Downtown
A Little Higher Radiation
Electricity Generation (Production d'électricité)
A yearly meeting of shareholders of Tokyo Electric Power Company was held today to reject a motion to stop nuclear power generation.
While thousands of shareholders gathered at a venue in Tokyo, the company management already secured a majority of votes from major shareholders, mostly banks and other financial sector businesses, who were absent today. Everything was decided as the management beforehand planned, though it took exceptional six hours due to many motions and questions from participants.
The price of TEPCO's stock was 2121 yen (26 dollars) on March 11, but now it is mere 316 yen (3.9 dollars). Share holders in aggregation have lost $34 billion.
It is not clear how 37,000 employees of TEPCO feel or 53,000 employees of TEPCO and its affiliated companies feel.
SECTION I: Electricity Generation Discussions
Most of the Japanese people have come to feel like leaving the era of nuclear power generation.
But, the situation is not so simple.
According to those who support nuclear power generation, alternative technologies, mainly wind and solar, are not trusted, attractive, and promising. Power generation by wind is not of high technology any more. It is China that is aggressively producing facilities and equipment for this system. The big buyer of the Chinese wind systems, the U.S., even complaints that the Chinese Government supports Chinese makers providing grant money. It is now the industry sector where the scale of economy or cost reduction counts. The growth of wind electricity in China is 64% but only 5.8% in Germany. As an amount of its electricity production is proportional to a mere area size of the wing of the window equipment, technological innovation to boost efficiency of one wind machine is not more effective than simply installing more and more wind facilities with less efficiency. It is not an industrial sector where Japan and the U.S. can enjoy advantage with their advanced engineering capability.
It also goes for solar energy generation. It is more effective to produce a solar panel with a wider area than enhance electricity-generation efficiency. Accordingly, it is a matter of costs but not of higher technology, so that China is also expanding its share in the global market. On the other hand, a major German solar panel maker is suffering a chronic deficit. Ironically, Saudi Arabia, the country most suitable for solar energy generation, is now promoting introduction of nuclear power generation. Saudi Arabia is going to construct 19 nuclear reactor units. Even an earthquake-prone country Turkey is about to introduce nuclear power generation technology from Japan, since Japan is the most experienced country in terms of an earthquake-resistant nuclear power plant.
Therefore, some Japanese still think that it is too early to fully deny nuclear electricity generation. A large-scale and stable electricity generation cannot be entrusted to the wind or solar technology. Rather, one promising technology is the fast-breeder nuclear reactor for which Japan keeps a leading position in the world. (http://adpweb.com/eco/)
Yet, if we stick to nuclear power generation, development of safer and more efficient power generation technology would be delayed. It is a matter of direction. We have to advance to the rational direction.
SECTION II: State of Fukushima Daiichi
The nuclear fuel left in the reactor units 1 to 4 on site of the Fukushima Daiichu nuclear power plant are now being cooled with water poured from the outside. So far, no hydrogen explosion is expected any more.
But, cooling water is not yet perfectly recycled. The water used to cool nuclear fuel is contaminated by radioactive material; accordingly it is called high-level contaminated water. And, currently the amount of the high-level contaminated water is about 110,000 tons. It can fill 85 of 50-meter long swimming pools. This amount is estimated to grow to 200,000 tons by the end of the year.
TEPCO is now making an effort to reduce a radioactive level of used and contaminated water so as to recycle it for cooling the nuclear fuel again, some of which are melted or still in fuel rods.
One stupid thing about their work is that they have installed total 4 km (2.5 mile) long piping for this purpose in the site of the plant. The piping is built and set from a dam in a nearby hill to each of four reactor unit buildings. Yet, something might be still wrong in their scheme as some leakage was reported from the piping.
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The Fukushima Daiichi site before construction of the nuclear power plant:
Note that the place had enough elevation of 35 meters or so above the sea level but they flattened it to build the nuclear plant that needed sea water to cool heated water and circulate it.
If they had built the reactor unit at at least 20-meter high location 40 years ago, no tsunami should have damaged the plant on March 11, 2011. In fact, they removed 25-meter depth soil and set the foundation of the plant at 10 meters above the sea level, though it was hit by 15-meter high tsunamis on March 11.
It is indeed an act of God. It shook the world.
(No cure for the summertime blues...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIkzvRW5S8o&feature=related)
Mat 6:28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: