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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Scepticism, even among pro-nukers, about Russia’s much boasted floating nuclear power plant

The Nuclear Power Plant of the Future May Be Floating Near Russia, NYT 26 Aug 26   18  “………some environmental groups — even those open to a role for nuclear power as a substitute for traditional power plants — are skeptical.

For one, they are not convinced by Rosatom’s assurances of safety. Critics worry that during a tsunami, the 21,000-ton steel structure might not ride out the wave. In a worst-case scenario, they say, it would instead be torn from its moorings and sent barreling inland, plowing through buildings until it landed, steaming and dented and with two active reactors on board, well away from its source of coolant.

In such a case, Rosatom says, a backup power source and coolant on board would prevent the reactors from melting down, at least for the first 24 hours. “During this time we would consider what to do,” said Dmitri Alekseyenko, the deputy director for Rosatom’s floating reactor program. Regulators in the United States, however, require on-land reactors to operate for 72 hours in an emergency shutdown without external water supplies.

And the fact that the technology is well tested in Russian ships gives critics little solace, given a long history of spills and accidents involving nuclear-powered submarines and icebreakers operated by the Soviet and Russian navies.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet Union dumped reactors in the Kara Sea, in the Arctic Ocean north of Kola Bay. Russian nuclear submarines sank in 1989 and 2000, while one Russian nuclear icebreaker caught fire in 2011 and the reactor on another leaked radiation that year, according to Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group.

“The question is, would clients of Russia be comfortable with something like this being parked right at a pier in a major city?” Matthew McKinzie, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, said in a telephone interview.

A Greenpeace sailboat tailed the Akademik Lomonosov on its maiden voyage from a shipyard in St. Petersburg to Murmansk, where it will be fueled, flying a banner in English saying: “Floating Nuclear Reactor? Srsly?”  ….

August 27, 2018 Posted by | Russia, spinbuster, technology | Leave a comment

Exelon teaching kids about nuclear power – conflict of interest?

Exelon welcomes community to learn about nuclear power, Watertown Daily Times By DEBRA J. GROOM

DGROOM@WDT.NET  , AUGUST 26, 2018 Dominick Giamartino’s eyes were big as saucers.

“This is cool,” he said.

Dominick, 6, a first-grader at Hastings-Mallory Elementary School, visited the Exelon Generation nuclear plant site Tuesday with his grandmother Diane Giamartino as part of the annual Community Information Night. Nearly 200 people showed up to learn more about what the company does at its three Oswego nuclear plants and the different types of jobs available in the nuclear industry.

There were two buildings filled with “cool” things to see, according to Dominick.

In the first building, visitors could watch a 3D printer turn out these spinning toys that Dominick and other children could take home. The small plastic devices were made of one piece of plastic, but had parts that would spin in different directions……..

Dominick saw even more “cool” stuff in the other Exelon building — especially the nuclear plant control room simulator used by employees. The control room is the brain of the plant, a place filled with various lights and readings on a huge control-room board that supervisors, senior reactor operators and reactor operators keep their eyes tuned to 24 hours a day to ensure all systems in the plant are operating correctly.

Jill Lyon, speaking for Exelon, said the Community Information Nights have been held since 2014 to help area residents learn more about what goes on at the plants.http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/news04/exelon-welcomes-community-to-learn-about-nuclear-power-20180826

August 26, 2018 Posted by | Education, USA | Leave a comment

Fukushima prefecture to start 2020 Olympic Games Torch Relay

Fukushima begins talks on 2020 relay route http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0004683941 24 Aug 18 FUKUSHIMA (Jiji Press) — Fukushima Prefecture officials started discussions on Friday on selecting a torch relay route for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.They will submit a route plan to the Olympic organizing committee by the end of the year.

Fukushima, one of the three prefectures hit hardest by the March 11, 2011, powerful earthquake and tsunami, has been picked as the starting point for the relay to highlight progress in the reconstruction of affected areas.

“We’ll proceed with preparations for realizing a torch relay that is suited for the start of the Olympics symbolizing postdisaster reconstruction,” Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori said at the meeting.

Torch-bearers are scheduled to run through Fukushima for three days starting on March 26, 2020, as part of the 121-day relay across the nation’s 47 prefectures.

The Fukushima officials will also discuss ways to select torch-bearers and ensure the safety of the relay route.

August 25, 2018 Posted by | Japan, spinbuster | Leave a comment

ABOUT THE FOURTH GENERATION (NUCLEAR REACTORS)

The nuclear company Terrestrial Energy has joined those other pro nuclear spinners –

“Ecomodernists” “The Breakthrough Institute” “Generation Atomic” “Environmental Progress” “Bright New World” and others –  in their very modern very alternative  type of pro nuclear spin.  It’s a lovely touchy feely style, where you concentrate on things beautiful, a gorgeous glowing future – and the words “nuclear reactor” are barely mentioned.

Yes, they want a glowing future –   unfortunately, it’s the wrong kind of glow.

Terrestrial Energy has set up this new pro nuclear propaganda group  “ABOUT THE FOURTH GENERATION” – it’s all about “climate and clean energy” 

August 23, 2018 Posted by | spinbuster, technology, USA | Leave a comment

Japan’s 2020 Olympic Games a public relations cover-up of the Fukushima fiasco, for the nuclear industry

Pay no attention to that radiological disaster behind the curtains https://globalhibakusha.com/page-2/?permalink=hiding-fukushima-behind-the-curtains-in-official-japan  by Bo, 

The government of Japan is clearly intending that the 2020 Olympics will function as a public relations win in which the image of Japan, and especially of Northern Japan and Fukushima are cleansed of images of radiological contamination. Even as the Fukushima Daiichi site itself, and the traces where the plumes of its explosions deposited fallout throughout the area remain un-remediated, the public perceptions will be remediated. This is typical of the behavior of governments in the developed world that suffer radiological disasters. The disasters themselves are so difficult to clean up, and take decades to even begin the clean up, that money is allocated for extensive public relations efforts. These become tasks that CAN be completed and CAN be considered successful. They function both to advance the public image agenda of the governments, and also deliver a sense of agency when the overall tone of nuclear disaster remediation is one of lacking effective agency.

Towards that end, the Japanese government is planning to integrate Fukushima sites and perceptions into the upcoming Olympics media fest. The journey of the Olympic torch through every prefecture of Japan will begin in Fukushima, a symbolic rebirth intended to facilitate the repopulating of the local communities that were evacuated, many of which have had few returnees since the government has declared them “safe” and cut public funds to those forcibly evacuated.

The government is also planning to hold multiple Olympic events in Fukushima prefecture including baseball and softball events. “Tokyo 2020 is a showcase for the recovery and reconstruction of Japan from the disaster of March 2011, so in many ways we would like to give encouragement to the people, especially in the affected area,”said Tokyo 2020 president Yoshiro Mori last March.

This active rebranding of Fukushima as safe involves removing physical reminders of ongoing risk. The central government has recently announced that it will be removing 80% of public radiation monitors from the region. An argument can be made that the presence of these monitors is theatrical in that they only measure external gamma radiation levels, which are not the primary risk to residents (this comes from internalizing radioactive particles that blanketed the region in the fallout of the plumes of the explosions of March 2011), and that positioning these gamma detectors in midair produces low readings since the particles are primarily on the ground. However, they are a tangible, embodied reminder that risk remains.

While there is a clearly an active campaign to rehabilitate the image of the region leading up to the 2020 Olympics, an effort that will no doubt intensify as the event draws near, there is also pushback and resistance in the local and national communities. A recent sculpture unveiled at the JR train station in prefectural capital Fukushima City (about 80km from the Daiichi nuclear site) has been stirring up controversy.  A Guardian article explained:

“The statue, by Kenji Yanobe, depicts a child dressed in a yellow Hazmat-style suit, with a helmet in one hand and an artistic representation of the sun in the other.
Yanobe said his Sun Child, which was installed by the municipal government after appearing at art exhibitions in Japan and overseas, was intended to express his desire for a nuclear-free world.
The artist said he did not mean to give the impression that local children needed to protect themselves from radiation more than seven years after the Fukushima Daiichi plant became the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
He pointed out that the child was not wearing the helmet and that a monitor on its chest showed radiation levels at ‘000’.”

While some, including the mayor of Fukushima City, have praised the statue for emphasizing a hopeful future for local children, others have criticized the statue for suggesting that there is any danger to local children.

Regardless of how one interprets the sculpture, it does confront people with the fact that things are far from normal in the region. This, in spite of the central government’s strong efforts to implore people not to pay any attention to what is happening behind the curtains it has been raising.

 

August 20, 2018 Posted by | Japan, psychology and culture, secrets,lies and civil liberties, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Would closing old and uncompetitive nuclear power plants really harm the United States?

The ‘Threat’ of Nuclear Power Plant Closures, Would closing old and uncompetitive nuclear power plants really harm the United States?   https://nationalinterest.org/feature/threat-nuclear-power-plant-closures-28262by Victor Gilinsky Henry Sokolski

For years, the nuclear industry insisted that civilian nuclear power had nothing to do with weapons programs. That was then. Now, in a desperate attempt to keep no-longer-competitive nuclear plants from being shuttered, the industry claims there really has been a connection all along, and electricity customers should pay a premium to keep it going. It is one claim too many.

In its latest public effort, the nuclear industry got several dozen retired generals and admirals, former State, Defense and Energy Department officials, three former chairmen of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and a sprinkling of former senators, governors, industrialists and other worthies to sign a June 26, 2018, letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry attesting to the connection between U.S. nuclear power plants and national security. The letter urged him to weigh in with federal and state rate-setting bodies to raise customers’ electricity bills to keep U.S. nuclear plants from shutting down, however much that will cost.

The letter didn’t, of course, put it in such crass terms. It talks about taking “concrete steps” to ensure electricity markets valued the nuclear plants’ “national security attributes”— a vague enough formulation to ease getting signatories. Most of them, as one of the signers (former Virginia Senator John Warner) himself put it , “are not intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the financial side of the power grid.” They do, however, apparently believe that they see the big picture—”the national security attributes of nuclear power”—more clearly than the parochial federal and state officials who set electric rates.

But are they any clearer on nuclear power’s national-security attributes than they are on the financial side of the industry?

The letter talks about “robust” nuclear power plants offering “a level of protection against natural and adversarial threats.” Leaving aside that “a level of protection” doesn’t mean much, the implied claim is dubious. It’s not well known but nuclear plant safety is critically dependent on the reliability of the electrical grid to which it is connected. In severe natural situations (ice storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes), and even more so in adversarial ones, the transmission lines connecting nuclear plants to the electrical grid may fail or be destroyed. The earthquake that triggered the Fukushima accident first destroyed transmission towers and broke the link with the electrical grid. In these circumstances a nuclear plant must be shut down, as would any other electric generating plant. The difference, however, is that the nuclear plant becomes a serious liability because its safety cooling systems would have to operate indefinitely on its emergency diesel reserves—a highly undesirable state of affairs. There have been grid failures in the United States that have put several nuclear plants into emergency mode. In this context, it’s fair to ask whether nuclear plants increase the resilience of our electrical grid or burden it.

Another claim is that the Navy “benefits from a strong civil nuclear sector.” Maybe so. But in that event, as John Cochrane, an economist with the Hoover Institution, pointed out in connection with a similar appeal to subsidies, “If national security is at risk, let Defense ask for money.” The writers and signatories of the Perry letter know that nuclear power subsidies wouldn’t stand a chance set against the priorities of the Department of Defense. They know it would be an easier touch to stick the country’s ratepayers with the added bill. There is an element of insensitivity in this, as most of the ratepayers are in rather more difficult financial circumstances than the comfortably pensioned signatories. It has not occurred to them to ask that industry should earn less out of patriotism. But, of course, they didn’t write the letter.

“The nuclear industry is an important career destination for military veterans.” True, and retired Navy officers and seamen have had a useful effect on making plants run better and more safely. But should customers pay more on their bills to provide second careers to retired military and naval personnel at plants that are not needed?

The claim in the letter that deserves the most attention is the insidious argument that the United States needs to be a major exporter of nuclear technology in order to retain “influence over nonproliferation.” The worldwide spread of nuclear technology is, of course, what makes proliferation an urgent problem. The whole point of the body of the Perry letter is that there is a close connection between U.S. nuclear power and our nuclear weapons programs. Why should we think that this connection is not present in other countries? Wouldn’t that suggest sharing less, rather than more, of this technology?

Nuclear power has not succeeded in escaping its origin. It was born in the federal government, was suckled by the government, and has always relied on government support and protection. The industry preferred a system of federal regulation that gave the public essentially no say in the deployment of nuclear plants. It was an easy path for the industry to get its way, but only for a time. The crutch that seemed to make it unnecessary to react to public and market feedback also held back improvements. Now that nuclear plants are threatened with shutdowns, the industry can only think of more federal and state subsidies. In this latest effort, the industry wraps itself in the flag to urge Washington to find a way to stick ratepayers with the tab. It should be ignored.

Victor Gilinsky served on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. He is program adviser for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and the author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future. He served as deputy for nonproliferation policy in the office of the U.S. secretary of defense from 1989 to 1993.

August 10, 2018 Posted by | spinbuster, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Canada’s  Nuclear Waste Management Organization is educating youth

NWMO introducing nuclear waste plan education to youth   Kincardine News, 9 Aug 18, With summer winding down, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization is concluding a busy few months of activities engaging with area youth……. “We want to foster and support opportunities for young people in South Bruce and Huron-Kinloss. Our local youth have a lot to offer, and as we engage with them as part of Canada’s plan we hope to strengthen the impact they will have on their communities.”…….

Youth engagement is a big priority for this multi-generational, infrastructure project. The NWMO has provided numerous investments in STEM Education Initiatives for youth at local schools and libraries. ……

Elementary and high schools in South Bruce and Huron-Kinloss were treated to an energy and nuclear power discussion with University of Calgary Professor Dr. Jason Donev, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) also made stops to talk about radiation and their role as Canada’s independent nuclear regulator.

Local youth have highlighted their desire to seek out information on social media, specifically on Instagram.

Already established on Facebook since October 2017, the NWMO recently launched on Instagram (follow @nwmocanada) with content highlighting its activities, and is working toward digital products that will help introduce Canada’s plan to the next generation.https://www.kincardinenews.com/news/local-news/nwmo-introducing-nuclear-waste-plan-education-to-youth

August 10, 2018 Posted by | Canada, Education | Leave a comment

Ahead of Olympic Games, Fukushima nuclear power plant gets an extreme makeover

Extreme makeover: Fukushima nuclear plant tries image overhaul, Channel News Asia, 3 August 18, 

FUKUSHIMA: Call it an extreme makeover: In Japan’s Fukushima, officials are attempting what might seem impossible, an image overhaul at the site of the worst nuclear meltdown in decades.

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, there’s a flashy new administrative building, debris has been moved and covered, and officials tout the “light” radioactive security measures now possible.

“You see people moving around on foot, just in their uniforms. Before that was banned,” an official from the plant’s operator TEPCO says.

“These cherry blossoms bloom in the spring,” he adds, gesturing to nearby foliage.

If it sounds like a hard sell, that might be because the task of rehabilitating the plant’s reputation is justifiably Herculean.

………TEPCO officials have been gradually trying to rebrand the plant, bringing in school groups, diplomats and other visitors, and touting a plan to attract 20,000 people a year by 2020, when Tokyo hosts the Summer Olympics.

Officials point out that protective gear is no longer needed in most of the plant, except for a small area, where some 3,000 to 4,000 workers are still decontaminating the facility.

Since May, visitors have been able to move around near the reactors on foot, rather than only in vehicles, and they can wear “very light equipment,” insists TEPCO spokesman Kenji Abe.

That ensemble includes trousers, long sleeves, a disposable face mask, glasses, gloves, special shoes and two pairs of socks, with the top pair pulled up over the trouser hem to seal the legs underneath.

And of course there’s a geiger counter.

The charm offensive extends beyond the plant, with TEPCO in July resuming television and billboard adverts for the first time since 2011, featuring a rabbit mascot with electrical bolt whiskers called “Tepcon”.

But the upbeat messaging belies the enormity of the task TEPCO faces to decommission the plant.

It has installed an “icewall” that extends deep into the ground around the plant in a bid to prevent groundwater seeping in and becoming decontaminated, or radioactive water from inside flowing out to the sea.

But about 100,000 litres of water still seeps into the plant each day, some of which is used for cooling. It requires extensive treatment to reduce its radioactivity.

Once treated, the water is stored in tanks, which have multiplied around the plant as officials wrangle over what to do with the contaminated liquid.

There are already nearly 900 tanks containing a million cubic metres of water – equal to about 400 Olympic swimming pools.

And the last stage of decommissioning involves the unprecedented task of extracting molten nuclear fuel from the reactors…….https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/extreme-makeover–fukushima-nuclear-plant-tries-image-overhaul-10586540

August 4, 2018 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Australia’s nuclear testing before the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne should be a red flag for Fukushima in 2020

Part time tutor in Medical Education, University of Dundee

The scheduling of Tokyo 2020 Olympic events at Fukushima is being seen as a public relations exercise to dampen fears over continuing radioactivity from the reactor explosion that followed the massive earthquake six years ago.

It brings to mind the British atomic bomb tests in Australia that continued until a month before the opening of the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne – despite the known dangers of fallout travelling from the testing site at Maralinga to cities in the east. And it reminds us of the collusion between scientists and politicians – British and Australian – to cover up the flawed decision-making that led to continued testing until the eve of the Games.

Australia’s prime minister Robert Menzies agreed to atomic testing in December 1949. Ten months earlier, Melbourne had secured the 1956 Olympics even though the equestrian events would have to be held in Stockholm because of Australia’s strict horse quarantine regimes.

The equestrians were well out of it. Large areas of grazing land – and therefore the food supplies of major cities such as Melbourne – were covered with a light layer of radiation fallout from the six atomic bombs detonated by Britain during the six months prior to the November 1956 opening of the Games. Four of these were conducted in the eight weeks running up to the big event, 1,000 miles due west of Melbourne at Maralinga.

Bombs and games

In the 25 years I have been researching the British atomic tests in Australia, I have found only two mentions of the proximity of the Games to the atomic tests. Not even the Royal Commission into the tests in 1985 addressed the known hazards of radioactive fallout for the athletes and spectators or those who lived in the wide corridor of the radioactive plumes travelling east.

At the time, the approaching Olympics were referred to only once in the Melbourne press in relation to the atomic tests, in August 1956. It is known that D-notices from the government “requesting” editors to refrain from publishing information about certain defence and security matters were issued.

The official history of the tests by British nuclear historian Lorna Arnold, published by the UK government in 1987 and no longer in print, reports tests director William Penney signalling concern only once, in late September 1956:

Am studying arrangements firings but not easy. Have Olympic Games in mind but still believe weather will not continue bad.

This official history doesn’t comment on the implications. And nowhere in the 1985 Royal Commission report is there any reference to the opening of the Olympics, just one month and a day after the fourth test took place 1,000 miles away.

The 1984 report of the Expert Committee on the review of Data on Atmospheric Fallout Arising from British Nuclear Tests in Australia found that the methodology used to estimate the numbers of people who might have been harmed by this fallout at fewer than 10 was inappropriate. And it concluded that if the dose calculations were confined to the communities in the path of the fallout and not merged with the total Australian population “such an exercise would generate results several orders of magnitude higher than those based on conventional philosophy”. There was no mention of the Olympic Games.

Neither Prime Minister Menzies nor his cabinet ever referred publicly to what had been known from the outset – that the British atomic tests in Australia would almost coincide with the Melbourne Olympics. The tests and the Games were planned simultaneously through the first half of the 1950s.

In May 1955, 18 months before the Olympics were due to start, Howard Beale, the Australian minister for supply, announced the building of “the Los Alamos of the British Commonwealth” (a nuclear test site in New Mexico) at Maralinga, promising that “tests would only take place in meteorological conditions which would carry radioactive clouds harmlessly away into the desert”.

An Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee was formed by the Australians but was closely controlled by physicist Professor Ernest Titterton, the only Englishman on the panel. The 1985 Royal Commission stated explicitly that the AWTSC was complicit in the firing of atomic detonations in weather conditions that they knew could carry radioactive fallout a thousand miles from Maralinga to eastern cities such as Melbourne.

Hazards of radioactivity

Professor Titterton, who had recently been appointed to a chair in nuclear physics at the Australian National University after working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, and at Aldermaston in England, explained why the atomic devices were being tested in Australia:

Because of the hazards from the radioactivity which follows atomic weapons explosions, the tests are best carried out in isolated regions – usually a desert area … Most of the radioactivity produced in the explosion is carried up in the mushroom cloud and drifts downward under atmospheric airstreams. But particular material in this cloud slowly settles to the ground and may render an area dangerously radioactive out to distances ranging between 50 and several hundred miles … It would therefore be hazardous to explode even the smallest weapons in the UK, and it was natural for the mother country to seek test sites elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

The AWTSC published two scientific papers in 1957 and 1958 which flat out denied that any dangerous levels of radioactivity reached the eastern states. But their measurements relied on a very sparse scattering of sticky paper monitors – rolls of gummed film set out to catch particles of fallout – even though these could be washed off by rain.

Despite their clear denials in these papers, meteorological records show that prior to the Games there was rain in Melbourne which could have deposited radioactivity on the ground.

The AWTSC papers included maps purporting to show the plumes of radioactive fallout travelling north and west from Maralinga in the South Australian desert. The Royal Commission published expanded maps (see page 292) based on the AWTSC’s own data and found the fallout pattern to be much wider and more complex. The Australian scientist Hedley Marston’s study of radioactivity uptake in animals showed a far more significant covering of fallout on a wide swathe of Australian grazing land than indicated by the sticky paper samples of the AWTSC.

The 1985 Royal Commission report into British Nuclear Tests in Australia discussed many of these issues, but never in relation to the proximity and timing of the 1956 Olympic Games. Sixty years later, are we seeing the same denial of known hazards six years after the reactor explosion at Fukushima?

 

July 18, 2018 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, spinbuster | Leave a comment

China and UK to work together on promoting the nuclear industry to universities etc

Energy Live News 29th June 2018 , China’s largest nuclear power producer has signed a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) with the UK Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research
Centre (Nuclear AMRC) to help deepen its links with Britain’s supply
chain.

CGN, the developer of the Bradwell B project, hopes to develop its
expertise and knowledge, as well as improve commercial and academic
connections. The wide-ranging deal includes working out how UK businesses
and universities can prepare themselves to participate in the project and
how these organisations can add value to CGN’s nuclear operations in
China and elsewhere.
https://www.energylivenews.com/2018/06/29/cgn-signs-mou-to-deepen-links-with-uks-nuclear-supply-chain/

July 2, 2018 Posted by | China, Education, UK | Leave a comment

James Hansen – a prophet on climate change, but a crank on nuclear power

James Hansen and the whale, a tragi-comedy in four chapters, The Reality Based Community,  By James Wimberley

“………..[James Hansen]  he said :      
Nuclear, especially next-generation nuclear, has tremendous potential to be part of the solution to climate change. The dangers of fossil fuels are staring us in the face. So for us to say we won’t use all the tools [such as nuclear energy] to solve the problem is crazy.

At this stage, the position is harmless crankiness. Nuclear reactors, with their negative learning curve, regular delays, uncertainty, and long-tail risks drove off almost all private investors decades ago. There is no good reason to think new nuclear is essential or even useful to the energy transition. “Next-generation nuclear” doesn’t exist. The economics of the nuclear reactors that can be built, poor as they are, depend on use as “baseload”, a concept that cheap but variable wind and solar as primary generators have rendered obsolete. What these need is flexible despatchable backup, which can be supplied far more cheaply by storage, gas turbines, more trade (eg with Quebec or Norway), or paid-for demand response. On energy blogs like MIT Technology Review or GTM you can find a vociferous band of loyal pro-nuclear commentators, but they do not represent anybody with power or money. …..
Another group of prophets deserves to be honoured. ……… I cited earlier the fall in the cost of renewables as one key element in making possible the Paris Agreement and the energy transition it requires. This did not happen by accident or the magic of the free market. The slope of the learning curves of technologies like wind and solar power and batteries may be exogenous. But it’s a relationship between cost and volume, and depends on growth in volume and an appropriate level of R&D. Until wind and solar broke through cost parity with coal, oil and gas a few years ago, progress down the leaning curve depended on subsidised deployment and research. Car batteries are not quite there yet.

These crucial policy and technical developments were the fruit of a fairly small number of enterprising, determined and lucky individuals. They included:

  • Researchers on solar: Becquerel, Willoughby Smith, Fritts, Einstein, Czochralski, the Bell Labs team of Chapin, Fuller, and Pearson. On wind: Poul La Cour and Johannes Juul in Denmark. On batteries: John Goodenough, who coming up to his 96th birthday still unprized in Stockholm, has just announced a research breakthrough on a high-density solid-state lithium battery.
  • Politicians and bureaucrats: NASA in the 1960s, MITI in the 1970s; Hans-Josef Fell and Hermann Scheer, leaders of the Energiewende in Germany and instigators of the 2000 Renewable Energy Act (EEG); Jerry Brown of California; Barack Obama (through targeted ARRA funding and the bilateral deal with China that made Paris possible).
  • Businessmen: Tokuji Hayakawa of Sharp in Japan; Elon Musk of Tesla; Wang Chuanfu of BYD.

This is an incomplete list, and no doubt unfair from my lack of knowledge. But it is near-certain that without these 18, and the then leaders of MITI and NASA, renewable energy and electric transport would not be where they are today.

The challenge also induced a lot of effort on enhanced geothermal, wave energy, OTEC, power kites, fuel cell cars, and other ideas that have not so far panned out. Nobody knows in advance which ideas will work out, and the failures also deserve their share of praise….. http://www.samefacts.com/2018/07/everything-else/james-hansen-and-the-whale-a-tragi-comedy-in-four-chapters/

July 2, 2018 Posted by | spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

UK govt launches pro nuclear campaign, pushes for women in the nuclear industry

UK government unveils £200m nuclear sector deal, The Engineer, By Stuart Nathan Business secretary Greg Clark launches deal including commitment to new technology development and increased role for women in the nuclear industry  ……. Details of the deal include up to £44m funding to develop advanced modular reactors, a commitment to reduce the cost of nuclear new build by 30 per cent by 2030, and to cut the cost of decommissioning old sites by 20 per cen% in the same period. There will be a new review into ways of accelerating the cleanup of old sites. Clark also signalled an increased commitment to fusion energy research, with the establishment of a national fusion technology centre at Culham in Oxfordshire, the site of the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion experiment and the home of Tokomak Technologies, which is developing fusion reactors based on the spherical tokomak principle. This fusion centre will be supported by £86m funding from the government.

Clark was particularly keen to announce the focus on female engineers in the sector. Currently, the UK nuclear industry has a 22 per cent female workforce, and 15 per cent of its engineers are women. The NSD will deliver 100,000 new jobs in the sector by 2021, and it aims to increase female representation to 40  per cent by 2030.

“The UK is the home of civil nuclear technology and with this investment in innovation and our commitment to increasing diversity in an already highly-skilled workforce, I want to ensure we remain the world leader,” Clark said.

The NSD was announced at Trawsfynydd in Snowdonia, the site of a decommissioned nuclear reactor (the only one in the UK not on the coast) and a mooted site for the first small modular reactor project. “This site reflects both the past of our nuclear industry and an exciting future as the potential site for the new generation of small reactors, placing Wales at the centre of a UK arc of the nuclear industry,” said Alan Cairns, secretary of state for Wales.

The advanced modular reactor project will see eight designs go forward to detailed commercial and technical visibility studies. This phase 1, £4m has been allocated, and three or four of the designs will then go forward to a second phase for further development, with a possible £40m of further funding subject to a value for money approval from the Treasury. Up to £5m will be made available to regulators to support this, and up to £7m will fund capability and capacity to assess and licence small and novel reactor designs…..https://www.theengineer.co.uk/nuclear-industry-sector-deal/

June 29, 2018 Posted by | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Pro nuclear spruik of Michael Shellenberger is getting weirder and weirder

Steve Dale  Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, 21 June 18

Shellenberger’s latest article is pretty strange and contradicts a lot of things I’ve heard from his local supporters.

Most unusual is that he calls nuclear waste a “blessing” – “But achieving that future will first require that we abandon our ridiculous fears and start seeing nuclear waste as the environmental blessing that it is.”

He also doesn’t want nuclear waste moved – not even from the reactor, let alone the USA. He says “Don’t Move The Waste” and “transporting cans of used nuclear waste would increase the threat to the continued operation of our life-saving nuclear plants.” This sort of contradicts the whole push of the NFCRC.

Shellenberger proposes that money set aside for storing nuclear waste for millennia should be diverted to nuclear plants, he says “It should be used to subsidize the continued operation of economically distressed nuclear plants, and subsidize the building of new ones.”

When a nuclear accident occurs we are usually told it’s because it is an old or aging plant? Well Shellenberger claims “Nuclear plants are functionally immortal. Existing plants can operate for 60, 80, 100 years or longer because everything inside the plant from the control panels to the steam generators and even the reactor vessel itself can be replaced, if needed.”

And I’ve heard local nuclear lobbyists claim new “waste eating” reactors are just around the corner, less than 10 years away, but Shellenberger says – “Sometime between 2050 and 2100, new nuclear plants — like the kind being developed by Bill Gates — will likely be able to use the so-called “waste” as fuel.”

I wonder what Shellenberger’s local supporters would think of this article? If Shellenberger gets his way, millennia lasting nuclear waste will be stored in half-inch thin, welded casks (see picture below) for centuries – by which time it would be too fragile to move.

The Forbes article is “Stop Letting Your Ridiculous Fears Of Nuclear Waste Kill The Planet” https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/

June 23, 2018 Posted by | spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

The nuclear industry has co-opted academia in Cumbria


In Cumbria 21st June 2018, More needs to be done to ensure communities not only see but feel the benefits of investment in Cumbria’s nuclear sector, industry figures have been told. Rick Wylie, the Samuel Lindow Academic Director for the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) based at Westlakes Science and Technology Park, laid down the challenge at the third warm-up arm-up event to September’s Cumbria Nuclear Conference, hosted by Carlisle MP John Stevenson.

Mr Wylie stressed the important work the nuclear industry had already done to support communities and the aspirations of young people and adults, by supporting projects such as the new Whitehaven Academy and Well Whitehaven. But, in a speech at Castle Green Hotel in Kendal on Thursday night, he said: “Nuclear investment needs to have wider public value. It is not just about money, it is about ensuring people not just see but feel the benefits of it.

June 23, 2018 Posted by | Education, UK | Leave a comment

Japan High School Peace Envoys Keen to Deliver Voices of Hibakusha 

https://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2018060701223

   Tokyo,  (Jiji Press), 7 June 18, –Japanese “high school peace ambassadors” on Thursday expressed their hopes to convey the voices of hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivors, for nuclear abolition to the world, and spread peace across the globe.
The high school students, who took part in a campaign to collect signatures with the aim of abolishing nuclear weapons, have been selected as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018.
At an event in Tokyo on Thursday to report the peace ambassador activities, Konami Funai, 17, a high school third-grader from Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, western Japan, spoke about her visit to the secretariat of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in March.
“It made me even prouder of our activities,” she said, referring to the nomination as a Nobel prize candidate. But Funai added that even if they win the prize, it would not be their goal. “I’ll patiently continue to call for nuclear abolition.”
The high school peace ambassadors were nominated a Nobel Peace Prize candidate by the Norwegian committee, after Japanese lawmakers recommended them for the award with the campaign marking its 20th anniversary this year.

June 8, 2018 Posted by | Education, Japan, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

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