- The Tokyo government has announced that they want nuclear electricity supplies reduced to 15% by 2030 and a full abandonment at some point thereafter. Immediately, local officials from communities hosting nuclear stations across Japan said they don’t like it. Officials in host communities Kashiwazaki and Kariwa in Niigata prefecture, say abandonment of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPS will destroy their economy. “Local opinion isn’t all the same, and we’re thinking of future generations,” said Yoshiko Arano, a 61-year-old head of a local citizens group dedicated nuclear issue transparency. She added, “I have to wonder how effectively information has been gathered by members of the public, who before had no interest in the nuclear power issue, for them to be seeking a zero nuclear policy.” In Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, host to three nuclear reactors, Mayor Kazuharu Kawase said, “We don’t know if national energy policy will change again sometime. Even if the portion of Japan’s electricity output that comes from nuclear plants is reduced, we should maintain atomic energy in this country.” Aomori Prefecture, which hosts the Rokkasho fuel reprocessing plant, appears particularly peeved. If nuclear power is abandoned, there will be no market for Rokkasho’s recycled fuel. “If the fuel isn’t reprocessed, then we will send it back to where it came from,” Aomori Gov. Shingo Mimura said, and added he also intends to reject any spent fuel bound for a mid-term storage facility set to open in October 2013. Another Aomori prefectural official sounded bitter about Tokyo’s about-face on nuclear energy, “We’ve been going along with national policy all this time. It’ll be a real shame if Aomori gets blamed now for preventing Japan from getting rid of nuclear power quickly.” If Aomori Prefecture makes good on their statements, Japanese nukes would run out of space in their pools and be forced to abandon operations. (Mainichi Shimbun)
- A cross-party group of Diet politicians call for the immediate decommissioning of more than half of Japan’s nukes. On Thursday, they said that 28 of Japan’s idled nuclear plants should be dismantled because they believe they are too dangerous to be trusted. Four power stations are said to be unacceptable because the group believes the geologic anomalies in their vicinity are seismically active. They add that the remaining 22 nukes are “dangerous” but not in need of immediate decommissioning. The group is comprised of 91 lawmakers out of the 722 that now comprise the Diet. (Kyodo News)
- The Tokyo government says about 25% of the debris left behind by the 3/11/11 tsunami has been disposed of. Environment Minister Goshi Hosono told reporters that 4.4 million tons, or about 24.5 percent, of debris from Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures had been incinerated, buried or recycled. This leaves more than 18 million tons of debris remaining to be handled. The ministry plans to accelerate the disposal by asking more areas to dispose of the debris and promoting more recycling of incombustible waste. Hosono remarked that the number of communities assisting in the clean-up is expanding, but he neglected to elaborate. The Ministry has set a target of 60% disposal by the end of March, 2013. In addition, rivers of Miyagi Prefecture are now clear of large tsunami debris that restricted flows and made damaging floods possible. The land ministry says the recent removal of an 8-meter-long barge from Kitakami River, 6 kilometers up-river from the sea, ends the work. It was first cut into pieces to make removal easier and safer. The barge was. The ministry says it has cleared 84 cars, 37 boats and 4 heavy machines from 4 rivers in Miyagi Prefecture since it started the process in August of last year. (NHK World)
- The Tokyo Electric Company (Tepco) wants to restart the seven nukes at their Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station. It is the largest nuclear power facility in the world. The president of Tepco, Naomi Hirose, says the plants were undamaged by the 3/11/11 quake/tsunami, are safe to operate, and the company would be able to recover much of its economic losses once the units are back on line. He promised to “take better measures to avoid a recurrence of the accident and implement them at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa as soon as possible.” Tepco plans to bring in outside experts, including foreigners, to comprise a board that will oversee the restarts. By doing this, Tepco hopes to recover some of its lost credibility with local officials and the public. Up to this point, the governor of Niigata Prefecture has opposed restart for any of the seven Kashiwazaki-Kariwa units. (Japan Today)
- President Naomi Hirose of Tepco says it would be “foolish” for Japan to abandon nuclear energy. Hirose points out that energy prices would further soar beyond the recent price increases if nukes are not restarted, making the country dangerously dependent on middle east supplies of oil and liquid natural gas. “We understand that local residents might ask whether they are really all right with letting us operate nuclear reactors again after the accident,” he said. “But zero nuclear is a very dangerous option. We need to step back and think of the wider consequences of giving up nuclear power.” He rejected nuclear opponent’s belief that Japan can get along without nukes by keeping their old fossil-fueled plants operating and maintaining the present state of national energy conservation. Hirose says the restart of moth-balled oil and gas plants produced great cost to their customers, and continuation of the nuclear moratorium could be economically catastrophic. Further, he pointed out that complete replacement of nukes with renewables is not as rosy a picture as nuclear opponents make it seem, “When people think of these new energy sources, they only think of best-case scenarios,” Mr. Hirose said. “But we have a responsibility to provide a cheap and stable source of power. We have to be realistic.” Further, he does not rule out restarting undamaged Fukushima Daiichi units #5&6 and the four undamaged units at Fukushima Daini, 16 kilometers south of F. Daiichi. (New York Times)
- Tokyo has lifted the power conservation targets for three of Japan’s 10 major electric companies. The three are in western and southwestern Japan. The move is due to the summer heat wave dissipating. Power shortages have been averted due to reopening old oil and natural gas-fired power plants, driving Japan’s electric prices upward due to buying more fossil fuels from the Middle East. The restart of the two undamaged nuclear units at the Oi nuclear power station also eased the situation. (Kyodo News)
- An American investigation into the Fukushima accident has found that Japan was not prepared for the tsunami of 3/11/11. This unsurprising announcement was made by the national Academy of Sciences. Japanese officials told NAS the March 11th tsunami was bigger than F. Daiichi was designed to withstand and company officials in Tokyo were not aware that a backup cooling system was not working after the loss of power sources. A representative from a US industry group of nuclear plant operators criticized safety standards in Japan. The panel member said it is vital to prepare for any eventuality, and that Japan seemed to lack this concept. (NHK World)
- Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda plans to use legal powers granted to his office to name members to the nation’s new nuclear regulatory body. Noda will appoint the chief and four members to the new Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Sept. 19 after the current Diet session ends. Japanese law states that if the Diet is not in session, the PM can appoint regulatory commission members himself. On July 26, the government submitted a list of nominees to the Diet for approval, but a vote on the appointments was delayed due to criticism by both ruling and opposition parties that appointees were too close to the nuclear energy community. Also, the Diet has been at a virtual standstill after the House of Councilors passed a censure motion against Noda on Aug. 29, making it virtually impossible for the Diet to vote on the nominations during this session. With the pressing need to get the new nuclear regulatory system up and running, Noda decided to take matters into his own hands. It is expected Noda will appoint Shunichi Tanaka, formerly of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, as chair. Other likely members will be Kayoko Nakamura, of the Japan Radioisotope Association; Toyoshi Fuketa, deputy division chief at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency; Kenzo Oshima, former ambassador to the United Nations; and Kunihiko Shimazaki, head of the Coordinating Committee for Earthquake Prediction. The Commission will formulate stricter safety standards for nuclear plant operations and examine the efficacy of restarting idled nukes. The Japanese NRC will be politically subordinate to the Ministry of the Environment. The NRC will replace NISA, which is a subsidiary of the Ministry of the Economy. (Yomiuri Shimbun)
- The heads of Japan’s three major Fukushima investigative committees believe the F. Daiichi accident was the result of a national institutional problem that blurred where responsibilities existed. They said people involved in nuclear safety were influenced by the notion — often dubbed the “safety myth” — that Japan’s reactors could not possibly suffer a catastrophic accident, so they didn’t plan to contain such crises. “And we can’t see who was responsible (for failing to prepare against crises). As a matter of form, there are government officials who headed the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, but none of them think they were truly responsible,” said Koichi Kitazawa, who chaired the RJIF panel. “They just said that even if they had tried to change the situation, they would have been ‘powerless’ trying to act on their own.” Kiyoshi Kurokawa, who chaired the Diet-appointed panel, added that NISA, the government nuclear watchdog, failed to properly implement regulations because the utilities have more nuclear expertise, reversing the position of the regulators and those being regulated in a phenomenon called “regulatory capture.” Cabinet panel chair Yotaro Hatamura said, “…they [government experts] significantly failed to visualize how things could go wrong.” Kurokawa also criticized the government for the lack of transparency in the process to choose the five commissioners for the new nuclear regulatory body that debuts this month, charging the Prime Minister with a less-than-transparent selection process. Kurokawa said the public is skeptical about the appointment system and nominees partly because the process for choosing the candidates is unclear to them. (Japan Times)
- Hokuriku Electric Power Co. has refused to tour Social Democratic Party leader Mizuho Fukushima through the Shika NPS in Ishikawa Prefecture. The reason given by Hokuriku Electric is Ms. Fukushima’s outspoken support of Japan abandoning all nukes as soon as possible. The Toyama-based utility told Fukushima and her Diet supporters that they “could not afford to deal with people who did not share the understanding for the need of atomic energy.” Another official at Hokuriku Electric said, “We are receiving so many requests for tours. Workers on the ground are very busy. We declined the request because we concluded it was low on our list of priorities. We feel that even if we granted a tour to officials of a political party that espouses a phase-out of nuclear energy, we were not likely to win their support for nuclear power.” (Asahi Shimbun)
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