NEI Nuclear Notes

Like a lot of folks, we've been seeing the reports out of Argentina that locals have caught a 3-eyed fish (leading to inevitable Simpsons comparison ) in a lake adjacent to the Embalse nuclear power plant . Here are just a couple of thoughts before the shots get mainstream media pickup: While the photos in question might be interesting to those who get their science from a prime time cartoon , one would hope they would be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. If the photos are real, we need to keep in mind that while seeing examples of mutation can be unsettling, they're not uncommon and occur naturally all the time. Drawing a connection between this fish and the power plant is more than a bit of a stretch. During normal operations, nuclear power plants are a source of clean and reliable, carbon free power. As even a source like Scientific American has noted, coal plants actually emit more radioactivity than nuclear power plants .

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...

Details from Marketwatch .

More bad news for American and its allies from the WSJ Energy Blog : OPEC, meet Opegasur. That’s the name of a new natural-gas cartel established this morning in an agreement between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Argentina’s President Nestor Kirchner . Opegasur, which stands for Organizacion de Paises Productores, Exportadores de Gas del Sur, will also include Brazil and Bolivia. It will be built around a $20 billion gas pipeline that will eventually connect the four countries. There has been talk that the natural-gas cartel might never get off the ground. But it may not be long before an even bigger — and scarier, to U.S. interests anyway — cartel takes shape, Michael J. Economides, editor-in-chief of Energy Tribune, warned recently on Foreign Policy’s Web site . “With domestic gas production in decline, the United States and many of its allies will grow more dependent on imports to generate electricity and heat homes,” he wrote. “Gas suppliers will band together in response t...