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Japan

Majority in Japan Backs Nuclear Power for First Time Since Fukushima (japantimes.co.jp) 68

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
For the first time in more than a decade, a narrow majority in Japan now supports restarting idled nuclear reactors, according to a poll in the country's top business newspaper. From a report: The survey result marks the first time since the Fukushima disaster in 2011 that an increasing role for nuclear energy has been favored. It comes amid surging power prices and warnings of electricity shortages in Tokyo. Some 53% of people said nuclear reactors should restart if safety can be ensured, while 38% said they should remain shut, according to the poll conducted by the Nikkei. That's up from 44% support for the restarts in a similar survey in September. The newspaper has been conducting semiregular polls on the issue for more than a decade. Japanese public opinion moved decisively against atomic power after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami resulted in the meltdown of three reactors at Fukushima, with most of the country's operable nuclear reactors remaining shut. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has pushed up energy prices globally, however, and a recent tremor in Japan took several gas- and coal-fired plants offline, leading to the first-ever electricity supply alert for Tokyo. "There is a strong tailwind for nuclear power at this moment," Nobuo Tanaka, a former executive director of the International Energy Agency, said in an interview Monday. If Japan restarts nuclear, the country's utilities could resell spare liquefied natural gas to Europe, he said.
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Majority in Japan Backs Nuclear Power for First Time Since Fukushima More

Majority in Japan Backs Nuclear Power for First Time Since Fukushima

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  • People are desperate to use idled infrastructure to combat the insane power prices in the current situation.

    Ask people if they would support building new nuclear power, I'm willing to bet the overwhelming majority would say no.

    • Some 53% of people said nuclear reactors should restart if safety can be ensured

      Well I don't think safety can be ensured, not in Japan at least. Its on a major fault line and there is no way stop earth quakes and tsunamis.

      • Well, if for no other reason, they need to bring them online in case of an emergency attack by China, so they can awaken Godzilla!!
      • Let's see. Nuclear power plants built all over the world starting 70 years ago. 1 had minor issues, while 2 had major issues.
        Looks to me like this is safe.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        Except the Fukushima event wasn't a quake.
        It was corner cutting by the builder who skimped on a couple feet of concrete sea wall and put the backup generators at the lowest point in the facility.,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      Big difference between building a new reactor and restarting an existing reactor.
      Existing reactors are already built and paid for and all of the carbon emissions from their building have been released. Similarly, nuclear fuel emissions (mining, transport, refining, etc.) have already been incurred. The actual operation should be relatively emission free (unless an accident).
      Building new reactors brings up a whole new set of carbon and nuclear emissions as well as the well documented high cost of the energy

      • My point exactly. This isn't people suddenly being pro nuclear, it's people being pro short term solution to get their energy costs under control.

        • My point exactly. This isn't people suddenly being pro nuclear, it's people being pro short term solution to get their energy costs under control.

          Still lots of pro nuclear people like myself. Just need governments willing to ignore all the whiners.

          https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mspohr ( 589790 )

            Governments also need to ignore the obscene cost and long build times of nuclear.
            Cost of power:
            Nuclear $100+/MWh
            Solar $45/MWh
            Wind $47/MWh

            • Nuclear is always on. Here on the Canadian prairie we only get 8 hours of sunlight at the winter solstice. Solar is fine for supplementary power, but not so practical when you need overprovision and storage for the 2/3 of the time it is dark. Wind is better, but I would not want to rely on it either. I'm totally fine with paying a premium for reliability.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by mspohr ( 589790 )

                Wind and solar complement each other and batteries smooth out supply.
                Stanford has modeled the entire US wind and solar and it can meet all electric supply needs.
                Nuclear always on is actually a problem since it can't be moderated to meet the wide swings in demand during each day. Batteries can do that easily.

                • Batteries not included (in your cost breakdowns).

                  Nuclear is great for the majority of the load they know happens every day. You can top it up with whatever is reliable and/or available.

                  Where I live solar and wind are fine supplements to keep more water behind the dams. Would never depend on them for reliability though.

    • Ask people if they would support building new nuclear power, I'm willing to bet the overwhelming majority would say no.

      Restarting existing reactors is an economic no-brainer.

      Building new reactors is insanely expensive, four times the price of new wind turbines.

      Restart the reactors. Import less gas. Use the savings to build wind farms in Hokkaido.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Some of those existing reactors turned out to be built on previously unknown fault lines. They have been rethinking the requirements for safety preparedness too, with some of the locations being unsuitable.

        • The 2011 quake was one of the largest ever recorded anywhere in the world, yet damaged no reactors.

          The tsunami, not the quake itself, caused the Fukushima meltdown.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            The epicentre was far from any nuclear plants. Had it been closer, it would have exceeded the design limits on all of those plants.

    • I'll take that bet. By overwhelming, you mean like 66%?
  • They love the way it centralizes control of electricity. But people should ask why, in half a century of the technology, it never even came close to dislodging the power of fossil fuels over the world's grids.

    The answer is that the economics don't add up, and can't add up. You can't build a power foundation on super-rare, complex to process, difficult to secure elements and get any result other than rarity, complexity, and insecurity.

    So anyone trying to sell nuclear as a climate solution is full of
    • Plus with a project worth billions, they can easily skim a few million off the top

    • It's stupefyingly easy to build an equivalent of power in wind and solar than to build a nuclear plant, even if when safety is thrown out the window.

      Then why isn't that all done? Why are we still reliant on fossil fuels, which we clearly are, if it's so stinkin' easy without nuclear?

      • Then why isn't that all done? Why are we still reliant on fossil fuels, which we clearly are, if it's so stinkin' easy without nuclear?

        By their very nature, fuels (of any kind, nuclear or fossil) concentrate political power, which has the quasi-Darwinian effect of encouraging them far more than their actual market value.

        Whereas wind and solar are not fuels, but technologies that access the environment continually, so their economics is very strong, but their political power is diffuse: An example of b
        • The tax credits the politicians lob at homeowners for solar panels counters your argument. Politicians love to give out pork. To everyone. They love to be loved, well re-elected.
          • Those tax credits don't even come close to offsetting the systemic, generations-deep, multi-trillion-dollar subsidies that flowed and still flow into fossil fuels. They are a laughable fig leaf, and often get used an excuse to impose even more limitations and costs on solar and wind to "keep them in their place."

      • It's stupefyingly easy to build an equivalent of power in wind and solar than to build a nuclear plant, even if when safety is thrown out the window.

        Then why isn't that all done? Why are we still reliant on fossil fuels, which we clearly are, if it's so stinkin' easy without nuclear?

        It's physically, technically easy. It's politically difficult, especially when oil companies get their pet congresscreeps to get them bailout money they neither deserve nor require and then spend it lobbying against renewables [bailoutwatch.org]. Are you new?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Lobbying.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbr439 ( 214107 )

        It's stupefyingly easy to build an equivalent of power in wind and solar than to build a nuclear plant, even if when safety is thrown out the window.

        Then why isn't that all done? Why are we still reliant on fossil fuels, which we clearly are, if it's so stinkin' easy without nuclear?

        One reason is because, unlike nuclear power, wind and solar do not have 24/7 availability and are in fact unpredictable and inconsistent. Additionally, energy storage technology does not presently exist that can be used to mitigate that deficiency to a sufficient degree.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by trawg ( 308495 )

        Because of simply staggering amounts of money being spent to try to stop them

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • I guess that politicians become evil after... elections?

        Power not only corrupts, but also attracts the corrupt and the corruptible. This is so well-known it's axiomatic, why don't you know it?

        If companies are evil after getting public and they pursue their own egoist interests, like getting more money by exploiting more employees and that stuff.

        Making profit isn't what's evil, making profit in a way that's unsustainable not only for your own profit (who cares) but also for others' health or even literally their existence is what is evil.

        And then politicians become evil too by centralising the control of electricity?

        No, evil politicians take advantage of centralized control.

        But how that benefits their own egoists interests? Wouldn't it make more sense to do whatever the evil companies want them to do and take money from them.

        You're forgetting sustainability again, this tendency in people is why we can't have nice things. Their interests include

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • You talk way too generically.

            Too generically for what? You to be comfortable? You to be spoon-fed, hand-held, and otherwise coddled?

            You are way too interested in not understanding properly or, at least, as per my intention

            Try communicating clearly. You weren't specific, so your objection is hypocritical.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Apparently nobody told this to France, you should inform them immediately:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • Anyone familiar with the French government knows very well that your example proves my point. Paris has generally preferred to centralize political control over the economy, going back centuries, and has been deeply skeptical of market competition (sometimes to its credit, but often the opposite).

        The fact that France is not a major producer of fossil fuels after the loss of its empire means there was no political incentive to subsidize them or impose them on the public, whereas in the case of the US the

    • You can't build a power foundation on super-rare, complex to process, difficult to secure elements

      The fuck are you talking about. There's nothing rare about uranium, it's far more abundant than gold or silver, and it isn't difficult to process, the first step being no different than separating gold from ore and the enrichment process not that much more compelx. You just need a simple centrifuge, something we figured out 50 years ago, and its supply of proven reserves can happily last us the coming 100 years if you assume zero increase in production and zero effort into uranium exploration.

      You want diffi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        Actually it's impossible to build equivalent power in wind and solar because they are not base load energy sources.

        False [ametsoc.org].

        • Your link shows that in some cases, intermittency of wind can be countered, not that wind can take care of base load. Sometimes there is little wind all across regions as big as the western Europe...

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ichijo ( 607641 )

            Your link shows that in some cases, intermittency of wind can be countered, not that wind can take care of base load.

            My link says, "It was found that an average of 33% and a maximum of 47% of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric power."

            Can you come up with a published study that proves that wind energy cannot be used as baseload electric power? Your time starts now. Good luck!

            • Your link's percentages are hypothetical, based on the idea that power networks have to be put together. There is no practical study that shows this. I indeed have no link to any published study that says it's impossible to use wine for baseload and I think you and your study have a point: it's theoretically possible. But I doubt it's practically possible. It's not been done anywhere, and therefore doing a study to show that is a waste of time. Asking me for a link is a waste of my time. No thank you.
      • "There's nothing rare about uranium, it's far more abundant than gold or silver".

        All three are rare.

        This is element abundances in our solar system, on a logarithmic scale (so one step down is 10x rarer):

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Abundances differ from that on the surface of Earth because primordial impactor deposits that haven't been subducted into the mantle yet, but it's still quite rare (about 1000x rarer than strontium, if rely on the table in this link):

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wi [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      >But people should ask why, in half a century of the technology, it never even came close to dislodging the power of fossil fuels over the world's grids.

      It didn't happen in places where anti-scienfic nutjobs got in power. In France on the other hand, it did work just fine.

      • It didn't happen anywhere that fossil fuels were a dominant domestic interest, or where local democracy had the power to balance dirigiste national economy-planners.

        Nuclear power is an authoritarian's dream, a crony capitalist's fallback position when they can't use political corruption to force fossil fuels down people's throats anymore, and a scientist's compromise to keep ignorant troglodytes from using engineers to build bombs instead.

        What's it not, and never was, is a rational, safe, or efficient

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Another anti-reality argument, as is typical of anti-nuclear religious fanatics. France's nuclear is a national project run by the state with massive democratic backing of the people, specifically because it makes it largely independent of foreign interests and crony capitalists both.

          And it has been tremendous success. Just one look at map of national CO2 intensity of power generation telsl you entirety of story. France has been de facto done with near total decarbonisation of its electric grid decades ago,

          • You keep making claims upon claims with zero backup argument, and that is typical of nuclear industry campaigning.

            What's more, you just made my point for me without realizing it: France's nuclear industry has nothing to do with the economic value, safety, efficacy, or sustainability of nuclear power generation, and everything to do with political interests and central government control. Needing a standing army of guaranteed jobs to manage a power plant and supply chain is not a good thing when it's the

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              I make self evident claims, that can be confirmed by a single google search. For example, it would take a single google search to find out that French nuclear power plants are state owned through government monopoly. It would also take a single search to find out that France is a liberal democratic state.

              And yet, here's the religious fanatic claiming that these are arcane, utterly illogical claims that backup arguments. It must be an authoritarian state, and it's all about maintaining the jobs. Please ignor

              • "Please ignore the aforementioned point about democracy"

                Are the nuclear plants approved by referendum, and subject to periodic ballot renewal? Are they directlyowned by the taxpayers who fund them? Can a private citizen have their own nuclear reactor the way they can have a wind turbine, a solar field, or a diesel generator?

                Give the propaganda a rest already, Comrade Fallout.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  Let me help you with some basic reading comprehension:

                  >It would also take a single search to find out that France is a liberal democratic state.

                  So no, it's not an anarchy.

                  Did you have any other stupid red herrings to whine about?

                  • "So no, it's not an anarchy."

                    Wow, that's quite an act of verbal self-immolation. Please educate us, Comrade Fallout, what part of ballot referendums and free enterprise are you calling "anarchy", given that every democracy on Earth (including France) has both?

                    Just to be clear, you are stating that the only part of France that is democratic is its nuclear industry / military-industrial complex, and the rest is "anarchy"?

                    Well gosh. I guess war is peace, slavery is freedom, and you are an intelligen

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      Sure. French did have a short phase in their history when they had those things you ask for. It was known as French Revolution, and it was a period of de facto anarchy. Hence the reference.

  • it matters what the majority of voters want, and how this will effect those voters. Opinion polls aren't really all that useful if they don't take into account who actually participates in the political process (or in America's case, who is allowed to participate).

    Moreover even if polls *do* take that into account they still need to account for whether it would change how those voters vote. In America you can find polls where 80% of voters want stronger gun laws, but they'll never pass because those opi

    • I never understand why so many useless polls are done.

      Tail wags dog, it's for the purpose of manipulation of public opinion. If you publish a poll that suggests that what you want is the majority opinion, then it can sway followers who are on the fence.

    • What makes even more of a difference is what the lobby/interest groups want. This is how you get functional nuclear programs shut down and replaced with "clean coal" and "green gas" that has to be bought from russia or the saudis.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      You don't think that a slice of that 80% who are also single issue voters can't be found? It's an issue where positions are based largely on emotions. The perfect recipe for that "damned everything else, I'm gonna vote my pet issue".

      More likely, the polls are wrong and it's all about manufacturing consent [slashdot.org].

  • So, 0% of Japanese people think reactors should be restarted?

  • I thought of it as uncharacteristic for the Japanese people to suddenly believe that nuclear power is unsafe. I am glad they're starting to understand that nuclear power is clean, efficient, and reliable. Now, can we get Germany and other countries on board?

    • Many nations, like Germany, will not have much of a choice but to build nuclear power plants.

      Dr. David MacKay did a study on the power needs of various nations, their land areas, and how renewable energy sources compare on power per area. Many of these nations could theoretically rely on renewable energy but it would take something like 20% of their land area. This is not trivial as there is not likely that much land that isn't already put to some use. What is the government going to do? Buy up this lan

      • As mentioned before, I'm mostly on the fence regarding nuclear power. I do enjoy the discussion and have seen your links. Germany though, can easily get by without building nuclear plants. They can just buy energy from France. Until then, they can keep burning coal. And yes, at some point they may get their base load energy out of some reservoir filled with green energy, whichever technology can offer that...

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