Over a year has passed since 新潟県 (Niigata Prefecture) suffered a massive offshore earthquake.  Measuring 7 on Japan’s scale of 7, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant quickly shut down the four reactors operating at the time.  Aside from an outdoor transformer catching fire and some radioactive material from a spent fuel storage pool leaking into the sea, there was no major damage to the plant.  The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has inspected the plant twice and found no serious damage to the facilities.  So this begs the question: Why isn’t the plant brought back online?

Disaster prevention was key in the design of this nuclear power plant, and the safety mechanisms worked near-perfectly.  The reactors were quickly shut down through automated systems, the rods were secured, and not one life was lost.  The facility was hit with a quake measuring 7 out of 7, in a country where Richter’s Scale just won’t do, and it’s still standing.  Surely this is a redeeming qualification to resume power generation in a country where a summer-time electrical consumption rate of 98.2% capacity is considered “expected.”

Oddly enough … no.

The seven nuclear power reactors, which together are capable of generating 8.21 GigaWatts (more than any other plant on Earth), will remain offline for the summer and probably until sometime in mid-to-late-2009.

About As Green As An American SUV

Electricity is insanely important in Japan as anything that can be plugged into a wall socket is plugged into a wall socket.  Chairs, sofas, coffee tables, aquariums, book shelves, digital scales, toothbrushes, and throw rugs.  Anything and everything that can have a computer chip, light bulb or fan, usually gets one … whether it’s necessary or not.  With such a reliance on power, the Japanese public will not tolerate such Third-World situations as rolling blackouts or, heaven forbid, brown-outs.  To this end, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) resumed operations at two thermal power plants in 横須賀市 (Yokosuka).  While this will help compensate for the lost power generation from Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, it will also emit an extra 30,000,000 tonnes of CO² into the atmosphere.

Yay.

Despite the rage and insults lobbed at China for their excessive use of coal-powered plants, few people pay attention to where their electrical power comes from.  With so much of the country flirting dangerously with shortages this summer, it’s time for us to think about these issues.  TEPCO must show that it’s implemented a dynamic set of safety measures if it wants to resume operations at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, and government agencies need to make more of an effort to educate the public on the need for nuclear power plants.

Whether this will happen, though, remains to be clear.