Eruption warnings raised for volcanoes in Japan, Ecuador

The active volcano on the island of Kyushu is located about 50km from the Sendai nuclear plant, where the reactor was restarted on Tuesday despite warnings about geological instability.

“The new so-called strict guidelines do not meet global standards and focus on hardware, whereas the main lesson of Fukushima is that human error was a major factor contributing to the meltdowns”, said Jeffrey Kingston, a professor at Temple University and author of “Contemporary Japan”. But opinion polls show majority opposition, according to Reuters.

And since there are so many more reactors coming after that, I anticipate that China and India are going to be two of the single greatest drivers of the price of uranium, at least until Japan works through some of its supply. And it intends to start the second reactor come October.

LNG imports, which already met ~30% of Japan’s generation needs, immediately stepped up to fill much of the gaping hole left by nuclear, rising to half of the generation mix.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance base forecast in June was for 26 reactors to come online over the next three years.

Nuclear facility operators have asked the NRA for permission to resume operations at 25 reactors, but only five have been given approval so far. Right now that is limited to ~4,000 people on the same island as Sakurajima, but ash from any eruption (depending on the winds) could impact Kagoshima (population ~600,000), located only 10 kilometers from Sakurajima.

If there are even minor troubles at the Sendai plant in Kyushu as it restarts, it could exacerbate the prime minister’s political problems. Which could pave the way for other plants to return to service soon – potentially beginning with the number two reactor at Sendai, which lies within the same complex as the plant that was rebooted this week.

What are some possible benefits of bringing the reactors back online?

And to add insult to injury, nuclear power is actually NOT an “alternative energy” source – it’s an incredibly fossil-fuel-intensive process.