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The triple whammy against nuclear power beginning with the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, followed by 1986′s Chernobyl  disaster and now Fukushima, effectively present a “three strikes and you’re out” call against civilian nuclear energy power generation for the foreseeable future.That said, with the trillions of dollars already invested in 436 nuclear power plants (NNP) worldwide, according to the International Atomic energy Agency (IAEA),  the industry has begun to push back, and “ground zero” is emerging as Europe, not Japan, with the lawyers circling.

In the wake of Fukushima, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on 30 May that Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy and Europe’s biggest, would shut down all of its 17 would abandon nuclear energy completely between 2015 and 2022, an extraordinary commitment, given that Germany’s 17 NPPS Germany produce about 28 percent of the country’s electricity.If Berlin’s announcement sent nuclear power proponents seating, worse was to follow, as Switzerland is examining a proposal to phase out the country’s five nuclear plants by 2034.Finally, if any doubts existed about Europe’s commitment of nuclear energy, on 12-13 June in a referendum in which 56 percent of Italian voters participated, an eye-watering 94 percent voted against nuclear power.  Following the 1987 Chernobyl disaster, Italy decided to shut down its four NPPs and the last operating plant closed in 1990. Three years ago Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reversed this decision but after Fukushima Berlusconi announced a one-year moratorium on his plans for new nuclear power plants, intending to restart Italy’s nuclear energy program in 2014. Berlusconi spent the days leading up to the polls challenging the nuclear power measure in court, declaring he wouldn’t vote and suggesting his fellow Italians stay at home too. They didn’t, and Berlusconi’s electoral defeat has ended nuclear possibilities for Italy for the foreseeable future. In 2010, 22.2 percent of Italy’s power came from renewable energy sources. 64.8 percent were from fossil fuels, and 13 percent were imported sources, including French nuclear power. The stinging defeat at the polls is a boon for Italy’s nascent renewable energy industry.

The German nuclear industry has begun to fight back, insisting that its shutdown would cause major damage to the country’s industrial base. Utilities E.ON AG and Vattenfall Europe AG have already announced that they will seek billions of euros in compensation, and RWE AG and EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG are expected to follow soon. Germany’s four nuclear operators have already announced they will stop paying into a government renewables fund, which was set up in September 2010 as compensation for longer nuclear life-spans.In such an environment, the only nuclear energy growth field currently is lawyers’ fees.

(check out this ebook from Foreign Policy on Japan's post-Fukushima future). Anti-nuclear sentiment has grown ever since -- making it a major political issue.

There are legitimate questions, nevertheless, about whether Japan could actually shift away from nuclear power. Japan is incredibly dependent on nuclear energy -- the country's 54 nuclear reactors account for 30 percent of its electricity; pre-earthquake estimates noted that the share to grow to 40 percent by 2017 and 50 percent by 2030. The prime minister today offered few details on how he'll transition away from nuclear reliance.   Japan joins a list of nuclear countries that have grown increasingly skittish about the controversial energy source since the disaster in March.

The country plans to make up the difference by cutting energy usage by 10 percent, it said, with more energy efficient appliances and buildings and to increase the use of wind energy.

Although the "Atoms for Peace" campaign was formally launched in 1957, corporate America began to promote peaceful uses of atomic energy as early as the first few months after Hiroshima. A Is For Atom, an artifact of this effort, takes this highly loaded and threatening issue straight to the public in an attempt to "humanize" the figure of the atom.A Is For Atom speaks of five atomic "giants" which "man has released from within the atom's heart": the warrior and destroyer, the farmer, the healer, the engineer and the research worker. Each is pictured as a majestic, shimmering outline figure towering over the earth. "But all are within man's power Ñ subject to his command," says the narrator reassuringly, and our future depends "on man's wisdom, on his firmness in the use of that power."General Electric, a long-time manufacturer of electric appliances, power generation plants, and nuclear weapon components, is staking a claim here, asserting their interest in managing and exploiting this new and bewildering technology. Its pitch: this is powerful, frightening, near-apocalyptic technology, but managed with firmness, it can be profitable and promising. This "Trust us with the control of technology, and we'll give you progress without end" pitch resembles what we've seen in films like General Motors' To New Horizons (on the Ephemeral Films disc). But the automobile, of course, wasn't a weapon of mass destruction.

In its first two years of release, A Is For Atom was seen by over seven million people in this version and a shortened ten-minute theatrical cut. In 1953 it won first prizes in both the Columbus (Ohio) and Turin (Italy) Film Festivals, the Freedoms Foundation Award, an "oscar" from the Cleveland Film Festival, and a Merit Award from Scholastic Teacher. In 1954 it won first prize in the Stamford Film Festival, a Golden Reel Award from the American Film Assembly, and a second Grand Award from the Venice Film Festival. The film was remade in the mid-sixties and is still available for rental.Like other John Sutherland films, A Is For Atom presents a portentious message in a visually delightful and often self-deprecating manner. "Element Town" and its quirky inhabitants, including hyped-up Radium and somnolent Lead, is unforgettable, and the animated chain reaction manages to avoid any suggestion of nuclear fear.

Six months after the Fukushima disaster, the repercussions of history’s second-largest nuclear meltdown are still being felt, not only in Japan but around the world. Predictably, people are rethinking the wisdom of relying on nuclear power. The German and Swiss governments have pledged to phase out the use of nuclear power, and Italy has shelved plans to build new reactors. Public debate on future nuclear energy use continues in the United Kingdom, Japan, Finland, and other countries.So far, it is unclear what the reaction of the Korean government will be. Certainly, the public backlash to nuclear energy that has occurred elsewhere in the world is also evident in Korea; according to one study, opposition to nuclear energy in Korea has tripled since the Fukushima disaster. However, there are countervailing considerations here as well, which have caused policy-makers to move cautiously. Korea’s economy is often seen as particularly reliant on the use of nuclear power due to its lack of fossil fuel resources, while Korean companies are some of the world’s most important builders (and exporters) of nuclear power stations.

There are three primary reasons why nuclear power is safer and greener than power generated using conventional fossil fuels. First ― and most importantly ― nuclear power does not directly result in the emission of greenhouse gases. Even when you take a life-cycle approach and factor in the greenhouse gas emissions from the construction of the plant, there is no contest. Fossil fuels ― whether coal, oil, or natural gas ― create far more global warming.

The negative effects of climate change will vastly outweigh the human and environmental consequences of even a thousand Fukushimas. This is not the place to survey all the dire warnings that have been coming out of the scientific community; suffice it to quote U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s concise statement that climate change is the world’s “only one truly existential threat … the great moral imperative of our era.” A warming earth will not only lead to death and displacement in far-off locales, either. Typhoons are already hitting the peninsula with greater intensity due to the warming air, and a recent study warns that global warming will cause Korea to see greatly increased rates of contagious diseases such as cholera and bacillary dysentery.

Nuclear power proponents claim: It has low carbon emissions. It is the peaceful face of the atom and proliferation problems are manageable. It is compact -- so little uranium, so much energy. Unlike solar and wind, it is 24/7 electricity. It reduces dependence on oil. Let's examine each argument.

1. Climate. Nuclear energy has low carbon emissions. But the United States doesn't lack low-carbon energy sources: The potential of wind energy alone is about nine times total US electricity generation. Solar energy is even more plentiful. Time and money to address climate change are in short supply, not low carbon dioxide sources. Instead of the two large reactors the United States would require every three months to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, all the breathless pronouncements from nuclear advocates are only yielding two reactors every five years -- if that. Even federal loan guarantees have not given this renaissance momentum. Wall Street won't fund them. (Can nuclear power even be called a commercial technology if it can't raise money on Wall Street?) Today, wind energy is far cheaper and faster than nuclear. Simply put: Nuclear fares poorly on two crucial criteria -- time and money.

2. Proliferation. President Eisenhower spoke of "Atoms for Peace" at the United Nations in 1953; he thought it would be too depressing only to mention the horrors of thermonuclear weapons. It was just a fig leaf to mask the bomb: Much of the interest in nuclear power is mainly a cover for acquiring bomb-making know-how. To make a real dent in carbon dioxide emissions, about 3,000 large reactors would have to be built worldwide in the next 40 years -- creating enough plutonium annually to create 90,000 bombs, if separated. Two or three commercial uranium enrichment plants would also be needed yearly -- and it has only taken one, Iran's, to give the world a nuclear security headache.

In his May 12, 2011 report "Fukushima Fallout: Regulatory Loopholes at U.S. Nuclear Plants," U.S. Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) stated: "Following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, many other countries have announced new safety measures with regards to nuclear reactors. China, Venezuela, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, and Taiwan have suspended new reactor development. Germany and Japan announced it would shut down older reactors pending safety review." The table also shows that the Phillipines and the U.K. have decided to reduce the role of nuclear power in their energy future. And in fact Germany, the fourth biggest national economy on the planet, has decided to completely phase out nuclear power by 2022. (see Table 1 on page 24).

Scared by the nuclear disaster at the Japanese Fukushima-1 Nuclear power plant, Germany, Italy and Switzerland have decided to abandon nuclear energy towards alternative sources of energy. How safe are these alternatives?  Today ecologists and scientists are trying to answer this question.Nature protection activists call alternative sources of energy “green” sources. However after a more detailed study these sources can hardly be regarded as “environmentally friendly”. Silicon solar arrays Europeans want to see on the roofs of their houses turn to be unsafe right at the stage of their production. The production of one ton of photo elements leads to the emission up to 4 tons of silicon tetrachloride, a highly toxic substance, which combinations may cause different diseases. Besides poisonous gallium, lead and arsenic the photo elements also contain cadmium. If cadmium enters a human body it can cause tumors and affect the nervous system.

As for wind turbines, their noise is dangerous for health and it is impossible to recycle the worn blades. Though green energy sources are not completely safe it is the question of choosing the lesser of two evils, Igor Shkradyuk, the coordinator of the program on the greening of industrial activities at the Center of Wild Life Protection, says."Absolutely environmentally clean energy does not exist.  All its types have stronger of weaker impact on the environment. A solar battery requires a huge amount of unhealthy silicon. Engineers hope that silicon-free materials for solar batteries will be produced in 10-20 years. The solar battery, if you don’t break it, of course, poses no danger. As for wind turbines, the first one was put into operation in mid 1970-s in Germany. But the residents complained about its strong vibration and noise and a local court ruled to stop it. Since then many things have changed and modern powerful wind turbines are unheard already at a distance of 200 meters. But they are the main source of danger for migrating birds which are almost asleep as they fly to their wintering grounds and back."

Vladimir Chuprov, the head of the energy department of Russia’s Greenpeace agrees that all sources of energy cause environmental damage.  But the alternative sources have advantages anyway, he says."Of course, we are negative towards any pollution and here the problem of choice comes up. For example, silicon production requires chlorine which is hazardous. But now the gradual transition to chorine-free methods of silicon production has already begun.  Besides that we see the gradual transition to thin-film photoconverters in particular arsenic based converters. And after all, nobody says that solar batteries will be thrown to a dump site. It is necessary to ensure their proper utilization." 

As a long time proponent of nuclear power, last week France announced that it will invest $1.4 billion in its nuclear energy program, diverging from contentious deliberation from neighboring states on nuclear energy policy after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan that damaged the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March. The President of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, issued a strong commitment announcing the energy funding package by declaring there is “no alternative to nuclear energy today.” With the capital used to fund fourth generation nuclear power plant technology, focusing research development in nuclear safety, the announcement validates many decades of energy infrastructure and legacy expansion. France currently operates the second largest nuclear fleet in the world with 58 reactors, responsible for supplying more than 74 percent of domestic electricity demand supplied to the world’s fifth largest economy last year. At the end of last month, French uranium producer, Areva Group (EPA:AREVA), and Katko announced plans to increase production to 4,000 tonnes of uranium next year.  Katco is a joint venture for Areva, the world’s largest builder of nuclear power plants, and Kazatomprom the national operator for uranium prospecting, exploration and production for Kazakhstan.

German closure The pronouncement to maintain the nuclear prominence in France provides a strong counterweight to other countries in the region. Germany recently announced the phased shutdown of its 17 nuclear power stations by 2022.  Last week, Germany’s federal parliament voted overwhelmingly to close its remaining nine active plants according to a preset 11 year schedule. A Federal Network Agency, which oversees German energy markets, will decide by the end of September whether one of the eight nuclear plants already closed in recent months should be kept ready on a “cold reserve” basis, to facilitate the transition for national energy supply. The German commitment to an energy policy transition indicates that the national power mix towards renewable sources will have to double from its present range of 17 percent to an ambitious 35 percent. Subsidies for hydro electric and geothermal energy will increase; however, financial support for biomass, solar, and wind energy will be reduced. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she would prefer for utility suppliers not to make up any electrical shortfalls after 2022 by obtaining nuclear power from neighboring countries like France. Germany will require an expansive supergrid to effectively distribute electricity from the north to growing industrial urban centers like Munich, in the south. In order to execute this plan the new laws call for the addition of some 3,600 kilometers of high capacity power lines. Germany’s strategy will partially include the expansion of wind turbines on the North Sea, enabling some 25,000 megawatts’ worth of new offshore wind power which will have to be developed by 2030. Nuclear persistence in the United Kingdom Last month, the government in the United Kingdom maintained its strong commitment to nuclear energy, confirming a series of potential locations for new nuclear builds.  The national policy statements on energy said renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage “all have a part to play in delivering the United Kingdom’s decarbonisation objectives,” and confirmed eight sites around the country as suitable for building new nuclear stations by 2025. The statements, which are to be debated in Parliament, include a commitment for an additional 33,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity, while the government said more than $160 billion will be required to replace around 25 percent of the country’s generating capacity, due to close by 2020. The Scottish government has also softened its tough opposition to nuclear power, following recognition by the energy minister of a “rational case” to extend operations at Scotland’s two nuclear plants. Additional Eurozone participation In June, Italian voters rejected a government proposal to reintroduce nuclear power. The plan by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to restart Italy’s nuclear energy program abandoned during the 1980s, was rejected by 94 percent of voters in the referendum. Another regional stakeholder, the Swiss government has decided not to replace the four nuclear power plants that supply about 40 percent of the country’s electricity. The last of Switzerland’s power nuclear plants is expected to end production by 2034, leaving time for the country to develop alternative power sources. Although the country is home to the oldest nuclear reactor presently in operation, the Swiss Energy Foundation has stated an objective to work for “an ecological, equitable and sustainable energy policy”. Its “2000 watt society” promotes energy solutions which employ renewable energy resources other than fossil fuels or nuclear power.

Saying that using nuclear power involves technology that is beyond the control of Japan’s conventional concept of safety, Kan said that following the disaster, he had come to realize that “the risk of nuclear energy is too intense. And while denying that he had called for an immediate stop to nuclear power, he did admit that previously chalked out plans that had aimed at increasing Japan’s use of nuclear to 50 percent by 2030 had been scrapped.

Nuclear Energy Worldwide

Germany derives 23% of its power from its 17 reactors. Calling the nuclear disaster and radiation leaks that took place in Japan a “catastrophe of apocalyptic dimensions”, Germany announced, in the latter part of March, that they would be looking at completely replacing energy produced by these nuclear power plants with renewable sources. Around the same time, Italy declared that they would be suspending their plans to revive nuclear energy for a year given the scale of radiation leaks that took place at the Fukushima reactors. Nuclear policies of India and China, the world’s two most populous nations, which had elaborate plans of expanding nuclear power capabilities, were also left shaken, with many experts stating that it would be difficult to get these countries to go ahead with expanding nuclear power facilities following the Japan disaster.

China continues to create headlines in the area of renewable energy — this time, concerning the wind power generating capacity it might reach by 2050 – some 1,000 gigawatts! China is already the world’s largest generator of wind energy capacity.The news comes from a study prepared by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), which has broad control over the Chinese economy.The total of 1,000 GW would represent a dramatic increase from the 41 GW of wind power capacity it showed at the end of 2010.The Worldwatch Institute writes:

“The breathtaking growth of Chinese wind power illustrates how effective government policy can influence the market. Since the issuing of the renewable energy law, the government has enacted a series of policies to facilitate wind power development. One important step has been to improve the wind power pricing regulation, which uses a competitive bidding process to determine the price of wind power. Through five rounds of public tendering to issue wind concessions, policymakers have explored ways to further improve pricing and disperse worries in the industry about excessively low bidding hindering further development.”Political and economic maneuvering aside, this is positive news from a climate perspective because the potential capacity of 1,000 gigawatts would reduce the country’s carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5 gigatons a year, roughly equivalent to the combined carbon dioxide emissions of Germany, France, and Italy in 2009, the study from the NRDC’s Energy Research Institute showed.

Bottom line: such renewable energy capacity would generate about 17 percent of China’s electricity output in 2050, compared to the present 1 percent number.

Well, the big day has come and gone. Andrea Rossi's one-megawatt-capable E-Cat cold fusion device has been tested in Bologna, Italy; and the unknown customer, who ran the test, is apparently happy.

There were some issues, so it couldn't be run at full power in self-looped mode, but what it did do was plenty impressive.

It ran for 5.5 hours producing 479 kW, while in self-looped mode. That means no substantial external energy was required to make it run, because it kept itself running, even while producing an excess of nearly half a megawatt. Rossi explained the reasons for this in the presentation he gave, which I videotaped and will be posting later.

Global energy advisory body, the International Energy Agency (IEA), says that India should not get influenced by countries that have announced changes in their nuclear energy plans in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. “India should go ahead and implement its civil

nuclear power plans,” Richard Jones, American diplomat and the deputy executive director of IEA told the Hindustan Times in an exclusive interview. “Of the countries like Germany, Italy and few others that have announced changes in their nuclear policy, we were not expecting them to do much in nuclear anyway.”

Jones said while India must “take a lesson from the Fukushima nuclear disaster and adequately address its security and safety concerns,” but should not slow down its nuclear capacity addition plans as switching to alternate fuels like gas for power generation.