On Jul 20, 2012, at 5:08 PM, SSJ-Forum Moderator wrote:

From: Andrew DeWit
Date: 2012/07/20

Alex Luta wrote":

"Come fall we'll see just how anti-nuclear the Japanese public REALLY is, when they will start having to pay for their perceptually safer, heavily CO2-polluting fossil-powered electricity."

If this is the issue, why didn't/doesn't the government just say so instead of trying to scare people with the threat of shortages?

Andrew DeWit wrote:

I wonder if it's an either nuclear or fossil fuels choice...
Here we are in the midst of an
IT-energy-biotech revolution, and Noda's at work on old-style pork-barrel stimulus package rather than say a big programme of efficiency/conservation retrofits that would have massive multiplier effect in the present as well as reduce energy costs into the future Restart those nukes in Japan, and you likely blunt this country's incentives to move fast in this accelerating industrial revolution. "...
Japan's additional risk is that the incompetence of the political class in the central government leaves it inadequately incentivized to get out of this renewed reliance on gas, oil and coal as fast as possible.
Especially in the wake of Fukushima, Japan should be way out in front of the green revolution.

I can't put this half as well as Andrew has done but I agree completely. This is truly a case in which for Japanese industry and government the Japanese saying "[Being in] a pinch is a chance" really applies. They can whine and reminisce, keep throwing money away to preserve a system that is unsustainable in
seismically-challenged* Japan or they can move forward.
(*Faults are suspected near the Oi, Shika, Tsuruga, and Tomari plants and "There are also NINE faults within the grounds of both the Mihama plant and Monju reactor." My emphasis.)
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201207180073

Greg Johnson