With the tragedy of the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan, focus, among many, moves from the devastating casualties (up to 30,000) and mass destruction of the Japanese infrastructure to the impact of the accidents at the Fukushima nuclear power plants. While the earthquake itself proved to weak to do effective damage to the power plants themselves, the tsunami was able to overcome the TEPCO built and highly anemic sea-wall which was supposed to "protect" the plant. Clearly this failed and TEPCO has a lot to answer for as do the Japanese regulators who OK'd this poor excuse for tsunami defense. But this diary is not about the ins and outs and effects immediately on Japan itself with regards to the nuclear situation, but in going over, generally, the future of nuclear energy in the immediate to near term sense.
Japan: Announced it was canceling or postponing all new builds there. A previous announcement stated just the opposite. At any rate, the capital investment in the recovery will suck up all funds, including ALL energy expansion projects for the immediate future. This includes wind and solar as well as nuclear.
United States: Only four reactors at two plant sites are expected to be continued. With the South Texas Project now probably dead (TEPCO being one of the original underwriters, it's not going to pay a cent outside Japan for a LONG time. Hopefully it'll be thoroughly nationalized as it should of been a decade ago. But that's another discussion). Given the extreme regulatory environment in the U.S. and the very high costs for general construction and other issues, I don't expect any new builds start, let alone being proposed for a long time. The Nuclear Renaissance in the U.S. was always more hype than real. This just brings that out into the open. Fukushima, even though only 4 plants in the U.S. are at all remotely exposed to tsunamis, has politically killed it off. The U.S. will continue to massively expand the use of natural gas (which is why the Natural Gas lobby is hugely happy about the events in Japan).
China: It should be noted that anti-nuclear tribunes like Harvey Wasserman and Greenpeace don't talk, often, about the 'failure of the Nuclear Renaissance' in a country like China. This is because the PRC is the leader in nuclear builds with 27 reactors under construction and dozens more about to break ground. From the current 9GWs of power and expected 80 to 100GWs are expected to be online in only the next 9 years...and another 200 GWs of low-carbon nuclear for the next 20 years after that.
The Chinese, wisely, halted all new applications/proposals until site issues can be gone over, again, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. There is zero slowdown in all plants currently under construction or those that have been approved. Plants that are on the drawing board...around 60 of them being talked about and likely to be approved, are on a hiatus for the moment while studies are conducted about:
1. Ability to restore auxiliary grid power in even a natural disaster wipes out parts of the grid;
2. tsunami defense. It is expected that all plants, including the many coal plants, will have to develop plans for tsunami defense in line of Japan.
3. Auxiliary on-site fuel supplies and their vulnerability to quakes and tsunamis.
So the Chinese are forging ahead building their vertically integrated nuclear industry. It is not slowing down.
I might add that they are finally onboard for devoting R&D to develop a deployable Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR).
Germany: They've canceled plans, in a panic, over Fukushima, with German politicos in a tizzy about their existing plants. It will be a while for things to shake out politically there, but right now nuclear is dead. Previous plans to build more coal and gas plants will get new life when nuclear shuts down. There is a huge and well entrenched anti-nuclear movement in Germany that is not going away.
Inida: Like China, they have vast plans to expand their reliance on nuclear energy with their own indigenous designs and use of thorium which they have in abundance. But serious opposition in some localities to the building of new plants has resulted in some rallies and demonstrations sponsored by NGOs. The Indian gov't (as well as the Chinese) have a history of trampling on local community rights often with no input at all from the various stakeholders. But it's expected that all the plans will move forward.
The Indians also put a hiatus on ALL coastside nuclear builds until the dangers from tsunamis can be parsed out and addressed.
Korea: By this I mean South Korea or the "ROC" (For Republic of Korea). The ROCs ambitious nuclear plans to raise their current 35% of their electrical generation to 45% and then later to 65% are on target and ahead of schedule. Their robust nuclear industry is also exporting plants (8 to the U.A.E). They too are re-looking at everything and like India and China looking at things from an engineering perspective: how do we prevent a "Fukushima" from occurring at out plants; what do we have to do to address the technology and engineering issues?"
Russia: With no coast side plants at all, but a few being looked at, the Russians haven't batted an eyelash and continue their deep expansion into their proven VVER designed plants and their Fast Reactor projects (being built in Russia, China and India). They rolled back, due to the world financial crisis, their initial plans and cut down the number of reactor new builds, but they are again reconsidering re-upping the numbers. The Russian incentive, other than staying on top of this technology and that it provides on demand energy, is the more power they produce from nuclear, the more they can close or cancel plans to build their gas fired plants, enabling them to sell more gas to...Germany which is phasing out their nuclear for gas. The Russians are quite happy about Germany' plans. The Russians, half-jokingly, agreed to sell Germany wood to keep warm in winter once the phase out is complete.
There are many other areas to report from, some with further depreciation on nuclear (Italy, Venezuela) others with expansion plans continuing (Vietnam, UAE, etc). I think the 'results' of Fukushima on the future of nuclear energy has yet to be written.