NEI Nuclear Notes

After you've read the John McCain quote in the post below, you may  wonder if, by proposing to put used nuclear fuel, including that of the United States, into some kind of international repository, he is falling prey to the worst NIMBY argument imaginable or acknowledging that other countries, notably Russia, have offered to serve as just such a repository. Frankly, we don't know, but his comments did highlight the NIMBY issues that can infect any effort, however benign it might otherwise seem. Take, for example, wind power, which doesn't generate anything that needs to be recycled or stored but does require expansive land masses on which to plant windmills . Artist Grahame Sydney yesterday said nuclear power in New Zealand was preferable to a huge wind farm on the Lammermoor Range in Central Otago. Well, we can't fault Mr. Sydney for bad taste in energy choices. Let's see what else he has to say: "If given the option between 176 turbines on the...

Climate change (long term) and fluctuations in the weather (short term) confuse even people who should know better, so pinning down whether this industry or that can claim to be affected by one or perhaps the other becomes an issue of semantics over science. Climate change as an idea drifts into the abstract, with little that really has a practical impact beyond planning for longer beach seasons. Leave it to New Zealand to solve that problem: Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said climate change likely will cause a decline in the production of malting barley in parts of New Zealand and Australia. Malting barley is a key ingredient of beer. “It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up,” Mr. Salinger told the Institute of Brewing and Distilling convention. There you are. Could climate change be any more real?

Christopher Paine, the Washington-based director of the nuclear program for the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, had seemed for awhile to be considering nuclear energy as a viable addition to the energy mix, especially as increased awareness of climate change altered the terms of the discussion. About a year ago, he said this : "Our position is that nuclear is not off the table as an energy source, but we believe there are cheaper, cleaner and faster ways to reduce pollution and provide reliable energy than nuclear power." But Paine has now been making the rounds in Utah with the old arguments made in the old way. Right now, at a time when nuclear power is increasingly being considered a cleaner source of energy than coal-fired plants, Paine questions the claim by some that the alternative of actually scaling up nuclear power production can be done safely around the world, even under international ownership and control. "If histor...

Coming out of last week's APEC summit in Australia, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark took credit for watering down some of the official statements about nuclear energy and climate change . But as it turns out, not everyone back home in New Zealand thought that was a good idea. From the New Zealand Herald : That nuclear power poses risks is indisputable. But those risks need to be assessed in context of the certain - not potential - environmental havoc that is being wrought by the use of fossil fuels to generate energy. In the US, more than 600 coal-fired power plants produce 36 per cent of that country's - and almost 10 per cent of the world's - emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. China is building a new coal-fired power station every week. [...] It may well be that nuclear power is not viable here on practical or political grounds, though the likelihood is that we will fail to meet our emissions-reduction targets w...

A geologist makes the case .

Meet Iain Gillies .