Japan to abandon nuclear power by 2030s: report

[bananas]

Source: AFP

Japan will abandon nuclear power within the next three decades under new government policy on the post-Fukushima energy mix, a newspaper said.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's administration will declare its intention to permanently shut down reactors by some time in the 2030s, the Mainichi Shimbun reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed government sources.

The move would bring resource-poor Japan into line with Germany, which has said it will wean itself off nuclear power by 2022, and comes as regular vocal protests against nuclear power continue.

The government "will formally decide at an energy and environment meeting this weekend" to stop the use of nuclear, the paper said.

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Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iN-aBromIma3YOppXAJ3vqWo15jQ?docId=CNG.b113259f79b40609a846e192725c90fb.2a1

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[bananas]

1. Japan aims for zero nuclear power in 2030s - media

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/12/japan-nuclear-idUSL3E8KC2JY20120912

Japan aims for zero nuclear power in 2030s - media

TOKYO, Sept 12 | Wed Sep 12, 2012 3:24am EDT

(Reuters) - Japan aims to quit nuclear power in the 2030s in a new energy strategy to be unveiled soon, media said on Wednesday, a major shift from a pre-Fukushima disaster goal of boosting atomic energy to produce more than half the country's electricity.

The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered three meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi plant, spewing radiation and forcing about 160,000 people to flee their homes.

It also prompted the government to scrap a 2010 plan to boost nuclear power's share of electricity to more than 50 percent by 2030.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Monday that he wanted to decide on the new policy this week and would take into account a proposal by his Democratic Party for Japan to "invest all possible policy resources to make it possible to exit nuclear power in the 2030s".

<snip>

[snooper2]

2. Don't do it...And are you still going to fund ITER Japan?

Fusion power is the way of the future...

ITER

ITER (originally an acronym of International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project, which is currently building the world's largest and most advanced experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor at the Cadarache facility in the south of France.[1] The ITER project aims to make the long-awaited transition from experimental studies of plasma physics to full-scale electricity-producing fusion power plants. The project is funded and run by seven member entities — the European Union (EU), India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States. The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing 45% of the cost, with the other six parties contributing 9% each.[2][3][4]

The ITER fusion reactor itself has been designed to produce 500 megawatts of output power for 50 megawatts of input power, or ten times the amount of energy put in.[5] The machine is expected to demonstrate the principle of producing more energy from the fusion process than is used to initiate it, something that has not yet been achieved with previous fusion reactors. Construction of the facility began in 2007, and the first plasma is expected to be produced in 2019.[6] When ITER becomes operational, it will become the largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment in use, surpassing the Joint European Torus. The first commercial demonstration fusion power plant, named DEMO, is proposed to follow on from the ITER project to bring fusion energy to the commercial market.[7]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

[bananas]

3. They should abandon nuclear energy right now.

This is about dirty dangerous expensive fission power plants, not research on fusion.

[Posteritatis]

15. So they flip the off switch Right Now. Where's the missing 30% of output come from (also Right Now)?

Oy.

[bananas]

4. Renewables are the way of the future, neither fission nor fusion are needed at all

The estimates of remaining non-renewable worldwide energy resources vary, with the remaining fossil fuels totaling an estimated 0.4 YJ (1 YJ = 10^24J) and the available nuclear fuel such as uranium exceeding 2.5 YJ. Fossil fuels range from 0.6 to 3 YJ if estimates of reserves of methane clathrates are accurate and become technically extractable. The total energy flux from the sun is 3.8 YJ/yr, dwarfing all non-renewable resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

[The Second Stone]

12. We already have a self-sustaining fusion reactor

that will be operating indefinitely human purposes. It's called the Sun. The power it puts out that falls on the Earth is vastly more than we need. All we need are methods to convert that power to electricity and store it. We have those already. What the powers that be are waiting for is a way to own all of it.

[Kablooie]

5. Thank God. Japan has dealt with more nuclear horror than any country in history.

[benld74]

6. All except for that glow in their north east sky, for the next thousand years or so,,,,,,,

[madokie]

7. Nuclear is not the solution to Global Warming

getting it out of the mix, sucking all the air out to the room now, will get something done. The world needs to research and develop alternates to both fossil and nuclear energy and as long as the nuke boys is around the money won't be coming for the necessary R&D for alternates.
The only time that nuclear is co2 less is during the production of electricity. The rest of the time nuclear is a co2 creating monster just like all other industrial projects are. Trouble is it takes years to build a nuclear power plant and all this construction is co2 intensive, from making the huge amounts of cement to the refining the iron and making it into steel suitable to build with, All this is a huge co2 producer. Now you have the huge amount of uranium to be mined to get the ingredients it takes to make the fuel that powers the nuke plant, Every bit of all this is co2 intensive. For instance a lot more co2 is created making cement than is produced burning fossil fuels, especially if you add NG to the mix. The local cement plant uses old tires to fuel their kilns with and by design of a cement kiln it doesn't allow for burning the old car tires cleanly at all.
I'll take my chances going forward with alternates to both Fossil and Nuclear

We need to convert as many coal plant to natural gas as is possible, possibly convert some ot them to using a gasifier to extract the energy from coal while we're building out more and more wind turbines and solar power plants, Oh and geothermal needs to get on the front burner as it is our best bet for a large percentage of our energy mix that is relatively clean. The water from most geothermal plants can be mined for precious metals as a bonus, something we need lots of and are dependent on the Chinese for most of ours or if not most then a large percentage.

Nuclear is not the future. There is too many dangers and too big a chance that when something unthinkable does happen no one knows what to do and in many cases there isn't much that can be done. Whats going on in Japan and still going on in Russia even after all these years is a testament to what I'm saying. Its too freaking dangerous when things go wrong. Like in Japan I don't believe the human factor has a lot of control on what is going on, I think the human factor is helping to keep it from being worse than it is but other than that not much else. We don't need to be relying on something that is as dangerous as these plants are.

And I haven't even mentioned the waste problem yet. Its been going on as far back as nuclear has existed, what to do with the waste. They lied to us when PSO tried to cram one down our throats here in northeast Oklahoma back in the '70s and they're still lying to us now. Dropping it off in international waters is not the answer either.
Sometime google nuclear waste, mafia and France and see what you get, (for those of you who haven't heard of this angle yet.) Enough to piss you right off if you're truly concerned with all parts of our ecosystem, not just select parts such our air.

Shut them down and ration my power if need be while they ramp up production thats cleaner, I won't mind.
Nuclear energy is not clean except during the actual time it is producing electricity. The rest of its cycle its pretty dirty

[NickB79]

9. Nat. gas conversions aren't a solution either

If it's procurred from fracking, the methane leakage from the wells puts it on par with coal with regard to global warming: http://inhabitat.com/updated-cornell-study-shows-fracking-causes-more-global-warming-than-coal/

And the future of gas appears to be fracking, fracking, and even more fracking as conventional sources run dry.

[madokie]

13. The fracking needs to stop

we have enough already that they're wanting to sell if overseas.
What I'm suggesting is using it as a stop gap while we get the renewables, wind, solar and geo built out, not as a solution to anything. Most of our Nuclear power plants are nearing their designed age limits and its playing with fire to use them beyond their designed parameters. metal fatigues, concrete cracks, rebar in that concrete will corrode if it gets moisture and air through those cracks, all these things point towards a catastrophe ultimately. What I'm saying is to stop using them as soon as possible and maybe stop something from happening. Nuclear energy is great during one phase of its lifespan but that is only a short time, looking at the big picture that is. When it gets out of hand as we're seeing in Japan now and we've seen in Russia before it can be a big ass problem.

What our country needs is a comprehensive energy policy, today we really don't have one and until we have one the big energy boys will control where we go and what we do, energy wise.

[NickB79]

14. I understand the idea of using nat. gas as a bridge to renewables

I'm just not convinced it will actually work anytime soon. So long as gas remains cheap from widespread fracking, renewables deployment is actually hurt as gas-fired electricity undercuts wind and solar. If policies were in place to ban fracking and promote the living hell out of renewables with massive subsidies, then we might be getting somewhere though.

Beyond that, I'm sorry to say but I don't think we have the time to transition anymore. The Arctic basin will be ice-free in 5 years or less, and the climate is already destabilizing as we speak. It's only a matter of time before the methane reserves frozen in the tundra are released in massive quantities. If we can't live off of renewables alone at this point, maybe we need to cut back to the point we can. If that means collapsing the global economy, so be it. I know that's harsh and completely unrealistic, but every extra ton of carbon added to the atmosphere is another nail in our coffin.

[NickB79]

8. What's that I smell? Oh, the sweet, sweet fumes of frack gas!

From the OP's link:

It also said Japan should develop resources in nearby waters and look to cheaper procurement of liquefied natural gas and other fossil fuels, including shale gas.

Japan, with precious few resources of its own, is presently heavily dependent on oil from the Middle East and has been forced to ramp up its imports to make up the energy shortfall over the last 18 months.

Yes, let's all clap for that

[Systematic Chaos]

10. You'd think this was the Late Breaking Spews forum.

[marions ghost]

11. Japan sees the light

good news

It's a no-brainer really.