Tag archives for Fukushima
Posted by After world-leading energy efficiency gains in the 1970s, Japan’s energy kaizen stagnated. Japanese industry remains among the most efficient of 11 major industrial nations, but Japan now ranks tenth among them in industrial cogeneration and commercial building efficiency, eighth in truck efficiency, and ties with the U.S. for next-to-last in car efficiency.
Posted by Reports of a 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Japan Friday sparked fears of a tsunami and potential nuclear plant damage, with the impact of the 9.0 magnitude 2011 Tohoku earthquake and ensuing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster still being felt in Japan’s energy landscape a year and a half later. The latest quake occurred east of Sendai,…
Top U.S. Nuclear Regulator’s Parting Message: Fukushima Was “A Wake-Up Call”
Posted by Mason Inman on May 23, 2012 Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, announced his resignation this week, but he is still making pointed comments about the need to strengthen regulations to ensure nuclear power plants are safer. “I think the Fukushima event was a wake-up call, hopefully for everyone,” Jaczko said in a news conference today, referring to…
Japan Demonstration Home Departs From the Grid
Posted by EarthTechling on May 10, 2012 Slightly more than a year after the March 11, 2011, Fukushima disaster, the automaker Honda unveiled a demonstration home in Saitama, Japan, that is powered by thin-film solar panels, as well as a 92-percent efficient gas-fired generator that contributes both hot water and electricity to the home, and a rechargeable home battery unit. (Related Story: One Year After…
Posted by One of our fathers had a sign in his garage: “If you don’t have time now to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” That line comes to mind with the latest energy news from Japan, which is embarking on a massive switch in its energy policy, on the fly.…
Posted by Taxpayers could end up being on the hook for a very large bill. Subsidies have been very much on the minds of lawmakers of late. The Obama administration failed in its bid to get Congress to withdraw the substantial subsidies we provide to the oil and gas industry. And the New York Times reports that…
Mapping Nuclear Fallout After Fukushima
Posted by Amy Sinatra Ayres on March 8, 2012 
One year after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, the nuclear industry is still grappling with how to handle the risks that come with extreme natural disasters. What if something similar happened in the United States? According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, there were five nuclear shutdowns in the U.S. last year, all due to…
A look at things a year after one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake erupted some 50 miles off Japan’s Tohoku coast. The ensuing tsunamis set off by the quake devastated communities up and down the Japanese coast, killing some 20,000 people. The one-two natural-disaster punch also…
Nuclear Generation Capacity Drops in 2011
Posted by Mason Inman on December 7, 2011 
After reaching an all-time high in 2010, this year the nuclear power capacity—the amount of electricity that all the world’s nuclear power plants can produce—took a dip. (Related: World Electricity Mix Interactive) The earthquake-tsunami disaster at the Fukushima power plants in Japan, which are still being cleaned up, led many to sour on nuclear energy.…
The U.S. nuclear industry needs more qualified people and better equipment to assess seismic risk for its nuclear plants, panelists told regulators in a meeting on post-Fukushima safety recommendations this week in Rockville, Md. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Japan Near-Term Task Force report, which was released in July, outlined 12 action items for bolstering plant…
As heroic workers and soldiers strive to save stricken Japan from a new horror—radioactive fallout—some truths known for 40 years bear repeating. An earthquake-and-tsunami zone crowded with 127 million people is an unwise place for 54 reactors. The 1960s design of five Fukushima-I reactors has the smallest safety margin and probably can’t contain 90 percent…
A game-changer or the price of doing business? At first there was the shock — the unbelievable devastation wrought first by Japan’s largest recorded earthquake (recently upgraded to a magnitude of 9.0) and then by the tsunami. Then, as the focus shifted to the daunting cleanup and recovery, another crisis hit — this one at…
