Skip to main content

Green Party to Go Nuclear?

By

fin-nukeAs you may know, most European countries have a Green Party as part of the political mix. In most countries, they may pick up a few seats, but generally the goal is to keep their views front and center. Nuclear energy usually fares poorly. Here’s the British Green Party (from last year):

In elections campaigns this spring, for the Welsh Assembly and local elections in England, the Greens are the only political party opposed to nuclear power.

I find that – exceptionally good news, actually.

And here’s the Finnish Green League:

In addition, the party's policy on nuclear energy will be in the spotlight. According to Holopainen, a large proportion of voters who back the Greens, nowadays also back the use of nuclear power.

See? Fairly consistent – wait, what? I couldn’t find much more about this – the story is about the formation of the party platform and the speaker is Hanna Holopainen, a delegate. We’ll have to wait until after this weekend to see if the Green League goes nuclear.

Color me curious.

Where the energy is – the yellow labels show the two Finnish sites. The one labeled as TVO is usually called Olkiluoto.

Finland has four nuclear reactors, producing about 30 percent of its electricity, the most of any source. Coal handles most of the rest, with hydro bringing up the rear (and causing electricity shortages in dry years.) The country is currently building a fifth reactor. More here.

Labels:

Comments

Pete51 said…
Popular Mechanics recently ran an article about Finland's spent fuel repository.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/waste/finlands-crazy-plan-to-make-nuclear-waste-disappear-8732655

They call it a "crazy plan", but I don't see anything crazy about it.
May 19, 2012 at 9:33 AM
Brian Mays said…
Eh ... it's Popular Mechanics. Were they right about the "flying car" 50 years ago?

Do you think that anyone takes Popular Mechanics seriously?!

They've always been a fun, but low-end, brand. It's a shame that their articles have deteriorated this much, but it's not exactly unexpected.
May 19, 2012 at 1:21 PM
Pete51 said…
The two videos embedded in the article appear to be produced by the Finns, and provide some good information on the design.
May 19, 2012 at 1:34 PM
Anonymous said…
What is often called nuclear waste actually is not waste; it is unused fuel. The current nuclear reactor technology is so inefficient that it actuually uses less than 1% of the available energy in the fuel. The "waste" should be saved so that, in the future, it can be used as fuel in better nuclear reactors. And, our current nuclear technology should be phased out in favor of more efficient reactors which will use the fuel more efficiently and produce only about 1% as much waste as the current nuclear technology.
May 19, 2012 at 5:38 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more