Hey guys, been a while since I posted here. I'm curious about Japanese nuclear energy, though. With the current crisis alerts of one of their reactors perhaps coming close to a meltdown, I did wonder, who the hell would build a nuclear power plant in such a seismogenous area? As a form of energy it generally enjoys very lavish subsidies, and given that the risks associated with it are high (and consequently, insurance premia too I'd imagine)? How was it financed? I can already see the hysteria that'll surround this given that the energy provider is, in name, a private corporation. My intuition is that subsidies were behind this.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
I found this:
The government's nuclear energy budget hovers around 500 billion yen ($4.5b). Private R&D investment (27 billion yen ($247m) in 2003) is well below 10% of government spending on nuclear energy, so clearly the government has provided huge subsidies to the nuclear industry. Without these subsidies, the industry wouldn't have survived.
The 2004 nuclear energy budget was 465 billion yen ($4.2b). If the 37 billion yen ($335m) allocated to accelerator and fusion-related work is deducted, this comes to 428 billion yen ($3.9b). Nuclear power generation in 2004 was 282,442 million kWh, so the government's subsidy to nuclear energy works out at 1.5 yen/kWh (1.38 cents/kWh). (Japan's nuclear energy policy is based on the fuel cycle, so the government's spending on the nuclear fuel cycle is included in this figure.)
from:http://cnic.jp/english/newsletter/nit113/nit113articles/nit113cost.html
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
There shouldn't be any significant problem with the plant, except for property damage to the plant itself, in any event. I have some experience in the field, and as one might expect, reactor plants are designed for extremely high levels of safety, given the public's general ignorance about the topic. For instance, the plant I trained on was designed to be safe even if subjected to an 8 point earthquake, during a catagory 5 hurricane, and a 17" shear in the piping (ie a whole side of the plant decided to fall off). 'Meltdown' is only likely due to sabotage.Otherwise you get a Three Mile Island type incident, where the core is irreparably damaged, and the containment area is massively contaminated. I could go on more, but I am sure no one wants a science/engineering lesson ;)
Those plants were build 40 years ago and nature did nearly everything what it could in that area, so this is actually made me feel that nuclear power is more safier than I thought.
Yes exactly Chyd. An 8.9 earthquake and they're still pretty much ok? That's amazing. Newer plants would be much safer and more soundly built.
I'm pretty much sold on the benefits of nuclear energy and I think it's going to be our next major source of power, but I'm curious about the subsidies it enjoys all the same.
I heard that the newer ones actually shut down without electricity, whereas older models would have overheated. Indeed the greatest field test for nuclear energy, though I’m sure many will see things differently.
As others have said, this was a very old plant regardless (much less safe than newer plants), and in spite of the intensity of the earthquake is still doing reasonably fine. Despite this, I have little doubt that "progressives" and other assorted statists who seem to get off on high costs will use this to screech and moan about yet another aspect of the private sector.
By the way Jon, the username is great. One of my favorite games of all time.
This is correct. I will not go into the specific physics, but modern nuclear reactions require energy to continue versus energy to remain stable. You would quite literally have to deliberately force a meltdown.
The nuclear threat in Japan is wildly overstated by the media for hysteric viewership. I do not know what specific process these Japanese reactors employ. However, Japan is one of the most highly advanced technological societies on Earth with a historical aversion to the risks nuclear reactions incur. I find it highly unlikely that they use the much less safe Russian methods to drive their cores.
I know from what I have read about this plant is that it is an older Boiling water plant, unlike the more modern pressurized water reactors, and this is having problems as the water is boiling, not circulating and overpressurizing the chamber- thus the venting, and the pouring on of seawater to maintain the cover over the pile.
SkarnkailW feel free to elaborate.
Anyway nirgraham answered my question. I had the intuition that it'd be subsidised because comparable programmes exist in France and the US. It should silence any "progressives" who try pin this on "market" negligence as subsidies skewer risk/reward calculations. And yeah, the comments on the plant's resilience are good too.
Thanks James, I quite love him as a villain, as well as his cold, logical view of things.
With the current crisis alerts of one of their reactors perhaps coming close to a meltdown, I did wonder, who the hell would build a nuclear power plant in such a seismogenous area?
Bah. It's just anti-nuclear scare nonsense. As long as the outer containment isn't broken (which it isn't), there's essentially no chance of a "meltdown"; there's a "core catcher" in the bottom that's designed to spread out and poison the fuel if it really did melt, but it's been shut down for days now. This is not Chernobyl.
I'm just wondering what factors might've impacted the firm's ability to assess risk. Subsidies are one way of significantly lowering costs associated with nuclear energy.
I don't buy the subsidies thing. People keep saying that about oil, too. How do you know the positive (for the oil/nuclear industry) effects of any subsidies outweighs the negative effects of restrictions and controls? I rather suspect it's the other way around.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rogers/rogers243.html