Guest post. Translated from the French by Tim Gupwell.

It’s already well established that Tepco, the operator of Fukushima, is in control of very little in the devastated nuclear plant. Not the ongoing, endemic contamination of the atmosphere and of the sea, not the status of nuclear fuel reduced to a state of three coriums which either can’t be localized or are stocked in pools from which they cannot be removed. Nor, even less so, the potential impact of new seismic shocks on the battered systems, including in the first instance that of Reactor N° 4’s cooling pool , a tremendous source of worry given the enormous mass of fuel it contains.

1535 fuel assemblies are stocked 30 metres (110 feet) above the ground in a structure which has had to be consolidated and which is open to the air, representing 85 times the quantity of Cesium-137 released during the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor…..Enough to render the whole of Japan uninhabitable and beyond, for it is on this kind of scale that the potential danger can be measured.

Fukushima poses problems that are currently impossible to resolve, unacknowledged only because of the conviction that even if the dismantling of the plant takes forty years, it will be seen through to the end. In reality, nothing is less certain. All this points to an improbable alternative: covering of all the installations by an immense sarcophagus, which will need continual cooling. An edifice in comparison with which Chernobyl’s –whose replacement site has just entered into construction – will pale into significance. With two slightly different requirements: that the basement floor on which the plant is constructed is able to support the weight, and that the leaks of water contaminated by these basements are stopped.

Simultaneously, the Fukushima catastrophe has just entered into a brand new phase. It started with the progressive halting for maintenance of the entire network of nuclear reactors, which still numbered 50 once Fukushima was discounted, the last one still in operation having ceased all activity on the 5th May. The reactors will now have to pass a double test; security tests which will always be suspected of partiality, and the test of public opinion as well as popular pressure on locally elected representatives.

As might be expected, the government – at the heart of which the nuclear lobby bubbles like a fuel rod in a nuclear reactor vessel about to enter into fusion due to a lack of cooling water – is striving for a reactivation, which both the nuclear power operators and, industry in general, are also hoping and praying for. The first group, as the energy bill for replacement oil and energy soars and wreaks havoc with the public accounts, the second group since this same bill eats away at their margins, the third as the resulting consumption restrictions disrupt their production.

One thing is already certain: the plan to increase the share of nuclear power from 30% to 50% of Japanese electricity production by 2030 is dead and buried. Nevertheless, for the time-being, as the summer peak in consumption approaches, the country has no choice but to moderate this certainty; creating on a nationwide scale a situation both unseen and instructive. In the long term, enterprises and the public will have to put up with an increase in their electricity bills, which will not help to improve the general economic situation. On both these grounds the government is operating a double blackmail, with the aim of reinitiating production on a limited basis in the form of a test which may subsequently serve as a precedent.

In parallel with the health aspect which concerns primarily the Japanese, the financial aspect is progressively growing in significance. For a start, the economic cost of nuclear power needs to be re-examined, in order to take into account the expenses engendered by the catastrophe, whether they are supported by the government or by Tepco.

The final hour of reckoning, however you look at it, remains a long way off, but even if the government is reluctant to admit it, the operator is, in reality, being gradually nationalized due to the financial aid which it is receiving. In the end it will be the Japanese who foot the bill as both consumers and taxpayers. Tepco is in the process of presenting a plan for new budget cuts of more than 30 billion Euros over 10 years in order to unblock in principle a contribution of 10 billion Euros of public funding, having already benefited from an agreement for 16 billion Euros. Private investors are supposed to contribute an equivalent sum of 10 billion Euros. It is at this price, plus that of an increase in tariffs which has not yet been publicly calculated, that the operator will be kept afloat and can both continue the pursuit of the employment of its power stations (if they are put back into operation again), as well as engage in the operations to dismantle Fukushima (if it proves possible in the long term). If this is not the case, the bill will be far heftier.

One after the other, the arguments of the wild and dangerous defenders of nuclear power are collapsing. Leaving the final derisory and deceptive line of defense, that of the clean energy which produces no CO²………which tops it all, given all the harm it can produce – as has been confirmed once again.