Going off oil, with Genkai No. 1 at the head of a diversified mix (1975)

One unit begun in March 1971, and finished forty-four years later

Reading the diversification of the 1970s as simply “a switch to nuclear power” loses the actual breadth of the provision made. What Kyushu Electric decided in that same decade was not only two nuclear units, but the introduction of LNG, pumped storage with what was then the world’s highest head, a second geothermal site, and a 500 kV backbone grid. Separate the kinds of fuel, separate the operating character of the output, and thicken the network that carries them. In the sense of building a composition that does not bet on the price of oil, every one of these is another face of the same decision.

Yet a composition assembled by dispersal breeds a different kind of concentration once one strand of it grows thick. The mix of fiscal 1990, with nuclear power at 33%, carried within it the size of the swing that would come when that strand stopped. Genkai No. 1, begun in March 1971, ended its operating life in April 2015 after forty years of running, and is now in the decommissioning process. The single unit the company decided to press ahead with in the middle of a crisis supported Kyushu Electric’s accounts for forty-four years, and is being taken apart by Kyushu Electric’s own hands.