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book titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment in a publication called the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. The roots of the decision remain murky. Within a few months after the first printing of the book, Ted Rockwell, a long time member of the Academy, started working to convince NYAS leaders that the decision to print was a grave error that was bad for science and posed a significant risk to the reputation of the Academy as a source of sound, peer-reviewed information. As part of his effort, he encouraged the current editor of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences to appoint reviewers and to post the results of those reviews.

Well, if we can’t tax pollution, how about encouraging the use of clean sources by giving them subsidies? This has proved to be more popular so far, but this idea has also recently run into trouble, given the current situation with the budget deficit and national debt. Events like the Solyndra bankruptcy have put government clean energy subsidies even more on the defensive. Thus, it seems that neither policies involving money flowing to the government nor policies involving money flowing from the government are politically viable at this point.

One final idea, which does not involve money going to or from government, is simply requiring that cleaner sources provide a certain fraction of our overall power generation. The many state Renewable Portfolio Standards (that do not include nuclear) and the Clean Energy Standard being considered by Congress and the Obama administration (which does include nuclear) are examples of this policy. While better than nothing, such policies are not ideal in that they are crude, and don’t involve a quantitative incentive based on real external costs. An energy source is either defined as “clean,” or it is not. Note that the definition of “clean” would be decided politically, as opposed to objectively based on tangible external costs determined by scientific studies (nuclear’s exclusion from state Renewable Portfolio Standards policies being one outrageous example). Finally, there is the fact that any such policy would require legislation.

All of the above begs the question whether there is a policy available that will encourage the use of cleaner energy sources that is revenue-neutral (i.e., does not involve money flowing to or from the government), does not involve the outright (political) selection of certain energy sources over others, and does not require legislation. Enter the Dispatch Queue

There must be enough power plants in a given region to meet the maximum load (or demand) expected to occur. In fact, total generation capacity must exceed maximum demand by a specified “reserve margin,” to address the possibility of a plant going offline, or other possible considerations. Due to the fact that demand varies significantly with time, a significant fraction of the generation capacity remains offline, some or most of the time. The dispatch queue is a means by which utilities, or independent regional grid operators, decide which power plants will operate in order to meet demand at any given instant. A good discussion of dispatch queues and how they operate can be found in this Department of Energy report.

The general goal of the methodology used to set the dispatch queue order is to minimize overall generation cost, while staying in compliance with all federal or state laws (environmental rules, etc.). This is done by placing the power plants with the lowest “variable” cost first in the queue. Plants with the highest “variable” cost are placed last. The “variable” cost of a plant represents how much more it costs to operate the plant than it costs to leave it idle (i.e., it includes the fuel cost and maintenance costs that arise from operation, but does not include the plant capital cost, personnel costs, or any fixed maintenance costs). Thus, one starts with the least expensive plants, and moves up (in cost) until generation meets demand. The remaining, more expensive plants are not fired up. This ensures that the lowest-operating-cost set of plants is used to meet demand at any given time

As far as who makes the decisions is concerned, in many cases the local utility itself runs the dispatch for its own service territory. In most of the United States, however, there is a large regional grid (covering several utilities) that is operated by an Independent System Operator (ISO) or Regional Transmission Organization (RTO), and those organizations, which are independent of the utilities, set the dispatch queue for the region. The Idea

As discussed above, a plant’s place in the dispatch queue is based upon variable cost, with the lowest variable cost plants being first in the queue. As discussed in the DOE report, all the dispatch queues in the country base the dispatch order almost entirely on variable cost, with the only possible exceptions being issues related to maximizing grid reliability. What if the plant dispatch methodology were revised so that environmental costs were also considered? Ideally, the public health and environmental costs would be objectively and scientifically determined and cast in terms of an equivalent economic cost (as has been done in many scientific studies such as the ExternE study referenced earlier). The calculated external cost would be added to a plant’s variable cost, and its place in the dispatch queue would be adjusted accordingly. The net effect would be that dirtier plants would be run much less often, resulting in greatly reduced pollution.

This could have a huge impact in the United States, especially at the current time. Currently, natural gas prices are so low that the variable costs of combine-cycle natural gas plants are not much higher than those of coal plants, even without considering environmental impacts. Also, there is a large amount of natural gas generation capacity sitting idle.

More specifically, if dispatch queue ordering methods were revised to even place a small (economic) weight on environmental costs, there would be a large switch from coal to gas generation, with coal plants (especially the older, dirtier ones) moving to the back of the dispatch queue, and only running very rarely (at times of very high demand). The specific idea of putting gas plants ahead of coal plants in the dispatch queue is being discussed by others.

The beauty of this idea is that it does not involve any type of tax or government subsidy. It is revenue neutral. Also, depending on the specifics of how it’s implemented, it can be quantitative in nature, with environmental costs of various power plants being objectively weighed, as opposed certain sources simply being chosen, by government/political fiat, over others. It also may not require legislation (see below). Finally, dispatch queues and their policies and methods are a rather arcane subject and are generally below the political radar (many folks haven’t even heard of them). Thus, this approach may allow the nation’s environmental goals to be (quietly) met without causing a political uproar. It could allow policy makers to do the right thing without paying too high of a political cost.

Questions/Issues The DOE report does mention some examples of dispatch queue methods factoring in issues other than just the variable cost. It is fairly common for issues of grid reliability to be considered. Also, compliance with federal or state environmental requirements can have some impacts. Examples of such laws include limits on the hours of operation for certain polluting facilities, or state requirements that a “renewable” facility generate a certain amount of power over the year. The report also discusses the possibility of favoring more fuel efficient gas plants over less efficient ones in the queue, even if using the less efficient plants at that moment would have cost less, in order to save natural gas. Thus, the report does discuss deviations from the pure cost model, to consider things like environmental impact and resource conservation.

I could not ascertain from the DOE report, however, what legal authorities govern the entities that make the plant dispatch decisions (i.e., the ISOs and RTOs), and what types of action would be required in order to change the dispatch methodology (e.g., whether legislation would be required). The DOE report was a study that was called for by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which implies that its conclusions would be considered in future congressional legislation. I could not tell from reading the report if the lowest cost (only) method of dispatch is actually enshrined somewhere in state or federal law. If so, the changes I’m proposing would require legislation, of course.

The DOE report states that in some regions the local utility runs the dispatch queue itself. In the case of the larger grids run by the ISOs and RTOs (which cover most of the country), the report implies that those entities are heavily influenced, if not governed, by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which is part of the executive branch of the federal government. In the case of utility-run dispatch queues, it seems that nothing short of new regulations (on pollution limits, or direct guidance on dispatch queue ordering) would result in a change in dispatch policy. Whereas reducing cost and maximizing grid reliability would be directly in the utility’s interest, favoring cleaner generation sources in the queue would not, unless it is driven by regulations. Thus, in this case, legislation would probably be necessary, although it’s conceivable that the EPA could act (like it’s about to on CO2).

In the case of the large grids run by ISOs and RTOs, it’s possible that such a change in dispatch methodology could be made by the federal executive branch, if indeed the FERC has the power to mandate such a change

Effect on Nuclear With respect to the impacts of including environmental costs in plant dispatch order determination, I’ve mainly discussed the effects on gas vs. coal. Indeed, a switch from coal to gas would be the main impact of such a policy change. As for nuclear, as well as renewables, the direct/immediate impact would be minimal. That is because both nuclear and renewable sources have high capital costs but very low variable costs. They also have very low environmental impacts; much lower than those of coal or gas. Thus, they will remain at the front of the dispatch queue, ahead of both coal and gas.

Those connections “run pretty deep,” said Kevin Kamp with the watchdog group Beyond Nuclear. “That begins to explain his policy.” Exelon has had ties to some of Obama’s closest advisers.

That would come on top of the .5 billion currently set aside as part of the loan guarantee program started under President George W. Bush’s Energy Policy Act of 2005. Some critics have charged that Obama’s support for nuclear power Dewalt DC9091 drill battery can be traced to his political rise in Illinois, home to Exelon, the nation’s biggest operator of nuclear plants.

Nuclear power already accounts for 20 percent of overall electricity in the United States, and makes up the vast majority of carbon-free energy. But because the cost of building a new reactor is so high — and Wall Street is reluctant to invest with natural gas emerging as a more viable alternative — utilities have turned to the government for assistance. Obama has signaled his desire to help, proposing in his 2012 budget plan an additional billion in loan guarantees to build new plants.

Exelon’s political action committee and its employees have given more than 0,000 to Obama’s congressional and presidential campaigns over the years, including ,300 from Exelon chief executive John Rowe, according to Federal Election Commission records.

David Axelrod, the president’s longtime political strategist and former White House advisor, has worked for Exelon as a consultant, though Axelrod said Friday he currently has no private clients. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff and now Chicago’s mayor-elect, helped broker the deal that created Exelon when he worked at the investment bank Wasserstein Perella.

Since Obama became president, Exelon has sided with the White House in at least one major policy battle — quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest of the trade group’s opposition to a cap-and-trade energy plan. Exelon declined comment.

Another major nuclear player is Duke Energy, whose chief executive, Jim Rogers, is leading fundraising efforts for the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. The firm, which slightly favored Democrats in its 2010 PAC donations, has agreed to guarantee a million line of credit for the convention from a local bank.

Duke Energy officials say the effort is purely an economic development initiative. ‘We would do it for the Republicans in 2016 if they would consider Charlotte,” said spokesman Tom Williams. “It’s not a partisan effort at all.”

Overall, Obama has not relied very heavily on energy-related contributions in his political career, and his aides have pledged to continue refusing any corporate PAC donations in the 2012 campaign. Contributors in the energy and natural resources sector gave about .8 million to Obama in 2008, compared to .1 million for GOP candidate John McCain, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The president’s position appears to be in good stead with crucial independent voters, a majority of whom view nuclear as a safe energy source, according to a new Fox News poll. The survey found that a plurality of Democratic voters disagree.

Last year, the White House rejected a request by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) to enforce a law passed in 2002 requiring that potassium iodide pills be made available to all U.S. citizens living within 20 miles of nuclear plants for use in case of exposure to radioactive iodine.

Gridlock and the Blame Game

NOTHING happend to the fuel in the pools at Fukushima. I would like to see some evidence other than the word of an activist who frightens kids for a living to support Gunter’s rant about peices of fuel being ejected miles away. From the looks of that video, the fuel didn’t move an inch. There is also a poll associated with the article. The poll discloses that it is completely unscientific, since it allows anyone to vote and is not based on randomly selected participants. However, I think that the results as of 0315 this morning are pretty amusing since the antinuclear opinion piece has been posted for nearly a week.

95% disagree with “Beyond Nuclear”. Let’s make it 99% by Rod Adams on October 14, 2011 in Antinuclear activist, Politics of Nuclear Energy, Unreliables, Wind energy Share0 One of the more powerful concepts that I studied in college was called “groupthink.” The curriculum developers in the history department at the US Naval Academy thought it was important for people in training to become leaders in the US Navy learn to seek counsel and advice from as broad a range of sources as possible. We were taught how to avoid the kind of bad decision making that can result by surrounding oneself with yes-men or fellow travelers. The case study I remember most was the ill fated Bay of Pigs invasion where virtually the entire Kennedy Administration cabinet thought that it would be a cakewalk. If Patricia Miller had bothered to do the fact-checking required by journalistic integrity she would have come across this video showing 30 feet of water above the fuel at Fukushima with all of the fuel bundles exactly where they’re supposed to be.Aside: Don’t we live in an amazing world? I just typed “Bay of Pigs groupthink” into my browser search box and instantly hit on exactly the link I needed to support the statement above. It even cites the book we used when I was a plebe in 1977, more than 33 years ago. End Aside. Not everyone, however, has the benefit of early leadership lessons about the danger of believing that a small group of likeminded people can provide actionable advice. Some of the people who are most likely to be victims of groupthink are those who adamantly oppose the continued safe operation of emission-free nuclear power plants. The writers who exclusively quote members of that tiny community have also fallen into the groupthink trap.  On October 8, 2011, the Berkeley Patch, a New Jersey based journal that regularly posts negative stories about Oyster Creek, featured an article titled Petitioners to NRC: Shut Down All Fukushima-Like Nuclear Plants . Here is a snapshot of the masthead, the headline and the lede. The article is a diatribe that quotes people on the short list of frequently quoted antinuclear activists including Paul Gunter, Michael Mariotte, Kevin Kamps, Deb Katz and Dale Bridenbaugh. The author faithfully reproduces some of their best attempts to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt using untruths about the actual events at Fukushima. For example, the article uses the following example of how antinuclear activists are still trying to spread the myth that the used fuel pools at Fukushima caught fire. Oyster Creek – the oldest nuclear plant in the United States – has generated over 700 tons of high-level radioactive waste, Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear said. “Granted that some of that has been moved into dry cast storage, but the pool remains full to its capacity,” Kamps said. “And this was a re-rack capacity. Much later in terms of quantity of high level radioactive waste than it was originally designed for.” This represents 125 million curies of radioactive cesium-137 and the NRC has reported that up to 100 percent of the hazardous material could be released from a pool fire, Kamps said. “I would like to point out that Fukushima Daiichi units one, two, three and four combined in terms of the inventory of high level radioactive waste in their storage pools does not match some of these reactors I mentioned in terms of how much waste is in these pools,” Kamps said. “So the risks are greater here for boil downs and the consequences of a radioactive fire in these pools.” Fortunately, the people who are not a part of the antinuclear community are finally beginning to recognize their own strength and to realize that they do not have to remain silent while the lies are being spread. Here is how a knowledgable commenter responded to the above segment of the article: If Patricia Miller had bothered to do the fact-checking required by journalistic integrity she would have come across this video showing 30 feet of water above the fuel at Fukushima with all of the fuel bundles exactly where they’re supposed to be.

“It took a really extraordinary event for 95 percent of the people in the world to know about it,” he said. “If they know about Fukushima, they know about Mark 1 reactors exploding in the air and releasing toxic radiation across the world and they know that’s not a good thing. Something has to be done to make sure that never happens again.” I could not let that one pass without a comment; I am quite sure that Mariotte has once again fallen victim to the fact that he surrounds himself with people who echo his own prejudices. Here is my response.

Marriotte makes an interesting statement by he claiming that “95% of the people in the world” know about Fukushima. That statement might be true about the people in the United States, where advertiser-supported television news programs covered the events with breathless hype for several months. I am pretty sure that you would have a difficult time finding anyone in China, central Africa, the Asian subcontinent, South America or the Middle East who can even pronounce Fukushima, much less know anything about GE Mark 1 containments. Most of them would not even know that they should be worried about radiation because they have never been taught to be afraid of something that they cannot smell, feel, taste, or hear especially when it occurs at levels that have no chance of making them sick within their expected lifetime. Mariotte, Gunter, Kamps, Katz and Bridenbaugh are all members of a vocal, but tiny group of people who have been carrying the water of the fossil fuel industry for decades by opposing nuclear energy, the only real competitor it has. They are victims of groupthink who believe that their neighbors in Takoma Park are representative of the whole world.

Just before making this comment, I voted in the unscientific poll associated with the article. 95% say that Oyster Creek should keep on powering New Jersey homes and businesses. They are not impressed by the Beyond Nuclear FUD; they like clean electricity.

And Ahmad Al-Malabeh, a professor in the Earth and Environmental Sciences department of Hashemite University, adds: "Jordan is rich not only in solar and wind resources, but also in oil shale rock, from which we can extract oil that can cover Jordan's energy needs in the coming years, starting between 2016 and 2017 ... this could give us more time to have more economically feasible renewable energy."

Finance, rather than Fukushima, may delay South Africa's nuclear plans, which were approved just five days after the Japanese disaster. South Africa remains resolute in its plans to build six new nuclear reactors by 2030. Katse Maphoto, the director of Nuclear Safety, Liabilities and Emergency Management at the Department of Energy, says that the government conducted a safety review of its two nuclear reactors in Cape Town, following the Fukushima event.

Vietnam's nuclear energy targets remain ambitious despite scientists' warning of a tsunami risk. Vietnam's plan to power 10 per cent of its electricity grid with nuclear energy within 20 years is the most ambitious nuclear energy plan in South-East Asia. The country's first nuclear plant, Ninh Thuan, is to be built with support from a state-owned Russian energy company and completed by 2020. Le Huy Minh, director of the Earthquake and Tsunami Warning Centre at Vietnam's Institute of Geophysics, has warned that Vietnam's coast would be affected by tsunamis in the adjacent South China Sea.

Larkin says nuclear energy is the only alternative to coal for generating adequate electricity. "What other alternative do we have? Renewables are barely going to do anything," he said. He argues that nuclear is capable of supplying 85 per cent of the base load, or constantly needed, power supply, while solar energy can only produce between 17 and 25 per cent. But, despite government confidence, Larkin says that a shortage of money may delay the country's nuclear plans.

The government has said yes but hasn't said how it will pay for it. This is going to end up delaying by 15 years any plans to build a nuclear station."

The Ninh Thuan nuclear plant would sit 80 to 100 kilometres from a fault line on the Vietnamese coast, potentially exposing it to tsunamis, according to state media. But Vuong Huu Tan, president of the state-owned Vietnam Atomic Energy Commission, told state media in March, however, that lessons from the Fukushima accident will help Vietnam develop safe technologies. And John Morris, an Australia-based energy consultant who has worked as a geologist in Vietnam, says the seismic risk for nuclear power plants in the country would not be "a major issue" as long as the plants were built properly. Japan's nuclear plants are "a lot more earthquake prone" than Vietnam's would be, he adds.

Undeterred by Fukushima, Nigeria is forging ahead with nuclear collaborations. There is no need to panic because of the Fukushima accident, says Shamsideen Elegba, chair of the Forum of Nuclear Regulatory Bodies in Africa. Nigeria has the necessary regulatory system to keep nuclear activities safe. "The Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority [NNRA] has established itself as a credible organisation for regulatory oversight on all uses of ionising radiation, nuclear materials and radioactive sources," says Elegba who was, until recently, the NNRA's director general.

Vietnam is unlikely to experience much in the way of anti-nuclear protests, unlike neighbouring Indonesia and the Philippines, where civil society groups have had more influence, says Kevin Punzalan, an energy expert at De La Salle University in the Philippines. Warnings from the Vietnamese scientific community may force the country's ruling communist party to choose alternative locations for nuclear reactors, or to modify reactor designs, but probably will not cause extreme shifts in the one-party state's nuclear energy strategy, Punzalan tells SciDev.Net.

Will the Philippines' plans to rehabilitate a never-used nuclear power plant survive the Fukushima accident? The Philippines is under a 25-year moratorium on the use of nuclear energy which expires in 2022. The government says it remains open to harnessing nuclear energy as a long-term solution to growing electricity demand, and its Department of Science and Technology has been making public pronouncements in favour of pursuing nuclear energy since the Fukushima accident. Privately, however, DOST officials acknowledge that the accident has put back their job of winning the public over to nuclear by four or five years.

In the meantime, the government is trying to build capacity. The country lacks, for example, the technical expertise. Carmencita Bariso, assistant director of the Department of Energy's planning bureau, says that, despite the Fukushima accident, her organisation has continued with a study on the viability, safety and social acceptability of nuclear energy. Bariso says the study would include a proposal for "a way forward" for the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, the first nuclear reactor in South East Asia at the time of its completion in 1985. The $2.3-billion Westinghouse light water reactor, about 60 miles north of the capital, Manila, was never used, though it has the potential to generate 621 megawatts of power. President Benigno Aquino III, whose mother, President Corazon Aquino, halted work on the facility in 1986 because of corruption and safety issues, has said it will never be used as a nuclear reactor but could be privatised and redeveloped as a conventional power plant.

But Mark Cojuangco, former lawmaker, authored a bill in 2008 seeking to start commercial nuclear operations at the Bataan reactor. His bill was not passed before Congress adjourned last year and he acknowledges that the Fukushima accident has made his struggle more difficult. "To go nuclear is still the right thing to do," he says. "But this requires a societal decision. We are going to spark public debates with a vengeance as soon as the reports from Fukushima are out." Amended bills seeking both to restart the reactor, and to close the issue by allowing either conversion or permanent closure, are pending in both the House and the Senate. Greenpeace, which campaigns against nuclear power, believes the Fukushima accident has dimmed the chances of commissioning the Bataan plant because of "increased awareness of what radioactivity can do to a place". Many parts of the country are prone to earthquakes and other natural disasters, which critics say makes it unsuitable both for the siting of nuclear power stations and the disposal of radioactive waste.

In Kenya, nuclear proponents argue for a geothermal – nuclear mix In the same month as the Fukushima accident, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency approved Kenya's application for its first nuclear power station (31 March), a 35,000 megawatt facility to be built at a cost of Sh950 billion (US$9.8 billion) on a 200-acre plot on the Athi Plains, about 50km from Nairobi

The plant, with construction driven by Kenya's Nuclear Electricity Project Committee, should be commissioned in 2022. The government claims it could satisfy all of Kenya's energy needs until 2040. The demand for electricity is overwhelming in Kenya. Less than half of residents in the capital, Nairobi, have grid electricity, while the rural rate is two per cent. James Rege, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Energy, Communication and Information, takes a broader view than the official government line, saying that geothermal energy, from the Rift Valley project is the most promising option. It has a high production cost but remains the country's "best hope". Nuclear should be included as "backup". "We are viewing nuclear energy as an alternative source of power. The cost of fossil fuel keeps escalating and ordinary Kenyans can't afford it," Rege tells SciDev.Net.

Hydropower is limited by rivers running dry, he says. And switching the country's arable land to biofuel production would threaten food supplies. David Otwoma, secretary to the Energy Ministry's Nuclear Electricity Development Project, agrees that Kenya will not be able to industrialise without diversifying its energy mix to include more geothermal, nuclear and coal. Otwoma believes the expense of generating nuclear energy could one day be met through shared regional projects but, until then, Kenya has to move forward on its own. According to Rege, much as the nuclear energy alternative is promising, it is extremely important to take into consideration the Fukushima accident. "Data is available and it must be one step at a time without rushing things," he says. Otwoma says the new nuclear Kenya can develop a good nuclear safety culture from the outset, "but to do this we need to be willing to learn all the lessons and embrace them, not forget them and assume that won't happen to us".

But the government adopted its Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for 2010-2030 five days after the Fukushima accident. Elliot Mulane, communications manager for the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, (NECSA) a public company established under the 1999 Nuclear Energy Act that promotes nuclear research, said the timing of the decision indicated "the confidence that the government has in nuclear technologies". And Dipuo Peters, energy minister, reiterated the commitment in her budget announcement earlier this year (26 May), saying: "We are still convinced that nuclear power is a necessary part of our strategy that seeks to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions through a diversified portfolio, comprising some fossil-based, renewable and energy efficiency technologies". James Larkin, director of the Radiation and Health Physics Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, believes South Africa is likely to go for the relatively cheap, South Korean generation three reactor.

It is not only that we say so: an international audit came here in 2006 to assess our procedure and processes and confirmed the same. Elegba is firmly of the view that blame for the Fukushima accident should be allocated to nature rather than human error. "Japan is one of the leaders not only in that industry, but in terms of regulatory oversight. They have a very rigorous system of licensing. We have to make a distinction between a natural event, or series of natural events and engineering infrastructure, regulatory infrastructure, and safety oversight." Erepamo Osaisai, Director General of the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC), has said there is "no going back" on Nigeria's nuclear energy project after Fukushima.

Nigeria is likely to recruit the Russian State Corporation for Atomic Energy, ROSATOM, to build its first proposed nuclear plant. A delegation visited Nigeria (26- 28 July) and a bilateral document is to be finalised before December. Nikolay Spassy, director general of the corporation, said during the visit: "The peaceful use of nuclear power is the bedrock of development, and achieving [Nigeria's] goal of being one of the twenty most developed countries by the year 2020 would depend heavily on developing nuclear power plants." ROSATOM points out that the International Atomic Energy Agency monitors and regulates power plant construction in previously non-nuclear countries. But Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), said "We cannot see the logic behind the government's support for a technology that former promoters in Europe, and other technologically advanced nations, are now applying brakes to. "What Nigeria needs now is investment in safe alternatives that will not harm the environment and the people. We cannot accept the nuclear option."

Thirsty for electricity, and desirous of political clout, Egypt is determined that neither Fukushima ― nor revolution ― will derail its nuclear plans. Egypt was the first country in the Middle East and North Africa to own a nuclear programme, launching a research reactor in 1961. In 2007 Egypt 'unfroze' a nuclear programme that had stalled in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. After the Egyptian uprising in early 2011, and the Fukushima accident, the government postponed an international tender for the construction of its first plant.

Yassin Ibrahim, chairman of the Nuclear Power Plants Authority, told SciDev.Net: "We put additional procedures in place to avoid any states of emergency but, because of the uprising, the tender will be postponed until we have political stability after the presidential and parliamentary election at the end of 2011". Ibrahim denies the nuclear programme could be cancelled, saying: "The design specifications for the Egyptian nuclear plant take into account resistance to earthquakes and tsunamis, including those greater in magnitude than any that have happened in the region for the last four thousand years. "The reactor type is of the third generation of pressurised water reactors, which have not resulted in any adverse effects to the environment since they began operation in the early sixties."

Ibrahim El-Osery, a consultant in nuclear affairs and energy at the country's Nuclear Power Plants Authority, points out that Egypt's limited resources of oil and natural gas will run out in 20 years. "Then we will have to import electricity, and we can't rely on renewable energy as it is still not economic yet — Egypt in 2010 produced only two per cent of its needs through it." But there are other motives for going nuclear, says Nadia Sharara, professor of mineralogy at Assiut University. "Owning nuclear plants is a political decision in the first place, especially in our region. And any state that has acquired nuclear technology has political weight in the international community," she says. "Egypt has the potential to own this power as Egypt's Nuclear Materials Authority estimates there are 15,000 tons of untapped uranium in Egypt." And she points out it is about staying ahead with technology too. "If Egypt freezes its programme now because of the Fukushima nuclear disaster it will fall behind in many science research fields for at least the next 50 years," she warned.

Much has been made of the apparent cozy relationship of TEPCO and NISA. There are clear indications that TEPCO as the largest nuclear utility in Japan had far too much influence on NISA, including some preferred hiring practices. Every country should look closely at the relations between the regulated and the regulator in every industry that has such oversight.

Political Interference – domestic

There have been reports that Prime Minister Kan of Japan was too involved in the response to the Fukushima incident. We’ve heard that he tried to prevent seawater injection and his desire to fly over the site delayed some of the vital activities. In addition, it appears that he bypassed some of the pre-planned emergency response systems that would have assured more balanced expert advice.

Political Interference – International

One of the most egregious examples of political grandstanding was NRC Chairman Jaczko’s presentation before Congress on March 16th. He declared that the unit 4 pool was dry and likely on fire and recommended a 50 mile evacuation zone for US citizens. The Japanese government vehemently denied the allegation and was ultimately proven correct.

International Emergency Response

IAEA was quick to send people to at least provide some independent international oversight of the risk to the population and the workers on the plant site. The NRC, EPRI, and other agencies also sent personnel with expertise on these plants to provide high level advice and suggestions. Those personnel were used by the Japanese and continue to provide support.

Suggestions have been floated to create an international “strike team” that would be available at a moment’s notice to fly to any plant that is in trouble.

Instead of trying to explain the basis for those statements more fully, I’ll try to encourage people to consider the motives of people on various sides of the discussion. I also want to encourage nuclear energy supporters to look beyond the financial implications to the broader implications of a less reliable and dirtier electrical power system. When the focus is just on the finances, the opposition has an advantage – the potential gains from opposing nuclear energy often are concentrated in the hands of extremely interested parties while the costs are distributed widely enough to be less visible. That imbalance often leads to great passion in the opposition and too much apathy among the supporters. Over at Idaho Samizdat, Dan Yurman has written about the epic battle of political titans who are on opposing sides of the controversy regarding the relicensing and continued operation of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Station. Dan pointed out that there is a large sum of money at stake, but he put it in a way that does not sound too terrible to many people because it spreads out the pain.

In round numbers, if Indian Point is closed, wholesale electricity prices could rise by 12%.

A recent study quoted in a New York Times article put the initial additional cost of electricity without Indian Point at about $1.5 billion per year, which is a substantial sum of money if concentrated into the hands of a few thousand victors who tap the monthly bills of a few million people. Here is a comment that I added to Dan’s post:Dan – thank you for pointing out that the battle is not really a partisan one determined by political party affiliation. By my analysis, the real issue is the desire of natural gas suppliers to sell more gas at ever higher prices driven by a shift in the balance between supply and demand.

They never quite explain what is going to happen as we get closer and closer to the day when even fracking will not squeeze any more hydrocarbons out of the drying sponge that is the readily accessible part of the earth’s crust.The often touted “100 – year” supply of natural gas in the US has a lot of optimistic assumptions built in. First of all, it is only rounded up to 100 years – 2170 trillion cubic feet at the end of 2010 divided by 23 trillion cubic feet per year leaves just 94 years.

Secondly, the 2170 number provided by the Potential Gas Committee report includes all proven, probable, possible and speculative resources, without any analysis of the cost of extraction or moving them to a market. Many of the basins counted have no current pipelines and many of the basins are not large enough for economic recovery of the investment to build the infrastructure without far higher prices.Finally, all bets are off with regard to longevity if we increase the rate of burning up the precious raw materia

BTW – In case your readers are interested in the motives of a group like Riverkeepers, founded and led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., here is a link to a video clip of him explaining his support for natural gas.http://atomicinsights.com/2010/11/power-politics-rfk-jr-explains-how-pressure-from-activists-to-enforce-restrictions-on-coal-benefits-natural-gas.html

The organized opposition to the intelligent use of nuclear energy has often painted support for the technology as coming from faceless, money-hungry corporations. That caricature of the support purposely ignores the fact that there are large numbers of intelligent, well educated, responsible, and caring people who know a great deal about the technology and believe that it is the best available solution for many intransigent problems. There are efforts underway today, like the Nuclear Literacy Project and Go Nuclear, that are focused on showcasing the admirable people who like nuclear energy and want it to grow rapidly to serve society’s never ended thirst for reliable power at an affordable price with acceptable environmental impact.

The exaggerated, fanciful accident scenarios painted by the opposition are challenging to disprove.

I just read an excellent post on Yes Vermont Yankee about a coming decision that might help to illuminate the risk to society of continuing to let greedy antinuclear activists and their political friends dominate the discussion. According to Meredith’s post, Entergy must make a decision within just a week or so about whether or not to refuel Vermont Yankee in October. Since the sitting governor is dead set against the plant operating past its current license expiration in the summer of 2012, the $100 million dollar expense of refueling would only result in about 6 months of operation instead of the usual 18 months.Meredith has a novel solution to the dilemma – conserve the fuel currently in the plant by immediately cutting the power output to 25%.

All countries with well-established nuclear programs have found themselves requiring spent fuel storage in addition to spent fuel pools at reactors. Some, like the US, use dry storage designs, such as individual casks or storage vaults that are located at reactor sites; other countries, Germany for one, use away-from-reactor facilities. Sweden has a large underground pool located at a centralized facility, CLAB, to which different reactors send their spent fuel a year after discharge, so spent fuel does not build up at reactor sites. Dry storage tends to be cheaper and can be more secure than wet storage because active circulation of water is not required. At the same time, because dry storage uses passive air cooling, not the active cooling that is available in a pool to keep the fuel cool, these systems can only accept spent fuel a number of years after discharge.6

The United States had been working toward developing a high-level waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada; this fell through in 2010, when the Obama administration decided to reverse this decision, citing political “stalemate” and lack of public consensus about the site. Instead, the Obama administration instituted the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to rethink the management of the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle.8 The US can flaunt one success, though. The Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), located near Carlsbad in southern New Mexico, is actually the only operating deep geologic repository for intermediate level nuclear waste, receiving waste since 1998. In the case of WIPP, it only accepts transuranic wastes from the nuclear weapons complex. The site is regulated solely by the Environmental Protection Agency, and the state of New Mexico has partial oversight of WIPP through its permitting authority established by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The city of Carlsbad is supportive of the site and it appears to be tolerated by the rest of the state.9

France has had more success after failing in its first siting attempt in 1990, when a granite site that had been selected drew large protests and the government opted to rethink its approach to nuclear waste disposal entirely. In 2006, the government announced that it needed a geologic repository for high-level waste, identified at least one suitable area, and passed laws requiring a license application to be submitted by 2015 and the site to begin receiving high-level waste by 2025.

Canada recently rethought the siting process for nuclear waste disposal and began a consensus-based participatory process. The Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization was established in 2002, after previous attempts to site a repository failed. The siting process began with three years’ worth of conversations with the public on the best method to manage spent fuel. The organization is now beginning to solicit volunteer communities to consider a repository, though much of the process remains to be decided, including the amount and type of compensation given to the participating communities.

the most difficult part of the back end of the fuel cycle is siting the required facilities, especially those associated with spent fuel management and disposal. Siting is not solely a technical problem—it is as much a political and societal issue. And to be successful, it is important to get the technical and the societal and political aspects right.

After weathering the Fukushima accident, and given the current constraints on carbon dioxide emissions and potential for growth of nuclear power, redefinition of a successful nuclear power program is now required: It is no longer simply the safe production of electricity but also the safe, secure, and sustainable lifecycle of nuclear power, from the mining of uranium ores to the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. If this cannot be achieved and is not thought out from the beginning, then the public in many countries will reject nuclear as an energy choice.

Certain elements—including an institution to site, manage, and operate waste facilities—need to be in place to have a successful waste management program. In some countries, this agency is entirely a government entity, such as the Korea Radioactive Waste Management Organization. In other countries, the agency is a corporation established by the nuclear industry, such as SKB in Sweden or Posiva Oy in Finland. Another option would be a public– private agency, such as Spain’s National Company for Radioactive Waste or Switzerland’s National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste.

Funding is one of the most central needs for such an institution to carry out research and development programs; the money would cover siting costs, including compensation packages and resources for local communities to conduct their own analyses of spent fuel and waste transportation, storage, repository construction, operations, security and safeguards, and future liabilities. Funds can be collected in a number of ways, such as putting a levy on electricity charges (as is done in the US) or charging based on the activity or volume of waste (Hearsey et al., 1999). Funds must also be managed—either by a waste management organization or another industry or government agency—in a way that ensures steady and ready access to funds over time. This continued reliable access is necessary for planning into the future for repository operations.

the siting process must be established. This should include decisions on whether to allow a community to veto a site and how long that veto remains operational; the number of sites to be examined in depth prior to site selection and the number of sites that might be required; technical criteria to begin selecting potential sites; non-technical considerations, such as proximity to water resources, population centers, environmentally protected areas, and access to public transportation; the form and amount of compensation to be offered; how the public is invited to participate in the site selection process; and how government at the federal level will be involved.

The above are all considerations in the siting process, but the larger process—how to begin to select sites, whether to seek only volunteers, and so on—must also be determined ahead of time. A short list of technical criteria must be integrated into a process that establishes public consent to go forward, followed by many detailed studies of the site—first on the surface, then at depth. There are distinct advantages to characterizing more than one site in detail, as both Sweden and Finland have done. Multiple sites allow the “best” one to be selected, increasing public approval and comfort with the process.

he site needs to be evaluated against a set of standards established by a government agency in the country. This agency typically is the environmental agency or the nuclear regulatory agency. The type of standards will constrain the method by which a site will be evaluated with regard to its future performance. A number of countries use a combination of methods to evaluate their sites, some acknowledging that the ability to predict processes and events that will occur in a repository decrease rapidly with each year far into the future, so that beyond a few thousand years, little can be said with any accuracy. These countries use what is termed a “safety case,” which includes multiple lines of evidence to assure safe repository performance into the future.

Moving forward

France, Canada, and Germany also have experienced a number of iterations of repository siting, some with more success than others. In the 1970s, Germany selected the Gorleben site for its repository; however, in the late 1990s, with the election of a Red–Green coalition government (the Greens had long opposed Gorleben), a rethinking of repository siting was decreed, and the government established the AkEnd group to re-evaluate the siting process. Their report outlined a detailed siting process starting from scratch, but to date too much political disagreement exists to proceed further.

Notes

Nuclear wastes are classified in various ways, depending on the country or organization doing the classification. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) notes six general categories of waste produced by civil nuclear power reactors: exempt waste, very short-lived waste, and very low level waste can be stored and then disposed of in landfill-type settings; low level waste, intermediate level waste, and high-level waste require more complex facilities for disposal.

Sweden is currently the country closest to realizing a final solution for spent fuel, after having submitted a license application for construction of a geologic repository in March 2011. It plans to open a high-level waste repository sometime after 2025, as do Finland and France.

Some countries, such as Sweden, Finland, Canada, and, until recently, the US, plan to dispose of their spent fuel directly in a geologic repository. A few others, such as France, Japan, Russia, and the UK have an interim step. They reprocess their spent fuel, extract the small amount of plutonium produced during irradiation, and use it in new mixed oxide (MOX) fuel. Then they plan to dispose of the high-level wastes from reprocessing in a repository.

In finding that balance, I’m not sure it’s possible to overcome the political pressures tugging agencies and officials to stress refinement and deployment of known and maturing technologies (even though that’s where industry and private investors are most focused).

On the left, the pressure is for resources to deploy today’s “green” technology. On the right, as illustrated in a Heritage Foundation report on ways to cut President Obama’s budget for the Energy Department, the philosophy seems to be to discourage all government spending on basic inquiry related to energy.

According to Heritage, science “in service of a critical national interest that is not being met by the private sector” is fine if that interest is national defense, but not fine if it’s finding secure and sustainable (environmentally and economically) sources of energy.

I solicited reactions to the Energy Department review from a variety of technology and innovation analysts. The first to weigh in are Daniel M. Kammen, an energy technology researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who is on leave working for the World Bank, and Robert D Atkinson, the founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Here’s Kammen: The idea of a regular review and status report on both energy innovation and deployment spending is a good one. Some of the findings in the QTR review are useful, although little is new. Overall, though, this is a useful exercise, and one that should be a requirement from any major programmatic effort.

he real need in the R&D sector is continuity and matching an increasing portfolio of strategic research with market expansion. My former student and colleague Greg Nemet have written consistently on this: - U.S. energy research and development: Declining investment, increasing need, and the feasibility of expansion - Reversing the Incredible Shrinking Energy R&D Budget

Perhaps the biggest worry in this report, however, is the missing logic and value of a ’shift to near term priorities in energy efficiency and in electric vehicles.’ This may be a useful deployment of some resources, but a range of questions are simply never addressed. Among the questions that need firmer answers are:

Following record levels funding made available to the energy industry through the [stimulus package of spending], what are the clearly identified market failures that exist in this area that added funding will solve? Funding is always welcome, but energy efficiency in particular, can be strongly driven by regulation and standards, and because good energy efficiency innovations have such rapid payback times, would regulatory approaches, or state-federal partnerships in regulation and incentives not accomplish a great deal of what can be done in this area? Congressman Holt raises a number of key questions on related issues, while pointing to some very hopeful experiences, notably in the Apollo program, in his 16 September editorial in Science.

given the state-by-state laboratories we already have of differing approaches to energy efficiency, the logic of spending in this area remains to be proven (as much as we all rightly love and value and benefit from energy efficiency).

Near-term electric vehicle deployment. A similar story could be told here. As the director of the University of California at Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center (http://tsrc.berkeley.edu) I am huge believer in electric vehicles [EVs]. However, the review does not make clear what advances in this area are already supported through [the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy], and what areas of near-term research are also not best driven though regulation, such as low-carbon fuel standards, R&D tax credits, ‘feebates’ that transfer funds from those individuals who purchase inefficient vehicles to those who purchase efficient ones. Similar to the story in energy efficiency, we do have already an important set of state-by-state experiments that have been in place for some time, and these warrant an assessment of how much innovation they have driven, and which ones do and do not have an application in scale-up at the federal level.

Finally, the electric vehicle landscape is already very rich in terms of plans for deployment by automakers. What are the barriers five-plus years out that the companies see research-versus-deployment and market-expansion support as the most effective way to drive change in the industry? Where will this focus put the U.S. industry relative to China?

There are some very curious omissions from the report, such as more detail on the need to both generate and report on jobs created in this sector — a political ‘must’ these days (see, e.g., the “green jobs” review by the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at Berkeley) — and straightforward comparisons in the way of ‘report cards’ on how the US is stacking up relative to other key players (e.g. China, Germany…).

Here’s Robert Atkinson: If DOE is shifting toward a more short-term focus, this is quite disturbing.  It would mean that DOE has given up on addressing the challenge of climate change and instead is just focused on the near term goal of reducing oil imports and modestly reducing the expansion the coal fired power plants. If DOE thinks it is still focused on climate change, do they think they are fighting “American warming”?

If so, cutting the growth of our emissions make sense.  But its global warming and solving this means supporting the development of scalable, cheap low or no-carbon energy so that every country, rich and poor, will have an economic incentive to transitioning to cheap energy.  Increasing building efficiency, modernizing the electric grid, alternative hydrocarbon fuels, and increasing vehicle efficiency do virtually nothing to meet this goal. They are “American warming” solutions.

This is also troubling because (as you point out) who else is going to invest in the long-term, more fundamental, high risk, breakthrough research than the U.S. government.  It certainly won’t be VCs. And it won’t be the Chinese who are principally interested in cutting their energy imports and exporting current generation clean energy, not developing technology to save the planet.  Of course all the folks out there who have been pushing the mistaken view that we have all the clean technologies we need, will hail this as the right direction.  But it’s doing what the rest of the market has been doing in recent years – shifting from high risk, long-term research to short-term, low risk.  If the federal government is doing this it is troubling to say the least.

or those seeking more, here are the slides used by Steven Koonin, the physicist and former BP scientist who now is under secretary for science at the department, in presenting the review earlier this week:

Rolling Out the Quadrennial Technology Review Report

The money trail can be tough to follow - Westinghouse, Duke Energy and the Nuclear Energy Institute (a "policy organisation" for the nuclear industry with 350 companies, including TEPCO, on its roster) did not respond to requests for information on funding research and chairs at universities. But most of the funding for nuclear research does not come directly from the nuclear lobby, said M.V. Ramana, a researcher at Princeton University specialising in the nuclear industry and climate change. Most research is funded by governments, who get donations - from the lobby (via candidates, political parties or otherwise).

“There's a lot of secrecy that can surround nuclear power because some of the same processes can be involved in generating electricity that can also be involved in developing a weapon, so there's a kind of a veil of secrecy that gets dropped over this stuff, that can also obscure the truth” said Biello. "So, for example in Fukushima, it was pretty apparent that a total meltdown had occurred just based on what they were experiencing there ... but nobody in a position of authority was willing to say that."

This is worrying because while both anti-nuclear activists and the nuclear lobby both have openly stated biases, academics and researchers are seen as the middle ground - a place to get accurate, unbiased information. David Biello, the energy and climate editor at Scientific American Online, said that trying to get clear information on a scenario such as the Daiichi disaster is tough.

"'How is this going to affect the future of nuclear power?'That’s the first thought that came into their heads," said Ramana, adding, "They basically want to ensure that people will keep constructing nuclear power plants." For instance, a May report by MIT’s Center For Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (where TEPCO funds a chair) points out that while the Daiichi disaster has resulted in "calls for cancellation of nuclear construction projects and reassessments of plant license extensions" which might "lead to a global slow-down of the nuclear enterprise," that  "the lessons to be drawn from the Fukushima accident are different."

"In the United States, a lot of the money doesn’t come directly from the nuclear industry, but actually comes from the Department of Energy (DOE). And the DOE has a very close relationship with the industry, and they sort of try to advance the industry’s interest," said Ramana. Indeed, nuclear engineering falls under the "Major Areas of Research" with the DOE, which also has nuclear weapons under its rubric. The DOE's 2012 fiscal year budge request to the US Congress for nuclear energy programmes was $755m.

"So those people who get funding from that….it’s not like they (researchers) want to lie, but there’s a certain amount of, shall we say, ideological commitment to nuclear power, as well as a certain amount of self-censorship."  It comes down to worrying how their next application for funding might be viewed, he said. Kathleen Sullivan, an anti-nuclear specialist and disarmament education consultant with the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs, said it's not surprising that research critical of the nuclear energy and weapons isn't coming out of universities and departments that participate in nuclear research and development.

"It (the influence) of the nuclear lobby could vary from institution to institution," said Sullivan. "If you look at the history of nuclear weapons manufacturing in the United States, you can see that a lot of research was influenced perverted, construed in a certain direction."

Sullivan points to the DOE-managed Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California in Berkley (where some of the research for the first atomic bomb was done) as an example of how intertwined academia and government-funded nuclear science are.

"For nuclear physics to proceed, the only people interested in funding it are pro-nuclear folks, whether that be industry or government," said Biello. "So if you're involved in that area you've already got a bias in favour of that technology … if you study hammers, suddenly hammers seem to be the solution to everything."

And should they find results unfavourable to the industry, Ramana said they would "dress it up in various ways by saying 'Oh, there’s a very slim chance of this, and here are some safety measure we recommend,' and then the industry will say, 'Yeah,yeah, we’re incorporating all of that.'" Ramana, for the record, said that while he's against nuclear weapons, he doesn't have a moral position on nuclear power except to say that as a cost-benefit issue, the costs outweigh the benefits, and that "in that sense, expanding nuclear power isn't a good idea." 

The Center for Responsive Politics - a non-partisan, non-profit elections watchdog group – noted that even as many lobbying groups slowed their spending the first quarter of the year, the Nuclear industry "appears to be ratcheting up its lobbying" increasing its multi-million dollar spending.

Among the report's closing thoughts are concerns that "Decision-making in the  immediate aftermath of a major crisis is often influenced by emotion," and whether"an accident like Fukushima, which is so far beyond design basis, really warrant a major overhaul of current nuclear safety regulations and practises?" "If so," wonder the authors, "When is safe safe enough? Where do we draw the line?"

The Japanese public, it seems, would like some answers to those very questions, albeit from a different perspective.  Kazuo Hizumi, a Tokyo-based human rights lawyer, is among those pushing for openness. He is also an editor at News for the People in Japan, a news site advocating for transparency from the government and from TEPCO. With contradicting information and lack of clear coverage on safety and contamination issues, many have taken to measuring radiation levels with their own Geiger counters.

"The public fully trusted the Japanese Government," said Hizumi. But the absence of "true information" has massively diminished that trust, as, he said, has the public's faith that TEPCO would be open about the potential dangers of a nuclear accident.

A report released in July by Human Rights Now highlights the need for immediately accessible information on health and safety in areas where people have been affected by the disaster, including Fukushima, especially on the issues of contaminated food and evacuation plans.

A 'nuclear priesthood' Biello describes the nuclear industry is a relatively small, exclusive club.

The interplay between academia and also the military and industry is very tight. It's a small community...they have their little club and they can go about their business without anyone looking over their shoulder. " This might explain how, as the Associated Press reported in June, that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was "working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nationalise ageing reactors operating within standards or simply failing to enforce them."

However, with this exclusivity comes a culture of secrecy – "a nuclear priesthood," said Biello, which makes it very difficult to parse out a straightforward answer in the very technical and highly politicised field.  "You have the proponents, who believe that it is the technological salvation for our problems, whether that's energy, poverty, climate change or whatever else. And then you have opponents who think that it's literally the worst thing that ever happened and should be immediately shut back up in a box and buried somewhere," said Biello, who includes "professors of nuclear engineering and Greenpeace activists" as passionate opponents on the nuclear subject.

In fact, one is hard pressed to find a media report quoting a nuclear scientist at any major university sounding the alarms on the risks of contamination in Fukushima. Doing so has largely been the work of anti-nuclear activists (who have an admitted bias against the technology) and independent scientists employed by think tanks, few of whom responded to requests for interviews.

So, one's best bet, said Biello, is to try and "triangulate the truth" - to take "a dose" from anti-nuclear activists, another from pro-nuclear lobbyists and throw that in with a little bit of engineering and that'll get you closer to the truth. "Take what everybody is saying with a grain of salt."

Since World War II, the process of secrecy – the readiness to invoke "national security" - has been a pillar of the nuclear establishment…that establishment, acting on the false assumption that "secrets" can be hidden from the curious and knowledgeable, has successfully insisted that there are answers which cannot be given and even questions which cannot be asked. The net effect is to stifle debate about the fundamental of nuclear policy. Concerned citizens dare not ask certain questions, and many begin to feel that these matters which only a few initiated experts are entitled to discuss.  If the above sounds like a post-Fukushima statement, it is not. It was written by Howard Morland for the November 1979 issue of The Progressive magazine focusing on the hydrogen bomb as well as the risks of nuclear energy.

The US government - citing national security concerns - took the magazine to court in order to prevent the issue from being published, but ultimately relented during the appeals process when it became clear that the information The Progressive wanted to publish was already public knowledge and that pursuing the ban might put the court in the position of deeming the Atomic Energy Act as counter to First Amendment rights (freedom of speech) and therefore unconstitutional in its use of prior restraint to censor the press.

But, of course, that's in the US, although a similar mechanism is at work in Japan, where a recently created task force aims to "cleanse" the media of reportage that casts an unfavourable light on the nuclear industry (they refer to this information as "inaccurate" or a result of "mischief." The government has even go so far as to accept bids from companies that specialise in scouring the Internet to monitor the Internet for reports, Tweets and blogs that are critical of its handling of the Daiichi disaster, which has presented a unique challenge to the lobby there.

"They do not know how to do it," he said of some of the community groups and individuals who have taken to measure contamination levels in the air, soil and food

 Japan's government has a history of slow response to TEPCO's cover-ups. In 1989, that Kei Sugaoka, a nuclear energy at General Electric who inspected and repaired plants in Japan and elsewhere, said he spotted cracks in steam dryers and a "misplacement" or 180 degrees in one dryer unit. He noticed that the position of the dryer was later omitted from the inspection record's data sheet. Sugaoka told a Japanese networkthat TEPCO had instructed him to "erase" the flaws, but he ultimately wrote a whistleblowing letter to METI, which resulted in the temporary 17 TEPCO reactors, including ones at the plant in Fukushima.

the Japanese nuclear lobby has been quite active in shaping how people see nuclear energy. The country's Ministry of Education, together with the Natural Resources Ministry (of of two agencies under Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry - METI - overseeing nuclear policies) even provides schools with a nuclear energy information curriculum. These worksheets - or education supplements - are used to inform children about the benefits of nuclear energy over fossil fuels.

There’s reason to believe that at least in one respect, Fukushima can’t and won’t be another Chernobyl, at least due to the fact that the former has occurred in the age of the Internet whereas the latter took place in the considerably quaint 80s, when a car phone the size of a brick was considered the height of communications technology to most. "It (a successful cover up) is definitely a danger in terms of Fukushima, and we'll see what happens. All you have to do is look at the first couple of weeks after Chernobyl to see the kind of cover up," said Biello. "I mean the Soviet Union didn't even admit that anything was happening for a while, even though everybody was noticing these radiation spikes and all these other problems. The Soviet Union was not admitting that they were experiencing this catastrophic nuclear failure... in Japan, there's a consistent desire, or kind of a habit, of downplaying these accidents, when they happen. It's not as bad as it may seem, we haven't had a full meltdown."

Fast forward to 2011, when video clips of each puff of smoke out of the Daiichi plant make it around the world in seconds, news updates are available around the clock, activists post radiation readings on maps in multiple languages and Google Translate picks up the slack in translating every last Tweet on the subject coming out of Japan.

it will be a heck of a lot harder to keep a lid on things than it was 25 years ago. 

Other potential successors to Grossmann are RWE chief commercial officer Leonhard Birnbaum and chief operating officer Rolf Martin Schmitz. Whoever lands the top job is likely to face a turbulent time. "One large challenge will be the task of bringing RWE's image - and the image of other energy companies - back into a positive light," a labor union representative told Reuters. "We expect a new orientation towards international and national energy politics from the new RWE chief."

"Jürgen Grossmann is very well known as someone who fought for the future of nuclear power plants," he told Deutsche Welle. "But the fact is that he was fighting for the future of his company, and for the investment his company has made over decades."

Nevertheless, Grossmann in June characterized the political movement to phase out nuclear power as reckless, saying consumers would be hit with higher electricity prices and expressing fear that a slump in RWE stock value could leave the company vulnerable to a hostile takeover. According to Bardt, Grossmann's stance runs counter to broader societal trends and political activity.

"He has been very, very prominent in a position advocating longer use of nuclear power, which in the end was not successful," Bardt said. "So that may be a problem in terms of public relations and of public acceptance of RWE." Bardt added that RWE and companies like it needed to "find new markets and new business opportunities."

The Cohen Commission hearings into the collapse of the 2009 Fraser River sockeye salmon run resumed in Vancouver earlier this week.

Morton also wants the CFIA to test farmed salmon, because she says trace amounts of radiation were detected in seaweed on the B.C. coast.

As a percentage of inflation-adjusted federal spending, nuclear subsidies accounted for more than 1% of the federal budget over their first 15 years, and oil and gas subsidies made up half a percent of the total budget, while renewables have constituted only about a tenth of a percent. [See graph above.]

The researchers are somewhat selective about which subsidies they factor in. In order to come to directly-comparable figures, they outline four criteria for evaluating subsidies: The subsidy is designed to increase production of the targeted resource; all the data for the subsidy is available; the subsidy existed during the early stages of of domestic production; the inclusion of the subsidy allows for meaningful comparison across different sectors.When adding them all up over time, the report’s authors found that on an average yearly basis, renewables represent a small fraction of the total government investments in the energy sector.  Here are two great charts that make that clear:

Note:  The above chart is average annual support.  The cumulative spending numbers are thus even more disparate:

I have some issues with this report, however. Firstly, the authors stop tracking the numbers in 2009 and leave out the billions invested through the stimulus package. They claim to do this because of the temporary nature of the stimulus package. While it’s true that many of those programs are already phased out or will be gone by next year, the stimulus is still a very important piece of early-stage investments in the sector. Why leave it out?The researchers also neglect to include the short burst of federal renewable energy investment in the late 1970s. While those tax credits and R&D programs lasted only a short while, they still contribute to the overall figures.

Finally, in an attempt to make clear distinctions between the renewable fuel and electricity sectors, the report separates biofuels from the renewables category (wind, solar, geothermal). That separation also changes the numbers and makes the renewables subsidy figures much lower than they otherwise would be.

The wild card. Finally, human nature being what it is, there are always the wild cards: people who kill romantic rivals via nuclear meltdown, freelance experimenters, terrorists, operators who should never have made it through personnel screening, operators who are drunk on the job, operators whose performance has declined through laziness, depression, boredom, or any host of reasons.

Overwhelmed by speed and complexity. As Charles Perrow argues in his influential book Normal Accidents, which was inspired by the Three Mile Island accident, human operators function well in environments of routinized normality; but, when highly complex technical systems function in unpredicted ways -- especially if the jagged interactions between subsystems unfold very rapidly -- then the human capacity for cognitive processing is quickly overwhelmed. In other words, if a reactor is veering toward an accident caused by the failure of a single system in a way that operators have been trained to handle, then they are likely to retain control. But, if the accident-in-the-making involves unforeseen combinations of failures unfolding quickly and requires improvised responses rather than routinized ones, the outcome is far less hopeful.

The politics of oversight. Regulatory apparatuses tend to degrade over time -- especially in political systems such as America's, which tend to facilitate the corporate capture of government functions. Thanks to the leverage afforded by campaign donations and the revolving door between public and private employment, industries have become extremely skillful at inserting their former employees, future employees, and other allies into the very regulatory agencies that oversee them. A brilliant piece of investigative journalism on the Securities and Exchange Commission in the latest issue of Rolling Stone shows how this can reduce a regulatory agency to an empty husk. Whether it's the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the Food and Drug Administration, the story is the same: Government agencies that started off as aggressive watchdogs have become absorbed over time by those over whom they have titular oversight. Americans recently saw the dire consequences of this trend in the banking meltdown of 2008.

The bottom line: Nuclear safety is threatened by human as well as technical malfunctions, and the risk of disaster can only be attenuated through attention to the principles of social engineering as well as nuclear engineering. While human behavior can always overflow the bounds of our plans for its containment, there are measures that can at least lower the risk of a nuclear disaster caused by human factors: First, the nuclear industry needs to do more to both protect and reward whistle-blowers; and, second, the industry needs regulators with a genuine desire to exercise oversight -- rather than people hoping to increase their income by later going to work for the very companies that they were regulating. Unfortunately, this goes against the ethos of the contemporary United States, where the trend-lines are going in the wrong direction.

The focus of potential concerns has also shifted in the wake of Fukushima. "If you asked people why they were unhappy about nuclear energy a year ago, they would have brought waste up," said Pidgeon. "What is clear from other polling is that accidents have gone to the top of what people are now concerned about with nuclear energy, the waste has dropped further down."

Bryony Worthington, a Labour peer and environmental campaigner, said that for the general public the perception of the main cause of the Fukushima problem had not been the design of the reactor but the siting of the power plant. "Most people said, hang on, why did you put them all on that eastern seaboard, which is a seismically unstable region?"The withdrawal of support for future nuclear power stations by the German government, she said, was political. "For Angela Merkel to reverse her decision and phase out the nuclear, Fukushima gave her a good opportunity to do it. She was already under huge political pressure to do that and Fukushima was just the trigger she found politically expedient to do it."

Although most often seen as an initiative of the Left, the antinuclear movement has been independent of both the orthodox old Left as well as the new Left. Historically, the old Left ignored the environmental problems created by industrialization and embraced nuclear powers because it viewed technology as a way to more quickly arrive at a socialist society. On the other hand, New Left ideologists have been critical of the environmental movement on the grounds that it was elitist rather than populist. Nonetheless, the antinuclear power movement became the first major environmental campaign in which large numbers of rank and file Leftists participated in.

Firth, management of radioactive waste and spent fuel are solvable problems. Dry cask storage works and deep geologic repositories are feasible once you get the politics right.Sixth, windmills will not replace reactors nor will solar nor anytime soon. These are intermittent and niche technologies which require massive government subsidies to get their electricity to market. Smart grids will improve the use of these technologies, but claimed improvements in energy storage technologies contain some starry eyed projections.The FAS describes itself as being focused on national and international security issues connected to applied science and technology. 

South Africa new buildThe South African government, which tried to offer a tender for 12 new nuclear reactors in 2008, but failed to arrange the financing for them, is making a second attempt. Energy Minister Dipuo Peters told financial wire services Oct 19 a tender for 9.6 GWe is under review by the government.The reactors would be built over a period of two decades. The bid process could begin as early as winter 2012.

The first U.S. utility to break ground for twin AP1000s is Southern at its Vogtle site in Georgia. Southern says it expects a combined construction and operating license sometime in the first months of 2012. At that time it will also ink the final term sheet of its $8.3 billion loan guarantee with the Department of Energy.Other utilities which plan to build twin AP1000s include Scana (2 at V.C. Summer site in South Carolina, Florida Power & Light at Turkey Point and Progress at Levy County. Both sites are in Florida.

NRC progress with AP1000The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's technical staff has recommended to the full commission that it approve final design certification of the Westinghouse AP1000. According to agency officials, the commission will vote on the matter by the end of the year. Eight new reactors in the southeast have referenced the AP1000 design. Construction of four units is already underway in China.The NRC rejected a petition by anti-nuclear groups to stop all new licensing until safety improvements related to the Fukushima crisis are issued as regulatory requirements. The commission said that the Part 52 licensing process allows for new safety measures to be added to licenses as the commission approves them.

The value at $4,000/kw could be in the range of $38 billion for the reactors, but as much as three times that amount in total for turbines, upgrades to the grid, including lines and substations, first fuel loads, and spent fuel management.A critical issue remains which is how the government will finance the new build. The country has suffered through a series of power crisis because in prior years the government failed to raise rates or diverted money from Eskom, the state owned utility, to social welfare purposes. As a result, the country's overall GDP suffered as manufacturing plants and mines had to close periodically or reduce operations due to problems with electricity supply.Since then the government has imposed rate increases, but faces some political opposition because of chronically high unemployment officially measured at 25% of the workforce. New coal plants are being built along with wind and solar plants.An interesting note is that China's Guangdong Nuclear Power Group has indicated interest in providing the financing in return for the right to build and operating the plants. Other bidders include the major developed country vendors.

In March 2009, however, the Secretary of Energy announced plans to terminate the Yucca Mountain repository program and instead study other options for nuclear waste management.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), noting that his state had 9,700 canisters of spent nuclear fuel ready to ship toYucca Mountain, characterized the present situation as “a failed state.” [See 1:27 to 1:34 on the video for the interchanges.]

Congress is demanding answers about the administration’s decision to halt development of the only permanent U.S. site for spent nuclear fuel.

At about the same time, the administration also directed DOE to establish a Blue Ribbon Commission of recognized experts to study nuclear waste management alternatives (but not disposal sites). The commission is scheduled to issue a report by January 2012.

At a June hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Assistant Energy Secretary for Nuclear Energy Peter Lyons said that the administration believed that the Yucca Mountain repository lacked social public acceptance, and that Secretary Chu was meeting with Energy Department lawyers to formulate the grounds to terminate the program[see video].

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) asked about the investment to date in Yucca Mountain. Consumers (ratepayers) have paid $9.5 billion of the nearly $15 billion spent thus far, with taxpayers paying the rest.

The federal government has already paid out about $1 billion in lawsuits for reneging on promises made under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to cart off nuclear waste.

Yucca Mountain is scheduled to open for storage in 2020. These costs will total $15.4 billion by 2020 and increase by an estimated $500 million for each year delay after that.

The Washington Post called the situation “toxic politics,” in a recent editorial.

Physics Today notes the dysfunctional controversy as reminiscent of another expensive hole in the ground — in Texas — for the superconducting super collider, canceled in 1993.