nuclear-news

Like Japan, Taiwan is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is an exceptionally bad location for nuclear power stations. About 90% of the world’s earthquakes and 81% of the world’s largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire
“The ‘Ring of Fire’, also called the Circum-Pacific belt, is the zone of earthquakes surrounding the Pacific Ocean- about 90% of the world’s earthquakes occur there. The next most seismic region (5-6% of earthquakes) is the Alpide belt (extends from Mediterranean region, eastward through Turkey, Iran, and northern India.” (“This dynamic earth: the story of plate tectonics” 1996, Kious, W. Jacquelyne; Tilling, Robert I., USGS Unnumbered Series General Interest Publication) http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/7000097

Tuesday afternoon local time, Taiwan reported an offshore 7.2 M earthquake. The USGS calls it a 6.4 M. It was offshore from two of Taiwan’s nuclear power stations. Two of the four nuclear reactors…

Science and Technology:

¶ One potential power source covers 71% of the Earth. Startup Columbia Power is the latest company to dream of harnessing the ocean for electricity. It’s building a wave generator called StingRAY that will float on the ocean’s surface, turning each passing wave to usable power. [CNN]

Columbia wave power.

World:

¶ The latest news from VW is that the company is now considering investing $11 billion into the development of a dedicated battery factory in Salzgitter – which would presumably support the production of the company’s previously hinted at future electric vehicle offerings. [CleanTechnica]

¶ Rongke Power, an affiliate of UniEnergy Technologies, will deploy the world’s largest battery, rated at 800 MWh. The vanadium flow battery will provide peak-shaving and enhance grid stabilization in northern China. More large batteries will no doubt be installed to support renewables. [PennEnergy]

UniEnergy Technologies…

Science and Technology:

¶ If you thought the upper limit of solar cell efficiency was 32%, think again. MIT News reported on a research team that showed how a silicon solar cell could top the theoretical limit of 32%. See you later, Shockley-Queisser Limit, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. [CleanTechnica]

Photo via MIT News, courtesy of the researchers.

World:

¶ Solar, wind and hydropower sources were added in 2015 at the fastest rate the world has yet seen, according to the Renewables Global Status Report. Investments in renewables during the year were more than double the amount spent on new coal and gas-fired power plants. [BBC]

¶ Australia installed almost 1 GW of new solar capacity last year but that was easily eclipsed by rather cloudy nations such as the United Kingdom, which installed about four times as much, according…

Today in Keswick 90% of the people we spoke to were opposed to new nuclear build in Cumbria. This does not tally with what NuGen are saying which is that “Cumbria wants new nuclear build.”  A recent poll in the Evening Mail indicated that 85% of those voting do not want new nuclear build in Cumbria.   Tourists said they would think twice about coming to Cumbria if dangerous new nuclear reactors were built here.

Dressed in nuclear waste barrels we handed out leaflets to tourists and locals outside the industry’s CONsultation day at the Skiddaw Hotel.

The only people going in to the CONsultation appeared to be the ones we had directed to it.   Last year, in the very same hotel on the fourth anniversary of Fukushima (11.03.015) former US nuclear regulator Arnie Gundersen described Moorside as “Chernobyl on Steroids”   Cumbria needs that like it needs a hole in…