By Jeremy Hannaford (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: April 4, 2012
A year has now passed since a massive tsunami hit Japan and caused the nuclear meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant; more than 50 square miles of the Japanese coastline area is now uninhabitable due to radiation, and will remain so for several decades. In the wake of the disaster, a massive anti-nuclear energy movement emerged from the concerned public, to the point where a poll taken in the summer of 2011 stated that 74 per cent of people surveyed wanted Japan’s other 54 nuclear power plants shut down as a safety precaution.
Nuclear power plants are always subjects of debate. These facilities produce large quantities of energy while producing low amounts of carbon emissions, but on the other hand, they obviously pose massive safety risks and can cause damage to the local environment due to the nuclear waste produced by the plants. Newer nuclear plants have instated measures that decrease these risks by disposing of the nuclear waste in more environmentally-friendly ways. But despite these precautions, over 130,000 evacuees will most likely never be able to return to their homes in the area of Fukushima.
At first, I thought that the deactivation of Japan’s nuclear reactors was a safe and Earth-friendly procedure. But then I became concerned with how Japan would make up for the 30 per cent of electricity that was being emitted from these plants, which power the homes and workplaces of almost 38.4 million people.
To compensate for the power they’ll lose, Japan has set plans in motion using renewable energy sources like wind turbines. This sounds all well and good, but then I found that they want to construct these wind turbines off the coast of Fukushima’s nuclear contaminated area.
Other than the fact that they want to place them in a high radiation zone, that whole coastline is at risk of suffering another tsunami or earthquake-related disaster. My concerns rose when it was announced that these turbines also won’t be up and running until 2020. What will provide that missing amount of energy the next eight years? With the financial crisis still in effect, Japan will have suffered job losses from shutting down these plants as well as the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in investments from having built them.
I am all for a more ecofriendly power supply for Japan. It is a start, considering how China and Japan are already some of the biggest polluters in the world. But it shows that the instant that things go wrong, people are more than willing to abandon them without thinking.
Of course, the circumstances revolving around this event are quite horrible. Radiation poisoning is a horrible condition that I would not wish upon anyone. But unless the Japanese have a better solution with a shorter timeline, they will be relying on already over-worked gas factories and other emission-producing plants. The Japanese are aware of this as they are still running six of the original 54 nuclear power plants. But eventually these, too, will be shut down.
The Japanese people need time to recover from this disaster, but they also need to install better countermeasures for these types of events. The world thought there would never be another Chernobyl. Obviously, no one can predict mother nature, but it really is up to scientists to put in rules and measures to prepare for these events as best as possible.
