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posted by martyb on Friday June 09 2017, @11:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the glowing-recommendation dept.

Japan's government is considering whether or not new nuclear power plants will be built:

Japan's trade ministry will launch a panel to revise the government's basic energy plan and consider a need to build new nuclear plants or replace existing plants in the future, the Nikkei business daily reported on Friday.

[...] The government will keep its current plan to reduce its reliance on nuclear energy but it would propose to keep a minimal amount of nuclear power for long-term stable power supplies and maintain technology and personnel, according to the report.

A target by the industry ministry for nuclear to provide about a fifth of the country's electricity in 2030 provoked widespread criticism when it was finalised in 2015.

[In light of the fallout from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, what would be a reasonable and prudent level of nuclear power for Japan? --martyb


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 09 2017, @01:07PM (3 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Friday June 09 2017, @01:07PM (#523024) Journal

    What kind of people are in charge of Japan then?

    Btw, the 5th generation project seems to have failed but it likely generated a lot of spinoff and lot's of trained engineers.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 09 2017, @05:57PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 09 2017, @05:57PM (#523178) Journal

    What kind of people are in charge of Japan then?

    Children. In this particular topic, there are several points of evidence that indicate Japan has lost much of its ability to make mature decisions about itself and its future. First, the enormous publicly held debt of Japan which is roughly twice as large as its GDP. Second, the closely related problems with Keynesian policy, particularly what I call the Keynesian trap where publicly funded economic stimuli are continued even during good years because the economy of Japan has become so highly dependent on this stimuli that the government won't risk its absence.

    For nuclear power in particular, we have a history of bad choices, such as permanently halting a whole generation of nuclear plants just because of one accident in the 1995-2005 period, combined with the decision to continue the use of much older and much less safe nuclear plants. Then after the Fukushima accident there was the spurious decision to halt all nuclear plant activity for more than a year even though about half the nuclear reactors in Japan hadn't been affected in the least by the earthquake.

    So what makes someone a child in this regard? It's the inability to plan and the inability to accept current pain for future gain. Japanese leadership has shown a lot of this behavior over the past two decades.

    Btw, the 5th generation project seems to have failed but it likely generated a lot of spinoff and lot's of trained engineers.

    That's always the excuse when these things fail. The consolation prizes would have been much cheaper to achieve, if that was all that had been tried. They don't justify the expense of the original program.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 09 2017, @06:53PM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday June 09 2017, @06:53PM (#523209)

      So what makes someone a child in this regard? It's the inability to plan and the inability to accept current pain for future gain. Japanese leadership has shown a lot of this behavior over the past two decades.

      This doesn't sound any different from American leadership these days. In fact, it seems perfectly normal for human societies that are past their sell-by date. Basically, if you look at the history of human societies, they all have limited lifespans, where they start out, prove to be very successful for a while and rise in power, but then become complacent and corrupt and then the society declines. Japan and the US were both ascendant in the early 20th century; now they both seem to be in decline, while China and India are on the rise. It's too bad about Japan though; they were really kicking ass in the 70s and 80s, but then took a wrong turn and things have been downhill from there. Maybe they just over-extended themselves during that time, achieving a lot through a ton of hard work but sacrificing too much in the process, and it's now biting them in the ass.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 09 2017, @07:34PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 09 2017, @07:34PM (#523229) Journal

        but sacrificing too much in the process, and it's now biting them in the ass.

        Sacrificing too much? Like what? My view is that the problem is rather that they kept the top-down systems that worked for them in the earlier decades, but not the people who made those systems work relatively well in the past. What helped them then is now hindering them due to the quality of the people running things.

        I agree that sounds like American leadership today. But that's why I'm an advocate for government reduction. One doesn't have to hope for the very unlikely event that will somehow catalyze competent government leadership when you can create it instead on the private sector side.