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."
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.