The public is being told that Fukushima is estimated to cost $105 billion in cleanup and liabilities. As the cleanup is going slow, to say the least, it will be seen how much the final costs and health consequences are, if we ever find out.
Japan has been one of the leaders in solar energy. One would think that with the nuclear catastrophe Japan would have a crash-program for more solar energy. Amazingly, one would be wrong.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to cut back on solar. The electric utility industry says Japan has been overwhelmed with electricity from small entrepreneur solar energy producers.
In two years new solar installations are providing 3.4 gigawatts of power to Japan. That is equal to 3 brand new nuclear power plants. Abe and the electric utilities say that is too much. They want to stop it and import more cheap fossil fuel, and add more nuclear power.
Neoliberals such as Abe hate the idea of electric utilities having to buy solar energy from small producers. He would rather pay subsidies to monopolies such as Big Oil, Big Nuclear and Big Electric.
Abe's complaints about solar energy are typical of the opposition. They say solar is too expensive, undependable, and disruptive to the grid.
Firstly, solar power works. It is a proven scientific fact. Light shines on a solar cell and voila , electricity comes out.
Solar energy has largely been a worldwide cottage industry, pushed by grass roots activists to change the laws to require the local electric utility company to allow individuals to install solar panels that feed into the local electric utility's grid.
There is nothing new about cottage industry electric generators. That is how the industry got its start, until holding companies started buying them up in the early 20th century to form monopolies that could manipulate prices for maximum profits.
When Big Electric talks about solar being disruptive to the grid they are usually talking about "disrupting" their monopoly. Monopolies do not like competition.
Unpleasantly for Big Electricity, it was discovered that the design of their meters allowed the little disc (the widget that measures how much electricity a customer is using) to run backwards as well as forward. That means whenever a customer produces unused solar electricity, the meter will run backwards reducing the customer's electric bill. It has the same result as selling electricity to the electric utility at retail prices.
Big Electric does not like paying retail. It complains that solar does not work when the Sun is not shining. After all, they say, a big electric company has to know how much electricity they have and how much they need to produce.
One rebuttal is that solar produces more electricity just in time on hot sunny days when all the air conditioners are cranked up. Solar electricity can also boost the electricity to the grid on extremely hot days, greatly extending the life of very expensive transformers.
The cost of solar has been the main issue. Using generally accepted accounting practices (GAAP) solar looks very expensive. No business minded person is going to invest in solar energy unless they get a subsidy from somebody, either from Big Electric or from the government. And that brings up a glaring problem with GAAP.
GAAP does not take into consideration the potential for future economies of scale and future advances in technology. Prices of solar panels and their efficiency have already improved considerably with the grass-roots efforts made all over the world in the last few decades.
GAAP does not calculate the full social costs or the big subsidies to fossil fuels and big subsidies to the nuclear industry. It does not measure the costs of wars about oil, neocolonialism and quest for world domination for natural resources. It does not measure the lives and property that will be ruined and lost by war and climate change.
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