Fukushima marks a 'nuclear ice age'

Fukushima marks a 'nuclear ice age'
While workers are still battling the crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, it may be too late to save global confidence in nuclear power, with safety reviews, suspensions and closures underway around the world. The only positive is that the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant was spared - if ruptured it is huge enough to spread deadly fallout around the world.

- Kosuke Takahashi

The ongoing nuclear crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant following an earthquake and tsunami is stirring up energy policy of almost all countries that use nuclear power. The repercussions from Fukushima are being strongly being felt at home and abroad, just as aftershocks are still being felt in northern Japan, including Tokyo.

There are 432 nuclear plants operating in 30 countries across the globe, with 66 reactors under construction. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said last Thursday he will rethink from bottom up the government's plan to build at least 14 more nuclear reactors by

2030, as Japan scrambles to overcome its worst nuclear crisis.
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The US has 104 commercial nuclear reactors, the most in the world. Of these, 23 were built to an identical design as the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactors. Each uses the "Mark I containment system", designed by General Electric decades ago.

ABC News and the New York Times, among other media, reported last month that experts had long criticized the ability of this containment system to withstand the events that cascade from what nuclear experts call a "station blackout" - where the loss of power cripples the reactor's cooling system. This "station blackout" scenario was unfortunately realized when a massive tsunami destroyed all emergency power systems at the Fukushima.Â READ MORE...

Comments: 7

Spirit of 1966 Apr 4, 2011, 12:50pm UTC

We can't let this accident stop us from going forward with atomic power. We need to use it and use it now.

It is like being in a car accident and being afraid to drive again. The best thing you can do after an accident is get behind the wheel again. The same applies here.

Dorothy H. Apr 5, 2011, 4:57am UTC

The best thing one can do is learn from the accident, and it's causes. Where one zigged when one should have zagged. If a car wreck was caused by a major design flaw, one does not get back into that same type of vehicle and continue to drive.

My husband knows cars, engines inside out, and there are vehicles he wouldn't touch, or spend money on, and recommends it's avoidance to anyone who cares to know. If Nuclear power plants were vehicles, these would be on his list to avoid.

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Ali Hussein Lopez Apr 4, 2011, 1:04pm UTC

Nuclear energy is still the most expensive energy option. We should be looking elsewhere.

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Shira C. Apr 4, 2011, 3:36pm UTC

Time to put our incentives toward developing solar, I'd say.

Dorothy H. Apr 5, 2011, 4:42am UTC

If the the money has got to be spent for greater and better energy souces, they should begin by fitting every rooftop, every streetlight, that needs an enery source, with solar panels, for starters, and where apllicable, it's own little windmill. Each functioning independently of the other. That way, if is knoked off it's power source it does not we effect any of the others. They need to get off the idea of one giant power grid that powers an entire area, that entire area being negatively effected when something disrupts the one power source.

In my area, we had a blackout, and the one little building that still had light, heat and air was my little solar powered outhouse way out in the middle of nowhere (haha!).

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Jim G. Apr 5, 2011, 8:59pm UTC

The Achilles Heel of U.S. nuclear energy is waste. It all sits in storage at our neclear plant sites. We have spent billions of dollars for underground starage at Yucca Mountain, NV & noone wants to store it there. There are concerns about fault structures there, & Utah citizens keep saying NIMBY. Nuclear plants supply 75% of power in France, about 17% of which is by recycled waste, but that is only a small part of a soultion for nuclear waste whose half-life lasts for centuries.

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Fukushima marks a 'nuclear ice age'

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