Up until three weeks ago all of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors were cooling their atoms in the ‘off’ position. However, faced with the prospect of brownouts as the summer heat and humidity advances, the government blinked and reauthorized the restarting of two reactors in Kansai, Japan’s industrial heartland. This has met with surprisingly large public criticism. A rally in Tokyo protesting against the restarts attracted 170,000 people while all this week anti-nuclear activists have been staging nighty noisy demonstrations outside the prime minister’s residence.
The primary reason for the unseemly return to nuclear energy is, as for so many things here, economic. In order to make up for the energy shortfall since all the reactors were turned off, Japan has been importing vast amounts of oil, coal and gas to keep the country’s electrical grid up and humming. The bill for this is estimated at $100 million a day. Plus there is all that capital intensive nuclear infrastructure just sitting there idly in the summer sun.
Yet, the restart of only two reactors is unlikely to reduce that bill by much. So, in tandem, the government has initiated a nationwide campaign of ‘setsuden’ or ‘power saving’ over the summer. This involves a myriad of approaches from turning off traffic lights, installing LED lightbulbs in street lights, badgering people to unplug electrical appliances at home, to setting air conditioner units to kick in only above 28 C (and that’s with 85%+ humidity). Even this may not be enough and so the various regional electrical utilities have drawn up plans for rolling electrical blackouts should demand swamp the available supply of electricity.
To the more cynical observer like, well, myself, it seems that there are a number of issues here. One is the economic cost of powering Japan versus the human cost of scrimping on same. Last year, when similar power saving measures were in place, a record 1,718 people died from heatstroke. According to yesterday’s Japan Times, just last weekend saw 8 people die from the broiling summer heat while another 2,500 had to be hospitalized for same. Even the government acknowledges that many of the fatalities were elderly people who switched off their air-conditioning in response to the ‘setsuden’ campaign.
A more subtle issue is the framing of the ‘setsuden’ in terms of the disruption (and deaths) it causes to people’s lives. Essentially, the government and the electricity utilities, who have invested billions in the nuclear power industry, are saying ‘without nuclear power, these are the hardships we have to endure. Do you want this to continue?’ The ‘you’ is the people of Japan as a whole. The implied contrast here is with the minority (population wise) of those displaced because of the meltdowns and radioactive dispersal at the Fukushima power plant. What the government is trying to do is switch the point of focus; instead of news reports about the ongoing (and potentially terminal) dislocation of the residents around the plant, the nightly news is filled with reports of the heatwave affecting all parts of the country and the suffering it is inflicting on a power-starved country. In other words, Fukushima is a local disaster whereas ‘setsuden’ is a national problem. And in a bitter irony, such a problem can easily be solved by putting also those expensively idle nuclear reactors back online.
The primary reason for the unseemly return to nuclear energy is, as for so many things here, economic. In order to make up for the energy shortfall since all the reactors were turned off, Japan has been importing vast amounts of oil, coal and gas to keep the country’s electrical grid up and humming. The bill for this is estimated at $100 million a day. Plus there is all that capital intensive nuclear infrastructure just sitting there idly in the summer sun.
Yet, the restart of only two reactors is unlikely to reduce that bill by much. So, in tandem, the government has initiated a nationwide campaign of ‘setsuden’ or ‘power saving’ over the summer. This involves a myriad of approaches from turning off traffic lights, installing LED lightbulbs in street lights, badgering people to unplug electrical appliances at home, to setting air conditioner units to kick in only above 28 C (and that’s with 85%+ humidity). Even this may not be enough and so the various regional electrical utilities have drawn up plans for rolling electrical blackouts should demand swamp the available supply of electricity.
To the more cynical observer like, well, myself, it seems that there are a number of issues here. One is the economic cost of powering Japan versus the human cost of scrimping on same. Last year, when similar power saving measures were in place, a record 1,718 people died from heatstroke. According to yesterday’s Japan Times, just last weekend saw 8 people die from the broiling summer heat while another 2,500 had to be hospitalized for same. Even the government acknowledges that many of the fatalities were elderly people who switched off their air-conditioning in response to the ‘setsuden’ campaign.
A more subtle issue is the framing of the ‘setsuden’ in terms of the disruption (and deaths) it causes to people’s lives. Essentially, the government and the electricity utilities, who have invested billions in the nuclear power industry, are saying ‘without nuclear power, these are the hardships we have to endure. Do you want this to continue?’ The ‘you’ is the people of Japan as a whole. The implied contrast here is with the minority (population wise) of those displaced because of the meltdowns and radioactive dispersal at the Fukushima power plant. What the government is trying to do is switch the point of focus; instead of news reports about the ongoing (and potentially terminal) dislocation of the residents around the plant, the nightly news is filled with reports of the heatwave affecting all parts of the country and the suffering it is inflicting on a power-starved country. In other words, Fukushima is a local disaster whereas ‘setsuden’ is a national problem. And in a bitter irony, such a problem can easily be solved by putting also those expensively idle nuclear reactors back online.
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