Rethinking nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster

I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Japan about the Fukushima disaster. Much to my surprise, the Japan Times decided to publish it.

The letter appears in today's newspaper. You can read it here. I have also cut and pasted the letter below:

Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda,

The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan continues to resonate far beyond its geographical borders for many reasons, but most of all because it exposed a deep fault line that runs through the global nuclear industry.

The twisted, charred reactors that sit on the Fukushima No. 1 site are a powerful symbol of both the literal and metaphorical damage to an industry that has long promoted nuclear power as a safe, reliable and clean source of energy.

The Fukushima disaster -- the worst of its kind since Chernobyl -- has shaken our assumptions about nuclear power, proving it is more unstable and dangerous than we thought. The disaster has also exposed the human arrogance that leads us to think we can somehow "outsmart" nature by building nuclear power plants as if they were unsinkable ships impervious to the rumblings of the earth and the movements of the ocean.

We forget that nature can't always be controlled or predicted, and so when a bigger-than-planned-for tsunami slams into a nuclear power plant, we are shocked to see the ugly mess left behind when the water recedes -- in this case, a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, the release of radioactive materials and the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from their homes. The tragedy is that we did this to ourselves.



If any good is to come of the Fukushima disaster, it is that it has sparked a worldwide debate about the future of nuclear power. Switzerland and Germany took quick, decisive action after the Fukushima crisis and announced their complete withdrawal from nuclear power in the coming decades. I'm pleased to hear that you plan to phase-out nuclear power too.

But what happens next is more complicated. Shutting down nuclear power plants will leave us with an energy supply gap that will have to be made up somehow. Will we invest in renewable energy or rely on increased imports of polluting fossil fuels? Will we attempt to reduce the demand for energy in the first place or continue to act as if the ground will never run out of oil?

Before the March 11 disaster, nuclear energy accounted for about 30 percent of Japan's power supply. Former Prime Minister Naoto Kan hoped to fill the majority of that gap with renewable energy by the early 2020s. You have said that reducing Japan's dependence on nuclear power will be a gradual process and that some reactors will have to be restarted.

In Germany, however, political leaders acted immediately to phase out nuclear power following the Tohoku disaster. The German government reversed its pronuclear stance and decided to abandon nuclear energy within 11 years. Eight of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors were taken off the grid after Fukushima. The German government has set a target to produce 35 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

But it's not enough to just address the supply of energy; we also need to look at how we can reduce that demand for energy in the first place. This will require a change in the way we think about energy and the way we live our lives.

Here in Japan, for example, there are more than 5.5 million vending machines. They guzzle electricity day and night to keep drinks hot and cool. But do we really need any of those vending machines? Do we really need to have their refrigerators and heaters running 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the sake of convenience?

How we use energy, how we produce energy -- it's all part of the discussion. I hope you will continue to keep Japan on its path of phasing out nuclear power. I also hope you will start thinking about safer, cleaner and more reliable alternatives.

If there is any good to come out of the Fukushima disaster, it is this.

SARAH MARCHILDON
Kyoto

Five days in Tokyo

Tokyo's manic energy is intoxicating. I don't know if it's the lights or the crowds or the futuristic vibe of the city. Whatever it is, it's impossible not to feel a rush of excitement while walking under a night sky blotted out by neon signs.

The best way to get to Tokyo is by bullet train. Being on a train going more than 300 kilometres an hour sets the tone for the trip. Riding the bullet train is like sitting in an airplane as it roars down the runway just before takeoff. That burst of takeoff speed is the thing I love most about flying. The only problem is that it doesn't last long. On a bullet train, you get the thrill of traveling at takeoff speed for more than two hours. You feel like you're hurtling headlong into the future.

I have a newfound appreciation for Tokyo. Maybe it's because I've been in Kyoto for too long. Living in Kyoto is like being in a small bar with jazz playing softly in the background. It's smooth, easy and comfortable. Going to Tokyo is like entering a huge nightclub with techno thumping from the speakers. It's loud, crowded and frantic. The bass rattles your teeth, the lights sweep over a sea of heads dancing in unison. The energy is contagious. There's nothing to do but look for a space in the crowd, slip in and let go.


The beauty of big cities is their diversity. There's a greater variety of people and lifestyles. In turn, people in big cities tend to be more accepting and tolerant than their small-town counterparts. You won't see gay couples holding hands on the streets of Tokyo but you will see a lot creative and non-conformist people -- stylistically speaking, at least. People in Tokyo are not afraid to dye their hair green, pop the lenses out of their glasses, carry a bag with a huge kitten painted on it, pair chunky purple shoes with red pants, and top it all off with a gold-sequined shirt. And those are just the guys. Harajuku girls elevate cosplay to an art form. Kyoto seems so conservative by comparison.

There is no shortage of things to do in Tokyo. On Saturday alone, there was a jazz festival, a bicycle film festival, an organic farmers' market, a high school cheerleading competition and a march against nuclear power.






It was inspiring to see hundreds of people marching against nuclear power. A lot of Japanese people are angry about the Fukushima disaster. And they are making their voices heard. I only hope the politicians are listening. The times they are a-changin'.

After the protest march, I ate a vegetarian falafel at the organic farmers' market at the United Nations University. It doesn't get much more politically correct than that! I felt like I was back in Vancouver.


Tokyo is a great place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there. Too big. Too many people. There are more people in the Greater Tokyo area (35 million) than in all of Canada (34 million). Five days in Tokyo was fun. But I couldn't imagine a lifetime of crowded trains, cramped living conditions and concrete as far as the eye can see.

Learning how to cook Indian food in Japan

One of the things I love most about Japan is the food. Sushi, ramen, curry, tofu, tempura, soba, udon, sashimi, onigiri, yuzu, nashi, gobo, edamame and wasabi. I love it all. But man cannot live by white rice and miso soup alone.

Unfortunately, easy access to foreign food is difficult to come by in Kyoto. It's almost impossible to satisfy a craving for Jamaican patties or Russian borscht or Mexican fajitas without spending a lot of time, energy and money traipsing across town to the tiny specialty shops that may or may not have what you're looking for in stock that day.

So it was a treat to be invited over to my friend Sunil's apartment to learn how to cook Indian food using ingredients easily found in Japan. Few Japanese supermarkets carry basmati rice or a large variety of beans or the myriad of spices needed for Indian cooking. But Sunil is able to buy everything he needs online from Ambika Japan.

Sunil, who originally hails from Delhi, said he didn't know what to eat the first few months after he arrived in Japan. Being vegetarian and unable to read Japanese meant he went hungry most of the time. Tired of subsisting on rice, Sunil asked his mom to teach him how to cook via Skype. Friends told him where to buy ingredients online and thus began a year-long foray into Indian cooking. The experience was miserable at first. Sunil overcooked the rice, burned the curry, couldn't figure out the right balance of spices, couldn't prevent the bread from hardening. But he persisted and made small adjustments here and there until the food began to taste good. The more he cooked the better he got. The better he got the more he enjoyed cooking. The more he enjoyed cooking the more he began to invite people over for dinner. And the more he began to invite people over for dinner the more his reputation began to spread.

I told him I had heard about his culinary prowess in the hallways at school. He laughed and said he wasn't sure he deserved any praise but that I'd be welcome to try his cooking for myself. Even better, he said he'd teach me and a couple of friends how to cook Indian food.


We made kidney bean curry with puri. It was easy to make and even easier to eat. The curry had the magical flavour combination of garlic, ginger, onion, tomatoes and chili peppers. The puri was soft and delicious. With Sunil's permission, I have reprinted his recipe below.


Red Kidney Bean Curry With Puri Recipe

INGREDIENTS

One head of garlic
One chunk of ginger
One large tomato
One medium onion
Five green chilies
500 grams of red kidney beans
One tablespoon of whole cumin
Half a tablespoon of turmeric
One tablespoon of coriander powder
Half a teaspoon of tamarind
Half a teaspoon of salt
Half a tablespoon of garam masala
Chili powder to taste
Olive oil
Canola oil
Three cups of atta (whole-wheat flour)

METHOD

1. Either cook the red kidney beans in a pressure cooker yourself or buy them pre-cooked in a can. Be sure to save the water from the pressure cooker or the can.

2. While the beans are cooking, prepare the puri dough. Spread out a bunch of newspapers on a large surface and dump three cups of whole-wheat flour in the centre. Knead small drops of olive oil into the flour then add a few drops of water, little by little, kneading the flour into one big ball that is slightly hard. Set the dough aside and keep it covered until you've finished cooking the curry.

3. Grate the ginger and garlic. Chop the onion, chili peppers and tomato.

4. Set the stove to low heat and add four tablespoons of olive oil to a large pot or frying pan. Add one tablespoon of whole cumin and fry for 30 seconds.

5. Add chopped onions, grated ginger, grated garlic and chopped chili peppers.

6. Stir fry until the onion is golden coloured.

7. Add half a tablespoon of turmeric powder and one tablespoon of coriander powder. Continue stirring and cooking for a few minutes.

8. Add the chopped tomatoes. Stir for about five minutes until everything becomes like a paste. Add half a tablespoon of salt and some chili pepper to suit your taste. Add half a teaspoon of tamarind.

9. Add the cooked beans. Little by little add the water that the beans were cooked in (or the water in the can of beans). Be careful not to add too much. You don't want liquid curry.

10. Add half a tablespoon of garam masala spice blend. The curry is finished. Now it's time to make the puri.

11. Take the puri dough and rip off small chunks and roll it in your hands into small balls. Using a rolling pin, roll each of the small balls into a small circle. Use oil on the pin if the dough starts sticking.

12. Fill a deep frying pan half full with canola oil over a high flame. When the vegetable oil is hot, take a pair of tongs and place (one at a time) a single puri in the oil. Allow it to deep fry for about two seconds before turning it over to do the other side for another two seconds. The puri will puff up immediately. Remove it from the oil quickly and set it aside. Continue one by one until they are all done.

13. Enjoy! Serves five.

Shirahama Beach: Japan's Jersey Shore

Summer in Kyoto is a little slice of hell. The humidity is oppressive, the heat is sweltering, and the sun is scorching. The temperature hovers around 35 degrees Celsius for weeks on end. The rivulets of sweat drip like a leaky faucet. The cicadas never stop screaming. The mosquitoes are omnipresent; the cockroaches even more so.

Escape, if only for a few days, is essential. Which is why four friends and I decided to leave the city behind last week. We hopped on a bus bound for Shirahama, a resort town on the Pacific Ocean about 150 km south of Kyoto. It seemed as good a destination as any. Shirahama, which means "white beach" in Japanese, is one of the country's most famous attractions ("famous" meaning "crowded"). The tourist propaganda describes it as popular destination but neglects to mention that the beach is more of a Japanese Jersey Shore than a scenic getaway.


Every Japanese beach-goer was armed with two essential accessories -- a beach umbrella and an inflatable life preserver. The umbrellas were used to create a little patch of shade. The life preservers were used by children to stay afloat and by women to keep their heads high enough above water to avoid getting their hair and makeup wet. Each one of these women could have been a Jersey Shore cast member with their teased, sprayed, dyed hair and full-face makeup -- foundation, powder, blush, lipstick, eyeliner, fake eyelashes, eye shadow all the way up to their drawn-on eyebrows, eyelid tape (if they hadn't already had eyelid surgery), and those creepy "big eye" contact lenses that create the appearance of a bigger, wider iris. There's nothing wrong with wearing that much makeup but wouldn't it be more fun to swim in the ocean without worrying about your face sliding off?

Not that there was much room to swim. The water was so crowded it felt like we were fish in a tank. We kept bumping up against other swimmers and when we weren't bumping up against other swimmers our bodies were brushing up against candy wrappers, plastic bags, newspapers, and other assorted bits of garbage. The flotsam and jetsam were a fitting accoutrement to the noise pollution. The entire beach was ringed with loudspeakers spaced a few metres apart. Every five minutes a recorded voice would remind us to be careful, "Attention everyone! Please be careful." That was about as specific as it got. Occasionally there were live announcements, usually concerning nondescript lost children, "Attention everyone! Mrs. Tanaka is looking for her six-year-old son. He is wearing a black shirt and blue shorts." And then, inevitably, the follow-up announcement, "Attention everyone! We have found Mrs. Tanaka's son. He is safe. Please be careful!" Over and over again.


This is one of the things about Japan I don't think I'll ever really understand. It's as if anything that is naturally beautiful or unique (as I imagine Shirahama Beach once was) is exploited by developers who demolish the surrounding area and build ugly hotels and line the streets with shops selling cheap junk and put down parking lots the size of shopping malls so that hundreds of buses can drop off thousands of tourists who mill around taking pictures of whatever it was that once made this place so special before everything around it was razed to the ground and encased in concrete. The worst offenders are the places marketed as the country's top three famous spots (such as the top three famous views, top three famous castles, top three famous beaches, top three famous mountains, etc.). Japanese tourists, with their limited vacation time and limited desire to get off the beaten path, descend on these famous places en masse, take some pictures, buy some souvenirs, eat some food, and then leave before the next busload of tourists arrives to take their place. It's not my idea of fun but people here seem to enjoy it.

Maybe I'm just a spoiled Canadian, unable to appreciate natural beauty if it isn't in full-screen format -- a wide vista of open spaces and wild places. I can't narrow my field of vision the way Japanese people can. They seem to be able to block out the concrete and the neon signs and focus instead only on the small beautiful thing nestled amongst the urban ugliness. I can't focus on the beauty of a cherry tree if it stands on a riverbank strewn with garbage. I will always see the whole picture, not its individual parts. That's not to say my North American way of seeing is better. Just different.

Still, there are beautiful areas to be found away from Shirahama's main tourist strip. We stayed at the Kyoto University research house, which is located in a forest a 20-minute walk away from the main beach. It was a bit out of the way but it's hard to complain when you're only paying $10 a night (being a student has its privileges). The best part is that the research house had its own private beach, which was much nicer and cleaner than the main beach. Because our beach wasn't "famous" it was completely deserted. It was so empty that we were able to go skinny dipping in the middle of the afternoon (much to the delight of the lone male researcher who showed up at the exact moment one of us was letting it all hang out on the beach).



Other highlights included a walk to the Senjojiki rocks and the Sandanbeki cliffs (sadly famous for being one of the top suicide spots in Japan).





Of course, the pictures don't tell the whole story. How do you capture the feeling of skin covered under layers of sweat, saltwater, sunblock, bugspray, mosquito bites, and melted ice cream? How do you capture the warmth between friends and the sensory experience of summer -- the long days and the even longer nights? The noisy cicadas and the burning sun? The rivulets of sweat and the freedom of the open ocean? As crowded and as tacky as Shirahama was, it was a trip that embodied the best of summer.

You will be missed

It is fitting that at the exact moment I read the news that Jack Layton had died, thunder rumbled overhead and the rain began to pour. It was as if the universe was grieving along with me.

His death came as a shock and I felt as sad as I would have if a friend had died. I never met Jack Layton. I didn't know him personally. But I felt like he knew me. Or he understood what was important to me. He fought for the things I cared about. He was more of an activist than a politician, and he had a strong sense of what was right and wrong, what was fair and unfair. He fought for what was right and he fought for what was fair. He fought for human rights, social justice and the environment. He fought for ordinary people not for powerful corporations. He marched proudly in the Gay Pride Parade every single year. He rode his bicycle to work. He was kind, compassionate, and caring. He spoke plainly and honestly -- always with hope and optimism. He was funny and intelligent. He was a man who devoted his life to the greater good.

It is unfair that his life should be cut short by cancer when he was only 61 and fitter and stronger than many people half his age. But it is especially cruel that his life should be cut short just months after he managed to lead the NDP to official opposition status. The party owes its historic success to Jack's charisma. He deserved to enjoy the results of his tireless hard work for much more than a few months. He would have made an excellent Opposition leader.

What will happen to the NDP now? Who will hold our Prime Minister accountable? Who will speak with a voice as strong and persuasive and reasonable and respected as Jack's when our Prime Minister promotes policies and measures designed to make a country that once stood for peace and human rights and compassion unrecognizable? We lost Jack Layton when Canada needed him most.

Two days before he died, Jack wrote a beautiful letter addressed to all of us. His last words were the most moving:

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world."

Farewell, Jack. You will be missed.

Taking the Canon S95 out for a test drive

I finally bought a new camera to replace the one that died on top of a mountain in the pouring rain many months ago. It took me all of about five minutes to decide on the Canon S95, which had less to do with the camera's features and more to do with wanting to get in and out of the electronics store as quickly as possible.

Japanese electronics stores are like torture chambers. If I was a spy and the enemy was trying to get me to spill some top-secret information, all they'd have to do is take me to a Japanese electronics store and I'd crack in less than 10 minutes. These stores are an all-out assault on the eyes and the ears. The fluorescent lighting is so bright it feels like your head is being squeezed in a vise grip. Your eyes dart wildly all over the place, unsure where to look because every square inch of space is plastered with ads. They hang from the ceiling, they line the walls, they take up more shelf space than the electronics. Too much clutter, too many colours. It makes you dizzy and nauseous. And the noise. The noise! There are more salespeople than customers and some of them are shouting out random greetings, others are using megaphones to advertise special deals, and the rest stalk their prey like commission-hungry carnivores. The overhead speakers blast the store's theme song over and over again (these theme songs usually feature a woman singing in a high-pitched voice over happy-sounding but crazy-making synthesizers). Every television in the store is turned on. Every stereo system is thumping out music. The result is a toxic cloud of noisy gibberish under blinding lights and aggressive advertising selling shiny plastic things in unnatural colours. The whole place is madness.

My tolerance level for these stores is about five minutes. I went in knowing exactly what I wanted -- a small point-and-shoot camera. And it had to be Canon. My old camera was a Canon and it was good. (I have the soul of an 80-year-old: I know what I like and I stick with it.) As much as I would like to upgrade to a digital SLR, I can't imagine lugging the damn thing around all the time. I like the little point-and-shoot cameras. I like their compact size and their light weight. You can take them everywhere. The Canon S95 was on sale and it looked good. So I bought it. And got the hell out of the store.

Two days in and I'm pretty happy with my little camera. I took it for a test drive yesterday. Just taking some pictures of a typical Monday here in Kyoto. I took some pictures at the lab. I took some pictures on my walk home. I took some pictures at the grocery store. And I took some pictures from the roof of my apartment. So far, so good.









I am especially fond of the "miniature" setting, which makes everything look like a little model version of the real thing.




The "macro" setting works nicely as well.

So connected yet so disconnected

Two very different news stories caught my eye yesterday. The first story was about Candy Spelling's Los Angeles mansion, which sold for a mind-blowing $85 million.


The second story was about the food crisis in Somalia, which is now a full-blown famine.


The two stories seem unrelated. But they're not. They are both fundamentally about greed and stupidity.

A society that not only allows but glorifies the use of 4.7 acres of land to build a 56,500-square-foot house that contains 123 rooms, 27 bathrooms, and five kitchens for one family is a symbol of all that is wrong with the world.

Candy Spelling's mansion is an extreme example of wasteful excess but it drives home the point that our economic system is built on a foundation of limitless consumption.

We've created this myth that growth is progress and that progress is accumulation. So we accumulate obscene amounts of wealth and build obscenely big houses and call it "progress" but what we're really doing is digging our own graves (and taking everyone else with us) by consuming resources faster than they can regenerate and pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the climate is changing.

And this is where Somalia comes in. The famine is being blamed on the combination of a severe drought and the ongoing conflict. A New York Times article reports that many scientists point to climate change as the cause of the current drought. And if we are changing the climate with our growth and our technology and our addiction to cheap oil, then we are partly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Somalis.

Of course, there is also the greed and stupidity of the Islamic militants who control the famine zone in Somalia. The militants forced Western aid groups out of Somalia last year when the drought was looming and now they are asking the aid groups to return. But few want to return due to the danger of dealing with the militants. Making the whole emergency relief effort even more complicated is that American government rules prohibit material support to the militants. The scale of the disaster and all of its complexities boggles the mind.

I don't know what's worse: the insanity of America's excess or the insanity of Al Shabab's extremism? An economic system that is directly responsible for climate change or a bunch of militants who chop off hands, stone people to death and ban TV, music and bras in the hope of turning Somalia into a seventh-century-style Islamic state?

Either way, multi-million-dollar mansions in America and Islamic militants in Somalia are connected. It's not difficult to imagine some Somali kid growing up in a poor neighbourhood in Los Angeles seeing these McMansions and the obscene wealth and the big cars and feeling excluded and angry. And it's not hard to imagine some Islamic extremist group exploiting that teenager's frustration by giving him a sense of community and a feeling of brotherhood while radicalizing the young man's anger into something more sinister.

And so when I read those two very different stories yesterday -- the sale of Candy Spelling's mansion and the food crisis in Somalia -- it wasn't their differences that struck me, it was their connections.

Academic writing ain't my thing

Can someone please explain why so many scholars and scientists feel compelled to obscure, confuse and bore their audiences?

These are brilliant people with brilliant ideas and yet they can't tell a story to save their lives. Just open any academic journal and you'll see what I mean. The language is impenetrable to outsiders. The sentences are clunky, heavy, and awkwardly constructed. Each article contains a wealth of information – some of it interesting and important – but the writing is so bad as to render the whole thing unreadable.

It pisses me off for three reasons: one, because I have to read this shit as part of my master's degree; two, because of the inherent disrespect to the general reader embedded in this kind of writing; and three, because it doesn't have to be this way.

I think part of the reason academics write the way they do is because they write for other academics. They're after the approval of their peers, not the public. As a result, there's a certain snobbery and elitism in academic writing. Academic writing must have weight and gravity, and the easiest way to add weight and gravity is to fill a paper with technical terms and sentences that are so scientifically precise that they obscure, rather than illuminate, what it is the author is trying to say.

Accuracy is the aim but obfuscation is the result.

Let me give you an example from one of my least-enjoyable reading assignments of the past year. The article, published in Functional Ecology in 2005, was titled "Neutral theory in community ecology and the hypothesis of functional equivalence." Here is a brief excerpt:

"The theory for community assembly based on the competitive niche paradigm became highly developed, first with multispecies community matrix theory (Levins, 1968), which was developed on the foundation of the Lotka-Volterra equations, and then with more mechanistic theory, which explicitly incorporated the dynamics of resource supply and consumption along with the dynamics of the resource-dependent consumer species (Tilman 1982, 1987)."

It goes on and on like this for seven pages. I had to read it three times before I started to understand it. And then I had to read it a few more times before I was able to translate the author's abominable sentences into something more digestible. Line by painful line.

You could argue that someone without a background in ecology is not the intended audience for this paper. It was written for specialists in the field who could quickly and easily grasp its context and significance. So there is no need to simplify it for a general audience. It's all well and good to contribute to the general body of knowledge in a particular field. But why are so many scholars and scientists content to just please their small circles of peers?

If you as an environmental scientist have no desire to communicate your findings to the public or to policy makers then what the hell is the point? Why spend years of your life on research that ends up collecting dust in an obscure journal in a remote part of some distant library?

It goes back to the snobbery and elitism unnecessarily embedded in academic writing. The problem is that plain English and simple storytelling is disparaged as not scientific. I have one professor who constantly dismisses non-academic writing as mere journalism.

And while I agree that journalistic research doesn't carry the same weight and rigor as academic research, I disagree that a more journalistic style of writing is somehow less serious than an academic style of writing. If academics want their research to resonate with the public or policy makers, they could benefit from a more narrative style of writing.

I'm not saying you have to spoon-feed the reader but at least open it up a bit. Tell us why your research is important. Put some effort into making the significance of your research clear and compelling. Strip down the sentences a bit. Why use five words when one will suffice? Push the academic journals to change their stuffy conventions.

There are many scientists who are excellent communicators. People like E.O. Wilson, David Suzuki, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan come to mind. They understand the importance of explaining their work to the public and they do it well.

Scientific research is important but it is meaningless if there is no attempt to communicate that knowledge in a way the public and the people in power can understand. Information locked away inside impenetrable jargon and technical terms is not helping anyone.