Japan is depending on the power of necessity to be the mother of the inventions it needs to solve its energy problem.
Today the last of its 50 usable nuclear reactors will be switched off, leaving the world’s third largest economy dependent on coal and oil-burning generators.
Japan had depended on nuclear plants to produce a third of its electricity when the tsunami in March of 2011 crippled the nuclear plant at Fukushima and created the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. The calamity, which has potential for still more damage, persuaded the Japanese to abandon nuclear power altogether rather than make their existing reactors safe.
