Comment by theanphibian

July 22, 2007 @ 4:06 am

Nuclear leak, everyone run for cover!

I would like to say that you’re straightforward reporting is greatly appreciated. I wanted to read just one report of the event that wasn’t journalistic fear mongering, and you guys delivered, thank you.

I had actually just been building the Wikipedia article for this plant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashiwazaki-Kariwa_Nuclear_Power_Plant
And I’m already familiar with most details that have come from this event, but you captured the true effect on the public. Tepco, itself, will predictably suffer terribly from the earthquake (what can we expect from a huge nuclear plant subjected to that much shaking), but the real damage to the citizens is exactly what you pointed out, the fear of the plant that drives people and money away from the area.

As I do have somewhat a background in this area, I searched everywhere I could for a measure of the release and what I found was 90,000 Becquerels for the total. How much is this? Frankly, bananas are more radioactive. As much as I searched for some real damage caused by the leak, the only conclusion I came to was that it was absolutely harmless even before it was diluted. Interestingly, various gas releases containing radioactive Iodine and other elements presented a much significant danger, though little enough that the utility probably wasn’t even required to report it. While I expected news reports to shift their focus to that, they didn’t, the “leak” remained the top story, and I imagine, is at this moment keeping people from playing in the Sea of Japan.

Given the situation, I wonder exactly what went wrong and caused so much panic. As I’m sure you’re well aware, the Japanese electric utilities (Tepco clearly included) haven’t had the best record with safety, and a worse record with public trust. Perhaps this made them feel obligated to report every little hiccup the site had during the critical moments after the earthquake. While this greater transparency is definitely a good thing, the media (over) reaction paints a grim picture for openness in the future.

Anyway, I think they’re probably feeling a little cornered right now. Report more and get slammed, or report as little as legally allowable and further suspicions of cover-ups, gag-orders, and everything else that seems to have defined the Japanese nuclear power industry in the international press through the last decade.

–
My prayers go out to the earthquake victims. I’ve been reading that it was pretty hard on those communities of the west coast Japan, with lots of leveled homes and residents made homeless. Japan has seen worse before, but it won’t be easy for them.

Thanks to all those at TPR for these wonderful podcasts. And make sure you know your emergency earthquake plans!

Comment by mareo

July 22, 2007 @ 11:04 pm

About NIOC. I strongly disagree whit the opinion that the relations between US and Iran are the main reason for change the contracts from dollars to yens. Is a real measurable fact that the US dollar is losing buying power around the world. Saving in dollars or being paid in dollars is not atractive anymore and most people I know like euros or any any other strong currency that dont lose value overtime. Just read the news, less americans are travelling to europe, is just to expensive, in the other hand a lot of people is travelling to the US, because is becoming so cheap. If these is good or bad, depends of your point of view.

Comment by DeOrio

July 23, 2007 @ 12:01 am

Mareo, the fear of asset seizure was not my opinion, but the speculation of some mainstream media outlets and some intelligence estimates. I agree, of course, the the dollar’s PPP is weakening and that its value vis a vis other currencies is dropping. Furthermore, Iran is not alone in trying to shift to a “basket” of currencies instead of just the dollar, it’s an idea periodically brought up by OPEC.
Furthermore, if any customers agree to long-term contracts at a set price, using the Euro, in particular, would obvioulsy work to Iran’s advantage, assuming the Euro continues to gain vis a vis the dollar.
That said, Iran has sought to move away from the dollar for quite some time and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that was not a purely economic decision.

Comment by DeOrio

July 23, 2007 @ 12:06 am

Theanphibian, thanks for the encouragement.

The leak doesn’t seem to be that dangerous, I agree, but you seem to know more about the plant itself than I do. I’m inclined to agree that TEPCo’s past record would cause doubts in some people’s minds. I’m also willing to blame public ignorance of what “radiation” is. Just mention the word and people get nervous. I remember, as a kid, trying to tell my kid brother that there was blood inside him that came out when he got cut and him being aghast at the idea. Most people seem to have a similar view of “radiation.”

Comment by Ken Worsley

July 23, 2007 @ 12:10 am

I agree with Mareo here, and perhaps the piece could have more clearly shown that political motivations are speculation emanating from the Western media.

Although Nippon Oil is switching, there are still banking issues with other firms, and it’s still not known if all firms will even be able to switch to a yen-based payment (well, eventually they will - things just take time to change in Japan sometimes).

Comment by Sam

July 23, 2007 @ 3:18 am

Great news piece guys as always. A question that I have but haven’t heard any answers to in the western media is how will the deactivation of the power plant influence TEPCO’s long term ability to supply sufficient power for Tokyo’s gigantic power appetite? I had heard that TEPCO was searching for fellow power companies to help them out. But I’ve heard nothing more about this proposal. Wasn’t there also a proposal to restart mothballed gas powered power plants to make up for the lost of available energy on the Tokyo power grid?

Comment by DeOrio

July 23, 2007 @ 9:14 am

That’s a great question, Sam, and one that I myself have as well. I know that, as of this weekend, not only Kashiwazaki, but at least one smaller nuclear plant was closed for inspection as well. I would assume this has significant impact on TEPCo’s ability to meet demand, but I haven’t yet seen anything concrete on what’s being done to meet that demand. I’ll comment here as soon as I see something definite.

Comment by DeOrio

July 23, 2007 @ 9:26 am

Ken, Mareo, as I recall the difficulty of switching currencies is what caused Iran’s initial request for payment in Euro to fall by the wayside. Presumably (and this is my speculation), the administrative hassles involved are a major factor in OPEC’s decisions thus far to not make the complete switch to the currency basket.

To dispel rumors of political motivation, NIOC’s Hojjatollah Ghanimifard issued this bit of verbosity: “Any time a currency in a country’s acquired currencies loses its parity value vis-a-vis other currencies, leading to a drop in that country’s purchasing power, it would be natural for the country to decide to receive the weaker currency less.”

In another bit of my own speculation, it would seem that such a decision, if it is not political, would mean that Iran not only wants to receive the weaker currency less, but is expecting a continued weakening of the dollar vis a vis the yen, Euro, or whatever other currencies they’re receiving in lieu of the dollar.

Comment by DeOrio

July 23, 2007 @ 9:54 am

It’s the first day of summer term, I have enough free time to pick on Greenpeace.

From today’s Japan Times:

“You cannot have nuclear power without public trust,” said Jan Beranek, nuclear energy project leader for the Greenpeace environmentalist group. “And you cannot trust people who don’t tell you the truth or who build nuclear plants in earthquake zones.”

Why does Greenpeace like to blow things out of proportion? You can’t trust people who build nuclear plants in “earthquake zones”? Like where? Like anywhere around the Pacific Rim? What’s an “earthquake zone” anyway? Seismologists have been talking about how difficult it is to determine where fault lines run. It seems that TEPCo didn’t know the Kasiwazaki-Kaniwa plant was over a fault. What would be their motivation for intentionally building a nuclear power platn over a fault?
Oh, wait, I get it. It’s because they’re unmitigatedly evil. I forgot.

Comment by theanphibian

July 23, 2007 @ 12:25 pm

Sam:

Answer to your questions: yes, I think so. I don’t think they can startup mothballed plant, but they will be restarting “unused” fossil units. That’s all the information I have, but it sounds like it’s going to be expensive.

Not only has Tepco asked for assistance from other utilities (not sure what that implies about who fits the bill), but some people in the government have asked companies to try to lower their energy usage. Indeed, if temperatures get a lot hotter they could be in a sticky situation. I think it’s doubtful that ordinary people will feel the effect of this though.

DeOrio:

The leak doesn’t seem to be that dangerous, I agree, but you seem to know more about the plant itself than I do. I’m inclined to agree that TEPCo’s past record would cause doubts in some people’s minds. I’m also willing to blame public ignorance of what “radiation” is. Just mention the word and people get nervous. I remember, as a kid, trying to tell my kid brother that there was blood inside him that came out when he got cut and him being aghast at the idea. Most people seem to have a similar view of “radiation.”

Yeah, this is certainly playing on people’s fears of radiation. But the focus on the leak is clear theatrics by the major media outlets. There were dozens of things that happened at the plant far worse than that. Some of the “spilled” water was literally spilled from the pool during the shaking, but the 1.3 cubic meters came from some sort of leak, movable platforms also fell into the pools. Almost all of this was expected to happen in an earthquake, the spent fuel pool water isn’t particularly harmful, it’s mostly the same activity and danger as the water in pool-type research reactors, which everyone always jokes about falling into. Since some places actually have life preservers to pull people out with, it’s probably not that bad. And then most stories quote TEPCO’s statements that it’s not dangerous after being dissolved in the Sea of Japan, and then take the opportunity to mention past scandals… That’s selective ignoring of the facts which leaves 99.9% of the people in the world who know about the event with a mistaken picture of what happened. I’ll be interested in what the IAEA has to say about the event in a few months, hopefully they’ll set some of the facts straight.

I’ve been tuning out what Greenpeace has been saying for the last few years myself. That group has gone about as crazy as PETA.

Comment by Matt Dioguardi

July 23, 2007 @ 12:28 pm

I think there is reason to be concerned about the nuclear incident.

Just two things that struck me early on:

1. The plant was built to withstand a 6.5 quake. The actual quake was 6.8. I think this translates to the earthquake being double that to which the plant was built to withstand.

2. Some type of concerned citizens group tried to get the courts to restrain Tepco from building the Kashiwazaiki-Kariwa plant. They argued that it was located on a fault and therefore should not be built. They lost in the Tokyo High Court. Now the company is saying the plant is located on a fault. Are these two claims basically the same or are they different?

Sorry if my details are slightly off. No time for links.

Comment by ken

July 23, 2007 @ 12:57 pm

Matt:

The plant was built to withstand a 6.5 quake. The actual quake was 6.8.

I was wondering what the plant was built to handle but haven’t had time to check it out. I can’t believe that nuclear plants are built to withstand anything less than an 8 on the Richter scale.

Theanphibian:

Major media, and especially the television media, has really hammed it up. I don’t know if you’ve been able to see the TV reporting, but rather than present things in a serious manner, I’ve seen stations simply plastering giant lists of what went wrong on their screens.

Comment by Matt Dioguardi

July 23, 2007 @ 1:31 pm

Here’s one quote:

“Also today, TEPCO announced that the force of the quake had exceeded its resistance guidelines at all seven reactors, sometimes by more than double. NHK reported that the reading at the No. 1 reactor was the strongest quake ever measured at a Japanese reactor.”

http://
www.theworldlink.com/articles/2007/07/19/news/news07190705.txt

Comment by mareo

July 23, 2007 @ 1:54 pm

And that is why i like read my news from people like TPR. Because on these channel we can get some acountability. or in other words, can improve whit the feedback.

NIOC: Iran and the First world have a love hate relationship. We need their oil and their need our money, economic sanctions are going to harm us so much like to them. Talking about freezing asets or stuff like that sounds a bit extreme to my ears, do we want to pay more for gasoline? Politicians can use anti-american rhetoric, but in the end if they get their wealth in US dollars or euros, they dont care, the color of the money have no ideology.

TEPCO: I guess that our electricity bill is going up. I have no doubt that J need more nuclear power plants, in fact we need like 3 times the current number (55), but is like the US bases. Who want to host these burden/danger? Sure is more profitable than a field of rice, but not many people is going to put happy faces whit the prospect of becoming a Springfield of the Simpsons. And TEPCO’s records dont look so better than Montgomery Burns. Nuclear power have my full support, but asking for raise the security is not bad thing.

Comment by DeOrio

July 23, 2007 @ 2:12 pm

From my very own news post (drawn from the dailies):

The Kashiwazaki-Kaniwa plant was designed to withstand an earthquake of up to 6.5 on the Richter scale, the government standard, less than half as strong as the magnitude 6.8 quake that damaged it.

Keep in mind that, in those standards, some amount of damage is considered acceptable - platforms falling, etc., as Theanphibian mentioned. The idea is that, in an earthquake at 6.5 on the Richter Scale, the plant should not fail in a dangerous way. An 8 is a “Great” earthquake, one step below “Massive” and two steps below “Meteoric,” which is the highest named classification on the Richter Scale. An 8 is equivalent to a gigaton of TNT and is what the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is thought to have been, if you take a relatively high estimate. (”Big Boy,” the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, was equivalent to a 5.0 on the Richter Scale in terms of energy released.)
It would be an engineering feat, to say the least, to build a nuclear power plant that could survive and 8 right underneath it. At that point, we’re talking Shindo upper 6, maybe 7 if the epicenter is under the plant.

Yes, citizens groups protested. Matt, if they knew then that the plant was on a fault, that brings a new element to the discussion. I didn’t know that. Some seismologists have said, since the quake, that it had been unclear, but I don’t know if other seismologists or geologists had a more exact picture of where exactly the fault was.

In the admittedly meager amount of amateur research I’ve been able to do, assuming the numbers now being reported are correct, it doesn’t seem that anything that bad happened, but there is always room for extra caution.

Theanphibian, you’re right about people having an unclear picture of what happened. I’ve gotten a few e-mails from the States asking if Tokyo had been affected by the “fallout.” I’ve been told that one ambitious local hack in the US tried to enrich his narrative by invoking the film “The China Syndrome” (apparently without understanding that the China Syndrome is a meltdown.)

On the PR front, the gov’t was very wise to reconsider its earlier decision and invite IAEA inspectors in. Considering that Japan has the nuclear plants most closely monitored by the IAEA (largely as a benchmark to calibrate software and hone methods used to investigate plants and their potential uses in other, less copperative areas), it would have given a very bad impression had IAEA inspectors been kept out.
TEPCo really hurt itself by underreproting the initial release.

Comment by DeOrio

July 23, 2007 @ 2:23 pm

I just had a moment of only barely relevant sunchronicity.
Finishing early on this fine Monday, I decided to make a sandwich and pop open a nice Anchor Steam Liberty Ale, “first brewed on the 18th of April, 1975 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Paul Revere’s historic ride.” That was also the 69th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake, which I referenced above.

On that date this year, TPR published this piece of bad news, having released TPR News the day before.

Comment by theanphibian

July 23, 2007 @ 2:42 pm

Ken:

Major media, and especially the television media, has really hammed it up. I don’t know if you’ve been able to see the TV reporting, but rather than present things in a serious manner, I’ve seen stations simply plastering giant lists of what went wrong on their screens.

I’m not watching the Japanese news, that’s for sure. But I have been tuned into the American news. And they’ve gone through a little of the full “list” of what went wrong. And I’ve personally read through the list myself. One thing toppled over, one pipe here cracked, there was a vent that was supposed to be turned off but someone didn’t follow the “manual” and it wasn’t. Still, I have seen maybe a 60% focus on that one silly leak, and that’s what really boiled my blood.

Yes, the earthquake was over the rated limits for the plant, and I agree with Ken that there should be plans for an 8.0 earthquake (history anybody?), but those plans don’t need to keep the reactor running or even mostly intact, they just need to keep the public safe in such an event. The risk of such a thing happening and the toll it will take on the profitability is something we can surely count on the investors themselves to decide.

Furthermore, that was a BIG earthquake, I understand that it was the largest in Japan, but hasn’t this been the largest earthquake to ever hit a nuclear plant in general (funny it’s the largest nuclear plant in the world). That said, it should be expected that we’ll deal with a lot of first-of-a-kind events, and I actually want to applaud Tepco a little bit for reporting an entire host of problems that they probably were not even legally required to report (some of them at least I know they didn’t have to). While painful (extremely), I hope this is a new direction for the nuclear industry in Japan where they will be more transparent and more open. There were a couple of leaks and radiation releases that were not reported until maybe 12 hours (or more) or so after the fact, which received considerable criticism, but in those cases the workers at the plant didn’t know themselves (again, not a good thing, but it’s also not a cover-up). Reporting problems as they are found does not look good on the utility, but that’s what the public needs.

I was also reading that somewhere in the vicinity of the plant there was a road that split with one section raised 30 cm above another. I just want to point out that all kinds of analysis are done for plane crashes directly on the containment building and whatnot, but if by some freak accident a fault line ran straight through a plant, and the worse possible scenario occurred, it’s pretty impossible to expect any structure on earth to survive that. Still, you could crack a nuclear plant in two and that would only destroy one barrier that keeps the radioactive gases contained. The important thing is that the core maintains cooled and intact and that there’s no danger to the public.

This event should provide some unique information, which is why I hope they continue to be open about everything. I’ll do some more research about the past court cases, but I’m pretty sure that this earthquake revealed completely new information about the seismic activity of the area.

Comment by Matt Dioguardi

July 23, 2007 @ 3:03 pm

Here’s another quote. I’ve reversed the actual order of the statements for effect …

.. the power plant, which has seven reactors, was built on the assumption that no active fault lies beneath the location. …The plant was built under the assumption that the maximum temblor to hit the area would be around 6.5 in magnitude. … The fault that caused Monday’s 6.8-magnitude earthquake off the Chuetsu region of Niigata Prefecture runs directly below Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, experts have found.
http://
www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200707180649.html

Comment by Matt Dioguardi

July 23, 2007 @ 3:25 pm

Sorry for these disconnected comments, but here’s another quote:

In 2005, the Tokyo High Court rejected a lawsuit by local residents seeking to revoke a state permit on the installation of the No. 1 reactor at the seven-reactor power station. The court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that an active fault exists near the station, saying that what they claimed to be an active fault did not even amount to a fault and could not cause a quake.

http://
search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070719a1.html

Comment by DeOrio

July 23, 2007 @ 5:01 pm

I’m so torn. I think both of you guys, Matt and Theanphibian, bring up very good points.

On the one hand, this has been blown out of proportion. Furthermore, nuclear power is probably Japan’s best option for the forseeable future and those plants have to be built somewhere, balancing potential risks.

On the other hand, reasonable scientific analysis and research are too often overwhelmed by the power and money behind certain predetermined outcomes. Reason is weak in the world. Judges, esp. in Japan, are too often allowed to decide on matters scientific with no requirement that they explain their decisions in detail.

Comment by ken

July 26, 2007 @ 7:07 pm

Thanks for all the comments everyone. I’ve been sort of waiting until I had a chance to sit down and relax before getting back into it, but that chance may never come, so I’m just going to comment now…

The anphibian: I think you’re right that there should be no expectation that a nuclear power plant (or really much of anything) would keep running in the event of an 8.0 earthquake. I think you make a good point that what needs to be ensured is public safety. Thus far, Japan has looked very bad on this front, especially with regards to nuclear power, as a piece in the LA Times noted the other day in an unsigned editorial. (Bruce Wallace is usually their Japan correspondent).

Prisons, nuke plants, airports, military bases, foreigners: no one wants them in their backyards. With power plants, though, there is a particular responsibility to ensure public safety. I think we should also be asking whether nuclear power is actually the right choice at this time. I think there are many compelling reasons against it, and many reasons why it is not the panacea many seem to assume.

More later…

Comment by DeOrio

July 26, 2007 @ 8:27 pm

Ken, there are many reasons to be hesitant in adopting nuclear power and it certainly carries risks, but, given that the tested and feasible alternatives all involve fossil fuel-burning plants, what, exactly, would be preferable?

Comment by Matt Dioguardi

July 27, 2007 @ 7:47 am

What would be preferable to Nuclear power?

Hm. One aspect that needs to be reviewed is the economics involved. Would nuclear power be possible without government assistance?

How many tax dollars goes into nuclear power?

And if we’re talking about energy, in general, how many tax dollars in Japan are spent on assisting American hegemony in the world so that the current world order can remain the status quo (which supposedly means a stable middle east.) This money too can be viewed as money spent on energy because it keeps the price of oil cheap.

The price we pay for energy is extremely cheap compared to what it would be if we didn’t have the government keeping the price of oil cheap and investing in nuclear power.

So what would happen if the price suddenly started going up, what would people do?

There are probably about a million different answers to this. Solar panels on the top of roofs. Bicycles machines that power the TV. Wind power. Using less air conditioning. Bicycling to work …

The problem is we view the problem as one in which the government needs a massive plan to keep stability in the middle east or to build these monstrous nuclear power plants …

One great source of power is human fat. Next time you see a portly person consider that all that fat could be converted into energy. Energy is all around us. Perhaps what we need are more energy entrepreneurs and less government subsidization.

The way we consume energy is a life style choice, so we’ve all gotten energy-fat on the cheap energy the government forces us to pay for. Change is not impossible.

Comment by DeOrio

July 27, 2007 @ 2:36 pm

Matt, I absolutely agree that energy industries receive far too much in the form of subsidies. Every time I see suggestions in the US on how to save energy and see things like, “Set your air-conditioner to 72 instead of 68 wen you’re not home,” instead of, “When you’re not home, turn the damned thing off and try a day or two without running climate control,” I find it upsetting, to say the least.

I would leave to see energy subsidies removed, especially seeing as people like me - who have no cars and rarely use air-conditioners, etc. - would pay more, but see benefits that have yet to come because nearly no one is willing to actually undergo any kind of inconvenience for the sake of improving the environment, energy efficiency, or any other related thing.

However, I think there still must be some form of power generation in the short-term and alternative energy sources - from solar to harnessing farts - all lack either technological readiness or distribution at this point.

Are you advocating a rapid fall - forcing people to change their ways through catastrophe? (Not that I’d necessarily be against that, provided we all understand that that would include us.)

Oddly enough, I started writing an op-ed back in March about what I would do if I were the governor of Tokyo - one my first things would be to make gasoline prohibitively expensive, to eliminate driving as a leisure activity. Next, I’d institute a strict ban on any new taxi licenses and any new gasoline-burning taxis or buses.

Maybe I should finish that up and publish it.

Why don’t trains use existing hybrid car technology to charge batteries? Think of the energy lost when a massive train comes to a complete stop once every couple of minutes, then starts again for that dead stop. Use that braking power!

Tokyo Gas has and sells home fuel cells now. Why isn’t that program better publicized and more widespread? (Not perfect - they still use natural gas - but far more energy efficient than what we now have.)

Comment by theanphibian

July 29, 2007 @ 1:49 pm

Matt:

What would be preferable to Nuclear power?

Hm. One aspect that needs to be reviewed is the economics involved. Would nuclear power be possible without government assistance?

How many tax dollars goes into nuclear power?

Nuclear power IS possible without government assistance. What pays for nuclear power is the yen per kW-h that ratepayers pay every month. Are giant ADVANCEMENTS of nuclear power possible without a considerable role played by the government? Probably not.

But there is a large difference when talking about Japan versus the United States in this matter. Of course, the USA sunk a lot of money into development of the basic boiling and pressurized water reactors we use today in the 50s and 60s, but with the technology established today, the operation of current plants and construction of new plants isn’t dependent on government money at all. Even the current generation of plants didn’t require the government, the AP1000, the ABWR, the EPR were all developed by companies, the money that nuclear power made was used to design those.

I can speak for the US a lot better than for Japan in this matter, but government funded labs don’t just do work for nuclear power. They also exist for nuclear weapons, renewable energy sources, fusion, and an entire host of things. Their existence is not necessary for nuclear energy to continue its presence, just as the research labs in Japan aren’t required for the nuclear plants in the country to keep running or for new plants to be built. Those labs are needed to develop the technology we’ll be using heavily 30 or 40 years down the road.

It’s funny, that’s a subsidy in a sense but it still doesn’t affect the price of nuclear power during this (or the next) decade, and things could continue at this rate for the next 100 years, but all the nations of the world still want to chase that golden dream of energy independence.

And if we’re talking about energy, in general, how many tax dollars in Japan are spent on assisting American hegemony in the world so that the current world order can remain the status quo (which supposedly means a stable middle east.) This money too can be viewed as money spent on energy because it keeps the price of oil cheap.

The price we pay for energy is extremely cheap compared to what it would be if we didn’t have the government keeping the price of oil cheap and investing in nuclear power.

I agree, there are many roundabout ways that fossil fuels are subsidized currently. But there’s really no power source that isn’t subsidized. Externalities like thousands of health problems per year due to a coal plant also exist.

DeOrio:

Isn’t the price of gas in Japan already bumped up a lot over other countries? Well, I hear they’re about on par with Europe, but that price still includes a lot of government taxes for the specific purpose of making people drive less, doesn’t it?

And would increasing the efficiencies of trains really help that much over say… getting a few more people to take mass transit over driving? The price per person-kilometer moved for trains and buses is almost dwarfed by the energy price of individual automobiles.

Another random topic:

I had some conversations when I was in Japan about jobs that require a car. 車がないと仕事が出来ない

In the U.S., about 95% of jobs out there can’t be done unless you drive, there’s just no way to get there and back. While I never saw such a place in Japan, people insisted that there are many places that don’t have sufficient mass transit for you to use on a daily basis. I know leisure-driving is much bigger in Japan than here, but isn’t daily use the real problem? If the government provides a bus at appropriate times to where you need to go, it seems to me that they’ve done their job.

Comment by DeOrio

July 30, 2007 @ 9:40 pm

Isn’t the price of gas in Japan already bumped up a lot over other countries? Well, I hear they’re about on par with Europe, but that price still includes a lot of government taxes for the specific purpose of making people drive less, doesn’t it?

Yes. I’d like to see it become economically unfeasible for anyone to drive when there’s any other option. For people whose jobs absolutely could not be done without driving, there could be tax credits or something like that to offset necessary fuel costs. If people insist on driving because they enjoy it or think they’re too special to hop on one of Tokyo’s myriad trains or buses, let them pay for it.

. . . people insisted that there are many places that don’t have sufficient mass transit for you to use on a daily basis.

There are, especially since the early ’90s, when JNR became JR and began to be privatized. Train lines were subjected to strict cost-benefit analysis, which meant that a number of rural areas saw their rail links phased out.
While small towns without train service usually have buses, they are infrequent.

I was thinking specifically of Tokyo, though, where cars seem to be mostly status symbols or hobby items. There’s not a whole of car ownership for the purpose of basic transportation in this town.

. . . isn’t daily use the real problem? If the government provides a bus at appropriate times to where you need to go, it seems to me that they’ve done their job.

Yes, it is. I see no reason not to make the mass transit that exists as energy-efficient as possible, though. Japan is worried about excessive greenhouse gas emissions, power generation, and the foul air of its big cities. I think it’s a good idea to increase energy efficiency and reduce power consumption wherever possible.

Some of Tokyo’s cab companies are Toyota Priuses modified to run on LNG. Perfect solution? No, but a possible, immediate step in the right direction.

Sorry to do the blockquote/reply thing. I’m not a fan of it, just wanted to quickly reply to a few of your points, though.

Thanks for all of your input into the nuclear issue.