PDA

View Full Version : Power scandal in Japan may result in outages on U.S. bases this summer



thedrifter
06-05-03, 05:28 AM
Power scandal in Japan may result in outages on U.S. bases this summer


By Jennifer H. Svan and Hana Kusumoto, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Thursday, June 5, 2003



YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — U.S. military installations on Japan’s Kanto Plain may experience power outages this summer if nuclear reactors at the region’s largest electricity provider remain idle.

Sixteen of Tokyo Electric Power Company’s 17 reactors are still shut following a cover-up of false safety reports documenting voluntary inspections.

TEPCO officials last month estimated its power supply could fall 9.5 million kilowatts short of demand this summer in the event of a heat wave, according to Japan Times.

U.S. Forces Japan officials aren’t speculating on whether TEPCO or Japan’s government will be forced to schedule brownouts or issue restrictions. They expect to know more after a June 13 meeting with TEPCO and Japanese government officials, said Col. Mike Weber, USFJ’s logistics director.

If TEPCO can’t meet consumer demand, U.S. bases likely would be affected, Weber said.

“It could happen to us, just like it happens anywhere else,” he said. “We’re just another TEPCO customer.”

The largest private power company in the world, TEPCO provides electricity to residences, government facilities and commercial businesses in Tokyo and eight outlying prefectures. The company is the only commercial electrical power provider on the Kanto Plain.

When all TEPCO’s reactors are operating, the company supplies about 60 million kw of electricity, a TEPCO spokesman told Stars and Stripes. It could provide up to 70 million kw with power purchased from other facilities.

To compensate for idle nuclear reactors, TEPCO is using additional thermal and hydraulic power plants, a TEPCO spokesman said, including the Yokosuka oil-burning plant in Kanagawa Prefecture. Operations at that plant were halted several years ago because of its age and national conservation policies.

TEPCO’s capacity now — even considering the inactive reactors — is 50 million kw, the spokesman said. But that’s far short of the typical demand during Tokyo’s stifling summer heat. For example, on July 24, 2001, when the temperature soared to 106 degrees Fahrenheit, 64.3 million kw were used.

Weber said in the event of a power outage, each military base has emergency generators kick into gear for certain facilities such as the hospital and command and control centers.

“Each installation has their own plan for that,” he said.

USFJ is making sure its emergency generators are working, and installations should be notifying base residents “that there may be some effects” due to the TEPCO situation, said Marine Corps Master Sgt. Leah Gonzalez, a USFJ spokeswoman.

The critical power-use months are typically from July to September, Weber said, when air conditioners are cranked.

He did not know how much energy U.S. bases on the Kanto Plain use.

“It’s got to be a drop in the bucket” as a percentage of the Kanto Plain’s total consumption, he said.

The Japan Times reported that cracks were found in the shrouds and piping of many of TEPCO’s reactors in the seven months of checks since the cover-up was discovered last August. TEPCO officials said they are trying to fix the problem and are asking customers to conserve energy.

“We greatly feel sorry to ask people to conserve energy due to our misconduct last summer,” the TEPCO official said.

Master Sgt. Gerardo Salazar, Yokota’s energy conservation manager, said there are numerous ways people can conserve energy.

Try to keep the thermostat at 78 degrees, he said. Central AC units on Yokota run at maximum efficiency at that temperature; for every degree below 78, energy consumption increases by 2 percent.

Other tips from Salazar: Turn off the computer when it is not in use. “The screen saver still consumes the same amount of energy.”

And switch incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones. The quality of light is the same, but energy consumption is less, he said. Fluorescent bulbs are free at Yokota’s Self-Help Store.



Sempers,

Roger

thedrifter
06-05-03, 05:29 AM
Japanese road tax is being enforced


By Carlos Bongioanni, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Thursday, June 5, 2003



KADENA AIR BASE, Okinawa — The road tax has been all the rage here since Sunday.

At each gate Kadena police officers have stopped every vehicle lacking the 2003 Japan road tax decals.

Saturday was the deadline for all motorists in Japan to have the decals properly affixed to their windshields.

Master Sgt. Leah Gonzalez, spokeswoman for U.S. Forces Japan, said all motorists had to pay the Japanese road tax by May 31. As of June 1, military police at all U.S. bases in Japan had the jurisdiction to stop, ticket and impound any vehicle belonging to SOFA personnel lacking 2003 stickers.

The decals are issued by U.S. bases in Japan; vehicles with Japanese plates don’t have them. Japanese vehicle owners who don’t pay the road tax are fined when they pay their insurance.

At Kadena’s Gate 1, the line stretched along the side of the entrance road late into the evening.

“I got stopped at Kadena yesterday,” Cpl. Brian Shelton said Monday at Camp Foster’s motor vehicle registration office, just before he put on his new decal. “They told me they were going to ticket me, but I told them I didn’t think it was fair.”

Shelton is attached to a Futenma Marine Corps Air Station detachment that recently returned from Afghanistan. He said he’d just bought the vehicle he was driving and couldn’t pay the mandatory fee by the deadline because he hadn’t received its final paperwork — which must be presented when paying the tax.

The Marine said he had to argue his case aggressively before Air Force police let him go with a warning.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Patricia Audy said gate guards stopped her Sunday afternoon and told her she was “lucky” she didn’t try to enter the base in the morning. If she had, she would have been ticketed and her car impounded for not having paid the tax, she said.

Base officials ordered a two-week grace period that afternoon for anybody who recently had been deployed, Kadena spokesman Charles Steitz said.

Audy, attached to Kadena’s 353rd Maintenance Squadron, qualified because she returned Saturday from the annual Cobra Gold exercise in Thailand.

The airman said the crackdown didn’t bother her. “This is just the base watching out for its own,” she said. “It’s better to get caught on base rather than off base, where you’d have to pay a lot more to Okinawa police.”

As of Monday afternoon, at least 20 motorists had been ordered to park and leave their vehicles in a lot until they paid their road tax, Steitz said.

Kadena security forces also issued tickets to individuals that lacked a decal or receipt proving they paid this year’s road tax, said Steitz. If motorists had the decals but hadn’t affixed them to windshields, security forces helped them do so, the spokesman added.

Marine Corps security officials on Okinawa gave a two-week grace period at their bases before impounding cars or issuing citations, said Capt. Christopher Perrine, a spokesman for the Marine Corps on Okianwa. “We have many people returning from deployments who maybe didn’t have the opportunity to pay their taxes,” he explained.

After the grace period, Perrine noted, security personnel at Marine Corps bases will begin impounding cars and giving traffic citations to those who haven’t paid the tax or gotten the decals.

Anyone who fails to scrape off an old sticker or put on the new one correctly may also get a “defective equipment violation citation.”

Those who receive citations for not complying with regulations will be put on a police blotter that will go to their commands, Perrine said.

Freddie Hatch said he was grateful for the grace period. He paid the tax Friday, but the line to get the decal at Foster was so long, he said he had to return Monday.

Hatch, attached to Futenma’s Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 36, said Futenma gate guards warned him twice over the weekend. “It would not have been nice at all” had he gotten a citation and had his chain of command “address” him for being put on the blotter, he said.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=15891


Sempers,

Roger