We shall force the future generations to make sacrifices for us…

As the United Kingdom and EDF are working out the final terms of the long term contract that EDF requires before it builds a nuclear power plant in Hinckley Point in Somerset, Tokyo Electric Power Company announced that the electricity supply to the cooling system at the damaged Fukushima power plant had failed for four spent reactor ponds at three reactors. Apparently a rat had bitten through the electrical supply shutting down some of the cooling systems.

A Dangerous Necessity?

The Japanese are the only nation upon which atomic bombs have been dropped. They have always had a cautious approach to nuclear power, but nevertheless have managed to create an economy under which a third of their electrical power was dependent upon nuclear energy. After Fukushima the Government put the decision to continue to operate nuclear power plants in the hands of the municipalities, and within a few months of the nuclear accident at Fukushima all nuclear power plants in Japan were closed down, temporarily.

Nuclear energy is important to the Japanese economy. It is not important because it is cheap – nuclear energy is not cheap over its whole life cycle, but it is important because it is there. Japan has little in the way of fuel for energy and having decided to invest in nuclear energy, once that investment no longer produces a return, returning to fossil fuel becomes expensive and requires more investment.

In order to counter this when the nuclear power plants were closed down the Japanese campaigned for people to use 15% less electricity. It is a sensible campaign. In Japan as in every other nation much energy is wasted. By that I do not mean that everyone wastes energy, but many people and businesses do, and reducing consumption by 15% is probably a rather modest aim.

But governments, who mainly want to get re elected and often forget the reasons why the put themselves forward for election in the first place, get worried is they feel that they might not get re elected. The economy, stupid, is probably what determines the results of elections and as most governments’ foresight is mainly limited to the next election the Japanese government is becoming worried that using fossil fuel, which for Japan is more expensive than the already paid for nuclear reactors, is sending the price of electricity high and will make goods more expensive thus damaging exports thus creating unemployment.

As a result the Japanese are proposing to restart two nuclear power plants. If they do the price of electricity may fall, the economy may improve and that may pave the way for starting more nuclear power plants, although the one at Fukushima will never, I expect, come back into operation. As nuclear power plants are located on the coasts in order to use the ocean as a device to cool the large amounts of heat generated by the power plants, I expect the Japanese, much like the rest of the world, are praying that no new tsunami occurs.

The Japanese are unfortunately qualified to make judgements about nuclear power, and must decide whether nuclear power is a dangerous necessity or dangerous luxury.

 

Radioactive Food

We are constantly advised that nuclear energy is safe and that the fallout from nuclear incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima has been insignificant. This, I hope is true, but fears linger on. Some good nuclear news happened recently when restrictions on moving sheep in Cumbria and North Wales are finally removed.

The Future of Nuclear Power

The United Kingdom gets about a quarter of its electricity from nuclear power; until the Fukushima incident, Japan got about a third of its electricity from nuclear power. Today, since Fukushima, Japan has no nuclear power plant in operation.

Some Good News Leaks from Fukushima

We associate Fukushima with a flooded broken nuclear power reactor, rather than good news, but good news has come from some research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution whose vessel has been measuring sea and sea organism radioactivity in the ocean affected by the Fukushima event.

Update on Fukushima

There was good news yesterday, or rather goodish news, from Japan. The Fukushima Daiishi nuclear plant has reached the stage of cold shutdown, and the nuclear reactors are now stabilised. The reactors need to be decommissioned and this process will take many years. It will also take many years to clean up, of for natural forces to clean up the contamination that has leaked into the surrounding sea and countryside.

Fukushima Update

In 2005 people were relatively relaxed about nuclear power. Last week, a poll taken by GlobeScan was released. They polled of 23,231 people in 23 countries in late summer this year. The results are odd. There is waning support for nuclear power, as you would expect after Fukushima, except for in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, where support for nuclear power grows. In Germany 90% are opposed to building new nuclear reactors and even in nuclear dominated France, opposition is at 83%, the same level as in Japan, which has recently suffered from the nuclear leaks at Fukushima Dalichi plants.

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water…

A year ago most of us were concerned by the 4.9 million barrels (205.8 million gallons) of oil spillage in the Gulf of México. Today there is little news on the spillage. The Gulf has absorbed much of the oil, much of it has been dispersed by chemicals and much cleaned up from the sea shore. It seems some of the marine life is safe and prospering; although in certain cases there has been irremediable damage to the environment.

The Price of Nuclear Power

Japan produces some of the best beef in the world, particularlyKobebeef, or 神戸ビーフ, which is renowned throughout the world. The Fukushimanuclear accident has disrupted the Japanese beef industry as recent tests showed that beef was infected with high levels of caesium thought to have been from cattle eating straw from rice which was tainted by radioactive material. The amount of infected beef was small (less than 1.2 metric tonnes) and the numbers of infected cattle that have consumed caesium straw material only a few, but rightly when it comes to public health the Japanese Government has banned cattle shipments from the Fukushima region.

And the winner is…

The nuclear leakage at Fukushima in Japan has now overtaken the previous nuclear accidents at Windscale, Three Mile Island, Kyshtym in terms of seriousness and has been awarded the same star rating as Chernobyl as a category 7 incident. It is an award that no one wishes to make or receive.