This morning on NHK TV, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku (the second-in-command in Japan’s civil service) said, “Our energy policy is to stick to nuclear power.” Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors are under review for safety in light of the Fukushima disaster, but apart from three reactors at the Hamaoka facility in central Japan, the nuclear industry in the country is still a “go.”
The Hamaoka plant is 200 kilometers from Tokyo, closer than Fukushima. It sits in a region that has a 90% chance of an 8.0+ magnitude earthquake in the next 30 years, according to expert sources quoted by Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
Chubu Electric runs the Hamaoka plant, and it has drawn up safety measures that include the creation of a seawall (there isn’t one right now) that would run 1.5 kilometers at a height of 12 meters. Erecting this wall should take between 2-3 years. At present, the plant’s protection consists of sand hills between it and the ocean which stand 15 meters high – enough to protect the plant from a tsunami of probably no more than 8 meters because sand barriers wash away so readily. The tsunami that hit Fukushima is estimated to have been about 14 meters.
Chubu can crank out about 30 million kilowatts with the Hamaoka plant in operation, and demand is estimated at 26 million kilowatts. Shutting the Hamaoka plant will reduce Chubu’s output by 10%, so Chubu official Mikio Inomata was not kidding when he said meeting demand without Hamaoka “would be tight.”
Yesterday’s meeting of Chubu officials failed to finalize any decision on what the company will do. Stay tuned.
MONDAY MORNING UPDATE: Chubu has announced that it will idle reactors number 4 and 5. Reactor 3 is currently offline for maintenance. Reactors 1 and 2 are being decommissioned.