Even were the claim true of its being “carbon free,” the future viability of nuclear power is questionable through the extreme-weather consequences of the very same development, climate change, which its boosters assert it would help solve. Severe wildfires or floods can destroy its vital safety systems.
The reactors’ voluminous cooling water demand can’t be met when heat waves and drought conditions reduce river flows and raise water temperature. Indeed, as David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer at UCS puts it, we must solve the climate problem first to continue nuclear-energy use, not the other way round.
Nuclear energy is not worth the risk http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/Editorial/2015/11/01/Nuclear-energy-is-not-worth-the-risk.html?ci=stream&lp=7&p=1 BY FRANCES LAMBERTS Realistically, in response to the “Sound-off” question in the Press on Oct. 25, I suspect we will be living with nuclear power for a while. The U.S. Treasury spigot for building new plants having been re-opened under the previous administration and kept open under President Obama, we now have Watts Bar II coming online by the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Vogtle plant’s expansion in Georgia carried forward by the Southern Company.
Despite closure of a number of plants because nuclear power is now uncompetitive economically, the industry has been seeking and receiving license extensions for various old plants. Continue reading
Germany’s slow, laborious journey from nuclear energy to renewables shows the world how to go
But here’s the thing about the Germans: They knew the energiewende was never going to be a walk in the forest, and yet they set out on it. What can we learn from them? We can’t transplant their desire to reject nuclear power. We can’t appropriate their experience of two great nation-changing projects—rebuilding their country when it seemed impossible, 70 years ago, and reunifying their country when it seemed forever divided, 25 years ago. But we can be inspired to think that the energiewende might be possible for other countries too.
In a recent essay William Nordhaus, a Yale economist who has spent decades studying the problem of addressing climate change, identified what he considers its essence: free riders. Because it’s a global problem, and doing something is costly, every country has an incentive to do nothing and hope that others will act. While most countries have been free riders, Germany has behaved differently: It has ridden out ahead. And in so doing, it has made the journey easier for the rest of us.
Germany Could Be a Model for How We’ll Get Power in the Future
The European nation’s energy revolution has made it a leader in replacing nukes and fossil fuels with wind and solar technology.National Geographic, By Robert Kunzig Photographs by Luca Locatelli
OCTOBER 15, 2015 “….. Germany is pioneering an epochal transformation it calls the energiewende—an energy revolution that scientists say all nations must one day complete if a climate disaster is to be averted. Among large industrial nations, Germany is a leader. Last year about 27 percent of its electricity came from renewable sources such as wind and solar power, three times what it got a decade ago and more than twice what the United States gets today. The change accelerated after the 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, which led Chancellor Angela Merkel to declare that Germany would shut all 17 of its own reactors by 2022. Nine have been switched off so far, and renewables have more than picked up the slack.
What makes Germany so important to the world, however, is the question of whether it can lead the retreat from fossil fuels. By later this century, scientists say, planet-warming carbon emissions must fall to virtually zero. Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy, has promised some of the most aggressive emission cuts—by 2020, a 40 percent cut from 1990 levels, and by 2050, at least 80 percent…….. Continue reading
Extremely high radiation measured in Fukushima mushroom sample
[Photo] 52,339 Bq/Kg of Cs-134/137 still measured from mushroom in Fukushima http://fukushima-diary.com/2015/10/photo-52339-bqkg-of-cs-134137-still-measured-from-mushroom-in-fukushima/ by Mochizuki , October 29, 2015 A Japanese citizen measured extremely high density of Cs-134/137 from mushroom in Fukushima.
On 10/22/2015, the person posted on Twitter that 52,339 Bq/Kg of Cs-134/137 was detected from a type of mushroom called “Ramaria botrytis” (Photos A). The sample was collected in a copse of Futaba county in Fukushima.
Cs-134/137 density was 2,378 Bq/Kg in the soil around the sample to show the mushroom concentrated Cs-134/137 over 22 times.
30,865 Bq/Kg of Cs-134/137 was also measured from a sample of “Cortinarius violaceus” (Photos B). The sampling location was the same.
Strong vote by Scottish Labour against renewal of trident nuclear missile system
Scottish Labour votes against renewal of Trident nuclear weapon system, Ft.com Mure Dickie in Perth, 1 Nov 15 Scottish Labour has voted emphatically against renewing the Trident nuclear weapon system, offering a major boost to supporters of unilateral disarmament in the UK party, including its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Party members and union delegates to a conference in Perth both voted by 70 per cent to 30 to abandon plans to maintain a “massively expensive” and “militarily useless” submarine-launched ballistic nuclear missile system.
Ian Murray, Labour’s only MP in Scotland and a member of the UK shadow cabinet, said the more than two-thirds majority meant disarmament was now formal policy for the Scottish party. That would mean it must be considered by UK Labour policy planners and could be included as part of Labour’s platform for the Scottish parliamentary elections next May. “It should be in the manifesto,” Mr Murray said.
The vote highlights uncertainty about Labour’s policy on Trident since Mr Corbyn’s election and will be portrayed by the Scottish National party as evidence of deep divisions between him and the UK party’s mainstream.
But many Scottish Labour members praised the decision of Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish party’s new leader and an opponent of unilateral disarmament, to allow delegates to choose to debate and vote on Trident and other issues.
The vote came after a vigorous and often passionate debate in which opponents of Trident renewal stressed what many called the fundamental immorality of nuclear weapons while supporters focused on the threat that scrapping them would pose to thousands of well-paid jobs.
Union representatives were divided on whether to back Trident renewal, with many fearing that promised defence industry diversification would not deliver equivalent employment for highly skilled workers…….. delegate Stephen Low said scrapping nuclear weapons would free money to be spent in more economically productive ways.
“I’d rather have pie in the sky on my horizon than a mushroom cloud,” Mr Low said. “You get a lot of bang for your buck with Trident . . . but you don’t get that many jobs.”
Defence policy is decided by the UK party, but Bill Butler, a candidate for the party in next May’s Scottish parliamentary election, said it could help build momentum for nuclear disarmament……..http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fb106dec-809b-11e5-84dc-31c8b3b18e5f.html#axzz3qGtjP1GJ
British MPs slam £25billion nuclear power station plan
MPs attack ‘desperate’ £25bn Hinkley nuclear power station plan http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3298926/MPs-attack-desperate-25bn-Hinkley-nuclear-power-station-plan.html By NEIL CRAVEN, FINANCIAL MAIL ON SUNDAY, 1 November 2015 A group of MPs have slammed a plan to build a £25billion nuclear power station, as opposition to the Government’s nuclear energy policy gathers steam.
An Early Day Motion that calls the plan to build at Hinkley Point, in Somerset, as ‘an act of desperation’ has been signed by 16 MPs in just 10 days.
Paul Flynn, MP for Newport West, which lies across the Bristol Channel from the planned site, has tabled the motion.
It says that similar reactors in France and Finland have suffered ‘catastrophic delays and financial losses’.
Experts also say the plan could cost billions more than expected and produce electricity that is far more expensive than market rates.
French energy firm EDF and China Nuclear Power Corporation agreed last month to build the plant. But criticism has come from all sides.
Chancellor George Osborne’s father-in-law Lord Howell of Guildford described the scheme as ‘one of the worst deals ever’ for British consumers and industry.
Explosion and fire in (inactive) nuclear station in Belgium
Explosion rocks nuclear power plant in Belgium https://www.rt.com/news/320381-belgium-nuclear-plant-explosion/ 1 Nov, 2015 An explosion occurred overnight at a nuclear power plant in Doel, northern Belgium, local media reported, adding that the blast caused a fire. The exact damage from the incident remains unknown.
The blast happened around 11pm local time on Saturday. The fire started in Reactor 1 of the plant, but was soon extinguished by personnel.
The explosion didn’t cause any threat to nature, Els De Clercq, spokeswoman from Belgian energy corporation Electrabel that runs the plant, told Het Laatste Nieuws. There was no fuel present at the time of the incident as the reactor had been shut due to its expired operational license.
Doel Nuclear Power Station, one of the two nuclear power plants in the country, is located near the town of Doel in east Flanders. The plant employs about 800 people.
According to the Nature journal and Columbia University in New York, the plant is in the most densely populated area of all nuclear power stations in the EU. About 9 million people live within a radius of 75km of the station.
Nagasaki hosts 61st international meeting of scientists for nuclear disarmament
Scientists meet in Nagasaki to seek abolition of nuclear weapons, Japan Today NATIONAL NOV. 01, 2015 – NAGASAKI — Scientists and nuclear experts from around the world gathered in southwestern Japan on Sunday to push for the abolition of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, with this year marking the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Japanese cities.
Nagasaki, one of the two cities devastated by an atomic bomb at the end of World War II, is hosting for the first time the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, which originated from calls for such a meeting from eminent scientists such as Albert Einstein about 60 years ago.
With the momentum toward nuclear disarmament seen to have suffered a setback after a U.N. conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ended in failure in May, organizers hope once again to call attention to the inhumane nature of nuclear arms and encourage dialogue in a world plagued with conflicts.
The five-day international conference, which is the 61st of its kind, brings together nearly 200 participants from about 40 countries, including U.S. and Russian officials and the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, according to the organizers.
On Sunday morning, participants met at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum with Yoshiro Yamawaki, 81, an atomic bomb survivor, to hear firsthand about the horrors of nuclear weapons.
Topics to be discussed at the conference include the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, paths toward a world free of nuclear weapons and risks involved in the civilian use of nuclear energy in light of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster triggered by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
A declaration will be released on the final day of the event. Some sessions are open to the public, including a speech by Osamu Shimomura, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2008. He was in a city adjacent to Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped……http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/scientists-meet-in-nagasaki-to-seek-abolition-of-nuclear-weapons
Mystery of “Deadly” radiation levels detected outside Fukushima containment vessel
Japan Times: “Deadly” radiation levels detected outside Fukushima containment vessel — “Details behind situation are unknown” — Officials unable to grasp location of melted nuclear fuel — “Impossible” to plan for decommissioninghttp://enenews.com/japan-times-deadly-94-sieverts-detected-fukushima-containment-vessel-details-behind-situation-unknown-officials-unable-grasp-location-melted-nuclear-fuel-impossible-plan-decommissioning?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29Jiji Press, Oct 29, 2015: 9.4 Sieverts Detected outside Fukushima Reactor Containment Vessel– [TEPCO] said Thursday that radiation levels of up to 9.4 sieverts per hour have been detected outside a reactor containment vessel… People exposed to the maximum radiation dose for some 45 minutes will die. TEPCO expects decontamination work to take at least one month. Checks conducted on Sept. 4-25 found the extremely high radiation levels at a cell which accommodates a pipe connected to the containment vessel of the No. 2 reactor…
Japan Times (via Jiji), Oct 30, 2015 (emphasis added): Deadly 9.4 sieverts detected outside Fukushima reactor 2 containment vessel; checks stop… Details behind the situation are unknown, according to the company. Tepco planned to start in August to check the inside of the containment vessel by using a remote-controlled robot but high radiation levels have stalled the examination. Extremely high radiation levels and theinability to grasp the details about melted nuclear fuel make it impossible for the utility to chart the course of its planned decommissioning of the reactors at the plant.
South Africa’s nuclear trajectory unstoppable – path to “national suicide”
South Africa’s nuclear plans are “national suicide” http://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/144377-south-africas-nuclear-plans-are-national-suicide.html The Sunday Times has reported that SA’s nuclear trajectory looks unstoppable, and that the cost is likely to be between R500 billion and R1 trillion. By Staff Writer – November 1, 2015 The Sunday Times has reported that South Africa’s nuclear trajectory looks unstoppable, and the cost for the nuclear project is likely to be between R500 billion and R1 trillion.
Apart from Russia’s state-owned Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, there are four other companies which could run the project.
They are France’s Areva, Westinghouse Electric, China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation, and South Korea’s Korea Electric Power Corporation.
In October, National Treasury allocated R200m to the Department of Energy for preparatory work to consider the costs, benefits, and risks of building four more nuclear power stations in South Africa.
Opposition to nuclear plans
Many people are opposed to South Africa’s nuclear plans, including the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
In 2014, NUM said it does not support “any temptations to employ nuclear energy as part of the solutions for sustainable energy”. “We, therefore, encourage government to take out nuclear as part of the energy mix. The risks and dangers of this element of energy far outweigh the benefits experienced by humankind.”
The union said the economy of South Africa cannot afford to build a R1-trillion nuclear plant.
The Sunday Times quoted NUM spokesperson Livhuwani Mammburu as saying that the country’s nuclear investment will be “national suicide”.
The Democratic Alliance said earlier this year that the government’s R1-trillion nuclear build plans are going to turn South Africa’s energy crisis into a jobs crisis.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane said the nuclear deal will drag the country’s economy back, and will cost thousands of South Africans their jobs.
“Whichever funding model is chosen, you can rest assured that it will be paid for by the South African taxpayer, and that we can expect substantial tariff increases over many years.”
Fukushima: underground walls built to contain radioactive water
Walls to halt tainted groundwater from flowing into sea completed at Fukushima plant http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201510260048 October 26, 2015 THE ASAHI SHIMBUN Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced Oct. 26 that the construction of seaside walls to block radiation-contaminated groundwater from seeping into the sea has been completed at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The walls, comprising numerous cylindrical steel pipes, were installed at a 780 meter-long stretch along the plant’s coastal embankment near the damaged No. 1 to No. 4 reactor buildings.
TEPCO officials said the underground walls will reduce the daily flow of contaminated groundwater into the sea from the previous estimated 400 tons to 10 tons.
However, they said it will take a month or two to confirm the effectiveness of the barriers.
The seaside walls are one of the three pillars of TEPCO’s efforts to deal with tainted groundwater accumulating at the plant.
The other projects are a plan to treat groundwater pumped from subdrain wells around the reactor buildings and release it into the sea and a frozen soil wall being constructed to divert untainted groundwater away from the damaged reactor buildings and into the ocean.
Urgent need for transparency on South Africa’s Integrated Energy Plan (IEP)
IEP 2015 must be tabled urgently: DA http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/iep-2015-must-be-tabled-urgently-da-1.1938828#.Vjab-dIrLGg November 1 2015 By ANA Reporter Cape Town – The Democratic Alliance on Sunday urged Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Petterson to urgently table the integrated energy plan (IEP) 2015 so that it can be scrutinised in Parliament.
The IEP 2015 presently before Cabinet indicated that government planned not one but up to three R1 trillion nuclear deals by 2050, all the while acknowledging that procurement of nuclear could in fact be delayed until at least 2020, if not later, DA spokesman Gordon Mackay said in a statement.
“The DA therefore calls on Energy Minister Joemat-Petterson to table this IEP as a matter of urgency and allow Parliament to scrutinise this document and address the key issues within this plan.”
According to reports in the Sunday Times on Sunday morning, the proposed IEP nuclear-generating capacity would be expanded to between 12 and 20 times South Africa’s current installed nuclear capacity of 1830 MW, he said.
This effectively meant the energy department envisioned a series of large-scale nuclear deals over the next 20 years, despite ongoing and significant concerns on affordability by National Treasury and uncertainty as to the impact on the cost of electricity for ordinary South Africans, particularly the poor.
The purpose of the IEP was to provide a roadmap of the future energy landscape for South Africa to guide future energy infrastructure investments and policy development by providing a thorough analysis of competing technologies for the provision of sustainable and cost-effective electricity.
“Far from being a thorough assessment of competing technologies however, the IEP is nothing more than a slavish confirmation of the inevitability of the nuclear new build program and is the product of political interference by the ANC government into the terrain of energy planning,” Mackay said.
The IEP therefore failed to provide an assessment of a potential energy mix which excluded nuclear, despite the international energy landscape where major nuclear nations, such as Germany, France, and the US, were all reducing their reliance on nuclear in favour of cleaner and cheaper renewables and gas.
Further, the IEP argued for an energy mix biased towards a combination of large scale nuclear and large scale decentralised renewables, despite general international consensus that the two technologies were largely incompatible due to the variable nature of renewables electricity generation. “Furthermore, the scope for gas in the IEP has deliberately been limited in order to produce a ‘nuclear heavy’ energy roadmap. The IEP is way too conservative on the scope of gas within in the energy mix. Internationally, a number of gas producers are coming online and numerous new gas finds are being made across Africa. This will result in an increased availability of natural gas and the subsequent decrease in the price of natural gas,” he said.
Government should have used the IEP to aggressively pursue gas as an alternative energy form, which was far safer, cleaner, cheaper, and more job friendly compared to the use of the potentially politically motivated and unaffordable nuclear build programme.
“The DA remains fundamentally opposed to costly, secretive nuclear deals which have the real potential to destroy any prospects of future economic growth and job creation, and as such will not support government’s latest and unimpressive solution to the energy crisis in the form of the integrated energy plan,” Mackay said.
Ontario’s CANDU nuclear reactors are seriously degraded
Ontario’s geriatric reactors at Darlington require major surgery http://www.pressenza.com/2015/09/canadas-darlington-nuclear-station-campaign-against-life-extension/ 05.09.2015 – Gordon Edwards While Ontario Power Generation (OPG) plans to permanently shut down the eight nuclear reactors at Pickering by 2020 (two of them are already retired), OPG is seeking an unprecedented thirteen year operating licence for its four nuclear reactors at Darlington. The Darlington reactors – the largest in Canada’s nuclear fleet – are sited on the north shore of Lake Ontario, between Toronto and Port Hope.
The Darlington reactors are seriously degraded and will require extensive rebuilding of the core and primary heat transport system to continue operating — a dirty and dangerous operation euphemistically called “refurbishment” that will cost at least TEN BILLION dollars. Thousands of highly radioactive pressure tubes and calandria tubes will have to be removed robotically and packaged for safe storage for a period of hundreds of thousands of years, along with tens of kilometres of radioactively contaminated “feeder pipes”. These dangerous radioactive wastes will be trucked north to the shore of Lake Huron near Kincardine to join the growing volumes of radioactive waste that are currently stored there.
Previous experience with refurbishment of CANDU reactors at other locations in Ontario and New Brunswick has been characterized by years of delay and billions of dollars in cost over-runs. During a refurbishment operation at the Bruce site, on the shore of Lake Huron, over 500 workers were exposed to inhaling plutonium-contaminated airborne dust for over three weeks in 2009 due to the incompetence or disregard of overseers who neglected to provide the men with respirators, failed to heed a radiation alarm, ignored company records that plainly revealed the presence of such contamination in the pipes that were being removed and subjected to a grinding operation, and neglected to properly test the air for contamination.
Anyone can intervene in the November licensing hearings by sending in a letter or a brief, with the option of appearing in person at the hearings and making a 10-minute oral presentation. It is even possible to testify by telephone using a tele-conferencing setup that the Commission has made available for intervenors; one only has to request it.
The Ontario Government, the sole owner of OPG, can decide not to refurbish the Darlington reactors by instead buying replacement power, investing in community-based energy conservation, and accelerating the installation of alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, and industrial cogeneration facilities. The province of Quebec has a very large surplus of water-generated hydropower at the present time and for the foreseeable future, and calculations have shown that the entire output of the Darlington reactors could be replaced if Ontario purchased excess power from Quebec at a price that would be mutually advantageous to both provinces, and much less expensive than the Darlington refurbishment option.
Although the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission staff promised to publish a report outlining the consequences of a severe nuclear accident at Darlington involving one, two, or all of the reactors there, they have instead produced a report that describes a release of radioactivity that is ridiculously low — at least 10 to 100 times less than what would be reasonably anticipated in the event of a severe nuclear accident. By misrepresenting the amount of radioactivity that could be released in such circumstances, the CNSC staff is misleading the public and government authorities who are responsible for putting in place emergency planning measures needed to cope with the aftermath of such a severe nuclear accident.
The IAEA recently published a report on the Fukushima triple meltdown in Japan. The following paragraph, taken from the first page of the IAEA report, is particularly applicable to the arrogant attitude of Canadian nuclear authorities who simply do not want to communicate to the public and to decision makers the results of their own internal calculations.
Tanzania: police raid Legal and Human Rights Center
After the elections in TANZANIA last Sunday, 25. Oct. 2015, the situation is not very good.
Among other things, we were informed that the LHRC – Legal and Human Rights Center, one of our partner NGOs in Tanzania and host of the 2013 Uranium Conference – has been raided by police, and – according to a newspaper article, staff has been arrested. http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Police-raid-observers–office–arrest-staff/-/1840340/2935620/-/3i6896z/-/index.html
Earlier this week, offices of CHADEMA, the oppostion party, have obviously been raided by police
Transition from nuclear energy to renewables, in Germany
Germany Could Be a Model for How We’ll Get Power in the Future
The European nation’s energy revolution has made it a leader in replacing nukes and fossil fuels with wind and solar technology. National Geographic, By Robert Kunzig Photographs by Luca Locatelli OCTOBER 15, 2015 “…..Germany’s Audacious Goal
Fell, who was installing PV panels on his roof in Hammelburg, realized that the new law would never lead to a countrywide boom: It paid people to produce energy, but not enough. In 1993 he got the city council to pass an ordinance obliging the municipal utility to guarantee any renewable energy producer a price that more than covered costs. Fell promptly organized an association of local investors to build a 15-kilowatt solar power plant—tiny by today’s standards, but the association was one of the first of its kind. Now there are hundreds in Germany.
In 1998 Fell rode a Green wave and his success in Hammelburg into the Bundestag. The Greens formed a governing coalition with the SPD. Fell teamed up with Hermann Scheer, a prominent SPD advocate of solar energy, to craft a law that in 2000 took the Hammelburg experiment nationwide and has since been imitated around the world. Its feed-in tariffs were guaranteed for 20 years, and they paid well.
“My basic principle,” Fell said, “was the payment had to be so high that investors could make a profit. We live in a market economy, after all. It’s logical.”…….
The biogas, the solar panels that cover many roofs, and especially the wind turbines allow Wildpoldsried to produce nearly five times as much electricity as it consumes. Einsiedler manages the turbines, and he’s had little trouble recruiting investors. Thirty people invested in the first one; 94 jumped on the next. “These are their wind turbines,” Einsiedler said. Wind turbines are a dramatic and sometimes controversial addition to the German landscape—“asparagification,” opponents call it—but when people have a financial stake in the asparagus, Einsiedler said, their attitude changes.
It wasn’t hard to persuade farmers and homeowners to put solar panels on their roofs; the feed-in tariff, which paid them 50 cents a kilowatt-hour when it started in 2000, was a good deal. At the peak of the boom, in 2012, 7.6 gigawatts of PV panels were installed in Germany in a single year—the equivalent, when the sun is shining, of seven nuclear plants. A German solar-panel industry blossomed, until it was undercut by lower-cost manufacturers in China—which took the boom worldwide.
Fell’s law, then, helped drive down the cost of solar and wind, making them competitive in many regions with fossil fuels. One sign of that: Germany’s tariff for large new solar facilities has fallen from 50 euro cents a kilowatt-hour to less than 10. “We’ve created a completely new situation in 15 years—that’s the huge success of the renewable energy law,” Fell said.
Germans paid for this success not through taxes but through a renewable-energy surcharge on their electricity bills. This year the surcharge is 6.17 euro cents per kilowatt-hour, which for the average customer amounts to about 18 euros a month—a hardship for some, Rosenkranz told me, but not for the average German worker. The German economy as a whole devotes about as much of its gross national product to electricity as it did in 1991.
In the 2013 elections Fell lost his seat in the Bundestag, a victim of internal Green Party politics. He’s back in Hammelburg now, but he doesn’t have to look at the steam plumes from Grafenrheinfeld: Last June the reactor became the latest to be switched off. No one, not even the industry, thinks nuclear is coming back in Germany…….
Germany’s big utilities have been losing money lately—because of the energiewende, they say; because of their failure to adapt to the energiewende, say their critics. E.ON, the largest utility, which owns Grafenrheinfeld and many other plants, declared a loss of more than three billion euros last year.
“The utilities in Germany had one strategy,” Flasbarth said, “and that was to defend their track—nuclear plus fossil. They didn’t have a strategy B.” Having missed the energiewende train as it left the station, they’re now chasing it. E.ON is splitting into two companies, one devoted to coal, gas, and nuclear, the other to renewables. The CEO, once a critic of the energiewende, is going with the renewables.
Vattenfall, a Swedish state-owned company that’s another one of Germany’s four big utilities, is attempting a similar evolution. “We’re a role model for the energiewende,” ……..
Vattenfall, however, plans to sell its lignite business, if it can find a buyer, so it can focus on renewables. It’s investing billions of euros in two new offshore wind parks in the North Sea—because there’s more wind offshore than on and because a large corporation needs a large project to pay its overhead. “We can’t do onshore in Germany,” Wiese said. “It’s too small.”
Vattenfall isn’t alone: The renewables boom has moved into the North and Baltic Seas and, increasingly, into the hands of the utilities. Merkel’s government has encouraged the shift, capping construction of solar and onshore wind and changing the rules in ways that shut out citizens associations. Last year the amount of new solar fell to around 1.9 gigawatts, a quarter of the 2012 peak. Critics say the government is helping big utilities at the expense of the citizens’ movement that launched the energiewende.
At the end of April, Vattenfall formally inaugurated its first German North Sea wind park, an 80-turbine project called DanTysk that lies some 50 miles offshore. The ceremony in a Hamburg ballroom was a happy occasion for the city of Munich too. Its municipal utility, Stadtwerke München, owns 49 percent of the project. As a result Munich now produces enough renewable electricity to supply its households, subway, and tram lines. By 2025 it plans to meet all of its demand with renewables……
Though Germany isn’t on track to meet its own goal for 2020, it’s ahead of the European Union’s schedule. It could have left things there—and many in Merkel’s CDU wanted her to do just that. Instead, she and Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel, head of the SPD, reaffirmed their 40 percent commitment last fall……..http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/climate-change/germany-renewable-energy-revolution-text
South Africa’s flawed and problematic Nuclear Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
New nuke build: EIA problematic and flawed http://gctca.org.za/new-nuke-build-eia-problematic-and-flawed/BY GAVIN, ON OCTOBER 28TH, 2015 As South Africa contemplates building nuclear power stations along the coast, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) consultants, GIBB, are holding public meetings to discuss their recently released draft report. The proposed nuclear builds are in Thyspunt (80 km outside Port Elizabeth) and Duynefontein (next to Koeberg, 30 km outside Cape Town).
“Thyspunt is the preferred site for Nuclear 1,” says Gary Koekemoer from NoPEnuke, “and no public meetings were scheduled for the Nelson Mandela Bay area thereby excluding 1.1-million citizens from this process. Further, it is our view that the current EIA process is fundamentally flawed with key information excluded.”
This EIA is the third draft published over eight years and was made available for scrutiny by GIBB consultants at the end of September. “The draft is a 40,000 page document and a quick count of words in the appendices making up the specialists’ reports alone showed that one would have to read around 90,000 words a day just to skim read it all before the public meetings were held,” says Peter Becker from the Koeberg Alert Alliance.
Widespread dissatisfaction has been expressed from many stakeholders around the limited time period allowed for public participation.
At the meetings, GIBB condensed their findings into a simplified scoring system for risks with ratings of Low, Moderate, High, or Fatally Flawed. “The scoring system is inadequate,” says Dr. Piet Human, project leader at the Bantamsklip Organisation. “The scores do not have a scientific or quantitative basis; what is ‘high’ for one may be ‘medium’ for another scientist. This subjectivity is then further compounded by the scores given by GIBBS.”
Becker describes a hypothetical scenario: “If the consultants found that there was a 51% chance that the new nuclear plant would explode catastrophically in the first year of operation, this would not result in a scoring of Fatally Flawed. Their recommendation in this case would be ‘Project can be authorised but with strict conditions and high levels of compliance and enforcement’.”
Bantamsklip was one of the three proposed nuclear sites alongside Thyspunt and Duynefontein but has now been excluded from this Nuclear 1 EIA. However, it remains a viable site for subsequent nuclear builds. A petition of over 10,000 signatures opposing the nuclear build was handed to the GIBB consultants at the Gansbaai meeting.
“We have only had time to look at one specialist report thus far,” continues Dr. Human, “and we reviewed the Social Impact Assessment which is problematic. The technical, scientific and professional credibility of the report is questionable as it uses outdated data, excludes HIV and Gender Related Issues (a new requirement for all large-scale EIA’s in South Africa), and does no comparative analysis of the three sites nor uses recent experiences with large projects such as Medupi.”
The biggest concerns of those in attendance at the meetings included the risk of a catastrophic nuclear accident and the evacuation plan, the environmental impact of radiation leaks into the sea, land or groundwater, the economic impact to the regions concerned owing to the negative perceptions of a nuclear facility in proximity to large-scale business concerns, costs (and the accompanying corruption), political instability and the risk of terrorism, and the massive problem of accumulating high level nuclear waste.
“The decision to build a nuclear plant must be taken with extreme care,” says Koekemoer. “We are concerned that in the gold rush of unsubstantiated promises of development and jobs we have been blinded to Thyspunt’s true value and potential as a significant local and global heritage area.
“Nuclear is not necessary,” he continues. “Renewables are making a significant contribution to our region. In our haste we are only servicing vested interests and it is a decision our grandchildren would shake their heads at.”
Becker concludes, “The GIBB consultants have a legal responsibility to put all the pertinent facts before the decision makers in a complete, unbiased and quantified way in the EIA report. Failing to do so can lead to criminal prosecution in their personal capacities.” There is concern from stakeholders that GIBB is trying to push through this flawed EIA with only token public participation.
The Sea Vista meeting for public participation in St Francis Bay will take place in early November, dates are not yet finalised. The Humansdorp meeting has been rescheduled due to public demand for more time needed and meetings in Nelson Mandela Bay have also been requested but are unconfirmed at this stage.
Submissions may be emailed to nuclear1@gibb.co.za. The full draft EIA report can be found at http://projects.gibb.co.za/en-us/projects/eskomnuclear1reviseddrafteirversion2 and more information can be found at http://koebergalert.org, http://bantamsklip.org andhttp://noPEnuke.co.za.
1.This Month
Small Nuclear Reactors Education Task Force: https://stop-smrs.weebly.com/bulletins.ht
24 May. The Vow from Hiroshima film is coming on PBS, this month https://www.thevowfromhiroshima.com/
3 June – FILM. SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy
6-7 July A summit and a rally in Washington D.C. https://nonatoyespeace.org/
-
Archives
- May 2024 (169)
- April 2024 (366)
- March 2024 (335)
- February 2024 (345)
- January 2024 (375)
- December 2023 (333)
- November 2023 (342)
- October 2023 (366)
- September 2023 (353)
- August 2023 (356)
- July 2023 (362)
- June 2023 (324)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 