Brazil, France to sign agreement on defense, nuclear energy

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) — Brazil and France will sign a cooperation agreement on defense and nuclear energy on Dec. 23, after months of negotiations, Brazilian media reported Tuesday.

The agreement will envision the construction of five submarines for Brazil, one of which will be propelled by nuclear energy.

France will be in charge of the submarines’ construction, while the part involving nuclear energy will be built by Brazil, with French technical cooperation.

Legends and Facts: Steven Chu on Nuclear Energy

Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s Keith Johnson buffing a legend that might alarm you a little:

Worried about radioactivity? Coal’s still your bogeyman. Dr. Chu says a typical coal plant emits 100 times more radiation than a nuclear plant, given the flyash emissions of radioactive particles.

That doesn’t mean nuclear power is much better. “The waste and proliferation issues [surrounding nuclear power] still haven’t been completely solved,” he said. A big part of the Department of Energy’s job is to oversee nuclear weapons and waste storage. And the Obama campaign made clear that increased reliance on nuclear power will require finding a “safe” way to dispose of radioactive waste.

We’d say, completely parenthetically, that coal has had an exceptionally bad couple of weeks.

Permanent storage remains unsolved in new push for nuclear energy

Companies such as Exelon Corp. use pool storage to store spent nuclear rods on site.

Applications for new nuclear reactors keep rolling into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), but everyone seems to be ignoring the crucial question: where will used nuclear rods be stored permanently? As nuclear companies continue to store nuclear waste on-site, environmentalists warn that without a permanent storage location, building more nuclear plants could be dangerous to the country’s security.The popularity of nuclear energy has undergone a resurgence of sorts as political and business leaders insist on a more energy-independent U.S. There are 16 new applications for a potential of 25 new nuclear reactors awaiting approval by the NRC. Chicago-based Exelon Corp., the nation’s largest nuclear energy producer, has a pending application for two new units in Texas, which would bring its total of nuclear reactors to 19.

LETTER:Nuclear energy, radiation not safe

Please read article, cited after the quote. Articles open in a new window.

“Many people think that damage is only what is seen or can be visibly verified. This is not the case. Numerous things have been approved by the US government (Agent Orange, Red Dye 45) that were deadly. Their effects were not noticed until they were already in use. One of my examples, Agent Orange, was a military test project, so some people can dismiss it by saying it was an experimental unknown in the first place.”

Sudan reveals intention to pursue nuclear energy

A Sudanese official disclosed today that his country is contemplating developing a nuclear power programme for scientific research.

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Electricity pylons stand in front of Grafenrheinfeld nuclear power plant on July 9, 2008 in Grafenrheinfeld near Wuerzburg, Germany (Getty)

The Sudanese minister for Science and Technology Ibrahim Ahmed Omer told the official news agency (SUNA) that his government received approval for its plans from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Omer said that IAEA will fund the programme jointly with the Sudanese government. However he did not say if a formal agreement has been signed.

The Sudanese official noted that the world is moving towards using peaceful use of nuclear energy to produce electricity.

He further said that despite Sudan’s diverse energy sources its devising plans for any future needs to make use of the available technology in different aspects.

Sudan is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows countries to build nuclear power stations under international supervision. Its northern neighbor Egypt is already working on constructing a nuclear power station that is expected to be completed within the next 10 years.

Experts caution on nuclear energy

Kenya should tread carefully and not rush into investing in nuclear energy.

Geothermal experts are now urging the government to instead invest, in the vast geothermal resources found in Kenya’s rift valley system that has an estimated potential of 7000 megawatts.

“Kenya should look for funds to invest fully in geothermal instead of nuclear energy, whereas nuclear energy is cheaper, it could be more devastating to the environment, we do not know what negative effects it might cause to generations to come,” said Ludvik Georgsson of the United Nations University, Geothermal Training Program.

Kenya’s geothermal potential stands at an estimated 7,000 megawatts.

However owing to the high cost of investment in the renewable energy the country has only managed to develop just under 130 megawatts, and now says Kenya could be assisted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – OECD countries once the financial melt-down in pegged.

According to the Business Development and Strategy Director at KenGen, Albert Mugo, the electricity generating company is set to tap into the capital markets to finance its geothermal development through an infrastructure bond.

The company needs some 12 billion shillings to develop the recently identified, 6 rigs used in tapping geothermal.

They were speaking at the venue of training for participants drawn from Djibouti, Burundi, Yemen, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iceland, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and host Kenya.

The move is aimed at developing the much needed human capital to help in developing geothermal resources in the region.

Election Day: A Voter Scorecard on Nuclear Energy

With Election Day just one week away, NEI Nuclear Notes is here to provide readers with a handy voter scorecard on nuclear energy. We sent a survey to all 69 Democratic and Republican candidates running for the U.S. Senate (Mark Pryor [D-AR] is running unopposed) and asked these three questions:

1. Does your candidate support the use of nuclear energy as a source of carbon-free electricity in the U.S.?
2. Does your candidate support the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States?
3. Does your candidate support the expansion of nuclear energy in his/her state?

We received completed questionnaires from 31 candidates. Some key takeaways:

* 30 candidates were supportive of the use of nuclear energy in the U.S.
* 30 candidates supported the expansion of nuclear energy in their state.
* Democratic and Republican Senate candidates from: Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Wyoming were in favor expanding nuclear power in their states.
* Challengers submitted 19 questionnaires, incumbents 12.

So how’d your candidate fare? Did they make the list?

There’s Nothing Energy Independent (and sustainable) about Nuclear Energy

Suppose we suspend our “precautionary principle” and understanding about the Three Mile Island crisis. You know, that 1979 national emergency caused by a partial meltdown triggered by a loss of reactor cooling water. Unfortunately, over the last three decades, neither plant owners nor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have adequately addressed the basic flaws in U.S. nuclear safety that led to the Three Mile Island accident, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

And suppose we just forget about what to do with the nuclear waste from the reactors, lethal to all life for more than 10,000 years. Even if we can contain the nuclear waste (a big “if” for many of us to swallow in these days of unforeseen financial market meltdowns), why pass this waste on to future generations, on to our great, great, great grandchildren?

That we’ve been unable to agree politically on a safe place to store nuclear waste (in Yucca Mountain, Arizona) masks the fact that we still need to move this toxic waste from as many as 104 currently operating nuclear reactors scattered throughout the continental U.S. Nice targets for those terrorists we’ve been unable to locate or perhaps for the swelling homegrown terrorist types as of late, folks who have come on hard times and can think of better things to do with a $700 billion bailout package and don’t like the way things are headed in Washington D.C. By the way, these nuclear reactors with a 40 year lifespan aren’t cheap, therefore they’ve been partially subsidized by American taxpayers for years.

Nuclear energy has many pitfalls

The idea of building a nuclear power plant has started to take root in Alberta in the last couple of years. However, some issues need to be looked at in great depth before any more steps are taken down this road.

If the costs aren’t astronomical enough to make Albertans think twice about nuclear power, perhaps the health safety concerns that preoccupy Dr. Helen Caldicott might prove a major source of consternation.

The Nobel Prize nominee was in Calgary this week to raise awareness about the medical issues around nuclear, specifically the untold genetic damage that can take generations to unfold. Unfortunately, the renowned physician was refused a meeting with the government-appointed expert panel preparing an “unbiased” examination for the province, but was to have an audience today with Energy Minister Mel Knight.

It’s important people such as Caldicott are heard. If the Alberta government is to develop a safe and responsible policy for nuclear energy, all sides of this contentious issue must be fully debated.

Let’s start with the costs. Nuclear is the only energy technology that has the double whammy of high up-front and back-end capital costs. That price tag is a big unknown as industry and governments struggle to figure out how to decommission a plant, and deal with its highly radioactive waste over the very long term.

It’s about time to kill off nuclear energy

Pop Quiz: what source of energy has received the most government subsidies since World War II, has a by-product that has remained dangerous for thousands of years, and is a major component of McCain’s energy proposal?

If you said “oil,” you answered incorrectly.

What I’m talking about is nuclear energy — 1950’s energy of the future. Back then, it was thought that nuclear energy would be the radioactive wave that would carry the world into the atomic age, supplying nearly all of the world’s electricity and a significant portion of its commercial energy. Obviously, nuclear energy has failed to live up to this expectation.

In the United States, no nuclear power plants have been built since the late 1970s. For private investors, the costs of building, maintaining and decommissioning a nuclear power plant overrun each other. Simply put, nuclear energy is a value destroyer that has only been proliferated by billing the American taxpayer. The modern initiatives for nuclear power still fail to recognize many of the flaws of the energy source.

Although electricity produced through nuclear power has been competitive, this price is not representative of all the costs along the nuclear energy value chain. For as much as nuclear energy is touted as an American fuel source, the Energy Information Agency of the U.S. government reported in 2007 that 54 million pounds of uranium oxide (what fuel rods are made of) were purchases imported into the U.S., compared to domestic production of 5 million pounds.

With oil, we have come to understand the political and economic consequences of becoming dependent on foreign sources, so we shouldn’t delude ourselves about nuclear.

Maintaining nuclear reactors can be expensive, yet necessary for the reactor to be stable and safe.

Unfortunately, when the companies that manage such nuclear reactors already work with thin profit margins, safety problems can be ignored until the plant has to shut down to address them.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has recorded on its Web site that an outage at a nuclear power plant which lasted more than a year has occurred 51 times at 41 different reactors. While in the 1960s and 1970s the plants were closed primarily for damage recovery, since 1996 all the year-long outages were for safety restoration.

In a September 2006 report, the Government Accountability Office criticized the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for acting slowly on needed oversight improvement, “particularly in improving the agency’s ability to identify and address early indications of declining safety performance.”

Although modern reactor and plant designs offer some solace about safety concerns, the issue still exists of what is done with spent fuel rods — high-level radioactive wastes. These spent fuels rods must be safely stored for at least 10,000 years, or 240,000 years if plutonium-239 is not removed by reprocessing.

There is no agreed-upon method for storing the wastes for 10,000 years, much less 240,000. Currently, many nuclear power plants in the U.S. store these wastes in deep water pools or dry concrete casks. Sabotage, terrorist attacks or earthquakes at one of these sites could release significant amounts of radioactive materials into the troposphere, contaminating large areas for decades.

Despite safety concerns, many aging nuclear power plants, dating from the late 1960s and early 1970s, are seeking operating license renewals from the Nuclear Regulation Commission, according to a Wall Street Journal article published in April.

Since 2000 the Nuclear Regulation Commission has extended the licenses of 48 nuclear power reactors. This extension delays the costly decommissioning process and speaks to the cost inefficiency of managing a nuclear power plant: they need to continue to extend a plant’s usable life to cover the overrunning costs. Moreover, using reactors beyond their intended life can only compound safety concerns.

Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute estimates that nuclear energy has received nearly half a trillion dollars in taxpayer subsidies, and thus has not been able to pay for itself throughout its entire existence. Current proposals to expand nuclear energy not only include more subsidies and tax incentives but also federal loan guarantees for the construction of plants. This means that nuclear power companies do not have to depend on their own collateral when trying to finance the construction of new plants.

America seems to be entering an era of socialistic corporatism. The measures for supporting nuclear energy are much akin to the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector. The government has visibly become an instrument for insuring private profit at public cost.

In reality, nuclear energy in this country is just a zombie kept alive by massive government subsidies. There’s only one thing I’d recommend to do with a zombie, and it involves a shotgun.