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Japan 's Impact On The World

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Japan has undergone significant changes in reliance on energy sources within the last five years. Unfortunately, these changes have often been sporadic and unpredictable for its government and citizens. Japan is the third largest oil importer and the second largest coal importing country today. Overall, Japan is the fifth largest consumer of global energy, yet imports almost all of its crude oil. Even more so, with a country that doubles its energy consumption every five years, its government is quickly searching for and implementing new solution to avoid a heavy reliance on importation. On March 11, 2001, Japan experienced a magnitude 9.0 earthquake followed by a large tsunami that caused disastrous damage to the Fukushima-Daiichi reactors. Before 2011, one of Japan’s major power sources came from nuclear generation. 27% of Japan’s power came from the Fukushima-Daiichi reactors in coastal Sendai. While the earthquake did not cause severe damage, the tsunami damaged the infrastructure and was forced to shut down, resulting in a loss of 10 gigawatts of electricity from nuclear generation. Other plants were shut down following these due to government concern for public safety. As a result, only two reactors ran in Japan for more than a year. Japan relied heavily on nuclear power, particularly because it was it’s least expensive resource. As a way to fill this gap of power, Japan began to import heavily on natural gas, crude oil, and coal. Unfortunately, importing oil was

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