Many people responded to the spike in electricity prices by switching off their heaters
lush fields and forests, Namie was doomed by its proximity to the local power plant. In 2011 the town’s 21,000 residents were ordered to evacuate after a tsunami overwhelmed the Fukushima nuclear facility 4km away. Soon after, all 54 reactors in Japan were shut down amid safety fears, winking out nearly 50 gigawatts of generating capacity. A new paper* argues that that decision may have cost far more lives than the initial disaster.
The Fukushima accident led to a surge in imports of coal, gas and oil. In the four years after the meltdown, the share of generation from fossil fuels leapt from 62% to 88%. Nuclear power, which once produced over 30% of Japan’s electricity, fell to zero. The result, say three academics, was a sharp spike in electricity prices.Many people responded to higher prices, in turn, by switching off their electric heaters.
The paper is part of a reassessment of Japan’s response to the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. At least 2,000 people died because of the Fukushima evacuation, some in the chaos immediately after the accident, and more from secondary health problems such as stress, suicide and interrupted medical care. Deaths from exposure to radiation, in contrast, are in the single digits. Most estimates assume even the long-term impact will be small.
It would have been bizarre if such a dramatic failure had not been followed by a thorough safety review. A second meltdown would have been vastly more damaging than the reactor shutdown, given that the first is estimated to have cost more than $700bn. But whatever the merits of the decision to mothball all reactors, nuclear power remains unpopular in Japan. Most people are opposed to restarting any reactors.
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