EcocentricUncategorized
Nobody likes a 40-year heat wave, but a 40-year heat wave in the midst of national drive to conserve energy seems particularly cruel. Last month, residents of Tokyo and other parts of Japan, where electricity is in short supply after March 11, endured highs of 95 degrees — and pangs of guilt when they reached to turn the …
EcocentricEnergy
Tokyo Electric Power Company’s stock rose 25% after Japan’s cabinet announced it approved a plan to help the nation’s largest utility avoid bankruptcy and pay a huge compensation bill to victims of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant crippled in the March 11 tsunami.
For the last three months, the future of TEPCO, which …
EcocentricEnergy
Summer has arrived in Japan. The pink cherry blossoms that offered some aesthetic respite from the destruction in the weeks after March 11 are long gone, and the heat —and all of the attendant challenges of living long-term with a nuclear disaster — have arrived. In Tokyo, where the mayor has set an ambitious energy reduction goal of …
EcocentricEnergy
The IAEA has released a preliminary report of its review of Japan’s handling of its nuclear crisis, concluding that regulators and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) underestimated the risk a severe tsunami posed to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The UN agency also noted that the plant’s backup power systems were not …
EcocentricEcocentric
In a way, it’s a sign that things are returning to normal. Even the March tsunami that swept away much of the small town of Otsuchi was not powerful enough to wipe out tensions between locals and the Western activists who have been monitoring dolphin hunting in the fishing hamlet on the Japan’s northeast coast.
Activists from the …
EcocentricUncategorized
Tokyo Electric Power Company’s head honcho stepped down today as the company announced $15 billion losses for the fiscal year that ended in March. Here’s my post over at Global Spin on how — and if — Tepco can survive.
EcocentricUncategorized
Krista Mahr posted a great item this morning on Japan’s decision to stop building new nuclear plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Atomic power already supplies some 30% of Japan’s electricity—considerably larger than nuclear’s share in the U.S.—and the Japanese government had plans on table to add another 14 reactors …
EcocentricRegulation
Chubu Electric Power Company agreed on Monday to suspend operations at the controversial Hamaoka nuclear power plant, three days after Prime Minister Naoto Kan made an unprecedented request for the company to shut down the plant, citing safety concerns. Like the beleaguered Daiichi Fukishima nuclear power plant further north, Hamaoka is …
EcocentricUncategorized
A colleague in Japan just drew my attention to this video on YouTube that was shot inside the beleaguered Fukushima nuclear power plant. It was shot on April 22 by Aoyama Shigeharu, a member of the Japanese government’s Atomic Energy Commission.
I don’t know a whole lot more about it than that — such as how it ended up on Japanese …
EcocentricFood
In the fishing town of Iwaki, uni is sold in the local market steamed, on the clamshell. Starting each May, free divers wearing weight belts and flippers gather urchin from a small cove and haul the spiny globes to shore in woven baskets. For years, tourists have been coming to this port in Fukushima prefecture to taste Iwaki’s uni, …
