Japan

Japanese workers wear Hawaiian shirts to save energy

To prevent rolling blackouts as a result of the failure of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, the Japanese government is mandating that all offices set their thermostats at 82 degrees F this summer. Combined with the usual salaryman armor — a dark business suit — that sounds a little like the eighth circle of hell (the […]

Christopher Mims Energy

Why is the United States so obsessed with nuclear power?

Why aren’t Americans more freaked out about the possibility of a nuclear accident? Photo: MikeThis is part one in a series on the United States and nuclear power. Read parts two, three, and four. After the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima, as a German living in the U.S., I often get asked these days: What’s going […]

Arne Jungjohann Energy

Watch an entire country lose its sh*t for a bullet train

This surprisingly emotionally affecting video was shot in Japan right before the recent tsunami. It's a commercial for a new bullet train line, which completed a network running nearly the full length of the country, connecting all of Japan in a way that people clearly found deeply meaningful. The tsunami hit the day before the line […]

Jess Zimmerman Buildings

Japan (shockingly!) gives up on further nuclear power

Once irradiated, twice shy: Japan is giving up on plans for future nuclear reactors after the disaster at Fukushima. The country had planned to build 14 more reactors by 2030, aiming to provide 50 percent of its electricity supply with nuclear power. Now, those plans are off the table, says Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan. […]

Jess Zimmerman Energy

Discovery of Fukushima contamination in areas identified by Greenpeace

TEPCO, the owners of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, just announced that they found contamination levels 100 to 1,000 times higher than normal in sediment from the Fukushima coast. TEPCO did the sediment testing late last week — in areas Greenpeace identified for testing in our research plan — after we were […]

Philip Radford Uncategorized

What would a Chernobyl or Fukushima disaster at Indian Point mean?

Twenty-five years ago, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, sending plumes of radiation around the planet and devastating the area surrounding the plant to this day. The world learned firsthand then about the dangers of nuclear power. Today, the ongoing nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is a tragic reminder of the threat that […]

Philip Radford Energy

Resilient Tokyo: commuters learn to love the bike

There’s more of this in Tokyo these days.Photo: Byron Kidd Shortly after last month’s disastrous earthquake and tsunami in Japan, we posted a dispatch from Tokyo by Bike blogger Byron Kidd (@tokyobybike) about how more people were biking to work in the quake’s aftermath. Today, The New York Times has a story about how the […]

Sarah Goodyear Buildings

Japan could rebuild faster with renewables, says report

In the wake of severe natural disasters, how is Japan going to get its electrical infrastructure back online? The Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability has an answer, and it's anything but business as usual. By deploying a mix of renewables and energy efficiency technology, they argue, Japan's need for electricity could be met three […]