1. If there is another disaster like a typhoon or earthquake and the spent fuel rod container is breached and the cooling water leaks out (or boils off), depending on which way the wind is blowing, Tokyo could become uninhabitable.
2. One of the academics said the Japanese had a culture of saying the right thing but never doing it so these spent fuel rods may never ever be moved, until it is too late.
Now that is a country where you can't trust your own government!
Sachmodog, Jacobson and Delucchi (2011) point out that “the overall historic and present range of nuclear planning-to-operation times for new nuclear plants has been 11–19 years, compared with an average of 2–5 years for wind and solar installations”. Also, wind is already commercialied and solar is approaching grid parity i.e. it is probably already cheaper than nuclear now anyway. That is on a levelised costs basis, that takes into account the lower capacity factors. The only issue is the intermittency of renewables, but this can be dealt with by having a range of generation. The you don't have the headache of toxic waste storage, terrorist attack, natural disaster or corporate or government incompetence.
So a tsunami hits a solar plant or a terrorist attacks a wind farm, whoopy doo!
Sorry to break it to you, but the world is heading to gas as a transition fuel (unfortunate but it may be necessary) followed by, and in parallel with, renewables.
Jacobson, M. Z. & Delucchi, M. A. (2011). Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials. Energy Policy, 39, 1154-1169.
Jacobson, M. Z. & Delucchi, M. A. (2011). Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, system and transmission costs, and policies. Energy Policy, 39, 1170-1190.
