Should Japan Restart More Nuclear Power Plants? (thebulletin.org)

Lasrick writes: Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Japan should restart more of its nuclear reactors (the Sendai nuclear plant was restarted in August). The reason is simple, writes Baum: "Japan is now building 45 new coal power plants, but if it turned its nuclear power plants back on... it could cut coal consumption in half. And coal poses more health and climate change dangers than nuclear power."

Comments

Re:Rubbish....

[Mashiki]

Article fails to mention that Germany is also importing massive amounts of power from France, and that the price of electricity in germany is between 0.20 and 0.45c/kWh now from all those renewable sources.

Climate change vs. Nuclear accident

[Roger W Moore]

And Japan lost the use of a LOT of land with one nuclear incident.

...and how much land will they lose if it turns out that burning all that coal causes the climate to warm and sea levels to rise significantly? Whatever they do there is a risk. Either you go with coal and hope the climatologists are wrong or you go with nuclear and hope the engineers have got their act together. Personally I would take the nuclear option since I would bet on skilled professionals being right rather than wrong but either way there is a risk.

Re:Climate change vs. Nuclear accident

[Alypius]

Nope. It is physically impossible for a plant to detonate into a mushroom cloud. Chernobyl was horrific because the engineers deliberately disengaged the safeties and ramped up the power. There have been significant advances in inherently-safe nuclear plants, such as pebble bed and thorium reactors. There are also breeder reactors that effectively "recycle" used fuel. Because of this, I just can't take seriously anyone who doesn't include nuclear as part of a climate-change-related energy policy.

Re:Honestly, Japan's screwed no matter what.

[WalksOnDirt]

Actually, they can still use that land. It's unsuitable for living on, growing food, etc

Over 90% of the affected area is suitable for those uses right now. The radiation in those parts is less than that of Colorado. I don't see people leaving Colorado because of the radiation.