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Japan To Restart Nuclear Power Tomorrow After Energy Prices Soar
An anonymous reader writes: After the Fukushima meltdown, all of Japan's nuclear power plants were shut down, the last in late 2013. This week the government plans on starting up reactor No.1 at the Sendai nuclear power plant. Energy prices have risen 30% since 2011, and it is hoped that the plant will soon be producing a surplus of electricity. Not everyone is happy about the plant restarting. This weekend, about 2,000 protesters marched around the plant and voiced their opposition. "Past arguments that nuclear plants were safe and nuclear energy was cheap were all shown to be lies," said writer Satoshi Kamata, one of the demonstration organizers. "Kyushu Electric is not qualified to resume operations because it has not completed an anti-quake structure to oversee a possible accident as well as a venting facility."
Gozilla breathes a sigh or relief... Nuclear power, sweet, lifegiving nuclear power!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
From the article: "has built stronger, higher tsunami walls near the new plant" and "Regardless, the 31-year old reactor"
It's sad that 31 years old counts as 'new'.
Consider that if they had had some really new nuclear plants that Fukushima probably would have already been shut down.
I don't read AC A human right
It should've been obvious to everyone involved that shutting down all the nuclear reactors in Japan as a reaction to the Fukushima meltdown with absolutely no replacement strategy wasn't a sustainable option.
Price increases, in and of themselves, are NOT a sign of inflation.
Essentially, inflation is an increase in the money supply not supported by a corresponding increase in "stuff you can spend money on".
While electricity certainly qualifies as "stuff you can spend money on", nothing that can be done to the supply of electricity signifies inflation in and of itself.
Remember, while price increases may be a sign of inflation, price increases are not necessarily a result of inflation. Sometimes it's just more demand than supply....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The other way to look at it is if Fukushima had been on the West coast we wouldn't be talking about it at all and it would never have been damaged by the Tsunami.
All power generation systems comes with some kind of risks. As a species we have been using nuclear all around the world for over 50 years and there are around 450ish plants with only 2 accidents of major note. In both instances we have learned what to look for and how to defend against those and similar issues in the future.
One of the huge risks on other energy sources that is a major reason why Japan will have a nuclear energy sector for the foreseeable future is it is the only reasonably independent energy source available to it which other countries can't take away easily. Japan has no major fossil fuel reserves so must import gas, coal etc. putting it at risk to other countries for its energy supply.
The same can be seen in their food production. Japan intensively farms its land and supports / protects its farmers. This is so that in the event of a conflict they retain the ability to feed themselves without imports.
Wind is great, solar is great, hydro is great but I'm not convinced there is enough capacity, built or build-able, in those sources for Japan to move away from nuclear at this stage.
I didn't know the event so just did a quick read. From what I can see the other cooling towers were more than capable of handling the heat load and the plant was throttled to 50% until the cooling tower was repaired. I couldn't find anything that referred to discharges into the river causing ecological damage, happy to read if you have something. Also it looks like it was a failure of a timber support not metal.
That said cooling towers are not specific to nuclear power stations. They are used by all heat based generation systems to the impact would have been identical at a coal or gas plant.