Rapid growth of China’s solar sector as solar panel prices plummet
The global solar sector has witnessed some extraordinary growth in the past couple of years. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the prices of solar panels have fallen by almost 42% in a single year to $0.87 per watt.
CHINA SETS 2015 SOLAR ENERGY TARGET AT 21GW Solar PV Investor, BY SARFARAZ KHAN | 12 JULY 2012 Although the massive target might seem overly ambitious to some, most of the industry analysts believe that it is still very modest. China’s local media has revealed that the National Energy Administration (NEA) has decided to quadruple the country’s 2015 solar energy target to 21GW. Continue reading
The sickness toll of uranium for USA veteran
Uranium Illness Leaves Veteran Without A Doctor http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/07/12/uranium-illness-leaves-veteran-without-a-doctor/ FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – James Fitch of Fort Worth has spent the last five years connected to an oxygen tank. “I have to have oxygen 24 hours a day,” said Fitch.
It’s a sad irony, because after serving in the Air Force, he spent roughly the same amount of time grinding uranium for the Phillips Petroleum Mill in Ambrosia Lake, New Mexico. “You had a lot of dust from crushing it down. The dust gets airborne and you breathe it in,” explained Fitch.
It was the 1960s during the Cold War and the U.S. government had contracted with the Mill to extract uranium to build nuclear weapons. Back then, the men worked without covering their mouths and noses.
It would eventually catch up with Fitch in 2004 when he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis from exposure to uranium. Continue reading
Cyberwar developing instead of nuclear war?
Cyber war on Iran has only just begun INQUIRER, By: Dan De Luce Agence France-Presse, July 13th, 2012 WASHINGTON – A US cyber war against Iran’s nuclear program may have only just begun and could escalate with explosions 
triggered by digital sabotage, experts say.
Although the Iranian regime remains vulnerable to more cyber attacks in the aftermath of the “Stuxnet” worm that disrupted its uranium enrichment work, Tehran may be receiving help from Russian proxies for its digital security, some analysts say. Continue reading
Canada’s govt landing tax-payers with unnecessary nuclear power costs
Greens want Ontario nuclear costs reviewed BY JONATHAN JENKINS Toronto Sun, JULY 12, 2012 TORONTO – Ontario’s Green Party is asking for an independent review of all nuclear costs in Ontario.
“Protecting our pocketbooks from nuclear cost overruns is clearly not a priority for the McGuinty government,” Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said in a news release.
“Every nuclear project in Ontario’s history has gone over budget. It’s an irresponsible waste of our money to pay $26 million for the nuclear industry to study their own costs.”….
Ontario suspended plans to build the two new reactors in 2009 after costs estimate from three companies — Westinghouse, Candu and Areva — came in far above what the government had been expecting.
But now that Bentley is restarting the process by paying Westinghouse and Candu to submit estimates, New Democrat energy critic Peter Tabuns called the expense “just crazy”.
“Giving people tens of millions of dollars just to prepare a bid on a contract, I just don’t think is reasonable,” Tabuns said. “OPG is a big sophisticated organization with its own staff. They can do their own analysis.”
Ontario now has a surplus of electrical generation and running what it has is very expensive, Tabuns said. Building more nuclear now — even if it’s just to replace aging units at Pickering — risks blowing the budget.
“Why would we go back to a mid-twentieth century technology?” he said.“Whatever they put forward (on cost), double it. If they’re saying $10 to $14 billion, then it’s probably going to be $20 to $30 billion.” http://www.torontosun.com/2012/07/12/greens-want-ontario-nuclear-costs-reviewed
Some Fukushima children have “lifetime” radiation dose to thyroid glands
Several children were judged to have received an equivalent lifetime dose to the thyroid.
But the government says it does not plan to notify the parents out of fear of creating anxiety.
Fukushima kids cop ‘lifetime’ radiation dose http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2012-07-12/fukushima-kids-cop-lifetime-radiation-dose/978786 12 July 2012, A Japanese study has found some children who live near the Fukushima nuclear plant have received “lifetime” doses of radiation to their thyroid glands. Continue reading
Japan cutting electricity consumption through summer
Japan begins power saving despite nuclear restart, Business Recorder, 02 JULY 2012 TOKYO: Electricity saving targets came into effect in Japan on Monday as the country eyes a power shortfall over the hot summer, despite the weekend re-start of a nuclear reactor.
The government has asked households and businesses served by six utilities in central and western Japan to voluntarily cut consumption of electricity by between five and 15 percent on summer 2010 levels through to September 7.
Power consumption usually rises in the summer as people turn on air conditioners to cope with the sometimes sweltering weather. A seven-percent reduction target will also come into force in Japan’s northernmost — and more temperate — island of Hokkaido on July 23….
The targets come as Japan ended almost two months without any functioning nuclear reactors, with the restart Sunday of Unit No. 3 at Oi nuclear power plant……
http://www.brecorder.com/world/south-asia/65136-japan-begins-power-saving-despite-nuclear-restart-.html
More cops than locals at Roxby Downs
Show of blue force at protest camp The Transcontinental, Port Augusta 13 Jul, 2012 “MORE cops than locals” is how the police presence in Roxby Downs has been described by residents ahead of a protest rally at Olympic Dam this weekend.
A blockade remains in place on the Olympic Way – the main throughfare to the BHP Olympic Dam mine – with police checking the credentials of motorists who try to gain access.
Hundreds of protestors have set up camp about four kilometres from the mine gates.
Spokeswoman for the protestors Nectaria Calan from Friends of the Earth is encouraging locals to engage with their cause. “Roxby residents are absolutely welcome to come out and have a chat,” she said. The group is opposed to uranium mining……
http://www.transcontinental.com.au/news/local/news/general/show-of-blue-force-at-protest-camp/2623692.aspx
Anti uranium protestors arriving at Olympic Damn
Protesters gather at Olympic Dam, Herald Sun, AAP July 13, 2012 ANTI-NUCLEAR activists are gathering at Olympic Dam in South Australia’s north to protest against the proposed $30 billion expansion of BHP Billiton’s copper, uranium and gold mine.
Organisers say the five days of action, beginning on Saturday, are planned to be peaceful, with people expected from across Australia. “We anticipate a vibrant protest camp which combines educational workshops, entertainment and non-violent direct action,” Nectaria Calan said.
“We will converge on the site of the current mine and approved expansion as the South Australian and Australian governments have failed to put the environment and people’s health before short-term economic concerns.
“The impacts of this project will remain long after BHP Billiton packs up, repatriates its profits, and moves on to the next project.”
Police are taking no chances, setting up a major security operation, closing several roads and declaring the area a protected zone……
The protest over Olympic Dam follows court action by Aboriginal elder Kevin Buzzacott in his bid to block the mine’s expansion. Mr Buzzacott asked the Federal Court to block the project on the grounds that federal Environment Minister Tony Burke had not given enough consideration to a number of issues including the risks posed by the storage of radioactive tailings.
His case was dismissed but he has since appealed to the Full Court of the Federal Court which is yet to hand down its judgment. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/protesters-gather-at-olympic-dam/story-e6frf7kf-1226425607523
Britain’s disastrous record in technology to manage nuclear waste
Minister admits total failure of Sellafield ‘MOX’ plant http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/minister-admits-total-failure-of-sellafield-mox-plant-793489.html BY GEOFFREY LEAN It was a deeply embarrassing moment for the Government, though it passed almost without notice.
Late last month, the Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, had to admit to one of the most comprehensive and catastrophic failures in British industrial history – and one that has led directly to the plans to ship weapons-ready plutonium to France.
Answering a question from Dai Davies, the independent MP for Blaenau Gwent, Mr Wicks confessed that a new plant at Sellafield, built amid great controversy at a cost of £473m, had comprehensively failed to work. Continue reading
Nuclear industry continues to need a law to protect itself from itself!
this is the only industry that has a law protecting it from itself. The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act of 1957 caps the liability of power plant owners and their insurance companies for nuclear accidents at $12.6 billion, after which taxpayers are on the hook. Chernobyl is estimated to have cost some $235 billion for containment, cleanup, and resettlement. Similar costs for the Fukushima disaster are yet to be determined, but estimates have also been in the several hundred-billion dollar range. Many proponents of nuclear power are the same “let the market work” advocates in economics and politics today. If the market were allowed to function in this case, would any new nuclear power plants be built in America — or existing ones re-licensed — if Price-Anderson were repealed?
Is New Nuclear Energy Just Mission Impossible? HUFFINGTON POST, Terry Tamminen Former Secretary, California EPA 07/11/2012 “….the Mission Impossible assignment facing global economies today — powering growth with nuclear energy.
The debate over nuclear energy has generally boiled down to the challenge of waste disposal. Of course there is always talk of safety, but proponents quickly point to the half-century of global experience with nuclear energy and the very few, albeit disastrous, incidents of the proverbial genie escaping its lead-lined, super-cooled, concrete bottle.
Proponents are also quick to dismiss waste issues by pointing to new technologies that recycle much of the spent fuel. The wild card that is common to every nuclear facility and which puts this technology squarely in the Mission Impossible category however, is not technology or waste — it’s human error….. the fact that engineers did not predict it [the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe] and that everyone at Edison is surprised by the failure attests to the limits of human calculation — even after that half-century of experience.
Nor can we dismiss the waste disposal issue so quickly, especially in an age when terrorists are thought to covet spent nuclear material for making mayhem. Delaware Senator Tom Carper commented recently that Congress has tried to solve the disposal issue for decades, but “over 30 years later, we find ourselves at what is really a dead end,” he said. Continue reading
Photographer to document anti-nuclear protest and police reaction at Olympic Dam uranium mine
David Bradbury is traveling to Roxby with a small camera crew to document the actions at Olympic Dam as part of Lizard’s Revenge. He is driving down (ie. heading south) and is aware of the roadblocks the state is putting in place, but is hoping to make it down by today or tomorrow. His trip and the festival can be followed on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Bradbury/349981725057349
BHP Billiton who own the mine and run it ‘like Nazi Germany’; so one of the workers told me three years ago when I was there filming after he told me not so politely to put my camera away and ‘f- off’. The miners and the huge multi national mining giant don’t like their right to earn big money and profits ripping out the Heart of Australia and polluting the precious water supply of future generations. Continue reading
Worldwide nuclear industry control of safety regulations
Those “wider structural problems” are far wider than Japan–they are global. The “regulatory capture” cited in the Japanese panel’s report has occurred all over the world–with the nuclear industry and those promoting nuclear power in governments making sure that the nuclear foxes are in charge of the nuclear hen houses. The “pus that pervades Japanese society” is international.
Nuclear Foxes In Charge of the Nuclear Hen Houses, OpEd News, 11 July 12 By Karl Grossman The conclusion of a report of a Japanese parliamentary panel issued last week that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster was rooted in government-industry “collusion” and thus was “man-made” is mirrored throughout the world. The “regulatory capture” cited by the panel is the pattern among nuclear agencies right up to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Continue reading
Nuclear power licensing and relicensing at a dead end in USA
opposition groups are saying that they will push hard to require site-specific evaluations, which could add years to any licensing or re-licensing process.
Nuclear Waste Issue Searing American Landscape Forbes, 11 July 12, Nuclear waste possibly ranks as that industry’s top quagmire: Nuclear plant operators are supposed to store their spent fuel onsite until it is properly cooled and at which point, it is supposed to go into a permanent burial facility. The problem is that such an eternal resting spot has never come to pass.
The dilemma has gotten even more complex now that a federal appeals court ruled last month that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not properly do its job when it previously told those same nuclear operators that they could extend their onsite storage from 30 years to 60 years . With such a triumphant court decision in their hands, environmental and citizen groups pounced: They subsequently asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia to stop issuing any nuclear construction or operating licenses until the NRC does its job.
“It’s hard to see how federal and state officials can justify putting more taxpayers or customer money at risk on new reactor projects until this situation is resolved,” says Former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford, who has lent his support to the 22 groups, called CleanEnergy.org , who filed this petition before the court. Continue reading
Japan Atomic Energy board “sanitises” education about nuclear radiation
The editing of the supplementary reader was commissioned to the Japan Atomic Energy Relations Organization, where senior officials of power utilities serve as board members.
Both the supplementary reader and the teacher’s guide tout the benefits of radiation, but neither of them mentions last year’s nuclear disaster and the public’s alarm about high levels of radiation exposure
No well-trodden path for radiation literacy classes in Fukushima schools July 12, 2012 THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, by Yasuhito Watanabe and Midori Iki. Schools in Fukushima Prefecture, still reeling from last year’s nuclear disaster, find themselves in uncharted territory with a new addition to their curriculums: radiation literacy classes.
Fukushima’s prefectural board of education ordained that between one and three hours of homeroom activity, or “integrated studies,” be set aside every year for the topic from this academic year through all grades. Continue reading
Fukushima children did receive high radiation to thyroid glands
Study finds lifetime thyroid doses of radiation in Fukushima children July 11, 2012 By YURI OIWA/ Staff Writer Children in Fukushima Prefecture likely received thyroid gland doses of internal radiation, despite earlier government assurances that the levels of such doses were zero, according to an independent study…… subscription only
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201207110058
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PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
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