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Nothing is costlier than nuclear power. The consequence of a nuclear accident is enormous, and it takes 40 to 50 years to decommission a nuclear reactor.

12 Comments

Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (Jiji Press)

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Koizumi-san,

here are some better things you could say:

"Nothing is costlier than public pensions/health care. The costs are enormous, and we have to steal from future generations to fund them"

"Nothing is costlier than nationalism. The costs are enormous, and we risk our future prosperity supporting it."

"Nothing is costlier than fossil fuels. The costs are enormous, and we risk our planet using them."

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

And yes, he allowed nuclear power to go on under him, ignored the lax safety standards and allowed folks to get paid vast sums of money while he was in power... Easy to say now.

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

No accidents, it's fine. It only takes one accident that it jumps from fine to very costly very quickly.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Actually, I read that printer ink is the costliest item on the planet, way more than nuclear power. If you price it out by ounce, nothing beats it.

A close second is cellphone data. My Softbank bill shows I incur about 720,000 yen in fees every month, but--thanks to their kindness in bearing the huge loss themselves--I only pay 5500 yen per my data plan. Clearly Softbank is losing more than the entire Japanese GNP every year by generously providing people with data plans, and bearing 98% of the massive costs itself--which far outweigh the costs of nuclear power.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

Yes it SHOULD be abundantly clear nuke power is NOWHERE near as cheap as govt/industry have been saying

We are getting closer to the time of real skyrocketing of energy costs & it will alsolutely brutal on NAmericans when it starts happening, Japan too with its weakening of well everything set to continue.

With so many nuke plants now & more & more coming on line..............well Fukushima is what sadly we will see more & more of as time goes by, there is simply NO WAY govt(too stupid, inefficient) & industry(too profit oriented) can handle nuke plants.

And even if they are decommissioned the costs are really unknown & currently vastly under estimated. And when power companies go bust, are bought out then it will argued who is responsible for what.

Bottom line is nuke plants are going to be a massive problem over time.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Is Junichiro Koizumi planning to return to politics or PR on behalf of his son?

1 ( +1 / -0 )

He's right. And none of us here now will ever know the eventual cost of the Fukushima clean-up, as it will out-live us all.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

With all due respects, Koizumi is not an expert and I am not sure he has made comparative studies of costs. For example, has the medical and lost productivity costs of coal pollution in China considered?

-5 ( +1 / -6 )

It's not nuclear power, per se, that 's expensive.

It's the accidents, which believe it or not, are NOT inevitable.

Only when you put them in control of governments or cronyists do they tend to get costly.

With 1/4 of the cost of CLEAN UP put into prevention, nuclear power would be pretty safe. And pretty cheap.

But since government idiots and TEPCO style idiots would rather save money now, they end up paying much more later.

To make a statement like "Nuclear energy is too expensive so we shouldn't use it" is really saying "governments are too stupid to use nuclear energy effectively so we'd better not use it."

But no government official would EVER say that government is anything less than perfect, so they blame nuclear energy, as if it's got some inherent flaws.

as if nuclear reactors would just spontaneously explode, regardless of where they where and how they were built.

-1 ( +5 / -6 )

Mr Koizumi is right but he tends to reference the situation in financial terms. Nuclear accidents cause genetic damage through succeeding generations and poison land thousands of miles away-I'm a little more Thanotic than Koizumi....

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

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