Archive for the 'International Politics' Category

Non-Treehuggers Criticize the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership

Page November 5th, 2007

Nuclear power´s [international] prominence as a major energy source will continue over the next several decades, according to new projections made by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)…

That’s from the IAEA press release for their new report, Energy, Electricity and Nuclear Power for the period up to 2030 [pdf]. The report’s ultimate goal is “…not so much to predict the future but to prepare for it,” and describes relative nuclear power use by a number of countries (flash presentation).

Regarding the US, the report found that, as of the end of 2006:

President Bush sits in the control room at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, Ala. Thursday June 21, 2007. Unit 1 of the Browns Ferry plant was restarted in May 2007, after being shut down for over 20 years. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The US had 103 reactors providing 19 percent of the country´s electricity… Altogether three-quarters of the US reactors either already have license renewals, have applied for them, or have stated their intention to apply. There have been a lot of announced intentions (about 30 new reactors´ worth) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now reviewing four Early Site Permit applications.

Since the beginning of Bush’s first term, his administration has been a strong advocate for a nuclear renaissance, pushing especially hard over the past several years, with strong economic incentives and government loan guarantees for new plant construction, investment protection for unforeseen plant construction delays, etc. . One sentence buried deep within a massive energy bill can go a long way.

But more nuclear plants means more nuclear waste; in the US alone, there are approximately 55,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in temporary storage at about 120 sites across the country, with no permanent storage solution in sight [pdf]. And other countries, with far more nuclear plants, have a similar problem. Spent nuclear fuel storage poses many problems (security, potential public safety hazards, etc.).

So, back in the beginning of 2006, the Bush administration announced its Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) proposal. The program is ambitious. Under the slogan of “Accelerating Clean and Safe Nuclear Energy”, it advocates worldwide expansion of nuclear power via nuclear fuel-recycling technology, with (theoretically) less nuclear waste. In short, build more nuclear plants, and…reduce, reuse, recycle!

The general GNEP nuclear fuel supply/demand/waste relationship. (Click to enlarge.)

[The GNEP proposal] will use a nuclear fuel cycle that enhances energy security, while promoting non-proliferation. It would achieve its goal by having nations with secure, advanced nuclear capabilities provide fuel services — fresh fuel and recovery of used fuel — to other nations who agree to employ nuclear energy for power generation purposes only. The closed fuel cycle model envisioned by this partnership requires development and deployment of technologies that enable recycling and consumption of long-lived radioactive waste.

One noteworthy GNEP-related partnership was forged with Russia in 2006 “…that would pave the way for Russia to become one of the world’s largest repositories of spent nuclear fuel…”. (The important implications and details are discussed here.)

The program is billed as a technological panacea for all things climate, energy, proliferation, and environment-related; it sounds like prime nerd bait as well as a prime target for anti-nuclear power nongovernmental organizations.

So guess who’s criticizing it? Well, my title gave it away: it’s the nerds.

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Fox News: Oil and Adventure in the Arctic!

Page October 8th, 2007

By now, I’m sure everyone has heard about this:

The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at a record low, scientists said last night. Experts said they were “stunned” by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as Britain disappearing in the last week alone. So much ice has melted this summer that the north-west passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the north-east passage along Russia’s Arctic coast could open later this month. If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.

The effects of this unprecedented low in Arctic sea ice are already apparent. One example:

In spring and summer of 2004, Ashjian and colleagues were investigating the potential impacts of a warming climate on the delicately balanced Arctic Ocean ecosystem, when they discovered an unexpected phenomenon: nine sightings of baby walruses swimming alone far from shore—apparently abandoned by their nursing mothers.

“The young can’t forage for themselves and are dependent on their mothers’ milk for up to two years,” said Ashjian, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The lone calves, about two months old and too far offshore to swim back to land, would likely succumb to starvation and drowning, the researchers concluded.

[snip]

The researchers think that the mothers had to swim farther and farther from shore to find ice for the calves to rest on and eventually had to abandon them in waters too deep for the mothers to reach food. Ice was “virtually absent” throughout the area where the scientists saw the lone calves.

(More on walruses and decreasing sea ice here.)

By 2050, grandparents may have to explain to their grandchildren what a polar bear was - not what a polar bear is. Grandparents might have to tell them “When I was a kid, the North Pole was really, really cold,”. They might also have to tell the youngsters that “People didn’t used to fight over the Arctic,”… and history teachers may describe two different “cold wars”.

The more cynical, astute, and reality-based history teachers might use Fox News footage to teach their students about the new “cold war”:

In a new series billed by Fox News as the “Race for the Arctic,” the network has responded by sending a reporter to Greenland to document first-hand observations of glaciers receding, icebergs breaking off, and other drastic climate-changing effects.

But if you think that Fox’s “race for the arctic” is a race to educate and inform the public about global warming, you are mistaken. In fact, from Fox’s perspective, the “race” is actually a race for oil. Fox News reporter Jonathan Hunt explained:

The melting ice cap is making the Arctic’s resources much more accessible. Now that is vital. Because beneath the Arctic Ocean, scientists estimate there may be a full 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves. There is now a race on to get to those reserves.

Here’s the Fox broadcast:

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