Dr. Conca reports that the damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant following the devastating tsunami in Japan on the 11th of March in 2011 has proven costly in many ways ... politically, economically and emotionally. Strangely, the costs that never materialized were the most feared, those of radiation-induced cancer and death. No radiological health effects have yet to result from the Fukushima disaster ... neither cancers, deaths nor radiation sickness... although the WHO models indicate a slight increase is statistically possible. No one received enough dose, even the 20,000 workers who have worked tirelessly to recover from this event. The direct costs of the Fukushima disaster will be about $15 billion in clean-up over the next 20 years and over $60 billion in refugee compensation. Replacing the some 300 billion kWhs previously produced from nuclear each year with fossil fuels has cost Japan over $200 billion, mostly from fuel costs for natural gas, fuel oil and coal, as renewables have failed to expand in Japan. This cost will at least double, and that only if the nuclear fleet is mostly restarted by 2020. If not, the their energy costs will become very high. The reconstruction and recovery costs associated with just the earthquake and the tsunami will top $250 billion. Since 2011, their trade deficit has become the worst in its history, and Japan is now the second largest net importer of fossil fuel in the world, right behind China. These costs may seem high, but it was the largest tsunami in history that hit the densest-populated industrialized country in history. As you may recall, 5 years ago in 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake on the Tohoku Fault off the east coast of Japan sent a 50-foot tsunami crashing into the Japanese coast with almost no warning, flooding over 500 square miles of land, killing almost 20,000 people, destroying a million homes and businesses, and making 300,000 people homeless.
Original URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/10/after-five-years-what-is-the-cost-of-fukushima/#1a76684c22ed
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