Video Discription |
After 8 years, the Fukushima disaster still casts its shadow on Japanese politics. Opinion polls show general opposition to any suggestion of expanding nuclear energy. Did the Fukushima disaster radically shift energy policy for the best?
Join Timothy Langley and Michael Cucek as they discuss Japan's nuclear policy since the 3/11 disaster.
[ENG] captions available!
Subscribe to the Langley Esquire YouTube channel for more weekly videos!
http://www.youtube.com/langleyesquire
To learn more about Langley Esquire, visit our website:
http://www.langleyesquire.com
More information can be found at the following sources:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/03/11/national/japan-marks-eight-years-since-tsunami-triggered-fukushima-nuclear-crisis/
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201903110021.html
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/03/10/national/waste-not-want-not-temporary-housing-units-3-11-finding-new-roles-across-japan/
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/03/13/editorials/japans-post-3-11-energy-policy/
----------------------
(Transcript below)
Tim: Did Fukushima kill the entire energy policy of Japan? Don't forget to hit like, subscribe and share. Hi, everyone: welcome back to Tokyo on Fire. Today is March 19th 2019. Today, we're going to talk about nuclear energy, the policy here in Japan. Michael, what in the heck is going on?
Michael: Well in this case, I was really surprised at the build-up up to the March 11th anniversary of the tsunami and then the nuclear accident. I thought eight years on they're just gonna let it go, they're gonna have a few things on television commemorating... no! It was incessant and it was constant, it was an overbearing presence and I was saying "wow this has really changed the psychology of people regarding the entire industry, the entire concept of nuclear power in ways that I really just, even though I remember, not quite sure that I really understand".
Tim: Before the incident of 3/11, eight years ago, nuclear energy provided about a third of Japan's total energy.
Michael: Well, it provided 30% or so of the electrical power generation. There were, you know, close to 50 power plants that were either operating or could be operating. Now, we're down to a handful. We have the ongoing cleanup that's going on at the Fukushima site for the six reactors that are there: it's going to cost a great deal more money. There's a million tons of contaminated water on-site, the engineers say that it's safe enough to release into the ocean but good luck telling other countries in the world that we're going to release a whole bunch of tritium and strontium contaminated water into the ocean and the ocean is so big it will take care of and dilute... it'll be fine. Try that at an international conference.
Tim: They say that they need about 90 ongoing reactors to reach parity with where they were before.
Michael: They have this plan. They had a bit of a plan in the mid-2000s about how nuclear power would be the answer to Japan's contribution to climate change with and the reduction of fossil fuels and co2 emissions.
Tim: Which they're committed to under the Kyoto Protocol, right?
Michael: Well, they were under the Kyoto Protocol and then reaffirmed under the Paris agreement. That's fine, that's great, that was the plan... Fukushima changed everything at least domestically. Nuclear power is no longer politically viable. It's viable in so far is that there are people who are very interested in it, particularly those who work for very large corporations, amongst them those that build nuclear power plants. They have a tremendous hold on the Abe administration. Mr.Abe is the Keidanren Prime Minister. He really works with big business and big business has been decidedly pro-nuclear right, but the rest of Japan is decidedly against it. And, if you look at public opinion polls, you look at any kind of measure of what you know the public wants to have done in terms of energy, nuclear power is off, right off the table. Now, it's neverΒ‘ really been on the table, actually, in terms of its its environmental safety, and because no one ever calculated in the costs of cleanup. Now, Fukushima as a disaster, the cleanup of that brings it front and center, the questions of what happens with long-term storage of radioactive waste; what happens to long-term storage of highly radioactive waste in a country with a lot of seismic activities. All of these things are now put into the cost equation. And in terms of energy in Japan, there was always a three stage criteria. Stage 1: a top-level continuous power, and continuous power means continuous generation and continuous supply of fuel. So that was priority one for all power, and that's why we don't have brownouts here. Have you ever experienced a blackout in [...].
Full Transcript available here:
https://www.langleyesquire.com/insights-media/3-11-in-rearview |