NEI Nuclear Notes

Although Germany has become something of a whipping post on this blog, it’s hard not to look at its energy profile since it decided to close its nuclear facilities and not see something like chaos. But a lot of that chaos is incipient, so there’s time – not a lot, but still some time – to figure out how to proceed. For Germany, one of those ways has been encouraging the uptake of renewable energy. But now, the plummeting price of solar panels has unleashed a new round of, how shall we put it, chaos. Germany plans to reduce government subsidies supporting solar power by up to 30 percent within a year because higher-than-expected demand has made the scheme far more costly than authorities initially expected. At first glance, that seems a boon to the solar business and a vindication of those subsidies – they seeded the market and now the market can proceed on its own. But not so. German companies producing solar panels, already under pressure from stiff competition from n...

Personally, I’ve always had my doubts about Saudi oil supplies. Sure, there’s some room for strategic ambiguity here. But when someone is playing their cards too close you always have to wonder if they’re just bluffing. The following article would seem to indicate that’s just what the Saudis have been doing. This morning’s story in the Guardian that US diplomats believed Saudi Arabia to have overstated their oil reserves should ring alarm bells around the energy world. Every time there is a debate about whether OPEC should raise production to lower oil prices [subscription req’d], many commentators argue it is irrelevant: that the Middle East doesn’t have as much oil as it says and that it can’t raise production enough to bring prices down. If this is true, it has serious consequences for the oil price. If OPEC doesn’t have the slack to up production and bring prices down, they will have a lot further to go above the $100 barrier. Simply put, the argument is this: Du...

The IAEA approves a fuel bank: The fuel bank would offer nations civilian atomic reactor fuel on an apolitical basis in hopes of deterring them from pursuing their own capability to produce such material -- a process that could also generate nuclear-weapon fuel. Essentially, it does this by providing enriched uranium when there is a disruption in the commercial supply. The idea is that this limits proliferation opportunities because the host country will not do the enrichment itself. Naturally, there are still a lot of details to work out: Undecided aspects of the plan include the site of the fuel supply, the precise process by which the bank could acquire additional fuel and how its capacity could be increased. This story goes into more details of Warren Buffett’s involvement, which was considerable: "Throughout my lifetime I will be interested in this subject and I will back that interest up with money," Buffett told Reuters. "If the project so...

Russian President Vladimir Putin, that’s who . "You couldn't transfer large electric power stations to wind energy, however much you wanted to. In the next few decades, it will be impossible," Putin said, adding that consumption patterns would only undergo minor changes. He said the only "real and powerful alternative" to oil and gas is nuclear energy. He rejected other approaches as "claptrap." Russian has a word for “claptrap?” --- Even though we’ve run a lot of stories about international activities, it’s actually rather hard to keep up with every country that wants to (re)join the nuclear family. So I thought it might be worthwhile to catalog a few countries that haven’t had a post yet – get them on the radar so we can take a better look at their ambitions going forward. -- Argentina has revived its nuclear energy industry, joining its neighbor Brazil. President Cristina Fernandez's government is finishing constructio...

Around the world: France has made a deal with Kuwait: An agreement "to develop the peaceful use of nuclear energy" was signed in Paris by Kuwait's Prime Minister, Sheikh Nasser Mohammed al-Ahmad al-Sabah, and French government officials. "This agreement will permit the development of cooperation between France and Kuwait in several areas of nuclear energy" including electricity generation, a French government statement said. Of course, water desalination is a big issue in desert countries and requires impressive electricity resources. Beyond that, Kuwait already suffers brown-outs and black-outs once the air conditioners start running full force. Kuwait has a population of 3.4 million people – the article doesn’t say, but it seems they could become an electricity exporter to Saudi Arabia and its old enemy, Iraq. --- So if that’s what the French are up to, how about the Russians? Moscow aims to spend billions of dollars to help Argenti...