Japan in quest to sidestep nuclear
• Still rattled by Fukushima disaster, focus is now on renewable energy
After the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, which was followed by a tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear power accident, Katsuichi Kato wanted to save his town.
A hamlet tucked away in fern- and forest-covered hills, Tsuchiyu was dependent on tourism, centred on natural hot springs, which gave the stream that flows through the town its lovely aquamarine colour. Although the destruction wrought by the earthquake was swiftly fixed, Tsuchiyu was stigmatised as a prefecture contaminated by radiation.
Kato, an entrepreneur who owned an hotel and then established a retirement home in the village, hit upon a great idea. After the three-day blackout that followed the quake, he began investigating whether the spring water could generate electricity.
He now owns a binary power plant that produces 350kW through a combination of the 350°C spring water and the chemical pentam in an almost emission-free process. He called his company Genki Up Tsuchiya (Cheer up Tsuchiyu).
“We had a sense of crisis that our town would disappear because of the earthquake. One of the measures to restart this town was the power plant. We used to have 250,000 visitors to this area. In 2011, that dropped to 70,000. Now the numbers are up to 180,000,” Kato — a spry 69-year-old — says.
The scars of the Fukushima disaster are still deeply etched on the Japanese psyche.
With no fossil fuel resources, Japan built a highly industrialised economy based on imports of coal, gas and oil, and on nuclear energy. Until Fukushima happened, the country believed that nuclear plants had solved its energy problem.
Says Misako Takahashi, a director in the ministry of foreign affairs: “For us, nuclear energy was important. We considered it as a ‘quasi-indigenous’ form of energy.”
But all that changed with Fukushima, when the 17 nuclear plants, made up of 54 reactors, shut down overnight. The six reactors at the Daiichi plant were destroyed: four exploded when the emergency power source failed, causing them to overheat, and two went into meltdown. All but four of the remaining 48 reactors are yet to be restarted.
“We want to restart nuclear power as soon as possible but the problem is public acceptance,” says Takahashi.
After the disaster, Japan experienced a surge of interest in renewable energy. To incentivise new producers, a generous feed-in tariff was legislated and established electricity companies — privately owned but until then regional monopolies — were obliged to purchase what they produced.
The feed-in tariff and the need to import larger quantities of coal, oil and gas caused the electricity price to double overnight. While the public continue to resist the restarting of nuclear power, industry and business are lobbying for a return to the old status quo.
“Companies prefer cheaper electricity but the public are much more concerned about safety. The difficulty is how to find a balance that is acceptable to everyone,” says Takahashi.
Nuclear energy has become an issue in this month’s national election with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party in favour of restarting the plants and the new Party of Hope, led by Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike, in opposition.
Energy policy has never been controversial before, says Nobuo Tanaka, chairman of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, which promotes international co-operation and human development. But now Japan faces some uncertainty over which way it will go.
Tanaka, who was one of the facilitators at last week’s Innovation for a Cool Earth Forum in Tokyo, a large international conference on climate change, seems to thrive on asking hard questions of his fellow citizens.
He points out that because of the shutdown of nuclear power, Japan’s carbon-dioxide emissions rose, putting it out of step with global developments.
While the public has lost faith in nuclear technology, Tanaka believes they are complacent about climate change and are not engaging with the need to find alternatives. “What if she [Koike] wins? Will energy policy suddenly be changing?”
Yuki Saito (not his real name) was a 27-year-old technician in the Daiichi plant when the earthquake hit.
“I thought we took enough safety measures, so I thought it would be okay no matter what happened. But the tsunami hit the plant and our emergency power supply was submerged so we couldn’t use the safety equipment and we couldn’t cool the reactors,” he says.
At noon the next day, the first reactor exploded and some of Saito’s colleagues were killed.
His opinion of nuclear energy has changed. “If we can do without it, it’s better. The development of the technology is not good enough to be used safely.”
Saito now works at Fukushima Electric Power Company, which has a large solar energy plant at Fukushima Airport. Like most renewable energy projects in Japan, the plant was built after the quake as “a model power plant” to promote what company representative Seichi Suzuki describes as “the drastic development” of renewable energy.
The government is promoting Fukushima as “a new energy society” and the prefecture has a renewable energy institute that has attracted 600 start-ups.
Says director-general Masuru Nakaiwa: “Before the quake, our policy was to move to 50% of nuclear energy. Now the goal is to move from 10% of renewable energy to 25% by 2030. After the disaster, government policy for this area was to revive it by starting a new industry.”
Nakaiwa believes nuclear power is no longer commercially viable, given the new safety requirements for Generation III reactors. “We have to consider the lifetime costs. It is no longer cost-effective to build new nuclear power stations.”
Fukushima is an important food-producing region for Japan. Decontamination is continuing with soil and rubble being removed to a “storage facility” and new soil and plants brought in. Contaminated water has been pumped into storage tanks, the ground around the site has been paved and the walls of the plant frozen.
The big problem of nuclear energy remains what to do with all this waste. Like most other countries including SA, a permanent resting place for nuclear waste is yet to be found. For the moment, contaminated water, rubble and nuclear material is being temporarily stored.
It is a sobering lesson in the use of nuclear technology. While governments have been able to kick that ball down the road, given the 50-year life cycle of nuclear plants, in Japan’s case that is no longer possible.