Kurashi - News From Japan

What a lot of travels and what everyone here calls the 連休 (renkyuu, consecutive days off) or "Golden Week" but here are some links that I think are important. Andrew DeWit has a great take on Obama's visit and how a US-Japan Green Alliance may be the key to the future. Heavy on military information but why not? The Pentagon apparently is way ahead of whoever-is-in-charge here in Japan when it comes to visions for defense that will not depend on oil. Japan Focus: Could a US-Japan “Green Alliance” Transform the Climate-Energy Equation? There was no emphasis on US-Japan military cooperation on climate change, even though the US military itself has for years identified climate change as the mother of all threats, including fully 8 detailed references to “climate change” and its consequences in its March 4, 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR 2014). Indeed, the American green military-industrial complex is openly calling for NATO to focus even more on climate ch...

February 9 is the date of the vote for a new mayor for Tokyo, and it has been called a "nuclear referendum" but I smell rat. The candidates may be for or against nuclear power. But the reality is that for Tokyo citizens, there is very little possibility of nuclear power plants to provide energy for the city's bright lights. Consumers, who vote, should know that only a handful of nuclear power plants that may provide energy to the metropolis are even candidates for restarts. A reminder: Currently, none of Japan's 48 nuclear power plants are online. Japan has completely gone off the nuclear "heroin" drug. But 16 are applying for restarts as of February 1, 2014 (pdf) . Of those, only two would be in any position to provide Tokyo with electricity. Those are reactors 6 and 7 in Kashiwasaki Kariwa in far away Niigata prefecture. Both were severely shaken by the earthquake back in 2007, so we know they are not yet confirmed to be safe as such. No other...

Climate change, heat, cold, we are all wondering what is going on. The Hamaoka nuclear reactors south west of Tokyo are a no-go as far as I am concerned. This was before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami hit Fukushima. I was working on this very topic back in 2005-2006 over at Japan Offspring Fund . Junichi Kowaka noted : Of all the 52 active nuclear reactors in Japan experts agree that the 5 reactors in Hamaoka are the most dangerous.  Hamaoka sits directly over a subduction zone near the junction of two tectonic plates. The ground is not solid rock, but sand.  This area is in fact overdue for a major earthquake. When the radioactivity is released, it will be much worse than if an atomic bomb was dropped in the region.   At Japan Offspring Fund, we are concerned with safety issues, and we would like to provide advice about what you can do to escape, when such earthquake happens. I like how the Calvin and Hobbes creator dealt with this issue, f...

The Hamaoka Nuclear Plant near Tokyo is in the news again, with The Mainichi reporting that anti-reactor restart mayors have been victorious in nearby towns. Glad to hear that. Best of luck to the campaigners in Shizuoka prefecture who have fought so hard for so long against this particular nuclear folly. Check Hamaoka here on Kurashi and it is probably the one nuclear plant I have blogged about most often over the years... Municipal elections delivered wins on April 21 for two incumbent mayors against the restart of the nearby Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station, joining two other cities in the region against reactivating the plant's reactors. Mayoral elections were held in the cities of Iwata, Kakegawa and Fukuroi, and anti-restart incumbents in the latter two were returned to office. The mayors of nearby cities Kikugawa and Yaizu have also declared they "will not recognize" any move by plant operator Chubu Electric Power Co. to restart t...

Since main stream media will not do the math, I thought I would give it a try. There used to be 54. But, four at Fukushima Dai-ichi are gone due the the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. Major meltdowns. Do we have 2, or 10, or 20, or more nuclear reactors that could actually do the job, in Japan? What is their status? Let's start with a map, found on wikipedia. Then, let's go from north to south. Tomari Three reactors, the only plant in Hokkaido. "...the Tomari power facility in Hokkaido, said that it could not rule out the possibility that the plant was vulnerable." Source NHK World 20120229 and JAIF (pdf). So, 50-3=47 Higashidori So,  only one reactor, but more planned. Now, this is where things tend to get interesting: Although the plant was in maintenance shutdown during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami , the April 7th aftershock caused the loss of all external power and the plant had to switch to backup power to supply cooling...

I'm going to keep this short as more details will no doubt be forthcoming after LDP and New Komeito form a government, having won the majority in Sunday's election. What can be noted right off the bat is that no party managed to ride any kind of anti-nuclear power wave to victory. Even the real-deal renewable energy activists like Iida Tetsunari could not get enough votes to get a seat in Parliament. That's pretty lousy, he could have done a lot of good. Anti-nuclear power parties missed this opportunity to explain to voters how Japan can manage short-term and long-term without the now unused power plants, that have been stopped one by one during 2012 for scheduled inspections, and not been restarted, except for two (at Ohi near Kyoto) out of some 50 or so (not counting the four at Fukushima Dai-ichi, three of which exploded after the massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011). Meanwhile, experts have been able to look closer at possible seismic faults under ...

The aging nuclear plant at Hamaoka, in Shizuoka prefecture is located near a fault line in a region seen as vulnerable to earthquakes. It was one of the first nuclear plants ordered to be shut down after last year’s March 11 disaster. I can't say how happy I am to hear this news. No restart of Hamaoka nuclear plant likely for long time, says Shizuoka governor: Japan Today/AFP Last September, plant operator Chubu Electric Co began preparations to build an 18-meter-high anti-tsunami seawall. However, Shizuoka Gov Heita Kawakatsu told reporters that new disaster-mitigation measures at the plant are a long way off, NTV reported. Chubu Electric says the seawall and other additional safety measures should protect the plant from a tsunami as strong as the one that crippled the Fukushima plant on after the March 11 earthquake. The Hamaoka plant faces the Pacific Ocean and sits in the Tokai region, southwest of Tokyo, where seismologists have long warned that a major q...

The Hamaoka nuclear power plant was the first one I was made aware of, and campaigned against, back when I was working on another project (about food safety and antibiotic resistance) for Japan Offspring Fund. Now I am pleased to hear that there is very little chance of it going back online. The Shizuoka governor seems to share the deep concerns not only about the earthquake fault it is on top of, but also the lack of tsunami protection. Back then, I think it was 2005, we just thought there was enough evidence that that particular plant was unsafe. Of course, after March 11, 2011, we know that massive earthquakes can cause massive damage, much worse than we could imagine, back then. Of course, the damage can be contained, and life goes on. But the Hamaoka nuclear power plant is situated at such a location that if a similar event to the Fukushima disaster were to strike, then Tokyo (and eastern Japan) would basically be cut off from Osaka (and western Japan). The Shinkansen and othe...