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Javier E

Mini Nuclear Reactors Offer Promise of Cheaper, Clean Power - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...heaper-clean-power-11613055608

reactors environment nuclear safety cost renewable energy policy US Politics economics

shared by Javier E on 11 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • Next-generation nuclear must overcome public wariness of the technology engendered by the terrifying mishaps at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and, most recently, Fukushima. Then there is the challenge of making a compelling case for nuclear power as the cost of electricity from natural gas, wind and solar is plunging.
  • Rather than offering up SMRs as a replacement for renewables, proponents of the devices say they can play a complementary role in the smart grid of the future—replacing coal- and gas-fired plants and operating alongside wind and solar
  • Most utilities rely on a variety of electricity sources, with differing costs, emissions and capacity to provide the constant flow that power grids need for stability, says Tom Mundy, chief technology officer at SMR developer NuScale Power LLC. “Our technology is a great complement to renewable power systems,”
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  • The U.S. government is lending its support to SMR development. In September, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the first time issued a final safety evaluation report on a SMR—a critical step before a design can be approved—to NuScale
  • is developing its first commercial SMR for utilities in Utah and promising power by the end of the decade.
  • the Energy Department awarded $210 million to 10 projects to develop technologies for SMRs and beyond, as part of its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The agency had already awarded $400 million to various projects since 2014 “to accelerate the development and deployment of SMRs,
  • . Potential buyers range from U.S. utilities trying to phase out coal-fired generators to Eastern European countries seeking energy independence.
  • GE’s second offering, a system now in development with nuclear startup TerraPower LLC, replaces water with molten salt, similar to what’s used in some advanced solar-power arrays. Dubbed Natrium, the system runs hotter than water-cooled reactors but at lower pressure and with passive cooling, which eliminates piping and electrical systems while improving safety, according to TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque.
  • “When you have a really elegant design, you can get multiple benefits working together,” Mr. Levesque says. TerraPower, established by investors including Bill Gates, received $80 million of the Energy Department funding for Natrium in October.
  • Greenpeace, the Union of Concerned Scientists and other advocacy groups argue that nuclear power remains a dangerous technological dead-end that causes as many problems as it solves.
  • Traditional reactors grew over time to achieve greater efficiencies of scale and lower cost per kilowatt-hour because power output rose faster than construction and operating costs. “There’s no reason that’s changed,” he says, dismissing SMR makers’ promises of lower costs and increased safety
  • Many proposed SMR expense reductions, such as less shielding, could ultimately increase their danger, while the combined use of several modules could create new safety risks like radioactive contamination that negate gains in individual modules, he says.
  • Mr. Ramana also says that the technological advances like 3-D printing and digital manufacturing that make SMRs possible are doing even more to improve green renewables. “It’s a kind of treadmill race, where one treadmill is going much faster.”
  • although SMRs have lower upfront capital cost per unit, their economic competitiveness is still to be proven.”
Javier E

To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html

iran foreign policy GOP invasion

shared by Javier E on 31 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • the president’s policy is empowering Iran. Whether diplomacy and sanctions would ever have worked against the hard-liners running Iran is unlikely. But abandoning the red line on weapons-grade fuel drawn originally by the Europeans in 2003, and by the United Nations Security Council in several resolutions, has alarmed the Middle East and effectively handed a permit to Iran’s nuclear weapons establishment.
  • The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.
  • Rendering inoperable the Natanz and Fordow uranium-enrichment installations and the Arak heavy-water production facility and reactor would be priorities. So, too, would be the little-noticed but critical uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan. An attack need not destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.
sarahbalick

North Korea 'expands plutonium production', says US - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-35534995

north korea production

shared by sarahbalick on 10 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • North Korea 'expands plutonium production', says US
  • North Korea could soon have enough plutonium for nuclear weapons after restarting one of its reactors, US intelligence chief James Clapper says.
  • It comes days after the North launched a long-range rocket, which critics say is a test of banned missile technology.
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  • "We assess that North Korea has followed through on its announcement by expanding its Yongbyon enrichment facility and restarting the plutonium production reactor," Mr Clapper wrote in his annual assessment of threats facing the US. "We further assess that North Korea has been operating the reactor long enough so that it could begin to recover plutonium from the reactor's spent fuel within a matter of weeks to months."
  • "capable of posing a direct threat to the United States".
  • "initial steps toward fielding this system, although the system has not been flight-tested".
  • Experts have said that, when fully operational, the Yongbyon reactor could make one nuclear bomb's worth of plutonium per year. About 4kg of plutonium is needed in order to make a bomb that would explode with a force of 20 kilotons.
Javier E

Andrew Sullivan: A Radically Moderate Climate Solution - 0 views

nymag.com/...moderate-climate-solution.html

Green New Deal nuclear crisis global warming

shared by Javier E on 01 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • One of the more interesting metaphors for this idea of balance was first coined in the 17th century by the Englishman George Savile, Earl of Halifax. He celebrated in a famous tract what he called the art of the political “trimmer,” governed by a simple rule: “If men are together in a boat, and one part of the company would weigh it down on one side, another would make it lean as much to the contrary.” Otherwise, the boat might capsize.
  • always attempting to meet in the middle of two competing forces. Call it “both sides-ism,” “zombie centrism,” or whatever. I share the general contempt for that kind of “splitting the difference” moderation. There may be times when it works, in an attempt to close a political deal, but it’s mindless if it doesn’t take into account external reality. So to return to the metaphor of a boat, it’s no good being equally balanced if a gale-force wind is pushing the boat in one direction. You may need to get everyone on one side of the ship to keep it upright. You trim your sails not according to ideology, or a compass, but according to the winds and the waves
  • There’s no easy formula for this; it requires prudential judgment. It requires leaders who have a sense of the exigencies and passions of their time and respond to them empirically.
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  • this period is unique in human history because it is the first time our species is on the verge of wiping out most life as it now exists on this planet. It’s the mother of all emergencies.
  • Thatcher: a radical remaker of an economy and society, but in the context of previous economic stagnation, social breakdown, and a stifling collectivism, something of a moderate.
  • So FDR was in many ways an extremist in the context of American history; but his extremism was a form of moderation given the dire economic crisis he had to handle.
  • That’s why the Green New Deal has appeal. Its vast ambition is actually well-suited to the humongous scale of the challenge
  • When AOC’s critics say her idea is preposterously expensive and unnecessarily socialist (as it is), she is perfectly right to ask: So what’s your alternative?
  • Here’s a suggestion: Focus on a non-carbon energy source that is already proven to be technologically feasible, can be quickly scaled up, and can potentially meet all our energy demands. What we need, given how little time we have, is a massive nuclear energy program
  • The speediest drop in greenhouse gas pollution on record occurred in France in the 1970s and ‘80s, when that country transitioned from burning fossil fuels to nuclear fission for electricity, lowering its greenhouse emissions by roughly 2 percent per year. The world needs to drop its global warming pollution by 6 percent annually to avoid “dangerous” climate change in the estimation of [respected climate scientist James] Hanse
  • For the U.S. to get half its energy from nuclear would cost around $14 trillion. But if we committed to a huge nuclear investment, and the innovation that comes with it, that cost would come down. Compared with one estimate of $93 trillion for the Green New Deal, it’s a bargain
  • A build rate of 61 new reactors per year could entirely replace current fossil fuel electricity generation by 2050. Accounting for increased global electricity demand driven by population growth and development in poorer countries, which would add another 54 reactors per year, this makes a total requirement of 115 reactors per year to 2050 to entirely decarbonise the global electricity system in this illustrative scenario.
knudsenlu

Reckoning With the Nuclear Reactor, 75 Years Later - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...547151

nuclear reactor legacy history war US

shared by knudsenlu on 04 Dec 17 - No Cached
  • At the time, news of the breakthrough on December 2, 1942, was conveyed  only in code: “The Italian navigator has landed in the New World.”Our “Italian navigator” was Enrico Fermi, the physicist who had escaped fascist Italy for America. The “New World” was not a place but a time: the atomic age. On that day 75 years ago, Fermi’s team set off the first controlled and sustained nuclear chain reaction.
  • The rest of the story is well-known: Bombs were made. Bombs were dropped. Hundreds of thousands of people died. A war was won.
  • “It’s always been a complicated story,” says Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the journal founded by former Manhattan Project scientists concerned about atomic weapons. Over the past 75 years, as the specter of nuclear annihilation has grown and waned and grown again, newspapers reporting on the anniversary have tried to grapple with that legacy.
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  • And details like the graphite dust that blanketed everyone. (Graphite was used as a “moderator,” to slow down neutrons so they could split uranium atoms.)
  • “We found out how coal miners feel. After eight hours of machining graphite, we looked as if we were made up for a minstrel. One shower would remove only the surface graphite dust. About a half-hour after the first shower the dust in the pores of your skin would start oozing. Walking around the room where we cut graphite was like walking on a dance floor. Graphite is a dry lubricant, you know, and the cement floor covered with graphite dust was slippery.”
  • The Chicago Pile was a genuine scientific breakthrough, but other, more famous milestones like the Trinity test and the Hiroshima bombing have also been pegged as the beginning of the atomic age.
  • When the 25th anniversary came around in 1967, World War II was receding from memory and the Cold War had come startlingly close to turning hot. It was atomic weapons that Americans were thinking about again. Volney Wilson, another physicist who worked on the Chicago Pile, speaking to the Schenectady Gazette, was far less optimistic: “It’s been a big disappointment to me ... I would have thought that the development of this horrible weapon would have been more of a force to bring the world together.”
  • The 50th anniversary came at a more optimistic time: 1992. The Soviet Union had dissolved. The United States was the world’s only superpower. The Soviet Union was not only dismantling its warheads, it was selling them to the United States for electricity.
  • Which brings us to the75th anniversary of the Chicago Pile. Nuclear power is on the decline in the United States today. Nuclear weapons are ever present in the news again. Yet nuclear science has also produced real breakthroughs in science and medicine. The legacy of the Chicago Pile is mixed, and it probably always will be—until, and such is the nature of nuclear weapons, the day it is clearly not.
Javier E

To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html

iran bomb nuclear US relations

shared by Javier E on 26 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • President Obama’s approach on Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe.
  • Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.
  • Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions. Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish interests are complex and conflicting, but faced with Iran’s threat, all have concluded that nuclear weapons are essential.
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  • . The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.
  • The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.
Javier E

'Chernobyl' Should Make Humanity Count Its Blessings - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...590956

chernobyl soviet USSR crisis

shared by Javier E on 03 Jul 19 - No Cached
  • During a beautifully rendered scene, an elderly Communist Party apparatchik sits silently at a meeting of plant managers and local officials, all of whom are giving in to panic. He then rises and exhorts his comrades to gaze upon the portrait of the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin on the wall, and to remember that Lenin would be proud of them—even though one of the reactors had already exploded and was, at that moment, on the verge of melting through the earth around them.
  • “Chernobyl,” Mazin tweeted to Bongino, “was a failure of humans whose loyalty to (or fear of) a broken governing party overruled their sense of decency and rationality. You’re the old man with the cane. You just worship a different man’s portrait.”
  • Once they captured a state, however, they were determined to keep it, and a regime founded by chance and based on a lie soon began to believe in its own infallibility. Socialism and communism were just words; the power and survival of the Soviet Communist Party were paramount. No one life was of any particular importance.
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  • Lenin and his comrades were European intellectuals who stumbled into power after “years of sitting in isolation and making up schemes for Communist revolution.”
  • From its inception, the Soviet Union was governed by a fundamentally psychotic regime that over successive generations was unable to comprehend reality, process information, or see beyond its own fevered and paranoid outlook
  • this scene captures something about the Soviet regime both at its most mundane and at its most dangerous. Everyone was accountable to everyone else. Any show of public defiance, or even a misplaced comment, could carry severe consequences
  • at a moment of great peril to millions of Soviet citizens and millions more people around the world, no one was accountable. Every bureaucrat and manager simply repeated the mantra of the gray, authoritarian system that produced them: I had my job. I did my job. I fulfilled my tasks. I did nothing wrong.
  • This state, run by delusional old men chasing, imprisoning, and shooting millions of their fellow citizens in a “circle of accountability,” controlled thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at the United States and its allies. We all lived under the constant threat that the commitment of a group of paranoids to ideas first bruited about in the coffeehouses of Victorian Europe would lead to global extermination.
  • We should also be grateful for our narrow escape not only from the burning reactors in the marshes of Pripyat, but from a state led by a cabal of dangerous men who, for the better part of a century, hijacked the fate of billions of human beings.
Javier E

Germany Has Some Revolutionary Ideas, and They're Working - 0 views

www.nationalgeographic.com/...ny-renewable-energy-revolution

germany climate change energy policy revolutionary ecological culture

shared by Javier E on 14 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • Last year about 27 percent of its electricity came from renewable sources such as wind and solar power, three times what it got a decade ago and more than twice what the United States gets today.
  • Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy, has promised some of the most aggressive emission cuts—by 2020, a 40 percent cut from 1990 levels, and by 2050, at least 80 percent.
  • The energiewende will take much longer and will involve every single German—more than 1.5 million of them, nearly 2 percent of the population, are selling electricity to the grid right now
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  • “It’s a project for a generation; it’s going to take till 2040 or 2050, and it’s hard,” said Gerd Rosenkranz, a former journalist at Der Spiegel who’s now an analyst at Agora Energiewende, a Berlin think tank. “It’s making electricity more expensive for individual consumers. And still, if you ask people in a poll, Do you want the energiewende? then 90 percent say yes.”
  • The Germans have an origin myth: It says they came from the dark and impenetrable heart of the forest
  • . The forest became the place where Germans go to restore their souls—a habit that predisposed them to care about the environment.
  • So in the late 1970s, when fossil fuel emissions were blamed for killing German forests with acid rain, the outrage was nationwide. The oil embargo of 1973 had already made Germans, who have very little oil and gas of their own, think about energy. The threat ofwaldsterben, or forest death, made them think harder.
  • I came away thinking there would have been no energiewende at all without antinuclear sentiment—the fear of meltdown is a much more powerful and immediate motive than the fear of slowly rising temperatures and seas.
  • energy researcher Volker Quaschning put it this way: “Nuclear power affects me personally. Climate change affects my kids. That’s the difference.”
  • NG STAFF; EVAN APP
  • Demonstrators in the 1970s and ’80s were protesting not just nuclear reactors but plans to deploy American nuclear missiles in West Germany. The two didn’t seem separable. When the German Green Party was founded in 1980, pacifism and opposition to nuclear power were both central tenets.
  • Chernobyl was a watershed.
  • The environmental movement’s biggest mistake has been to say, ‘Do less. Tighten your belts. Consume less,’ ” Fell said. “People associate that with a lower quality of life. ‘Do things differently, with cheap, renewable electricity’—that’s the message.”
  • It was 1990, the year Germany was officially reunified—and while the country was preoccupied with that monumental task, a bill boosting the energiewende made its way through the Bundestag without much public notice. Just two pages long, it enshrined a crucial principle: Producers of renewable electricity had the right to feed into the grid, and utilities had to pay them a “feed-in tariff.” Wind turbines began to sprout in the windy north.
  • The biogas, the solar panels that cover many roofs, and especially the wind turbines allow Wildpoldsried to produce nearly five times as much electricity as it consumes.
  • In a recent essay William Nordhaus, a Yale economist who has spent decades studying the problem of addressing climate change, identified what he considers its essence: free riders. Because it’s a global problem, and doing something is costly, every country has an incentive to do nothing and hope that others will act. While most countries have been free riders, Germany has behaved differently: It has ridden out ahead. And in so doing, it has made the journey easier for the rest of us.
  • At the peak of the boom, in 2012, 7.6 gigawatts of PV panels were installed in Germany in a single year—the equivalent, when the sun is shining, of seven nuclear plants. A German solar-panel industry blossomed, until it was undercut by lower-cost manufacturers in China—which took the boom worldwide
  • Germans paid for this success not through taxes but through a renewable-energy surcharge on their electricity bills. This year the surcharge is 6.17 euro cents per kilowatt-hour, which for the average customer amounts to about 18 euros a month—a hardship for some
  • The German economy as a whole devotes about as much of its gross national product to electricity as it did in 1991.
  • Ideally, to reduce emissions, Germany should replace lignite with gas. But as renewables have flooded the grid, something else has happened: On the wholesale market where contracts to deliver electricity are bought and sold, the price of electricity has plummeted, such that gas-fired power plants and sometimes even plants burning hard coal are priced out of the market.
  • Old lignite-fired power plants are rattling along at full steam, 24/7, while modern gas-fired plants with half the emissions are standing idle.
  • “Of course we have to find a track to get rid of our coal—it’s very obvious,” said Jochen Flasbarth, state secretary in the environment ministry. “But it’s quite difficult. We are not a very resource-rich country, and the one resource we have is lignite.”
  • Vattenfall formally inaugurated its first German North Sea wind park, an 80-turbine project called DanTysk that lies some 50 miles offshore. The ceremony in a Hamburg ballroom was a happy occasion for the city of Munich too. Its municipal utility, Stadtwerke München, owns 49 percent of the project. As a result Munich now produces enough renewable electricity to supply its households, subway, and tram lines. By 2025 it plans to meet all of its demand with renewables.
  • Last spring Gabriel proposed a special emissions levy on old, inefficient coal plants; he soon had 15,000 miners and power plant workers, encouraged by their employers, demonstrating outside his ministry. In July the government backed down. Instead of taxing the utilities, it said it would pay them to shut down a few coal plants—achieving only half the planned emissions savings. For the energiewende to succeed, Germany will have to do much more.
  • The government’s goal is to have a million electric cars on the road by 2020; so far there are about 40,000. The basic problem is that the cars are still too expensive for most Germans, and the government hasn’t offered serious incentives to buy them—it hasn’t done for transportation what Fell’s law did for electricity.
  • “The strategy has always been to modernize old buildings in such a way that they use almost no energy and cover what they do use with renewables,” said Matthias Sandrock, a researcher at the Hamburg Institute. “That’s the strategy, but it’s not working. A lot is being done, but not enough.”
  • All over Germany, old buildings are being wrapped in six inches of foam insulation and refitted with modern windows. Low-interest loans from the bank that helped rebuild the war-torn west with Marshall Plan funds pay for many projects. Just one percent of the stock is being renovated every year, though
  • For all buildings to be nearly climate neutral by 2050—the official goal—the rate would need to double at least.
  • here’s the thing about the Germans: They knew the energiewende was never going to be a walk in the forest, and yet they set out on it. What can we learn from them? We can’t transplant their desire to reject nuclear power. We can’t appropriate their experience of two great nation-changing projects—rebuilding their country when it seemed impossible, 70 years ago, and reunifying their country when it seemed forever divided, 25 years ago. But we can be inspired to think that the energiewende might be possible for other countries too.
  • Fell’s law, then, helped drive down the cost of solar and wind, making them competitive in many regions with fossil fuels. One sign of that: Germany’s tariff for large new solar facilities has fallen from 50 euro cents a kilowatt-hour to less than 10. “We’ve created a completely new situation in 15 years
  • Curtailing its use is made harder by the fact that Germany’s big utilities have been losing money lately—because of the energiewende, they say; because of their failure to adapt to the energiewende, say their critics. E.ON, the largest utility, which owns Grafenrheinfeld and many other plants, declared a loss of more than three billion euros last year.
  • “The utilities in Germany had one strategy,” Flasbarth said, “and that was to defend their track—nuclear plus fossil. They didn’t have a strategy B.”
  • In a conference room, Olaf Adermann, asset manager for Vattenfall’s lignite operations, explained that Vattenfall and other utilities had never expected renewables to take off so fast. Even with the looming shutdown of more nuclear reactors, Germany has too much generating capacity.
ethanshilling

North Korea's Arsenal Has Grown Rapidly. Here's What's in It. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...north-korea-arsenal-nukes.html

nuclear weapons north korea

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • North Korea test-launched what it called a newly developed tactical guided missile ​on Thursday, violating international sanctions.
  • It was the country’s first ballistic missile test in a year and its first provocation to the Biden administration, prompting the​ American president to warn that there will be “responses” if North Korea continues to escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
  • North Korea​ has rapidly expanded its nuclear program and modernized its missile fleet under Kim Jong-un, the country’s young leader. The expansion of the arsenal is a growing threat to the United States and allies​ in the region. ​Here’s what’s in it.
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  • As of January 2020, North Korea had 30 to 40 nuclear warheads and could produce enough fissile material for six or seven bombs a year, according to an estimate by the Arms Control Association.
  • North Korea has extracted plutonium, an atomic bomb fuel, from its Soviet-designed nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang.
  • North Korea’s ballistic missiles can carry nuclear warheads, and the country conducted six increasingly sophisticated underground nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017. The last four of them happened under Mr. Kim.
  • And at a party congress in January, Mr. Kim doubled down on his nuclear arms buildup, offering a laundry list of weapons he said he planned to develop. They included “multi-warhead” nuclear missiles, “hypersonic” missiles, land- and submarine-launched I.C.B.M.s that use solid fuel, and “ultramodern tactical nuclear weapons.”
  • By the end of the year, Mr. Kim claimed that his country had the ability to launch a nuclear strike against the continental United States.
  • In 2017, North Korea made big strides in its weapons capabilities.That year, the country fired its intermediate-range ballistic missile, Hwasong-12, over Japan and threatened an “enveloping” strike around the American territory of Guam.
  • When North Korea resumed missile tests in 2019 following the collapse of the Kim-Trump talks, the tests featured three new weapons, code-named KN-23, KN-24 and KN-25 by outside experts.
  • Unlike its older missiles that used liquid fuel, all three of the new missiles used solid fuel. The new solid-fuel weapons, mounted on mobile launchers, are easier to transport and hide and take less time to prepare.
  • Mr. Kim said in January that his country would also build a nuclear-powered submarine in order to acquire the means to deliver nuclear weapons to its adversaries more stealthily.
  • North Korea has one of the largest standing armies in the world, with more than one million soldiers. But much of its equipment is old and obsolete, and the military lacks fuel and spare parts.
  • North Korea has sought to make up for its shortcomings by building nuclear weapons.
  • At the January party congress, Mr. Kim said that his weapons program “never precludes diplomacy” but “guarantees its success.” He has also said he no longer holds any expectations for dialogue unless Washington makes an offer that satisfies his government.
  • It showed that “North Korea was pushing ahead with the plans” set down by Mr. Kim during the party meeting, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
saberal

Furor in Japanese Town Casts Light on Fukushima's Legacy - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-fukushima-nuclear-waste.html

Global crisis history

shared by saberal on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • It seemed like an easy payday. The Japanese government was conducting a study of potential locations for storing spent nuclear fuel — a review of old geological maps and research papers about local plate tectonics. It put out a call for localities to volunteer. Participating would commit them to nothing.
  • There are few places on earth eager to host a nuclear waste dump. Only Finland and Sweden have settled on permanent repositories for the dregs of their atomic energy programs. But the furor in Suttsu speaks to the deep anxiety that remains in Japan 10 years after an immense earthquake and tsunami caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors in Fukushima Prefecture, the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
  • Even before the Fukushima calamity, which led to three explosions and a release of radiation that forced the evacuation of 150,000 people, ambivalence toward nuclear energy was deeply ingrained in Japan.
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  • Still, most Japanese had come to terms with nuclear power, viewing it as an inevitable part of the energy mix for a resource-poor country that must import about 90 percent of the materials it needs to generate electricity.
  • “Utilities and the government and us nuclear experts kept saying, ‘Don’t worry, there won’t be a serious accident,’” said Tatsujiro Suzuki, director of the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition at Nagasaki University. Now “people think that the industry is not trustworthy and the government that is pushing the industry is not trustworthy.”
  • Almost 2,500 of the huge radioactive tubes are sitting in temporary facilities in Aomori and Ibaraki Prefectures, waiting to be lowered 1,000 feet beneath the earth’s surface into vast underground vaults
  • The central government has tried to incentivize local governments to volunteer for consideration by offering a payment of around $18 million for taking the first step, a literature review. Those that go on to the second stage — a geological study — will receive an additional $64.4 million.
  • The government says it would make small releases over 30 years with no impact on human health. Fishermen in Fukushima say that the plan would wreck their long journey toward recovery.
  • Critics of nuclear power in Japan frequently point to the decades of failure to find a solution to the waste problem as an argument against restarting the country’s existing reactors, much less building new ones.
  • “Every normal person in town is thinking about it,” said Toshihiko Yoshino, 61, the owner of a seafood busines
  • Many in the town were initially opposed, he said during an interview in his office, but the project has delivered handsome returns. The town has spent the profits from selling electricity to pay off debts. T
  • The plan has fiercely divided the town. Reporters have flooded in, putting the discord on national display.
  • In October, an angry resident threw a Molotov cocktail at Mr. Kataoka’s home. It broke a window, but he smothered it without any further damage.
ethanshilling

Japan to Start Releasing Radioactive Water From Fukushima in 2 Years - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ukushima-wastewater-ocean.html

japan fukushima

shared by ethanshilling on 13 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Japan said on Tuesday that it had decided to gradually release tons of treated wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean, describing it as the best option for disposal despite fierce opposition from fishing crews at home and concern from governments abroad.
  • Disposal of the wastewater has been long delayed by public opposition and by safety concerns. But the space used to store the water is expected to run out next year, and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said during the cabinet meeting on Tuesday that disposing of the wastewater from the plant was “a problem that cannot be avoided.”
  • The Fukushima crisis was set off in March 2011 by a huge earthquake and tsunami that ripped through northeastern Japan and killed more than 19,000 people. The subsequent meltdown of three of the plant’s six reactors was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
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  • The government will “take every measure to absolutely guarantee the safety of the treated water and address misinformation,” he said, noting that the cabinet would meet again within a week to decide on the details for carrying out the plan.
  • Ten years later, the cleanup is far from finished at the disabled plant, which is operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company. To keep the three damaged reactor cores from melting, cooling water is pumped through them continuously.
  • There are now about 1.25 million tons of wastewater stored in more than 1,000 tanks at the plant site. The water continues to accumulate at a rate of about 170 tons a day, and releasing all of it is expected to take decades.
  • But the Japanese government’s plan faces strong opposition from local officials and fishing crews, who say that it would add to consumer fears about the safety of Fukushima seafood.
  • Responding to Japan’s decision, the U.S. State Department said in a statement, “In this unique and challenging situation, Japan has weighed the options and effects, has been transparent about its decision, and appears to have adopted an approach in accordance with globally accepted nuclear safety standards.”
hannahcarter11

Japan's New Leader Sets Goal of Being Carbon Neutral by 2050 - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...japan-carbon-neutral.html

japan climate emissions

shared by hannahcarter11 on 26 Oct 20 - No Cached
    • hannahcarter11
      hannahcarter11 on 26 Oct 20
       
      Even if they're just doing this in competition, whatever it takes to clean up the planet!
  • Achieving that goal will be good not only for the world, he said, but also for Japan’s economy and global standing
  • Taking an aggressive approach to global warming will bring about a transformation in our industrial structure and economic system that will lead to big growth
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  • major upgrade of its previous commitment to reducing greenhouse gases, and necessary if the world hopes to keep a global temperature rise well below 2 degrees
  • Japan is the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It had previously said it would go carbon neutral “at the earliest possible date,” vowing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 205
  • Joseph R. Biden Jr., his challenger in the presidential election, has vowed to restore the United States’ participation in the accord.
  • reinforced just how much of an outlier the United States, the world’s second-largest carbon emitter
  • decision was most likely driven by a combination of domestic and external political pressures
  • As a developed nation, Mr. Kuramochi said, it would be “somewhat embarrassing for Japan to have a net zero emissions timeline later than China.”
  • he would harness the power of “innovation” and “regulatory reform” to transform the country’s energy production and usage
  • The country has made steady progress in reducing its emissions, but still generated 1.06 billion tons of the gas in the one-year period that ended in March 2019, placing it among the top 10 per capita emitters
  • By the early 2000s, Japan had made substantial progress in curbing carbon dioxide emissions through the use of nuclear power. But the meltdown of a nuclear power plant in Fukushima after a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011 led to a widespread shutdown of the country’s energy-producing reactors, which had generated roughly a third of Japan’s total power supply. Only a handful of the plants have since restarted.
  • Short on energy sources, Japan decided to reinvest in coal.
  • Japan currently plans to reduce — but not eliminate — its dependence on coa
  • The country has also vowed to end contentious government subsidies for the export of coal-fired power technology to developing nations, where the use of coal for electricity continues to rise
  • Further efforts to decrease Japan’s domestic commitment to coal will likely meet powerful resistance from Japanese industry, which is still heavily dependent on the fuel
  • Japan is already considering a substantial increase in its supply of wind and solar power, and it is also looking at newer, less-established technologies, such as plants that burn ammonia or hydrogen.
  • Mr. Suga said that Japan would continue to develop nuclear power with “maximum priority on safety,”
  • Movement toward the new goal had already started on the local level, where 150 municipal governments have pledged to be carbon neutral by midcentury.
  • But even if Japan achieves its goal, it will not by itself be enough to halt or even slow the current trend of global warming, a goal that requires a global effort
  • Preventing a climate catastrophe will require “a transformation of the energy system that has underwritten modern society,”
  • Japan will be carbon neutral by 2050, its prime minister said on Monday
  • The announcement came just weeks after China, Japan’s regional rival, said it would reduce its net carbon emissions to zero by 2060.
Javier E

Obama Ordered Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...cyberattacks-against-iran.html

cybersecurity US foreign policy computer infrastructure

shared by Javier E on 01 Jun 12 - Cached
  • It appears to be the first time the United States has repeatedly used cyberweapons to cripple another country’s infrastructure, achieving, with computer code, what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plant explosives.
  • If Olympic Games failed, he told aides, there would be no time for sanctions and diplomacy with Iran to work. Israel could carry out a conventional military attack, prompting a conflict that could spread throughout the region.
  • Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took reporters on a tour of the plant and described grand ambitions to install upward of 50,000 centrifuges. For a country with only one nuclear power reactor — whose fuel comes from Russia — to say that it needed fuel for its civilian nuclear program seemed dubious to Bush administration officials.
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  • Hawks in the Bush administration like Vice President Dick Cheney urged Mr. Bush to consider a military strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities before they could produce fuel suitable for a weapon. Several times, the administration reviewed military options and concluded that they would only further inflame a region already at war, and would have uncertain results.
  • The first stage in the effort was to develop a bit of computer code called a beacon that could be inserted into the computers, which were made by the German company Siemens and an Iranian manufacturer, to map their operations. The idea was to draw the equivalent of an electrical blueprint of the Natanz plant, to understand how the computers control the giant silvery centrifuges that spin at tremendous speeds. The connections were complex, and unless every circuit was understood, efforts to seize control of the centrifuges could fail.
  • The first attacks were small, and when the centrifuges began spinning out of control in 2008, the Iranians were mystified about the cause, according to intercepts that the United States later picked up.
  • The unusually tight collaboration with Israel was driven by two imperatives. Israel’s Unit 8200, a part of its military, had technical expertise that rivaled the N.S.A.’s, and the Israelis had deep intelligence about operations at Natanz that would be vital to making the cyberattack a success.
  • Soon the two countries had developed a complex worm that the Americans called “the bug.” But the bug needed to be tested. So, under enormous secrecy, the United States began building replicas of Iran’s P-1 centrifuges, an aging, unreliable design that Iran purchased from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear chief who had begun selling fuel-making technology on the black market.
  • “This is the first attack of a major nature in which a cyberattack was used to effect physical destruction,” rather than just slow another computer, or hack into it to steal data.
  • It took months for the beacons to do their work and report home, complete with maps of the electronic directories of the controllers and what amounted to blueprints of how they were connected to the centrifuges deep underground. Then the N.S.A. and a secret Israeli unit respected by American intelligence officials for its cyberskills set to work developing the enormously complex computer worm that would become the attacker from within.
  • the code would lurk inside the plant for weeks, recording normal operations; when it attacked, it sent signals to the Natanz control room indicating that everything downstairs was operating normally. “This may have been the most brilliant part of the code,” one American official said.
  • the Iranians had grown so distrustful of their own instruments that they had assigned people to sit in the plant and radio back what they saw.
  • Mr. Bush urged him to preserve two classified programs, Olympic Games and the drone program in Pakistan. Mr. Obama took Mr. Bush’s advice.
  • Mr. Obama authorized the attacks to continue, and every few weeks — certainly after a major attack — he would get updates and authorize the next step. Sometimes it was a strike riskier and bolder than what had been tried previously. “From his first days in office, he was deep into every step in slowing the Iranian program — the diplomacy, the sanctions, every major decision,” a senior administration official said. “And it’s safe to say that whatever other activity might have been under way was no exception to that rule.”
  • In the summer of 2010, shortly after a new variant of the worm had been sent into Natanz, it became clear that the worm, which was never supposed to leave the Natanz machines, had broken free, like a zoo animal that found the keys to the cage.
  • An error in the code, they said, had led it to spread to an engineer’s computer when it was hooked up to the centrifuges. When the engineer left Natanz and connected the computer to the Internet, the American- and Israeli-made bug failed to recognize that its environment had changed. It began replicating itself all around the world.
  • “We think there was a modification done by the Israelis,” one of the briefers told the president, “and we don’t know if we were part of that activity.”
  • Mr. Obama, according to officials in the room, asked a series of questions, fearful that the code could do damage outside the plant. The answers came back in hedged terms. Mr. Biden fumed. “It’s got to be the Israelis,” he said. “They went too far.”
  • American cyberattacks are not limited to Iran, but the focus of attention, as one administration official put it, “has been overwhelmingly on one country.” There is no reason to believe that will remain the case for long. Some officials question why the same techniques have not been used more aggressively against North Korea. Others see chances to disrupt Chinese military plans, forces in Syria on the way to suppress the uprising there, and Qaeda operations around the world. “We’ve considered a lot more attacks than we have gone ahead with,” one former intelligence official said.
  • In fact, no country’s infrastructure is more dependent on computer systems, and thus more vulnerable to attack, than that of the United States. It is only a matter of time, most experts believe, before it becomes the target of the same kind of weapon that the Americans have used, secretly, against Iran.
Javier E

The Rio Summit and the Promise of Renewable Energy - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rio-isnt-all-lost.html

global warming climate economics trends

shared by Javier E on 26 Jul 12 - Cached
  • Since the first conference, global carbon emissions have increased by some 50 percent — an outcome that those who were present 20 years ago would surely have seen as disastrous. And we are continuing this sorry trend: As the Arctic becomes ice-free, we can expect that it will be drilled for oil.
  • despite the alarming news, the seeds of an energy revolution are being sown.
  • Solar and wind energy are developing faster than predicted — indeed, faster than most people realize. Europe is showing the way. Denmark gets about 20 percent of its electricity from wind. On a nice day, Germany, which no one thinks of as a sunny place, gets from the sun over 40 percent of the electricity it uses.
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  • Worldwide, solar and wind capacity now tops 300 gigawatts, three times as much as the total capacity in Britain, or roughly as much electricity as 50 nuclear reactors, nearly half the number now operating in the United States. Most of this renewable capacity has been installed in just the last five years. In fact, over that period, solar capacity has been growing by over 50 percent a year, wind by 25 percent.
  • The cost of photovoltaic cells has fallen by two-thirds in three years. Today, solar energy costs around 15 cents a kilowatt-hour in the United States. In some regions, like Southern California, the cost of solar power is nearly on par with what consumers pay for electricity now.
grayton downing

Iran Says It Agrees to 'Road Map' With U.N. on Nuclear Inspections - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...un-on-nuclear-inspections.html

iran US policy politics

shared by grayton downing on 11 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday that Iran had agreed to resolve all outstanding issues with the agency, and would permit “managed access” by international inspectors to two key nuclear facilities that have not been regularly viewed.
  • the promise of wider scrutiny did not extend to one of the most contentious locations: the Parchin military site southwest of Tehran. Inspectors from the agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog,
  • “This is an important step forward to start with, but much more needs to be done,
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  • Secretary of State John Kerry said at a news conference in the United Arab Emirates that the Obama administration was not in a “race” to strike a deal.
  • In the past, the agency has questioned whether the Gachin mine, which produces yellowcake uranium for conversion to nuclear fuel, is linked to Iran’s military. The heavy-water plant at Arak could produce plutonium, which can be used in a weapon, and a key concern is that once the plant is operational, it would be all but impossible to destroy it without running the risk of spreading deadly plutonium. Western officials noted that the agreement gave the atomic agency access to the heavy production plant but not the nuclear reactor, which is under construction there.
  • lack of in-depth information and inspections of the heavy-water plant have been a particular worry to the West. French officials went further and indicated that they wanted construction halted altogether at the facility, and that Iran’s failure to agree to that was one reason the French were reluctant to endorse a broader deal with Iran this weekend.
  • The agreement on Monday comprised a four-paragraph statement and six bullet points in an annex of issues to be tackled within the next three months.
  • “Managed access” is a term used by the United Nations agency to denote the ground rules for inspections that permit host countries to protect information they consider to be proprietary or secret, such as military technology, while still allowing inspectors to garner data they require, officials said.
julia rhodes

AP - Iran's leader backs nuke talks, with conditions - 0 views

www.pulse.me/...639abe38644e77b625c6a59f83cdd4

economics economic obama politics History crisis policy iran leader nuke talks conditions

shared by julia rhodes on 20 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Ahead of a new round of Iran nuclear talks, the country's supreme leader voiced support on Wednesday for the negotiations, but he insisted there are limits to concessions that Iran will make in exchange for an easing of sanctions choking its economy.
  • But his mention of Iran's "nuclear rights" was widely interpreted as a reference to uranium enrichment.
  • Iran would get some sanctions relief under such a first-step deal, without any easing of the most harsh measures — those crippling its ability to sell oil, its main revenue maker.
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  • But Iranian leaders have made clear that their country will not consider giving up its ability to make nuclear fuel — the centerpiece of the talks since the same process used to make reactor stock can be used to make weapons-grade material.
  • Khamenei said he would not "interfere in the details of the talks," in a clear nod of support for the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, which has opened historic exchanges with the U.S. However, Khamenei also said the main goal is "stabilization of the rights of the Iranian nation, including nuclear rights."
  • Khamenei also blasted what he called the U.S. government's "warmongering" policies, including threats of military action, and he said sanctions cannot force unwanted concessions by Iran.
  • Barack Obama also faces opposition to a deal from Israel, Saudi Arabia and critics in the U.S. Congress, who say an envisaged first-step deal would give Iran too much in the way of sanctions relief for too little in the way of concessions. They argue that Iran can't be trusted. Obama and his national security team counter that the risk is worth taking because the alternative is war no one wants.
julia rhodes

Iran reaches nuclear deal with world leaders -- now what? - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...iran-nuclear-deal

US politics history crisis policy obama economic iran deal nuclear nuclear weapons israel congress

shared by julia rhodes on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • A day after Iran agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for lighter economic sanctions, the difference in the moods on the streets of Tehran and Jerusalem couldn't be starker.
  • We hope all the world knows we use this nuclear (power) just for peace, not for war
  • most Iranians are extremely happy with the deal, especially after many rounds of negotiations that yielded no results.
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  • Benjamin Netanyahu, who slammed the deal as "a historic mistake."
  • "I'll find us new friends" -- an apparent jab at the United States and other allies that supported the deal.
  • This deal doesn't represent the fact we're dealing with the most thuggish people in the whole world."
  • Netanyahu said, "must lead to one result: The dismantling of Iran's military nuclear capability. I remind you that only last week, during the talks, the leaders of Iran repeated their commitment to destroy the State of Israel, and I reiterate here today my commitment, as Prime Minister of Israel, to prevent them from achieving the ability to do so."
  • Iran has stumbled from one economic crisis to the next under the sanctions, and unemployment currently runs over 24%. But not every country is following suit. Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said his country will maintain its sanctions on Iran. "People of #Iran deserve freedom & prosperity denied them by regime's nuclear ambitions," Baird tweeted. "Until then, Canadian sanctions remain in full force."
  • It's also unclear whether Congress will agree to the deal. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a prominent Republican on the Appropriations, Armed Services, Budget, and Judiciary committees, called Monday for a new round of sanctions that can be relieved only if Iran dismantles its plutonium reactor.
  • Even though it's only a six-month deal, world leaders hope it'll pave the way to a long-term guarantee that Iran won't produce nuclear weapons. And Iran hopes to recoup some of the billions of dollars it's lost as a result of international sanctions.
  • "Its success hinges on whether or not it leads to a bigger agreement to "put Iran's nuclear weapons program to rest."
  • "We are pleased after 10 years that an agreement on this level has been reached," he said.
  • Now that sanctions are working, Netanyahu wants to see them tightened, not loosened, until Iran shuts down much of its nuclear capability.
Ellie McGinnis

Talks With Iran Fail to Produce a Nuclear Agreement - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...iran-nuclear-talks.html

iran politics policy US

shared by Ellie McGinnis on 10 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Marathon talks between major powers and Iran failed on Sunday to produce a deal to freeze its nuclear program, puncturing days of feverish anticipation and underscoring how hard it will be to forge a lasting solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
  • “A lot of concrete progress has been made, but some differences remain,” Ms. Ashton said at a news conference early Sunday.
  • “I think it was natural that when we started dealing with the details, there would be differences.”
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  • not only divisions between Iran and the major powers that prevented a deal, but fissures within the negotiating group.
  • France objected strenuously that the proposed deal would do too little to curb Iran’s uranium enrichment or to stop the development of a nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium.
  • “What I was looking for was the political determination, willingness and good faith in order to end this,” he said. “I think we’re all on the same wavelength, and that’s important.”
  • Iranian officials had promoted the possibility of a deal for days, generating an expectant atmosphere that swelled when Secretary of State John Kerry cut short a tour of the Middle East on Friday to join the talks. He was joined by the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and Russia and a vice foreign minister from China.
  • “It takes time to build confidence between countries that have really been at odds with each other for a long time now.”
  • The proposal under consideration in Geneva was to have been the first stage of a multipart agreement. It called for Iran to freeze its nuclear program for up to six months to allow negotiations on a long-term agreement without the worry that Iran was racing ahead to build a bomb. In exchange, the West was to have provided some easing of the international sanctions that have battered Iran’s economy.
  • .Despite the diplomats’ insistence on progress, the failure to clinch an agreement raised questions about the future of the nuclear talks, given the fierce criticism that the mere prospect of a deal whipped up in Israel and among Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.
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