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How much money was spent on it, building it, operating it, cleaning it up, and losing what had been invested in the region around it? How have these costs have been passed on to the Japanese population as taxes, fees, or in other ways? I don't think we'll ever know. If you are arguing that because you missed something, then the figure is zero, I don't think that's a reasonable argument. I don't think that is what you are saying, right? Whatever the amount is, if that same amount of money had been put into renewables, many of those people would still be living in their homes today, with sustainable power for the foreseeable future. Sometimes, when there is a crisis as you mention, the alternatives have to be weighed against each other. Just because one alternative addresses the crisis, doesn't mean it is the best alternative. Sure, we can use both if absolutely necessary (renewables and nuclear being the alternatives we are talking about here) but it makes more sense to me to start with the sensible one, namely, renewables, and use both only if, repeating myself, absolutely necessary. Nuclear energy is less sensible from a consumer standpoint because it is more centralized, has larger safety issues, creates more hazardous wastes, impacts property values more, raises anxiety levels more, and is more susceptible to corruption, big industry control, crony capitalism, cost overruns, and leads to huge tax increases imposed to pay for all these issues. Even the property value impact alone should be enough for nobody to want to have a nuclear power plant in their area. We should go as far as possible with renewables before resorting to a technology that has larger problems. |
The damage is done. Building nuclear now won't fix it. But with the benifit of hindsight (and the benifit of arguing for the counterfactual), but strangling nuclear power decades ago was a regulatory mistake with literally disasterous consequences.