nuclear-news

Thinking people can but wonder what’s wrong with the US NRC, and those working for the nuclear industry in general. Are they suffering from psychopathy (anti-social personality disorders)? Are they lacking in common sense along with having cheated their way through school? Many would have gotten their training on US Navy Nuclear Subs, and it was recently revealed that there was seven years of cheating on one or more US Nuclear Navy exams. Already, anyone who would willingly work on a nuclear sub is a bit strange upstairs, to say the least. Overall one can suspect that evil people within the US NRC promote those who are either not very bright or not very knowledgeable. The same appears true for the US EPA.

Do they hate all life in America so much? Many US NRC workers are foreigners, probably with dual citizenship. Even the head of the utility research group…

Opinion:

¶ “Can Regions, Cities become 100% Dependent on renewable energy? Absurd? Not anymore”- Strides are being taken to move entire regions, as well as cities, to 100% renewable energy, according to speakers at the May 13-15 Renewable Cities Forum 2015 in Vancouver. Renewables are transforming policy. [Bloomberg BNA]

Vancouver downtown, winter sunset. Photo by Pmagn. Wikimedia Commons.

Science and Technology:

¶ A project testing combination of solar PV, combined heat and power systems and battery storage at a commercial facility in Germany could be adapted and scaled up elsewhere, according to General Electric, one of the project’s partners. Other partners are solar provider Belectric, and Jenbacher, for CHP technology. [CleanTechnica]

World:

¶ The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group now comprises over 75 of the world’s greatest cities. In this role it represents a quarter of the world’s economy and nearly 8% of its population. Now it…

Baby California Sea Lions by Eric Boerner-NOAA ca 2007

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) compared to Chernobyl

Areas one to two thousand miles away (UK and Scandinavia) remain highly contaminated by Chernobyl almost 30 years on, even though the half-life of Cesium 137 is 30 years. One curie is 37 billion becquerels (radioactive disintegrations-emissions per second).






From “Dry Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Problems and Solutions“, by Donna Gilmore SanOnofreSafety.org, May 17, 2015 https://sanonofresafety.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/dry-cask-storagedgilmore2015may17a.pdf (With the exception of the baby sea lions, all images above this point, including Chernobyl vs SONGS graph are from Donna Gilmore of SOS. Chernobyl commentary our own. There are a total of 45 important slides found at the above link, including a good pic of Gorleben, above ground, interim storage in Germany.)

Germany, Switzerland, Japan and probably everyone else except the USA have their interim dry casks INSIDE. As seen below, comparison…

Anti Nuclear & Clean Energy Campaign – Australia FoE

As a former long time activist with Friends of the Earth this is horrifying. Simon Bullock, Friends of the Earth’s senior campaigner on Climate Change and Energy has outlined the top ten priorities for Amber Rudd, the new head of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.  DECC was formed in 2008 amidst great hope for a new future tackling climate change and ensuring a genuinely sustainable future.  The grim reality of  DECC is that 95% of its budget goes to nuclear .  Almost all of the roughly £7.9 billion DECC budget during 2013/14 went towards “cleaning up”  the UK’s nuclear legacy largely at Sellafield through the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a government quango.  The NDA has also spent public money on buying up large areas of land around Sellafield – one would think as a buffer zone as a measure of protection for the…

World:

¶ The world’s first electrical car and passenger ferry powered by batteries has entered service in Norway. The ferry only uses 150 kWh per route, which corresponds to three days use of electricity in a standard Norwegian household. The ferry is powered by lithium-ion batteries charged by hydropower. [The Maritime Executive]

Battery-powered ferry in Norway.

¶ International Energy Agency and the World Bank have issued an update on progress countries have made on energy objectives. They say significant process has been made towards achieving widespread energy access, increased energy efficiency, and a greater development of renewable energy, but more is needed. [CleanTechnica]

¶ On Monday, the International Renewable Energy Agency released a report claiming that developing Djibouti’s significant renewable energy resources will allow the country to reach its goal of sourcing 100% of its energy from renewables by 2020. The country’s has geothermal, wind, and…

Year to-date is record warm

Only a few small areas of the globe were cooler than average in April 2015.

Staff Report

FRISCO — April’s globally averaged temperature was the fourth-warmest on record, at 1.33 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, according to federal climate trackers releasing the monthly Global State of the Climate update.

“Over time, [nuclear fuel] burnup has increased, allowing utilities to get more power out of their fuel before replacing it. Average burnup, around 35 GWd/MTU two decades ago, is over 45 GWd/MTU today. How hot and radioactive spent fuel is depends on burnup, the fuel’s initial makeup and conditions in the core. All these factors must be taken into account in designing dry storage and transport systems for spent fuel.” http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/bg-high-burnup-spent-fuel.html

Comment to the US NRC for 5/18/2015 High Burnup Fuel meeting, by Donna Gilmore of San Onofre Safety (Emphasis added):

The Nuclear Energy Institute, “NEI’s statement in today’s (5/8/2015) HBF meeting that high burnup fuel will be the same as lower burnup fuel is not supported by data. Also, when I pressed for data, NEI admitted their claim that “high burnup is better” based on how it acts in the reactor, not in dry storage…

Opinion:

¶ “President Obama Regrettably Approves Oil Drilling in the Arctic Ocean” – The Obama administration granted conditional approval to Shell Oil Company to begin exploratory drilling in the Arctic Ocean off the North Slope of Alaska on May 11, 2015. The decision represents a major compromise on global warming. [Energy Collective]

Shell Oil’s Polar Pioneer Arctic Drilling Rig. Photo by Chas Redmond from Seattle WA, USA. Wikimedia Commons.

World:

¶ A house in the hills above Stuttgart can theoretically generate enough energy to power itself and an electric car, with enough left over to feed back to into Germany’s national grid. The B10 house is designed to generate 200% energy, a target it hopes to hit within the next year. Almost the entire house is recyclable. [Wired.co.uk]

¶ Around 1.6 million premature deaths would be prevented annually if the world’s governments stopped subsidising fossil fuels, according…

About a year ago I wrote an article about the current state of play as to the performance of renewables. How they were doing in real terms, compared to what levels of growth are needed to offset dangerous climate change and peak oil. Well as we’ve just finished teaching for the year and marking season starts again for lecturers I thought it would be useful to repeat the exercise.

Figure 1: Renewables now accounts for 22% of global electricity use and 19% of TFC [Source: IEA, 2014]

Old Renewables v’s New Renewables

I’ve used the same methodology as last time. I’ve included the figures for both GW’s installed, separating electrical, thermal and fuels out (where possible) and then including the resulting TWh’s that such growth in capacity would yield. If I managed to get a reliable TWh, PJ or mtoe figure then its included (centre justified to make…

Scott Sklar, former head of the Solar Electric Industries Association and now the principal of The Stella Group, is one of America’s most knowledgeable and outspoken proponents of solar power, and has been for decades. In this piece, first posted (but with a somewhat garbled ending) on RenewableEnergyWorld.com, he takes on the false notion that everyone pays the same rates for electricity. We don’t. And that makes a difference when there are nuclear and fossil fuel utilities arguing that people without solar power are somehow subsidizing those who do have it. They don’t.

Many electric utilities are flexing their political muscles against solar net metering and state renewable portfolio standards (RPS). Their main issue is that other consumers are subsidizing solar (and renewables), particularly pointing to lower-income consumers. I have already written about the numerous studies that disprove those allegations, but that is not what this article is…

This interview, the fourth in a series on political topics, discusses philosophical issues that underlie recent debates about climate change. My interviewee is Dale Jamieson, a professor of environmental studies and philosophy at New York University. He is the author of “Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle to Stop Climate Change Failed — and What It Means for Our Future.” — Gary Gutting

Gary Gutting.: It’s clear that global warming is an established fact, and that a good amount of it is due to human activities. But to what extent can we reliably predict how warming will affect our lives if we do little or nothing about it, or predict the effects of various policies designed to lessen its effects? In other words, does climate science have sufficient predictive reliability to be a good guide to forming public policy?

Dale Jamieson: The difference in scale between what climate…

Nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard arrives back at HM Naval Base Clyde, Faslane, Scotland following a patrol. Date 29 November 2010, 16:00:21 SourceDefence CPOA(Phot) Tam McDonald This file is licensed under the Open Government Licence v1.0.
From Wikileaks:
“Trident whistleblower: nuclear ‘disaster waiting to happen’(on 2015-05-17)

“Please make sure this information is released. I don’t want to be in prison without anyone knowing the truth. ”
These are the words of UK Royal Navy “Trident” nuclear weapons submariner William McNeilly, aged 25.

Mr McNeilly, who has been in communications with WikiLeaks since the beginning of May, has decided he wants to go public about the detailed nuclear safety problems he says he has been “gathering for over a year”.

“This is bigger than me, it’s bigger than all of us. We are so close to a nuclear disaster it is shocking, and yet everybody is accepting the risk to…

Cameco Crow Butte ISL Nebraska

Canada’s Cameco and Russian State owned Rosatom (Uranium One) asked the US EPA for comment extensions-public hearings, because of apparent concerns re the economic impact of restoring groundwater on their US operations. Rosatom (essentially Russia) seems to fancy itself a small business, which might have to cease operations. (Public Submission Posted: 02/23/2015 ID: EPA-HQ-OAR-2012-0788-0026) (Let them hurry up then and go back to Russia and Cameco to Saskatchewan, after cleaning up their messes.) They got the extension they wanted, of course, which is apparently why the deadline is now 27 May.

This, in combination with the weak and toothless nature of the groundwater (aquifer) restoration required under the US EPA proposal, suggests that Cameco-Rosatom are currently mega-polluting the aquifers. How bad are they polluting that even a weak, toothless, standard raises alarm? It further raises the question of why Canada’s Cameco and Russia’s Rosatom are…

Opinion:

¶ “7 Facts That Prove the Renewable Energy Revolution Has Arrived” – The global transition to clean, renewable energy and away from nuclear and fossil fuels is well under way with remarkable developments happening every day. Here are seven important developments that may surprise you: [EcoWatch]

World:

¶ Giving local communities powers to stop onshore wind farms is one of the first things on the agenda of the new UK energy secretary, Amber Rudd. Personally, she enjoys the turbines, but her position is that they cannot be built on scale in places where people do not want them, she told The Sunday Times.
[SeeNews Renewables]

Wind turbine in UK. Author: Mark Thompson. License: Creative Commons. Attribution 2.0 Generic

¶ The Irish Green Party has called on Dublin to support domestic rooftop solar development ahead of utility-scale solar farms. Party leader Eamon Ryan says businesses and…