Japan scorches climate targets with nuclear fleet idled, carbon emissions up 39%

[wtmusic]

"The Fukushima accident occurred in mid-March 2011, just three weeks before the end of FY2010. During that period the country's power stations produced an average of 350 grams of CO2 for each kWh of electricity generated, but over the course of the next year Japan's reactors shut down one-by-one for inspection and were not allowed to restart. This caused power companies use imported fossil fuels instead, with the result that carbon intensity rose to 476 gCO2 per kWh in FY2011 - an increase of 36%.

The rising trend continued through FY2012, according to figures released yesterday by the Federation of Electric Power Companies (Fepco). Carbon intensity now stands at 487 gCO2 per kWh, some 39% above FY2010 levels.

Among Japan's climate change goals was for the electricity sector to reduce carbon intensity by 20% from 1990 levels, to 334 gCO2 per kWh on average over the five years from 2008 to 2012."

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE_Climate_targets_missed_in_Japan_0108131.html

[GliderGuider]

1. Oops!

[kristopher]

6. I'll say. It proves conclusively that nuclear power is a dangerous way to avoid carbon.

What do you think will happen when the next meltdown occurs? Especially if the winds push the contamination towards major population centers instead of out to sea?

Investing in nuclear is an idiotic approach to carbon reduction.

[GliderGuider]

7. Not sure how you get there, but that doesn't really matter.

Investing in nuclear is an idiotic approach to generating energy, but then so is fossil fuel.

Human beings are simply structure-creating, entropy-producing thermodynamic engines operating in an exergy-rich environment. Any problem that might get in the way of that process - like atmospheric carbon, radiation, ocean acidification, fossil water depletion, habitat destruction or the wholesale extinction of other species - is either "solved" or blithely disregarded or until the existential threat finally becomes too big to ignore. As a species we have an accelerator, but no brake or rear-view mirror.

The problem is far larger than nuclear power. We have utterly failed to recognize what we are as a species, and how we operate as a result. Why we continually fail to recognize facts that have been staring us in the face for several thousand years is another, even deeper question.

[FBaggins]

9. Easy to see how he gets there.

Because to him a reliable light bulb that works fine shares the same variability problem as a flickering dim bulb if you choose to turn off the light switch. It isn't your choice that is to blame... it's a characteristic of the bulb.

And the darkness that results from you choosing to turn off the light switch is simultaneously proof that it was unwise to buy the bulb in the first place and proof that you shouldn't flip the switch back on.

[joshcryer]

11. To be fair, the energy part of the equation only recently spiked.

Last 100-150 years:

[NNadir]

10. If there is another meltdown, dumb people will carry on, burning metric tons of coal, oil and gas...

...to produce stupid posts on the internet on how everyone will die everywhere on the earth -all the while harping on the how the failed so called "renewable energy" industry will be viable some decades hence, with the target moving continuously with each new failure.

Their fear and ignorance will cause ever more people to die from climate change and air pollution, basically because these people know no science and no history.

In the meanwhile the deaths associated with dangerous fossil fuels and so called "renewable energy" (in the form of biomass) will start killing even more people than the 3.3 million who die each year.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/index.html

We can see this going on right now. Almost all of the deaths associated with the Fukushima event have little to do with radiation and everything to do with the replacement of that form of energy with dangerous fossil fuels.

Panic, fear, and ignorance always kill people, and this event is hardly different.

Nuclear energy saves lives, as the great climate scientist Jim Hansen has pointed out:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197

It may have saved more than the 1.8 million people it has historically saved, were it not for the mindlessness of the anti-nuke community.

Have a nice afternoon.

[Gregorian]

2. Population really has us in all kinds of boxed in corners. Energy mostly. But many many other things

[FBaggins]

4. Japan's population is in decline

In fact... it's declining faster than any other country.

[Gregorian]

8. I know. It's the present absolute size that I'm talking about. That's what matters.

It's trivial. If they, as an example, were small enough in size they wouldn't have even needed Fukushima.

[NickB79]

3. Don't worry, I'm sure it's just a short-term trend

Nothing to worry ourselves about.

[FBaggins]

5. In this case it is

since they'll be restarting many of their reactors over the next couple/few years.