Because of the very warm temperatures the Nordic region is currently experiencing, the sea water that is collected to cool the Loviisa reactors is warmer and the water released is also warmer, at 32 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.
Releasing hot water back to the sea after cooling the reactors could be a hazard and if it exceeds 34 degrees Fortum said the reactors must be shut down due to regulations.
“We decreased power by 170 megawatts for a bit less than two hours. The sea water that cools the reactors was at 24 degrees, which is warmer than usual,” Fortum’s chief of operations in the plant, Timo Eurasto, told Reuters.
Such a rare occurrence may happen again in the next days because of the unusually warm temperatures, he said, adding that there was no danger to people, the plant, or the environment.
“High sea water temperature may indeed reduce the efficiency of the cooling systems of the plant. This is compensated by reducing or shutting down the reactor power,” said Nina Lahtinen, nuclear safety section head at Finland’s regulator STUK.
In Germany traders warned last week that higher temperatures in August may create cooling issues for the country’s reactors, with E.ON subsidiary PreussenElektra cutting output slightly from two units.
Sweden’s nuclear energy regulator SSM, told Reuters on Tuesday that power production at the Forsmark nuclear plant has also been reduced “by a few percentage points” due to cooling issues.
Last time Fortum had to reduce power in its reactors due to warmer-than-usual cooling water was seven years ago, said Loviisa plant’s Eurasto.
Unusually warm and dry weather in the Nordics led temperatures to record highs this summer, affecting water levels at the reservoirs that feed Norway and Sweden with hydropower, causing prices to spike as a result.
Leaked video of post-Fukushima flooding risk at American nuclear power plant
Flooding at a Florida Nuclear Plant, UCS, DAVE LOCHBAUM, DIRECTOR, NUCLEAR SAFETY PROJECT | JULY 26, 2018, Role of Regulation in Nuclear Plant Safety #5
St. Lucie Unit 1 began operating in 1976. From the beginning, it was required by federal regulations to be protected against flooding from external hazards. After flooding in 2011 led to the meltdown of three reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan, the NRC ordered owners to walk down their plants in 2012 to verify conformance with flood protection requirements and remedy all shortcomings. The owner of St. Lucie Unit 1 told the NRC that only one minor deficiency had been identified and it was fixed.
But heavy rainfall in January 2014 flooded the Unit 1 reactor auxiliary building with 50,000 gallons through flood barriers that had been missing since at least 1982. Unit 1 became as wet as the owner’s damp assurances and the NRC’s soggy oversight efforts.
Parade of Flood Protection Promises
Operators achieved the first criticality, or sustained nuclear chain reaction, of the Unit 1 reactor core at the St. Lucie nuclear plant located about miles southeast of Ft. Pierce, Florida at 8:30 am on April 22, 1976. Federal regulations adopted more than five years earlier required the plant to be protected against natural phenomena. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), forerunner to today’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), issued guidance in August 1973 that explicitly informed nuclear plant owners and applicants that the natural phenomena to be protected against included heavy local precipitation.
En route to the AEC issuing an operating license for Unit 1 on March 1, 1976, the owner submitted a Preliminary Safety Analysis Report and later a Final Safety Analysis Report, now called the Updated Final Safety Analysis Report (UFSAR), describing the design features and operational procedures that demonstrated conformance with all applicable regulatory requirements such as flood protection. The design bases external flood was a Probable Maximum Hurricane (PMH) while the design bases internal flood was the postulated rupture of a 14-inch diameter low pressure safety injection system pipe. The analyses summarized in the UFSAR reported the flooding rates, flooding depths needed to submerge and disable safety components, alarms alerting workers to the flooding situation, and response actions and associated times for workers to intervene and successfully mitigate a flooding event.
…………The owner reported to the NRC on December 27, 2012, the results of its evaluation of the missing and degraded conduit seals. The NRC was told that the electrical manholes have 4-inch and 1.5-inch diameter drain lines to the storm water system. In the event of site flooding due to a storm, water could flow through these drain lines into the electrical manholes. When the water filled the manholes to a certain depth, water would flow through the missing and degraded conduit seals into the reactor auxiliary building and disable components needed for safe shutdown of the reactor. The owner reported that the conduit seals had been missing since original construction in the 1970s. This potential hazard no longer existed because the missing and degraded conduit seals had been corrected.
The NRC evaluated the missing and degraded conduit seals reported by the owner via its November 27 and December 27 submittals. On April 25, 2013, the NRC issued its report for its evaluation. The NRC noted:
The licensee’s design basis does not allow for any external leakage into safety-related buildings during a PMH. Unit 1 UFSAR section 3.4.4, states in part, that “All external building penetrations are waterproofed and/or flood protected to preclude the failure of safety related system or component due to external flooding.”
Even though the flood protection deficiency existed for over three decades before being found and fixed, the NRC elected to impose no sanction for violating federal safety regulations.
The NRC reported on July 30, 2013, about additional walkdowns its inspectors made of the Unit 1 and 2 reactor auxiliary buildings. The NRC inspectors also reviewed documents in the owner’s corrective action and work order databases for weather-related problems that could result in site flooding. No problems were found.
Raining on the Promise Parade
On January 9, 2014, it rained on St. Lucie. A culvert in the storm water drain system obstructed by debris caused rain water to pool around the reactor auxiliary building instead of being carried away. Rain water leaked into the reactor auxiliary building via two electrical conduits that lacked the proper flood barriers. A video obtained by UCS via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) shows water pouring from an electrical junction box mounted on the inside wall of the Unit 1 reactor auxiliary building. (We don’t have a video of this location before the flood, but we know that it wasn’t nearly as wet and noisy.)
An estimated 50,000 gallons of water flooded Unit 1. Workers periodically manipulated valves to allow flood water to drain into the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) pump room sumps where it was transferred to an outdoor collection tank. Their efforts successfully prevented any safety components from being disabled and Unit 1 continuing operating through the rainfall.
When the dust dried, workers found four other electrical conduits that lacked proper flood barriers. The six conduits passed through the reactor auxiliary building wall below the design bases flood elevation. Consequently, they should have been equipped with flood barriers, but the required barriers had not been provided. These six conduits were not part of the plant’s original design, but had been installed via modifications implemented in 1978 and 1982.
The NRC issued a White finding, the second least serious among its Green, White, Yellow and Red classification scheme, on November 19, 2014, for two violations of regulatory requirements:
……..the owner violated federal regulations in 1978 and 1982 by not providing flood barriers with the installed conduit and re-violated federal regulations in 2012 by not finding the flood barriers missing when commanded by NRC to do so after Fukushima.
UCS Perspective
In the letter transmitting the White finding to the plant’s owner, NRC noted that the severity of the two violations of federal regulations would normally have also resulted in a $70,000 fine, but explained:
Because your facility has not been the subject of escalated enforcement actions within the last two years, the NRC considered whether credit was warranted for Corrective Action in accordance with the civil penalty assessment process in Section 2.3.4 of the Enforcement Policy. … Therefore, to encourage prompt identification and comprehensive correction of violations, and in recognition of the absence of previous escalated enforcement action, I have been authorized, after consultation with the Director, Office of Enforcement, not to propose a civil penalty in this case.
What?
“Because your facility has not been the subject of escalated enforcement actions within the last two years” is largely because the owner violated federal regulations by not finding, fixing, and reporting the missing flood barriers on the six electrical conduits that factored in the January 9, 2014, flooding event. So, the reason the owner has a clean slate over the past two years is because the owner violated federal regulations two years ago that would otherwise have uncleaned that slate. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
……… Is the White finding without the usual (and entirely appropriate) $70,000 fine a slap on the wrist of this owner?I don’t know. But I do know that it is a slap in the face of the many plant owners who took the NRC’s order seriously by doing a thorough job of walking down their plants for flooding and earthquake vulnerabilities and remedying all deficiencies (not just a token one or two).
By “encouraging” owners who perform badly, the NRC is discouraging owners who perform well. ……..
For over 30 years, St. Lucie operated without flood barriers it was required by federal regulations to have. ………
St. Lucie is adequately protected against flooding—unless a flood happens. That flood might reveal still more deficiencies for the NRC to “encourage” the owner to promptly find and comprehensively fix (assuming the reactor still hasn’t melted down.)
The 2020 Olympics will open in 2 years, and the heat is on, https://apnews.com/0a64bd6df7f349879fb5ff7c3b6cafd7 By JIM ARMSTRONG, 24 July 18 Since being awarded the games, which will be the largest ever with 33 sports and 339 events, Tokyo organizers have had to deal with a series of problems ranging from stadium and construction delays , natural disasters and a scandal involving the official logo.
Potential for scorching summer conditions has always concerned organizers, with temperatures in central Tokyo often exceeding 35 Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) in July and August, made more difficult because of high humidity.
This summer heatwave has resulted in more than 65 deaths and sent tens of thousands to hospitals. The temperature on Monday reached 41.1 Celsius (106 Fahrenheit), the highest ever recorded in Japan.
Experts have warned the risk of heatstroke in Tokyo has escalated in recent years, while noting the Olympics are expected to take place in conditions when sports activities should normally be halted.
“We are mindful that we do have to prepare for extreme heat,” John Coates, head of the IOC’s coordination commission for the Tokyo Games, told a recent news conference.
The 1964 Games in Tokyo were held in October to avoid the harshest of the heat. That was before the Olympics schedule was influenced by rights-paying broadcasters and sponsors.
Local organizers are doing what they can to help athletes combat the conditions. The marathon and some other outside events will be held early in the morning to avoid extreme heat.
The federal and the Tokyo metropolitan governments are also planning to lay pavements that emit less surface heat and plant taller roadside trees for shade.
“The spectators as well as the athletes have to be taken care of,” Coates said. “The timing of the marathon and road walks will be as early as possible as they have been in previous games to beat the heat.”
Organizers want the games to help showcase Japan’s recovery from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that took more than 18,000 lives and triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
While reconstruction from the disaster is making steady progress, and work on the new 68,000-seat main stadium in Tokyo is 40 percent complete, more than 70,000 people remain displaced from their communities.
The construction of the main stadium was more than a year behind schedule when it started in December 2016, as earlier plans were scrapped because of spiraling costs and a contentious design.
The Japanese government approved the new 150 billion yen ($1.5 billion) stadium, which is expected to be completed in November of 2019. The previous construction timeline would have allowed the main stadium to host the 2019 Rugby World Cup final on Nov. 2 as a test event, but that idea was scrapped.
Meanwhile, organizers say the other newly-constructed venues are 20 to 40 percent complete.
The torch relay will start March 26, 2020, in Fukushima, an area hit hard by the disaster.
Coates said local organizers are on track with 24 months to go.
“Tokyo 2020 comes a significant step closer to delivering an Olympic Games that will bring Japan and the world together,” he said. “The organizing committee has presented considerable progress … especially as it related to venue and operational readiness.”
It’s so hot, even parts of the Arctic are on fire.
Temperatures this month reached 86 degrees Fahrenheit well inside the Arctic Circle in Sweden, where the worst fires the country has seen in decades are now burning. More than 50 fires have ignited across the country, forcing evacuations. Finland and Norway are also fighting flames.
“This is a serious situation and the risk for forest fires is extremely high in the whole country,” Jakob Wernerman, operative head of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, told the Associated Press.
So far, no deaths from wildfires have been reported in Scandinavia, but Greece hasn’t been so fortunate. The country declared a state of emergency as raging forest fires have killed more than 70 people and injured more than 180 as they encroach on the capital Athens.
“There are no words to describe the feelings of all of us, these times,” said Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras during a televised address Tuesday. “The country is going through a tragedy.”
The government suspects arsonists may be behind the fires. But there’s also been intense heat across Europe this summer.
Across Europe, fire risks remain high in the coming weeks, according to the European Forest Fire Information System:
While warm temperatures and dry conditions crop up sporadically throughout Europe during the summer, it’s highly unusual that so many places are experiencing such hot, dry conditions for so long at the same time:
A corollary is that summers also spark wildfires in Europe on a regular basis, but rarely in so many places at the same time.
As for the rest of the world, heat this summer has already proved deadly in countries including Japan, Pakistan, and Canada.
As the climate changes, the fire season is getting longer, now stretching from June through October in Europe. We saw this play out late last year as Hurricane Ophelia sent stiff winds through Portugal and Spain, driving wildfires that killed more than 100 people. The European Environment Agency reported that “an expansion of the fire-prone area and longer fire seasons are projected across Europe.”
On grid operator RTE’s website, EDF said environmental issues are limiting “some” nuclear production availability in the country, starting Saturday.
EDF did not give details on the exact impact of the output restrictions. The two nuclear power stations have a combined capacity of over 6 GW.
Environmental issues have already resulted in weekend outages at EDF’s Bugey-3 reactor on the river Rhone. Hot weather conditions previously have led to cooling water restrictions due to raised river temperatures.
According to forecaster MeteoFrance, temperatures should remain above seasonal average, or around 2 degrees Celsius above norms over the weekend.
One of the more serious impacts of human-caused climate disruption occurs when seawater absorbs excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When this occurs, the carbon dioxide reacts with the water to form carbonic acid, which then ultimately reduces its pH level. For much of the marine life in the oceans, the consequences of this will be dire.
“Animals that have a calcium carbonate shell such as, corals, coralline algae, pteropods, bivalves and gastropods are negatively affected by ocean acidification,” said Richard Feely, a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. “In some cases, their shells are weakened or actually dissolve while the animal is still alive. Fish behavior is also impacted by ocean acidification such that some species lose their ability to navigate or avoid predators.”………
As oceans absorb increasing amounts of our industrial emissions of CO2, their pH is expected to drop to a staggering 7.7 pH by 2100, according to professor of marine chemistry Aleck Wang at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Wang told National Geographic that by 2100, “you are going to start seeing calcium carbonate shells dissolve. It’s not going to be that far away.”
Most scientists studying the impacts of ocean acidification agree that by killing off the types of organisms Feely mentioned (corals, oysters, types of phytoplankton, etc.), major portions of the oceanic food chain could be greatly impacted.
Feely told Truthout that key marine organisms and ecosystem services face contrasting risks from the combined effects of ocean acidification, warming and sea level rise, and that even under the most stringently controlled CO2 emissions scenario, warm water corals and mid-latitude bivalves “are considered to be at high risk by 2100.”
“Under our current rate of CO2 emissions, most marine organisms are expected to have very high risk of impacts by 2100 and many by 2050,” Feely said. “These results are consistent with evidence of biological responses during high-CO2 periods in the geological past. Impacts to the ocean’s ecosystem services follow a parallel trajectory.”
……… According to Feely, high latitude and upwelling regions of the oceans are already “seriously affected by ocean acidification,” and he said that he and his colleagues are “already observing dissolution of pteropod shells in the Arctic and Southern Oceans, and also upwelling regions along the West Coast of North America.”
………Feely’s deepest concerns about ocean acidification are that so many ecosystem processes that humans depend on for food and survival are already impacted by both oceanic warming and acidification, and the risks of these impacts to these services only increases with continued CO2 emissions, which currently show little signs of slowing down.
“[The impacts] are predicted to remain moderate for the next several decades for most services under stringent emission reductions,” Feely said. “But the business-as-usual scenario would put all ecosystem services at high or very high risk over the same time frame.”
A 2015 study warned that ocean acidification could cause dramatic changes to phytoplankton, the basis of the entire oceanic food web.
Tokyo 2020 will host the XXXII Olympic Summer Games, Jul 24 – Aug 9.
How safe will the athletes be – competing in this new era of climate change heat?
How safe will anyone be, with the continuing danger of Fukushima’s wrecked nuclear reactors, and Japan’s accumulations of nuclear radioactive trash?
Ironically, Japan would appear to most thinking people to be a most unwise choice for the 2020 Olympics, because of the continuing dangerous situation at Fukushima.
But most people have missed the connection to the military-industrial-corporate-global-nuclear-complex.
It’s a large part of the reason WHY JAPAN WAS CHOSEN – TO PROVE TO THE WORLD THAT FUKUSHIMA DOESN’T MATTER – THAT THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY IS JUST FINE!
Steve Dale comments:Trees take up the Cesium-137 via their roots and pump it to their growth tips. A forest fire could spread radioactivity everywhere again. People avoiding the No-Go areas might have the radiation come to their lungs via smoke.
This month’s scorching heat wave broke records around the world. The Algerian city of Ouargla, with a population of half a million, had a temperature of 124.3 degrees Fahrenheit on July 6, the hottest reliably measured temperature on record in Africa. In Ireland and Wales, the unusually hot weather revealed ancient structures normally hidden by grass or crops. In Chino, California, the mercury soared to 120 degrees. Another round of hazardous summer heat is expected this week, with record high temperatures possible in the southern United States.
The prolonged heat wave has been a staple of television news for weeks. However, most of the coverage has been sorely lacking in context: Humans are warming the planet, and scientists have already linked some heat waves to climate change. A recent analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change concludes that human-driven climate change, rather than natural variability, will be the leading cause of heat waves over the western United States and Great Lakes region as early as the 2020s and 2030s, respectively.
Like the heat itself, much of the media coverage was stupefying. “Major broadcast TV networks overwhelmingly failed to report on the links between climate change and extreme heat,” according to a Media Matters survey. “Over a two-week period from late June to early July, ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 127 segments or weathercasts that discussed the heat wave, but only one segment, on CBS This Morning, mentioned climate change.”
TV coverage would undoubtedly improve if weather forecasters were better informed about climate science. But four Republican senators with close ties to the fossil fuel industry are trying to eliminate government funding for a National Science Foundation designed to help forecasters (and by extension, the general public) “become more familiar with the science behind how their local weather and its trends are related to the dynamics of the climate.”
At least 11 wildfires are raging inside the Arctic Circle as the hot, dry summer turns an abnormally wide area of Europe into a tinderbox.
The worst affected country, Sweden, has called for emergency assistance from its partners in the European Union to help fight the blazes, which have broken out across a wide range of its territory and prompted the evacuations of four communities.
Tens of thousands of people have been warned to remain inside and close windows and vents to avoid smoke inhalation. Rail services have been disrupted.
The Copernicus Earth observation programme, which gives daily updates of fires in Europe, shows more than 60 fires burning across Sweden, with sites also ablaze in Norway, Finland and Russia, including in the Arctic Circle.
Norway has sent six fire-fighting helicopters in response to its neighbour’s request for assistance. Italy is sending two Canadair CL-415s – which can dump 6,000 litres of water on each run – to Örebro in central southern Sweden.
In western Sweden, fire-fighting operations were temporarily halted near an artillery training range near Älvdalen forest due to concernsthat unexploded ordnance might be detonated by the extreme heat.
Residents in Uppsala said they could see the plumes of smoke and have been banned from barbecuing in national parks, after 18 consecutive days without rain.
“This is definitely the worst year in recent times for forest fires. Whilst we get them every year, 2018 is shaping up to be excessive,” said Mike Peacock, a university researcher and local resident.
There have been huge fires in the past in Sweden, but not over such a wide area. This appears to be a trend as more and bigger blazes are reported in other far northern regions like Greenland, Alaska, Siberia and Canada.
The sparks come from a variety of sources: BBQs, cigarettes and increasingly lightning, which is becoming more frequent as the planet warms.
Swedish authorities say the risk of more fires in the days ahead is “extremely high” due to temperatures forecast in excess of 30C. Much of the northern hemisphere has sweltered in unusually hot weather in recent weeks, breaking records from Algeria to California and causing fires from Siberia to Yorkshire. Ukraine has been hit especially hard by wildfires.
The European Forest Fire Information System warned fire danger conditions were likely to be extreme across much of central and northern Europe in the coming weeks.
EU officials said many of this year’s fires are outside the traditional European fire zone of the Mediterranean, and are increasingly taking place at unexpected times of year. 2017 was the worst fire year in Europe’s history, causing destruction to thousands of hectares of forest and cropland in Portugal, Spain and Italy, as late as November. “There are clear trends of longer fire seasons and frequent critical periods in Europe that are leading to dangerous fire situations,” said a European commission official.
Climate scientists said the Arctic and other areas that were once relatively fire-free are likely to become more vulnerable.
“What we’re seeing with this global heatwave is that these areas of fire susceptibility are now broadening, with the moors in north-west England and now these Swedish fires a consequence of that,” said Vincent Gauci, professor of global change ecology at the Open University.
“Both these areas are typically mild and wet which allows forests and peatlands to develop quite large carbon stores,” he added. “When such carbon-dense ecosystems experience aridity and heat and there is a source of ignition – lightning or people – fires will happen.”
In India, summer heat could soon be unbearable — literally
An analysis of South Asia’s biggest cities found that if current warming trends continued, wet bulb temperatures — a measure of heat and humidity indicating when the body can no longer cool itself — will become so high people directly exposed for six hours or more would die. Somini Sengupta-Seattle Times, July 18, 2018 The New York Times
NEW DELHI — On a sweltering Wednesday in June, a rail-thin woman named Rehmati gripped the doctor’s table with both hands. She could hardly hold herself upright, the pain in her stomach was so intense.
She had traveled for 26 hours in a hot oven of a bus to visit her husband, a migrant worker here in the Indian capital. By the time she got here, the city was an oven, too: 111 degrees by lunchtime, and Rehmati was in an emergency room.
The doctor, Reena Yadav, did not know exactly what had made Rehmati sick, but it was clearly linked to the heat. Yadav suspected dehydration, possibly aggravated by fasting during Ramadan. Or it could have been food poisoning, common in summer because food spoils quickly.
Yadav put Rehmati, who is 31 and goes by one name, on a drip. She held her hand and told her she would be fine. Rehmati leaned over and retched.
Extreme heat can kill, as it did by the dozens in Pakistan in May. But as many of South Asia’s already-scorching cities get even hotter, scientists and economists are warning of a quieter, more far-reaching danger: Extreme heat is devastating the health and livelihoods of tens of millions more.
If global greenhouse-gas emissions continue at their current pace, they say, heat and humidity levels could become unbearable, especially for the poor.
It is already making them poorer and sicker.
…….Indeed, a recent analysis of climate trends in several of South Asia’s biggest cities found that if current warming trends continue, by the end of the century, wet bulb temperatures — a measure of heat and humidity that can indicate the point when the body can no longer cool itself — would be so high that people directly exposed for six hours or more would not survive.
In many places, heat only magnifies the more thorny urban problems, including a shortage of basic services, like electricity and water.
…The science is unequivocally worrying. Across the region, a recent World Bank report concluded, rising temperatures could diminish the living standards of 800 million people.
Worldwide, among the 100 most populous cities where summer highs are expected to reach at least 95 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, according to estimates by the Urban Climate Change Research Network, 24 are in India.
………Delhi’s heat index, a metric that takes average temperatures and relative humidity into account, has risen sharply — by 0.6 degrees Celsius in summer and 0.55 degrees during monsoons per decade between 1951 and 2010, according to one analysis based on data from 283 weather stations across the country.
Some cities are getting hotter at different times of year. The average March-to-May summertime heat index for Hyderabad had risen by 0.69 degrees per decade between 1951 and 2010. In Kolkata, a delta city in the east, where summers are sticky and hot anyway, the monsoon is becoming particularly harsh: The city’s June-September heat index climbed by 0.26 degrees Celsius per decade.
Joyashree Roy, an economist at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, found that already, most days in the summer are too hot and humid to be doing heavy physical labor without protection, with wet-bulb temperatures far exceeding the thresholds of most international occupational health standards. of most international occupational health standards……… https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/in-india-summer-heat-could-soon-be-unbearable-literally/
Research published in the International Journal of Climatology last year found night-time temperatures were increasing more rapidly than daytime temperatures.
History was made in the Middle East on June 28 when the world’s hottest night on record was set in Quriyat, Oman with the overnight “low” dropping to 42.6 degrees Celsius.
Individual location records have been broken in the US, Russia, Canada, Scotland, Armenia and Georgia.
Africa could have reached its highest ever reliably recorded temperature of 51.3C in Ourargla, Algeria on July 5.
The World Meteorological Organisation recognises 55C as the highest temperature for Africa, recorded at Kebili, Tunisia on July 7, 1931.
But there is widespread scepticism about the record’s accuracy because the temperatures recorded before the 1950s are mysteriously higher than anything to have come after them.
Telegraph 18th July 2018, Britain’s largest companies will need to lay bare the size of their
carbon footprint alongside their statutory financial results in their
annual reports from next year. Under new rules, the Government will force
large private companies and those quoted on the London Stock Exchange to
account for their energy use, carbon emissions and their energy efficiency
measures in the drive towards a zero carbon economy. The new rules take
effect for the financial years from April 2019 and replace a defunct carbon
reporting regime which was heavily criticised by business for needlessly
adding layers of bureaucracy at a cost of around £20m. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/07/18/government-force-carbon-accounting-annual-reports/
Nuclear power predicted to ‘virtually disappear’ in the US Power Technology 5th July 2018 By Scarlett Evans, Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy have released a report detailing nuclear power’s dwindling significance in the US, stating that it is unlikely to make any noteworthy contributions to the country’s decarbonised energy system over the next few decades.
The report, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, examined the potential contribution of large, light water nuclear reactors (LWRs) to the US energy system over the next three or four decades…… The researchers also examined whether advanced reactor designs and factory-manufactured smaller light water reactors (known as small modular reactors or SMRs) would play a significant role in US energy markets, being the only other option for the large-scale deployment of nuclear power. The study took several scenarios into account, such as using SMRs as wind or solar back-ups, to desalinate water, produce heat for industrial processes, or serve military bases.
Guardian 6th July 2018 Temperature rises as a result of global warming could eventually be double
what has been projected by climate models, according to an international
team of researchers from 17 countries. Sea levels could also rise by six
metres or more even if the world does meet the 2 degree target of the Paris
accord.
The findings, published last week in Nature Geoscience, were based
on observations of evidence from three warm periods in the past 3.5m years
in which global temperatures were 0.5-2 degrees above the pre-industrial
temperatures of the 19th century.
The vanishing nuclear industry, Science Daily, July 2, 2018, Source: College of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
Summary:
Could nuclear power make a significant contribution to decarbonizing the US energy system over the next three or four decades? Probably not.
Could nuclear power make a significant contribution to decarbonizing the U.S. energy system over the next three or four decades? That is the question asked by four current and former researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP). Their answer: probably not.
In a paper, “U.S. nuclear power: The vanishing low-carbon wedge,” just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the team examined the current U.S. nuclear fleet, which is made up of large light water nuclear reactors (LWRs). While for three decades, approximately 20% of U.S. power generation has come from these LWRs, these plants are ageing, and the cost of maintaining and updating them along with competition from low cost natural gas, makes them less and less competitive in today’s power markets.
In place of these LWRs, the team asked whether advanced reactor designs might play a significant role in U.S. energy markets in the next few decades. They concluded that they probably would not. Then, the team examined the viability of developing and deploying a fleet of factory manufactured smaller light water reactors, known as small modular reactors (SMRs). The team examined several ways in which a large enough market might be developed to support such an SMR industry, including using them to back up wind and solar and desalinate water, produce heat for industrial processes, or serve military bases. Again, given the current market and policy environments, they concluded that the prospects for this occurrence do not look good. …https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180702154736.htm
