Japan flips on nuclear — it tried to go Green without it but now wants to reopen closed plants

Nuclear’s suddenly the answer to “Net Zero” — Japan wants to triple its nuclear power by 2030

It’s the third largest economy in the world, and a large but quiet vacuum of global fossil fuels. Right now it’s the second largest importer of gas in the world after China, and the third largest importer of coal (not that Extinction Rebellion seems to care).

Before the Fukushima disaster in 2011, nuclear power generation produced as much as 30% of Japan’s energy mix, but that’s now shrunk to just 6%. Japan has only six operating nuclear reactors left with a total capacity of six gigawatts, down from 54 before the Fukushima incident. Just a few days ago polls showed that that the fear and negativity of nuclear power in Japan has dramatically shifted in the last few months. One little war can change everything. Russia has suddenly given everyone permission to get serious about nuclear power.

Now the Japanese government wants to grow back from 6% to 20% nuclear in just 8 years.

Japan Sees Nuclear Energy As A Vital Piece Of Its Net-Zero Plan

OilPrice.com

Prior to the Fukushima disaster, nuclear power generation accounted for almost 30% […]

Oh the mystery of how coronavirus doesn’t infect and kill people in Japan anymore?

Absolutely no one who writes for newspapers has any idea of why Covid may have almost completely disappeared from Japan since the sudden Delta wave in August. The trajectory collapsed on August 25th and vaccines don’t explain it.

“While Omicron explodes around the world, COVID cases in Japan plummet and no one knows why”

Sydney Morning Herald, Dec 23

Call it the hunt for a potential “X factor,” such as genetics, that may explain the trend and inform how Japan could deal with the next wave. While the new highly transmissible Omicron variant has appeared in the country and experts suspect there is already some community spread, the overall transmission rate of the virus and coronavirus-related deaths in Japan have remained low. “

” “Honestly, we do not know the exact reason behind the sudden drop in COVID deaths in Japan,” said Taro Yamamoto, professor of global health at Nagasaki University’s Institute of Tropical Medicine. “

There is no mention of the-drug-that-shall-not-be-named — Voldermectin. But on August 13th as the third major wave was running out of control, a high ranking doctor in Tokyo recommended doctors use ivermectin. Dr. Haruo Ozaki, the […]

Only 16 countries are even aiming to reach their Paris targets

The Paris Agreement was always fake news

Only 16 countries have set domestic targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are clearly at least as ambitious as their pledged contributions to the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to an analysis published today (29 October 2018)…

Who are these environmental stars and global suckers?

The 16 countries with targets in national policies and laws that are compatible with their NDCs are:

Algeria, Canada, Costa Rica, Ethiopia,

Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, FYR Macedonia,

Malaysia, Montenegro, Norway, Papua New Guinea,

Peru, Samoa, Singapore and Tonga.

“We found only six countries that have set economy-wide targets beyond 2030 in their NDCs – Iraq, Cameroon, Brunei, Armenia, Bhutan and Palestine. Only 16 countries plus the EU currently look beyond 2030 in their national laws, policies and directives…”

The committee writing the report seems to have a thing about “economy wide” targets probably because they are the most expensive, profligately wasteful and pointless schemes, like the Australian carbon tax which cost $5310 per ton of carbon reduced. Economy wide schemes […]

Japan: Fifty solar PV companies already gone in 2017 as subsidies end. Coal soaring.

What’s the word for competitive-but-needs-a-subsidy? Broke…

One hundred solar PV companies are forecast to collapse in Japan this year alone.

Up to 100 solar PV firms in Japan could face bankruptcy this year, with more than double the number of firms going bust in the first half of this year than the same period in 2016.

According to corporate credit research company Teikoku Databank, which surveys companies across various industries and has produced its third report on solar PV company bankruptcies, 50 companies in Japan’s solar sector have already gone out of business in the first six months of 2017.

While the market overall has rapidly expanded from the launch of the feed-in tariff (FiT) in July 2012, Teikoku Databank acknowledged that there has been a slowdown in deployment in the past couple of years as the government successively made cuts of 10% or more on an annual basis to the premium prices paid for solar energy fed into the grid.

Bankruptcies have doubled in the industry since last year.

Meanwhile Japan plans to build at least 45 HELE Coal Plants.

Check out the map of “coal in versus coal out” in Japan. For […]

CO2 is not making storms worse near Japan either

Yet more evidence that there is no relationship between CO2 and cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons. This paper from 2012 tests the theory that global warming made storms more severe and tried to find any effect on typhoons hitting Japan that could be linked to climate change since 1980.

There has been no increase in “super typhoons”. The typhoon season is not longer, nor is it delayed in starting. There has been no change in intensity. The wind speeds are not increasing. The minimum pressure is pretty much the same.

CO2 appears to influence storms in simulated worlds, but not so much in the real one. There is no sign of more severe storms in Australia, New Zealand or the South Pacific either. Nor is there any pattern in the Global Energy indicies, US Hurricanes, US Tornadoes either.

When will scientists and reporters make sure that their audiences know that?

The authors conclude:

“The results suggest that typhoons have not been influenced by global warming. In conclusion, global warming has not significantly changed the characteristics of typhoons, and there is no close relationship between the two.”

Figure 19. Number of super typhoons that develop

9.4 […]

Japan slashes: Forget a 25% cut in CO2 emissions, now the target is a 3% rise!

The UN will not be happy about this. The global movement is falling apart.

Japan, third largest economy in the world, and the land of Kyoto itself, has dumped their ambitious plan to reduce emissions by 25% by 2020. Now they warn that their emissions may rise instead.

Cabinet members said on Friday they had agreed a new target with an updated time frame, under which Japan would seek to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 3.8 per cent by 2020 compared with their level in 2005. Nobuteru Ishihara, the environment minister, is to defend the goal next week when he joins international climate talks in Warsaw.

Japan’s previous target used an earlier and more challenging baseline: 1990, the benchmark year for the Kyoto agreement and a time when Japanese emissions were lower. Compared with that year, Japan said in 2009, it would cut its emissions by one-quarter by 2020.

The new target announced on Friday represents a 3 per cent rise over the same 30-year period – a difference from the previous goal that is about equal to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of Spain.

Read more at the Financial Times

It is being painted as being due to the […]

Breaking News: World’s third largest economy bails on Kyoto II’

Source national post news.

“Japan will not inscribe its target under the Kyoto protocol on any conditions or under any circumstances.”

Japan is the third largest economy in the world. In absolute, unequivocal terms it has just announced it will not be extending the Kyoto agreement.

It’s hard to see how a carbon trading scheme can continue to grow when major emitters are pulling out.

“The delicately balanced global climate talks in Cancún suffered a serious setback last night when Japan categorically stated its opposition to extending the Kyoto protocol – the binding international treaty that commits most of the world’s richest countries to making emission cuts.

The Kyoto protocol was adopted in Japan in 1997 by major emitting countries, who committed themselves to cut emissions by an average 5% on 1990 figures by 2012.

However the US congress refused to ratify it and remains outside the protocol.”

From The Guardian: Japan refuses to extend Kyoto

Presumably this is the perfect time then for the Gillard Government to launch Australia (with it’s minor player, 800 billion dollar, GDP) into a sacrificial symbolic scheme that the rest of the world is abandoning.

‘The forthrightness […]