The undeclared war that has been quietly raging since the 1990s in Ontario’s electricity sector flared into the open last week, with a new ad from the biggest union. Mincing no words, the Power Workers’ Union put its case starkly: this is nuclear versus natural gas, and Ontario’s electricity future is at stake. According to Steve Aplin of Canadian Energy Issues, this statement could not be more accurate.
Nuclear is green energy and intermittent sources can’t replace it. Page gives excellent Vermont examples. (This op-ed has also appeared on other Vermont websites, where it has attracted many heated comments.)
At a dinner roasting the founder of the Ethan Allen Institute, former Vermont Governor Tom Salmon spoke in favor Vermont Yankee. He said that the state’s “assault on Vermont Yankee” makes no sense. (Salmon was Governor of Vermont in the 70s and is a Democrat.) The post includes a video of his remarks.
On Friday the AP posted an article about Lady Barbara Judge becoming a safety advocate for Tepco. The article fails to say she was actually hired more than six months ago, and not as an advocate, per se. In addition, several mis-statements about F. Daiichi are posted as fact. The AP has become a bastion of antinuclear confabulation.
Robert Hayes believes the most exciting of all the engineering and science disciplines is most certainly that of nuclear. This would be because nuclear science spans all disciplines from the largest scales of cosmology and the origins of the universe to the smallest of the subatomic particles. It encompasses all the known forces in the universe except perhaps gravity. A good understanding of nuclear technology requires understanding everything from quantum mechanics and statistics to relativity and thermodynamics, it covers a very broad scope.
Rod Adams on the recent retirement of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California, and how this tragedy might have been prevented.
8. Pakistan’s Cabinet Executive Committee approved Thursday setting up two 1,100 megawatt nuclear power plants at the Karachi coast, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said. Budget documents had revealed the setting up of only one 1,100 megawatt coastal power plant at Karachi, with Chinese assistance.
Vietnam is considering offers from established nuclear countries as it seeks to introduce nuclear energy technology. Vietnam is in negotiations for about 4 to 8 nuclear reactors.
9. Nextbigfuture – Currently, India has 20 nuclear reactors operating in six plants, providing about three per cent of the country’s energy. But 44 more reactors are either slated for construction or are already being built. By 2050, India wants a quarter of its energy to be nuclear. Dr Singh said India could produce 470 GW of nuclear power by then “if the country thinks big and executes its plans correctly”.
* Iran intends to produce “about 20,000 megawatts of nuclear-generated electricity” over the next few years, according to the Director of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani.
* Argentina is still committed to developing its fourth and fifth nuclear power plants and expects to invest the US$35.7bn remaining of its US$42bn national nuclear power plan, announced in 2006, by 2023, according to federal planning minister Julio de Vido.
* Middle Eastern countries are increasingly interested in nuclear power as an additional part of a fuel mix historically dominated by oil and gas, delegates at Atomexpo 2013 in St Petersburg, Russia, said Wednesday.
“There are regions that are hydrocarbon-based, but Arab counties are interested in developing nuclear power to achieve an energy balance,” Komarov said. They are also attracted to nuclear power for it uses in water desalination and medicine, he said.
Michael Dittmar wrote a series of posts about nuclear energy that was published on The Oil Drum in 2009. In the first post of the series, he said that uranium “civilian uranium stocks are expected to be exhausted during the next few years” and “the current uranium supply situation is unsustainable”. Basically lack of uranium production from uranium mines would cause lack of nuclear fuel which would result in steadily dropping nuclear power generation. I made a series of three bets with Dittmar.
1. World Uranium production (I won in 2010, 2011, 2012)
2. World Nuclear power generation bets going to 2018 (I won in 2010, lost 2009, 2011, 2012)
3. Uranium production in Kazakhstan (I won 2010, 2011)
So out of 9 bets, I have won 6 bets and lost 3.
I have won all five uranium production related bets.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.