Nuclear power plants in Japan after 3-11, 2011

Fukui District Court ruling order

On May 21, the Fukui District Court banned Kansai Electric Power Co. to restart the No.3 and No.4 reactors of the Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui prefecture.  Currently there are 48 nuclear reactors in 17 nuclear power plants across Japan, but none of these are in operation three years after the Fukushima disaster.　Although the Nuclear Regulation Authority is now in the process of inspecting 18 reactors that operators aim to reactivate at 11 nuclear plants, the Fukui District Court ruled that no safety measures could ever be sufficient, as it is impossible for modern science to predict the biggest possible earthquake that could strike.

 I wonder how the court judges without sufficient knowledge of science could ignore the ongoing inspection by the Nuclear Regulation Authority and rush to decide such ruling. When we saw the Sinkansen bullet train for the first time some 50 years ago, there were also some who criticized the new technology as a threat to Japanese society. And what about air planes when they first appeared? Mathematically there have been no human inventions with zero possibility of accidents. But our history shows that human beings have overcome such difficulties or minimized those risks involved to a tolerable level with the improvement of technology and human wisdom. With this in mind, I have examined the current situation facing us in Japan.

Japan’s Primary Energy Supply before & after Mar. 11, 2011

 So what are the issues? Let's take a look at the following ratios of power supply from the various resources, which I pick up from the report by The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan(*1).
                                                              　               　　  Annual total
　　　　Nuclear   Hydro   Renewables   Fossil Fuel　  Generated Electricity
2010:  29%         9%       1%                62%              10,006 TWh
2012:   2%          8%       2%                88%               9,408
          -27%                                       +26%  

 Here "Fossil Fuel" includes Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas with the respective ratios of 8%, 25%, & 29% in 2010 and of 18%, 28%, & 42% in 2012. And "Renewables" represent the sum of Geothermal, Solar, and Wind power generation.  We can easily see that the nuclear power generation was exactly replaced by fossil fuels after The Great East Japan Earthquake hit in March 11, 2011. 
  We also keep in mind that Japan’s dependence on imported energy  sources is extremely high with 96% in 2010 if Nuclear energy is excluded from domestic energy. Thus this leads to ;

Japan’s trade balance in 22 consecutive months of loss

On May 21 Nikkei, the Japanese leading newspaper, reported that Japan’s trade deficit reached to 808.8 billion yen in April in the 22nd month of loss in a row, where the trade deficit with the Middle East accounted for 1002.9 billion yen  mainly due to the import of fossil energy resources.

This situation is not sustainable. We need to stop this continuing loss as soon as possible, or Japan with no natural resources could not survive in the competitive world economy, which might force our children's generation to escape from their homeland for seeking a job in abroad. This would cause some of our land as devastated as the disaster did.

Renewable energy

 Could renewable energy like solar, wind, geothermal or their combinations be an alternative to fossil fuels in power generation?

There are pros & cons with those types of new energy, but the most crucial points are;

• Significantly Higher Costs
• Fluctuated and unreliable power supply
• Limited Capacity

It's OK to promote further the use of these renewable energy from the current less than few percents, but it has become apparent that they can not be an alternative to fossil fuel due to their much higher cost and unstable nature of power supply.

 My point is that the energy issues should be discussed from the various perspectives including safety, costs, human heath, global warming, and reliability. But the Fukui court went too far in their abilities and provided us with no insight to dig into these problems. It's not so simple.