After 3/11, Mr Koga decided speak out about the awful practices he had experienced while working on Japan’s energy policy. The disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant, run by TEPCO, is symptomatic of a wider malaise. The utility companies buy the academy by sponsoring research, buy the media through mountains of public-service advertisements and junkets, buy big business by paying top-dollar for everything, buy the bureaucrats and regulators by handing them cushy post-retirement jobs.

Talking to him one gets a chill down the spine. Often, bureaucrats are regarded as lemming-like self-interested do-nothings or devious micro-managers. But Mr Koga’s brave words and deep understanding of how energy companies pad their costs, block competition, keep energy prices high and ultimately strangle Japan is an antidote to that image. Instead, the figure that emerges is a deeply intelligent, hard-working civil servant who wants the best for his country.

This report sets the Committee’s advice on the potential for renewable energy development in the UK, and advice on whether existing targets should be reviewed.

The Committee was asked to provide this advice as part of the Coalition Agreement in May 2010.

The report contains new analysis of technical feasibility and economic viability of renewable and other low-carbon energy technologies and scenarios for renewable energy deployment to 2030.

“The current situation at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant and the anxiety of a possible meltdown are once again calling into question the use of nuclear power as a long-term energy option here in Canada,” Joshua Pearce, a mechanical and materials engineering professor told the Star.

The university team looked at the 100 nuclear plants in the U.S. and factored in the indirect public subsidy, which amounts to the cost of insuring a nuclear plant in the event of a catastrophic accident, and the power produced over the lifetime of a nuclear power plant.

“In my mind it is basically insanity to shoulder the public with risk to get relatively small amount of electricity out of it,” Pearce said.

He noted that in the U.S. there is a $10-billion cap on liability in the event of an accident, which amounts to an indirect subsidy of about $33 million per plant per year over the lifetime of a nuclear plant.

FIRST came a violent earthquake. Then a devastating tsunami followed. Now an explosion at a nuclear power plant—and the release of radioactive material—has added to Japan’s woes. There was a momentary sense of relief on Saturday evening when the government assured the public that the explosion had not been caused by the meltdown of the reactor.

Two aftershocks of yesterday’s quake rattled northeastern Japan between 10:20 and 10:40 pm, measuring 4.8 and 6.0 in magnitude. Yesterday’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake set off the automatic shut-down systems in ten of Japan’s 55 nuclear power plants, from which the country gets a third of its energy. But the cooling systems malfunctioned in numerous reactors at the Fukushima plant. As the temperatures rose, so did the pressure inside two reactors. Radioactive vapour was released into the air on Saturday to ease the pressure. The control room reported radiation levels at 1,000 times the norm.

At 3:36 pm the Fukushima Dai-ichi (number one) building exploded following reported tremors, billowing plumes of smoke into the atmosphere. Yukio Edano, the government’s chief cabinet secretary, said that the reactor’s nuclear containment vessel did not suffer a meltdown or explode, citing the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

Japan has declared a state of emergency and called for mass evacuations near two nuclear power plants following cooling systems failures that led to radiation escaping from a reactor at one location.

The emergency declarations, which include five reactors at the two plants, followed Friday’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake off the country’s northeast coast. The quake, the most powerful in Japan’s recorded history, triggered a massive tsunami wave.

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Onahama city, about 270 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, a power failure triggered a problem in a cooling system, causing radiation levels inside one of its reactors to rise to 1,000 times normal.

In a troubling announcement, Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency official Ryohei Shiomi said a monitoring device outside the plant detected radiation that is eight times higher than normal.

An evacuation zone has been expanded from three kilometres around the plant to 10 kilometres.

Four new reactors are under construction in the U.S.–on time and on budget–today

The first new nuclear reactor ordered in the U.S. in roughly three decades is beginning to take shape in the red clay near Augusta, Ga. Southern Co. and its partners have dug 27.5 meters down into that soil to reach bedrock and are now filling up the hole to provide a stable foundation for what is likely to be the first of a new generation of reactors in the U.S.: two new AP-1000 models at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant that stand next to two older pressurized water reactors, which came online in the 1980s.

“The nuclear revival is underway in Georgia,” says Jim Miller, chief executive of Southern Nuclear Operating Co., the subsidiary charged with administering the corporation’s nuclear power plants. “It will provide safe, clean, reliable, low-cost electric energy to our customers for generations to come.”

In addition to charging its current customers $3.73 a month for the construction of this reactor until costs are recovered Southern received an $8.3-billion loan guarantee from the federal government to help make up the cost difference compared with building a natural gas–fired turbine, for example. The total cost of the two new reactors is expected to be $14 billion in the end, Miller says.

SIR – Coming just before the conclusion of the UN climate-change summit in Cancún, your article on mini nuclear reactors could not have been more timely (“Thinking small”, December 11th). As you pointed out, Russia has developed small floating reactors to deliver energy to the Arctic regions, primarily to overcome the problem of building power plants and grids on unstable permafrost. The simplicity and scalability of small reactors makes them an ideal energy source where future demand is uncertain and investment in larger plants and grids is simply not viable.

But you passed over the one big area where small reactors can perhaps make the greatest contribution: the developing world. Harnessing this technology can promote clean and affordable economic and social development in countries that are held back by energy shortages. Indeed, small reactors should figure prominently when it comes to implementing Cancún’s pledges on technology transfer to developing economies.

For nuclear power to live up to this promise, the international community must be ready to share technology and expertise to help reduce costs and ensure the highest safety standards. So as well as representing a significant step in “resetting” American-Russian relations, the recent approval by the American Congress of an agreement with Russia opens the way for unprecedented commercial co-operation on new reactor designs that are small, proliferation-resistant and more cost-effective.

Such an increase in international co-operation coupled with continuing improvements in technology will allow nuclear energy at last to live up to the hopes of its pioneers from more than 50 years ago.

Oleg Deripaska
Chief executive
Basic Element
Moscow

Germany’s coalition government has decided to extend the life span of the country’s nuclear power plants by an average of 12 years, officials say.

Under the agreement, some plants will now remain in production until the 2030s, instead of being phased out by 2021 as the previous government wanted.

There will also be new fees on utility companies to fund renewable energy.

Chancellor Angela Merkel argued that renewable sources are not developed enough to abandon nuclear power.

She acknowledged that there were widespread concerns about nuclear energy, but said it was needed as a “bridge technology” until renewables were more viable.

German power generation, she said, would become “the most efficient and most environmentally friendly in the world”.

Ministers met until late on Sunday to discuss the plan, emerging to announce that the older of Germany’s 17 nuclear plants will remain in production for eight more years beyond 2021 while more recent ones will stay online for an additional 14 years.

“According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market.”

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Study: Solar power is cheaper than nuclear

The Holy Grail of the solar industry — reaching grid parity — may no longer be a distant dream. Solar may have already reached that point, at least when compared to nuclear power, according to a new study by two researchers at Duke University.

It’s no secret that the cost of producing photovoltaic cells (PV) has been dropping for years. A PV system today costs just 50 percent of what it did in 1998. Breakthroughs in technology and manufacturing combined with an increase in demand and production have caused the price of solar power to decline steadily. At the same time, estimated costs for building new nuclear power plants have ballooned.

The result of these trends: “In the past year, the lines have crossed in North Carolina,” say study authors John Blackburn and Sam Cunningham. “Electricity from new solar installations is now cheaper than electricity from proposed new nuclear plants.”

If the data analysis is correct, the pricing would represent the “Historic Crossover” claimed in the study’s title.

Two factors not stressed in the study bolster the case for solar even more:

1) North Carolina is not a “sun-rich” state. The savings found in North Carolina are likely to be even greater for states with more sunshine –Arizona, southern California, Colorado, New Mexico, west Texas, Nevada and Utah.

2) The data include only PV-generated electricity, without factoring in what is likely the most encouraging development in solar technology: concentrating solar power (CSP). CSP promises utility scale production and solar thermal storage, making electrical generation practical for at least six hours after sunset.

The Swedish parliament has approved the replacement of old nuclear reactors with new ones, marking a change in policy on nuclear power.

The plan, proposed by the government, passed narrowly by two votes.

In 1980, a Swedish referendum decided to phase out reactors by 2010, although the target was later abandoned.

Sweden’s 10 reactors, at three power stations, supply as much as half of the country’s electricity.

The plan allows for new reactors to be built at the same site as the country’s existing plants, but forbids the approval of new sites. The number of reactors is not allowed to exceed 10.

It passed by 174 votes to 172 against, with three MPs absent.

The centre-left opposition said they would rescind the law if they win the next election, due in September.

“Of course we will tear it up,” said Tomas Eneroth from the Social Democratic Party.

To extract the uranium, Sparton adds sulphuric and hydrochloric acids to the ash, along with water, to make a slurry. With some sorts of ash, nitric acid is also used. The acids dissolve the uranium, and various other things, leaching them from the ash. The trick is to get the dissolved uranium out of the resulting solution.

Sparton’s process uses a charcoal filter made from burned coconut husks to trap floating particles and eliminate organic compounds. The filtered solution is then passed through small beads of an ion-exchange resin. These selectively remove uranium ions while leaving the others behind—extracting about two-thirds of the uranium in the ash, according to the company. The uranium is then dissolved from the beads using a solution of ammonium carbonate and precipitated as “yellow cake”, a mixture of uranium oxides.

…

At the moment, this process costs more than ten times as much as conventional mining, but some countries might regard that as a small price to pay for security of supply. Perish the thought that the supply is for anything other than providing fuel for civilian nuclear-power stations.”