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Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

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Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#41

Post by glogla »

knocte wrote: post #20
lelag wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it is that nuclear disasters are terrible and costly, but they don't threaten the existence of mankind or our way of life. Global warming, on the other hand, is threatening our way of life and well-being slowly but very directly. This is the real danger, and I believe that the green movement has been very misguided in its anti-nuclear stance. They are achieving the opposite of their goals. The carbon fo…

I don't think the green movement is anti-nuclear, it is nuclear reluctant but given two choices, e.g. coal vs nuclear, green would always choose the lesser of two evils.

Yeah, I think we have experimental evidence from EU that shows otherwise.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#42

Post by wewxjfq »

hsn915 wrote: post #24
ycuser2 wrote: post #3

As a German this is quite bizzare to me. Here, our politicians take Fukushima as an example why we should stop nuclear energy. People are scared of nuclear energy. And now Japan goes max nuclear.

As far as I understand, the FUD campaign was actually orchestrated by Russian gas companies to make Germany more dependent on Russian gas, and it seems to have worked.

Saying this while nuclear power depends greatly on Russia and no country could sanction Rosatom shows how grounded in reality these discussions are.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#43

Post by nonethewiser »

Dalewyn wrote: post #25
ycuser2 wrote: post #3

As a German this is quite bizzare to me. Here, our politicians take Fukushima as an example why we should stop nuclear energy. People are scared of nuclear energy. And now Japan goes max nuclear.

Because it makes no sense to not go nuclear. For one: Japan has no natural resources. Fuel for power must be imported. Materials for solar panels (or the panels themselves) must be imported. Nuclear is by far one of the most efficient /and/ effective forms of power generation humanity currently has. For two: Fukushima was a result of human incompetence, nothing to do with the reactor itself or nuclear technology ther…

> Fukushima was a result of human incompetence

There is always a risk of that. Humans cannot garuntee humans wont fuck up.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#44

Post by nonethewiser »

theshrike79 wrote: post #33
Dalewyn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it makes no sense to not go nuclear. For one: Japan has no natural resources. Fuel for power must be imported. Materials for solar panels (or the panels themselves) must be imported. Nuclear is by far one of the most efficient /and/ effective forms of power generation humanity currently has. For two: Fukushima was a result of human incompetence, nothing to do with the reactor itself or nuclear technology ther…

> Fukushima was a result of human incompetence Also Fukushima was hit with BOTH by a record-level quake AND a record-level tsunami. And it still didn't cause a huge death toll. If the backup generators would've been higher up, most of the whole issue would've been avoided. Now they got flooded by the tsunami and failed.

> Also Fukushima was hit with BOTH by a record-level quake AND a record-level tsunami

Not a coincidence given all of Japan has tons of seismic activity

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#45

Post by theshrike79 »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #26
ycuser2 wrote: post #3

As a German this is quite bizzare to me. Here, our politicians take Fukushima as an example why we should stop nuclear energy. People are scared of nuclear energy. And now Japan goes max nuclear.

>people are scared of nuclear energy Let's not make policy out of unfounded fears. Let's look at some simple facts: 1. Fewer people have died from nuclear reactor meltdowns than from any other form of electricity generation. It is by far the safest form of power. 2. Even with the price of renewables dropping quickly, we will not be able to decarbonize quickly enough to prevent the terrible climate change outcomes. We…

Nuclear power is the safest and most environmentally friendly way to produce reliable and consistent base power. No renewable can do that yet.

In theory they can, but in practice it's still either prohibitively expensive or highly location-dependent.

Pumped storage works, but it needs natural formations to be cost-effective, you can't just build a mile high lake in the middle of a desert. Hydrogen electrolysis+on-site storage is a decent option, but still very expensive and not very efficient (energy loss is around 50% give or take depending on the scale).

We needed nuclear 5 years ago, maybe when the current gen generators are EOL we have gotten good enough at storing renewable power that we don't need nuclear any more.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#46

Post by nonethewiser »

unglaublich wrote: post #39
whatshisface wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they have managed to redesign humans point two remains.

You can educate humans, or redesign technology to get humans out of the loop.

Who can redesign tech to get humans out of the loop? Humans who designed the original non fail-proof tech?

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#47

Post by askvictor »

Dalewyn wrote: post #25
ycuser2 wrote: post #3

As a German this is quite bizzare to me. Here, our politicians take Fukushima as an example why we should stop nuclear energy. People are scared of nuclear energy. And now Japan goes max nuclear.

Because it makes no sense to not go nuclear. For one: Japan has no natural resources. Fuel for power must be imported. Materials for solar panels (or the panels themselves) must be imported. Nuclear is by far one of the most efficient /and/ effective forms of power generation humanity currently has. For two: Fukushima was a result of human incompetence, nothing to do with the reactor itself or nuclear technology ther…

> For one: Japan has no natural resources. Fuel for power must be imported. Materials for solar panels (or the panels themselves) must be imported. Nuclear is by far one of the most efficient /and/ effective forms of power generation humanity currently has.

How is nuclear fuel any different in this respect? Sure it's more compact, but it has other complications regarding transport. They're still going to be reliant on other countries. Solar panels, even if imported, do not require the ongoing importation of fuel.

> For third: Japan needs power /today/, not tomorrow

I don't see how nuclear solves this problem. New plants have a very long lead time.

I'm not trying to fearmonger, and I think that had we adopted a lot more nuclear in decades past we could be in a much better position regarding climate change now. But I'm not convinced that the arguments stack up for nuclear right now.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#48

Post by lucb1e »

melling wrote: post #7
ycuser2 wrote: post #3

As a German this is quite bizzare to me. Here, our politicians take Fukushima as an example why we should stop nuclear energy. People are scared of nuclear energy. And now Japan goes max nuclear.

The fear of tsunamis hitting nuclear plants in Germany seems remote. How do Germans feel about all those nuclear power plants next door in France? Does anyone have any fear of the health effects of burning coal decade after decade?

> How do Germans feel about all those nuclear power plants next door in France?

You should see the stickers on restaurant windows, cars, street lanterns, etc. I think that's for a plant in Belgium since I'm from the Belgium-bordering area, but not sure. I'd boycott those restaurants but it's absolutely everywhere. I assume that whoever prints those but not also "close " stickers must also be printing 5G stickers and buying armbands with radioactive dust (what are they called again, 'negative ion' or 'positive energy' wearables or something?) to protect from cell tower radiation.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#49

Post by gggmaster »

wslh wrote: post #30
Dalewyn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it makes no sense to not go nuclear. For one: Japan has no natural resources. Fuel for power must be imported. Materials for solar panels (or the panels themselves) must be imported. Nuclear is by far one of the most efficient /and/ effective forms of power generation humanity currently has. For two: Fukushima was a result of human incompetence, nothing to do with the reactor itself or nuclear technology ther…

Great answer, I would add that also there could be new solutions to disposing nuclear material that adds more confidence to the full cycle.

Sea dumping?

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#50

Post by mpweiher »

ycuser2 wrote: post #3

As a German this is quite bizzare to me. Here, our politicians take Fukushima as an example why we should stop nuclear energy. People are scared of nuclear energy. And now Japan goes max nuclear.

As a German, my country's reaction to Fukushima was and is bizarre to me.

There was a natural disaster, a Tsunami, that cost upwards of 15000 lives, almost certainly a good number of them when various pieces of technology failed due to the Tsunami.

One of the pieces of technical infrastructure affected was a nuclear power plant of an old, already inherently not great design, safety wise, that we now know was not built to regulations. Despite all that, there have been 0 deaths attributable to that accident so far.

Zero.

Germany's reaction: OMG WE NEED TO GET RID OF NUCLEAR POWER.

Utterly bizarre.

For me, Fukushima was what convinced me that nuclear was much safer than I had previously thought, a fact confirmed by the data: https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy

The politicians did not "take Fukushima as an example why we should stop nuclear energy". They knew better. They just triangulated the public's irrational fears.

And those irrational fears are stoked, maximally, by the press. See the recent reporting on the anniversary:

"Am 11. März 2021 jährt sich zum zehnten Mal die Tsunami- und Atomkatastrophe von Japan, die bis zu 20.000 Menschen das Leben und rund 160.000 Japaner ihre Heimat kostete."

https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfzeit/zdfzeit-der-ewige-g...

March 11, 2021 marks the tenth anniversary of the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, which claimed the lives of up to 20,000 people and displaced around 160,000 Japanese.

Not sure it is technically a lie, but suggesting this strongly that the 20000 deaths were caused at least equally by the Tsunami and the reactor accident is certainly not truthful reporting.

And this isn't an isolated incident, pretty much all the reporting was this way.

And of course this has the desired effect. And while I am not sure that the German public would consciously say that the 16000-20000 deaths were caused by the reactor accident, it is certainly how they feel, and the feeling gets reinforced time and time again.

And so we turned off our cleanest and safest form of energy, spent trillions in order to miss our emissions targets and become ever more dependent on fossil fuels, in the process prompting a dictator to miscalculate our dependence and embolden him to start the most brutal war in Europe for almost a century.

Yay us.

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