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."

Comments

And...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Gozilla breathes a sigh or relief... Nuclear power, sweet, lifegiving nuclear power!

It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[Firethorn]

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.

Re:It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[Applehu Akbar]

Japan's newest nukes are of the very latest design, and all of the plants being restarted have passed the latest safety tests, on a date that has been planned for years. No, this is not some panic move "in response to soaring energy prices" as the headline claims.

Re:It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[trout007]

Imagine if the nuts never stopped reactor development? We'd have breeder reactors by now with little waste and much better air.

Re:It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[FranTaylor]

There has to be an acceptable level of imperfection in the human hands that exploit nuclear power generation.

Yeah, that's the ticket, keep telling the nuclear fuel to be more forgiving of stupid humans, that's how we prevent accidents.

Re:It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[Trepidity]

Japan's newest reactors are indeed of a modern design, but the specific plant whose restart is discussed in this article, Sendai, is still a 2nd-generation plant. It's a newer one than Fukushima (1984 vs. 1971), but not a 3rd-generation plant.

Re:It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[ColdWetDog]

Japan's newest nukes are of the very latest design, and all of the plants being restarted have passed the latest safety tests, on a date that has been planned for years. No, this is not some panic move "in response to soaring energy prices" as the headline claims.

No, not really.

"The vast majority of plants under construction around the world, 47 in all, are considered Generation II reactor designs—the same 1970s vintage as Fukushima Daiichi, and without integrated passive safety systems."

Note the last phrase 'without integrated passive safety systems". That is the key. Fukashima required external power to shut itself down safely. Yes, TEPCO could have done things differently - site generators uphill, install a seawall that could actually contain a worst-case-scenario earthquake. Installed a hydrogen vent system. But it didn't. And TEPCO stated for years that the system was safe.

Until you can shut down a reactor all by itself, then it isn't safe.

Re:It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[David_Hart]

There becomes a measurable, yet acceptable level of environmental consequence

That level for nuclear generated electricity would be zero, considering that we have multiple other options available. If we had to choose between whale oil and nuclear, it would be a different story, but face it, between solar, wind, and reduced consumption, we simply don't need to take the risk

Wrong...

Wind and Solar are unpredictable and cannot be stored for peak times. Geothermal and Hydro tend to provide reliable power but do not provide enough supply. Wave power may contribute to this, but they are still working on engineering materials that will last in the ocean and handle the currents. That leaves Coal and Natural Gas, both of which have their own detrimental effects on the environment and risks, some of which are as bad or worse than nuclear. http://motherboard.vice.com/bl...

Modern reactor design is as safe, or safer, than natural gas and coal. Most accidents are occurring at older plants that are near their lifetime. We are in this state because of public fear and the near impossible process of bringing a new reactor online. This has slowed the development and deployment of newer, safer designs.

One of these days, we will learn how to store solar and wind energy. At that time, the other methods would quickly become obsolete. But until then, the sources of energy that we use will carry some form of inherent risk.

Re:It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[quenda]

Hydro? Are you insane?
In 1975, an 18GB hydro-electric dam system in China failed, killing at least 170,000 people. And 11 million made homeless.

Far more in one incident than from Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
Do you really want to take that risk?

And don't get me started on coal ...

Re: It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[WindBourne]

Gen 4 melted salt thorium reactor. In addition, these can use current nuke waste and leave us 5% of the volume that is safe in 200 years. Zero chance if a failure, unless all of the laws of physics suddenly collapse.

Re:It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[Chas]

Solar and Wind are *NOT* "options" for baseline power.

Not with our current grid system.
Not even if we rebuilt into a proper national grid, spec'ed to maximize the solar/wind contributions.

And I wish people would STOP trying to push this sort of bullshit.
Solar and wind currently provide a TINY fraction of the national power load. Scaling up to provide all of it, were it even possible with current tech, would basically leave vast swaths of the country buried under panels or reflectors (in the case of solar thermal). Leaving said tracts of land useless for pretty much anything else.

Nuclear is a 365-day-a-year baseline power solution. And far more energy-dense than any renewables out there.
The main problem is that too many people have been conditioned with "Nookyoolur = BOMZ!" fear and antipathy.
As such, we've seen even simple issues blown COMPLETELY out of proportion. And every and any issue is treated like "the plant blew up and we have thousands of people dead because of it".

There have been approximately 371 deaths in the nuclear power industry since 1950. Most of them being uranium miners.
There have been approximately ZERO civilian deaths.
And most of the overseas casualties have been plant workers in poorly designed/maintained/operated facilities.

That I know of, there's been approximately 3 deaths in the solar industry since the 1970's. All of them during install.
That totally discounts deaths among silica miners, as other industries utilize silica-based products too.

As for "reduced consumption".

You be the first to volunteer to go shiver in a cave in the winter, roast in the desert in the summer and generally never use modern electronics again.

Consumption of power is only ever going to INCREASE in the US. Any efficiencies realized will simply be subsumed in further consumption.

Realistically, what I'd like to see is a modernized grid with a base generation of nuclear fission (for now) with additional load covered renewable resources mated to power storage technology.

This can tide us over while we race to find out if nuclear fusion will become a viable power source.

After that, baseline nuclear fusion augmented by renewables with power storage technology.

Re:It'd be hilareous if not so sad...

[Chas]

Right. You want to use things like Solar and Wind at peak times.

For everything else, there's nuclear.

And you know who's pushing the solar and wind farms the most?

The gas company. Because a lot of these solar and wind facilities being put in are actually:

Solar + Gas backup

Wind + Gas backup

What did they think was going to happen?

[timrod]

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.