On March 11, 2011, Japan was hit by a massive earthquake -- measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale -- and a tsunami with waves up to 65 feet high, leading to a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. As a result, Japan's 54 nuclear power plants were taken offline for safety checks. The last one was powered down on May 5, 2012.
But in May, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, in the face of overwhelming public opposition, decided to restart Japan's nuclear power plants. Now, a growing movement is protesting the decision.
Weekly demonstrations, with turnout initially numbering in the hundreds, have been taking place on Friday evenings in front of the Prime Minister's office. People show up after work and school. And their numbers have been swelling, reaching into the thousands in recent weeks.
Japan is the third-largest consumer of nuclear energy, after the U.S. and France, and is followed by Russia and Germany. Japan is also the world's third largest economy. Nuclear power plants generate about 30 percent of Japan's energy needs. During the shutdown of its nuclear power plants, utility companies have turned to coal, oil and gas to supply electricity to industries and households.
Additionally, Japan, already the world's biggest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) bought record amounts of LNG last year to replace the nuclear energy.
Last July, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan called for a nuclear phase-out and proposed drawing a new energy strategy that reduces Japan's reliance on nuclear generated electricity. He proposed scrapping plans for 34 new nuclear power plants and questioned whether private companies should run nuclear power plants. Kan also said that Japan should work to increase renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, and recently told the AP that the Fukushima disaster has "turned him into a believer of renewable energy."
Kan was succeeded by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Sept. 2, 2011. In his first speech, delivered that day, Prime Minister Noda -- the fiscally conservative former Minister of Finance -- announced that Japan will continue to phase out nuclear power plants, building neither new plants nor extending the licenses of existing plants.
But he also announced that existing nuclear power plants would be restarted after safety checks.
On May 30, 2012, the Union of Kansai Governments, an organization consisting of representatives from local authorities in the region including Fukui, gave its approval for a restart of the two reactors at the Oi nuclear power plant. The district is on the western coast of Honshu, Japan's main island.
More importantly, the reactors are in Japan's "nuclear alley," which includes 13 of the country's 54 reactors, and supplies the nearby industrial city of Osaka with power.
Nonetheless, most of the local governments are not in favor or a restart. Only two of 11 municipal governments within an 18-miles radius of the plants support a restart, according to a recent survey by Kyodo.
In response to the May 30 decision, up to 1,000 anti-nuclear protestors gathered outside the Prime Minister's office on Friday, June 1, beating drums and chanting against the restart as part of the growing weekly Friday demonstrations. But on June 16, Prime Minister Noda gave final approval to the plans to restart the two reactors at Oi. Although the restart does not need local approval, he sought to rally it in order to secure consensus.
Yet the public remains staunchly opposed to nuclear energy in Japan. Since March, weekly demonstrations have taken place on Fridays at 6pm in front of the Prime Minister's office.
According to Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action, a Japan-based organization working to end nuclear power, "the demonstrations started out with 500, then several thousand and have now even reached 150,000. Each week, they have grown."
The first reactor at the Oi nuclear power plant was restarted on July 9. Thousands of people across Japan marched against the country's nuclear restart.
The second reactor was restarted July 18, and came two days after one of the largest protests against nuclear power in Japan since the Fukushima disaster, as tens of thousands protested in Tokyo.
And on July 20, the weekly demonstration expanded with an additional protest taking place in front of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
The dissent on the issue of nuclear energy is bringing to the fore tensions between the political establishment and public will. Ex-Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who preceded Kan, joined the July 20 rally, saying, "I regret that politics has strayed so far from the people's wishes." Kan resigned last August and was succeeded by Prime Minister Noda.
The turnover also speaks to a crisis in the government, which has seen six ministers in five years and has largely lost the voters' confidence.
On the upside, Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yukio Edano approved the introduction of feed-in-tariffs on June 18, 2012. This system has proven very beneficial in Germany, employing a percentage of energy use fees to subsidize renewable energy.
Japan hopes to ramp up its renewable energy to the point where it constitutes 25 percent to 35 percent of its energy source by 2030. Kazue Suzuki from Greenpeace says, "Japan could easily end its reliance on the nuclear energy. From May 5 to July 5, Japan was nuclear free. No single power plant operated and there were no black outs... Japan is the most ideal country for renewable energy. We have sun. We have wind everywhere. What is missing is the political will."
Last September, together with the European Renewable Energy Council, Greenpeace published the second edition of its report, "The Advanced Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable Energy Outlook for Japan." The document outlines three possible scenarios for Japan's energy future: 1) business as usual; 2) a nuclear phase-out and switch to renewables; and 3) a rapid switch from nuclear reactors, keeping them closed, and a transition to renewables.
"If Japan takes the third outlined pathway, it could generate up to 43 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020," said Greenpeace International's Jan Beránek, who was involved with authoring the report.
Having weathered the worst of its summer heat and humidity with the majority of its nuclear power plants shut down bodes well for Japan's ability to phase out nuclear energy and shift to renewables. But it remains to be seen what the Japanese government will ultimately decide.
The government continues to be under scrutiny and pressure as a result of its handling of the Fukushima disaster and nuclear energy policy. On July 22, reports revealed an investigation into allegations that employees subcontracted by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) were pressured to under-report the level of radiation they detected at the Fukushima Daichii plant. And on July 23, Reuters reported that despite safety tests, Japan's nuclear power plants might not be prepared for another complex catastrophe.
But with the government increasingly in crisis and at odds with the public and with demonstrations rising, it looks like it will have to be the people's voice that forces a shift away from nuclear power.
Tina Gerhardt is an independent journalist and academic who covers international climate negotiations, domestic energy policy and related direct actions. Her work has appeared in Alternet, Grist, The Nation, The Progressive and the Washington Monthly.
Nukes power is trillion dollar million cancer death disasters, million year million cancer deaths waste, and civilization ending proliferation, all for electricity that is more expensive that rooftop pv solar offshore wind or waste bio fuels to back it all up.
Where do you get your made up numbers? Has there been a trillion dollar disaster? Where is the peer reviewed research that shows millions of deaths? Nuclear reactors are being used to burn down blended weapons grade Uranium and soon to burn weapons grade plutonium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOX_fuel this is the opposite of proliferation.
Even advanced nuclear is cheaper than pv solar, offshore wind, and bio fuels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
say they have been stalked by intelligence officials, subjected to
physical and verbal abuse, and received death threats"
India http://www.nirs.org/international/asia/kudankulam2.html
There
have been police harassment, intelligence officers’ stalking,
concocted news reports in the pro-government media, abuse of our
family members, hate mail, death threats and even physical attack.
http://www.theweekendleader.com/Causes/851/nuclear-war.html
“Having
failed in their attempt to use science to convince people about the
safety and justification of using nuclear power, the nuclear lobby
wants to silence all voices that offer a differing view on the matter
of nuclear energy.”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb155/is_1_17/ai_n28885269/pg_2/
U.S.
harassment of nuclear scientists, nuclear plant workers and
grassroots anti-nuclear activists
Helen
caldacotte has had 8 serious death threats.
http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/review.cfm?review_id=4650
Rosalie
Bertell smear and death threats.
The
situation in Port Hope has become so severe that there have been
death threats against those opposed to the nuclear industry, said
W-FIVE reporter Paula Todd, and Mayor Thompson agreed.
http://www.waterkeeper.ca/2008/11/11/w-five-focuses-on-different-views-of-llrw-issue/
http://vtdigger.org/2012/07/27/vermont-yankee-employees-allow-water-to-drain-from-spent-fuel-pool/
Entergy did NOT report this spill to the public because "it was not a safety issue"!
Liars tell the lies until the people believe the lie is the truth. (which it isn't)
The NRC is in cahoots with the industry it is supposed to regulate for safety. Nuclear power is fine as long as it is ultra safe. Too bad the industry isn't !
Since then, numbers have dwindled, not grown.
It is interesting ,to me, to note that coverage shows a large number of the protest signs written in English.
I wonder who those are for?
Though it is "possible" for the Japanese to do without nuclear, it is not economically or environmentally sustainable. They cannot afford to continue importing fossil fuels at their present rates, and with decades idled Japanese coal mines reopening they will not be able to honor their carbon commitments for long.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/world/asia/thousands-gather-in-tokyo-to-protest-nuclear-restart.html
And police put the size at 75,000 (marching through central Tokyo … not outside Noda's Office).
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dad12af8-cf41-11e1-bfd9-00144feabdc0.html#axzz21vaXGy7U
"Organiser claims that 170,000 turned up looked exaggerated to journalists on the scene, but a police estimate of 75,000 reported by NHK appeared credible."
In the last decade more than 4500 American soldiers have died in the Middle East to make the world safe for OPEC oil, but not one has died in a nuclear power plant accident. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost about $3 trillion dollars, by some estimates, enough to build 300 new, safe, efficient, nuclear power plants in America.
In Japan, 20,000 people died from the tsunami, an Act of God, or Gaia, or Mother Nature, but (so far as I can find) not one from the nuclear power plant failures that were caused by the tsunami, an Act of God, Grammy Gaia, or Mommy Nature.
More Americans die in car crashes every week than died in the Chernobyl disaster in Russia. The worst nuclear power plant disaster in history.
Four million Americans die every year from all causes, but it has been more than fifty years since an American died from a nuclear power plant accident in America.
200,000 Americans die every year from medical malpractice and prescription drug reactions and interactions, but none from nuclear power plant accidents. Maybe we should ban doctors and build nukes?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/05/japan-nuclear-disaster_n_1650264.html
Official site of NAIIC accident investigation panel.
http://naiic.go.jp/en/
"Independent experts" are running around like Chicken Little. I doubt they have formal nuclear engineering training. Maybe some "physicist" types or ecologists, but hardly any degreed nuclear engineers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/11/nuclear-apologists-radiation
All they have to do is stoke the fires of misinformation about nuclear and the people of Japan eat up the propaganda and rally against their own best economic interests. By getting rid of clean nuclear the Japanese people are also unknowingly harming their own health and the health of the children by polluting the air with significant fossil fuel emissions to make up for the loss of nuclear.
If that's what they want to do, then I say let them do it. Sooner or later they will realize their mistake. Sometimes people have to learn from direct experience. It's too bad that innocent people will have to suffer in order for the whole country to realize their mistake.
Some documentation for such a claim would be nice ... and not just more conspiracy from a tired and besieged pro-nuclear advocacy.
"Without Nuclear, Japan is Almost Fully Dependent on Fossil Fuels for Electricity
If its reactors remain idle this year, predicts the Institute for Energy Economics, Japan will spend nearly $60 billion more than in 2011 on foreign oil, natural gas, and coal. And carbon-dioxide emissions could rise 5.5 percent..."
Meanwhile Japan has the best FIT for solar of any nation.
Japan is going green, not nuke and not fossil.
You're wrong- again.
And it is worth mentioning that over 100K people still can not return to their homes, many will not be able to for years more, if ever. And the radiation from these melted down reactors is still so high, neither robots nor humans with protective gear can go in them to inspect them.
http://funologist.org/2012/07/10/saving-nuclear-in-japan-mock-blackouts-and-suppressed-coverage/
It is possible that Chubu Electric may struggle to assure the new regulator that their attention to maintenance is sufficient; but that decision still lies in the future, and the seawater ingress is more likely to be a symptom of an underlying issue rather than the primary reason for a closure decision. From what I understand (for example http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110520004807.htm ) Chubu Electric was actually relatively proactive on earthquake and tsunami defense, and the political pressure to close these plants early was just another random act of Kan.
=====
I don't know what the latest figure is for evacuees, but a number of areas are re-opened and it seems to be a matter of the speed with which the regional councils make their applications as to when the various zones are re-opened. The scare stories and over wild overstatements about permanent closure and wider evacuations are gradually winding down.
Areas off limits to workers are basically confined to certain zones within and very near the reactor buildings themselves.
http://www.irsn.fr/EN/newsroom/News/Pages/20120611_IRSN-report-Fukushima-one-year-on.aspx
Outside the initial 20 km exclusion zone … "If the most contaminated areas (annual dose exceeding 20 mSv) had not been evacuated, as the Japanese authorities decided to do on April 22, 2011, this dose could even have been higher than 50 mSv for approximately 5,300 people. Inside the 20 km exclusion zone, even higher doses, in excess of 200 mSv, could have been reached, according to the maps published by MEXT. These estimates confirm that it would have been unthinkable to allow the return of the people urgently evacuated from this zone at the time of the accident (p. 156).
There is a lot of fear mongering with what amounts to a CT scan of radiation to the surrounding area. Thats nothing in the grand scheme of things.
http://www.theworld.org/2012/04/france-nuclear-power/
"Recent polls have found that more than 80 percent of French voters now object to building new nuclear plants, and nearly two-thirds support phasing out existing plants. Those poll numbers may have played a role in the decision by France’s opposition Socialists to support a plan by the smaller Green Party to close almost half of the country’s 58 nukes by 20-25. Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande told France 2 TV that while he doesn’t want to eliminate nuclear power, he does want to diversify the country’s electricity sources."
Americans leaving a sinking ship:
http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org/media/pdfs/030712%20CSI%20Fukushima%20Anniversary%20Survey%20Rpt%20FINAL2.pdf
"Nearly six in 10 Americans (57 percent) are less supportive of expanding nuclear power in the United States [one year after Fukushima] … More than three out of four Americans (77 percent) say they are now more supportive than they were a year ago “to using clean renewable energy resources – such as wind and solar – and increased energy efficiency as an alternative to more nuclear power in the United States.”
Germans actually doing something about it!
http://www.technologyreview.com/featured-story/428145/the-great-german-energy-experiment/
"If Germany succeeds in making the transition, it could provide a workable blueprint for other industrial nations, many of which are also likely to face pressures to transform their energy consumption."
That "quick review of major problems" has mutated into something far more bureaucratic and taxing. The benefits of that reivew have been completely swamped by the harm of keeping so much clean power off-line. The folly of actually allowing all the plants to shut down was a political blunder and the process of approving those "quick reviews" appears to have been shunted off onto a far, far back burner.
Folly, Utter folly. The infrastructure is there and ready to provide the energy the country's economy deparately needs. Wake up, Japan.
Who cares what the citizens want. Nukes need their 500M$ in breaks per year per reactor, the people be d@mned.
Run them at half power or whatever is needed for them to not meltdown with a total failure of grid and backup power.
Remove all breaks for nukes and fossils.
Plow all that an more into rooftop solar, offshore wind and waste bio energy and biofuels.
Solar is cheaper than nukes, wind and waste are half the cost of nukes.
It's a no brainier.
Thats less than $2 for every man woman and child in this country. You spend that much on a pack of cigarettes that will more likely kill you han living near any nuclear plant.
The fuel pools are still capable of releasing huge amounts of radioactivity - 9 times that of the Chernobyl cataclysm. Enough of that can cross the Pacific to endanger lives everywhere in the Northern hemisphere.
See the second of Three Ticking Time Bombs at www.aesopinstitute.org
Our government needs to pressure the Japanese into a 24/7 effort to stabilize the fuel pools, one if which is 100 feet in the air in a badly damaged building not expected to survive a category 7 earthquake which has a 98% probability of occurring within the next 3 years.
Earthquakes are not measured in terms of categories or category 7 for that matter.
Coal is vastly more harmful than nuclear.
Japan's increased use of coal, oil, and natural gas is a much bigger health issue than anything that is theoretically posed by nuclear.
Coal is usually more harmful than nuclear, but not in the case of Fukushima.
See ENENews.com to understand the real threats from the meltdowns.
Now imagine multiple meltdowns resulting from long-term grid failures worldwide. That is a very possible scenario if we do not prevent it with technology now in pre-production. And I have no financial interest in Advanced Fusion Systems that is developing vacuum tubes to protect the grid.
http://icanps.go.jp/eng/SaishyuRecommendation.pdf
Recommendations for the provision of information and risk communication
(Final Report VI. 2. (7))
It is necessary to build mutual trust between the public and the government and to
provide relevant information in an emergency while avoiding societal confusion and
mistrust. To this end, a risk communication approach on risks and opinion exchanges
thereupon should be adopted for a consensus building among all stakeholders based on
mutual trust
Recommendations for public understanding of radiation effects
(Final Report VI. 1. (3) e.
(g))
As many opportunities as possible should be institutionalized for the public to get
knowledge and deepen their understanding of radiation. By doing so, the individuals should
be able to judge the radiation risks based on correct information; in other words, they would
be freed from unnecessary fears about, or from underestimating, the radiation risks because
of the lack of information.
So these sections state implicitly that the lack of clear understanding of radiation effects (some perpetuated by false information by antinuclear opportunists) leads to a misperception of public understanding of radiation risk
Radiation risk information should be credible, not from ill-posed independent internet sites with agendas.
After Fukushima: nuclear dirty tricks | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian
Fukushima victims: homeless,desperate and angry | Reuters
Your links pepetuate the ignorance, and the fear.
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2012/7/18/now-358-of-fukushima-children-examined-have-thyroid-cysts-or.html
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2012/6/29/more-great-reporting-from-mark-willacy-in-japan-radiation-ki.html