Tag: nuclear accidents

2011 Japan Earthquake – Tsunami Fast Facts | CNN

CNN
—

Here’s a look at the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March of 2011.

March 11, 2011 – At 2:46 p.m., a 9.1 magnitude earthquake takes place 231 miles northeast of Tokyo at a depth of 15.2 miles.

The earthquake causes a tsunami with 30-foot waves that damage several nuclear reactors in the area.

It is the largest earthquake ever to hit Japan.

Number of people killed and missing

(Source: Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency)

The combined total of confirmed deaths and missing is more than 22,000 (nearly 20,000 deaths and 2,500 missing). Deaths were caused by the initial earthquake and tsunami and by post-disaster health conditions.

At the time of the earthquake, Japan had 54 nuclear reactors, with two under construction, and 17 power plants, which produced about 30% of Japan’s electricity (IAEA 2011).

Material damage from the earthquake and tsunami is estimated at about 25 trillion yen ($300 billion).

There are six reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, located about 65 km (40 miles) south of Sendai.

A microsievert (mSv) is an internationally recognized unit measuring radiation dosage. People are typically exposed to a total of about 1,000 microsieverts in one year.

The Japanese government estimated that the tsunami swept about five million tons of debris offshore, but that 70% sank, leaving 1.5 million tons floating in the Pacific Ocean. The debris was not considered to be radioactive.

READ MORE: Fukushima: Five years after Japan’s worst nuclear disaster

All times and dates are local Japanese time.

March 11, 2011 – At 2:46 p.m., an 8.9 magnitude earthquake takes place 231 miles northeast of Tokyo. (8.9 = original recorded magnitude; later upgraded to 9.0, then 9.1.)
– The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issues a tsunami warning for the Pacific Ocean from Japan to the US. About an hour after the quake, waves up to 30 feet high hit the Japanese coast, sweeping away vehicles, causing buildings to collapse, and severing roads and highways.
– The Japanese government declares a state of emergency for the nuclear power plant near Sendai, 180 miles from Tokyo. Sixty to seventy thousand people living nearby are ordered to evacuate to shelters.

March 12, 2011 – Overnight, a 6.2 magnitude aftershock hits the Nagano and Niigata prefectures (USGS).
– At 5:00 a.m., a nuclear emergency is declared at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Officials report the earthquake and tsunami have cut off the plant’s electrical power, and that backup generators have been disabled by the tsunami.
– Another aftershock hits the west coast of Honshu – 6.3 magnitude. (5:56 a.m.)
– The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency announces that radiation near the plant’s main gate is more than eight times the normal level.
– Cooling systems at three of the four units at the Fukushima Daini plant fail prompting state of emergency declarations there.
– At least six million homes – 10% of Japan’s households – are without electricity, and a million are without water.
– The US Geological Survey says the quake appears to have moved Honshu, Japan’s main island, by eight feet and has shifted the earth on its axis.
– About 9,500 people – half the town’s population – are reported to be unaccounted for in Minamisanriku on Japan’s Pacific coast.

March 13, 2011 – People living within 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of the Fukushima Daini and 20 kilometers of the Fukushima Daiichi power plants begin a government-ordered evacuation. The total evacuated so far is about 185,000.
– 50,000 Japan Self-Defense Forces personnel, 190 aircraft and 25 ships are deployed to help with rescue efforts.
– A government official says a partial meltdown may be occurring at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant, sparking fears of a widespread release of radioactive material. So far, three units there have experienced major problems in cooling radioactive material.

March 14, 2011 – The US Geological Survey upgrades its measure of the earthquake to magnitude 9.0 from 8.9.
– An explosion at the Daiichi plant No. 3 reactor causes a building’s wall to collapse, injuring six. The 600 residents remaining within 30 kilometers of the plant, despite an earlier evacuation order, have been ordered to stay indoors.
– The No. 2 reactor at the Daiichi plant loses its cooling capabilities. Officials quickly work to pump seawater into the reactor, as they have been doing with two other reactors at the same plant, and the situation is resolved. Workers scramble to cool down fuel rods at two other reactors at the plant – No. 1 and No. 3.
– Rolling blackouts begin in parts of Tokyo and eight prefectures. Downtown Tokyo is not included. Up to 45 million people will be affected in the rolling outages, which are scheduled to last until April.

March 15, 2011 – The third explosion at the Daiichi plant in four days damages the suppression pool of reactor No. 2. Water continues to be injected into “pressure vessels” in order to cool down radioactive material.

March 16, 2011 – The nuclear safety agency investigates the cause of a white cloud of smoke rising above the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Plans are canceled to use helicopters to pour water onto fuel rods that may have burned after a fire there, causing a spike in radiation levels. The plume is later found to have been vapor from a spent-fuel storage pool.
– In a rare address, Emperor Akihito tells the nation to not give up hope, that “we need to understand and help each other.” A televised address by a sitting emperor is an extraordinarily rare event in Japan, usually reserved for times of extreme crisis or war.
– After hydrogen explosions occur in three of the plant’s reactors (1, 2 and 3), Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano says radiation levels “do not pose a direct threat to the human body” between 12 to 18 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) from the plant.

March 17, 2011 – Gregory Jaczko, head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, tells US Congress that spent fuel rods in the No. 4 reactor have been exposed because there “is no water in the spent fuel pool,” resulting in the emission of “extremely high” levels of radiation.
– Helicopters operated by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces begin dumping tons of seawater from the Pacific Ocean on to the No. 3 reactor to reduce overheating.
– Radiation levels hit 20 millisieverts per hour at an annex building where workers have been trying to re-establish electrical power, “the highest registered (at that building) so far.” (Tokyo Electric Power Co.)

March 18, 2011 – Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raises the threat level from 4 to 5, putting it on a par with the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania. The International Nuclear Events Scale says a Level 5 incident means there is a likelihood of a release of radioactive material, several deaths from radiation and severe damage to the reactor core.

April 12, 2011 – Japan’s nuclear agency raises the Fukushima Daiichi crisis from Level 5 to a Level 7 event, the highest level, signifying a “major accident.” It is now on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union, which amounts to a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures.”

June 6, 2011 – Japan’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters reports reactors 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced a full meltdown.

June 30, 2011 – The Japanese government recommends more evacuations of households 50 to 60 kilometers northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The government said higher radiation is monitored sporadically in this area.

July 16, 2011 – Kansai Electric announces a reactor at the Ohi nuclear plant will be shut down due to problems with an emergency cooling system. This leaves only 18 of Japan’s 54 nuclear plants producing electricity.

October 31, 2011 – In response to questions about the safety of decontaminated water, Japanese government official Yasuhiro Sonoda drinks a glass of decontaminated water taken from a puddle at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

November 2, 2011 – Kyushu Electric Power Co. announces it restarted the No. 4 reactor, the first to come back online since the March 11 disaster, at the Genkai nuclear power plant in western Japan.

November 17, 2011 – Japanese authorities announce that they have halted the shipment of rice from some farms northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after finding higher-than-allowed levels of radioactive cesium.

December 5, 2011 – Tokyo Electric Power Company announces at least 45 metric tons of radioactive water have leaked from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility and may have reached the Pacific Ocean.

December 16, 2011 – Japan’s Prime Minister says a “cold shutdown” has been achieved at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a symbolic milestone which means the plant’s crippled reactors have stayed at temperatures below the boiling point for some time.

December 26, 2011 – Investigators report poorly trained operators at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant misread a key backup system and waited too long to start pumping water into the units, according to an interim report from the government committee probing the nuclear accident.

February 27, 2012 – Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, an independent fact-finding committee, releases a report claiming the Japanese government feared the nuclear disaster could lead to an evacuation of Tokyo while at the same time hiding its most alarming assessments of the nuclear disaster from the public as well as the United States.

May 24, 2012 – TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) estimates about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials were released between March 12 and March 31 in 2011, more radiation than previously estimated.

June 11, 2012 – At least 1,324 Fukushima residents lodge a criminal complaint with the Fukushima prosecutor’s office, naming Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) and 32 others responsible for causing the nuclear disaster which followed the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and exposing the people of Fukushima to radiation.

June 16, 2012 – Despite public objections, the Japanese government approves restarting two nuclear reactors at the Kansai Electric Power Company in Ohi in Fukui prefecture, the first reactors scheduled to resume since all nuclear reactors were shut down in May 2012.

July 1, 2012 – Kansai Electric Power Co. Ltd. (KEPCO) restarts the Ohi nuclear plant’s No. 3 reactor, resuming nuclear power production in Japan for the first time in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown following the tsunami.

July 5, 2012 – The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission’s report finds that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis was a “man-made disaster” which unfolded as a result of collusion between the facility’s operator, regulators and the government. The report also attributes the failings at the plant before and after March 11 specifically to Japanese culture.

July 23, 2012 – A Japanese government report is released criticizing TEPCO. The report says the measures taken by TEPCO to prepare for disasters were “insufficient,” and the response to the crisis “inadequate.”

October 12, 2012 – TEPCO acknowledges in a report it played down safety risks at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant out of fear that additional measures would lead to a plant shutdown and further fuel public anxiety and anti-nuclear movements.

July 2013 – TEPCO admits radioactive groundwater is leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi site, bypassing an underground barrier built to seal in the water.

August 28, 2013 – Japan’s nuclear watchdog Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) says a toxic water leak at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant has been classified as a Level 3 “serious incident” on an eight-point International Nuclear Event Scale (lINES) scale.

September 15, 2013 – Japan’s only operating nuclear reactor is shut down for maintenance. All 50 of the country’s reactors are now offline. The government hasn’t said when or if any of them will come back on.

November 18, 2013 – Tokyo Electric Power Co. says operators of the Fukushima nuclear plant have started removing 1,500 fuel rods from damaged reactor No. 4. It is considered a milestone in the estimated $50 billion cleanup operation.

February 20, 2014 – TEPCO says an estimated 100 metric tons of radioactive water has leaked from a holding tank at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

August 11, 2015 – Kyushu Electric Power Company restarts No. 1 reactor at the Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima prefecture. It is the first nuclear reactor reactivated since the Fukushima disaster.

October 19, 2015 – Japan’s health ministry says a Fukushima worker has been diagnosed with leukemia. It is the first cancer diagnosis linked to the cleanup.

February 29, 2016 – Three former TEPCO executives are indicted on charges of professional negligence related to the disaster at the Fukushiima Daiichi plant.

November 22, 2016 – A 6.9 magnitude earthquake hits the Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures and is considered an aftershock of the 2011 earthquake. Aftershocks can sometimes occur years after the original quake.

February 2, 2017 – TEPCO reports atmospheric readings from inside nuclear reactor plant No. 2. as high as 530 sieverts per hour. This is the highest since the 2011 meltdown.

February 13, 2021 – A 7.1 magnitude earthquake off the east coast of Japan is an aftershock of the 2011 quake, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

April 13, 2021 – The Japanese government announces it will start releasing more than 1 million metric tons of treated radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean in two years – a plan that faces opposition at home and has raised “grave concern” in neighboring countries. The whole process is expected to take decades to complete.

September 9, 2021 – The IAEA and Japan agree on a timeline for the multi-year review of Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean.

February 18, 2022 – An IAEA task force makes its first visit to Japan for the safety review of its plan to discharge treated radioactive water into the sea.

July 4, 2023 – An IAEA safety review concludes that Japan’s plans to release treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean are consistent with IAEA Safety Standards.

Source link

February 27, 2024
IAEA chief ‘completely convinced’ it’s safe to release treated Fukushima nuclear wastewater | CNN

Tokyo
CNN
—

Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water into the ocean is safe and there is no better option to deal with the massive buildup of wastewater collected since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog told CNN.

Japan will release the wastewater sometime this summer, a controversial move 12 years after the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown. Japanese authorities and the IAEA have insisted the plan follows international safety standards – the water will first be treated to remove the most harmful pollutants, and be released gradually over many years in highly diluted quantities.

But public anxiety remains high, including in nearby countries like South Korea, China and the Pacific Islands, which have voiced concern about potential harm to the environment or people’s health. On Friday, Chinese customs officials announced they would ban food imports from ten Japanese prefectures including Fukushima, and strengthen inspections to monitor for “radioactive substances, to ensure the safety of Japanese food imports to China.”

Speaking in an interview during a visit to Tokyo Friday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said that while fears over the plan reflect a “very logical sense of uncertainty” that must be taken seriously, he is “completely convinced of the sound basis of our conclusions.”

“We have been looking at this basic policy for more than two years. We have been assessing it against … the most stringent standards that exist,” he said. “And we are quite certain of what we are saying, and the scheme we have proposed.”

Grossi told CNN he had met with Japanese fishing groups, local mayors and other communities affected by the 2011 disaster – and whose livelihoods may be hurt by the release – to listen to those concerns.

“My disposition … is one of listening, and explaining in a way that addresses all these concerns they have,” he said.

“When one visits Fukushima, it is quite impressive, I will even say ominous, to look at all these tanks, more than a million tons of water that contains radionuclides – imagining that this is going to be discharged into the ocean. So all sorts of fears kick in, and one has to take them seriously, to address and to explain.

“This is why I’m here, to listen to all those who in good faith have questions and criticism and question marks, and to address them.”

On Tuesday, Grossi formally presented the IAEA’s safety review to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The report found the wastewater release plan will have a “negligible” impact on people and the environment, adding that it was an “independent and transparent review,” not a recommendation or endorsement.

IAEA approves plan for Fukushima’s wastewater

Japanese authorities have said the release is necessary because they are running out of room to contain the contaminated water – and the move will allow the full decommissioning of the Fukushima plant.

The 2011 disaster caused the plant’s reactor cores to overheat and contaminate water within the facility with highly radioactive material. Since then, new water has been pumped in to cool fuel debris in the reactors. At the same time, ground and rainwater have leaked in, creating more radioactive wastewater that now needs to be stored and treated.

That wastewater now measures 1.32 million metric tons – enough to fill more than 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Japan has previously said there were “no other options” as space runs out – a sentiment Grossi echoed on Friday. When asked whether there were better alternatives to dispose of the wastewater, the IAEA chief answered succinctly: “No.”

It’s not that there are no other methods, he added – Japan had considered five total options, including hydrogen release, underground burial and vapor release, which would have seen wastewater boiled and released into the atmosphere.

But several of these options are “considered industrially immature,” said Grossi. For instance, vapor release can be more difficult to control due to environmental factors like wind and rain, which could bring the waste back to earth, he said. That left a controlled release of water into the sea – which, Japanese officials and some scientists point out, is frequently done at nuclear plants around the world, including those in the United States.

The IAEA will also remain on site for years to come, with a new permanent office set up in Fukushima to help monitor progress.

“We have the benefit of science,” Grossi said. “Either you have a certain radionuclide in a water sample or you don’t have it … it’s a measurable thing. We have the science, we have the laboratories … to ensure the credibility and the transparency of the process.”

CNN goes inside the Fukushima nuclear plant where wastewater is being treated

But some critics have cast doubt on the IAEA’s findings, with China recently arguing that the group’s assessment “is not proof of the legality and legitimacy” of the wastewater release.

Many countries have openly opposed the plan; Chinese officials have warned that it could cause “unpredictable harm,” and accused Japan of treating the ocean as a “sewer.” The Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum, an inter-governmental group of Pacific island nations that includes Australia and New Zealand, also published an op-ed in January voicing “grave concerns,” saying more data was needed.

And in South Korea, residents have taken to the streets to protest the plan. Many shoppers have stockpiled salt and seafood for fear these products will be contaminated once the wastewater is released – even though Seoul has already banned imports of seafood and food items from the Fukushima region.

International scientists have also expressed concern to CNN that there is insufficient evidence of long-term safety, arguing that the release could cause tritium – a radioactive hydrogen isotope that cannot be removed from the wastewater – to gradually build up in marine ecosystems and food chains, a process called bioaccumulation.

While Grossi said he takes these objections seriously, he added that he “cannot exclude” the possibility some are driven more by politics than science.

“We understand that there is a political environment … which is tense. Geopolitical divisions are very, very strong these days so we cannot exclude these things,” he said.

Grossi also denied media reports that the IAEA had shared a draft of its final report with the Japanese government ahead of its publication. “It’s absurd,” he said. “This is the DNA of the IAEA – to be the nuclear watchdog for nuclear operations, the nuclear watchdog for nuclear safety and security. When we come to a conclusion, it is our independent conclusion.”

And more broadly, the future of nuclear as an alternative energy source relies on the success of the Fukushima release, he said. Though there has been heightened public alarm toward nuclear plants recently – for instance, regarding the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine – “the problem there is war, the problem is not nuclear energy,” Grossi said.

“If there was one lesson that came clearly after the Fukushima accident, it’s that the nuclear safety standards should be observed to the letter,” he added. “If you do that, the probability of having what happened in Fukushima is extremely low.”

Source link

July 6, 2023
Ukraine accuses Russia of blowing up dam near Kherson; flood could displace thousands

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine on Tuesday accused Russian forces of blowing up a major dam and hydroelectric power station in a part of southern Ukraine they control, threatening a massive flood that could displace hundreds of thousands of people, and ordered residents downriver to evacuate.

Russian news agency Tass quoted an unspecified Russian government official as saying the dam had “collapsed” due to damage.

Ukrainian authorities have previously warned that the dam’s failure could unleash 18 million cubic meters (4.8 billion gallons) of water and flood Kherson and dozens of other areas where hundreds of thousands of people live, as well as threatening a meltdown at a nearby Russian-occupied nuclear power plant. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called an emergency meeting to deal with the crisis.

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry wrote on Telegram that the Kakhovka dam, had been blown up, and called for residents of 10 villages on the river’s right bank and parts of the city of Kherson downriver to gather essential documents and pets, turn off appliances, and leave, while cautioning against possible disinformation.

Footage from what appeared to be a monitoring camera overlooking the dam that was circulating on social media purported to show a flash, explosion and breakage of the dam.

Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, said in a video posted to Telegram shortly before 7 a.m. that “the Russian army has committed yet another act of terror,” and warned that water will reach “critical levels” within five hours.

Zelenskyy moved to convene an emergency meeting of the country’s security and defense council following the dam explosion, the council’s secretary, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote on Twitter.

Ukraine and Russia have previously accused each other of targeting the dam with attacks, and last October Zelenskyy predicted that Russia would destroy the dam in order to cause a flood.

Authorities, experts and residents have for months expressed concerns about water flows through — and over — the Kakhovka dam.

In February, water levels were so low that many feared a meltdown at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, whose cooling systems are supplied with water from the Kakhovka reservoir held up by the dam.

By mid-May, after heavy rains and snow melt, water levels rose beyond normal levels, flooding nearby villages. Satellite images showed water washing over damaged sluice gates.

Ukraine controls five of the six dams along the Dnipro River, which runs from its northern border with Belarus down to the Black Sea and is crucial for the entire country’s drinking water and power supply. The Kakhovka dam — the one furthest downstream in the Kherson region — is controlled by Russian forces.

Source link

June 5, 2023
‘A new era’: Germany quits nuclear power, closing its final three plants | CNN

CNN
—

Germany’s final three nuclear power plants close their doors on Saturday, marking the end of the country’s nuclear era that has spanned more than six decades.

Nuclear power has long been contentious in Germany.

There are those who want to end reliance on a technology they view as unsustainable, dangerous and a distraction from speeding up renewable energy.

But for others, closing down nuclear plants is short-sighted. They see it as turning off the tap on a reliable source of low-carbon energy at a time when drastic cuts to planet-heating pollution are needed.

Even as these debates rumble on, and despite last-minute calls to keep the plants online amid an energy crisis, the German government has been steadfast.

“The position of the German government is clear: nuclear power is not green. Nor is it sustainable,” Steffi Lemke, Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment and Consumer Protection and a Green Party member, told CNN.

“We are embarking on a new era of energy production,” she said.

The closure of the three plants – Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim – represents the culmination of a plan set in motion more than 20 years ago. But its roots are even older.

In the 1970s, a strong anti-nuclear movement in Germany emerged. Disparate groups came together to protest new power plants, concerned about the risks posed by the technology and, for some, the link to nuclear weapons. The movement gave birth to the Green Party, which is now part of the governing coalition.

Nuclear accidents fueled the opposition: The partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the 1986 catastrophe at Chernobyl that created a cloud of radioactive waste which reached parts of Germany.

In 2000, the German government pledged to phase out nuclear power and start shutting down plants. But when a new government came to power in 2009, it seemed – briefly – as if nuclear would get a reprieve as a bridging technology to help the country move to renewable energy.

Then Fukushima happened.

In March 2011, an earthquake and tsunami caused three reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to melt down. For many in Germany, Japan’s worst nuclear disaster was confirmation “that assurances that a nuclear accident of a large scale can’t happen are not credible,” Miranda Schreurs, professor of environment and climate policy at the Technical University of Munich, told CNN.

Three days later then-Chancellor Angela Merkel – a physicist who was previously pro-nuclear – made a speech called it an “inconceivable catastrophe for Japan” and a “turning point” for the world. She announced Germany would accelerate a nuclear phase-out, with older plants shuttered immediately.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, provided another plot twist.

Fearful of its energy security without Russian gas, the German government delayed its plan to close the final three plants in December 2022. Some urged a rethink.

But the government declined, agreeing to keep them running only until April 15.

For those in the anti-nuclear movement, it’s a moment of victory.

“It is a great achievement for millions of people who have been protesting nuclear in Germany and worldwide for decades,” Paul-Marie Manière, a spokesperson for Greenpeace, told CNN.

For critics of Germany’s policy, however, it’s irrational to turn off a low-carbon source of energy as the impacts of the climate crisis intensify.

“We need to keep existing, safe nuclear reactors operating while simultaneously ramping up renewables as fast as possible,” Leah Stokes, a professor of climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told CNN.

The big risk, she said, is that fossil fuels fill the energy gap left by nuclear. Reductions in Germany’s nuclear energy since Fukushima have been primarily offset by increases in coal, according to research published last year.

Germany plans to replace the roughly 6% of electricity generated by the three nuclear plants with renewables, but also gas and coal.

More than 30% of Germany’s energy comes from coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels – and the government has made controversial decisions to turn to coal to help with energy security.

In January, protestors including Greta Thunberg converged on the west German village of Lützerath in an unsuccessful attempt to stop it being demolished to mine the coal underneath it.

“Building new coal capacity is the opposite of what we need,” said Stokes. Fossil fuels are a climate problem, but they’re also a health risk, she pointed out. Air pollution from fossil fuels is responsible for 8.7 million deaths a year, according to a recent analysis.

Veronika Grimm, one of Germany’s leading economists, told CNN that keeping nuclear power plants running for longer would have allowed Germany more time “to electrify extensively,” especially as renewable energy growth “remains sluggish.”

But supporters of the nuclear shutdown argue it will ultimately hasten the end of fossil fuels.

Germany has pledged to close its last coal-fired power station no later than 2038, with a 2030 deadline in some areas. It’s aiming for 80% of electricity to come from renewables by the end of this decade.

While more coal was added in the months following Fukushima, Schreurs said, nuclear shutdowns have seen a big push on clean energy. “That urgency and demand can be what it takes to push forward on the growth of renewables,” she said.

Representatives for Germany’s renewable energy industry said the shutdown will open the door for more investment into clean energy.

“Germany’s phase-out of nuclear power is a historic event and an overdue step in energy terms,” Simone Peter, president of the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE), told CNN. “It is high time that we leave the nuclear age behind and consistently organize the renewable age.”

The impacts of nuclear power shouldn’t be overlooked either, Schreurs said, pointing to the carbon pollution created by uranium mining as well as the risk of health complications for miners. Plus, it creates a dependency on Russia, which supplies uranium for nuclear plants, she added.

Nuclear has also shown itself to have vulnerabilities to the climate crisis. France was forced to reduce nuclear power generation last year as the rivers used to cool reactors became too hot during Europe’s blistering heatwave.

Now Germany must work out what do with the deadly, high-level radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.

Currently, the nuclear waste is kept in interim storage next to the nuclear plants being decommissioned. But the search is on to find a permanent location where the waste can be stored safely for a million years.

The site needs to be deep – hundreds of meters underground. Only certain types of rock will do: Crystalline granite, rock salt or clay rock. It must be geologically stable with no risks of earthquakes or signs of underground rivers.

The process is likely to be fraught, complex and breathtakingly long – potentially lasting more than 100 years.

BGE, the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal, estimates a final site won’t be chosen until between 2046 and 2064. After that, it will take decades more to build the repository, fill it with the waste and seal it.

Plenty of other countries are treading paths similar to Germany’s. Denmark passed a resolution in the 1980s not to construct nuclear power plants, Switzerland voted in 2017 to phase out nuclear power, Italy closed its last reactors in 1990 and Austria’s one nuclear plant has never been used.

But, in the context of the war in Ukraine, soaring energy prices and pressure to reduce carbon pollution, others still want nuclear in the mix.

The UK, in the process of building a nuclear power plant, said in its recent climate strategy that energy nuclear power has a “crucial” role in “creating secure, affordable and clean energy.”

France, which gets about 70% of its power from nuclear, is planning six new reactors, and Finland opened a new nuclear plant last year. Even Japan, still dealing with the aftermath of Fukushima, is considering restarting reactors.

The US, the world’s biggest nuclear power, is also investing in nuclear energy and, in March, started up a new nuclear reactor, Vogtle 3 in Georgia – the first in years.

But experts suggest this doesn’t mark the start of a nuclear ramp up. Vogtle 3 came online six years late and at a cost of $30 billion, twice the initial budget.

It encapsulates the big problem that afflicts the whole nuclear industry: making the economics add up. New plants are expensive and can take more than a decade to build. “Even the countries that are talking pro-nuclear are having big trouble developing nuclear power,” Schreurs said.

Many nuclear power plants in Europe, the US and elsewhere are aging – plants have an operating life of around 40 to 60 years. As Germany puts an end to its nuclear era, it’s coming up to crunch time for others, Schreurs said.

“There will be a moment of decision as to whether nuclear really has a future”

Source link

April 14, 2023
This community’s quarter century without a newborn shows the scale of Japan’s population crisis | CNN

Tokyo
CNN
—

When Kentaro Yokobori was born almost seven years ago, he was the first newborn in the Sogio district of Kawakami village in 25 years. His birth was like a miracle for many villagers.

Well-wishers visited his parents Miho and Hirohito for more than a week – nearly all of them senior citizens, including some who could barely walk.

“The elderly people were very happy to see [Kentaro], and an elderly lady who had difficulty climbing the stairs, with her cane, came to me to hold my baby in her arms. All the elderly people took turns holding my baby,” Miho recalled.

During that quarter century without a newborn, the village population shrank by more than half to just 1,150 – down from 6,000 as recently as 40 years ago – as younger residents left and older residents died. Many homes were abandoned, some overrun by wildlife.

Kawakami is just one of the countless small rural towns and villages that have been forgotten and neglected as younger Japanese head for the cities. More than 90% of Japanese now live in urban areas like Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto – all linked by Japan’s always-on-time Shinkansen bullet trains.

That has left rural areas and industries like agriculture, forestry, and farming facing a critical labor shortage that will likely get worse in the coming years as the workforce ages. By 2022, the number of people working in agriculture and forestry had declined to 1.9 million from 2.25 million 10 years earlier.

Yet the demise of Kawakami is emblematic of a problem that goes far beyond the Japanese countryside.

The problem for Japan is: people in the cities aren’t having babies either.

“Time is running out to procreate,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a recent press conference, a slogan that seems so far to have fallen short of inspiring the city dwelling majority of the Japanese public.

Amid a flood of disconcerting demographic data, he warned earlier this year the country was “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions.”

The country saw 799,728 births in 2022, the lowest number on record and barely more than half the 1.5 million births it registered in 1982. Its fertility rate – the average number of children born to women during their reproductive years – has fallen to 1.3 – far below the 2.1 required to maintain a stable population. Deaths have outpaced births for more than a decade.

And in the absence of meaningful immigration – foreigners accounted for just 2.2% of the population in 2021, according to the Japanese government, compared to 13.6% in the United States – some fear the country is hurtling toward the point of no return, when the number of women of child-bearing age hits a critical low from which there is no way to reverse the trend of population decline.

All this has left the leaders of the world’s third-largest economy facing the unenviable task of trying to fund pensions and health care for a ballooning elderly population even as the workforce shrinks.

Up against them are the busy urban lifestyles and long working hours that leave little time for Japanese to start families and the rising costs of living that mean having a baby is simply too expensive for many young people. Then there are the cultural taboos that surround talking about fertility and patriarchal norms that work against mothers returning to work.

Doctor Yuka Okada, the director of Grace Sugiyama Clinic in Tokyo, said cultural barriers meant talking about a woman’s fertility was often off limits.

“(People see the topic as) a little bit embarrassing. Think about your body and think about (what happens) after fertility. It is very important. So, it’s not embarrassing.”

Okada is one of the rare working mothers in Japan who has a highly successful career after childbirth. Many of Japan’s highly educated women are relegated to part-time or retail roles – if they reenter the workforce at all. In 2021, 39% of women workers were in part-time employment, compared to 15% of men, according to the OECD.

Tokyo is hoping to address some of these problems, so that working women today will become working mothers tomorrow. The metropolitan government is starting to subsidize egg freezing, so that women have a better chance of a successful pregnancy if they decide to have a baby later in life.

New parents in Japan already get a “baby bonus” of thousands of dollars to cover medical costs. For singles? A state sponsored dating service powered by Artificial Intelligence.

Whether such measures can turn the tide, in urban or rural areas, remains to be seen. But back in the countryside, Kawakami village offers a precautionary tale of what can happen if demographic declines are not reversed.

Along with its falling population, many of its traditional crafts and ways of life are at risk of dying out.

Among the villagers who took turns holding the young Kentaro was Kaoru Harumashi, a lifelong resident of Kawakami village in his 70s. The master woodworker has formed a close bond with the boy, teaching him how to carve the local cedar from surrounding forests.

“He calls me grandpa, but if a real grandpa lived here, he wouldn’t call me grandpa,” he said. “My grandson lives in Kyoto and I don’t get to see him often. I probably feel a stronger affection for Kentaro, whom I see more often, even though we are not related by blood.”

Both of Harumashi’s sons moved away from the village years ago, like many other young rural residents do in Japan.

“If the children don’t choose to continue living in the village, they will go to the city,” he said.

When the Yokoboris moved to Kawakami village about a decade ago, they had no idea most residents were well past retirement age. Over the years, they’ve watched older friends pass away and longtime community traditions fall by the wayside.

“There are not enough people to maintain villages, communities, festivals, and other ward organizations, and it is becoming impossible to do so,” Miho said.

“The more I get to know people, I mean elderly people, the more I feel sadness that I have to say goodbye to them. Life is actually going on with or without the village,” she said. “At the same time, it is very sad to see the surrounding, local people dwindling away.”

If that sounds depressing, perhaps it’s because in recent years, Japan’s battle to boost the birthrate has given few reasons for optimism.

Still, a small ray of hope may just be discernible in the story of the Yokoboris. Kentaro’s birth was unusual not only because the village had waited so long, but because his parents had moved to the countryside from the city – bucking the decades old trend in which the young increasingly plump for the 24/7 convenience of Japanese city life.

Some recent surveys suggest more young people like them are considering the appeals of country life, lured by the low cost of living, clean air, and low stress lifestyles that many see as vital to having families. One study of residents in the Tokyo area found 34% of respondents expressed an interest in moving to a rural area, up from 25.1% in 2019. Among those in their 20s, as many as 44.9% expressed an interest.

The Yokoboris say starting a family would have been far more difficult – financially and personally – if they still lived in the city.

Their decision to move was triggered by a Japanese national tragedy twelve years ago. On March 11, 2011, an earthquake shook the ground violently for several minutes across much of the country, triggering tsunami waves taller than a 10-story building that devastated huge swaths of the east coast and caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Miho was an office worker in Tokyo at the time. She remembers feeling helpless as daily life in Japan’s largest city fell apart.

“Everyone was panicking, so it was like a war, although I have never experienced a war. It was like having money but not being able to buy water. All the transportation was closed, so you couldn’t use it. I felt very weak,” she recalled.

The tragedy was a moment of awakening for Miho and Hirohito, who was working as a graphic designer at the time.

“The things I had been relying on suddenly felt unreliable, and I felt that I was actually living in a very unstable place. I felt that I had to secure such a place by myself,” he said.

The couple found that place in one of Japan’s most remote areas, Nara prefecture. It is a land of majestic mountains and tiny townships, tucked away along winding roads beneath towering cedar trees taller than most of the buildings.

They quit their jobs in the city and moved to a simple mountain house, where they run a small bed and breakfast. He learned the art of woodworking and specializes in producing cedar barrels for Japanese sake breweries. She is a full-time homemaker. They raise chickens, grow vegetables, chop wood, and care for Kentaro, who’s about to enter the first grade.

The big question, for both Kawakami village and the rest of Japan: Is Kentaro’s birth a sign of better times to come – or a miracle birth in a dying way of life.

Source link

March 18, 2023
With a Russian offensive looming, Ukrainian officials battle to train military up with new Western weapons | CNN

Pripyat, Ukraine
CNN
—

A few kilometers from the Belarus border, Ukrainian forces are training for what they expect to be a brutal spring.

Ageing T-72 tanks – some twice the age of their crews – fire off rounds into the mist, while ground troops practise storming abandoned buildings. Some of the training takes place in the eerily quiet town of Pripyat, deserted since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.

As the troops are put through their paces, Lieutenant General Serhiy Naiev takes delivery of a dozen pick-up trucks armed with heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, a crowd-funded initiative to help Ukraine repel Iranian-made Shahed drones, which have caused so much damage to Ukraine’s power infrastructure.

But Naiev, a stocky and affable commander, believes the next phase of this war will be about tanks. And that means not his ancient T-72s but more modern machines such as German Leopard 2s and British Challengers. Ukrainian officials say they need several hundred main battle tanks – not only to defend their present positions but also to take the fight to the enemy in the coming months.

“Of course, we need a large number of Western tanks. They are much better than the Soviet models and can help us advance,” Naiev said. “We are creating new military units. And our next actions will depend on their combat readiness. Therefore, Western assistance is extremely important.”

Chief among their requests is the Leopard 2, which is relatively easy to maintain and operate, and in service with many NATO nations. Both the military and political leadership in Ukraine were hoping that the Ramstein meeting of Ukraine’s partners on Friday would greenlight their delivery, but Germany held back.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, speaking after the meeting, said he and German counterpart Boris Pistorius “had a frank discussion on Leopard 2s … to be continued.”

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s Presidential Administration, told CNN Friday: “We are disappointed. We understand that some countries have inhibitions. But the slower this goes the more of our soldiers and civilians are killed.

“It would be significant if Germany took a leadership position here.”

He contends that “300 to 400 of these tanks, in fact, would outdo 2,000 to 3,000 Soviet-era tanks…It would sharply accelerate the tempo of the war and initiate the closing stages.”

In the meantime, Ukrainian officials say they are running out of spare parts for their existing Soviet-era tanks, even as they scour other former Soviet bloc states for supplies.

The Ukrainians fear that a second Russian offensive may begin within two months. By the spring, 150,000 Russians drafted last autumn will have been trained and probably incorporated into battle-ready units. For the Ukrainians, it’s a race against time. But they are essentially converting a military based on Soviet hardware to one using advanced western weapons at warp speed.

They won’t be getting M1 Abrams main battle tanks, which are powerful but difficult to maintain. Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy adviser, said of the M1 that it’s “expensive. It’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine.”

Experts also believe the German tanks could make a real difference. “Leopard 2 is a modern, well-protected main battle tank with good sensors,” Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow in Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told CNN.

“It was originally designed to be maintained by conscripts and is therefore simpler to keep in the fight than some other NATO designs like the Challenger 2. There is also an existing production line to keep Leopard 2s supplied with spare parts.”

But other weapons continue to flow in – Stryker armored vehicles and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles from the US, howitzers from Finland, the advanced ARCHER artillery system and anti-tank guns from Sweden.

The Ukrainian military has to train units on the new equipment and integrate it into its existing formations.

“The whole unit should be equipped with the same vehicle, so a whole battalion is equipped with Bradley, if we get it, or with Leopards,” Lieutenant-General Naiev told CNN.

Several senior Ukrainian officials have said that Ukraine wants to go on the front foot before Russia reinforces its lines and its battalion tactical groups. The front lines – all the way from the Russian border in the northeast to the Black Sea – have moved little since Ukrainian advances in Kharkiv and Kherson in the autumn.

Podolyak said rapid deliveries of modern tanks would localize the war. “It wouldn’t spread, but remain on the occupied territories and be decided with tank warfare.”

Ukraine needs tanks to clear occupied land quickly, but also longer-range missiles, Podolyak said. He expects the Russians are “going to bring in a lot more troops, a lot of old Soviet equipment, everything, according to our estimates, that they have left.”

The Russians appear to be trying to reduce the vulnerability of their ammunition stocks and troops concentrations by placing them further away from the frontlines, perhaps even beyond the range of US HIMARS systems that Ukraine has used effectively against such targets.

The list of hardware that the Ukrainians want seems ever-expanding, but Podolyak responds: “Our guys aren’t leaving the battlefield, even if they aren’t provided with new weaponry. They’ll just die more often and with greater regularity.

“I understand that some countries may feel tired of this war,” Podolyak told CNN.

“But we are the ones whose are paying the real price for freedom. We are the ones whose people are dying because of Russian aggression.”

Source link

January 22, 2023
Tokyo High Court acquits three former Tepco executives over 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident: NHK | CNN

Tokyo
CNN
—

The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday acquitted three former Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) executives, finding them not guilty of manslaughter over the 2011 triple reactor meltdown at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported Wednesday.

The High Court’s ruling was a decision on an appeal against a 2019 judgment by the Tokyo district court that found former Tepco chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and former executive vice presidents Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto were not guilty of professional negligence on the grounds they could not have foreseen the tsunami that wrecked the plant.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake off Japan’s northeastern coast triggered the tsunami that flooded the plant’s reactors, causing the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

The High Court case focused on whether the tsunami could have been predicted and whether the accident at the nuclear plant could have been prevented.

The criminal case against the executives follows a civil case in which a Tokyo court in July 2022 ordered the three men – along with Tepco’s former President Masataka Shimizuto – to pay 13 trillion yen ($95 billion) in damages to the operator of the wrecked plant.

That ruling, which came after shareholders filed a lawsuit in 2012, was the first to find former Tepco executives legally responsible for the nuclear plant disaster.

Source link

January 17, 2023