Japan to maximize nuclear power in clean-energy push as electricity demand grows

And before someone starts arguing that nuclear power is dangerous, remember the death troll from radiation at Fukushima was ONE. That was one worker whose cancer death in 2018 was put down to exposure while measuring radiation levels.

Chernobyl enters the room

Mr Kipling

And before someone starts arguing that nuclear power is dangerous, remember the death troll from radiation at Fukushima was ONE. That was one worker whose cancer death in 2018 was put down to exposure while measuring radiation levels.

It's not only about deaths from radiation. There was the massive evacuation of 150,000 nuclear refugees most of whom lost their properties, personal belongings, their communities, and their business.

Many have been unable to return to their former homes.

There is the massive costs of the nuclear disaster estimated by experts to cost more than ¥100 trillion before it is over.

There is a massive problem with the nuclear waste. The spent fuel rods will need tens of thousands of years of storage. The reprocessing plant in Aomori The Rokkasho Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Facility is at maximum storage capacity.

There is the highly radiated waste from decommissioning the plant and from a further 20 reactors that will be decommissioned.

Remember the slogan that hung across the road in the town next to the nuclear plant?

"Safe, clean, and Cheap."

It was taken down years ago.

The amount of power from nuclear energy is limited by the fact there are only 20 reactors considered safe to run. Could produce 15-20% of power.

TEPCO carries the can for the current nuclear energy crisis.

More than 2,000 people died related to the disaster, including deaths from suicide, stress, and interruption of medical care.

Mr Kipling

The Nuclear energy is safe when it's handle properly. In Fukushima and Chernobyl, it was handle by corrupt and greedy bigots. So technically, the energy itself is safe, the problem is that you cannot have a 100% safe energy if human are the weak link.

The Chernobyl nuclear had nothing to do with "greedy bigots". It was a poorly built Soviet plant. The Fukushima plant disaster was "Man-made" due to the lack of safety features to safeguard the plant. Profit before safety.

Not sure, but I think that all of the Japanese nuclear plants are susceptible to the same catastrophic failure that occurred at Fukushima; a massive tidal wave can take the cooling system off-line, and a melt down inevitably follows. It would be monstrously expensive, but the coastal nuclear power plants need to be protected from once-in-a-century tidal waves, and that probably means relocating them to higher ground.

With the right safety features the Fukushima plant would have survived the earthquake and tsunami and there would have been no nuclear meltdowns.

RE; Not sure, but I think that all of the Japanese nuclear plants are susceptible to the same catastrophic failure that occurred at Fukushima; a massive tidal wave can take the cooling system off-line, and a melt down inevitably follows.

The Onagawa plant on the Oshika peninsula here in Miyagi is why that statement is wrong.

From Wiki. The March 11 earthquake shifted Oshika Peninsula by 5.3 m (17 ft) towards the epicenter and lowered it by 1.2 m (3.9 ft), according to the Geospatial Information Authority in Tsukuba.

Even under those extreme circumstances the reactor safely shut down with no real damage, radiation discharge , human injury or (as mentioned) mass evacuation.

This was a modern construction that was very different from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Judging all nuclear facilities in Japan on the Fukushima disaster is unscientific.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshika_Peninsula

I have been reading from the most ardent experts and scientists, reliable secure renewable efficient dependable energy policy, net zero fossil free, requires nuclear energy expansion.

The "net zero fossil free" option could be some fifty plus years away, the technology simply at present or at least the foreseeable future is out of our grasp.

The costs are eye watering.

Successful Cold Shutdown of Onagawa: The Closest Nuclear Power Station to the March 11, 2011, Epicenter

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.13182/NT13-61

The Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan restarted its second unit on October 29, 2024, after being mothballed following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami:

If nuclear power is 'clean' then the Japanese government won't mind storing the waste in the back gardens of their family estates.

The problem for Japan is nuclear energy, geologically, is pandora box with the lid half off.

as electricity demand grows

So with falling population, has anyone in charge wondered why energy consumption is growing?

Effective energy policies need to consider efficiency and energy reduction.

Energy is being wasted wherever you look.

The electricity demand for 2013-2022 has remained constant.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/750101/japan-electricity-demand/#:~:text=In%20the%20fiscal%20year%202022,hours%20in%20fiscal%20year%202013.

The decision to evacuate the people from the places around the nuclear disaster was the right one because the extent of the nuclear disaster was unknown. There are still many areas with high levels of radiation. The country got lucky because 90% of the released radiation blew out to sea. What if it had not? Tokyo would have been evacuated. 27 million people.

Some residents outside the evacuation-designated zones chose to evacuate voluntarily for a variety of reasons, including concerns about radiation.

So-called green energy is intermittent energy. It must have a reliable back-up power source to have the slightest chance of being usable. German industry has been tanking since quitting nuclear and reducing coal, but at least they can buy some power from neighboring France. Who is Japan going to buy power from when the crash comes here?

If anybody wants to read up on a country gong "all in" on nuclear, this article has a good summary of France's nuclear program:

Nuclear power in France - Wikipedia

Japan needs an energy education before it's mimicry of Western energy policies eviscerates it's energy security.

https://x.com/BjornLomborg/status/1872276210392134136

At least, nuclear plants in Japan are never "clean-energy".

Those constructions had already destructed the nature of seacoast, spend huge resources. Besides, nuclear disaster is contaminating the nature and people, victimized the lives including US navy crews who participated "operation Tomodachi" 2011.

Moreover, LDP government plot to spread huge amount of radioactive contaminated soils to nationwide despite decontaminated and accumulated because unsafe on the pretext of boosting reconstruction.

Japanese nuclear policy always accompanies deception, it just deceive public by plausible pretext to benefit major power corporations who benefit LDP with political contribution.

Fukushima Dai'ichi was totally fine. All the director of the facility had to do on 3/11 was to order the flood of the reactor with seawater to stop the meltdown. He refused to do so out of fear of repercussions of rendering the reactor permanently inoperable. His hesitancy to choose Japan over his own career screwed the nation in the worst possible way. Whether a corporate culture failure or a personal failure, there was a way to prevent the accident and it was not taken. He destroyed his country and his career in one act of extreme cowardice.

ifd66Today 09:01 pm JST

So with falling population, has anyone in charge wondered why energy consumption is growing?

Data centers, EVs, general trend of electrification in place of things like gas, etc.

In Ireland, for example, data centers now account for a staggering 21% of power consumption.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/07/23/electricity-consumption-by-data-centres-rises-to-21-eclipsing-urban-households/

The_BeagleToday 11:07 pm JST

All the director of the facility had to do on 3/11 was to order the flood the reactor with seawater to stop the meltdown. He refused to do so out of fear of repercussions of rendering the reactor permanently inoperable. His hesitancy to choose Japan over his own career screwed the nation in the worst possible way.

Who are you talking about? The superintendent of Fukushima Daiichi was Yoshida Masao, and he did use seawater to cool the reactors, ignoring the orders not to from head office.

His actions -- choosing Japan and nuclear safety over his career -- almost certainly prevented a worse disaster, and we all have him to thank.

https://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00093/

(And no, his cancer apparently wasn't related to the disaster.)

Freshwater or Seawater

Yoshida Testimony

http://www.asahi.com/special/yoshida_report/en/2-1.html

a singular, but avoidable incident. tepco management and japanese government oversight failed.

the nuclear reactors didn’t fail. it was the human failure to upgrade and locate the backup generating to higher ground right behind the plant.

nuclear power isn’t to blame. human complacency and decisions made by spreadsheet is to blame.

Nuclear power Japan has come back to life and hitched a ride on the politics of energy and the Green wave, for better or for worse, despite them just finally managing to get to the fuel rods at Fukushima ( 2011! ) only recently. You never hear much of a public debate here on the energy mix either. I just hope that they learned the mistakes from that horrible day where the genie was let loose and only barely contained.

The tight lipped nature of the industry and its backers didn’t help either. Transparency and competency onegaishimasu!

No, they have learned nothing from the meltdown at Fukushima.

Having been in Japan long enough to experience a major earthquake then I know that nuclear power has no place in Japan.

Does that mean they will extend the life span of the 60 year old reactors again? Or, do they intend to build new reactors to use modern tech and modern fuel to achieve this? This is just something to say to the reporters to feed the masses. It's easy to sell to the reporters but Japan does not have the resources (or the money) to build new reactors. The only way to achieve this is to extend the lives of the existing reactors again. They'll be relying on 50+ year old technology. How wonderful!

Japan to maximize nuclear power in clean-energy push

Finally sensible news! However, they should start building new Gen III reactors, instead of just fixing the old Gen II instalatiions. There are many new and extremely safe designs out there. I.e. Korea operates CANDU reactors, why does Japan not?

South Korea operates CANDU reactors at the Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant (WNPG): 

The plant has four CANDU-type pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs):

The No1 reactor is permanently shut down.

Output 1.6 GW.

Type Gen 111 reactors are not commercially available.

Unlikely new reactors will be built in Japan.

wallace

Type Gen 111 reactors are not commercially available.

Fact check: There is a number of commercially available Gen III reactor designs out there. Including the latest version of CANDU. Maybe you were thinking about Gen IV.

Unlikely new reactors will be built in Japan.

I hope you are wrong.

"A government-commissioned panel of experts"

That is, equal to farce. One of typical deceptions that LDP regime who want to guide convenient conclusion had repeated.

They only insist necessity of atomic power, distract eyes from unmeasurable risk that continue to use superannuated nuclear plants at Japan where massive natural disaster frequently occur.

There are not many Gen 111 reactors in operation. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant has two reactors 6&7.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Japan is located near a fault line. It was built on firm ground and has underground elements to stabilize it. However, the plant was not designed to withstand earthquakes greater than magnitude 6.5. It has been shut down since 2011.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Japan is expected to restart in October 2024. The restart of Unit 7 is part of a broader effort to bring five reactors nationwide back into operation by 2025. We are waiting for local consent.

wallace

There are not many Gen 111 reactors in operation. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant has two reactors 6&7.

I have never seen Kashiwazaki-Kariwa classified as Gen III. What is your source?

I have never seen Kashiwazaki-Kariwa classified as Gen III. What is your source?

Reactors 6&7

Check it out yourself.

wallace

Reactors 6&7

Check it out yourself.

Where did you read that they are a Gen III design? Got a link?

Where did you read that they are a Gen III design? Got a link?

I am not here to do searches for you.

The first Generation III reactors to begin operation were Kashiwazaki 6 and 7 advanced boiling water reactors (ABWRs) in 1996 and 1997.

wallace

I am not here to do searches for you.

The first Generation III reactors to begin operation were Kashiwazaki 6 and 7 advanced boiling water reactors (ABWRs) in 1996 and 1997.

LOL, but you ARE "doing searches for me". I was not asking to repeat your find, I was asking where it came from. There are sources, and there are sources, as you (should) know.

Wallace

Never mind, I see your source is Wikipedia. Yes, very trusted that one. LOL.

Zaphod

Wallace

> Never mind, I see your source is Wikipedia. Yes, very trusted that one. LOL.

Just what I would expect from you

Advanced Boiling Water Reactor

The first Generation Ⅲ+ The first Generation Ⅲ+ Reactor in Operation today

https://www.hitachi-hgne.co.jp/en/download/abwr.pdf

Kashiwazaki 6 and 7 advanced boiling water reactors (ABWRs)

Wallace

Congrats for looking further than Wikipedia! However, Hitachi built these things, so naturally Hitachi will put on the best label.

I understand they were all designed as BWRs (i.e. Gen II), but have been heavily modified with additional safety systems, so some people (notably their manufacturer) will call them ABWRs.

However, there is nothing wrong with upgrading the safety, so call them what you want. In any case, Japan needs more Gen III and not more life extensions for Gen II reactors.

You have no idea what sites I visit. I have been commenting on Fukushima and nuclear energy since 2011.

I don't call anything, it is according to others. What's your problem?

Sure, Japan can enjoy prosperity from nuclear power as long as Tokyo will not make the Pacific Ocean their da-kine nuclear radiation waste dump site again.

Thank goodness they’re finally coming to their senses.

I pray we achieve at least 90% nuclear power generation.

for that they’ll have to start building new reactors

people need to learn that radiation is not that big of a risk. It is a small and extremely manageable risk.

all of the worlds nuclear waste fits onto a single football field. its potency diminishes quickly.

if you’ve lived in Japan for any amount of time you’ll know that it’s a risk-averse culture prone to hyper-overreaction. Fukushima is an example of gross mis-management by Japan. Apparently they’ve finally learned from their mistakes. Support nuclear or go back to Stone Age living

Hiro S Nobumasa

Sure, Japan can enjoy prosperity from nuclear power as long as Tokyo will not make the Pacific Ocean their da-kine nuclear radiation waste dump site again.

They never did.

Nuclear is not clean energy

ian

Nuclear is not clean energy

It is cleaner than anything else out there.

wallace

The Chernobyl nuclear had nothing to do with "greedy bigots".

It was the socialist version of "greedy bigots". An all-powerful nomenclature, a system of pushing through bureaucratic schemes without question by taking shortcuts w/o regard to safety, from the design stage to operation. That is what you get in a socialist system where plans from above are everything, and criticism aka "misinformation" is not allowed.

Nuclear is not clean energy

Please support your claim.

The people in the evacuated had their lives uprooted, and in many cases ruined for no reason at all.

After the Fukushima incident, the government had planned to just clean up and move on. It was the public and the press that demanded the unnecessary evacuation and excessive cleanup effort.

The “evidence” was tragically misleading. Given its consequences, I have no problem calling evacuation supporters evil.

Oops:

*evacuated areas