La réaction du gouvernement chinois au déversement des eaux usées de la centrale nucléaire de Fukushima a été des plus virulentes. Rejet de la grande majorité des opinions scientifiques, qui jugent acceptable le processus de traitement des eaux mis en place par les autorités nippones; campagne de critique acerbe de Tokyo dans les médias domestiques et sur la scène internationale; interdiction totale de l’importation des produits de la mer japonais. Comment peut-on expliquer cette réaction, et quelles seront les conséquences de l’affaire pour les relations compliquées entre les deux pays voisins?
Certains objectifs immédiats de Pékin semblent évidents. La confiance dans son modèle économique s’effrite et la fin chaotique de la politique du zéro covid a laissé un souvenir douloureux et amer au peuple chinois.… Seguir leyendo »
Japón comenzó a verter al océano Pacífico lo que será más de un millón de toneladas de agua radiactiva tratada, que hasta ahora permanecía almacenada en la central nuclear Fukushima Daiichi.
Se prevé que se tardará varias décadas en verter toda el agua de la central, arrasada en 2011 por un tsunami provocado por el fuerte terremoto de Tohoku. Tanto la Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), que gestiona dichas instalaciones, como el Organismo Internacional de Energía Atómica (OIEA) dicen que la radiación que se liberará tendrá unas concentraciones tan bajas que su impacto radiológico sobre las personas y el medioambiente será insignificante.… Seguir leyendo »
This week Japan will begin releasing more than a million tons of treated radioactive water, now stored at the disabled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, into the Pacific Ocean.
It is expected to take decades to release all of the water at the plant, which was devastated in 2011 by a tsunami generated by the powerful Tohoku earthquake. Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, which operates the facility, and the International Atomic Energy Agency both say the radiation to be released will be of such low concentrations that it will have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.
That may turn out to be true, if everything goes according to Tepco’s plans, consistently and without major mishap, for at least the next 30 years.… Seguir leyendo »
Le 11 mars 2018, 7 bougies ont été soufflées sur le gâteau de la catastrophe nucléaire à la centrale de Fukushima Daiichi, au Japon. Le démantèlement estimé à 620 milliards de dollars, qui devrait durer quarante ans, suit son bonhomme de chemin. L’opérateur TEPCO continue de refroidir avec de l’eau les 3 réacteurs dont le combustible a fondu (corium) et espère pouvoir le repérer grâce à des robots et un peu de chance. Chaque jour, 6000 liquidateurs travaillent sur le site afin de garder la maîtrise sur le plus grand accident nucléaire mondial.
Après le tsunami, les combustibles nucléaires des réacteurs 1, 2 et 3 avaient rapidement fondu.… Seguir leyendo »
El incidente registrado en la central nuclear de Fukushima Daiichi, el 11 de marzo de 2011, marca, posiblemente más que el de Chernobyl, el futuro de la energía nuclear. Las lecciones aprendidas de este incidente tienen hoy un impacto determinante en el coste y en la continuidad misma de esta fuente energética. Esta experiencia no se limita a cómo evitar un nuevo incidente sino que también servirá para buscar soluciones a posibles incidentes futuros.
Toda la información acerca de las causas del incidente y sus consecuencias inmediatas resulta fácilmente accesible. No obstante, parecería que, tras esta primera oleada informativa, se haya desvanecido el interés público por el proyecto de dar soluciones a las consecuencias de este incidente, que, sin embargo, por sus implicaciones técnicas, económicas y políticas, tiene una gran trascendencia.… Seguir leyendo »
El 11 de marzo de 2011, un terremoto de magnitud 9 sacudió al este del Japón, seguido de un tsunami de 15 metros que desactivó el sistema de electricidad y enfriamiento de tres reactores de la planta nuclear de Fukushima Daiichi y provocó uno de los accidentes nucleares más graves de la historia.
Vista la cercanía con grandes urbes (Tokio está a poco más de 200 kilómetros), más de 10 millones de personas podrían haber quedado expuestas a la nube de radiación. Afortunadamente para las poblaciones (y en perjuicio de los ecosistemas costeros), gran parte de la radiactividad fue a parar al mar.… Seguir leyendo »
Saturday marks the sixth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear accident, the worst recorded since the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. How did Fukushima affect the lives of those touched by its radioactivity?
One narrative used by the media in its Fukushima reporting described those who volunteered to return to the dangerous site as “samurai,” “kamikaze,” or simply “Fukushima heroes.”
But my research with Japanese people who have survived radioactive exposure — first from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and then from Fukushima — suggests that they bear the burden of discrimination and shame. In Japan, these survivors are known as the hibakusha.… Seguir leyendo »
In the five years since the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns that devastated Fukushima Prefecture, the Japanese government has undertaken mammoth efforts to decontaminate irradiated communities.
Thousands of workers have removed millions of tons of radioactive debris from backyards and fields, roadsides and school grounds. They have scraped away acres and acres of tainted soil, collected surface vegetal matter, wiped down entire buildings and hosed and scrubbed streets and sidewalks.
The cleanup effort is staggering in scale, and unprecedented. Japan’s leaders hope to restore for human habitation more than 100 cities, towns and villages scattered over hundreds of square miles. The government has allocated more than $15 billion for this work.… Seguir leyendo »
When Japan marked the 70th anniversary of Nagasaki’s obliteration by a plutonium bomb on Aug. 9, its own cache of weapons-usable plutonium was more than 47 metric tons — enough to make nearly 6,000 warheads like the one that flattened Nagasaki.
Japan, an industrial powerhouse but resource-poor, has long depended on nuclear energy. Before the earthquake and meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011, it was generating nearly one-third of its electricity from nuclear power, and had plans to increase that share to 50 percent by 2030. Japan’s 48 standard reactors burn uranium fuel, a process that yields plutonium, a highly radioactive and extremely toxic substance.… Seguir leyendo »
The G7 leaders' pledge to eliminate the use of fossil fuels as an energy source by century’s end could be the most significant outcome of the most recent meeting. It also reinforces German host Angela Merkel’s claim to be the “climate chancellor”.
As is customary with such pledges, however, the announcement was short on specifics and it’s really not clear how reductions in fossil fuel usage can be achieved. After all, disasters at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 have made key G7 members considerably less enthusiastic about nuclear power, one obvious alternative.
Both Germany and Japan have crucial roles to play over the coming decades in facing up to these challenges.… Seguir leyendo »
On Oct. 21 the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Expert Remediation Mission to Japan submitted their preliminary findings based on their visit to Tokyo and Fukushima over the previous seven days.
Remediation is a very important area of the IAEA’s work, and “aims to reduce the radiation exposure from contamination of land areas or other contaminated media, such as surface — or groundwater.” In line with this role, the IAEA were requested to inspect Japan’s decontamination efforts after the Fukushima No. 1 disaster. This is in fact their second visit, a followup to an October 2011 mission.
Reading the IAEA’s findings, and contrasting them with the reality in Fukushima, one is left wondering whether the IAEA mission got lost in a Potemkin village during their trip.… Seguir leyendo »
Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima Island, built by the warlord Taira no Kiyomori around 1168, stands at the edge of an inlet of the Inland Sea, not far from Hiroshima. Long regarded as one of Japan’s three most beautiful places, it was registered in 1996 by Unesco as a World Heritage Site.
The shrine’s architecture is a masterpiece of the shinden style: Poised on vermilion pillars and facing the mainland across the Onoseto Strait, it appears at high tide to float on the sea.
Over almost 900 years Itsukushima has survived many disasters — typhoons, fires, earthquakes, landslides, not to mention pollution, blind development, political squabbles and wars.… Seguir leyendo »
It is two years since Japan’s 9.0- magnitude earthquake, one so powerful it shifted the position of the Earth’s figure axis by as much as 6 inches and moved Honshu, Japan’s main island, 8 feet eastward. The tsunami generated by the earthquake obliterated towns, drowned almost 20,000 people and left more than 300,000 homeless. Everyone living within 15 miles of Fukushima was evacuated; many are still in temporary housing. Some will never be able to return home.
More than 300,000 buildings were destroyed and another million damaged, including four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on the northeast coast.… Seguir leyendo »
This year has seen a lot of concern about the confrontation between China and Japan over a group of islets in the East China Sea.
Less attention, though, is being paid to what may be a more destabilizing development: next year Japan plans to bring its long-delayed Rokkasho reprocessing plant online, which could extract as much as eight tons of weapons-usable plutonium from spent reactor fuel a year, enough for nearly 1,000 warheads. That would add to Japan’s existing stockpile of 44 tons, 9 of which are stored in domestic facilities.
Japan has repeatedly vowed never to develop nuclear weapons, and there’s no reason to doubt that now.… Seguir leyendo »
Summer took its own sweet time leaving Japan this year. Late into September, workers and students riding the always-busy subway cars across the vast expanse of Tokyo carried small towels to wipe away the beads of sweat that gathered on their brows. The air conditioning might have been on, but the temperatures remained stubbornly high even indoors.
Ever since the March 2011 tsunami that swept into northeastern Japan and the nuclear disaster that followed, the Japanese have had to make do with much, much less electricity.
The community-minded Japanese looked calm doing their part to deal with the crisis. But in the aftermath of the tsunami and the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan faces rising political temperatures and difficult choices.… Seguir leyendo »
The traditional inn nestled amid the mountainous countryside offered all the luxurious comforts for which these old-style hotels are famous. An elegant and eye-pleasing eight-course dinner was served in our room. The outdoor hot-spring bath had a view of lush foliage covering a steep cliff, lit up to highlight the diverse shades of green. A soothing sound emanated from a river flowing below. I could have been anywhere in Japan enjoying the typically understated royal treatment.
Only this time, when I checked out, instead of a parting gift of a box of local confectionaries or a hand towel with the hotel’s name on it, the owner handed me a plastic bag containing a vinyl raincoat, cotton gloves and a gauze mask.… Seguir leyendo »
Este Documento de Trabajo analiza las posibles repercusiones del accidente de Fuskushima de marzo de 2011 y de la desnuclearización progresiva de Japón en la seguridad energética de un país con una muy elevada dependencia externa.
Introducción
Japón es un actor muy importante en los mercados energéticos mundiales: cuarto mayor consumidor de energía, primer importador de gas natural, carbón y derivados del petróleo y tercer mayor importador de crudo. La razón principal es que no posee apenas recursos propios, por lo que debe importar más del 80% de la energía que consume[1].
Otra característica destacada del país es su alto grado de eficiencia energética.… Seguir leyendo »
Hace no mucho, leí una obra de ciencia-ficción en la que la humanidad decide enterrar cantidades ingentes de residuos radiactivos en las profundidades subterráneas. No saben de qué modo deben advertírselo a la generación futura, a la que se le dejará el cometido de deshacerse de los residuos, ni quién debe firmar la advertencia.
Desgraciadamente, la situación ya no es un tema de ficción. Estamos endosando unilateralmente nuestras cargas a las generaciones futuras. ¿Cuándo abandonó la humanidad los principios morales que nos impedían hacer algo así? ¿Hemos superado un punto de inflexión fundamental en la historia?
Después del 11 de marzo, me quedaba levantado todas las noches hasta bien tarde viendo la televisión (una costumbre recién adquirida tras el desastre).… Seguir leyendo »
Justo antes de que comenzara la cuarta cumbre trilateral entre Japón, China y Corea del Sur el 21 de mayo, el premier chino, Wen Jiabao, el presidente surcoreano, Lee Myung-bak, y el primer ministro japonés, Naoto Kan, conjuntamente visitaron las zonas afectadas por el Gran Terremoto del Este de Japón, en una señal de aliento para las víctimas del desastre que viven en los centros de evacuación. Desde el accidente en la Planta de Energía Nuclear Fukushima Daiichi en marzo, Kan apuntó a que se levantaran las prohibiciones que muchos países impusieron a las importaciones de productos agrícolas japoneses, y así ofreció a los dos jefes de Estado cerezas de Fukushima con la intención de poner de relieve su seguridad.… Seguir leyendo »
Nothing is more rapidly globalized than nuclear fear.
The partial meltdown of reactors in Fukushima, Japan, has created overwhelming fear in people living nearby, considerable fear in people living in the rest of Japan, and a certain amount of fear in people throughout Asia and even in Europe and the United States.
Nor can this fear be simply dismissed as hysteria. It can be exaggerated — especially in relation to other continents — but the fact is that, depending on what happens to the reactors, how the wind blows, and what kind of radiation plume develops, the danger could be grave.… Seguir leyendo »
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