Japan No New Reactors. USA?
Saturday, May 14, 2011
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Let's Join Japan and Junk New Nuclear Power Plants
Japan will build no new nuclear reactors. It's a huge body blow to the global industry, and could mark a major turning point in the future of energy.
Says Prime Minister Naoto Kan: "We need to start from scratch... and do more to promote renewables."
Wind power alone could---and now probably will---replace 40 nukes in Japan.
The United States must join them. Axing the $36 billion currently stuck in the 2012 federal budget for loan guarantees to build new reactors could do the trick.
Wind potential alone between the Mississippi and the Rockies could produce 300% of the nation's electricity. That doesn't include solar, geothermal, ocean thermal, sustainable bio-fuels and the many more renewable sources poised to re-shape the Amercian energy future once the prospect of new nukes is discarded.
Japan was set to build 14 new nukes before Fukushima. Six of Japan's total of 55 reactors were shut by the earthquake and tsunami. Three at Kashiwazaki remain shut from the seven that were hit by an earthquake less than five years ago. Kan wants three more closed at Hamaoka, also in an earthquake/tsunami zone.
Japan's reactor fleet remains the world's third-largest, behind the US and France. The General Electric and Westinghouse nuclear divisions, builders of nearly all the commercial reactors in the US, are at least partly controlled by Japanese companies. Reactor Pressure Vessels and other major components are built there.
Four California reactors also sit in earthquake zones vulnerable to tsunamis. San Onofre, between Los Angeles and San Diego, has 7.5 million people living within a 50-mile radius. Its two operating and one dead reactor sit less than a mile from the high tide line.
Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, sits near a series of earthquake faults, including one newly discovered less than two miles from the two reactor cores there.
Numerous other US reactors are perilously close to earthquake faults, including two operating at Indian Point, 35 miles north of Manhattan. The Perry reactor, on Lake Erie east of Cleveland, was damaged by an earthquake in January, 1986.
Massive quantities of heat have poured into the global eco-system from the multiple explosions, partial melt-downs and spent fuel fires at Fukushima, contributing significantly to global warming.
Highly radioactive fallout has been found miles from the site. Millions of gallons of extremely contaminated water have poured into the ocean.
Radioactive fallout has also been detected in rainwater, milk and on vegetables throughout the United States, threatening the health of millions of Americans, especially small children and embryos in utero.
Now Fukushima Unit Four appears to be on the brink of physical collapse. Fission may be continuing in at least one spent fuel pool, and possibly in one or more cores. Radiation levels are high enough at the site to guarantee certain near-term death to workers, many of whom have come to consider work at Fukushima to be a virtual suicide mission. A definitive end to the disaster could be years away.
Kan's decision to shut Hamaoka and then to cancel future nukes came as a shock. Widely criticized for weakness in the wake of Fukushima, he has now redefined Japan's energy future.
Though dependent on imported fossil fuels, major Japanese corporations have substantial investments in wind, solar and other Solartopian technologies. This will push them to the forefront of Japan's energy future. more
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