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The South African government released its official climate change response policy this week and while it contains many positives, many environmentalists, myself included, are very concerned about the fact that it contains a continued and increased commitment to nuclear energy. First, some of the good news. In the National Climate Change Response White Paper, the government reiterates its conviction, based on the research of the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists, that climate change is happening, that human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation are the main causes and that there will be very severe consequences if the international community does not take decisive collective action to halt it. That’s great. There’s not denying that. What’s more, the South African government acknowledges that, while Africa as a continent has been a relatively minor contributor to climate change, South Africa itself is a significant emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG), largely as a result of its energy-intensive, fossil fuel powered economy. If nothing is done, the country’s emissions are projected to quadruple by 2050.

Electricity generation accounts for about 40% of all of South Africa’s GHG emissions and clearly this represents a major opportunity for future reductions. More than 90% of the country’s electricity is produced by coal-fired power stations. The French-built Koeberg plant outside Cape Town, which dates back to the Apartheid era, remains the country’s only commercial nuclear energy facility. It’s interesting to take a look at how a major new nuclear energy construction program has become an integral part of South Africa’s climate change policy. The ruling African National Congress, in power since the first democratic elections in 1994, used to be a staunch opponent of atomic energy. When the organization was in exile some of its underground operatives even sabotaged Koeberg while it was being built.

These days, however, the ANC government is a very strong proponent of nuclear energy. Critics believe that this is mainly the result of effective lobbying by the international nuclear industry and the country’s main industrial and mining electricity consumers. This week, Minister of Energy, Dipuo Peters confirmed that plans to construct 6 new nuclear plants with a combined capacity of 9 600 megawatts would cost something like R1 trillion (about $125 billion). The formal acceptance of nuclear energy into South Africa’s climate change policy can be traced back to a study of so-called long term mitigation scenarios (LTMS) which modeled various actions that could be taken to bring the country’s GHG emission under control in line with what is required internationally to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Nuclear power is no magic solution, argues Pervez Hoodbhoy — it's not safe, or cheap, and it leads to weapons programmes. A string of energy-starved developing countries have looked at nuclear power as the magic solution. No oil, no gas, no coal needed – it's a fuel with zero air pollution or carbon dioxide emissions. High-tech and prestigious, it was seen as relatively safe. But then Fukushima came along. The disaster's global psychological impact exceeded Chernobyl's, and left a world that's now unsure if nuclear electricity is the answe

Core concerns The fire that followed the failure of emergency generators at the Daiichi nuclear complex raised the terrifying prospect of radiation leaking and spreading. The core of the Unit 1 reactor melted, and spent nuclear fuel, stored under pools of water, sprang to life as cooling pumps stopped. Fukushima's nuclear reactors had been built to withstand the worst, including earthquakes and tsunamis. Sensors successfully shut down the reactors, but when a wall of water 30 feet high crashed over the 20-foot protective concrete walls, electrical power, essential for cooling, was lost. The plume of radiation reached as far as Canada. Closer, it was far worse. Japan knows that swathes of its territory will be contaminated, perhaps uninhabitable, for the rest of the century. In July, for example, beef, vegetables, and ocean fish sold in supermarkets were found to have radioactive caesium in doses several times the safe level. [1]

The Japanese have been careful. In the country of the hibakusha (surviving victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), all reactors go through closer scrutiny than anywhere else. But this clearly wasn't enough. Other highly developed countries — Canada, Russia, UK, and US — have also seen serious reactor accidents. What does this mean for a typical developing country? There, radiation dangers and reactor safety have yet to enter public debate. Regulatory mechanisms are strictly controlled by the authorities, citing national security reasons. And individuals or nongovernmental organisations are forbidden from monitoring radiation levels near any nuclear facility. Poor and powerless village communities in India and Pakistan, that have suffered health effects from uranium and thorium mining, have been forced to withdraw their court cases.

SciDev.Net reporters from around the world tell us which countries are set on developing nuclear energy despite the Fukushima accident. The quest for energy independence, rising power needs and a desire for political weight all mean that few developing countries with nuclear ambitions have abandoned them in the light of the Fukushima accident. Jordan's planned nuclear plant is part of a strategy to deal with acute water and energy shortages.

The Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) wants Jordan to get 60 per cent of its energy from nuclear by 2035. Currently, obtaining energy from neighbouring Arab countries costs Jordan about a fifth of its gross domestic product. The country is also one of the world's most water-poor nations. Jordan plans to desalinate sea water from the Gulf of Aqaba to the south, then pump it to population centres in Amman, Irbid, and Zarqa, using its nuclear-derived energy. After the Fukushima disaster, Jordan started re-evaluating safety procedures for its nuclear reactor, scheduled to begin construction in 2013. The country also considered more safety procedures for construction and in ongoing geological and environmental investigations.

The government would not reverse its decision to build nuclear reactors in Jordan because of the Fukushima disaster," says Abdel-Halim Wreikat, vice Chairman of the JAEC. "Our plant type is a third-generation pressurised water reactor, and it is safer than the Fukushima boiling water reactor." Wreikat argues that "the nuclear option for Jordan at the moment is better than renewable energy options such as solar and wind, as they are still of high cost." But some Jordanian researchers disagree. "The cost of electricity generated from solar plants comes down each year by about five per cent, while the cost of producing electricity from nuclear power is rising year after year," says Ahmed Al-Salaymeh, director of the Energy Centre at the University of Jordan. He called for more economic feasibility studies of the nuclear option.

There are many terrific reasons to favor the rapid development of nuclear fission technology.

It is a reliable and affordable alternative to hydrocarbon combustionIt is a technology that can use less material per unit energy output than any other power sourceIt is a technology where much of the cost comes in the form of paying decent salaries to a large number of human beingsIt is a technology where wealth distribution is not dependent on the accident of geology or the force of arms in controlling key production areasIt is an energy production technology where the waste materials are so small in volume that they can be isolated from the environmentIt is a technology that is so emission free that it can operate without limitation in a sealed environment – like a submarineIt is an important climate change mitigation too

Our current economy is built on an industrial foundation that removes about 7-10 billion tons of stored hydrocarbons from the earth’s crust every year and then oxidize that extracted material to form heat, water and CO2 – along with some other nasty side products due to various impurities in the hydrocarbons and atmosphere. The 20 billion tons or so of stable CO2 that we dump into the atmosphere is not disappearing – there are some natural removal processes that were in a rough balance before humans started aggressive dumping, but most of the mass of CO2 that we are pumping into the thin layers of atmosphere that surround the Earth is not being absorbed or used.

The calls these days for a technological “energy revolution” are widespread. But how do you spark breakthroughs when the natural bias of businesses, investors and governments is toward the here and now? In governance, politics creates a bias toward the short term. This is why bridges sometimes fall down for lack of maintenance. That’s also why it’s so hard to sustain public investment in the research and intellectual infrastructure required to make progress on the frontiers of chemistry, biology and physics, even though it is this kind of work that could produce leaps in how we harvest, harness, store and move energy. (This is why I asked, “Are Chemists and Engineers on the Green Jobs List?” back in 2008.)

To get the idea, you only have to look at the sputtering state of President Obama’s mostly unfunded innovation hubs, or look once again at the energy sliver in the graph showing America’s half-century history of public investment in basic scientific research. (There’s not much difference in research patterns in most other industrialized countries.) You can also look at the first Quadrennial Technology Review produced by the Department of Energy (summarized by Climate Progress earlier this week). The review was conducted after the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology wisely recommended regular reviews of this sort as part of its prescription for accelerating change in energy technologies.

This excerpt from the new review articulates the tension pretty transparently for a government report: There is a tension between supporting work that industry doesn’t— which biases the department’s portfolio toward the long term—and the urgency of the nation’s energy challenges. The appropriate balance requires the department to focus on accelerating innovation relevant to today’s energy technologies, since such evolutionary advances are more likely to have near- to mid-term impact on the nation’s challenges. We found that too much effort in the department is devoted to research on technologies that are multiple generations away from practical use at the expense of analyses, modeling and simulation, or other highly relevant fundamental engineering research activities that could influence the private sector in the nearer term.

As reported by Matt Wald of the New York Times, former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford strikes again, with a most apt metaphor bringing a dose of reality to the so-called Third Way/Idaho National Lab conference on nuclear power's future. Unmentioned in the reporting, however, is the irony of U.S. Senators Voinovich (R-OH) and Carper (D-DE) hosting the event. It was on Voinovich's watch that the Davis-Besse atomic reactor near Toledo came within 3/16ths of an inch of a meltdown; Carper's political power base in Wilmington could suffer 100,000 "peak early fatalities," over 70,000 "peak early injuries," 40,000 "peak cancer deaths," and over $300 billion in property damage if any one of the three Salem/Hope Creek atomic reactors suffered a catastrophic radiation release, according to NRC's 1982 CRAC-2 study ("Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences"). Also unreported was the irony that, as Obama administration officials -- Energy Secretary Steven Chu, White House climate and energy czar Carol Browner, NRC chairman Greg Jaczko -- rubbed shoulders with NEI President Marvin Fertel, GE-Hitachi Board Chair Jack Fuller, etc., the nuclear power industry's army of lobbyists worked Capitol Hill to attach a $7 billion nuclear loan guarantee onto the congressional lame duck session Continuing Resolution to fund government operations. NRC's homepage described the gathering as "28 nuclear leaders from government, industry and finance -- focused on long term policy for nuclear energy," but offered no explanation as to why its Chairman would attend an event seemingly largely devoted to nuclear power's promotion -- NRC is not supposed to promote nuclear power, but rather to regulate it in the interests of public health and safety and environmental protection

South Africa, the host of U.N. global climate talks, is faced with a conundrum -- it wants to wean itself off of coal-powered plants seen as primate culprits of greenhouse gas emissions and find a cleaner energy source.It is turning to nuclear power, despite the catastrophic environmental degradation the world witnessed after Japan's Fukushima plant disaster this year.

The global climate talks that opened earlier this week in Durban are seeing a widening division on nuclear power, with many advanced economies moving away from it after Fukushima and emerging states heavily reliant on fossil fuels embracing it as a cleaner way to power their development. "If you want to be part of the climate change race and mitigation you basically have renewables and nuclear. Renewables are intermittent and you need a firm and reliable baseload technology. Renewables are not in a position to provide this yet," said H. Holger Rogner, section head of the International Atomic Energy Agency's planning and economic studies section. South Africa, among the world's top 20 emitters per capita of carbon dioxide, and many other emerging countries, see nuclear power as a way to ensure energy security for the coming years and as a bridge to a time when they are rich enough to afford adding more renewables to their power mix.

The Fukushima disaster changed the economics of the nuclear industry by drying up markets in developed countries such as Japan and increasing competition among the few global conglomerates who can build nuclear power plants.

LONDON, UK, November 9, 2011 (ENS) - Unless there is a "bold change of policy direction," the world will lock itself into an insecure, inefficient and high-carbon energy system, the International Energy Agency warned at the launch of its 2011 World Energy Outlook today in London. The report says there is still time to act, but despite steps in the right direction the door of opportunity is closing

The agency's warning comes at a critical time in international climate change negotiations, as governments prepare for the annual UN climate summit in Durban, South Africa, from November 28.

international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door will be closed forever," IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol warned today. "Growth, prosperity and rising population will inevitably push up energy needs over the coming decades. But we cannot continue to rely on insecure and environmentally unsustainable uses of energy," said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. "Governments need to introduce stronger measures to drive investment in efficient and low-carbon technologies," she said.

This year’s World Energy Outlook report has been published by the International Energy Agency, and says wealthy and industrializing countries are stuck on policies that threaten to lock in “an insecure, inefficient and high-carbon energy system.”You can read worldwide coverage of the report here. Fiona Harvey of the Guardian has a piece on the report that focuses on the inexorable trajectories for carbon dioxide, driven by soaring energy demand in Asia.A variety of graphs and slides can be reviewed here:

According to the report, Russia will long remain the world’s leading producer of natural gas, but exploitation of shale deposits in the United States, and increasingly in China, will greatly boost production in those countries (which will be in second and third place for gas production in 2035).Last month, in an interview with James Kanter of The Times and International Herald Tribune, the new head of the energy agency, Maria van der Hoeven, discussed one point made in the report today — that concerns raised by the damage to the Fukushima Daiichi power plant could continue to dampen expansion of nuclear power and add to the challenge of avoiding a big accumulation of carbon dioxide, saying: “Such a reduction would certainly make it more difficult for the world to meet the goal of stabilizing the rise in temperature to 2 degrees Centigrade.”

Here’s the summary of the main points, released today by the agency: “Growth, prosperity and rising population will inevitably push up energy needs over the coming decades. But we cannot continue to rely on insecure and environmentally unsustainable uses of energy,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. “Governments need to introduce stronger measures to drive investment in efficient and low-carbon technologies. The Fukushima nuclear accident, the turmoil in parts of the Middle East and North Africa and a sharp rebound in energy demand in 2010 which pushed CO2 emissions to a record high, highlight the urgency and the scale of the challenge.”

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, delivered a speech this week at the International V.M. Goldschmidt Conference in Knoxville.  Alexander serves on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and is the chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority Congressional Caucus.  His remarks as prepared follow:

When

in a speech in Oak Ridge in May of 2009, I called for America to build 100 new nuclear plants during the next twenty years.  Nuclear power produces 70 percent of our pollution-free, carbon-free electricity today.  It is the most useful and reliable source of green electricity today because of its tremendous energy density and the small amount of waste that it produces.  And because we are harnessing the heat and energy of the earth itself through the power of the atom, nuclear power is also natural.

There are battles being fought on two fronts in the five months since a massive earthquake and tsunami damaged the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. On one front, there is the fight to repair the plant, operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and to contain the extent of contamination caused by the damage. On the other is the public’s fight to extract information from the Japanese government, TEPCO and nuclear experts worldwide.

The latter battle has yielded serious official humiliation, resulting high-profile resignations, scandals, and promises of reform in Japan’s energy industry whereas the latter has so far resulted in a storm of anger and mistrust. Even most academic nuclear experts, seen by many as the middle ground between the anti-nuclear activists and nuclear lobby itself, were reluctant to say what was happening: That in Fukushima, a community of farms, schools and fishing ports, was experiencing a full-tilt meltdown, and that, as Al Jazeera reported in June, that the accident had most likely caused more radioactive contamination than Chernobyl

As recently as early August, those seeking information on the real extent of the damage at the Daiichi plant and on the extent of radioactive contamination have mostly been reassured by the nuclear community that there’s no need to worry.

Take NASA scientist James Hansen, who wrote (pdf) a public letter in June suggesting that the fate of the planet rests with the 1,700-mile Keystone XL project.

The climatologist said the proposal is a steppingstone to exploiting the entire oil sands region in Canada, where a vast amount of carbon dioxide sits underground in sand formations. Hansen asserted that its extraction would mean "game over" for the Earth when combined with emissions from coal. Canada holds the second-largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia.

, proponents of Keystone XL say that oil production in the Canadian region will continue no matter what, and that developers will find a way to transport the oil overseas if the United States declines to approve the pipeline.

In our new report “True Cost of Nuclear Power in South Africa”, presented to the Department of Energy today, we expose the significant social and economic impacts of the country’s nuclear program in the past, and highlight the benefits of a nuclear-free future. At the same time we also made a submission to the Environmental Impact Assessment on the proposed Nuclear-1 power station to the DoE.

Greenpeace urges the Minister of Energy to reconsider the role of nuclear energy in South Africa and put a moratorium on any new nuclear reactors at least until the safety implications of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan have been fully evaluated. Rather than investing in dangerous energy technologies, our country should opt for clean energy options. The True Cost of Nuclear report outlines South Africa’s costly nuclear history, its failure to learn from past mistakes, and how the country could leave dirty and dangerous energy behind by investing in renewables. To achieve a nuclear-free South Africa, whilst still reducing the country’s dependency on coal, the electricity sector needs to be the pioneer of renewable energy utilisation. According to our Advanced Energy [R]evolution, 49% of electricity can be produced from renewable sources by 2030, increasing to 94% by 2050. “Nuclear energy is a dangerous distraction from the clean energy development needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. Nuclear power simply delivers too little, too late, and at too high a price for the environment,” said Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International.

As host of the international climate negotiations COP17 in Durban this year, South Africa should play a leading role both in terms of its domestic energy choices, and by debunking false energy solutions to catastrophic climate change, such as nuclear. Greenpeace Africa is calling for decisive action and the political leadership required to secure the brighter future South Africans deserve. A future that is free of the threats posed by nuclear energy. “We need an Energy [R]evolution driven by the creation of green jobs. With the political will and South Africa’s abundance of renewable energy resources, the country could and should become a renewable energy leader in Africa,” said Ferrial Adam, Greenpeace Africa campaigner.

In response to the freakishness of historic floods on the Missouri River in Nebraska threatening the Fort Calhoun and Cooper atomic reactors simultaneous to a historic wildfire in New Mexcio coming dangerously close to tens of thousands of 55 gallon barrels of plutonium-contaminated wastes, Beyond Nuclear has published a new fact sheet entitled "Far from 'solving global warming,' atomic energy is too risky to operate in a destabilized climate."

Temperatures can fall by up to 4C downwind of farms

Tory MPs write to PM demanding dramatic subsidy cuts

The team from the University of Illinois found that daytime temperatures around wind farms can fall by as much as 4C, while at night temperatures can increase

An electric car owner would have to drive at least 129,000km before producing a net saving in CO2. Many electric cars will not travel that far in their lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 145km on a single charge and are unsuitable for long trips. Even those driven 160,000km would save only about a tonne of CO2 over their lifetimes.

The British study, which is the first analysis of the full lifetime emissions of electric cars covering manufacturing, driving and disposal, undermines the case for tackling climate change by the rapid introduction of electric cars.

The Committee on Climate Change, the UK government watchdog, has called for the number of electric cars on Britain's roads to increase from a few hundred now to 1.7 million by 2020.

Californians are closely synched to Gov. Jerry Brown's views on nuclear power, global warming and other environmental issues, a new Public Policy Institute of California poll has found, but they aren't very approving of how he has handled those issues. The PPIC poll found that support for nuclear energy, which had been creeping upwards in recent years, plummeted after a tsunami hit Japanese nuclear plants and threatened to create a nuclear disaster. Nearly two-thirds of California adults now oppose building more nuclear plants in California, which now has two in operation -- the lowest level of support ever found in a PPIC poll. Last month, a statewide Field Poll found a similar drop in nuclear power support.

"Californians are holding steady in the belief that global warming is underway and threatens the state's future," Baldassare added. "In the wake of federal inaction on the issue, they strongly support the state's climate change policies. With unemployment high, many also see a potential for job creation."

Near the end of 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a summary of a report titled The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle as part of its MIT Energy Initiative. The complete report was released a few months ago. The conclusions published that report initiated a virtual firestorm of reaction among the members of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) Study group who strongly disagreed with the authors.

the following quote from the “Study Context” provides a good summary of why the fast reactor advocates were so dismayed by the report.

For decades, the discussion about future nuclear fuel cycles has been dominated by the expectation that a closed fuel cycle based on plutonium startup of fast reactors would eventually be deployed. However, this expectation is rooted in an out-of-date understanding about uranium scarcity. Our reexamination of fuel cycles suggests that there are many more viable fuel cycle options and that the optimum choice among them faces great uncertainty—some economic, such as the cost of advanced reactors, some technical such as implications for waste management, and some societal, such as the scale of nuclear power deployment and the management of nuclear proliferation risks. Greater clarity should emerge over the next few decades, assuming that the needed research is carried out for technological alternatives and that the global response to climate change risk mitigation comes together. A key message from our work is that we can and should preserve our options for fuel cycle choices by continuing with the open fuel cycle, implementing a system for managed LWR spent fuel storage, developing a geological repository, and researching technology alternatives appropriate to a range of nuclear energy futures.

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.