A short-lived tyranny It’s about time to kill off nuclear energy
OCOLLY.COM  By Brandon McVeyOpinion Columnist : October 06, 2008 Pop Quiz: what source of energy has received the most government subsidies since World War II, has a by-product that has remained dangerous for thousands of years, and is a major component of McCain’s energy proposal?

What I’m talking about is nuclear energy — 1950’s energy of the future. Back then, it was thought that nuclear energy would be the radioactive wave that would carry the world into the atomic age, supplying nearly all of the world’s electricity and a significant portion of its commercial energy. Obviously, nuclear energy has failed to live up to this expectation.

In the United States, no nuclear power plants have been built since the late 1970s. For private investors, the costs of building, maintaining and decommissioning a nuclear power plant overrun each other. Simply put, nuclear energy is a value destroyer that has only been proliferated by billing the American taxpayer. The modern initiatives for nuclear power still fail to recognize many of the flaws of the energy source.

Although electricity produced through nuclear power has been competitive, this price is not representative of all the costs along the nuclear energy value chain. …………………………..we shouldn’t delude ourselves about nuclear.

Maintaining nuclear reactors can be expensive, yet necessary for the reactor to be stable and safe.

Unfortunately, when the companies that manage such nuclear reactors already work with thin profit margins, safety problems can be ignored until the plant has to shut down to address them.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has recorded on its Web site that an outage at a nuclear power plant which lasted more than a year has occurred 51 times at 41 different reactors. While in the 1960s and 1970s the plants were closed primarily for damage recovery, since 1996 all the year-long outages were for safety restoration…………………………There is no agreed-upon method for storing the wastes for 10,000 years, much less 240,000. Currently, many nuclear power plants in the U.S. store these wastes in deep water pools or dry concrete casks. Sabotage, terrorist attacks or earthquakes at one of these sites could release significant amounts of radioactive materials into the troposphere, contaminating large areas for decades……………………………..

America seems to be entering an era of socialistic corporatism. The measures for supporting nuclear energy are much akin to the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector. The government has visibly become an instrument for insuring private profit at public cost.

In reality, nuclear energy in this country is just a zombie kept alive by massive government subsidies.

Power cuts feared in UK nuclear plants crisis
THE INDEPENDENT 5 Oct 08 Six out of 10 of the nation’s atomic stations are operating below capacity, throwing their future into doubt. By Geoffrey Lean and Jonathan Owen…………………..The majority of the power stations are in dire trouble, and their failure is leading to the most acute concern in years that the country may run short of electricity this winter.

Two of the 10 have been idle for almost a year, with both reactors out of action due to corrosion. Another two have had one of their reactors closed down for months. And yet another two are having to run both their reactors at less than three-quarters of their normal power for safety reasons.

And even that is not the end of it. Of the four that are still in good working condition, one is due to shut down permanently in two years’ time, a second is partially closed for routine maintenance, and a third is facing safety questions following the discovery of flaws in similar reactors in Japan………………………..it proves the inherent unreliability of the technology, and point to construction problems, delays and cost overruns in the only two nuclear power stations at present being built in Europe, in Finland and France.

RCR QUARTERLY REVIEW Uranium’s crystal ball is price sobering
Mineweb Ross Louthean 05 Oct 2008  The industry average long-term uranium price has been downgraded $US15/lb by RCR’s just-released quarterly Equity Research Report from its third quarter report to $US80/lb and saying  that in the current quarter it will trade between $US50-65/lb.

At the time the report was released the spot uranium price was $US55/lb.

RCR’s principal, John Wilson, said global equity markets remain volatile and investor sentiment cautious and this has seen the junior end of the resource sector “disproportionately negatively impacted.”

“A number of companies are trading below their cash backing and we expect smaller cap public companies to continue to face funding challenges,” he said…………………..

The market valuation of Australian companies with one or more uranium projects is down 11% over the past month and down 44% over the past 12 months.

This compares with a selection of Canadian companies with one or more uranium projects, down 25% over the past month and down 57% over the past 12 months………………………….”Producers, however, could face significant challenges in financing and developing new projects, including spiralling cost pressures and potential delays variously relating to permitting, infrastructure development and commissioning.”