Saturday, May 12, 2012

Nuclear Cheat

The whole world now knows:
            Fukushima = nuclear disaster

Japanese nuclear operator TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company's) Annual Report is thus frightening reading for us all (link).

The financial accounts show something of how the operator prepared & responded. The 11 March 2011 disaster circumvented a planned dividend payment for the end of March 2011. But though the firm suffered huge losses & liabilities, and received large injections of public funds, no explicit attempts were made to claw back the dividend handouts disbursed 30 Nov 2010 and earlier that year (some 81 billion yen, or nearly US$1 billion).

We can also see (p.14) TEPCO's total power generation capacity was 64,988 thousand kW, of which only 4 thousand kW were renewables (wind & geothermal). German energy supply was then (early 2011) 20% renewables, over 300 times TEPCO's percentage. TEPCO's pitifully small proportion of 0.006% renewables shows that management & those with policy oversight were terribly, perhaps criminally, shortsighted.

Due to TEPCO, Fukushima's glow now lights the world!
Stop nuclear profiteering.