Perhaps if the same people bring up concerns about nukes back then weren’t also SCREAMING about the dangers of GLOBAL WARMING, Japan could have decommissioned its #1 reactor and maybe started replacing their vulnerable nukes with coal plants.
I’m not about to give the liberals a FREE PASS on this mess, regardless of how it turns out.
Japan isn’t going to go towards coal plants. They’re already the biggest consumer of coal in Asia, and they want to reduce their reliance on imports. So their national policy (for several years now) has been to project increases in nuclear energy and decreases in coal consumption.
I remembered reading something in a report and I found it again:
Japan ended domestic coal production in 2002. You can search for it in this piece:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Japan/Full.html
I also read of the high commodity prices in 2008 making old coal mines in Japan finally pencil out again, when coal went over $100/ton for Japan... their coal mining costs are ferociously high compared to Australia and the US.
So they’re importing most all of the coal they use.