If you can
tear yourself away from the
synthetic culture wars that
pass for political debate in this country, there was a real milestone to note in Japan this week. For the first time since 1970, Japan stopped producing nuclear power. May 5th was the date of the last day of nuclear power generation when Tomari No. 3 in Hokkaido was shut down. Japanese nuclear plants produced thirty percent of the nation's electricity. Thousands of anti-nuclear protesters have forced this action on the government in the deadly aftermath of the Fukushima triple meltdowns. Government has not ruled out restarting reactors if Japan suffers electricity shortages. But Japanese
nuclear activists are adamant about keeping nuclear power in its unexpectedly sudden grave. Nuclear decisions in Japan are made on the basis of local consensus. Industry and government leaders have been arguing for a restart of Ohi units 3 and 4 located in sparsely populated Fukui prefecture, north of Osaka. Without the restarts, Kansai Electric Power will be 16.3% short of peak demand this summer based on government estimates. 67% of the prefecture opposes the restart according to an
Asahi Shimbun newspaper poll. Toru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka, has become a standard bearing for citizens opposing nuclear power, calling the reactivation "absolutely unreasonable". 63% of polled Japanese do not trust government safety standards.
Japan operated 54 reactors, 17 of which were damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami or where shut down at government request.
On Wednesday Japan's government approved a $12.6 billion bailout for TEPCo, the operator of Fukushima Daiichi. The expected move to temporary state control will prevent TEPCo from collapsing. The government will become the majority shareholder and force the company to follow a restructuring plan that includes management changes, rate increases, and $41.4 billion in cost cutting. The TEPCo monopoly provides electricity to northeast Japan including Tokyo.
The the latest news confirming that new nuclear construction is economically unsustainable is the conclusion of French developer EDF that the cost of building a nuclear power plant is £7 billion, up from £4.5 last year. According to a
Citi Group analyst that cost makes building new plants in the UK commercially nonviable, exceeding the cost of offshore wind power. Only with taxpayer subsidization such as that
available in the United States makes nuclear economic sense. A tentatively approved loan guarantee for the new Vogtle plants in Georgia is
running into problems because owner-operator Southern Company wants all financial risk of construction shifted to taxpayers. The nuclear power generation industry is clearly an industry whose moment under the sun has past.
