Meeting coal demand in Japan
Indonesian coal is also expected to help fuel a surge in fossil power generation in Japan after that country shuttered its nuclear plants in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor meltdown in 2011.
Japan's 50-plus nuclear reactors had provided as much as 30 percent of the country's peak power generation, according to government estimates. Without a replacement source, Japan could see electricity shortfalls approaching 19 percent in the manufacturing-heavy region around Osaka, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Some have suggested that Japan, in addition to boosting coal-fired power generation, may seek to increase natural gas imports from Russia. Domestic coal production in Japan saw a precipitous drop over the past 30 years, from an estimated 24 million tons in 1980 to 3.5 million tons in the early 2000s, as the country closed all its coal mines and chose to rely on coal imports to meet its needs.
Since 2002, Australia has provided the lion's share of coal burned in Japanese power and steel plants, with the balance coming mostly from Indonesia and China.
According to the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan, utilities operate 16 power plants that rely either fully or partly on coal-fired boilers. A number of those plants went offline after the March 2011 tsunami, but most have been restored.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
See what we're tweeting about
10 Comments
Add Comment"... implementing expensive actions in the US to dramatically reduce our CO2 emissions is a complete waste of our limited financial resource.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually not since nuke power at 4 cents a kwh all in (VC Summer built by private power) is cheaper than the cost of the coal itself. The rate of return of investment to the nation as a whole switching from fossil to nukes can exceed 40% per annum, as factory production of nukes gets under way. 15 years from now no more fossils is well within our industrial and financial capacities.
China and India are well on their way with the process accelerating as factory production of nuke components in China begins. China is likely to have a production ready molten salt reactor, within the next 5 years. This unit which can be shipped on rail cars, can power the world for a thousand years, burning existing nuclear waste, and do it for less than a cent a kwh.
What is required is the Big Oil paid off media, Green organizations and politicians, cut with the antinuclear propaganda and get on with it.
Their most potent weapon the cheap gas canard falls apart when we see that cheap domestic gas at $2/mcf is only a $2/mcf tanker ride to a $15/mcf overseas market.
Every year these ghouls can delay the replacement of fossils with nukes more than 3 million people are killed by fossil air pollution. Billions will die when they lead us over that fast approaching global warming precipice.
There are still perfectly good reasons for the US to reduce coal power generation. Coal is dirty, extracting it is environmentally destructive, and the waste product (coal ash) is quite toxic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNor is it foolish for the US, a major CO2 producer, to cut back. Truthfully coal is already as expensive as wind when you consider new installed capacity. Nuclear is a more complex argument, Seth's view IMHO is rather highly optimistic. Dry geothermal should also be quite competitive and requires only modest investment. Heck, you can sink a hole almost anywhere and if it is deep enough generate power. Like where you already have existing thermal plant.
It is interesting to argue over what are ultimately matters of business and economics, but people seldom change their positions. Instead, the ones having incorrect arguments are simply driven out of business over time, all the while remaining unpersuaded. We will eventually see who is right about oil, coal, and nuclear. At present there is considerable disagreement about what exactly are the relevant laws of economics, however as in the case of physics, the laws apply regardless of our current understanding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo why couldn't ClimateWire present these coal production predictions as at least rough estimates of projected increases in atmospheric co2? Isn't that what's important to the survival of humanity through the coming decades?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW, if nuclear power is actually so much cheaper than coal furnaces in the U.S. why are the Asians pursuing coal? It would seem that we've either encumbered coal power plants with unnecessary regulations or Asian countries are not attempting to minimized their ecological impact...
Takes time to build nukes as production capacity builds and there is the that wait and see for a few years distraction giving new Chinese technologies like the US designed and abandoned MSR and the pebble bed machines to prove their promise. India same same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Instead, the ones having incorrect arguments are simply driven out of business over time..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's impossible when the Federal Government picks up the nuclear industry's liability insurance tab because of the Price Anderson Act. Without this astronomical subsidy, the nuclear industry couldn't buy liability insurance at any price and would have never been viable. All the billion$ in research money used to develop Light Water Reactor technology for the Manhattan Project helped out immensely as well. When the nuclear industry imploded in the 1980s, the feds and the ratepayers had to swallow the enormous losses. Long story short, nuclear power ALREADY failed, but its political connections and out-sized influence have kept it afloat long enough for people to seemingly forget these failures and be fooled into thinking we need to try the same thing again.
BTW, the rebirth of the nuclear industry isn't looking great at all regardless of how many people they might pay to fanatically rant in their favor on comment boards:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/a-higher-price-tag-for-a-nuclear-project/
"The Asian forecast contrasts sharply to projections for the United States, which is expected to see sagging domestic demand as power plants undergo fuel switching away from coal"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBaloney. US coal demand increased last year and will continue to increase. hint... Pollyanish 'projections' are not reality. As nuclear plants shut down, natural gas can't make up the slack and in the scale of demand, 'renewable' energy is a mostly irrelevent.
Reduction in carbon emissions are lip service that nobody but the gullible accept. 'Growth, growth, growth..the mantra of all economies including the USA.
Once again Sault accepting the bow for the dumbest commenter on Sciam since the inception of its comments section. Is it even possible to believe the man can actually read much less earned the BS and MS in engineering he claims?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnce and for at least a score of efforts to penetrate the thickness, the Price Anderson Act limiting liabity in the event of an accident impossible in a modern reactor,is not a nuke subsidy. If it was liabilty costs would forbid any nuke bomb sized LNG tanker sailing into a US port, and no solar or wind plant could be built if folks could sue for all the sickness and death caused by the air pollution from their required filthy gas backup. No US hydro power facilty or chemical plant could operate.
The immense stupidity of the Sault knows no bounds. The Manhatten project used graphite reactors not LWR and was about nuke weapons. No subsidy there.
Actually the losses in 1980's nukes were caused by Greenie attorneys in the NRC appointed by the halfwit Carter, and amount to a tiny fraction of a cent a kwh over the power generated since.
Failed? what a twit. Nuke power costs all in on existing plant is 2 cents a kwh - the cheapest energy there is.
Nuke power is unable to battle the immense resources that Big Oil/Coal and their wholely owned subsidiary Big Green put into their antinuclear battle. The industry has no influence compared to the immense forces arrayed against it.
As usual Sault doesn't read the link it posted. Georgia Power's problem is interest payments to greedy Wall Street not an issue for public power and VCSummer on time on schedule at $4B/Gw- 4 cents a kwh for public power. The same reactors are almost 90% complete on time on budget built by American engineers for half the price in China.
There are many reasons why Asian countries are slow on developing nuclear power, amongst them ... inadequate access to technology, safety/liability issues, crony capitalism (it is easier to illegaly mine coal than nuclear fuel), "not in my backyard" syndrome.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUseful points. I suspect that the communist equivalent of "crony capitalism" is a significant factor in China, as those administrators whose power base is derived from established coal mining operations likely work to ensure its continued success...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this