nuclear-news

It’s no great revelation to say that the mainstream media, fractured though it may be these days, holds great power. It’s not direct power; the media can’t make actual decisions. Rather, the media grabs a theme–a meme if you want–and holds on to it, and repeats it, and provides slight twists to it so it can be repeated again, until it becomes accepted wisdom. While the media, especially the mainstream media, is often behind the curve, behind reality, once it catches up and snares and spreads that meme, it doesn’t take long for it to establish itself. And once a concept becomes accepted wisdom, then the actual decisions tend to follow in unison. As a group, politicians rarely stray far from accepted wisdom.

For many years, from the 1950s through the 70s, the accepted wisdom was that nuclear power was safe, advanced, and a great asset to society. Then reality…

Opinion:

¶ “The fantasy of cheap, safe nuclear energy” Back in the 1970s and 80s, solar and wind energy were expensive and were criticised by the nuclear industry for dreaming of a renewable energy future. Nowadays countries are on their way to their targets of 80%-100% renewable electricity while global nuclear energy fails to grow. [InDaily]

Australia’s national electricity market could be operated 100 per cent on renewable energy, argues Mark Diesendorf. AAP image

World:

¶ Jan De Nul Group has won an order to produce and install the foundations for the 50 MHI Vestas turbines and the high-voltage substation at Belgium’s 165-MW Nobelwind offshore wind farm. The project will be the first offshore wind job for the group’s newly acquired offshore jack-up heavy lift vessel, Vidar. [SeeNews Renewables]

¶ A VW engineer warned the company about cheating over its emission tests as early 2011…