|
Wait what? People in Japan are opposed to geothermal power because of THEIR ONSEN? How?
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 12:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 21:59 |
|
|
There are a lot of people who believe that exploiting geothermal power will somehow magically cause the onsen to stop working. Enough of these people exist that Japan has close to zero geothermal power generation, despite being one of the best places in the world to do it. Wikipedia claims Japan currently produces 0.1% of its power through geothermal.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 12:16
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:There are a lot of people who believe that exploiting geothermal power will somehow magically cause the onsen to stop working. Enough of these people exist that Japan has close to zero geothermal power generation, despite being one of the best places in the world to do it. Wikipedia claims Japan currently produces 0.1% of its power through geothermal. This makes total sense (to hear about in regards to Japan)
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 13:55
|
|
|
hadji murad posted:This makes total sense (to hear about in regards to Japan) And likely totally inaccurate. I would like to see sources of officials who actually believe that their onsens will "magically stop working". It's far more likely a combination of your standard NIMBY stance (e.g., not wanting heavy industries around tourism sites) and relying on the fact that nuclear was the standard "next gen" technology, could be placed in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, and supplied a huge chunk of Japan's energy consumption. Of course the latter may not be the case depending on how the restarts work out but there won't be pressure on geothermal unless nuclear is totally off the tables.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 14:09
|
|
|
Spazzle posted:What about high speed pizza delivery? You're an alright guy in my book. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 15:20
|
|
|
Geothermal power plants in onsens that were once tourist meccas seems like a great idea to me. Beside the power generation, it would give local economies at least a minor shot in the arm. God knows there are enough shuttered up Bubble-era getaways in the boondocks to choose from. I can't imagine there are enough residents left in a lot of them to object. 65% of Iceland's power generation is geothermal - what's stopping Japan?
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 16:40
|
|
|
ozza posted:Geothermal power plants in onsens that were once tourist meccas seems like a great idea to me. Beside the power generation, it would give local economies at least a minor shot in the arm. God knows there are enough shuttered up Bubble-era getaways in the boondocks to choose from. I can't imagine there are enough residents left in a lot of them to object. Well, Iceland is on the other end of the world and the price of undersea powercables is enormous.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 16:43
|
|
|
ozza posted:65% of Iceland's power generation is geothermal - what's stopping Japan? Ignorance and not a lot else, really. If people actually researched things instead of just kneejerking about them (Ospreys and the safety non-issue come to mind) then it wouldn't even be an issue.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 16:47
|
|
|
Zo posted:And likely totally inaccurate. Yes, I've never heard that idea anywhere but in this thread, nor have I ever found any articles to support it. Privately I've heard nothing but support for geothermal power, other than concerns about the cost to set it up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 17:00
|
|
|
mystes posted:Cartoons are cheap to produce, except in the US. Hollywood's been a giant money laundering ring since it's inception and it drives entertainment prices sky high across the country.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 20:30
|
|
|
ozza posted:Geothermal power plants in onsens that were once tourist meccas seems like a great idea to me. Beside the power generation, it would give local economies at least a minor shot in the arm. God knows there are enough shuttered up Bubble-era getaways in the boondocks to choose from. I can't imagine there are enough residents left in a lot of them to object. Providing power for 300k people isn't the same as providing power for 125 million.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2013 08:55
|
|
|
dilbertschalter posted:Providing power for 300k people isn't the same as providing power for 125 million. True enough, that wasn't a great comparison. There's no denying that it's a hugely underutilised energy source in Japan at present, though - just 0.2% of electricity produced is geothermal, and capability has been basically unchanged since 1999. After a bit of reading today it looks like, in addition to gaining consent from onsen managers, another hurdle for geothermal power is the huge cost involved in locating and drilling sites for power plants. The fact that the majority of the locations are in difficult-to-access, mountainous regions pushes this cost up even further. The good news is that post-3/11 the government has upped subsidies for exploration and construction costs. But yeah - certainly the few academic articles that I was able to find all suggested that the biggest issue for geothermal power in Japan was understanding / acceptance by local stakeholders.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2013 09:57
|
|
|
Most of Abenomics has been working as planned except for the most important part. Abe got the prices to go up and has money going into companies but something isn't moving. Japan firms resist Abe's calls to raise wages: Reuters poll quote:Just under half of 266 companies answering a question on what they will do if the tax is raised as planned, said they will not respond with any increase to overall pay - including bonuses. Woops. Then this was followed a day later by this. Govt, labor, firms hold 3-way talks quote:Representatives from the government, the business world and labor have held their first meeting to discuss how to improve wages and employment.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:20
|
|
|
Sounds exactly the same as the US to me. Trickle-down economics is a fantastical notion no matter where it is or what you call it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:24
|
|
|
Kenishi posted:Woops. Where's the 'whoops'? I'm pretty certain that's the game plan by Abe ("gently caress the poor with higher sales taxes while lovingly fellating the corporate overlords")...
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:27
|
|
|
ArchangeI posted:Well, Iceland is on the other end of the world and the price of undersea powercables is enormous. That said, there were a few Japanese students in our geothermal science whatever, so eh, maybe. Still doesn't change the fact that it's NIMBY-ism that's stopping poo poo from happening rather than them lacking the know-how. Always been a bit surprised though that they haven't tried out tidal more, seeing as it would probs work fairly well there.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2013 01:28
|
|
|
Deceitful Penguin posted:Anecdotal, but I know more dudes working on geothermal energy in China than in Japan. I've always had a knee jerk fear that the likes of Tepco doing geothermal could end up polluting or somehow loving up the onsens in some way. Is this not a reasonable concern, rather that just some NIMBY bullshit?
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2013 01:55
|
|
|
I could believe TEPCO being incompetent enough to do anything at this point, but from my understanding of how geothermal works there's no way to hurt anything with it. The worst that can happen is you gently caress up building the plant and it doesn't work. The Earth has plenty of internal heat, the onsens won't be affected by drawing off a tiny bit for electricity. You could drill into the onsen itself and vent it or something but that would have to be intentional.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2013 02:06
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:I could believe TEPCO being incompetent enough to do anything at this point, but from my understanding of how geothermal works there's no way to hurt anything with it. The worst that can happen is you gently caress up building the plant and it doesn't work. You can definitely and gently caress it up by overproducing, which will cool off the local area (i.e. the effective area of the plant). It will eventually regenerate - this is the "renewable" part - but your plant might be unprofitable for a while. This is mostly just economic impact on the plant itself. Environmental-wise my understanding was that some plant types evaporate away a shitload of water which must be replenished with external sources. This would obviously affect the mineral composition of their precious onsen water, but I believe there are also plant types which do not emit any vapour. Not sure what the tradeoffs are though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2013 03:10
|
|
|
Zo posted:You can definitely and gently caress it up by overproducing, which will cool off the local area (i.e. the effective area of the plant). It will eventually regenerate - this is the "renewable" part - but your plant might be unprofitable for a while. This is mostly just economic impact on the plant itself. Don't forget thermal pollution of waterways, if there is any warm-water outflow from the plant.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2013 09:37
|
|
|
Same day the US government shuts down? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-01/abe-proceeds-with-japan-s-first-sales-tax-increase-since-1997.html quote:Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proceeded with an April sales-tax increase and will implement a stimulus program as he tries to rein in the world’s biggest debt burden without jeopardizing efforts to end deflation. Things are happening in Japan, but from that last comment I can't actually tell if the IMF wants Japan to succeed or collapse entirely and let them come in to fix the mess.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 07:55
|
|
|
pentyne posted:Same day the US government shuts down? Japan has the highest ratio of public debt to GDP in the world.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 08:00
|
|
|
pentyne posted:Same day the US government shuts down? Why sales tax and not income tax or something else progressive? Is Japan in a wave of "gently caress the poor" right now, too?
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 10:11
|
|
|
VideoTapir posted:Why sales tax and not income tax or something else progressive? Because the workforce is getting ready to shrink like crazy as the median age creeps up towards 50 (44.6 as of 2010). They need to be able to collect tax from retirees if they're going to make a dent, and a consumption tax is probably the only politically feasible way to do that. And it's only barely feasible since all those olds vote. Mr. Fix It fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Oct 1, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 10:23
|
|
|
Mr. Fix It posted:Because the workforce is getting ready to shrink like crazy as the median age creeps up towards 50 (44.6 as of 1010). They need to be able to collect tax from retirees if they're going to make a dent, and a consumption tax is probably the only politically feasible way to do that. And it's only barely feasible since all those olds vote. Japan has always had a relatively high propensity to consume though. And also to save. They could easily recapture that from their olds on passing through an estate tax without endangering people reducing their spending.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 10:42
|
|
|
ReidRansom posted:Japan has always had a relatively high propensity to consume though. And also to save. They could easily recapture that from their olds on passing through an estate tax without endangering people reducing their spending. But it would be political suicide because the elderly are by far the most politically influential. As-is pushing through the consumption tax increase destroyed the last administration.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 11:12
|
|
|
Yeah, of course elderly folk usually don't spent as much per capita on items that are likely to be taxed in the first place, if anything it is going to depress consumer spending for younger folk who are already hard pressed. Basically, it is dancing around the real issues of Japan economy which are demographic (and largely tied to sexism). Ardennes fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Oct 1, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 11:49
|
|
|
VideoTapir posted:Why sales tax and not income tax or something else progressive? Japan has a very low consumption tax compared to most developed countries and a fairly high income tax.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 12:37
|
|
|
Yeah, Japan's taxes are relatively high on everything but consumption, it feels like. Taxes relating to death and inheritance are also quite high, I'm told, which sort of compounds this demographic problem too, cause not enough people are dying 
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 13:08
|
|
|
Stringent posted:I've always had a knee jerk fear that the likes of Tepco doing geothermal could end up polluting or somehow loving up the onsens in some way. Some problems have been mentioned but off the top of my head, the main problems are: 1. Limits of renewabilty: You can only make the plants so big before the uptake of water becomes unsustainable, i.e. you're taking more water out than is put back in. You can put water back in manually but it's a complex logistical feat if you don't already have a very effective and reliable water distribution system. (Iceland is also at the forefront in these matters, but then again we have certain advantaged thanks to having designed our water distribution system with the idea of recycling warm water used for heating and energy generation again. Not sure about how that might work in Japan) So you might have competition with the onsens, but it is not very likely if you're careful. Of course, we're talking about Tepco here so they might well tap the wells far too much... 2. Local area pollution: While we've made a lot of inroads since we first began using geothermal energy, you still can't escape the fact that geothermal energy creates steam and when steam is created much of the minerals that remain need to be gotten rid of. Our novel approach of selling it to tourist and pumping it into the Blue Lagoon is only partially successful in getting rid of all it and the rest end up in run-off, which has somewhat elevated levels of whatever minerals are in the water. Decent filtration means you maybe get a bit higher levels of them than you'd get anyway but Iceland and Japan have a pretty different ecosystem so those higher levels might wreak more havoc there than here. This means that if the plants are located close to the onsens, which if they're near the center of the hotspot would be most efficient, you might have some local pollution effects. Again, a little forethought might forestall it, as would placing them a bit off but geothermal is already pretty marginally profitable if used solely for energy generation, or at least was when I learned about it. Zo posted:You can definitely and gently caress it up by overproducing, which will cool off the local area (i.e. the effective area of the plant). It will eventually regenerate - this is the "renewable" part - but your plant might be unprofitable for a while. This is mostly just economic impact on the plant itself. VideoTapir posted:Don't forget thermal pollution of waterways, if there is any warm-water outflow from the plant.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 13:53
|
|
|
Your distrust of TEPCO is not unfounded, I wouldn't touch the lot of bastards to handcrank a generator with the way they've hosed up cleanup.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 14:00
|
|
|
LP97S posted:Your distrust of TEPCO is not unfounded, I wouldn't touch the lot of bastards to handcrank a generator with the way they've hosed up cleanup. TEPCO's behavior is entirely predictable though. The are acting in a manner that costs them the least in yen terms. If the government had said "ok once you have finished clean-up you can start-up the rest of your reactors and start on the replacement work", I would imagine it would have already been completed. But as it stands they have very little cash flow because they are largely not generating enough power and need to purchase it off the other utilities to meet their contractual obligations. They either needed to have been nationalised or turned into a non-profit generator. But as it stands they will continue to drag their feet as long as that keeps them making returns to their shareholders. Note this is a good example as to why Nuclear power should never have been privitized, as what is needed for the long term stability of the plants, and for security of power, are generally things that cost money, and as such will have had corners cut. And it is likely that corner cutting is the exact cause for the whole mess in the first place. Engineers would have been advocating putting the generators in a room on stilts well above any expected tsunami height, and not in the basement. But the basement would have cost the least amount of money so that is where they went. Wibbleman fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Oct 1, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 21:01
|
|
|
A really great court decision Monday:quote:The Kyoto District Court ordered anti-Korean activists Monday to pay damages for disrupting classes at a Korean school by staging demonstrations during which they used hate speech, and banned them from staging further rallies.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2013 16:30
|
|
|
mystes posted:A really great court decision Monday: You know what bugs me the most? When netuyos argue that netuyos must all be secret Korean agents because no true Japanese would do that much to damage Japan's reputation. My god, the brain loops necessary to believe that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2013 17:32
|
|
|
Samurai Sanders posted:Wow, I really shouldn't have looked at the 2ch thread about this decision. I always think I can just look at the poop without it getting on me but it I felt dirty by the third post. The psychological mechanisms involved must indeed be fascinating. You see the same thing on Freep.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2013 21:11
|
|
|
Samurai Sanders posted:Wow, I really shouldn't have looked at the 2ch thread about this decision. I always think I can just look at the poop without it getting on me but it I felt dirty by the third post. Whoa, there are a significant number of people making GBS threads on netouyos in that thread. Not a lot, but way more than I'd expect out of a cesspit like 2ch.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2013 00:42
|
|
|
Are there any big Japanese online communities which are more leftist?
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2013 00:50
|
|
|
Lucy Heartfilia posted:Are there any big Japanese online communities which are more leftist? But anyway yeah, there is an opposition to netuyos on 2ch as well, same as any big and powerful thing breeds an opposition.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2013 03:25
|
|
|
Well, it definitely looks like the TPP is going to turn out exactly like I expected. I don't follow Japanese language papers so I don't know if they have been reporting on this or not. English Yomiuri is though. Japan may opt to give up 'sanctuary' on TPP items This doesn't surprise me since Japan started off with a bad hand from the get go, opting to join in the talks towards the end. Plus if you factor in the fact that Abe never really gave any concrete promises, but did make it sounds like rice and other goods would be safe. Makes me wonder how much he'll be crucified by the lobbyists over this. (I feel confident that Japan will lift tarrifs on rice completely, going against what JA probably expects.) On the English side, that results and stuff happening at the TPP talks hasn't been mentioned much, I wonder if its the same in Japanese news.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2013 06:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 21:59 |
|
|
Kenishi posted:Well, it definitely looks like the TPP is going to turn out exactly like I expected. I don't follow Japanese language papers so I don't know if they have been reporting on this or not. English Yomiuri is though. I'd be very pleased if that happened. Most of Abe's "reforms" so far have been of the easy variety, it would be impressive if he took on a major vested interest that has a terrible effect on the Japanese economy.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2013 09:07
|
|