Japan Courts the Money in Reactors

[kristopher]

Japan Courts the Money in Reactors
HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO — Even as Japan plans to phase out nuclear power as too risky for domestic use, the government is supporting a new push by Japanese industry to sell nuclear power technology to other countries.

Japanese industrial conglomerates, with the cooperation of the government in Tokyo, are renewing their pursuit of multibillion-dollar projects, particularly in smaller energy-hungry countries like Vietnam and Turkey. The effort comes despite criticism within Japan by environmental groups and opposition politicians.

It may seem a stretch for Japan to acclaim its nuclear technology overseas while struggling at home to contain the nuclear meltdowns that displaced more than 100,000 people. But Japan argues that its latest technology includes safeguards not present at the decades-old reactors at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant, which continues to leak radiation.

While Fukushima Daiichi ...

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20111010/ZNYT01/110103010/1109/sports?p=all&tc=pgall&tc=ar

[kristopher]

1. The dangerous fallout from Japan

This goes hand in hand with the OP:

The dangerous fallout from Japan
"... the proliferation of nuclear reactors across Asia is certain to facilitate and encourage nuclear weapons proliferation as well"
By JIM HOAGLAND
Monday, October 10, 2011

The environmental disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant this spring is creating a new global divide over the safety of nuclear energy. Sharply differing responses to Fukushima from the world’s wealthiest and poorest nations will bring diminished safety for all.

...developing countries with little nuclear experience and spotty industrial safety records are moving ahead with ambitious plans to expand generating capacity. China and India — after pausing briefly to review safety arrangements — are adding about 80 new reactors over the next two decades. (The United States has 104 of the 436 reactors worldwide.)

...In short, the proliferation of nuclear reactors across Asia is certain to facilitate and encourage nuclear weapons proliferation as well.

“We are holding a pair of nuclear tigers by the tail,” said George Shultz, secretary of state in the Reagan administration, at a conference on nuclear risk last week at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. The disaster at Fukushima, he said, “should prompt a deeper appreciation of ... weak links in nuclear weapons ... and in the humans who are charged with making decisions, not to mention those seeking to cause mass murder.”

It is ...

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20111010/WIRE/111009576/1042?p=all&tc=pgall&tc=ar