It’s
already well established that Tepco, the operator of Fukushima, is in control
of very little in the devastated nuclear plant. Not the ongoing, endemic
contamination of the atmosphere and of the sea, not the status of nuclear fuel
reduced to a state of three coriums which either can’t be localized or are stocked
in pools from which they cannot be removed. Nor, even less so, the potential impact
of new seismic shocks on the battered systems, including in the first instance
that of Reactor N° 4’s cooling pool , a tremendous source of worry given the
enormous mass of fuel it contains.
1535 fuel assemblies*
are stocked 30 metres (110 feet) above the ground in a structure which has had
to be consolidated and which is open to the air, representing 85 times the
quantity of Cesium-137 released during the explosion of the Chernobyl
reactor…..Enough to render the whole of Japan uninhabitable and beyond, for it
is on this kind of scale that the potential danger can be measured.
Fukushima
poses problems that are currently impossible to resolve, unacknowledged only because
of the conviction that even if the dismantling of the plant takes forty years,
it will be seen through to the end. In reality, nothing is less certain. All
this points to an improbable alternative: covering of all the installations by
an immense sarcophagus, which will need continual cooling. An edifice in
comparison with which Chernobyl’s –whose replacement site has just entered into
construction – will pale into significance. With two slightly different requirements:
that the basement floor on which the plant is constructed is able to support
the weight, and that the leaks of water contaminated by these basements are
stopped.
Simultaneously,
the Fukushima catastrophe has just entered into a brand new phase. It started
with the progressive halting for maintenance of the entire network of nuclear
reactors, which still numbered 50 once Fukushima was discounted, the last one still
in operation having ceased all activity on the 5th May. The reactors
will now have to pass a double test; security tests which will always be
suspected of partiality, and the test of public opinion as well as popular
pressure on locally elected representatives.
As might be
expected, the government – at the heart of which the nuclear lobby bubbles like
a fuel rod in a nuclear reactor vessel about to enter into fusion due to a lack
of cooling water – is striving for a reactivation, which both the nuclear power
operators and, industry in general, are also hoping and praying for. The first
group, as the energy bill for replacement oil and energy soars and wreaks havoc
with the public accounts, the second group since this same bill eats away at
their margins, the third as the resulting consumption restrictions disrupt
their production.
One thing
is already certain: the plan to increase the share of nuclear power from 30% to
50% of Japanese electricity production by 2030 is dead and buried.
Nevertheless, for the time-being, as the summer peak in consumption approaches,
the country has no choice but to moderate this certainty; creating on a
nationwide scale a situation both unseen and instructive. In the long term,
enterprises and the public will have to put up with an increase in their
electricity bills, which will not help to improve the general economic
situation. On both these grounds the government is operating a double blackmail,
with the aim of reinitiating
production on a limited basis in the form of a test which may subsequently serve as a
precedent.
In parallel
with the health aspect which concerns primarily the Japanese, the financial
aspect is progressively growing in significance. For a start, the economic cost
of nuclear power needs to be re-examined, in order to take into account the
expenses engendered by the catastrophe, whether they are supported by the
government or by Tepco.
The final
hour of reckoning, however you look at it, remains a long way off, but even if
the government is reluctant to admit it, the operator is, in reality, being
gradually nationalized due to the financial aid which it is receiving. In the
end it will be the Japanese who foot the bill as both consumers and taxpayers.
Tepco is in the process of presenting a plan for new budget cuts of more than
30 billion Euros over 10 years in order to unblock in principle a contribution
of 10 billion Euros of public funding, having already benefited from an agreement for
16 billion Euros. Private investors are supposed to contribute an equivalent sum
of 10 billion Euros. It is at this price, plus that of an increase in tariffs
which has not yet been publicly calculated, that the operator will be kept
afloat and can both continue the pursuit of the employment of its power
stations (if they are put back into operation again), as well as engage in the
operations to dismantle Fukushima (if it proves possible in the long term). If
this is not the case, the bill will be far heftier.
One after
the other, the arguments of the wild and dangerous defenders of nuclear power
are collapsing. Leaving the final derisory and deceptive line of defense, that
of the clean energy which produces no CO²………which tops it all, given all the harm
it can produce - as has been confirmed once again.
* Note: two of these have since been removed!!
No comments:
Post a Comment