Japan nuclear watchdog considers extending reactor life

Good news. Be sure to shut down all GE reactors though, it's rubbish!

Japanese people don’t realise how many band-aids are needed to cover those cracks. Just look at France right now. 57 reactors and they have to go from exporting electricity to importing because half their functioning ones are in old and broken.

Building new plants to new standards - for example a large leadfilled buffer under the core to automatically extinguish any meltdown - is a necessity if nuclear power is going to be continued. It's a more expensive design but far cheaper than the Fukushima cleanup.

No new plan but relying on extending the old plants indefinitely seems like a risky strategy.

NRA and the Power Utiity testing and QC was very poor. You can read how they extrapolated data from one reactor to another model, instead of actually carrying out measurements, leading to excessive thinning and then ruptured steam pipes, killing 5 people and injuring 6 at Mihama-3 back in 2004. At Mihama-2, they re-wrote the standards, allowing for thinner pipes, and replaced a degraded pipe with an old pipe, but were caught by NISA inspectors and ordered to replace the pipe.

Similar incidents occured in Hokkaido and Tsuruga, but were discovered on review.

Independent oversight is required, the utiities are not fit to inspect and check themselves.

Just extends until another Fukushima take place and people need to pay for it, in many ways. Either through their taxes or displacement.