Monju fiasco, Fukushima plans point to a better energy source — The Asahi Shimbun

” We are perhaps witnessing a turning point in history regarding humankind and energy.

The total capacity of facilities in Japan that sell electricity generated from solar power under the feed-in tariff system exceeded 30 gigawatts by the end of last year, according to figures of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.

Most of those facilities began generating power after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster in 2011. Their total capacity is worth 30 nuclear reactors, although actual output depends on the time of day and the weather.

Frankly, I was surprised to learn that solar power has grown so big despite the many barriers, such as regional utilities essentially setting upper limits on the amount of electricity generated with renewable energy sources that they purchase.

And solar power is turning out to be useful.

Through inquiries with nine regional utilities, The Asahi Shimbun learned that electricity generated with solar power accounted for about 10 percent of power supply at peak demand last summer.

In the service area of Kyushu Electric Power Co., the ratio was close to 25 percent.

The shift to renewable energies is more pronounced on the global scale.

For example, global wind power capacity topped 430 gigawatts in 2015, according to the Global Status Report released on June 1 by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21), an international body.

Global nuclear power capacity is now 386 gigawatts, according to figures of the International Atomic Energy Agency, so wind turbines have outstripped nuclear reactors in terms of output capacity.

Solar power has a total capacity of 227 gigawatts, nearly 60 percent of that of nuclear power.

SOLAR FARM IN EMPTY TOWN

A symposium was held June 4 in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, to commemorate the start of a large-scale solar farm project in the town of Tomioka, also in the prefecture. Tomioka remains entirely evacuated because of the nuclear disaster.

Under their own initiative, residents of the town plan to build a giant solar farm with an output capacity of 30 megawatts. Proceeds from the project will be used to help rebuild communities.

The plan is being led by Yoko Endo, a 66-year-old former music teacher, and her husband, Michihito, a 60-year-old former art teacher. The couple now live in evacuation in the city of Iwaki, also in Fukushima Prefecture.

The couple’s former home is in a government-designated “no-residence” zone, whereas Yoko’s family home nearby stands in a “difficult-to-return” zone.

Michihito’s 2 hectares of rice paddies have also been rendered unusable.

The couple said they thought they would still be able to produce something that would be good for Japan from their terrain, even if they could not return to Tomioka and no longer grow crops there.

They solicited cooperation from their “neighbors” in diaspora across the country for the solar farm project, and they obtained agreements from more than 30 landowners for the use of about 35 hectares of rice paddies.

The total cost of the project is 9.5 billion yen ($91 million), an exceptionally large figure for a project initiated by residents. Citizens’ investments will cover 1.3 billion yen of the expenses.

Proceeds from the project will be used to help elderly residents get to and from medical institutions and stores when they return to Tomioka. The money will also fund projects to help pass on farming technologies to younger generations when farming can resume in the town.

The couple plan to start building the solar farm this autumn and have it operational in March 2018.

“We hope to nurture the project so that people will look back and say that this solar farm project, led by the initiative of residents, was more bright and brilliant than any other project of the kind,” Yoko Endo said.

Other large-scale renewable energy projects are springing up in Fukushima Prefecture.

MONJU REACTOR IN DEADLOCK

“An energy source that relies on nuclear power is not suited to human needs,” Tetsuya Takahashi, a professor of philosophy with the University of Tokyo, said in his keynote lecture during the Koriyama symposium. “Once it runs amok, it hurts human livelihoods to an unrecoverable extent.”

Takahashi was born in Iwaki and spent his childhood in Tomioka. People from that area are now aspiring to create an energy source that is better suited to their needs.

As I listened to the professor talk, my thoughts went to Monju, the prototype fast-breeder reactor.

In 1956, shortly after Japan set out on its nuclear development program, the government said in its initial long-term plan that a fast-breeder reactor “best fits the circumstances of Japan.” At the time, the reactor appeared to represent the best solution.

In the following years, the fast-breeder reactor became the symbol of Japan’s nuclear development.

The government has spent 1 trillion yen on the construction of Monju, which began in earnest in 1985. But its development program was suspended after sodium leaked from the reactor in 1995.

Things got so bad that the Nuclear Regulation Authority recommended to science minister Hiroshi Hase last November that Monju should be brought under a different operating body.

“The first thing to do is to implement reliable maintenance in a state of suspended operation,” a study group set up by the science ministry said May 27 in a report about Monju’s operating body.

Something as basic as that is not being done properly.

A project once thought to symbolize national policy was, after all, not best suited to the people’s needs. ”

by Toshihide Ueda

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For some Fukushima mothers, protecting children from radiation comes at heavy price — The Asahi Shimbun

” Three-and-a-half years after fleeing to central Japan, a mother received a package from her husband who had opted to remain at their home in Fukushima Prefecture despite the nuclear disaster.

From Tamura, about 35 kilometers west of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, the father sent snacks for the couple’s two children. The cardboard box also contained divorce papers.

“I cannot send money to my family whom I cannot see,” the husband told his wife.

She still refused to return home.

Thanks to decontamination work, radiation levels have fallen around the nuclear plant since the triple meltdown caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. And families are returning to their hometowns, trying to resume normal lives.

But many mothers, distrustful of the government’s safety assurances, still harbor fears that radiation will affect the health of their children. As a result of these concerns, families are being torn apart, friendships have ended, and a social divide remains wide in Fukushima communities.

Around 70,000 people are still not allowed to return to their homes located in evacuation zones designated by the central government. And an estimated 18,000 people from Fukushima Prefecture whose homes were outside those zones remain living in evacuation.

The government is pushing for Fukushima residents to return home and trying to counter false rumors about the nuclear disaster.

More families in Fukushima Prefecture are willing to buy food produced in the prefecture–but not all.

A 40-year-old mother who once lived on the coast of Fukushima Prefecture and moved farther inland to Koriyama said she still fears for the health of her 11-year-old daughter.

Her classmates started serving “kyushoku” school lunches containing Fukushima rice and vegetables that passed the screening for radioactive materials. But the fifth-grader has instead eaten from a bento lunch box prepared by her mother.

The daughter says that eating her own lunch led to teasing from her classmates. She heard one of them say behind her back: “You aren’t eating kyushoku. Are you neurotic?”

She does not talk to that classmate anymore, although they used to be friends.

“I now feel a bit more at ease even when I am different from other students,” the daughter said.

Her mother expressed concerns about her daughter’s social life, but protecting her child’s health takes precedence.

“My daughter may fall ill sometime,” the mother said. “I feel almost overwhelmed by such a fear.”

An official of the Fukushima prefectural board of education said a certain number of students act differently from other students because of health concerns over radiation.

“Although the number is limited, some students bring bento to their schools,” the official said. “Some students wear surgical masks when they participate in footraces during outdoor school athletic meets.

“The feelings toward radiation vary from person to person, so we cannot force them (to behave in the same way as other students).”

Sung Woncheol, a professor of sociology at Chukyo University, and others have conducted surveys on mothers whose children were 1 to 2 years old when the nuclear disaster started. The mothers live in Fukushima city and eight other municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture.

Of the 1,200 mothers who responded to the survey in 2015, 50 percent said they had concerns about child-rearing in Fukushima Prefecture.

Nearly 30 percent said they avoid or try to avoid using food products from Fukushima Prefecture, compared with more than 80 percent six months after the disaster.

But for some mothers, the passage of nearly five years since the disaster unfolded has not erased their fears of radiation.

The 36-year-old mother who received the divorce papers from her husband in autumn 2014 continues to live with her children in the central Japan city to which she had no previous connection.

A month after the nuclear disaster, she fled with her then 1-year-old son and her daughter, 10, from their home, even though it was not located in an evacuation zone.

She said she left Fukushima Prefecture because she “could not trust the data released by the central government.”

The mother still has not told her children that their parents are divorced.

“I believe I could protect the health of my children,” the woman said. “But my family has collapsed.” ”

by Natsuki Edogawa

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Tepco ordered to pay over suicide linked to nuclear evacuation — The Japan Times

” FUKUSHIMA – Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Tuesday was again held responsible for a suicide linked to the 2011 nuclear crisis and ordered to pay damages.

The Fukushima District Court ordered Tepco to pay ¥27 million to the family of 67-year-old Kiichi Isozaki, who committed suicide in July 2011 after being forced out of his home near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and fell into depression.

It is the second time that a court has determined there was a link between the nuclear disaster and a suicide, and ordered the utility to pay damages.

In the latest ruling, presiding Judge Naoyuki Shiomi said the severe experiences Isozaki had gone through made him depressed and led to his suicide. But Shiomi said the disaster had a “60 percent” impact on the man’s decision to take his own life, given that he had diabetes, which may also have played a role.

Isozaki’s wife, Eiko, 66, and two other relatives had sought ¥87 million.

“The ruling aside, I really want Tepco to apologize,” Eiko Isozaki said after the decision.

Tepco issued a statement saying it will “thoroughly examine the ruling and handle the case sincerely.”

According to the lawsuit, Isozaki started having trouble sleeping and lost his appetite after he was evacuated from his home in the town of Namie to a high school in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture. Isozaki and his family later moved to an apartment in another city, but his condition did not improve.

At dawn on July 23, 2011, Isozaki left his apartment and was found dead near a dam the following day, according to the lawsuit. He had presumably thrown himself off a bridge.

The plaintiffs argued that depression had prompted him to commit suicide and he would be “living happily had the nuclear accident not occurred.”

Tepco argued that the court should consider other factors that may have contributed to his mental state.

Last August, the same district court ordered the utility to pay ¥49 million in damages to the family of a 58-year-old woman who burned herself to death after she was forced to evacuate from her home in a Fukushima town contaminated by the nuclear disaster.

Although more than four years have passed since the powerful earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, triggered the country’s worst nuclear crisis, suicides linked to the event continue as more than 100,000 people remain evacuated in and around Fukushima.

Sixty-nine suicides in Fukushima Prefecture committed by the end of May have been deemed linked to the earthquake-tsunami or nuclear disasters, according to the Cabinet Office. ”

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Fukushima: Hawaii-based nonprofit group says “every single person” they hosted from Japan has had health problems — Global Research, Nuclear Hotseat podcast

” Interview with Vicki Nelson, founder of Fukushima Friends (nonprofit organization which facilitates trips to Hawaii for Fukushima radiation refugees), Nuclear Hotseat hosted by Libbe HaLevy, Jun 9, 2015 (at 16:30 in):

Vicki Nelson, founder of Fukushima Friends (emphasis added): We have a home that’s open for them to come and experience some time of respite and eat different food. What we’ve been experiencing also is that every single person that comes has reaction to the change as soon as they come here. There’s been people who have vomited, they’ve been having nosebleeds, they’ve been dizzy, they’ve been very ashen in color.

Libbe HaLevy, host: This is once they have left Japan? In other words, it is the lack of the radiation that allows them to then have these reactions?

Nelson: It’s like it is expelling from their body. There’s diarrhea, there’s nosebleeds— almost every single person has had nosebleeds on their pillow. I find blood, and they don’t want to tell me that they have these reactions, they’re embarrassed. Tokiko’s son [from Koriyama, Fukushima] vomited the whole first week practically, and had diarrhea. We actually took him to the hospital because we felt that he was dehydrated. They did run tests, and they said yes he was dehydrated. So he was kept overnight at the Hilo hospital on the big island and cared for. ”

Global Research source

Nuclear Hotseat #207: Fukushima kids and moms escaping radiation – Hawaii’s Fukushima Friends and Japan’s Komoro Homestay

* * *

” Meeting hosted by Andrew Cash, member of Canadian parliament, Dec 2012 — Japanese mother (at 2:12:30 in):

“My home town is Sapporo [northernmost island in Japan]… In my city, no one thinks about radiation. I found a group of escaped mothers from Tokyo and the Fukushima area, and I was very surprised… Most of them had thyroid problems, or eye problems, or nose bleeds… They are very worried about it. In Japan we knew about the meltdowns two months after the meltdowns happened, so we can have no information about radiation. Now the government is telling us to eat food from Fukushima. We can’t rely on government. The TV said Fukushima is safe, no problem… Fukushima is good to live. They want to invite a lot of tourists to Fukushima.” “

Fukushima’s educational facilities — Akira Hino, Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center

” 1. Current State of Fukushima Prefecture

Four years have passed since the earthquake and nuclear accident, but almost no progress has been made toward Fukushima Prefecture’s recovery. In particular, the recovery of the Futaba area and its vicinity has just gotten underway. The reason for this delay in recovery has been radioactive contamination resulting from the nuclear accident. The radioactive substances are dispersed widely over Fukushima Prefecture.

Iwaki and Soma suffered damage from the tsunami, but were relatively less affected by radioactive contamination, and thus progress is being made little by little toward recovery in those areas. On the other hand, in the Nakadori region (middle third of the prefecture), where the cities of Koriyama and Fukushima are located, removal of radioactive contamination (decontamination and disposal of waste materials) is necessary for recovery, but that has not been completed yet. In some cases, even after decontamination, radiation doses rise again, so there is no end in sight. The reason this is happening is that no effort has been made to decontaminate the montane forests that cover much of Fukushima Prefecture, and radioactive materials are transported in from the forests by winds and rain.

Two towns in the Futaba area, Okuma and Futaba, have “agreed” to accept interim storage facilities, and the shipment of radioactive wastes into the area has begun. There has been almost no progress on acquiring land for this, however, and when shipments of waste started to arrive only 2% of the total planned area had been secured. Difficulties are expected in future negotiations with the more than 2000 land owners.

Although in these ways the recovery has made no progress, there has been a move toward allowing memories of the nuclear accident to fade away. Divisions among the citizens are being created regarding the question of radiation, and expressions of concern from people about the danger are being contained at the citizen level. There is a growing tendency to call those who talk about the danger “alarmists” or “troublemakers,” so it is becoming difficult for people to discuss it.

Moreover, there have been cases in which compensation paid to the evacuees has caused divisions. For example, a survey has highlighted the concerns felt by citizens of Iwaki City, where many people from the Futaba area evacuated, noting, “The citizens of Iwaki are trying to understand the nuclear evacuees, but they cannot accept the discrepancies in compensation from TEPCO.” 1) Iwaki suffered damage from the earthquake and tsunami. People whose houses were swept away by the tsunami are having to live in temporary emergency housing or rented housing, just like the nuclear disaster evacuees, but they have received no compensation at all, quite unlike the fact that the nuclear disaster evacuees are receiving compensation for their situation. Under such circumstances, it is understandable that many of Iwaki’s citizens feel strongly dissatisfied.

Prime Minister Abe keeps saying that Japan will not recover without the revival of Fukushima, but it is not the citizens of Fukushima that he has in mind, but rather companies and the economy. For example, can the restoration of National Highway 6 or reopening of the closed sections of the Joban Expressway be called “recovery”? These roads merely pass through the Futaba area, from which all of the citizens were evacuated. The people are not allowed to live in the evacuation zones, and there is still no outlook for the return of Futaba’s citizens to their hometown.

2. Educational Facilities Impacted by the Nuclear Disaster

(1) Futaba’s Schools Have Reopened, but…

Prior to the nuclear accident, the Futaba area had about 6,400 children studying at 28 elementary and junior high schools (17 elementary schools and 11 junior highs). After the accident, one by one, the schools gradually reopened in towns and villages throughout the prefecture, and currently 22 of Futaba’s schools have reopened (13 elementary schools and nine junior highs). However, no more than 657 students (as of the 2014 academic year) have returned to Futaba’s schools. Currently, no more than about 10% of the students have returned. Whenever a school reopens, the media report on it, but people feel suspicious about the media’s stance. There is conspicuous coverage giving the impression that reopening means a return to normal. The current reality is that they have barely reached the “starting line.”

(2) Problems with Facilities and Equipment

The existing school facilities include temporary school buildings and schools that had formerly been closed. In some cases, even factories have been converted into schools. When the schools were reopened, they had to start all over again from zero. The preparations for reopening began with arranging for desks and chairs, and through the efforts of the school staff to improvise educational materials and teaching tools, it became possible to provide a minimal level of educational activities. In the four years that have passed, a certain amount of teaching materials and tools have been obtained, but there are still schools lacking special purpose rooms or gymnasiums.

For the children to attend these schools, they have to take school buses from their places of refuge, and commutes of one hour each way are not unusual. Because the times of the buses need to be considered, there are insufficient opportunities to engage in after-school learning support or club activities. Ways have had to be devised to conduct school events in accordance with the small numbers of students along with the conditions of the facilities and equipment. Some of the schools have no incoming students or none graduating, and there have been years in which they were unable to hold entrance or graduation ceremonies, which are important school events. Such conditions are by no means “back to normal.”

(3) Evacuee Schools Outside of Futaba

There are also some elementary and junior high schools located outside of the Futaba area that were forced to move due to the effects of the nuclear accident.

The elementary and junior high schools of Odaka-ku, Minamisoma are currently holding classes in temporary facilities erected on the grounds of elementary and junior high schools in Kashima-ku. In contrast to the 1,091 students at the time of the earthquake disaster, the number had fallen to 258 students as of the 2014 academic year. In other words, no more than about 25% have returned.

The three elementary schools of Iitate Village have currently reopened in Kawamata, and the junior high school has reopened in Iino. About half of the children present before the earthquake disaster have returned. Almost all of them are commuting by school bus from the area around Fukushima City.

The elementary and junior high schools of Miyakoji-district, Tamura City resumed classes in 2011, using closed school buildings in Funehiki. After the national government’s evacuation order was rescinded, they returned to their original school buildings in April 2014, but when that happened about 20% of the students transferred to other schools. Although the facilities had been decontaminated, there were still major concerns about radiation.

Sad to say, one school has closed: Onami elementary school in Fukushima City. After the nuclear accident, the Onami district had extremely high radiation doses, and one family after another moved away for safety. The last remaining students graduated at the end of the 2013 academic year, and the school closed from 2014. No one could have predicted that such circumstances would arise in an area 60 km distant from the nuclear power plant.

3. Status of Students and School Staff

(1) Issues Affecting the Students

The children of the Futaba area are facing many problems. In particular, junior high school students reaching adolescence have been heavily affected by life as refugees due to the earthquake disaster and nuclear accident. Their parents or guardians who have lost their jobs continue to spend the day at home, there is no place they can be alone in the cramped temporary housing, and at home they have to listen to quarreling or other things they do not want to hear. As a result, there are children who have distanced themselves from their homes.

As a result of the evacuation necessitated by the nuclear accident, the number of families living apart and the number of households with divorced parents are increasing. Moreover, households where a parent or guardian has lost his or her job are able to get by somehow at this time by receiving compensation payments, but they continue to live with the fear that there is no guarantee of their ability to live in peace in the future.

It is best for children to grow up close to their important family, seeing their parents or guardians at work. There are a growing number of children, however, in the midst of circumstances that offer no view at all of what is ahead, who therefore cannot dream of their own future. The biggest victims of the nuclear accident are the children.

(2) Exhausted Teaching Staff

The schools’ teaching staff have been exhausting themselves on a daily basis caring for their students. Each day they seek emotional closeness with the children and improvise their educational activities.

The school staff themselves, however, are refugees. Living in a place to which they are unaccustomed is also a source of unease. In addition, some of them are caring for aging parents or dealing with emotional instability in their own children, making it harder for them to do well by their students. Moreover, each time they make temporary sojourns to visit their homes in the Futaba area, they find their houses are breaking down. It is quite a psychologically trying situation.

These days, society overall is attempting to return to its pre-earthquake state, as if the earthquake disaster and nuclear accident had never happened. While dealing with their own unsettled state of mind, the teaching staff are providing emotional care for their students while trying to meet society’s demands. This unjust situation has continued with no let-up since the earthquake disaster. Thus, there are concerns that the number of people taking sick leave due to psychological disorders will increase.

(3) Psychological Support for the Students and School Staff

Under these circumstances, school counselors have been assigned to all elementary and junior high schools in Fukushima Prefecture. However, they are allotted only one visit to each school per week, so they are unable to provide sufficient support. There are not enough counselors in Fukushima Prefecture, so in some cases the prefecture is having counselors from other prefectures (including the far-distant Kansai region) visit once a week. Fukushima Prefecture shoulders the costs of travel and lodging in those cases, so it is inefficient from a budgetary perspective. Rather than using the budget in that way, it would be desirable for the government to ensure a budget for continual allocation of staff who can meet with the children every day.

4. Current Conditions and Issues of Education in Fukushima Prefecture

(1) Decreasing Numbers of Children and Consolidation of Elementary and Junior High Schools

There are 13,308 children below the age of 18 (as of October 2014) who have evacuated away from Fukushima Prefecture. The number of child refugees has been decreasing, but they are still numerous.

Also, as the number of children has decreased, there has been an increasing tendency to consolidate schools in Fukushima Prefecture. Through the 2014 academic year, consolidations were occurring mostly in the Aizu region—the mountainous western third of the prefecture. From 2015, though, six elementary schools and four junior high schools will be combined into one of each kind of school (one elementary school and one junior high school) in Miwa district, Iwaki in southern coastal Fukushima Prefecture. In neighboring Ishikawa Town, six elementary schools and two junior high schools will be combined into one of each kind of school.

A draft of guidelines issued by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in January 2015 used the term “appropriate scale,” indicating an intention to promote consolidation of smaller schools. There are concerns that MEXT’s guidelines will affect cities, towns and villages, which are the entities empowered to establish schools. It is unacceptable for schools, which serve as the heart of a community, to be discarded so easily.

(2) Education Policies of Fukushima Prefecture

One matter of concern these days regarding school education is academic advancement. It is important to increase the students’ academic abilities. All of the faculty are striving day in and day out to help their students grow. Their academic advancement itself, however, is being strained by the demands of society.

With one new policy after another on academic advancement being served from above together with criticisms of poor results on scholastic achievement tests, the faculty have too many things to do and are unable to provide educational activities as they would like to. Both the faculty and the students wind up exhausted.

Calls for improving the students’ physical strength are also on the rise. The press has reported that the children of Fukushima Prefecture have been tending to gain weight. Radioactive contamination from the nuclear accident has caused a sharp reduction in chances for the children to play outdoors. In addition, to avoid exposure during travel to and from school, in many cases they go by school bus or their parents drop them off and pick them up.

Fukushima Prefecture maintains that under these circumstances, it is necessary to improve the students’ physical strength. To tell the children to go out like good kids and play in a decontaminated schoolyard, however, would be the height of irresponsibility.

The children’s parents worry that they could risk exposure to radiation if they were involved in activities outside or that their children might get thyroid cancer. Fukushima Prefecture is being called upon to take measures to eliminate these kinds of worries. Countermeasures are being sought such as creating indoor physical education facilities in each district so that the students can obtain exercise at ease without worrying about exposure.

(3) The Kind of Education Needed Now

The government’s meddling in schools, trying to force various policies on them, is in no way leading to improved academic abilities. Would it not be better for them to trust the faculty and give them more leeway? It is the faculty on the scene that best understands the children they see before them. Would it not be the faculty that could devise ways of guiding the children, bringing out the children’s own abilities and helping them achieve real academic ability?

What is important is to urge policies to be created that improve academic abilities, not to cram the children’s heads full of knowledge. It is necessary to get close to the children, meet their gaze and explain to them the importance of learning. It is important to teach the children how to study, so that years later, after they graduate from school, they will have the ability to continue studying on their own. That means nurturing the power to live.

Academic abilities that can be assessed quantitatively, as the Fukushima Prefectural Board of Education wants, are nothing more than one aspect of education. I think that educating the children in a way that does not nip their desire to learn in the bud leads to real advancement of their academic abilities.

It will also be necessary to provide education on radiation in Fukushima Prefecture, where the nuclear accident occurred. This does not mean instruction from the point of view that “radiation is all around us. It’s useful in many fields in today’s society,” as has been taught. The radioactive substances that were spread by the nuclear accident are dangerous for their harmful effects on the human body. For that, the faculty themselves need to study radiation properly. Then through radiation education, they must teach the children properly about the danger of radiation so that the children themselves can acquire the means to protect themselves from radiation.

Unfortunately, discrimination against people from Fukushima on account of radioactive contamination is actually occurring. We must teach the children the spirit not to allow discrimination or prejudice and the strength not to succumb to such things. We must include the perspective of human rights education as a part of education on radiation.
It is important that education on radiation and on human rights be promoted starting from Fukushima Prefecture, which has been affected by the nuclear accident. ”

Akira Hino is Director of Nuclear Disaster Countermeasures Fukushima Prefecture Teacher’s Union

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Can Japan recapture its solar power? — MIT Technology Review

” It’s 38 °C on the Atsumi Peninsula southwest of Tokyo: a deadly heat wave has been gripping much of Japan late this summer. Inside the offices of a newly built power plant operated by the plastics company Mitsui Chemicals, the AC is blasting. Outside, 215,000 solar panels are converting the blistering sunlight into 50 megawatts of electricity for the local grid. Three 118-meter-high wind turbines erected at the site add six megawatts of generation capacity to back up the solar panels during the winter.

Mitsui’s plant is just one of thousands of renewable-power installations under way as Japan confronts its third summer in a row without use of the nuclear reactors that had delivered almost 30 percent of its electricity. In Japan people refer to the earthquake and nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, as “Three-Eleven.” Radioactive contamination forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate and terrified millions more. It also sent a shock wave through Japan’s already fragile manufacturing sector, which is the country’s second-largest employer and accounts for 18 percent of its economy.

Eleven of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors shut down on the day of the earthquake. One year later every reactor in Japan was out of service; each had to be upgraded to meet heightened safety standards and then get in a queue for inspections. During my visit this summer, Japan was still without nuclear power, and only aggressive energy conservation kept the lights on. Meanwhile, the country was using so much more imported fossil fuel that electricity prices were up by about 20 percent for homes and 30 percent for businesses, according to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI).

The post-Fukushima energy crisis, however, has fueled hopes for the country’s renewable-power industry, particularly its solar businesses. As one of his last moves before leaving office in the summer of 2011, Prime Minister Naoto Kan established potentially lucrative feed-in tariffs to stimulate the installation of solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy. Feed-in tariffs set a premium rate at which utilities must purchase power generated from such sources.

The government incentive is what motivated Mitsui to finally make use of land originally purchased for an automotive plastics factory that was never built because carmakers moved manufacturing operations overseas. The site had sat idle for 21 years before Mitsui assembled a consortium to help finance a $180 million investment in solar panels and wind turbines. By moving fast, Mitsui and its six partners qualified for 2012 feed-in tariffs that promised industrial-scale solar facilities 40 yen (35 cents) per kilowatt-hour generated for 20 years. At that price, says Shin Fukuda, the former nuclear engineer who runs Mitsui’s energy and environment business, the consortium should earn back its investment in 10 years and collect substantial profits from the renewable facility for at least another decade.

Overnight, Japan has become the world’s hottest solar market: in less than two years after Fukushima melted down, the country more than doubled its solar generating capacity. According to METI, developers installed nearly 10 gigawatts of renewable generating capacity through the end of April 2014, including 9.6 gigawatts of photovoltaics. (The nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi had 4.7 gigawatts of capacity; overall, the country has around 290 gigawatts of installed electricity-generating capacity.) Three-quarters of the new solar capacity was in large-scale installations such as Mitsui’s.

Yet this explosion of solar capacity marks a bittersweet triumph for Japan’s solar-panel manufacturers, which had led the design of photovoltaics in the 1980s and launched the global solar industry in the 1990s. Bitter because most of the millions of panels being installed are imports made outside the country. Even some Japanese manufacturers, including early market leader Sharp, have taken to buying panels produced abroad and selling them in Japan.

How Japan­­—once the world’s most advanced semiconductor producer and a pioneer in using that technology to manufacture photovoltaic cells—gave away its solar industry is a story of national insecurity, monopoly power, and money-driven politics. It is also a tale with important lessons for those who believe that the strength of renewable technologies will provide sufficient incentives for countries to transform their energy habits.

In Japan, for most of the 2000s, impressive advances in photovoltaics were ignored because the country’s powerful utilities exerted their political muscle to favor nuclear power. And despite resurging consumer demand for solar power and strong public disdain for nuclear, the same thing could happen again. Will a country with few fossil-fuel resources and bleak memories of the Fukushima disaster take advantage of its technical expertise to recapture its position as a leading producer of photovoltaics, or will it turn away from renewable energy once more? ”

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