Nobuo Tanaka's hair is on fire. The immediate past executive director of the International Energy Agency is on a mission attempting to alert officials in the United States, Japan, Europe, China and elsewhere that post-Fukushima Japan may be approaching an energy death spiral.
Tanaka's argument is mathematical at its core. He argues that if Japan does not find a way to 'turn on' its now shuttered nuclear energy reactors, not only will Japan's already sluggish economic condition be crushed with much larger oil and gas imports from Russia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East -- but because of the costs and risk uncertainty -- Japan's powerful manufacturing base may begin pulling out of the world's third largest economy. In a morning meeting with me last week, Nobuo Tanaka said that if Japan didn't get its domestic energy production back on line soon, Japan would experience serious 'deindustrialization.'
Tanaka explained that at current levels, Japan consumes about 5 million barrels of oil a day. Without domestically produced nuclear energy -- for which Japan has stockpiled for decades the world's largest non-weaponized highly processed plutonium reserves -- Japan falls about 10 percent or half a million barrels of oil short of what it must have. 
Japan has 54 nuclear energy reactors -- only one of which is running at the moment and both of which are scheduled for regular check ups and will shut down either late this month or in early May 2012. As regular maintenance has required shutting down plant after plant, none of Japan's governors has allowed the nuclear energy plants to be returned to operation.
On top of the post-Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, global tensions with Iran are threatening Japan's dependence on Iranian oil exports, which Japan's share amounts to about 300,000 barrels a day.
This makes Japan's current potential daily energy deficit about 800,000 barrels per day.
Tanaka, who after leaving the International Energy Agency is biding his time now as Global Associate for Energy Security and Sustainability at Japan's Institute of Energy Economics, acknowledges that the Saudis have offered Japan, Europe and others who are jittery about the growing tensions with Iran more of its own domestic capacity, which most put at about 2 million barrels a day. Tanaka says the problem is that that's just not enough to manage global shortfalls if there is a strike on Iran and oil flows are interrupted -- and he believes that the Saudis will favor European needs over Japan's.
On top of the gloom about nuclear energy supply doldrums in Japan and the hard consequences of tensions with Iran, there is a third area of concern Tanaka has: the weather. He said that if Japan has a very hot summer -- which some are projecting -- Japan will run another 10 percent short of supplies on top of the shortages it already projects.
But even all this is not the end of the squeeze.
Japan's other partial energy option is the importation of liquified natural gas (LNG) -- which it imports from Malaysia, Brunei, Qatar, UAE, Indonesia and Australia. Japan needs to further boost imports if it can but prices for LNG are surging. The combined energy deficit Japan is facing would require a net increase, according to Tanaka, of LNG and oil that would run about $40 billion a year -- wiping out completely Japan's trade surpluses and more.
In meetings hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies this past week, Nobuo Tanaka made an appeal for the U.S. to export some of its cheap LNG supply to Japan. The price of LNG in Japan is currently four times the price in the United States.
However, House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Edward Markey has over the last several months been agitating in speeches and correspondence with Energy Secretary for the U.S. to restrict LNG exports -- thus keeping prices low in the United States and leaving key strategic allies like Japan vulnerable to surging global LNG prices and to the geostrategic flirtations from Russia. Tanaka said that with Russia, about which the U.S. has increasing concerns about its mercantilist global energy behavior, Japan may be forced to build new grid and pipeline infrastructure with Russia given the cold shoulder the U.S. is thus far showing Japan.
Tanaka told me that one high-ranking Chinese official recently approached him asking if and when Japan would turn its nuclear reactors back on -- as Japan's massive energy needs now were disrupting supply patterns and costs and could affect China's energy investment picture if Japan's needs were to become structurally permanent.
To some degree, without the Pulitzer and best-selling energy reality books to his name, Nobuo Tanaka is the Daniel Yergin of Japan and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the patterns and vectors of energy production and consumption by all the major global energy actors. His warnings matter -- and yet Japan's political leaders, he believes, have not honestly talked with the Japanese public about the hard choices it faces and a possible economic unraveling that comes with the status quo national nuclear energy allergy.
Tanaka thinks that the U.S. could play a constructive role in helping Japan weather its challenges -- not just in exporting cheaper LNG but in helping bridge the 'trust gap' between Japanese citizens and their government.
The former senior Japan Ministry of Economy Trade & Industry official joked that the only place in the world where an elected legislature may be less popular with its citizens than the U.S. Congress is Japan -- where government incompetence and false statements made during and after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant disasters have collapsed Japanese trust in their officials. And trust wasn't high before these incidents.
Tanaka realizes that there is a legitimate debate to be had about the safety and management of Japan's nuclear energy facilities and that standards need to be improved and a national conversation has to take place -- but that a total rejection of nuclear energy will send Japan over a cliff as deindustrialization is triggered by energy shocks.
One solution he thinks is for former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners and other U.S.-based, respected nuclear energy experts form an ad hoc commission designed to consult with the Japanese nuclear energy industry and political authorities -- and to create what would be a bilateral, or perhaps even an international, peer review structure. This might allow Japanese citizens to possibly fasten their trust in the international Commission even if doubtful about the solvency of their own business, political, and energy leaders.
It's an interesting
proposal -- one that gets to the core issue of trust and lurking uncertainties about nuclear energy in Japan. Some critics could argue that creating such a U.S.-Japan or international commission would allow Japan to push this needed debate under the rug and cover up dangers lurking in Japan's energy system.
Maybe so -- but it also seems that Nobuo Tanaka could be right that Japan's economic future further unravels if it doesn't figure out some way to get safe nuclear energy
back online.
Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons.
Follow Steve Clemons on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SCClemons
If the government can assure the people that these steps have been taken then there will be less resistance to restarting the nuclear power plants. But, if they leave things as they are, it has already been proven to not be good enough.
This is interesting because by these criteria Denver, Colorado and other high altitude rocky mountain cities and towns should be evacuated as they all have background radiation levels of around 50 millisieverts per year or more.
A pro nuclear piece based on need and cost of imports does not make nuclear safe.
Until they figure out how much the cleanup at Fukushima will cost, they can't even state how expensive their risk taking would be.
The claim that energy imports are more expensive is not substantiated until there is a prictag on the recent meltdowns.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-04/fukushima-cleanup-bill-14b-over-30-years-ministry.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/business/global/after-fukushima-disaster-a-confused-effort-at-cleanup.html
TEPCO has already seen a bailout in excess of ¥ 11 trillion yen (or USD $137 billion). Are they going to clean up the radiation in the mountains, build an earthquake proof sarcophagus at the site, improve the sea wall so reactors and spent fuel pools are protected from tsunamis? Too many unknowns … and government estimates of initial costs should not be taken as full accounting for long term costs.
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-24/tepco-bailout-largest-in-japan-since-rescue-of-banking-industry
I think it means pre disaster levels of consumption. If it was referring to pre disaster levels of consumption then their conservation efforts thus far prove my point. They just need to implement it for the long term.
The article, being a polemic on the absolute certain to restart reactors, does not even mention the possibility of using less.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has concluded its mandatory hearing on the South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) and Santee Cooper application for two Combined Licenses (COL) at the Summer site in South Carolina. In a 4-1 vote the Commission found the NRC staff’s review adequate to make the necessary regulatory safety and environmental findings, clearing the way for the NRC’s Office of New Reactors (NRO) to issue the COLs."
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2012/12-034.pdf
It's the same passive cooling design that makes the AP1000 have incredibly low seismic ratings. It has a six million pound water tank on the roof of the reactor. The fact that Westinghouse submitted flawed information for it's approval to the NRC doesn't help matters any.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/business/energy-environment/21nuke.html
The industry has clearly learned it's lessons from TMI. When faced with external public pressure and calls for greater safety and oversight, push forward rather than pull back. The only problem is how close they can get to the cliff edge before they fall over.
http://atomicinsights.com/2011/06/nrc-wavering-on-ap1000-decision-under-pressure-by-foe.html
Great news for the UK.
Two out of the six proposed nuclear reactors have been cancelled.
Japan is a very creative place. They'll show the rest of us how to start turning away from industrial capitalism while doing very, very well. At least, I hope so.
You mean go back to a Medieval agrarian economy? There are no magical undiscovered ways around the fundamental physical fact that our way of life, our very civilization, requires lots of energy. Unlike most natural resources energy is essentially unlimited. We don't have to conserve energy if we get if from the right technologies, like nuclear power.
There are no magic bullets and no perfect energy resources, hence we'd be wise to use all energy sources with careful purpose and not take anything for granted. We can write endless checks to the future, but at some point the bill is going to come due.
It's a long, exhausting subject to explain (and it isn't as though I've been clear about this for a long time either.) , but we don't have to give up the many advances brought about by each successive stage of life. Serfdom had its innovations and benefits. Capitalism was initially a great social and economic improvement over serfdom. But (again, IMO) capitalism has run its course and needs to be replaced by something more democratic and earth-friendly.
Capitalism depends on externalizing costs and internalizing benefits. It also depends on limitless growth. But you can't have limitless growth on a finite planet. As population increases and resources get scarce there is a violent ongoing breakdown of our system. This does not only apply to energy, but to land, water, species, etc. We are experience staggering loss of biodiversity, for instance.
So we have to power down, grow our own food, build smarter, be more cooperative. Japan has great cultural and technical sophistication, and could be the best industrial country to lead us into a better-thought-out and evolved way of living.
Human's have decided to disregard this "natural" shielding, open up the earth like a present on Christmas morning, and play with the stuff like there is no tomorrow or consequences for our actions. We're left with giant holes in the ground, contaminated freshwater aquifers, stock-piles of earth obliterating weapons, giant kettles of boiling water in earthquake and tsunami zones, and a trail of waste that nobody knows what to do with (so we keep it in swimming pools).
Someone has to scratch their head and wonder at the incredible hubris and folly of it all.
So before anymore fairy tale stories of "natural" shielding, you'd best look at your own incredible hubris in your making things up and believing they're true.
Google Oklo natural reactor.
Oh please. Accept ''natural'' radiation? The natural sources being human beings, bananas, energy drinks, radon gas...
Bananas? Up to you, along with the energy drinks.
Radon gas? Don't live/ work over granite, ventilate and get a detector.
Your doctor? Don't accept random medical and dental x-rays to pad the practioners bill.
Remember when x-ray machines were all the rage in shoe stores? Kids could actually see how much growing room they had in their new shoes, but then they starting going in to try the machines all the time, it was so cool? Or when x-raying pregnant women wasn't a problem? Seen as folly now.
Man-made radiation? Entirely different. The ability to lay waste to entire regions and for radiation to traverse the entire globe.
The entire difference, Shams, is exactly as you said.
Natural.
Or man-made.
I certainly differentiate, and I'm not alone.
I would not have the choice of nuclear reactors forced on me by corrupt, inept, lying agandas.
I don't think a panel of industry-captured experts from overseas joining local industry-captured experts is going to fill the populace with confidence. or turn their revulsion into approval.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/turning-point-at-chernobyl
The risks of nuclear are indeed very high, and should not be minimized even for a very resilient and diversified global economy as Japan. Energy diversification and economic diversification should go hand in hand, or the development of energy resources that manifest a great deal less catastrophic risk than nuclear power.
It didn't change his plans; it just gave him more leverage for reform.
Further, Japan's National Debt to GDP now greatly exceeds 200% & they are simply delaying their entry into a Depression. Europe & the US shall either be following them or leading them into the financial abyss.
If Toyota can't make manufacturing work in Japan, then Chrysler certainly won't.