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

Nuclear energy reduces greenhouse emissions

[tlambert]

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?

Re:Nuclear energy reduces greenhouse emissions

[aliquis]

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

Re:Nuclear energy reduces greenhouse emissions

[FlyHelicopters]

It would help if it wasn't a 40 year old reactor design.

Often missed when talking about nuclear reactors among the general media is that most are old and few new designs have been built.

We have newer, safer, designs. We should, quite frankly, scrap the 40 year old reactors and replace them all with something much newer and much safer.

And yes, hire people who know what they are doing.

Re:Nuclear energy reduces greenhouse emissions

[khallow]

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 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 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).

So where is this alleged evidence of incompetence?

Re:Nuclear energy reduces greenhouse emissions

[AK Marc]

How would you know if something was successfully suppressed, given that the definition of "successful" includes those who use bullshit assertions themselves while attempting to label others statements as such?

Why is it the government is incompetent at everything it does, but is still suspected of pulling off (or being able to pull off) the most fanciful of conspiracy theories?

Haven't the Japanese went through enough hell?

[anubi]

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.

Carbon politics

[Tailhook]

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.

Re:Ah, the nuclear boogeyman rears its ugly head.

[thej1nx]

Get off your high-horse!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions#List_of_countries_by_2012_emissions_estimates

Why exactly have US and China managed to stay on top of the list continuously for past few years, without managing to act the least bit "responsible"? Mod me troll or flamebait if you want to, but Japan even on per-capita basis is lower on list than most other countries. If US and Chinese politicians are willing to sit on their asses and screw the world, why this special onus of "responsibility" on Japan? USA could have done better, and should have so long ago. But US government was more busy trying to convince everyone that global-warming was a "myth" and attempting to argue that it was better to kill the planet than "harm the economy". When we go painting Japan as "one of the world's top polluters", let us remember to name and shame the top two or three as well.

Re:LDP setting stage to restart reactors

[AmiMoJo]

Japan has enough off-shore wind to power the entire country at all times, if enough turbines were build. Of course no-one is suggesting that as there would be other issues, but off-shore wind is a massive resource for Japan. In case you were wondering, the Kamisu offshore wind farm was not damaged by the tsunami despite being hit by it directly.

Offshore wind can provide base load. As long as it is distributed over a wide geographical area you can guarantee a certain amount of generation at any time.

Japan doubled its solar output this year alone. There is a vast amount of untapped energy there, and increasingly it is being paired with battery packs so that the energy can be used at night.

Energy efficiency is also a big deal. There are lots of new technologies, like LED lights that automatically set their brightness to maintain a constant ambient level in an office. Blinds that automatically rotate their blades to reflect as much light and heat into the building as possible are also becoming more common.

the plant designed for magnitude 7 took a hit from magnitude 9 which is a hundred times stronger and still survived it with no problems.

Actually no, it was damaged by the earthquake which was considerably weaker than magnitude 9 by the time it reached Fukushima. It wasn't known at the time due to the tsunami damage and radioactive leaks making inspection impossible, but some of the emergency cooling systems were damaged by the earthquake and wouldn't have worked even if the tsunami hadn't arrived. How well the plant could have survived that damage depends on what the operators did, so not good odds.

Fault lines have been discovered right under some reactors using new technology to locate them which was not available when the plants were first built. It is doubtful that any design could safely survive so much lateral force or ground liquification.