Every once in a while though, there comes a time where in good conscious, I feel like I need to speak up about an issue, and unfortunately I feel like the movement to keep all of Japan's nuclear power plants permanently off right now is one of them. I strongly feel that in addition to the economics of it, this is environmentally a really bad idea and here is why.
Before Japan shut off all of its nuclear power plants for stress testing, Japan's power make up was 60% thermal (coal, oil, gas), 29% nuclear, and 1% everything else. (Most of that 1% being solar).
With Japan's nuclear reactors off and with no nationwide infrastructure for anything else, that necessarily bumps the amount of thermal energy consumption up to 99%. Not only is this bad in terms of the obvious immediate environmental reasons (higher rates of lung cancer, asthma, smog), economic reasons, (whole towns full of people losing their jobs, Japan's debt skyrocketing due to importation costs, etc) most importantly, I think this is a major step in the wrong direction in terms curtailing Japan's (and consequently, the world's) emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Now, Im not saying Im a fan of nuclear energy either. Personally, I fully support the idea of Japan transitioning out of nuclear energy by 2040. There's just too many earthquakes here for it, and personally I don't like the idea of having to contain the waste for over 10,000 years anywhere. Last I checked, that's 5 times the length of all of recorded human history. Hell, the continents may not even be in the same place by then.
Now if the world was in better shape than it is right now, leaving them all off might be doable, but for all intensive purposes, the Kyoto Protocol was a failure. The US, the #1 carbon emitter in the world at the time, refused to even take part it and China (now #1) and India (#3) were exempt because they were still developing. Such was also the case with Korea, and the rest of the BRICS crew.
Canada and Austrailia, while they committed to it, failed to meet their targets. Only the EU, and a few other countries are on point to hit their targets and up until the reactors were turned off, Japan was one of them.
Now, one can argue that this is good reason to build a nationwide clean energy system for Japan, and I completely agree with them, but the fact of the matter is, a safe, efficient and effective system of that magnitude will take years to design, and build and the dangers of Global Warming are quite literally, right around the corner.
For those living here in Tokyo, think of the Tokyo Skytree. Not counting how long it took to design, just the construction alone took 4 years, and cost $803 million dollars. That's one building. Now imagine the complexity of building a nationwide infrastructure that has to power the homes of over 120 million people at least as well as the current system. Thats a massive, massive undertaking, and realistically even doing it within 2 decades will be difficult.
While Japan does have effective solar energy technology, (and thats been proposed as the most likely replacement for nuclear) the current technology is also extremely expensive for the amount of electricity it generates. (For the home units out there, the amount of electricity they produce is so small that it takes 20-30 years of regular use to recoup the $10,000-a-set cost of installation), and having to build a nationwide grid of these things, while also having to pay the extra $100 million dollars per day for the extra 4.5 million barrels of oil the country will be using daily for the next 30 some years sounds like economic suicide.
The fact of the matter is, I'm not a fan of nuclear energy myself. Even with advances in the modular pebble-bed reactor system, I think nuclear energy is still not the best option we have. As such, I am absolutely all for moving forward with the current proposal for Japan transitioning out of it by 2040. The key word here however is transitioning. Temporarily having the reactors shut off while they are being tested, and/or strengthened is one thing, and a necessary thing at that. However keeping them all offline for the 2 or 3 decades it will take to rebuild a replacement system is another. It isn't just a bad idea for Japan, but for everyone else in the world as well.
With the failure of the 2008-2012 Kyoto protocol, (and the fact that at present, there is nothing out there to replace it) global warming is a much more clear and present threat than the chances of the perfect storm of events that caused Fukushima to repeat. Particularly since the laws have already been changed, much stronger control regulations on nuclear energy are already being adopted, and all of the current plants are being stress tested. As one of the people who went up to Fukushima to volunteer after the incident myself, I can understand that people have feelings of anger and fear towards nuclear energy, and its industry here. But as we have seen historically time and time again (most recently in Lybia) anger and fear are never good things to base our decisions on. I'm all for a cleaner tomorrow, but if we wanna get through today, I think we need to turn the damn things back on.
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2 comments:
Well written, well thought out. You're closer to the issue there in Japan - What proposals, if any, have been adopted in the way of transitioning off nuclear towards (presumably solar)? Is there a time table yet?
Well written, well thought out. You're closer to the issue there in Japan - What proposals, if any, have been adopted in the way of transitioning off nuclear towards (presumably solar)? Is there a time table yet?
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