Tuesday 4 November 2014

Change of Guard

The Fukushima Dai Chii power plant had been considered the worst ever nuclear accident since Chernobyl, but unlike Chernobyl, Japan is now making plans to reopen the power plant after new safety measures have been put in place. Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe revealed a basic plan to bring back the 48 power plants that supply the country with 30 percent of her energy requirements online. This is also due to the current inconsistency of the current renewable sources of power and the increase of oil and gas imports for their thermal power plants. This closing down of their plants was a decision to look into the alternative of renewable energy, solar and wind but with the economic demands and her production capacity going down and an increase of 50% of power costs, forcing their major manufacturing plants to either reduce their production or lay off workers. A trade deficit of 120 million pounds from March 2011 and an insult to the Kyoto protocol that they have been upholding and further insulting as the protocol is named after one of their renowned cities. Carbon emissions have doubled as they have had to rely on oil and gas, which are expensive and have a lower energy output compared to nuclear power that will take years before replacing them. This is how significant nuclear power is to an economy and the environment. It is just a bit saddening that people tend to see the negative aspect and expect the worst rather than the positive possibilities. When the disaster hit everyone were up in arms claiming how nuclear energy and technology is dangerous, some reaped profits writing books and making sales using the Fukushima incident as a convincing tool for people to buy their products. This goes to companies dealing with oil, gas and solar. Oil, coal and gas have some serious adverse effects on the environment, to some extent one would say the dark ages are to blame as no scientific discovery was made and any attempt was deemed as religious blasphemy,so over the years, man has relied on the latter three. Introduction of nuclear technology could have been discovered earlier than the 20th century and now we could have made some several improvements where the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters would not have become the cliches of environmental disasters. Nuclear technology is here to stay and from every hitch something new is discovered and in the coming future, there will be little or no carbon emissions as oil and gas will be phased out and nuclear energy will be the conduit for nations to go green.

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