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A lot of politicians seem to love nuclear power—from John McCain to Angela Merkel and Silvio Berlusconi. But more importantly, public opinion everywhere is getting behind them.

Given its limited reserves of natural uranium and its abundant supply of thorium, India has chalked out a unique three-stage nuclear program. In the first stage, pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs)—similar to those used in advanced industrial countries—burn natural uranium. In the second stage, fast-breeder reactors, which other countries have tried to commercialize without success, will burn plutonium derived from standard power reactors to stretch fuel efficiency. In the key third stage, on which India's long-term nuclear energy supply depends, power reactors will run on thorium and uranium-233 (an isotope that does not occur naturally).

Nuclear energy makes an important contribution to our fight against climate change and our security of energy supply

In order to make the necessary investments possible, the commission is examining ways to address the difficulties related to licensing, financing and different nuclear liability regimes.

green light for new nuclear build in the UK

Each of the reactors at Oldbury for example generate 815MW of thermal output, of which only some 218MW emerges as electricity indicating a thermal efficiency of 27%. This is an important point to be aware of when making primary energy comparisons.

In the Question and Answer session following the Speak Up Europe conference, Italy’s decision to phase out nuclear energy came under attack:

Energy consumption worldwide is likely to double between 2000 and 2050, and nuclear energy will remain a key element in future low-carbon energy systems. Europe has the largest nuclear industry in the world and one third of its electricity comes from nuclear plants.

Investing in new nuclear power plants, which produce electricity 24 hours a day and seven days a week, can be a major growth engine for our economy. Nuclear plants can be located close to growing demand centers, and next to existing transmission lines. Renewables, which produce power intermittently, must often be sited far from cities and the grid.

Electricity is usually made using nuclear power by heating steam to rotate turbines that generate electricity. But beginning in the 1960s, the US and Soviet Union used thermoelectric materials that convert heat into electricity to power spacecraft using nuclear fission or decaying radioactive material. The Pioneer missions were among those using the latter, "nuclear battery" approach.

The Commission has decided today to give a favourable opinion to the initiative of Natsionalna Elektricheska Kompania (NEK) of Bulgaria to build a new nuclear power plant at the site of Belene

The Guardian reports this morning on a private report to Gordon Brown that suggests that Britain should oppose binding target for renewable energies in Europe (20% of all energy by 2020, as agreed earlier this year at this spring's EU Summit). The Guardian flags the juicy political bits ("work with Poland and other governments sceptical about climate change to "help persuade" German chancellor Angela Merkel and others to set lower renewable targets", "a potentially significant cost in terms of reduced climate change leadership"), but also provides some of the apparent underlying reasons provided, which are worth commenting upon: it undermines the carbon-trading scheme which "allows wealthy governments to pay others to reduce emissions"; it costs too much money (£4 billion a year to get to 9% by 2020); it does not help push for new nuclear plants as it "reduces the incentives to invest in other carbon technologies like nuclear power"; Let's say it plainly: each of these arguments is stupid, short-sighted and, quite simply, false. Let me take you through them in turn (under the fold).

The Oxford Research Group paper, funded by the Joseph Rowntree charitable trust, says that the worldwide nuclear "renaissance" planned by the industry to provide cheap, clean power is a myth.

Investment of $20.2 trillion will be required by 2030 under the IEA alternative energy scenario, increasing nuclear capacity by 41% to 519 GWe and reducing energy demand by 10% and CO2 emissions by 16% compared with projections on present basis. Of this amount, $11.3 trillion will go for electricity: $5.2 trillion for generation, and the rest for transmission and distribution.

Nuclear fusion has evoked opinions in the various energy blogs ranging from “sixty years of failure and a certain dead end”, to “the reason why we do not need to worry about peak oil”. This event was a good opportunity to gain a clearer view of what part, if any, fusion energy could play in filling the gap as oil and then gas production peak and decline.

Right now, we have no idea what to do with this stuff. It's hard to imagine next century, let alone 15 million years from now. Do we really want to leave this stuff lying around? It will almost certainly escape from anywhere we put it.

Luckily, scientists are working on ways to avoid these long term problems. British scientists have 'transumted' iodine-129 into iodine-128 with a high-powered laser. Now, dropping one neutron might not seem like a big deal, but the half life of iodine-129 is 15 million years while the half life of iodine 128 is 25 minutes.

Climate analyst Jesse Ausubel is getting a lot of press with his new, controversial, deeply flawed study, "Renewable and nuclear heresies" (available here with subscription, but you can get the main points from this 2005 Canadian Nuclear Association talk and the accompanying PPT presentation).