Japan: Kan feared Tokyo would become uninhabitable after Fukushima nuclear crisis

Japan's outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan shared candid thoughts on the Fukushima nuclear disaster in an interview this week. “Deserted scenes of Tokyo without a single man around came across my mind,” he told Asahi Shimbun, describing his state of mind immediately after March 11. “It really was a spine-chilling thought.” After the disaster, Kan is now opposed to the use of nuclear power in Japan. More: Japan Today, and Asahi Shimbun.

• [rourin_bushi]

  I figure it’s cuz he figured his contituents would have the same dream and panic. Regardless of how much it actually spooked him personally.
  “If that is the way the winds are blowing, let no one say I don’t also blow” ~Quimby

• [Joshua Ochs]

  Thankfully, this was not the case.

  On a related note, what are the prevailing winds in Japan? For instance, had this been a full-on Chernobyl with massive radiation vented directly into the atmosphere, would said fallout been carried near Japan’s major population centers, or out to sea?

• [cymk]

  Speaking of chernobyl, has Japan even bothered with a cement dome over the reactor? Or were they just going to leave it alone and hope the radiation goes away?

• [CaptainK]

  But wait!!! For years now the experts in the nuclear power field have repeatedly assured us that there was no way for a reactor to leak or melt down. Can they be wrong? Or liars? Or not experts at all but merely people payed by the industry to paint a rosy, safe, healthy picture for all of us to see within out last blink?

  • [MertvayaRuka]

    Cue up “This was an outdated reactor and if we could just get the DFHs to back off the nuclear industry they’d build us shiny new modern reactors that will never ever have any problems like this ever again. Also, if we don’t let the nuclear industry build more plants, LOTS more plants, coal will kill everyone because coal is the only other options for electrical power.”.

    • [AnthonyC]

      You’re right that coal is not the only other option. Germany certainly believes they can replace all their nuclear with renewables, and they’re right. Coal is, however, the most likely option in places that lack the political will to oppose coal (like the US).

      OTOH, is is actually, objectively true that modern nuclear reactors are much safer than the old ones, and that the old ones are mostly around because the industry knows they won’t be allowed to build new ones in a reasonable timeframe (build times are a huge factor in nuclear plant costs/financing). It is also true that coal kills and sickens more people through the industry’s normal operation, each year, than nuclear plants have in all the disasters that have ever occurred in the industry.

    • [Joshua Ochs]

      Queued, but thanks for hyperbolizing in my place. This was an outdated reactor – 1960′s vintage, with safety systems of the time (look into active vs passive safety systems). Shiny modern reactors indeed cannot melt down, and thus cannot have problems like that ever again. True, even if you meant it sarcastically. And if we don’t build new nuclear plants to replace the old ones, then yes, we have to make up that energy deficit somehow, and non-nucelar options have nasty problems of their own. What’s your plan then, sans nuclear? If you can come up with an integrative solution that makes that thorny problem work, I’m all ears.

  • [Meng Bomin]

    What experts have you been listening to?  I have heard no such thing.  Methinks that it’s worth revisiting the definition of “straw man”.

    • [Guest]

      And methinks it’s time to revisit the definition of “hasty retort”

      http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Nuclear-power-is-safe-and-reliable-1729695.php

      http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9P58OHO1.htm

      http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/13/earthquake-driven-nuclear-meltdown-america-happen/

      It’s been in the air lately. He has a fair point.  Straw man denied.

      • [Meng Bomin]

        Yup, in a hasty retort you provided no articles claiming that a meltdown is impossible.  Own goal.

        • [Guest]

          That wasn’t the challenge.

          The challenge was to find hyperbole about safety. It’s in there. Dig In.

        • [Meng Bomin]

          Hmmm…let’s review the original comment:
          CaptainK:

          But wait!!! For years now the experts in the nuclear power field have
          repeatedly assured us that there was no way for a reactor to leak or
          melt down. Can they be wrong? Or liars? Or not experts at all but merely
          people payed by the industry to paint a rosy, safe, healthy picture for
          all of us to see within out last blink?

          The only hyperbole is the clear claim by CaptainK that “For years now the experts in the nuclear power field have repeatedly assured us that there was no way for a reactor to leak or melt down.”

          I replied because this was an obvious straw man.  No one worthy of being called a nuclear expert would claim (much less repeatedly claim) “that there was no way for a reactor to leak or melt down”, so CaptainK’s comment is an obvious straw man.  You rebutted that there was no straw man and as support provided articles that did not back up CaptainK’s statement while implying that my reply was a hasty retort.

          As for the articles that you posted, I didn’t see any hyperbolic claims.  You’re free to cite specific examples that you think are hyperbolic, but if you think that your articles were anywhere near a refutation of the notion that CaptainK was presenting a (rather blatant) straw man, then you are mistaken.

  • [Joshua Ochs]

    And they’re correct – on a modern reactor. Fukushima, Chernobyl, and anything in the United States is anything but modern (>30 years old). Fukushima was from the 60′s. So was Three Mile Island. Chernobyl was similar, but with even more primitive safety mechanisms. Please look into Pebble Bed Reactors and other modern designs which have passive safety systems. In such systems the reaction must be actively maintained or else it stops on its own without intervention. This means when anything goes wrong – loss of power or other catastrophic events – the reaction stops.

    To make an analogy to past technological safety improvements, this is similar to when brakes on trains went from being actively engaged by brakemen jumping from car to car, to passive air brakes. Before, if the brakes failed the train went out of control, and massive accidents were commonplace. With the introduction air brakes any failure in the braking system caused the brakes to engage, stopping the train. It revolutionized the railway industry and made rail transit enormously safer. Well, the same thing happened in nuclear decades ago, but we’ve been so staunchly anti-nuclear that it passed us by.

    Right now you’re engaging in the equivalent of judging modern auto safety based on crash tests of 1960′s vehicles (utter death traps in anything beyond a fender bender). If you want to paint nuclear the same way, ignoring decades of improvements is definitely the way to do it. It’s stupid and dishonest, but it lets you hold onto your beliefs.

    We need to get rid of these old reactors. Not because they’re nuclear, but because they’re older, more primitive designs that *are* unsafe. Nuclear can be done properly – we just aren’t able to do so thanks to the anti-nuclear crowd.

    • [Cloud Buster]

      The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has called ground source heat pumps the most energy-efficient, environmentally clean, and cost-effective space conditioning systems available.[24] Heat pumps offer significant emission reductions potential, particularly where they are used for both heating and cooling and where the electricity is produced from renewable resources.Ground-source heat pumps have unsurpassed thermal efficiencies and produce zero emissions locally, but their electricity supply includes components with high greenhouse gas emissions, unless the owner has opted for a 100% renewable energy supply. Their environmental impact therefore depends on the characteristics of the electricity supply.Annual greenhouse gas savings from using a ground source heat pump instead of a high-efficiency furnace in a detached residence (assuming no specific supply of renewable energy)CountryElectricity CO2
      Emissions IntensityGHG savings relative tonatural gasheating oilelectric heatingCanada223 ton/GWh[25][26][27]2.7 ton/yr5.3 ton/yr3.4 ton/yrRussia351 ton/GWh[25][26]1.8 ton/yr4.4 ton/yr5.4 ton/yrUSA676 ton/GWh[26]-0.5 ton/yr2.2 ton/yr10.3 ton/yrChina839 ton/GWh[25][26]-1.6 ton/yr1.0 ton/yr12.8 ton/yrThe GHG emissions savings from a heat pump over a conventional furnace can be calculated based on the following formula:[4] HL = seasonal heat load ≈ 80 GJ/yr for a modern detached house in the northern USA
      FI = emissions intensity of fuel = 50 kg(CO2)/GJ for natural gas, 73 for heating oil, 0 for 100% renewable energy such as wind, hydro, photovoltaic or solar thermal
      AFUE = furnace efficiency ≈ 95% for a modern condensing furnace
      COP = heat pump coefficient of performance ≈ 3.2 seasonally adjusted for northern USA heat pump
      EI = emissions intensity of electricity ≈ 200-800 ton(CO2)/GWh, depending on regionGround-source heat pumps always produce less greenhouse gases than air conditioners, oil furnaces, and electric heating, but natural gas furnaces may be competitive depending on the greenhouse gas intensity of the local electricity supply. In countries like Canada and Russia with low emitting electricity infrastructure, a residential heat pump may save 5 tons of carbon dioxide per year relative to an oil furnace, or about as much as taking an average passenger car off the road. But in countries like China or USA that are highly reliant on coal for electricity production, a heat pump may result in 1 or 2 tons more carbon dioxide emissions than a natural gas furnace.Your argument is invalid.

  • [jhertzli]

    “But wait!!! For years now the experts in the nuclear power field have
    repeatedly assured us that there was no way for a reactor to leak or
    melt down.”

    [CITATION NEEDED]

    • [Guest]

      Please see my reply to meng bomin above. It’s not my point to defend, but I did provice a few recent citations of talking heads and experts saying basically that.

      It’s not my argument, but his generalization is accurate, generally.

• [TokyoTokyo]

  Hey – In those days, the first few after the earthquake, EVERYONE in Tokyo had those fears. That the PM was one of them is not surprising – he is human too, after all. 

  @Joshu Ochs: The winds were mostly north-north-west, inland over Fukushima prefecture.

  • [benher]

    “he is human too, after all. “ 

    I agree with everything else you said, but Kan?!! Of the Minshuto?? Human? Citation needed.

• [awjt]

  We don’t need to make safer reactors: we make safer safety.

• [Beth Z]

  I actually own a rather rare book of photography called “Tokyo Nobody” where the photographer managed to take photos of major metropolitan Tokyo areas… with absolutely no one in them. The effect is, indeed, quite eerie and post-apocalyptic.