“Scotland has massive renewable resources and as European Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger said just a few weeks ago, can be a renewable energy powerhouse of Europe. Why on earth would anyone want to put all of that at risk by diverting money to pay for new nuclear white-elephants that are significantly more expensive than renewables?
Gunther Oettinger
Wednesday 27th March 2013 | 10:59
SNP press release
The announcement of public funding for nuclear energy projects has shattered Westminster’s no nuclear subsidy promise and demonstrated that the Westminster Government simply cannot be trusted to keep its word.
Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable has announced £31 million in public funding for companies involved in the nuclear energy industry, making a mockery of the Westminster Government’s coalition agreement promise that there would be ‘no public subsidy’ for new nuclear energy.
The coalition agreement also states that ‘Liberal Democrats have long opposed any new nuclear construction’, raising questions as to why Vince Cable has allocated funds in this way.
Commenting, SNP Energy Spokesperson Mike Weir MP said:
“This funding announcement clearly breaks the Westminster Government’s promise and completely undermines the credibility of Vince Cable and the Lib Dems.
“With a recent opinion poll showing that a majority of people in Scotland are opposed to new nuclear energy, there is no justification for Westminster to be wasting public money in this way.
“Nuclear energy simply cannot be delivered without eye-wateringly high levels of subsidy. In these difficult economic times, the last thing people need is to see their money wasted on nuclear white elephants that are significantly more expensive than renewable options.
“Scotland has massive renewable resources and as European Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger said just a few weeks ago, can be a renewable energy powerhouse of Europe. Why on earth would anyone want to put all of that at risk by diverting money to pay for new nuclear white-elephants that are significantly more expensive than renewables?
“With the Westminster Government breaking promise after promise, it is little wonder that people in Scotland want major decisions to be made by a Scottish Government directly accountable to people living here.
“Only a Yes vote will ensure that the decisions that matter to Scotland are made by a Scottish Parliament directly elected by people living in Scotland.”
“…Why on earth would anyone want to put all of that at risk by diverting money to pay for new nuclear white-elephants that are significantly more expensive than renewables?…”
….’We in Britain should be leading the nuclear power industry, because we have such a glorious past,’ notes Judge. ‘When I was young, the smartest graduates would want to become nuclear engineers or physicists. Now, the dream is to do an engineering undergrad, then an MBA, then to get shipped off to a bank to become an energy analyst.’….. Lady Barbara Judge 🙂
….The International Energy Agency has estimated that there will be £930bn of investment in new nuclear reactors in the next 20 years, and £230bn in decommissioning and waste storage…..
The business secretary, Vince Cable, added: “We need to sharpen [the UK’s] competitive advantages to become a top table nuclear nation.”
“In 2010, the Climate Change Committee identified the low-carbon technologies the UK should develop and deploy in order to become world leading. The list included offshore wind and marine energy. It did not include nuclear. With the cost of offshore wind predicted to be on par with or cheaper than nuclear by 2020, there is no rationale for distorting policy to prop up the nuclear dinosaur.”
Nuclear-free future not an option for UK energy strategy, says chief adviser
Prof John Beddington affirmed importance of atomic power to UK at the launch of long-term nuclear strategy
Nuclear-free future not an option for UK energy strategy, says chief adviser
Prof John Beddington affirmed importance of atomic power to UK at the launch of long-term nuclear strategy
Chief scientific adviser to the UK government, John Beddington, said nuclear power is an important part of the UK’s energy future. May 2009. Photograph: David Wimsett/UPPA/Photoshot
The government said its nuclear strategy would help seize the economic opportunities of a £1 trillion global market and provide 40,000 UK jobs.
Prof Sir John Beddington, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said new nuclear power was essential: “We really can’t see a future for the UK energy sector, if we are to meet our climate change obligations and have resilience in the power sector, without a significant component of nuclear. A non-nuclear scenario is not one the government is thinking seriously about.”
Beddington led a review of the nuclear research and development programme needed if the government’s high-nuclear scenario for future energy is to be feasible. Prof David Mackay, chief scientific adviser at the department of energy and climate change, said this scenario – one of four set out in the 2011 carbon plan – envisaged 75GW of nuclear capacity in 2050 providing 86% of the UK’s electricity, a situation he compared to France today.
The industrial strategy, welcomed by the nuclear industry which worked with government to develop it, covers every part of the nuclear chain from new build, operations and maintenance and waste management. It includes:
…….HIROSHIMA – In a first, the Hiroshima High Court ruled Monday that the results of last December’s general election in Hiroshima’s No. 1 and 2 districts were invalid because of significant disparities in the weight of their votes.
The ruling makes it the first court in the nation to declare an election result void as lawsuits continue to flood the system over vote-value disparities……
Tokyo court rules Dec. 16 election unconstitutional but not invalid
March 06, 2013
By RYUJIRO KOMATSU/ Staff Writer
The Tokyo High Court on March 6 ruled that the December Lower House election was unconstitutional, but stopped short of invalidating the results, the first verdict handed down in a series of lawsuits over the election.
Lawyers around Japan filed lawsuits asking that the election be invalidated because it was conducted without reapportioning districts to overcome the imbalance in the value of a vote due to population discrepancies. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that this imbalance was “in a state of unconstitutionality.”
Verdicts in the other lawsuits are expected by March 27. The Supreme Court is then expected to hand down a uniform ruling by the end of the year.
In March 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the August 2009 Lower House election was in a state of unconstitutionality because the largest difference in the value of a single vote between the most and least populous districts was 2.3 times. In its ruling, the Supreme Court called for the elimination of the process of first giving all prefectures one seat before distributing the remaining seats by population. That process was viewed as being the main cause for the large difference in the value of a vote.
However, the Diet in November passed a bill that only cut seats from the five least populous prefectures. The bill passed on the day the Lower House was dissolved.
The Dec. 16 Lower House election was conducted using the same electoral district boundaries used in the 2009 election that was ruled in a state of unconstitutionality by the Supreme Court. For that reason, the difference in the value of a vote between the most and least populous districts had increased to 2.43 times.
The Tokyo Election Administration Commission, the defendant in the case, argued that the call to invalidate the recent election should be rejected because time was needed to reapportion districts, and the 21 months between the Supreme Court ruling and the December Lower House election was insufficient to make that change.
Under the Public Offices Election Law, lawsuits seeking to invalidate election results are first submitted to high courts rather than district courts as is the usual case with lawsuits. While there is also a provision in that law that calls for efforts to be made to issue rulings within 100 days of the lawsuit being filed, that has previously not been followed to the letter. However, that has apparently changed, as the Tokyo High Court ruling came 79 days after the lawsuit was filed.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1976 and 1985 that Lower House elections were unconstitutional because of the large gap in the value of a vote. However, the court stopped short of invalidating the results of those elections.
The lawsuits related to the 2009 Lower House election led to four rulings at high courts that said it was unconstitutional, three that said it was held “in a state of unconstitutionality,” on the ground that there had not been enough time before the election to correct the vote imbalance, and two rulings that said it was constitutional.
By RYUJIRO KOMATSU/ Staff Writer
Japan- Allegations of General Election Fraud on Dec. 16, 2012 come to light!
Published: March 25th, 2013 at 8:31 pm ET By ENENews
itle: Powerpoint Presentation: Ken Buesseler Source: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, Day 1 Author: The Helen Caldicott Foundation Date Presented: March 11, 2013
I found a website that holds historical data on the SSTA (see surface temperature anomaly’s) which indicates that region seems to activate from time to time (maybe water releases?) although it get weekly updates which makes the results less accurate… the current spot seems to begin at around the week of 30 January
It’s a pesky little website so change the date manually to go back in time
Diagram of Contaminated front of water to March 2012
“So how far and how fast [is the cesium traveling]? If you take a broader look at the Pacific Ocean and you look for a front of where you see the edge of the cesium moving. This goes to March 2012, about 180 degrees. This is actually based on samples, not models.”
nuclear-news 
