NEI Nuclear Notes

Here’s the problem : 86 per cent of its energy comes from foreign countries. And here’s a solution: An international study presented Sunday argues strongly for the introduction of nuclear energy in Italy, saying the country can diminish its dependency on foreign nations and cut carbon emissions. Italy closed its nuclear plants in the wake of Chernobyl and now derives about 81 percent of its electricity from gas and oil. As this chart shows, Italy has been displacing oil with natural gas throughout the aughts. It also shows that nuclear energy was not a big contributor even when the plants were open. But the issue here is less what Italy is using currently than that so little of it is domestic, which makes the country vulnerable to price fluctuations that it cannot significantly control through policy. So Italy needs home-grown plants. Why nuclear? By introducing nuclear energy, between 2020, when plants might begin working, and 2030, when they should account fo...

Bob Metcalfe has an interesting futurist editorial in the Wall Street Journal: The good news is that the big names in nuclear energy -- like Areva, Hitachi, General Electric and Toshiba -- have recently been joined by a bevy of high-tech start-ups seeking to develop advanced nuclear-reactor designs for both fission and fusion energy production. So far, there are five fission and two fusion start-ups, among them Hyperion, NuScale and Tri Alpha. We don’t want to quote much – too much on Metcalfe’s mind to paraphrase. He considers current nuclear technology too expensive, though he give a kind of indirect thumbs up to the kinds of mini-reactors Babcock & Wilcox recently introduced, and perhaps oversells fusion – still essentially a lab project. Even as a peek into the future, we found ourselves quibbling a lot. But it tweaks the brain and is therefore worth a read. --- Geothermal’s in town and shaking things up. While prospecting for heat in Basel Switzerland a few y...

Stan Jakuba at Energy Tribune wrote a piece titled " Obama’s Stumble: Wind Power " in which he explains the limits of President Obama's renewable goals and what the President should promote as well (I'm copying the whole thing because I think it's that good): I like Barack Obama but I have doubts about his presidency when I hear him saying that the US will “double the amount of energy that comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term." He should know that that’s not possible. But instead, during his State of the Union speech, he proclaimed that we’ll reach that goal in three years, not four. Most anyone who has studied the energy situation must wonder about Obama's, or his advisors', energy experience. Presented with the numbers from the table (see below) he would realize that the majority of the renewable power comes from hydro and from wood, about 154 gigawatts. Readily available data show that the 6 percent for hydro and bio is pretty m...

Google.org (not the Google.com everyone is familiar with) just released a plan "to wean the U.S. off of coal and oil for electricity generation by 2030." I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with their plan because even though nuclear power is somewhat a part of it, Google doesn't give nuclear power much consideration. What's their plan? In order to achieve much of their goal, Google.org calculates that the U.S. should build 380 gigawatts (GW) of wind, 250 GW of solar and 80 GW of geothermal by 2030. This is a total of 710 GW of renewable capacity which would generate 56% of the country's electricity. As well, efficiency is projected to reduce electricity demand 33% by 2030 while plug-in vehicles increase demand by 8%. Their plan will supposedly cost a total of $4.4 trillion while saving $5.4 trillion through efficiency gains and avoided fossil-fuel use. The efficiency and renewable capacities alone are estimated to cost nearly $2.5 trillion. What do the nu...

Or ranch, I guess, as in the Crawford Ranch. Hosting the third hour of the Today Show yesterday, Mrs. Bush won a sandwich-making contest, listened politely to advice about raising twins - her own, Jenna and Barbara, were on hand to cheer on their mom - and interviewed author R.L. Stine. And : ...in a pre-taped tour of the family’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush touted green aspects of the home, which is partially heated with geothermal power. “We could and we’ve discussed putting one wind mill out here because, as you can tell, we have enough wind to generate electricity” she said as the wind tousled her hair. With President Bush ever so slowly acknowledging climate change issues, it was nice of the First Lady to move things along a bit in an audience-friendly way. Bush has become a bit detached from eco-unfriendly movement conservatives as his presidency moves into its final months, and it has allowed him to strike out in some new directions. It'll be in...

From the Wall Street Journal : Al Gore has been hectoring Americans to pare back their lifestyles to fight global warming. But if Mr. Gore wants us to rethink our priorities in the face of this mother of all environmental threats, surely he has convinced his fellow greens to rethink theirs, right? Wrong. If their opposition to the Klamath hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest is any indication, the greens, it appears, are just as unwilling to sacrifice their pet causes as a Texas rancher is to sacrifice his pickup truck. If anything, the radicalization of the environmental movement is the bigger obstacle to addressing global warming than the allegedly gluttonous American way of life. . . . These dams provide cheap, renewable energy to 70,000 homes in Oregon and California. Replacing this energy with natural gas -- the cleanest fossil-fuel source -- would still pump 473,000 tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. This is roughly equal to the annual emissi...

Details from The Western Australian . They're calling it, "natural nuclear power". More from Oikos .