Axil Axil <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think you are suffering from the same lack of desire to educate yourself > about nuclear power when you categorically reject nuclear power based on an > incomplete education. > I am not rejecting it so much as reporting that the Japanese public, mass media, and people living near reactors have rejected it. The people living in towns near nuclear reactors insist that they remain shut down. The central government must bow to their wishes. The Japanese are smart people; they should not reject nuclear power based > on the past mistakes and criminally deficient nuclear engineering of their > American idols. > 1. Perhaps they should not reject it but they have. 2. Americans are not their idols. 3. The problem in this case was Japanese site engineering (the placement of the diesel engine fuel tanks), not the American reactor. As I pointed out several times, any commercially available reactor would have failed under these circumstances. > Like China they should take their on fate in their own hands; they can > devote some money and talent to direct their nuclear industry in the proper > direction. > I think it would be more cost-effective to devote money and talent to conventional alternative energy. I'm sure the Japanese could build offshore wind turbines and rooftop solar at a far lower cost than nuclear energy. I would not have said that before the Fukushima disaster revealed the true dollar cost of nuclear energy. The average wind turbine a few years ago cost ~$2 million per MW of nameplate capacity. That's $2000/kw, but actual capacity is about one third of the nameplate so it $6000/kw. That is expensive, although it is cheaper than a nuclear power plant starting cost per kilowatt. Anyway, for the cost of this accident, ~$650 billion, you could buy about ~108 GW of wind generating capacity, which is about half of Japan's installed generator capacity, and far more than their nuclear capacity. Needless to say, the cost of wind power is falling rapidly, and long before you build 108 GW the cost would fall by a large margin. Even if it turns out the accident cost only half as much as people now estimate, you could easily replace all of Japan's nuclear power with offshore wind for the cost of this one accident. As I said to three more accident like this would go a long way to bankrupting the nation. Nuclear power is an economic sword of Damocles. I do not think anyone in his right might would build more fission reactors now that we have seen what they can do, and how impossible it is to clean up. Any Japanese politician who recommended more reactors would be voted out of office. That is not a problem in China where they do not have democracy or elections and the government can get away with anything it wants. The recent high speed train accident in turn illustrated this. The literally buried the evidence on site. They buried the smashed railcars in the ground. The public made a huge commotion so the government dug them up, moved them to a local station and covered them up again with tarps this time. Given their track record on safety, pollution and other issues I do not think you should hold the Chinese as a shining example to the world. The government is, after all, a ruthless dictatorship. - Jed
