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A fortnight after writing $2.84bn (£1.84bn) off the value of its Fayetteville shale gas business in Arkansas, BHP is poised to reveal on Wednesday that the charge helped push down its profits by a massive 40 per cent – to $14.2bn – in the year to June 30.

The FTSE 100 mining giant was forced into the writedown after a decade-long stampede into the brave new world of US shale gas produced so much of the stuff that its price tumbled to 10-year lows, taking the value of its producers with them.

"The problem is exacerbated because the minerals leasing system in the US obliges lessees to drill fairly quickly or relinquish their drilling rights," he added.

US nuclear power plants mostly exist in a legal “get out of jail free” land of LLC (Legal Liability Corporation) ownership. While big energy conglomerates like Entergy own the bulk of the commercial nuclear power plants in the US, these plants are owned by individual LLC companies that have one asset, the power plant. Through a network of LLC companies and holding companies these energy giants are able to suck all the profits out of these nuclear power plants but shoulder none of the risk if something goes bad.

The US has a nuclear accident liability law, Price-Anderson. This law sets up a limited fund that all licensed nuclear plant owners would pay into in the event of an accident. They only pay premiums into this fund after an accident happens. Under this law each plant is required to have $300 million in liability insurance that would pay before Price-Anderson would kick in. Proving any other sort of cash reserves, ability to pay for an extended outage or an accident (including Price-Anderson premiums) has been largely voluntary by the power companies. Even when proof of financial assets is asked for by the NRC it is calculated based on projected income estimates done by the power company. The NRC admits they are out of their expertise when it comes to finance and also does no investigation to assure these estimates have any basis in fact. The NRC has also complained repeatedly that deregulation of the energy industry is causing a lack of safety and maintenance to become a large problem as companies try to extract as much profit as possible up and out of these LLC companies to the parent company, leaving insufficient money to safely operate these nuclear plants. Many of these plants in LLC situations are among the aging reactor fleet from the 1960′s & 1970′s. As these plants ask for operating license extensions from the NRC, financial soundness is not part of the review.

If a nuclear power plant has a major accident, is found to have an expensive damage situation or is facing decommissioning the LLC that owns it can file for bankruptcy and walk away. The parent company has no financial risk or liability. The NRC has expressed doubt about being able to “pierce the corporate veil” in court and has diverted into settlements every time it has run into this issue with an aging plant facing a financial crisis. The NRC also has no special standing in a bankruptcy case where they can compel Price-Anderson premium payments or for the nuclear power company to pay funds towards decommissioning. It is not totally clear where the decommissioning trust fund lies as these funds are “sold” along with the plant when a new company takes over a nuclear power plant.

TOKYO — Japan started trading rice futures Monday but suspended the market after the price of the staple grain soared on fears that radioactive contamination from the Fukushima disaster will restrict supply. The nuclear plant, hit by the powerful March 11 quake and tsunami, has spewed radiation into the environment for nearly five months, tainting farm produce, including beef after cattle were fed radioactive rice straw.

Consumer fears have grown that rice will be contaminated too and many families have stocked up on rice grown last year, while the government has ordered testing across the fallout zone. Japan on Monday started a two-year trial for futures trading in rice for the first time in more than seven decades at commodities exchanges in Tokyo and Osaka—but the trade was quickly suspended when the price spiked.

The Tokyo Grain Exchange and the Kansai Commodities Exchange began trading rice futures at 0000 GMT, with buy orders far exceeding sell orders, triggering a circuit breaker at the Tokyo market to prevent sharp price moves. No deals were made in Tokyo, while the Kansai market in the western city of Osaka saw the January 2012 contract trade shoot to 19,210 yen per 60 kilograms, much higher than the reference price of 13,700 yen.

The New York Times published an article on Sunday, June 26, 2011 titled Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush. The article quotes a number of emails from natural gas industry insiders, financial analysts that cover the gas industry and skeptical geologists to produce a number of questions about the long term viability of an increasing dependence on cheap natural gas from hydraulic fracturing. The message is that the gas industry has been engaging in hyperbole regarding its capacity to expand production at current prices to meet market demands.

the people quoted in the NY Times article do not agree that the technique magically produces low cost gas in unprecedented abundance.

“Our engineers here project these wells out to 20-30 years of production and in my mind that has yet to be proven as viable,” wrote a geologist at Chesapeake in a March 17 e-mail to a federal energy analyst. “In fact I’m quite skeptical of it myself when you see the % decline in the first year of production.”

Fears that large amounts of rice in Japan may be contaminated with radioactivity saw the price of the staple grain soar 40pc on the first day of trading for the country's new futures market.

Japan yesterday launched its first rice futures contract in 72 years, but trading had to be suspended on the Tokyo Grain Exchange as the price per contract shot up immediately. The price of 60 kilograms of rice had a reference price of $13,700 (£8,399) for delivery in 2012 but it reached more than $19,210 on the Osaka exchange, which carried on trading. There is concern that crops may be damaged by radioactivity in the wake of the nuclear accident at Fukushima earlier this year. Japan has begun rice trading to try to open up the market and increase transparency in the trade of its staple foodstuff. Analysts are predicting that stockpiles of rice will be at their lowest level in four years in 2012. The mood in Japan is nervous after it emerged that cattle has been fed rice straw contaminated by caesium. Some prefectures are currently banned from exporting beef.

In the money-driven battle over our future energy supply choices, the people who fight nuclear energy have imagination on their side. They can, and often do, invent numerous scary tales about what might happen without the need to actually prove anything.

One of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal is the embedded fantasy that a nuclear reactor accident can lead to catastrophic consequences that cannot be accepted. This myth is doubly hard to dislodge because a large fraction of the nuclear energy professionals have been trained to believe it. When you want to train large numbers of slightly above average people to do their job with great care and attention to detail, it can be useful to exaggerate the potential consequences of a failure to perform. It is also a difficult myth to dislodge because the explanation of why it is impossible requires careful and often lengthy explanations of occasionally complex concepts.

The bottom lines of both Chernobyl and Fukushima tell me that the very worst that can realistically happen to nuclear fission reactors results in acceptable physical consequences when compared to the risk of insufficient power or the risk of using any other reliable source of power. The most negative consequences of both accidents resulted from the way that government leaders responded, both during the crisis stage and during the subsequent recoveries.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. should cut costs by around twice as much as it is aiming for over the next 10 years if it expects to compensate victims of the nuclear crisis at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, a government panel said Monday.

In its report, the third-party panel also urged the utility to review its price-setting regime because its findings suggest that household power bills may be unnecessarily high due to cost overestimates on Tepco's side. One estimate in the report states that compensation payments could reach around ¥4.54 trillion by March 2013, including about ¥3.64 trillion for around a year starting from March 11, the day when the megaquake and tsunami crippled the plant.

The panel, tasked with scrutinizing Tepco's financial standing, submitted the report to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. It is part of the process the utility must take to get state aid for the compensation payments. Calling the report a "starting point," Noda said the government would "strictly" check Tepco's rationalization efforts and look into the country's electricity pricing system. The outcome of the study, which started in June, showed that Tepco could cut ¥2.55 trillion in costs by fiscal 2020 by reducing personnel and other expenses. But Tepco's plan shows costs would only be cut by ¥1.19 trillion. The panel, meanwhile, urged Tepco's managers to take responsibility by jettisoning executives and other means if it intends to win financial aid from the state-backed Nuclear Damage Compensation Facilitation Corp.

Rice farmers near Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant will impose radiation safety limits that will only clear grains with levels so low as to be virtually undetectable after government-set standards were viewed as too lenient, curbing sales. Farmers now completing the harvest in areas affected by fallout from the nuclear station are struggling to find buyers amid doubts about cesium limits, which are less stringent than in livestock feed. No samples have been found exceeding the official limits. A self-imposed, near-zero limit on radiation in rice may help spur sales from Fukushima, which was the fourth-largest producer in Japan last year, representing about 5 percent of the total harvest. The prefectural office of Zen-Noh, Japan’s biggest farmers group, plans to only ship cesium-free rice to address safety concerns, as does the National Confederation of Farmers Movements, which includes about 30,000 producers nationwide.

“We advise our members to test their rice for radiation and sell only if results show no cesium is detected,” said Yoshitaka Mashima, vice chairman of the confederation. The government has tried to “hide inconvenient information, which is deepening consumer distrust.” The near-zero limit was set as very low levels of cesium are hard to detect. Testing equipment in Japan is unable to verify levels of cesium in food below 5 becquerels a kilogram, according to Mashima.

Fukushima Rice Japan set the maximum allowed level of cesium in food about a week after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, based on recommendations from the International Commission on Radiological Protection. The health ministry set the rice ceiling at 500 becquerels a kilogram, while the agriculture ministry’s limit for feed is 300 becquerels. The agriculture ministry allowed rice planting in Fukushima and neighboring prefectures in April, excluding paddy fields containing more than 5,000 becquerels of cesium per kilogram.

Collectively, Texas eats more energy than any other state, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. We’re fifth in the country when it comes to our per-capita energy intake — about 532 million British Thermal Units per year. A British Thermal Unit, or Btu, is like a little “bite” of energy. Imagine a wooden match burning and you’ve got a Btu on a stick. Of course, the consumption is with reason. Texas, home to a quarter of the U.S. domestic oil reserves, is also bulging with the second-highest population and a serious petrochemical industry. In recent years, we managed to turn ourselves into the country’s top producer of wind energy. Despite all the chest-thumping that goes on in these parts about those West Texas wind farms (hoist that foam finger!), we are still among the worst in how we use that energy. Though not technically “Southern,” Texans guzzle energy like true rednecks. Each of our homes use, on average, about 14,400 kilowatt hours per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It doesn’t all have to do with the A/C, either. Arizonans, generally agreed to be sharing the heat, typically use about 12,000 kWh a year; New Mexicans cruise in at an annual 7,200 kWh. Don’t even get me started on California’s mere 6,000 kWh/year figure.

Let’s break down that kilowatt-hour thing. A watt is the energy of one candle burning down. (You didn’t put those matches away, did you?) A kilowatt is a thousand burnin’ candles. And a kilowatt hour? I think you can take it from there. We’re wide about the middle in Bexar, too. The average CPS customer used 1,538 kilowatt hours this June when the state average was 1,149 kWh, according to ERCOT. Compare that with Austin residents’ 1,175 kWh and San Marcos residents’ 1,130 kWh, and you start to see something is wrong. So, we’re wasteful. So what? For one, we can’t afford to be. Maybe back when James Dean was lusting under a fountain of crude we had if not reason, an excuse. But in the 1990s Texas became a net importer of energy for the first time. It’s become a habit, putting us behind the curve when it comes to preparing for that tightening energy crush. We all know what happens when growing demand meets an increasingly scarce resource … costs go up. As the pressure drop hits San Anto, there are exactly two ways forward. One is to build another massively expensive power plant. The other is to transform the whole frickin’ city into a de-facto power plant, where energy is used as efficiently as possible and blackouts simply don’t occur.

Consider, South Texas Project Plants 1&2, which send us almost 40 percent of our power, were supposed to cost $974 million. The final cost on that pair ended up at $5.5 billion. If the planned STP expansion follows the same inflationary trajectory, the price tag would wind up over $30 billion. Applications for the Matagorda County plants were first filed with the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974. Building began two years later. However, in 1983 there was still no plant, and Austin, a minority partner in the project, sued Houston Power & Lighting for mismanagement in an attempt to get out of the deal. (Though they tried to sell their share several years ago, the city of Austin remains a 16-percent partner, though they have chosen not to commit to current expansion plans).

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government insists that electricity bills will only grow modestly as a result of the nuclear energy phase-out. Experts, however, disagree, with many pointing to Berlin's massive subsidies for solar power as the culprit.

A pioneering spirit has taken hold in Germany, thanks to the government's radical reworking of the country's energy policies. Hardly a week goes by without the foundation being laid someplace in the country for a new solar farm, yet another biogas plant or an even bigger wind turbine. Fesseldorf, the town in northern Bavaria which just hosted Seehofer, will soon be home to one of the largest photovoltaic plants in the state.

The German government's plan calls for increasing the share of renewables in the country's energy mix to 35 percent by 2020. It is an ambitious goal in every respect. Not only will the current renewable energy share have to be doubled within a few years, the grid expanded and new power storage facilities installed. But Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is also somehow expecting the entire energy revolution to cost virtually nothing.

out

Nuclear power was gaining a lot of momentum prior to the terrible disaster at Japan's Fukushima powerplant in March.

But since then, atomic energy has come under increased scrutiny and once again drawn the ire of environmentalists who were just warming up to its carbon-free emissions.

The U.S., after authorizing the release of 30 million barrels of oil from its emergency stockpile, is prepared to take additional action if needed to react to disruptions in world supplies, according to an Obama administration official. The decision to draw oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, part of an international move to release 60 million barrels, was made after months of consulting with allies and oil-producing nations, according to officials, who briefed reporters on condition they not be named.

The coordinated release of 60 million barrels by the U.S. and 27 other nations would provide about 2 million barrels a day within the first 30 days, according to the IEA.

Supply Concerns The release is being done in response to disruption caused by the Libya conflict and in anticipation of increasing demand during the U.S. summer driving season, the official said. It is intended more to ensure supply rather than affect prices, according to the official. The national average retail price for a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.612, according to a AAA survey.

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

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

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

What do you do with the waste? – Kirk Sorensen’s answers by Rod Adams on October 13, 2011 in Fuel Recycling , Nuclear Batteries , Nuclear Waste , Plutonium , Thorium Share3   Gordon McDowell, the film maker who produced Thorium Remix , has released some additional mixes of material gathered for that production effort. One in particular is aimed at those people whose main concern about using nuclear energy is the often repeated question “What do you do with the waste.” Many people who ask that question think that it is a trump card that should end all conversation and let them win the hand. I used to play bridge and enjoyed it when I could “no trump” a smug contestant who thought he had a winner. Kirk’s discussion below is one example of how that can be done in the nuclear energy field . My friends who like the Integral Fast Reactor have another answer . I am pretty certain there are dozens of other good answers to the question – the primary obstacle to implementing them comes from the nefarious forces that LIKE raising (artificial) barriers to the use of nuclear energy. On another note, I want to point to a story published in the evening of October 12, 2011 on the Wall Street Journal web site titled WSJ: Fluor Buys Stake In Reactor Maker NuScale Energy . I am happy to see that NuScale has found a suitable, deep pockets investor with a lot of nuclear plant engineering and construction experience. One more short note. Jay Hancock, a writer for the Baltimore Sun, has taken note of some of the work published on Atomic Insights regarding Exelon’s decision to destroy the Zion Nuclear power station rather than allowing it to compete against existing power plants to increase the supply and decrease the price of electricity. On October 8, 2011, Hancock published a column titled State should pull plug on Constellation-Exelon deal that explored whether or not it would be beneficial for Marylanders to allow a company like Exelon to own a dominant number of electrical power generation facilities in the state. One of the pieces of evidence that has convinced Hancock to oppose the proposed merger is the way that Exelon has acted with regard to the Zion nuclear station. He recognizes that the company has adequately demonstrated a history of using market power to drive up prices and profits at the expense of customer interests. Additional reading related to Exelon bear hug attempt: EDF Asks Maryland Regulators To Block Exelon-Constellation Merger

What do you do with the waste? – Kirk Sorensen’s answers by Rod Adams on October 13, 2011 in Fuel Recycling, Nuclear Batteries, Nuclear Waste, Plutonium, Thorium Share3  Gordon McDowell, the film maker who produced Thorium Remix , has released some additional mixes of material gathered for that production effort. One in particular is aimed at those people whose main concern about using nuclear energy is the often repeated question “What do you do with the waste.” Many people who ask that question think that it is a trump card that should end all conversation and let them win the hand. I used to play bridge and enjoyed it when I could “no trump” a smug contestant who thought he had a winner. Kirk’s discussion below is one example of how that can be done in the nuclear energy field . My friends who like the Integral Fast Reactor have another answer. I am pretty certain there are dozens of other good answers to the question – the primary obstacle to implementing them comes from the nefarious forces that LIKE raising (artificial) barriers to the use of nuclear energy. On another note, I want to point to a story published in the evening of October 12, 2011 on the Wall Street Journal web site titled WSJ: Fluor Buys Stake In Reactor Maker NuScale Energy. I am happy to see that NuScale has found a suitable, deep pockets investor with a lot of nuclear plant engineering and construction experience. One more short note. Jay Hancock, a writer for the Baltimore Sun, has taken note of some of the work published on Atomic Insights regarding Exelon’s decision to destroy the Zion Nuclear power station rather than allowing it to compete against existing power plants to increase the supply and decrease the price of electricity. On October 8, 2011, Hancock published a column titled State should pull plug on Constellation-Exelon deal that explored whether or not it would be beneficial for Marylanders to allow a company like Exelon to own a dominant number of electrical power generation facilities in the state.

Gordon McDowell, the film maker who produced Thorium Remix, has released some additional mixes of material gathered for that production effort. One in particular is aimed at those people whose main concern about using nuclear energy is the often repeated question “What do you do with the waste.” Many people who ask that question think that it is a trump card that should end all conversation and let them win the hand. I used to play bridge and enjoyed it when I could “no trump” a smug contestant who thought he had a winner. Kirk’s discussion below is one example of how that can be done in the nuclear energy field

Germany will be redirecting its economy towards renewable energy, because of the political decision to decommission its nuclear plants, triggered by the Fukushima event in Japan and subsequent public opposition to nuclear energy. Germany's decision would make achieving its 2020 CO2 emission reduction targets more difficult.   To achieve the CO2 emissions reduction targets and replace nuclear energy, renewable energy would need to scale up from 17% in 2010 to 57% of total electricity generation of 603 TWh in 2020, according to a study by The Breakthrough Institute. As electricity generation was 603 TWh in 2010, increased energy efficiency measures will be required to flat-line electricity production during the next 9 years.   Germany has 23 nuclear reactors (21.4 GW), 8 are permanently shut down (8.2 GW) and 15 (13.2 GW) will be shut down by 2022. Germany will be adding a net of 5 GW of coal plants, 5 GW of new CCGT plants and 1.4 GW of new biomass plants in future years. The CCGT plants will reduce the shortage of quick-ramping generation capacity for accommodating variable wind and solar energy to the grid.

Germany is planning a $14 billion build-out of transmission systems for onshore and future offshore wind energy in northern Germany and for augmented transmission with France for CO2-free hydro and nuclear energy imports to avoid any shortages.    Germany had fallen behind on transmission system construction in the north because of public opposition and is using the nuclear plant shutdown as leverage to reduce public opposition. Not only do people have to look at a multitude of 450-ft tall wind turbines, but also at thousands of 80 to 135 ft high steel structures and wires of the transmission facilities.   The $14 billion is just a minor down payment on the major grid reorganization required due to the decommissioning of the nuclear plants and the widely-dispersed build-outs of renewables. The exisitng grid is mostly large-central-plant based. 

This article includes the estimated capital costs of shutting down Germany's nuclear plants, reorganizing the grids of Germany and its neighbors, and building out renewables to replace the nuclear energy.    Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG) in 2000, guarantees investors above-market fees for solar power for 20 years from the point of installation. In 2010, German investments in  renewables was about $41.2 billion, of which about $36.1 billion in 7,400 MW of solar systems ($4,878/kW). In 2010, German incentives for all renewables was about $17.9 billion, of which about half was for solar systems.   The average subsidy in 2010 was about ($9 billion x 1 euro/1.4 $)/12 TWh = 53.6 eurocents/kWh; no wonder solar energy is so popular in Germany. These subsidies are rolled into electric rates as fees or taxes, and will ultimately make Germany less competitive in world markets.   http://thebreakthrough.org/blog//2011/06/analysis_germanys_plan_to_phas-print.html http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-31/merkel-faces-achilles-heel-in-grids-to-unplug-german-nuclear.html http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/829664/revealed_how_your_country_compares_on_renewable_investment.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany  

The chilling images of a melting nuclear reactor in Japan is causing more buyers to take a closer look at how far their new home would be to a nuclear reactor. As such, sellers near towns with nuclear reactors may have a longer wait in finding a buyer and even see their home values drop, Reuters News reports. “I’d be shocked if this didn’t have a temporary negative effect on selling prices,” says David Clark, professor of economics at Marquette University, who has studied the impact of nuclear power plants on home values. Just how long-lasting the impact will depend on how bad the situation gets in Japan, Clark adds. 

Other experts say the impact to real estate values will be temporary and home owners near nuclear power plants shouldn’t be too worried. For example, home prices tumbled following the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear plant incident in Pennsylvania. However, prices stabilized a couple of years later, according to research studies. 

Whistleblower pays price for voicing nuke safety concerns, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, Dec. 15, 2011: Dr. Walter Tamosaitis, Research & Technology Manager for the Waste Treatment Plant processing Hanford’s radioactive waste Walt Tamosaitis, nuclear waste whistleblower and Tom Carpenter, attorney and executive director of the non-profit group Hanford Challenge, talks with Rachel Maddow about safety concerns at the site and the penalties he has suffered as a consequence of speaking about his concerns.

Transcript Excerpts At ~7:00 in MADDOW: Dr. Tamosaitis, can you describe your safety concerns at Hanford [nuclear waste facility in Washington] for the non-nuclear engineers among us? TAMOSAITIS: Yes, ma`am. The major concern is poor mixing in the vessels, the tanks that process the hazardous nuclear waste. And if you have poor mixing in the tank, you can build up solids, the solids can trap hydrogen gas. You can have solids build up on the bottom of the tank which can lead to a criticality. So, trapping a hydrogen gas can lead to a fire or an explosion. And the solids buildup could lead to a criticality.

At ~9:45 in MADDOW: In terms of — Dr. Tamosaitis, let me go back to you. In terms of your safety concerns and, again, speaking to a public that may not be, including myself, all that familiar with the processes you`re describing there, what is the greatest risk that you think is possible here based on corners that you`ve seen cut? Are we looking at something that could be more than the kind of leaks that Hanford has already experienced? Are we talking about something that could be a larger release of radioactive material? TAMOSAITIS: Yes, ma`am. Yes, Rachel, we are. If we have poor mixing, we could trap hydrogen gas, we could end up with a fire or explosion, as we saw on the TV at Fukushima in Japan.