies. You just refuse to recognize it as such, your complaints are, therefore, irrelevant.

The Fukushima plant was exposed due to one of the largest earthquakes of modern history to conditions beyond its design specifications and it behaved as intended with a contained meltdown of several reactors.

TEPCO re-rated the plant to 600Gal, the plant was only ever exposed to 150Gal during the Earthquake, so clearly this is an incorrect statement.

TEPCO then acted to prevent the situation from getting worse. They've since expended considerable effort to clean up their mess and take responsibility for their actions (which includes compensating those who have been harmed by the Fukushima accident).

Your posts come across as if you are you an apologist for TEPCO or the Nuclear industry. Are you in any way related to, paid for by or sponsored in any way by the Nuclear industry or TEPCO in a professional or other capacity?

So where is this alleged evidence of incompetence?

I ask again. Do you have evidence of incompetence?

Yes. The answers you seek are contained in the official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission prepared for the The National Parliment (Diet) of Japan, which cites (amongst others);

• a multitude of errors and willful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11
• serious deficiencies in the response to the accident by TEPCO, regulators and the government
• TEPCO must undergo dramatic corporate reform, including governance and risk management and information disclosure—with safety as the sole priority.

The most telling citation I can provide you from the official report is how the nuclear industry managed to avoid absorbing the critical lessons learned from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. I'm sure you've sen that before.