JAPAN MANAGES SUMMER HEAT WITHOUT NUKES

WITH HALF OF ITS NUKES IDLE JAPAN MANAGES WELL WITH CONSERVATION ALONE


Over the last few months, since the disastrous March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Japan's shattered Fukushima Diichi nuclear plant continues to emit radioactive gases and particulate matter which spreads out contaminating a fifty kilometer wide zone. In the rest of the nation more than 30 of Japan's 54 other nuclear plants, (many of them aging GE models similar to those we have here in the US), lay idle in cold-shutdown, while their siting-suitability and safety are reevaluated. This long and slow process has forced Japan into an unwanted, unplanned nationwide summer conservation program. The good news is that the nation's efforts have been highly successful.

I hear through my Nipponese friends, (as well as the Sept 17, 2011 "Economist", iphone editors highlights) that one striking difference you may observe were you to have visited corporate Japan this summer is that everyone was going about tieless and in shirtsleeves rather than in the traditional business suit. The reason? No air conditioning.

It is a tribute to the Japanese that they have managed to continue their personal lives, busineses and vital activites with most of their nuclear plants shuttered and idle. It is remarkable that Japan, a modern, top-tier industrialized nation, has come through the hot summer, when demand is highest on its nuclear-power-driven electrical generation system, unscathed, with its people working, its factories operating, and its infrastructure and society intact . It is a tribute to the Japanese national character which prizes social cohesion, cooperation, and hard work, but it is also encouraging that a modern industrialized nation can give up 55% of its electrical power generation and still manage to avoid dreaded brownouts and blackout--over a hot summer. How?

Japan put into place a wide-ranging set of simple conservation measures, such as having some employees limit daily travel to work from home, by closing certain factories in the day and operating them at night when electrical demand is low, limiting use of air conditoning and excess lighting, and by broadcasting the nation's peak electrical demand figures over over TV and radio stations to encourage citizen cooperation and compliance. An enormous amount of electricity goes to waste in our modern usage. Contrary to what the nay-sayers claim, simple conservation measures can be significant. Conservation can and should be seen as another energy resource--that part of what we produce, but which is generally wasted--which, as the Japanese experiment this summer seems to prove--is a significant fraction of the whole. Other industrialized nations can use less electricity (much less) and continue to thrive.

Do the Japanese want to live under strict conservation all the time? It depends on where you are coming from and what choices you have. But without significant fossil fuel resources Japan must turn to its existing efficient use of its wind, tidal, hydropower resources--as well as conservation. There are few places in Japan---which is geologically, essentially a series of merged volcanic cones--where nukes can be safely sited. But as Father Michael often encouraged us: "make a stepping stone out of every stumbling block". For the Japanese that would be to make use of the great pool of subterranean heat which causes its earthquakes and tsunamis and which lies under its surface. Geothermal energy can be used either to directly heat homes and factories, or to generate electricity. After all that is what is accomplished in a nuclear plant-- water is heated by nuclear fission to make steam to drive generators--. The irony is that directly under the Fukishima Diichi plant there is an enormous amount of free, safe, and unlimited heat to drive all of Japan's electric generation needs.

What is your preference? Continual anxiety, uncertainty and business disruption and an existential threat by the danger of exposure to nuclear melt-down and radiation poisoning, or tapping into geothermal heat?

In the interim, as geothermal, wind, tidal and hydropower are developed...Japan will probably continue to have to cope as they have this summer with conservation---and the electricity generated from those nuclear plants which are considered safe--for now.

The good news is that there are good options for Japan.


Get the picture?