The Japanese government has declared nuclear power as an “important baseload energy resource“. While the government insists that nuclear power is an important power source they did not declare a percentage of generation that should come from nuclear. At least one nuclear expert pointed out that the lack of any significant contribution from nuclear power throws the government’s claim of it being a baseload power source out the window. The government also classifies coal and hydro power as baseload power sources. The concept of baseload power has been highly disputed as being an outdated concept that was fabricated by various power industries to protect their stake.
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Yomiuri Shimbun, always ready to plead the case for the nuclear industry issued this disturbing editorial last week. It called “returning people home” to be important but doesn’t really say why. It proclaims the entire problem to be the supposed irrational fears of evacuees as the problem. Yomiuri declares the 20 mSv/year radiation level to be the official level of safety, yet this is a highly disputed level that only the government has deemed safe for political reasons. ICRP calls 1 mSv/year safe or as close to “safe” as they assume can be achieved. Yomiuri goes on to cite UNSCEAR who has been publishing erroneous and skewed data on the disaster, much of it dependent on the official government data known to be inaccurate. As usual Yomiuri falls back on blaming the evacuees for somehow not understanding things. The reality is that this is a well educated resistance to a politically motivated plan to force people to return to contaminated areas that are unsafe. Why this political tactic against the victims of nuclear disasters is so dangerous is explained here.
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