Paul Mitford writes on the "[SSJ: 7150] Why Noda is pushing a tax increase" thread:

"What's amazing is that Japan has been able to shut down all but 2 of its reactors (as of yesterday every reactor serving Kansai, the most nuclearly dependent regional grid), without suffering any serious shortfall, despite Japan's very dysfunctional grid."

It's less surprising if you consider the following two things. First, the winter peak load is usually significantly lower than the summer peak load. And if memory serves me correctly, the coldest spells usually hit Japan in January or early February, so we're likely already out of the woods.until July and August, when I suspect that Noda or whoever is prime minister will be praying for a cool, cool summer. Second, Japan has a highly functional grid all things considered. Japanese electricity is widely regarded as some of the most stable-think voltage-and steady-think low blackout and brownout rates-if most expensive-no explanation needed-electricity on this planet. Considered as an engineering feat, you have to give a big hand for this to the major power companies and their extensively interconnected regional grids. Yes, there is the not-so-small matter of the 50/60 Hz divide, but Japan is a developed economy with a sizable population, so even half that loaf-essentially one of two trans-regional super grids with a 1 GW two-way connection-is a pretty sizeable loaf. (Which is a big reason why this did not come across as too inconveniencing until the massive and growing outage that hit Japan came along.) It could be argued that the domination by large, vertically integrated regional monopolies made possible the kind of collaboration that allowed the electricity to keep flowing with reasonable regularity despite the post-3.11 regional mismatches in supply and demand. Of course one human's collaboration is another human's cartel, with its own set of negatives; I'm curious to see where METI Minister Edano and the Noda administration (or whatever) ultimately come down on this issue. That said, there was nothing "dysfunctional" about this from the perspective of keeping the electricity flowing through the winter peak (fingers crossed).

Did I get it right, Paul (Scalise)? I know you're following these threads.