Japan taxpayers foot $100bn bill for Fukushima disaster

[bananas]

Source: Financial Times

The Fukushima nuclear disaster has cost Japanese taxpayers almost $100bn despite government claims Tokyo Electric is footing the bill, according to calculations by the Financial Times.

Almost five years after a huge tsunami caused the meltdown of three Tepco reactors by knocking out their supply of power for cooling, the figure shows how the public have shouldered most of the disaster’s cost.

It highlights the difficulty of holding a private company to account for the immense expense of nuclear accidents — a concern for countries such as the UK that are building new nuclear power stations.

<snip>

That implies Tepco has borne slightly less than 20 per cent of the total cost, with taxpayers picking up the other Y10.7tn. The figure is rough, and ignores the cost of shutting down all Japan’s nuclear reactors, so it is likely to understate both the total cost and the proportion paid by the public.

<snip>

“The government’s approach has worked in that Tokyo Electric has not shut down,” said Mr Oshima. “But with the costs increasing to this extent it’s hard to see the purpose of having kept Tepco alive.”

Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/97c88560-e05b-11e5-8d9b-e88a2a889797.html

[forest444]

1. The new normal.

You've seen one bailout, you've seen'em all.

[Ferd Berfel]

2. That's $110bn reasons to shut down our reactors now

starting with the ones we have that are of the same stupid design.

note: it's a problematic posting articles form FT and some others like it. SOme of U can't read the original article because they are pay to play.

[Turbineguy]

3. That's probably about 1 million times

the cost of putting the emergency diesels in a less vulnerable place.

And another fine day for the risk analysis folks.

[Ferd Berfel]

4. HOw many solar panels and wind farms and tide generators can you have

for that kind of $$.

[NNadir]

5. Who's footing the bill for the seven million people who die from air pollution each year?

No one. No one gives a rat's ass about those seven million people per year, because no amount of money can in fact save them.

Much of the money being wasted on the so called "nuclear clean up" will save zero lives, because zero lives are actually threatened by the reactors.

According to a paper published recently not on some airhead anti-nuke website, but in one of the most important scientific environmental journals in the world, Environmental Science and Technology, much of the cost of Fukushima is actually unnecessary, the result of hyping the disaster by people who hate nuclear energy because they know nothing at all about it.

The paper is here: Environ. Sci. Technol., 2016, 50 (3), pp 1075–1076

From the text:

The Japanese government has applied a regulatory limit of 100 Bq/kg for radioactive cesium; this limit is very strict for radionuclide content in products and is about four to ten times lower than those in most countries.1 National and regional Japanese institutions have run extensive food monitoring programs; when samples exceeding the regulatory limit are found, distribution and consumption of the products are banned very quickly.2 As of December 2015, this monitoring had resulted in ongoing restrictions on the distributions of 78 agricultural food items, 50 fisheries food items, and 25 wild-animal meat items in 14 prefectures. Although the current monitoring program ensures high levels of food safety,3,4 once a distribution is restricted, that restriction is not canceled quickly, even when further samples testing shows levels below the regulatory limit. This affects the livelihoods of local farmers, fishermen, and others. A prominent example can be found in the Lake Kasumigaura watershed, approximately 160 km southwest of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where the distribution of crucian carp (Carassiusauratus) and Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica), both important fisheries products, was restricted on 14 April and 7 May 2012,respectively (Figure 1). Although the total radiocesium activity (i.e., 134Cs and 137Cs) in crucian carp fell below the regulatory limit at about the beginning of 2013, the restriction on crucian carp distribution was not canceled until 24 March 2015 (Figure1). Likewise, the current radiocesium level in Japanese eel has fallen substantially below the regulatory limit, but the restriction on distribution has not yet been canceled.

For the record, 110 Beq/kg is the rough concentration of naturally occurring radiation from ⁴⁰K, the radioactive isotope of potassium that has occurred in all living things since living things evolved, in bananas. (This fact, that all bananas are radioactive because they contain potassium, a radioactive element without which any living organism on this planet would die, often escapes anti-nukes. Because of their complete lack of scientific knowledge, their contempt for science, they go around screaming idiotically that "there is no level of radioactivity that is safe," even though the total absence of radioactivity would kill every living organism.)

So right now, there are Japanese fishermen out of work because fish shows the same level of radioactivity as a banana, and yet bananas are not illegal to eat in Japan.

The same journal published a paper in the current issue, which I happened to read today, indicating that dangerous fossil fuel waste in the United States has cost of between $37 billion to $93 billion per year, as opposed per tsunami.

Environ. Sci. Technol., 2016, 50 (5), pp 2117–2120

See also Table ES-1 in EPA report EPA-452/R-11-011

The number of whiny completely uneducated anti-nukes (and there are no other kind of anti-nukes) who give a rat's ass about this cost is zero. They completely ignore the continuous, permanent, and vast costs of not expanding nuclear energy to be the main source of energy on this planet.

The dangerous materials released by dangerous fossil fuel plants, which belch extremely toxic stuff producing vast mortality with and without tsunamis, with and without accidents, and without stop. The weak response to this from the uneducated anti-nuke crowd is to hype so called "renewable energy," which soaked the world economy for two trillion dollars in the last 10 years without doing a single meaningful or measurable thing to prevent the rate of fossil fuel consumption from increasing.

Have a nice week.

[kristopher]

8. Was this at your place?

[NNadir]

10. In many years at Democratic Underground, I have scrupulously avoided utilizing the...

...ignore button.

But the fact is that I'm an old man, filled with contempt for the fear and ignorance which led to 2015 being either the worst, or second worst year ever observed for increases in climate change gas accumulation, greatly saddened at appalled at what my generation is leaving behind. As I will not live all that much longer, I certainly want to make the case for what should have been, not the disaster that is.

We spent two trillion dollars in the last ten years on so called "renewable energy," money taken directly from the poor to subsidize the rich, and the results of this quixotic and grotesquely failed effort is written in the atmospheric composition data in such a way as anyone with a brain can see.

People without brains, on the other hand, will continue to see only what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, the lives of billions of others be damned.

It's looking very bad these last few weeks at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory.

There are some people here who I've come to know for whom I have respect. On the other hand, there are annoying little intellectual and moral lilliputians with cartoon mentalities who write here, often in response to my posts, who have nothing, absolutely nothing to say that is remotely intelligent.

The latter apparently get all of their information watching cartoons or reading journalists who are as stupid as they are.

All these unenlightened buffoons do for me is to raise my blood pressure and fill me with a grave distress at the future, as I contemplate their bourgeois indifference and ignorance. I've decided therefore, as my life winds down, that I certainly don't need the stress of continuous exposure to lightweight thinking. I have a real life, trying to hand off the science I have learned to my son who is better equipped to deal with a future whose challenges - because, again, of the fear and ignorance that ruled my times - will be onerous and extreme.

Why waste time with spoiled children when the ignore button is a tool for anyone to use in this space?

Have a nice week and, oh yeah, a nice life.

[kristopher]

11. And here I thought I was being nice...

...given that the alternative would be listing the numerous and unceasing falsehoods that your posts are brimming over with.

[Jopin Klobe]

6. We do that here with this: The Price-Anderson Act ...

The Price-Anderson Act has been criticized by various think tanks and environmental organizations, including Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace International, Public Citizen and the Cato Institute. Public Citizen has been particularly critical of Price-Anderson; it claims that the Act understates the risks inherent in atomic power, does not require reactors to carry adequate insurance, and would therefore result in TAXPAYERS FOOTING MOST OF THE BILL FOR A CATASTROPHIC ACCIDENT. An analysis by economists Heyes and Heyes (1998) places the value of the government insurance subsidy at $2.3 million per reactor-year, or $237 million annually. In 2008 the Congressional Budget Office estimated the value of the subsidy at only $600,000 per reactor per year. Due to the structure of the liability immunities, as the number of nuclear plants in operation is reduced, the public liability in case of an accident goes up. ...

The Price-Anderson Act has been used as an example of corporate welfare by Ralph Nader. ...
LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

[Marrah_G]

7. It is only that expensive because someone is getting rich off it

That is the major problem on this entire planet.

[Octafish]

9. Gee. Who else do you think should pay?

It's not like TEPCO's responsible.



From Greg Palast*

Fukushima: They Knew

This month marks the 3rd Anniversary of the Fukushima Nuclear disaster.

By Greg Palast for FreePress.org
Monday, March 10, 2014

EXCERPT...

I was ready to vomit. Because I knew who had designed the plant, who had built it and whom Tokyo Electric Power was having rebuild it: Shaw Construction. The latest alias of Stone & Webster, the designated builder for every one of the four new nuclear plants that the Obama Administration has approved for billions in federal studies.

But I had The Notebook, the diaries of the earthquake inspector for the company. I'd squirreled it out sometime before the Trade Center went down. I shouldn't have done that. Too bad.

All field engineers keep a diary. Gordon Dick, a supervisor, wasn’t sup- posed to show his to us. I asked him to show it to us and, reluctantly, he directed me to these notes about the “SQ” tests.

SQ is nuclear-speak for “Seismic Qualification.” A seismically qualified nuclear plant won’t melt down if you shake it. A “seismic event” can be an earthquake or a Christmas present from Al Qaeda. You can’t run a nuclear reactor in the USA or Europe or Japan without certified SQ.

This much is clear from his notebook: This nuclear plant will melt down in an earthquake. The plant dismally failed to meet the Seismic I (shaking) standards required by U.S. and international rules.

Here’s what we learned: Dick’s subordinate at the nuclear plant, Robert Wiesel, conducted the standard seismic review. Wiesel flunked his company. No good. Dick then ordered Wiesel to change his report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, change it from failed to passed. Dick didn’t want to make Wiesel do it, but Dick was under the gun himself, acting on direct command from corporate chiefs. From The Notebook:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. [He said,] “I believe these are bad results and I believe it’s reportable,” and then he took the volume of federal regulations from the shelf and went to section 50.55(e), which describes reportable deficiencies at a nuclear plant and [they] read the section together, with Wiesel pointing to the appropriate paragraphs that federal law clearly required [them and the company] to report the Category II, Seismic I deficiencies.

Wiesel then expressed his concern that he was afraid that if he [Wiesel] reported the deficiencies, he would be fired, but that if he didn’t report the deficiencies, he would be breaking a federal law. . . .

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/fukushima-they-knew-3/

Which is why TEPCO, Japan, Nuke Inc and the USA went out of their way the other day to play up the tsunami's role:

Tsunami, not Quake, Seen as Main Cause of Fukushima Accident

by Mari Iwata
Wall Street Journal, Oct. 8, 2014

Japan’s nuclear regulator said Wednesday that the tsunami following the March 11, 2011, earthquake–not the quake itself–was the main cause of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The conclusion matters because of the implications for other nuclear-power plants. Virtually all of Japan is prone to earthquakes, but some places are relatively protected from tsunamis. Currently all of the nation’s 48 reactors are offline, and the government is weighing whether to restart some next year.

In the March 2011 nuclear accident, three reactors melted down after the plant lost main and backup power, paralyzing cooling systems.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority studied why the No.1 reactor lost backup power and concluded on Wednesday in a report that the tsunami was the main cause, based on data about temperature, pressure and other parameters. Those data were stable immediately after the earthquake hit at 2:46 p.m., suggesting the plant didn’t suffer critical damage until the arrival of the tsunami some 45 minutes later.

A previous investigation by Japan’s parliament had left more room for the possibility that the earthquake itself did significant damage.

The regulator said it would translate the report into English and post it on its website. The Japanese-language version is here.

“You cannot say there was no damage by the earthquake at all. But you can say the major cause was the tsunami, looking at the data,” said Tamotsu Kozaki, a nuclear engineering professor of the Hokkaido University.

CONTINUED...

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2014/10/08/tsunami-not-quake-seen-as-main-cause-of-fukushima-accident/

Which is not what the scientists said, way back when they were warning TEPCO, which elected to take the cheapskate's way out.



Here's a bit to add to the atomic pile:

Masanobu Shishikura: The Man Who Predicted the Tsunami in 2009.

British scientist 'predicted nuclear power station problem'

Toshiaki Sakai: Utility Engineer Warned of Tsunami Threat at Japanese Nuclear Plant in 2007

Apart from venting hot air in committee meetings, TEPCO did nothing, and hoped for the best.

Thank you, Bananas.