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Electricity flows from restarted Oi reactor

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I am somewhat bemused by the fact that even after they restarted the reactors, Kansai people have to reduce power usage. Saving 10% is not much different to saving 20%. To me this shows they probably could have done it without restarting them.

9 ( +12 / -3 )

Robert: "Let's work together for a green future, but I when people boycott screaming "no nukes" thats great and all, but there are about 40 plants RIGHT across the Japan Sea that could effectively irradiate Japan if anything happened."

Are the NPPs in those nations sitting on major fault lines and do they have a direct threat from tsunamis? If you're going to compare you need to at least take those factors into account.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

Now that it is up and running,and soon others will be too, let's just keep our fingers crossed that the new safety measures are up to the task of handling another major quake. I hope that no one on this Earth ever has to live through another meltdown.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

I feel dirty

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Seems a bit scary to me... In the same newspaper they say Fukushima was a "man-made" disaster then, in the same "breath" they say that they've now restarted one of the Oi reactors...

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Yeah as long as SAFETY SAFETY SAFETY measures are in place.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Zichi, is talking about restart of Monju. Some details provided by this article. If true, it is just another example of either bureaucrats completely ignoring government instructions or the government hiding the ball from the public.

Either way it is a sad state of affairs.

http://enformable.com/2012/06/jaea-found-making-quiet-agreements-with-nuclear-plant-makers-in-preparation-for-monju-restart/

3 ( +8 / -5 )

More cheep clean power...until something goes wrong...then decades of cost.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

basroil, coal to some extent, yes, but Japan is looking very hard at frozen undersea methane and even more at fracked gas.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

If it's that bad Robert Dykes then perhaps Japan isn't a safe place to live. Maybe they should have stayed in Mongolia. Get that Speed Learning English and get off this rock.

Anyway, there's too much incompetence here for them to be allowed to run nuclear reactors. They can't even lock the back door at the police station. They can't keep their kids from falling off balconies. Nope, definitely not qualified to use nuclear energy.

2 ( +8 / -6 )

I don't like Nuclear Power Plants of any kind. I know we need Nuclear technology for medicine. But for energy? War? Deterrant's for War? Not a fan!!! Earthquakes and other natural Dissaster's are bound to happen. But when we bring "Manmade Nuclear Accidents" into our world we needlessly punish ourselve's. For What? Corporate greed? Big Profit's....It's the people who suffer the most, not those in their Ivory Towers of Luxury. " NO Nukes" No nuclear clean-up's....

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Fadamor

True. No one has yet died from radiation exposure. Anti-radiation paranoia is, well, paranoid.

Just as glib assertions of radiation's safety are, well, glib.

At lease six workers got more than their lifetime radiation exposure allowance. They will almost certainly die prematurely as a result. As will a significant number of the over 300 others who got 'significant doses' of radiation.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

@fadamor - a number of deaths have been reported in the Nuclear Ginza - Wakasa Bay reactors - during the 1990s - mainly cancers in younger people - employed in some of the cleaning and maintenance work in the reactor vessels. However, when the relatives or supporters sued for damages, radiation exposure data cards were found to have been either incomplete, lost, altered or just plain forged, and the courts threw the cases out, as the doses received and thus the causality could not be proven. The usual sub-sub-sub contractors managing workers so that the utilities could keep their hands clean. Many of othe casual laborers were also the homeless and itinerant picked up by organized crime groups in the downtown Osaka slums. 20~30M Yen hush money was offered to them by KEPCO/ JAE. The priest at one of the shrines in the area and photographer Ken Higuchi recorded many of these cases (UK film 1995 Nuclear Ginza and Higuchi's books), but as usual, no official follow up was ever taken.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

We did fine without any nuclear power for the past 2 months. Buying into the lie that it is necessary when it clearly isn't.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Not sure where you live basroil, but calling humid rainy season June 'winter' is a bit of a mental leap. Everywhere I have been for the past month has had aircon blasting at 23. All without nuclear power.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Lobbyists are now defiantly on this site.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Onniyama, it has happened before and unfortunately it will happen again, and again...

0 ( +2 / -2 )

@gogogo - the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organisation (!), NISA and other websites have details of the training and qualifications to become a reactor operator, and the career progression, re-training and advancement to become a supervisor and shift manager

There is a training centre (Nuclear Power Training Center Ltd.) in Fukui prefecture, while Mitsubishi, Toshiba and Hitachi all have their own in-house training facilities. Videos of NPP operations show that these manufacturers' staff are active in the day to day operations of their own reactors, accompanied by utility staff for verification, and day labourers (gamma sponges) to do the manual dirty work.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Nice, reassuring photo of the Monju control center. Unfortunately, all I see in my mind's eye is the Fukushima control center...post 3/11...ceiling panels hanging, dials showing zero...everything unglued. And me, wondering with everyone else nearby, what the hell was descending upon me from the skies, and then through the food, especially food marked, "nihon kara" or some such equivalent that can only be interpreted as, "too lily-livered to admit the food is from Fukushima, parts of irradiated Ibaraki and Chiba, and points north in Tohoku. Big, big trouble too, too possible in the near future. Turn off the nukes, turn on the sun, the wind, the water. Now or never, which shall it be?

0 ( +4 / -4 )

AylerJul. 06, 2012 - 04:02PM JST

Not sure where you live basroil, but calling humid rainy season June 'winter' is a bit of a mental leap. Everywhere I have been for the past month has had aircon blasting at 23. All without nuclear power.

I'm pretty far north so winter lasts 6 months of the year. Power peak here is also during winter instead of summer.

Regardless, KEPCO's power consumption right now is still only about 70% of 2010 summer levels, and 81% of last year's to-date maximum (to today's date a year ago, when the temperatures were abnormally warm early on but not that bad overall. The temperatures so far have been warm at worst, still not much out of line with average temperatures, and actually significantly cooler than last year. If the temps hit 33+ though, you can see a demand spike going into the 27GW+ area on a normal year, and even if they manage to just hit 26GW it's enough to be in the blackout danger zone (if a plant has to stop for any reason, or if hydro stations are lacking water).

Nobody says blackout WILL come, simply that they are very likely to come if energy use trends continue as in the past.

0 ( +5 / -5 )

basroil,

Nobody says blackout WILL come, simply that they are very likely to come if energy use trends continue as in the past.

Yes you have said that multiple times on this forum basroil. Do you want to take it back now?

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Would love to know the technical requirements to work here, how skilled are the workers? Where do they get their degrees etc?

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Theres nothing cheap about nuclear power, it is a sad state of affairs in Japan indeed!

-1 ( +7 / -8 )

nandakandamandaJul. 05, 2012 - 11:04PM JST

coal to some extent, yes, but Japan is looking very hard at frozen undersea methane and even more at fracked gas.

The only plants that are able to be brought online within three years are the mothballed coal plants that nuclear plants replaced.

And methyle hydrate is a bad idea, it is much, much worse than CO2 for the environment, so if there's an accident mining it you can expect years worth of green house gasses released overnight. Not to mention nobody has tried yet because it's not economically viable yet. Frackling also has it's issues, mainly in that it may be a fault-line activator and some types of fluids needed may contaminate water supplies (risk can be minimized, but can't say it won't happen).

-1 ( +5 / -6 )

"Almost certainly", "probably", and "likely" are not words used with facts. They're words used with guesses. Those six workers may outlive us all. This is because the "lifetime radiation exposure limitation" is ALSO a guess. There isn't a single expert on the face of this planet who can tell you exactly where the dividing line is for "safe" exposure and "unsafe" exposure for a lifetime. We know exposure rates that are definitely fatal and exposure rates that definitely increase the risk of cancer down the line, but nobody is sure about where things go from bad to "safe". Indeed, there are some who say the background radiation we normally live in from day to day is slowly killing us, so there IS no "safe" amount of exposure. We as a species didn't help ourselves back in the 50's with all those nuke tests. They added to the background radiation signature that we currently live in. So until people actually start dying, the count is 0.00000000000000000000000000 deaths.

Oh, and I have no doubt that when people from the affected areas eventually DO die (for whatever reason), there will be those who claim it was the radiation that did it. I've already resigned myself to that inevitability.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Electricity flows from restarted Oi reactor

Let's pray that is the only thing that flows from it...

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

AylerJul. 06, 2012 - 09:37AM JST

We did fine without any nuclear power for the past 2 months. Buying into the lie that it is necessary when it clearly isn't.

Your talking about a mild winter where power consumption goes down significantly. If summer is like 2010, there will be blackouts.

-1 ( +4 / -5 )

JTDanManJul. 06, 2012 - 02:00AM JST

At lease six workers got more than their lifetime radiation exposure allowance. They will almost certainly die prematurely as a result. As will a significant number of the over 300 others who got 'significant doses' of radiation.

6 workers had over 2 Sv of exposure? I think we would have heard about that, since 2Sv is enough to cause some nasty temporary side effects. I think you mean they had more than their lifetime BACKGROUND exposure, which Japan states as being 1.5mSv a year (at 85 year life expectancy, most of those guys were above 30, so actually more may have reached the number). However, if you include medical radiation, construction materials, etc, it's only about 25-30 years worth of background exposure in Japan. Since the number was about 100 (usually 150 or so mSv reported) , they will have approximately a 0.1% increased chance of cancer. They will likely not die early, as so far the only workers from Chernobyl exposed to higher than that level that died early as a result of cancer is 1. The other deaths not associated with accidents were ones exposed to 2+Sv worth of radiation who died of burns and radiation poisoning within a few weeks or months.

-1 ( +5 / -6 )

Germany has successfully closed down its reactors and is now a world leader in solar energy. Japan is starting its reactors up again and is a world leader in.......?

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Robert Dykes

All I am saying is, protesting JUST Japan's nuclear power is short sighted and naive. There are dangers a few hundred kilometers away. across the ocean that being completely ignored.

NOBODY is saying that only the nuclear reactors in Japan should be abolished. But since we don't live in India or South Korea, I don't see how we can protest over their reactors.

If you cared so much, then why don't you complain about it to the Indians or South Koreans or whatever?

And oh look... virtually all nuclear plants are now shut down, and we're doing fine. No economic meltdowns, the sky isn't falling. Stop overreacting.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

And yes, some of us are actually trying to stop the use of nuclear reactors all over the world. But ultimately, it's up to India, South Korea, etc. to give up their nuclear reactors.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

Good your demonstration, some how Nuclear power generation completely stopped.

But It is not easy to stop over night as Japan high Industrial nation ...be cool... It take time to find another safe cheep way of generating power .

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

PenfoldJul. 05, 2012 - 11:06PM JST

Nice try but comparing people falling from rooftops whilst fitting solar panels to Chernobyl and Fukushima is pushing the mathematical envelope a little don't you think so? Or were you just having a little fun?

Don't put words into my mouth that I neither said nor even supported. Regardless, a death is a death, and while the numbers are pretty different than the ones I have seen in the past, it doesn't mean that the ideas were wrong.

-3 ( +4 / -7 )

Look at this way: If there ever is another nuclear meltdown in Japan, then say bye bye to Japan.

Saying that they get to "benefit" from their reactors is hilarious. They're the ones who will have to pay the price for owning nukes just like Japan did with Fukushima and the Soviets did with Chernobyl, which must have contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

-4 ( +3 / -7 )

FightingVikingJul. 05, 2012 - 08:55PM JST

Seems a bit scary to me... In the same newspaper they say Fukushima was a "man-made" disaster then, in the same "breath" they say that they've now restarted one of the Oi reactors...

I'm sure you are scared of your neighbor because they said someone in another town robbed and killed someone. Different company, different type of reactor, different time, different precautions. While it won't be 100% safe, given the lessons learned it won't really be an issue. Hopefully people keeping a close eye on things will also make them more responsive to international and internal recommendations.

-4 ( +4 / -8 )

@smithinjapan "Are the NPPs in those nations sitting on major fault lines and do they have a direct threat from tsunamis? If you're going to compare you need to at least take those factors into account."

ARE YOU KIDDING? I mean really? are you kidding? India and Pakistan are on the brink of war consonantly? Possibly nuclear war. You don't think a war could cause a nuclear meltdown in a reactor. What about Korea and North Korea. They may not be on fault lines, but a 9,0 earthquake happens every 500 or 1000 years. WAR happens at the drop of a hat. You 4 of the 5 nuclear nations on the pan Asian content on the brink of war RIGHT NOW.

All I am saying is, protesting JUST Japan's nuclear power is short sighted and naive. There are dangers a few hundred kilometers away. across the ocean that being completely ignored. I am all for a 100% green Japan. Of course that is the rational thing to do, but if Japan densest recover economically from this, there will be no japan, no money to build a entirely new infrastructure. The nuclear power infrastructure they have now took 30 years to build and fiance and cost TRILLIONS of yen. A 100% green power system is not going to jsut happen over night.

You guys just love thumbing up ANYTHING that is anti nuke and thumbing down anything that isn't blatantly anti nuke. But non of you offer ANY suggestions how we are going to just magically fix the economy and magically build a entire new energy infrastructure or magic create the non-existent technology over night or what we are going to do in the mean time. Its so easy to jump on a band wagon. Listen to me. I agree nuclear power is not good. I AGREE WITH YOU!!! I also see ZERO alternative in the near future, in the next 5 to 10 to 15 years.

When you give a rational answer, I will give you a thumbs up too. Its just so easy to jump on a bandwagon but offer up no thoughts or ideas of your own to answer the zillion questions of what to do.

-5 ( +1 / -6 )

zichiJul. 05, 2012 - 04:51PM JST

After PM Noda gave permission to restart the Oi reactors, minister Goshi Hosono that no further reactors would be started until after the new atomic safety agency is functioning, sometime after Sept.

Guess no one informed him of the gov't's intention to restart the Monju Fast Breeder reactor, located in Fukui, by mid July?

The Monju uses MOX fuel, a mixture of uranium and plutonium and is cooled by sodium. There have been too many major accidents at the plant including a sodium fire.

The cost of electricity so far out of Monju is ¥10,000/kWh.

1) Monju is an experimental reactor, not a commercial one, so the cost is not much different than some of the first experimental reactors... But it is one of the most expensive ones because they keep restarting it for no reason other than perhaps to make more plutonium.

2) Even I think that's a bad idea. Monju has proven that molten sodium reactors, while less likely to release radiation due to low contamination of the coolant, are just too dangerous in the atmosphere. I hope they suddenly remember that they don't really want to restart it.

-7 ( +3 / -10 )

Basroil - Nice try but comparing people falling from rooftops whilst fitting solar panels to Chernobyl and Fukushima is pushing the mathematical envelope a little don't you think so? Or were you just having a little fun?

-7 ( +5 / -12 )

Well said Robert. Somebody had to say something rational.

-8 ( +7 / -15 )

Basroil - Nice try but comparing people falling from rooftops whilst fitting solar panels to Chernobyl and Fukushima is pushing the mathematical envelope a little don't you think so? Or were you just having a little fun?

No nearly as much fun as somebody implying that even a single person has died due to the radiation leak at Fukushima.

Deaths at Fukushima due to Direct radiation or fallout: 0.0000000000000000000000000000000
-8 ( +0 / -8 )

Look at this way: China, India, and Korea have around 100 nuclear power plants running at this moment. If they ever melted down, those famous winds that bring the yellow sand to Japan, would also bring all that radiation powering down ALL of Japan. They get to "benefit" from their reactors, but Japan has to share in the danger. Do you trust China or India over Japan when it comes to running an advance piece of technology. I mean honestly. Do you think if the tsunami never happened, Japan would probably never ever have had this problem to begin with. Let's work together for a green future, but I when people boycott screaming "no nukes" thats great and all, but there are about 40 plants RIGHT across the Japan Sea that could effectively irradiate Japan if anything happened. Just seems pointless to be FOR crippling Japan power and economy but then not doing or saying anything about the the other countries that are growing thriving and relying on nuke plants. Yes I get that Japan needs to get rid of nuclear power. Do you REALLY think the best time is in the its worst economic deppression since in 30's year while its 1000 year "enemy" China is growing fast than any nation on the planet.

-12 ( +6 / -19 )

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