After two years without any nuclear power in response to the 2011 Fukushima earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis, Japan has restarted its first reactor, Sendai 1.
Following the Fukushima event, Japan’s nuclear power generators were gradually shut down. Before the earthquake, nuclear power accounted for around 30 percent of Japan’s electricity. After the shutdown, fossil fuels largely picked up the slack and have been doing the heavy lifting ever since, causing a sustained rise in greenhouse gas emissions.
The restart of Sendai 1 is good news for Japan’s response to climate change, and comes with heightened safety regulations around nuclear energy. Based on our assessment of the evidence, this only makes a safe industry safer. But there are still large psychological barriers to overcome.
Visiting Fukushima
In May this year we returned to the megalapolis of Tokyo, following our visit to Fukushima prefecture and the site of the destroyed Daiichi reactors.
We carried dosimeters (a device that measures radiation) through the 20 km radius exclusion zone and wore them at the site. At the very foot of reactor unit 1, the dose rate was serious (greater than 400 microsieverts per hour). Just a couple of hundred metres away at the undamaged reactor 6, the rate was normal background (less than 5 microsieverts per hour).
