Japan plans to scrap nuclear plants after 40 years to beef up safety after Fukushima disaster
But when we read the subtext, we learn that this is wildly overstating the development.
Unlike the U.S., where nuclear reactors for energy production are required to seek renewed licensing after 40-years in operation, no such requirements exist under law in Japan.
As you may recall, the reactors at Fukushima, which belong to the same generation as the one at Vermont Yankee, were several years past their 40-year design life-expectancy when disaster struck.
What the Japanese legislature is now considering is to enact a system similar to that in the U.S., where, after forty years in operation, a twenty year extension must be secured if a reactor is to continue operating.
This relicensing is presumed to involve rigorous safety checks, but as we know from the history of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the U.S. cronyism “creep” tends to infect the process over time, as the regulators gain intimacy with the industry and their role evolves into a kind of enabling partnership.
Reading further, we are reminded that:
Such renewals have been granted to 66 of 104 U.S. nuclear reactors. That process has been so routine that many in the industry are already planning for additional license extensions that could push the plants to operate for 80 years or even 100.
In point of fact, not a single U.S. plant has been denied re-licensing by the NRC.
The Japanese are gaining first-hand knowledge of the faulty economics of nuclear plant operation. The 40-year life-expectancy is ironically juxtaposed with the 40 years that have been estimated to totally decommission the failed reactors at Fukushima…to say nothing of the collateral health risk, delivered exponentially to a population of unknown dimensions.
I think for sheer understatement, the following sentence deserves mention, too.
The government has already decided to scrap six reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi, where backup generators, some of them in basements, were destroyed by the March 11 tsunami – setting off the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
Oh really? You mean there’s no way Japan can get another twenty years of service from them? Pity.