nuclear-news

The nuclear resuscitation – finished before it really got started

Diesendorf expects events in Japan will see nuclear power continue its decline – ”despite the claims of its proponents, it is already an industry in stagnation” – and will drive renewable expansion. ”China and India were doing a lot already on renewables … enough to wipe out nuclear.” He foresees increasing emphasis on wind, on solar, and on concentrated solar thermal power.

Is this the end of the nuclear revival?, The Age, Jo Chandler, March 19, 2011 “……Professor Frank von Hippel.”This is definitely in the Chernobyl league now. If the reactors go, that’s bad, of course. But the real concern at this point is if those … spent-fuel pools catch fire. There are many Chernobyls’ worth of radioactive material in there.”…….

says Griffith University’s Professor Ian Lowe, a leading authority on energy and the environment, nuclear critic and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, is that there has been a net decrease in new nuclear capacity coming online recently, while wind power has surged. Like Associate Professor Mark Diesendorf, an energy policy expert from the University of New South Wales, he is confident that with political will and aggressive policies and investment, renewables could meet global needs sooner rather than later. Fukushima, they hope, might provide the impetus……..

”Nuclear-power boosters expected that by now nuclear power would produce perhaps 80 to 90 per cent of all electrical energy globally,” nuclear experts of the International Panel on Fissile Materials said late last year in a report tracking the fortunes of nuclear energy.

Instead, nuclear plants today account for less than 14 per cent of global electric-power generation.

While ”the routine health risks and greenhouse-gas emissions from fission power are small relative to those associated with coal … there are catastrophic risks,” the panel wrote…….

Diesendorf expects events in Japan will see nuclear power continue its decline – ”despite the claims of its proponents, it is already an industry in stagnation” – and will drive renewable expansion. ”China and India were doing a lot already on renewables … enough to wipe out nuclear.” He foresees increasing emphasis on wind, on solar, and on concentrated solar thermal power.

Ian Lowe takes a similar line. Fukushima will ”derail even the limited progress the nuclear industry was making in trying to talk itself up as a solution to climate change”……

March 19, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, business and costs