The crisis at Japan’s earthquake- and tsunami-crippled Fukushima nuclear station has been as dramatic as it has been horrifying. At the centre of this calamity, a smaller, human story has caught the world’s attention: the sacrifice of the so-called Fukushima 50 – the technicians who stayed behind to keep repair efforts going on Tuesday after radiation levels surged, forcing most of the 800 workers to evacuate.



On Twitter, a young woman who says her father is a technician at the site has been reporting snippets of his ordeal. “I’ve never seen my mother cry so much,” she posted on the day of the radiation spike and evacuation. “Please come back alive, dad.”



In an update on Friday, she said her father had been rotated out to Tepco’s base camp in the nearby town of Iwaki. The Fukushima 50 were in fact only 50 for a short time. Tokyo Electric Power, the station’s operator, sent some of the evacuated personnel back in after a few hours. As of Friday, the number of Tepco and “partner company” employees was 279, according to the utility.



Soldiers, police and fire-fighters are also working at the plant, often in darkness as the tsunami washed away back-up systems.



Amid radiation levels that have risen to millions of times normal dose rates, they make their way through the darkness to open steam valves and direct seawater into the reactors by hand. To allow repair work to continue, the government has raised the legal limit on radiation exposure twice since the earthquake, from 50 millisieverts to 100, then to 250.



Tepco has not released personal information about the technicians, and Japanese notions about the quiet discharge of duty mean few are likely to seek the spotlight. Tepco will only give their numbers, and confirm that 14 have been injured so far.

The United States has the opportunity to be a world leader in production of renewable energy. LCV is committed to turning this opportunity into a reality. The passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act in the House was an important first step toward spurring renewable energy development and moving America toward a clean energy economy. LCV is working with the Senate to strengthen and pass this landmark bill, which includes a national renewable electricity standard.



Improving energy efficiency is the cheapest and fastest way to reduce global warming emissions. It's a simple concept-- improve building and appliances so that they use less energy which reduces overall electricity demand. Rather than building new power plants to meet growing energy needs, we should use energy more wisely. Through new building designs and activities to weatherize homes, such as installing more efficient windows, we can cut down on the energy needed for heating and cooling buildings. Home appliances have become more efficient, and there is great opportunity for improvements in commercial and industrial sectors.



The Energy Independence and Security Act, which Congress passed in 2007, included important provisions to increase energy efficiency. It included incentives and standards for efficiency in buildings and homes and contained light bulb efficiency standards that will reduce global warming pollution by 100 million metric tons per year by 2010. Currently, bills are working their way through the House and Senate that would dramatically increase funding and requirements for energy efficiency.



Technologies to increase energy efficiency currently exist and should be employed on a nationwide scale, which would create thousands of jobs, save consumers and businesses money in the long-run, and help us use energy more wisely. LCV is working to ensure that comprehensive climate and energy legislation includes investments in and requirements for increased energy efficiency.



The United States gets almost half of its electricity from coal-fired power plants. These plants produce roughly 30% of all global warming pollution in the U.S. We need to reduce our dependence on old, dirty coal plants, and also ensure that increased demand for power doesn't lock us into decades of additional global warming pollution.



Dirty Fuels: The Wrong Direction Some members of Congress are pushing the U.S. to adopt a more robust program for turning America's coal reserves into fuel. Unfortunately, the process for extracting a usable fuel from coal produces a tremendous amount of global warming pollution. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, using coal-derived fuel produces nearly twice as much global warming pollution as gasoline.



Other dirty, high-carbon fuels that are being considered are equally troubling. Oil-- weighs in at three times as much global warming pollution as conventional oil. Oil shale is another resource that some hope to extract for oil. This resource is found throughout Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, some of the most stunning wildlife habitat in the U.S. The technology is largely untested, would increase global warming emissions and would require an energy and water intensive process that literally melts rock.



Rather than spending billions of dollars to support fuels that make global warming worse, we should focus our efforts on increasing fuel efficiency for cars and trucks and developing renewable fuels that can reduce global warming pollution and finally wean us off of oil.

Monday we touched on the kind of existential catastrophe that could befall southern California if an earthquake and tsunami even smaller than the ones that hit Japan happened anywhere near the Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear power plants. My neighbor was asking why Obama or Governor Jerry Brown don't just shut them down. I pointed out that weaning ourselves away from dangerous-- even deadly-- power, be it the fossil fuels on which so many wars are predicated and which cause so many ailments in humans or the nuclear energy that threatens to poison mankind or even destroy the planet itself, is not a question for a craven politician but for society/mankind. Do we choose lifestyles that threaten our existence?She made a very perceptive suggestion. She wanted me to ask the southern California Members of Congress who voted against developing solar energy if they would sign a pledge to become part of a Team of 50 like the one she saw on the news battling away at Fukushima.On September 26, 2008 we as a society, through our elected Representatives, did make a choice. They passed the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Tax Act that will, among other things, expand and improve solar tax credits for 8 years. It was a bipartisan vote with 30 Republicans joining the Democrats for a whopping 257-166 victory over a conservative mindset that glorifies perpetual oil wars, pollution, corporate corruption and over-consumption. The Koch Brothers have instructed the Republican Party-- which they bought-- to overturn all alternative energy initiatives, especially solar and wind , mankind be damned. The southern California Republicans whose constituents could all be ruined, if not killed, were a Japanese sized quake/tsunami to hit Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, all voted against the bill and are all adamantly opposed to alternative, green energy. Would Kevin McCarthy, Elton Gallegly, Buck McKeon, David Dreier, Darrell Issa, Gary Miller, John Campbell, Ken Calvert, Brain Bilbray, and Dana Rohrabacher sign up to be part of a Team of 50?As the nonpartisan League of Conservative Voters reminds us, "Over half of the fifty states and the District of Columbia have adopted Renewable Electricity Standards, which require that a certain percentage of their power comes from clean sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal." The Kochs and their conservative puppets in Congress want to turn back the clock even though (or maybe because) a 25% standard by 2025 would save consumers $64.3 billion on energy bills (according to the Union of Concerned Scientists), among other benefits including job creation and reduction of global warming pollution.Recently, thanks to government credits and rebates, I was able to install a solar electricity system on my roof. The sun now produces more energy at my house than I produce-- clear, nonpolluting energy. My electric bill went from around $1,000 a month to zero. In fact, I get a credit every month. The Republican Party opposes this and oily billionaires like the Kochs have spent millions of dollars on propaganda to persuade voters this is bad. It isn't. It's salvation.

Labels: California, clean energy, Japan, Koch, nuclear energy, solar energy