http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/fukushima-crisis-can-japan-be-the-forefront-of-authentic-paradigm-shiftFukushima crisis: Can Japan be at the forefront of an authentic paradigm shift?
By Mycle Schneider | 9 September 2011
Article Highlights:
- The Fukushima disaster vividly illustrates that the economic development model and underlying risk calculation that supported the nuclear industry are both outdated.
- Even before Fukushima, the global nuclear industry was trending downward, and post 3/11, utilities and banks are increasingly questioning the economics of new nuclear power plants.
- Germany and Japan are politically and economically situated at the forefront of an authentic paradigm shift toward a sustainable, low-carbon andnuclear free energy policy.
The catastrophe now referenced by a single word -- Fukushima -- is not merely a major natural disaster. The events of 3/11 sent shockwaves through the nuclear industry and governments around the world and constitute the end of a certain economic development model and the industrial risk calculation that underlies it. Giant, centralized electricity production sites that rain kilowatt-hours onto consumers who are constantly increasing their consumption -- while accepting risk that can potentially harm millions -- are now outdated.
Chernobyl demonstrated the flaws of this model, 9/11 rendered it obsolete, but it took Fukushima for the world to understand that the equation sold to countries around the world…
Very Large Danger Potential x Very Low Accident Probability = Acceptable Risk
…is not acceptable after all, anywhere.
<snip>
In fact, 3/11 only accelerated a pre-existing, global, downward trend in the nuclear industry. The international nuclear lobby has pursued a 10-year-long, massive propaganda strategy aimed at convincing decision-makers that atomic technology has a bright future as a low-carbon energy option. As we have shown in the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2010-2011, however, most of the high-flying nuclear plans never materialized. The historic maximum of reactors operating worldwide was achieved in 2002 with 444 units. In the European Union the historic peak was reached as early as 1988 with 177 reactors, of which only 134 are left. The only new projects underway in Europe are heavily over budget and much delayed.
As Time magazine rightly stated in March, "Nuclear power is expanding only in places where taxpayers and ratepayers can be compelled to foot the bill." China is building 27 -- or more than 40 percent -- of the 65 units officially under construction around the world. Even there, though, nuclear is fading as an energy option. While China has invested the equivalent of about $10 billion per year into nuclear power in recent years, in 2010 it spent twice as much on wind energy alone and some $54.5 billion on all renewables combined.
But by the end of 2010 the installed capacity in the world of just four renewable energy technologies -- wind, solar, biomass, and small hydro-power (i.e., excluding large dams) -- exceeded installed nuclear capacity for the first time. And in fact, the technology of splitting the atom to generate electricity was losing out against renewable energy sources, long before Fukushima happened. In 2004 the share of renewable power capacity newly connected to the US grid was a negligible 2 percent. That share had jumped to 55 percent by 2009.
<snip>
Editor's Note: This analysis is based on an article published in Japanese by Sekai Magazine, Tokyo, September 2011. Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt, and Steve Thomas co-wrote "2010-2011 World nuclear industry status report," which can be found in the July/August issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
