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Donald Trump appointees will be fans of oil, gas, and nuclear industries

Oil, gas and nuclear industries anticipate friendly Trump DOE WyoFile, by Umair Irfan    | NOVEMBER 15, 2016 A Donald Trump appointee at the Forrestal Building bodes well for oil, natural gas and nuclear power, but renewables will remain robust contenders, analysts say.

Drillers and nuclear energy advocates are excited about the prospect of new Republican leadership at the Department of Energy in hopes of policies that could extend a lifeline to threatened nuclear power plants and boost oil and gas developers struggling with low fuel prices……..

federal policy can only do so much to push back against global market forces.

“President Trump may be surprised to find there’s a global oil glut underway that severely constrains whether or not it’s economically sensible to attract more investment,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy director at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

The nuclear energy industry is also optimistic about a Trump presidency, as a number of existing nuclear power plants are slated for early retirement.

“During the campaign, Mr. Trump spoke out on the need to build more nuclear plants and expand the nation’s overall energy supply,” said Maria Korsnick, the Nuclear Energy Institute’s incoming president and CEO, in a statement. “We encourage President-elect Trump to continue advancing his support for nuclear energy to maintain our nation’s leadership in nuclear technology and its indispensable role in our critical energy infrastructure and environmental interests.”…….

Renewables, on the other hand, may not get support for new large-scale installations through DOE loan guarantees, but enough momentum has built up for wind and solar power over the past eight years that those industries will still grow without DOE backing.

Wind energy prices have declined 41 percent, and solar photovoltaic costs have fallen 64 percent since 2008. Wind and solar also received a crucial extension for their tax credits late last year.

Though Trump has railed against renewables, particularly wind energy, many Republican-leaning states, like Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa, strongly support them. “If [Trump] wants to do away with it, he’ll have to get a bill through Congress, and he’ll do it over my dead body,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told Yahoo News in August.

“That is an area that has enjoyed bipartisan support,” said Dan Reicher, who led DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under President Clinton and served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “Energy efficiency has also tended to be fairly bipartisan.”……http://www.wyofile.com/oil-gas-nuclear-industries-anticipate-friendly-trump-doe/

November 16, 2016 Posted by | general | 1 Comment

Secretive meeting for South Africa’s Parliament on nuclear briefing

Media not welcome at nuclear energy briefing http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2016/11/15/Media-not-welcome-at-nuclear-energy-briefing Linda Ensor | 15 November, 2016  The Department of Energy’s briefing on the nuclear build programme to Parliament’s energy portfolio committee will be a closed meeting with no media or members of the public present‚ committee chairman Fikile Majola announced on Tuesday. The decision marks a step backwards in Majola’s otherwise forthright push for greater transparency from the department‚ which has been intent on withholding documents on the nuclear procurement programme.

 The sitting was yet to be scheduled. Majola also said the meeting to discuss the forensic reports into the R14.5-billion impairment suffered by PetroSA on its investment in the Ikhwezi offshore drilling project was also to be closed.

This meeting was also scheduled for Tuesday‚ attracting a strong media presence. Journalists and other members of the public were required to leave the room. Majola said he had obtained the necessary authorisation from parliamentary authorities to close the meeting‚ which would be addressed by the PetroSA board.

At a previous sitting‚ Majola obtained copies of the forensic reports into the Ikhwezi project on the proviso that the committee decided in what manner it dealt with it‚ giving consideration to the need for confidentiality.

The Ikhwezi project was intended to bolster the supply of gas to PetroSA’s gas-to-fuel refinery at Mossel Bay but generated only about 10% of the envisaged volumes.

November 16, 2016 Posted by | politics, South Africa | Leave a comment

A dangerous nuclear deal – Japan and India

A questionable nuclear deal, Japan Times NOV 15, 2016

In recent years, Japan has concluded a series of civilian nuclear cooperation pacts with such countries as Vietnam, Jordan and Turkey in an effort to export its nuclear power plant technology and equipment. But the latest deal with India carries different ramifications. It marks a deviation from Japan’s emphasis on the NPT regime as the international framework for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament, which is already threatened by North Korea’s repeated nuclear weapons tests.

 India carried out nuclear weapons tests in 1974 and 1998 and is believed to possess at least 100 nuclear warheads. It has refused to join the NPT, which limits possession of nuclear arms to the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, nor has it signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The international community for years prohibited civilian nuclear cooperation with India, but the U.S. administration of President George W. Bush in 2008 concluded such a pact with New Delhi with an eye on building nuclear power plants in the rapidly growing South Asian economy — a move followed by other countries including Japan…….

Japanese businesses involved in nuclear power meanwhile see promising markets overseas for export of their technology and equipment since the Fukushima disaster made it difficult for utilities to build new nuclear plants in Japan and the restart of idled plants remains slow. These strategic and business considerations were prioritized as Tokyo pushed for the nuclear deal, which also authorizes India to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium. Japan is reported to have compromised on its earlier demand that the pact include an explicit provision that cooperation would be halted if India resumed nuclear weapons tests. …..http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/11/15/editorials/questionable-nuclear-deal/#.WCtw59J97Gg

November 16, 2016 Posted by | India, Japan, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

20,000 Tons of Heavy Metals and Explosives Dumped Into the Oceans by USA Military

US Military Plans to Dump 20,000 Tons of Heavy Metals and Explosives Into the Oceans Tuesday, 15 November 2016 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report The US Navy has been conducting war-game exercises in US waters for decades, and in the process, it has left behind tons of bombs, heavy metals, missiles, sonar buoys, high explosives and depleted uranium munitions that are extremely harmful to both humans and marine life.

Truthout recently reported that the Navy has admitted to releasing chemicals into the oceans that are known to injure infants’ brains, as well as having left large amounts of depleted uranium in US coastal waters. Now, the Navy’s own documents reveal that it also plans to use 20,000 tons of heavy metals, plastics and other highly toxic compounds over the next two decades in the oceans where it conducts its war games.

According to the Navy’s 2015 Northwest Training and Testing environmental impact statement (EIS), in the thousands of warfare “testing and training events” it conducts each year, 200,000 “stressors” from the use of missiles, torpedoes, guns and other explosive firings in US waters happen biennially. These “stressors,” along with drones, vessels, aircraft, shells, batteries, electronic components and anti-corrosion compounds that coat external metal surfaces are the vehicles by which the Navy will be introducing heavy metals and highly toxic compounds into the environment.

Just some of the dangerous compounds the Navy will be injecting into the environment during their exercises are: ammonium perchlorate, picric acid, nitrobenzene, lithium from sonobuoy batteries, lead, manganese, phosphorus, sulfur, copper, nickel, tungsten, chromium, molybdenum, vanadium, trinitrotoluene (TNT), RDX [Royal Demolition eXplosive] and HMX  [High Melting eXplosive], among many others.

“None of these belong in the ocean’s food web, upon which we all depend,” Karen Sullivan, a retired endangered species biologist who cofounded West Coast Action Alliance, which acts as a watchdog of Naval activities in the Pacific Northwest, told Truthout. “Nor will the Navy be willing to clean it up, or even contribute to medical tests for people whose health may suffer.”……http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38374-us-military-plans-to-dump-20-000-tons-of-heavy-metals-and-explosives-into-the-oceans

November 16, 2016 Posted by | oceans, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

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