Some Unexpected Stuff From Japan’s Nuclear Crisis

As Japanese officials are attempting to cool the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was damaged after the devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami last week, some unexpected things have been happening as a result of the fear from this situation.

In an effort to help Japan conserve its electricity, game developers Konami and Square Enix will be suspending online access of their games to Japanese consumers for the time being.

Square Enix operates MMORPG games Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV, and Konami operates Metal Gear Online.

How much electricity this will actually save is a difficult question to answer, but in times of crisis I suppose that every little bit helps.

In another development, Germany has temporarily shut down 7 of its nuclear power plants.

“We want to look at the risk and safety issues in the light of events in Japan,” the European energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger said.

While I can understand the desire for safety, particularly in light of the media-driven fear of radiation contaminating the rest of the world, I think this action is not only an over-reaction, but it adds fuel to the fire of radiation fears.

This also comes in the face of a massive anti-nuclear protest in Germany, which was already planned prior to the devastation in Japan,

Protesters in Stuttgart formed a human chain reaching 45km (27 miles) for the event, which had been planned before the current nuclear crisis in Japan because it was already a key election issue.

Switzerland has also suspended decisions on its current nuclear power structure to re-evaluate its country’s energy plans.

This is quite baffling to me because nuclear energy is one of the cleanest and safest forms of energy production. It is not exactly fair to use the Japan situation as a case against nuclear power, seeing as it was recently hit by and 9.0 magnitude earthquake AND a tsunami.

The Japanese crisis is indeed serious, but unique. It actually wasn’t the earthquake or the tsunami which directly caused the explosions. It was an unfortunate failure of the backup power systems to the power plant which prevented cooling water from circulating, which then caused overheating and eventually an explosion.

So I don’t believe that blaming the nuclear boogeyman is the right way to react to this scenario. Disasters do happen and there are unforeseeable consequences. And as I write this, the containment structures of the reactor cores have not yet been breached, and the Japanese are attempting to cool them by flooding the structures with seawater.

Much like the Three Mile Island scare, the potential for damage is there, but no large amounts of radiation have been released yet.

Unfortunately, solar and geothermal power are not quite ready to meet the world’s energy needs yet. Wind power is starting to be criticized because of its environmental impact. So for the time being, nuclear power remains our best bet for environmentally conscious energy production.