Japan to Reinvent Fukushima as a Renewable Energy Hub

George Dvorsky Nov 13, 2019. 6 comments

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Earther japan renewable energy Science

Plans have been announced to convert

abandoned areas in Fukushima to a renewable energy hub, a scheme that will involve the construction of new solar plants, wind farms, and a power transmission grid that will feed Tokyo with electricity.

It’s been eight years since an

earthquake and tsunami triggered a catastrophic meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The immediate area around the facility remains unsafe, but as Nikkei Asian Review reports, Japan is hatching a plan to convert the area into a haven for renewable energy.

The plan calls for 11 solar plants and 10 wind farms to be built on land in the Fukushima prefecture that “cannot be cultivated anymore and mountainous areas from where population outflows continue,” according to Nikkei.

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Nearly 43,000 Japanese citizens remain displaced by the disaster—many of whom are understandably wary about returning home, despite the government’s assurances. Meanwhile, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which operates the ruined nuclear power plant, says the facility may not be

completely decommissioned until the 2050s. And then there are Fukushima’s three Evacuation-Designed Zones to consider, which encompass 371 square kilometers (143 square miles) of space, or nearly 3 percent of the prefecture’s total area.

If the Fukushima nuclear disaster is essentially a gigantic lemon, then Japan is now trying to make some lemonade in the form of this renewable energy hub. The new facilities are expected to be completed by March 2024 at an estimated cost of $2.7 billion. A line of credit to partially support the cost of the project will be provided by the state-run Development Bank of Japan and the privately owned Mizuho Bank according to Nikkei.

The hub is expected to produce around 600 megawatts of electricity. That’s a fraction of the nearly 4,700 megawatts the former nuclear plant was capable of producing, but will still be enough electricity to power 114,000 average American homes. The project also calls for the construction of a grid connected to TEPCO’s main backbone grid that can be used to transmit electricity to Tokyo.

This new plan is consistent with prefecture’s goal of having renewable energy supply 40 percent of its demand by 2020, two-thirds by 2030, and 100 percent by 2040, according to the Japan Times.

This plan is reminiscent of a China-backed

scheme to build solar power stations in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the only other area on Earth ravaged by a nuclear meltdown. There’s a curious poetic irony to these plans, in which areas wrecked by power plants can still be used to generate power. Life is weird.

6 Comments

makerofthegames Nov 13, 2019

So I got curious about exactly how contaminated the Fukushima surroundings are. We don’t have good data on the dangers of long-term low-level exposure, so I don’t fault Japan for erring on the side of caution. But I found they are being extremely cautious.

The “no-go” zone around Fukushima, where people are not being allowed to return home, is set to where radiation exposure would exceed 50 millisieverts/year. There are places on Earth with higher natural levels of radiation. Guarapari, Brazil is 175. Ramsar, Iran is above 250. If received over a short period, it corresponds to about a 0.5% increase in cancer rate (though we don’t know if long-term exposure works differently - we have reason to suspect it does, but firm data is lacking).

The zones where return is permitted, but decontamination will be performed, is anywhere above 1 millisievert/year. Which is similarly zealous - Santa Fe, New Mexico is around 7, and nobody seems particularly concerned about it (granted, there’s not much we could do). And a single CT scan can be up to 10 mSv.

Now, blocking the land from agricultural use, at least in the higher-level areas, is probably a good idea. Ingesting radioactive material is (S FAWK) the most dangerous way to be exposed to it, and some isotopes bioaccumulate, being concentrated as they make their way up the food chain. (Plus, some of them are toxic heavy metals anyways). But the land is suitable for pretty much anything else.

Stephan Zielinski Nov 13, 2019

The additional cancer risk is about +5.5% per sievert, at least per . An additional 50 millisieverts per year for one year thus adds .275%.

What that really means is per thousand people exposed to an additional 5 0 millisieverts per year for one year, we’d see about 2.75 more cases of cancer ever in their lives t han in an equivalent population not so exposed. It might be ten minutes before the cancer shows up; it might be fifty years.

Note too that it’s the beaches of that have been measured at up to 175 mSv/year. In the city, it’s 5.2 mSv/year.

, and the radiation nerds are, in fact, suggesting people clear the hell out.

makerofthegames Nov 13, 2019

Linear No-Threshold is still basically a hypothesis at this point. We don’t have enough good data to support it. We really don’t have much good data to support any hypothesis. It’s not like you can sign a million people up, expose them to a range of radiation doses (plus a control group), and then keep them in identical conditions for the rest of their lives. We have to derive data out of messy population studies (and the Soviets kept very poor records post-Chernobyl, which could at least have given good data ) , or extrapolate from animal studies or the relatively good data we have on high acute doses.

If you’re a policymaker, go ahead and use LNT. It’s the most pessimistic plausible model. It might lead you into being overcautious, but it will almost certainly not lead you into being reckless. That’s a good thing when it comes to policy - if you don’t know , assume the worst plausible scenario and act as such.

But if you want to know how radiation risk actually works, well, you’re out of luck. There’s quite likely a “threshold” level, below which the body can repair damage (but where it is is undetermined and likely varies between populations, people whose ancestors lived in high-natural-radiation areas are probably more resistant). It may take the form of two linear functions, switching to a steeper curve above that dose. It may be a quadratic function is a better fit. Or exponential. There’s even the hormesis model, which assumes small enough doses are actually beneficial, but I don’t buy it. One day I’m sure we’ll have a nice big equation that can tell you the exact risk of cancer per-organ, based of the exact types of radiation exposure. But we don’t have that yet. We have “probably no more than +5.5%/Sv”. Which isn’t great.

But isn’t terrible.

Dense non aqueous phase liquid Nov 13, 2019

It would be nice to see them invest in R&D on envelope pushing renewables, storage and maybe other non renewable low or no carbon technologies on the site as well. Not to mention a developing a global center of excellence for science, engineering and management of radionuclides in soil and water. Especially if US nuke plants go offline and will be needing decommissioning. R&D investment return could be an additional revenue stream if technologies are deployed elsewhere by others. Another revenue stream seems needed, since estimated power generation is reported to be much less than what the nuke plants did.

Times up, time to leave! Nov 13, 2019

“but will still be enough electricity to power 114,000 average American homes.”

And here in lies the second part of the equation, power usage. Part of the whole process of becoming green requires taking a good hard look at how power is used in the home. Continuing to use power as an unlimited resource is part of why we are where are and it has to change. For most households around 75% of the power used is wasted as conversion losses in inefficient appliances, energy leaks due to poor or non-existent insulation and simply leaving things running when not needed.

Perhaps the prefecture can look at ways to improve energy efficiency of the connected homes and offer assistance to home owners to change. Things like good quality insulation, solar hot water, solar direct LED lighting and updated ultra efficient refrigeration and HVAC can make a massive difference to energy consumption. In fact if their homes are typical that 600Mw could do the job of a 2400Mw system if they got rid of the waste.

dudebra Nov 13, 2019

Earthquakes and tsunamis are a fact of life on planet Earth and a near inevitability in tectonically violent Japan. Building nuclear power plants in Japan is human error. Building nukes on the coast of Japan is compounding that human error. Storing waste on top of those nukes and not having redundant safety systems to prevent meltdown is incredibly stupid human error.

This is a good start and is hopefully the beginning of Japan abandoning the uninsurable, unable to survive without massive subsidy and deadly for generations nuke industry.