¶ “The COP23 climate change summit in Bonn and why it matters” • Aiming to “prevent dangerous human caused interference with the climate system,” nations are meeting for the 23rd annual “conference of the parties” (COP23) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is taking place in Bonn starting November 6. [The Guardian]
Homes in West Bengal (Photo: Sushavan Nandy | Barcroft Images)
Science and Technology:
¶ The Trump Administration released a sweeping federal climate report concluding that the Earth is warming at an alarming rate due to human activity. The congressionally mandated report said the Earth is undergoing its warmest period “in the history of modern civilization,” fueled primarily by rising levels of carbon dioxide. [Bloomberg]
World:
¶ Roughly a quarter of the world’s oil refineries face closure by 2035 if governments around the world actually manage to meet their current greenhouse gas emissions…
COP23: What’s at stake? International climate agreements are hard-won through laborious negotiations and COP23 will be no different. The event may be taking place in Bonn, but Fiji’s presidency sends a clear signal to the likes of Donald Trump. Usually, the country holding presidency of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) hosts […]
Not much time left for Alpine ice Staff Report Austrian climate scientists aren’t mincing words when it comes to the continued alpine meltdown caused by global warming. “It was a bad year for Austria’s glaciers,” scientists with the ZAMG said last week, announcing that the Pasterze Glacier, below the country’s highest peak, thinned by 2 […]
Picture shows contamination of ground or leaves 100 times above background levels. Date video released 5th November 2017
Further reading;
….To finish this summary of his talk it would seem that the recent drive for tourism in the nuclear damaged Fukushima prefecture would actually be impacted during and after the Olympics. As the deadline for the games approaches clean up from the tsunami and nuclear disaster would be diverted into the Olympic infrastructure program as the tough IOC deadline approaches for July 2020…..
Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP) project is given separate conditional licences for the design and construction of the power plant from Bangladesh Atomic Energy Regulatory Authority (BAERA).
Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC) has received the conditional licence from BAERA as a supportive part of the inauguration of First Concrete Pouring (FCP) program of the main construction of RNPP.
The licence was handed over to Dr. Dilip Kumar, the chairman of BAEC by Dr Naiyyum Choudhury, the chairman of BAERA in a program arranged at the Hotel Sonargaon in the city on today.
The BAEC has been implementing the 2,400 RNPP project at a cost of $12.65 billion. Russian nuclear agency Rosatom is working as its contractor. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will formally inaugurate the main phase construction on November 30th this year.
A set of conditions are set by the BAERA authority as targets which includes some safety and environmental, Quality of Service and efficiency standards in building the power plant. These targets must need to be met. Sources claimed that, the final licence will be given to BAEC in the next March once it manages to reach the target.
Dr Naiyyum Choudhury presided over the program while Science and Technology Minister Yeafesh Osman was the chief guest. Abul Kalam Azad, chief coordinator for SDG affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office, and BAEC Chairman Dilip Kumar Saha, among others, spoke at the ceremony.
South African MP says says David Mahlobo clearly appointed energy minister to force the thing through
DA stands ready to interdict nuclear deal
The DA will not hesitate to interdict any attempt by Minister of Energy, David Mahlobo, to force through a nuclear deal despite the fact that South Africa does not need or afford the estimated R1 trillion deal.
Media reports today indicate that the Energy Department has been forced to work overtime to ensure the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) is ready by 14 November, a full four months ahead of when it was due.
With each passing day, it becomes clear that Minister Mahlobo was appointed to make sure that the necessary nuclear deal would be pushed through.
We will not allow Mahlobo to appease his friends, the Russians, at the expense of millions of South Africans who are struggling to survive with no jobs in a flat economy.
The DA will use every legal and Parliamentary tool at our disposal to ensure that the generations to come will not be shackled to massive debt that will compromise South Africa’s future.
Statement issued by Gordon Mackay MP – Shadow Minister of Energy, 5 November 2017
WASHINGTON — For the first time in decades, the United States got more electricity from renewable sources than nuclear power in March and April.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Thursday that electricity production from utility-scale renewable sources exceeded nuclear generation in the most recent months for which data is available. That’s the first time renewable sources have outpaced nuclear since 1984.
The growth in renewables was fueled by scores of new wind turbines and solar farms, as well as recent increases in hydroelectric power as a result of heavy snow and rain in Western states last winter. More than 60 per cent of all utility-scale electricity generating capacity that came online last year was from wind and solar.
In contrast, the pace of construction of new nuclear reactors has slowed in recent decades amid soaring costs and growing public opposition. Nearly all nuclear plants now in use began operation between 1970 and 1990, with utilities starting to retire some of their older reactors.
Still, experts predict output from the nation’s nuclear plants will still outpace renewables for the full year, due to such seasonal variation as less water flowing through dams in the drier summer months. Also, nuclear plants tend to undergo maintenance during spring and fall months, when overall electricity demand is lower than in summer or winter.
Despite the growth in renewables, the U.S. still gets nearly two-thirds of its electricity from burning fossil fuels, primarily natural gas and coal. Nuclear and renewables account for roughly equal shares of the rest, each accounting for less than 20 per cent of total output.
FUKUSHIMA – Blanket radiation checks on rice produced in nuclear disaster-hit Fukushima Prefecture have come under debate because no rice with radiation exceeding the safety limit has been found in recent years.
Some people, including producers, in the prefecture call for continuing the current system because there are consumers who still avoid Fukushima produce. But the blanket checks are costly and require a lot of manpower.
The prefectural government hopes to decide by year-end whether to change the radiation checks, starting with rice that will be harvested next year, officials said.
The blanket checks were introduced after many parts of the prefecture were contaminated with radioactive substances released because of the 2011 nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
Fukushima rice is put through radiation checks bag by bag before shipment. The safety limit is set at 100 becquerels per 1 kg of rice.
Rice that pass the checks have certification labels attached to the bags before being put through distribution channels.
According to Fukushima officials, the total amount of rice harvested last year and checked by the end of September this year reached 10.26 million bags.
To cover the expenses, the prefectural government collects ¥5 billion from Tepco each year. Some ¥500 million to ¥600 million in personnel expenses are covered with state subsidies.
The prefecture conducted radiation checks on a total of 53.13 million bags of rice harvested between 2012-2016. Total costs reached ¥30.5 billion.
The blanket check system began with the 2012 rice. At that time, 71 of the 867 bags checked exceeded the safety limit. But no such rice was detected at all for the 2014-2016 rice.
As of Oct. 25 this year, radiation levels stood below the minimum detectable level of 25 becquerels for 99.99 percent of the 2016 rice that underwent the checks.
The absence of above-limit rice has led some people to question the blanket check system. The continuance of the system may be making the unintended effect of fueling consumer concern about Fukushima rice, one critic said.
To discuss the fate of the blanket system, the prefecture set up a group with members of agricultural and consumer organizations in July this year.
The group will examine the issue based on opinions from more than 300 local farmers and seven wholesale companies in the Tokyo metropolitan area. It will also conduct an internet survey of 2,000 consumers nationwide.
Hisao Tomita, a farmer working in the city of Fukushima, called for the continuance of the current system even though it is burdensome also to producers.
As long as Fukushima rice is affected by negative rumors, radiation checks should be maintained even if they have to be scaled back, he said.
BY JAMES SPENCER AND GREG WETSONE / Published: November 5, 2017
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry recently proposed that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission intervene in state electricity markets to establish new rules that would force electricity consumers to subsidize uneconomical coal and nuclear power plants.
The proposal is theoretically intended to promote “resiliency” of the electrical grid, but it is a thinly disguised effort to help politically connected interests at the expense of electricity ratepayers.
In its proposal, the Department of Energy gave FERC only 60 days to decide whether to upend the nation’s electricity markets. If FERC decides to enact the government’s proposal, it would undermine 25 years of progress in the development of competitive electricity markets that save consumers money. As the federal government intervenes to pick winners and losers, it undermines the growth of two thriving industries that have been huge drivers for economic growth both in Pennsylvania and across America — renewable energy and natural gas.
The energy department’s recent study of the nation’s grid undermines the notion that we need this new government intervention to address concerns about resilience.
The study failed to document any way that either coal or nuclear power could help. In fact, in extreme circumstances where the grid has been tested, the on-site coal and nuclear fuel that the department now says is necessary has proved to be a vulnerability. During the 2014 polar vortex, coal piles froze. During Hurricane Harvey, coal units went down in the Houston, Texas, area due to flooding. Tsunami floods in 2011 led to the shutdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan and the release of dangerous radiation. Facilities that require continuous access to cooling water to avert catastrophic accidents are not resilient to stress.
There is no evidence that on-site fuel supply, as called for by the energy department, will reduce electricity outages. A recent study by the Rhodium Group, a New York economic analysis agency, concluded that less than .00007 percent of power outages are related to fuel supply issues. In those rare cases in which fuel supply has been an issue, it has been at coal plants.
The department’s proposal seeks to override state authority by imposing a guaranteed cost recovery mechanism for existing and potentially new coal and nuclear units. Every eligible unit would receive full cost recovery whether it is needed by the system operator or wanted by customers. That means consumers would be saddled with billions of dollars in unnecessary electricity charges.
Fortune 500 companies and small businesses choose the kind of electricity they want to meet requirements for energy, lower costs, critical functions and sustainability. If finalized, this rule would force businesses to pay more for power they don’t want.
The decision on whether to upend the current electricity marketplace with new subsidies for coal and nuclear power will ultimately rest with FERC, which has a majority of Trump administration appointees, none of whom in the past have supported this sort of interference in state and regional electricity markets.
A broad coalition stands together in support of a competitive electricity marketplace, including groups as diverse as the American Petroleum Institute and the American Council on Renewable Energy. It is our hope that the bipartisan commissioners at FERC will rule against this heavy-handed distortion of the electricity marketplace, and avoid new bureaucratic initiatives that increase prices.
Tilman A. Ruff, a long-time student of radiation effects on human health, demonstrates how these effects have been underestimated. He offers a detailed explanation of what exposure to different doses of radiation, such as from the Fukushima accident, means for cancer rates and effects on DNA. Timothy A. Mousseau and Anders P. Møller, who have undertaken field research for many years on the genetic effects of the Chernobyl accident, look at how nuclear plant accidents affect the health of humans and other species. Combined, these two chapters offer a potent, often overlooked, argument against the nuclear option.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011 has raised serious questions about nuclear power.
In our work since Fukushima, we have tried to answer two questions: What is the current status of nuclear energy in Asia? Does nuclear power have a future in East Asia? By answering those questions, we hope to contribute to the global debate about nuclear energy. To be sure, questions of such magnitude can rarely be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Decisions on energy are made at the national level, on the basis of both objective factors such as cost-effectiveness and notions of the national interest, and less objective ones, such as influence peddled by power plant operators, corruption, and bureaucratic self-interest. Nevertheless, by closely examining the status and probable future of nuclear power plants in specific countries, the authors of this volume come up with answers, albeit mostly of a negative nature. At the start of 2017, 450 nuclear power reactors were operating in 30 countries, with 60 more under construction in 15 countries. Thirty-four reactors are under construction in Asia, including 21 in China. The “Fukushima effect” has clearly had an impact in Asia, however. In China, no new construction took place between 2011 and 2014, although since then there has been a slow increase of licenses. Nevertheless, the full story of China’s embrace of nuclear power, as told in this volume by M. V. Ramana and Amy King, is that the onset of a ‘new normal’ in economic growth objectives and structural changes in the economy have led to a declining demand for electricity and the likelihood of far less interest in nuclear power than had once been predicted. On the other hand, in South Korea, which relies on nuclear power for about 31 per cent of its electricity, Lauren Richardson’s chapter which is presented here, shows that the Fukushima disaster and strong civil society opposition have not deflected official support of nuclear power, not only for electricity but also for export.
Meanwhile, the 10 countries that comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are divided about pursuing the nuclear-energy option, with Vietnam deciding to opt out in 2016, and Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines at various stages of evaluation. Even so, the chapter by Mely Caballero-Anthony and Julius Cesar I. Trajano shows that only about 1 per cent of ASEAN’s electricity will derive from nuclear power in 2035, whereas renewables will account for 22 per cent.
How viable nuclear power is finally judged to be will depend primarily on the decisions of governments, but increasingly also on civil society. ASEAN has established a normative framework that emphasises safety, waste disposal, and non-proliferation; and civil society everywhere is increasingly alert to the dangers and costs, above-board and hidden, of nuclear power plants. As Doug Koplow’s chapter shows, for example, the nuclear industry, like fossil fuels, benefits from many kinds of government subsidies that distort the energy market against renewable energy sources. Costs are politically as well as environmentally consequential: even if construction begins on a nuclear power plant, it will be cancelled and construction abandoned in 12 per cent of all cases. It is important to note that of the 754 reactors constructed since 1951, 90 have been abandoned and 143 plants permanently shut down. When construction does proceed, it takes between five to 10 years on average for completion (338 of 609), with some 15 per cent taking more than 10 years. And, in the end, old and abandoned reactors will have to be decommissioned, as Kalman A. Robertson discusses, with costs that may double over the next 15–20 years. As Robertson points out, the problem of safe disposal of radioactive waste and the health risk posed by radiation released during decommissioning should be factored into the total price that cleanup crews and taxpayers will eventually pay. On top of all that, there isn’t much experience worldwide in decommissioning. Then there is the issue of trust in those who make decisions. Tatsujiro Suzuki’s chapter shows that in Japan, the chief legacy of Fukushima is public loss of trust in Japanese decision-makers and in the nuclear industry itself. Several years after the accident, costs continue to mount, a fact that pro-nuclear advocates elsewhere in Asia might want to consider. They also need to consider the issue of transparency for, as Suzuki shows, the nuclear industry has consistently dodged the fairly obvious lessons of Fukushima with regard to costs, nuclear energy’s future, and communication with the public. Similarly, in Taiwan, as Gloria Kuang-Jung Hsu’s study shows, transparency about safety issues has been notoriously lacking, and a history of efforts to obfuscate nuclear weapon ambitions means that constant vigilance over nuclear regulators is necessary. Of course, if public opinion does not count in a country—say, in China and Vietnam—the issue of trust is muted. But we know that, even there, people are uneasy about having a nuclear power plant in their backyard. Issues of hidden cost and public trust are also embedded in the biological and health threat posed by nuclear energy. Tilman A. Ruff, a long-time student of radiation effects on human health, demonstrates how these effects have been underestimated. He offers a detailed explanation of what exposure to different doses of radiation, such as from the Fukushima accident, means for cancer rates and effects on DNA. Timothy A. Mousseau and Anders P. Møller, who have undertaken field research for many years on the genetic effects of the Chernobyl accident, look at how nuclear plant accidents affect the health of humans and other species. Combined, these two chapters offer a potent, often overlooked, argument against the nuclear option.
This introduction by Mel Gurtov and the following article by Lauren Richardson are adapted from Peter Van Ness and Mel Gurtov, eds., Learning From Fukushima. Nuclear Power in East Asia. Australian University Press.
***
Protesting Policy and Practice in South Korea’s Nuclear Energy Industry
by Lauren Richardson
Japan’s March 2011 (3/11) crisis spurred a revival in anti-nuclear activism around the globe. This was certainly the case in South Korea, Japan’s nearest neighbour, which was subject to some of the nuclear fallout from Fukushima. This chapter examines the puzzle of why the South Korean anti-nuclear movement was apparently powerless in the face of its government’s decision to ratchet up nuclear energy production post-3/11. It argues that its limitations stem from the highly insulated nature of energy policymaking in South Korea; the enmeshing of nuclear power in the government’s ‘Green Growth Strategy’; and certain tactical insufficiencies within the movement itself. Notwithstanding these limitations, the movement has successfully capitalised upon more recent domestic shocks to the nuclear power industry, resulting in a slight, yet significant, curtailing of the South Korean government’s nuclear energy capacity targets.
Introduction
The March 2011 (3/11) earthquake in northeastern Japan and ensuing nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant had profound reverberations for the global nuclear industry. In the wake of the disaster, countries as far-reaching as Germany and Switzerland brought their nuclear energy programs to a complete halt. Closer to the source of the calamity, the Taipei government initiated a gradual phase-out of its nuclear reactors and suspended plans for the construction of a fourth nuclear plant. These policy shifts were precipitated by nationwide anti-nuclear demonstrations that erupted in response to the Fukushima crisis. Somewhat surprising, however, was that Japan’s nearest neighbour, South Korea, reacted to the complete contrary. Despite the fact that Korean territory was subject to some of the nuclear fallout from Fukushima (see Hong et al. 2012), the South Korean government proceeded to ratchet up its nuclear energy program post-3/11 and pushed ahead with plans to become a major exporter of nuclear technology. Indeed, within only months of Japan’s disaster, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak reiterated his administration’s goal of doubling the number of domestic reactors, and reaffirmed nuclear technology as a primary export focus.
This response was puzzling for a number of reasons. First, similarly to the cases of Germany, Switzerland, and Taiwan, the South Korean anti-nuclear movement expanded to unprecedented proportions in the aftermath of Fukushima, yet ostensibly to no avail. This expansion was driven by a marked decline in public trust in the safety of nuclear reactors, and witnessed activists mounting a formidable challenge to nuclear energy policy. Moreover, since overthrowing the nation’s long-standing authoritarian regime in the late 1980s, South Korean civil society has evolved to wield powerful influence across a variety of policy domains; activists, though, were apparently powerless in the face of their government’s decision to increase nuclear-generating capacity. This is somewhat perplexing given that, in the very same year of the Fukushima calamity, South Korean civic groups contributed to undercutting a proposed security accord between Seoul and Tokyo, and ‘comfort women’ victims compelled their foreign ministry to pursue compensation from Japan more vigorously on their behalf―to name but two realms of policy influence.
Why then was South Korea’s anti-nuclear movement unable to subvert the South Korean government’s nuclear energy policy?
South African MP says says David Mahlobo clearly appointed energy minister to force the thing through
nuclear-news 