Japan and France in a marketing frenzy to sell nuclear technology

Hollande is on a three-day visit to Tokyo accompanied by several cabinet ministers and more than 30 executives, including the head of France’s nuclear energy giant Areva, Luc Oursel.

As well as agreeing to boost the exports of nuclear technology, Tokyo and Paris confirmed plans to cooperate on Japan’s troubled nuclear spent fuel reprocessing and fast-breeder projects,

France, Japan join forces for larger share of nuclear market http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/us-japan-france-nuclear-idUSBRE9560C720130607 By Antoni Slodkowski TOKYOJun 7, 2013 Japan and France on Friday agreed to boost nuclear cooperation to secure a larger share of global atomic energy markets as Tokyo’s pro-nuclear government looks to restart reactors despite public unease in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

The agreement comes hot on the heels of a $22 billion deal struck in May between Japanese and French nuclear giants to build Turkey’s secondnuclear power plant.

Both agreements have the strong support of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been touting Japan’s nuclear safety standards on trips overseas, even as the wrecked nuclear plant in Fukushima has suffered a spate of radioactive leaks and remains in a precarious state.

“When it comes to atomic power plants, we will respond to expectations that Japanese nuclear technology will help raise global safety standards,” said Abe during a joint news conference with the French President Francois Hollande.

“I believe that Japan and France are the world’s best partners in this respect,” said Abe.

Hollande is on a three-day visit to Tokyo accompanied by several cabinet ministers and more than 30 executives, including the head of France’s nuclear energy giant Areva, Luc Oursel.

As well as agreeing to boost the exports of nuclear technology, Tokyo and Paris confirmed plans to cooperate on Japan’s troubled nuclear spent fuel reprocessing and fast-breeder projects, but no further details were provided in the joint statement released at the news conference.Reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant triggered by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 shook the industry and raised questions over whether atomic energy was safe.

Tens of thousands of anti-nuclear protesters marched in Tokyo on Sunday shouting slogans against Abe’s plans to restart nuclear reactors deemed safe by Japan’s new nuclear watchdog, which was set up after the Fukushima catastrophe highlighted oversight failures by its predecessor.

The operator of the crippled Fukushima plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co, on Wednesday found a new leak in storage tanks that hold contaminated water. On Tuesday, Tepco said it had detected radioactive caesium in groundwater flowing into the plant — overturning an early finding that contamination was negligible.

A string of leaks and power outages plagued the facility in March and April and the plant’s still precarious state serves as a reminder of the poor management of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, experts say.

1.This Month

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Energy efficiency – theme for July 2019

Energy efficiency represents the single largest potential contributor to global emissions reduction, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2017). It should be a key part of the global energy strategy, for several reasons:

It could reduce global electric demand by more than 20 per cent, based on current rates in the U.S. power sector, while maintaining high levels of services such as heating and lighting.
It avoids the need for increased energy, capacity and grid services, making it the least expensive way to decarbonise at scale.
It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes.

A dramatic example of the power of energy efficiency is lighting. In 2017 the United States passed the milestone of 1 billion LED and CFL lights installed, avoiding 142 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions, at a cost of about $7 per ton of avoided carbon dioxide. In contrast, the cumulative installed capacity of rooftop solar reached 8,000 MW in 2017, saving 8 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, at a cost of $360 per ton. Lighting efficiency thus yielded almost 18 times the avoided carbon dioxide, at about 2 per cent the cost per ton of rooftop solar.

Google provides another example of the power of energy efficiency. Its data centers now use 50 per cent less energy than the average data center, according to the company. Google also developed an improved chip, the TPU, which performs 83 times better than standard CPUs. The new chip allowed Google to reduce power consumption at its data centers by a factor of 30—far exceeding the effect on Google’s carbon footprint of all of the company’s renewable energy purchases. ” – John Woolard, Eco Business, 10 June 2019

nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope