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South Dakota – take heed from Colorado’s bad experience with uranium mining

thumbs-downColorado has ‘experience’ with uranium mines http://www.argusleader.com/story/opinion/readers/2014/06/03/letter-colorado-experience-uranium-mines/9942453/

 

Gena Marie ParkhurstRapid City South Dakota can learn from Colorado’s experience with uranium mining. While South Dakota has 272 abandoned uranium-oreuranium mines and prospects, Colorado has 387. While South Dakota has yet to experience an operating in-situ leach uranium mine (Powertech/Azarga is attempting to permit the first one 15 miles northwest of Edgemont), Colorado has experienced experimental in-situ leach uranium mining, which left elevated levels of gross alpha radiation, beta radiation, nitrate, ammonia and selenium in the underground aquifer. The contamination got worse after the mine was declared “restored.”

Colorado has had enough. Colorado House legislators recently passed new regulations on uranium processing. The bill sets minimum standards for groundwater cleanups before a company can be let off the hook. It also requires uranium and thorium mines to get a radioactive materials license from the state health department if they use a new process that involves injecting water into the mine’s rock formations.

Colorado state Representative Jared Wright, R-Fruita, said new mining technologies often pollute, despite promises to be safe and clean. “This bill is about protecting our citizens, those we are all here today to serve,” Wright said.

Let’s hope our legislators take heed and protect our water in 2015’s legislative session.

June 5, 2014 Posted by | environment, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

India on the road to a renewable energy revolution?

India’s energy future: Australian coal or renewable revolution? The Conversation,  Craig Froome Global Change Institute – Clean Energy Program Manager at University of Queensland “…….…Renewable revolution?

India’s renewable energy ambitions are driven both by the need to reduce carbon emissions and by falling renewableenergy prices (relative to increasing coal prices).

Currently India has four renewable energy schemes. They are:

  • Renewable Mix Target (Electricity)
  • Renewable Capacity Target
  • Renewable Portfolio Standard (PAT Scheme)
  • Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission

The Renewable Mix Target sets a target of 15% of India’s total electricity generation by 2020. This target ignores large-scale hydroelectricity, but with renewable energy generation currently at 12% India is in a good starting position.

The Renewable Capacity Target is a target for installed capacity. Set in 2012, it aims for 41.3 gigawatts of installed renewable capacity by 2017, increasing to 72.4 gigawatts by 2022. As of March 31 India has 29.5 gigawatts installed capacity. The capacity target also sets ambitions for individual technologies 4 to 20 gigawatts of solar capacity, and 20.2 gigawatts to 27.3 gigawatts of wind energy by 2017 and 2022. Solar and wind currently stand at 2.2 and 20.2 gigawatts respectively.

The portfolio standard is a cap-and-trade scheme, due to end in 2015. Current estimates suggest the scheme has had the desired effect, and rules for continuing the scheme are being considered.

Finally, the solar mission is a solar-specific program to increase grid-based generation to 20 gigawatts by 2020, funded by a national feed-in tariff. More than 80 solar manufacturers are now establishing in India in anticipation for the roll out……..http://theconversation.com/indias-energy-future-australian-coal-or-renewable-revolution-26569

June 5, 2014 Posted by | India, renewable | Leave a comment

USA gives Vietnam a better nuclear deal than it gave to UAE

Pride and pragmatism: The UAE’s nuclear strategy, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2 JUNE 2014 Lauren Carty When the United States and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) signed an agreement for nuclear cooperation in 2009, the terms of the deal were quickly heralded as a gold standard for US nuclear negotiations and nonproliferation goals. Not only did the UAE agree to forgo uranium enrichment and nuclear waste reprocessing—an unprecedented concession in a bilateral agreement of this type—but the United States also retained the right to order the UAE to remove special fissionable material “if exceptional circumstances of concern from a nonproliferation standpoint so require.”

For its part, the United States agreed that it would not extend terms more favorable than these to any other non-nuclear-weapon state in the Middle East in a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement. The Emirates, however, probably did not foresee the United States backing off its high standards in future agreements with countries outside the Middle East, such as the 2014 agreement with Vietnam that is awaiting Congress’ likely approval. In spite of the Emirates’ subtle animosity over the more flexible US-Vietnam agreement, they have taken it in stride, and have actually used it as an opportunity to lead and exert dominance over the Arab world, as well as to boast of their commitments to sustainability and clean energy technologies.

A double standard? Unlike any other US nuclear agreement to share certain nuclear technologies with its allies, the 2009 arrangement included the stipulation that the UAE must import low enriched uranium rather than building its own enrichment facilities. Some analysts were puzzled when, five years later, the United States entered into a nuclear cooperation deal with Vietnam that allowed the country to enrich uranium. If the gold standard had been established with the UAE in 2009, why did the United States not apply it to Vietnam? Outmaneuvering China is one answer to this question, along with the fact that Vietnam hardly has the infrastructure to undertake a viable enrichment program. These considerations gave the United States incentive to create nuclear foreign policy on a case-by-case basis.

Whatever the reasons for the discrepancy, the UAE is fully aware that it received the short end of the stick………

Nuclear power is just part of the UAE’s strategy for meeting future energy demands. Abu Dhabi—one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE—has become the headquarters for the International Renewable Energy Agency, an organization of 163 countries including the United States and the European Union. Another emirate, Dubai, looks to gain recognition for its environmental sustainability efforts, aiming to be in the top 10 carbon-neutral cities in the world by the end of the decade……http://thebulletin.org/pride-and-pragmatism-uae%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy7219

June 5, 2014 Posted by | politics international, Saudi Arabia | Leave a comment

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