The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear disaster was one that literally shook the whole world — Not only was it the biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, but it was also the only other event to measure level 7 on the nuclear event scale. While this nuclear event was caused by a large scale earth quake followed by a tsunami it has also left us still feeling the effects of this event, two years later. More then 16,000 people died during this event, and as many as “300,000 people were forced to evacuate or voluntarily left their homes.” (1) Moreover, with this event-taking place it has lead japan to think about new and safer ways of creating energy and has even left an impact on a global scale in the energy industry, and other industries such as the automobile industry.
This disaster resulted on such a large-scale that it forced the plant management team at Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to not only re-evaluate their disaster evacuation plans, but as Dale Klein (chair of the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee) states “it required something that is generally not considered very Japanese: asking for foreign help.” This marks a big step for the Japanize government in recognizing that they did not have the right precautions in place and they now see they do not have the proper amount of knowledge to prevent this problem in future events.
Japan currently has 2 out 50 nuclear reactors operating, and this leads to a large energy deficit, requiring the government to spend nearly $250 Billon per year on imported oil, gas and coal. (2) While this doesn’t show much hope for japan in the future it is actually interesting to know that japan has the third largest solar energy market in terms of installed capacity and is also projected to have the third largest geothermal energy resources. This is a sector that japan needs to exploit more and Goldman Saschs sees that they need to help incentive this already existing assets: they have recently stated that they will “invest as much as $487 Million in Japanese fuel cell, solar, wind and biomass efforts” showing that while this country may not have yet recovered fully from the second largest nuclear disaster they do have hope in creating self sustaining energy such as solar and fuel cells.
The Japanese government seems to have taken a lot away from this disaster, and in return they have followed Germanys footsteps by setting a target of reaching 25-35% of total energy being created by renewable methods by 2030. Japan has also started a global trend and has created a feed-in-tariff system, which is a method of purchasing electricity at a set price for a fixed period. (3) Thus showing the steps japan has taken to not only improve their energy strategies, but also how their market can positively effect the global market.
References:
2) http://www.japantoday.com/category/opinions/view/japans-energy-challenges-2-years-on-from-fukushima
3) http://ajw.asahi.com/article/globe/economy/AJ201301270012