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

[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.

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.

LDP setting stage to restart reactors

[ingulsrud]

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.

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.

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: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.