 The profit potential of the global nuclear industry is closely tracked by several financial services
The growth of nuclear energy over the next two-and-half decades will vastly shift energy use from carbon-based to carbon-free uses. The key elements of this shift include significant change from fossil fuel sources for electricity generation to uranium for nuclear reactors. It follows there will be greater use of electricity in industrial processing and heating. Another aspect of the shift in energy use will be to use nuclear energy instead of natural gas for water desalinization. especially in arid countries or those with high population growth and parallel pollution problems. The transportation sector, which accounts for much of today's use of oil, will benefit with high speed electrified rail service for people and freight. The growth of global markets for electric cars will depend more on battery technologies than electricity supply. According to the World Nuclear Association, worldwide nuclear energy is expected to grow in substantially in 10 key countries by 2030. The World Nuclear Association outlook data ... read more >>
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“Consumption is a tricky issue for us, but we need to start talking about it.” So says Peter Lehner, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. This is welcome news. Like the other big environmental NGOs, NRDC has shied away from telling people what to eat (less red meat and dairy), what kinds of cars to drive (smaller ones), whether to fly (not too much) or how many homes to own (one). That may be about to change. I spoke to Lehner last week after a three-day symposium on Climate, Mind and Behavior, sponsored by NRDC and the Garrison Institute, a nonprofit whose program on “transformational ecology” is led by Jonathan F.P. Rose, a New York real estate developer who also sits on NRDC’s board. The event was designed explore ways to change behavior on a scale big enough to have a major impact on global GHG emissions. The stellar group of participants included enviromentalists (Paul Hawken, Van Jones and Gus Speth), investors and business people (Mark Fulton and Bruce Kahn of Deutsche Bank, Jesse Fink of MissionPoint Capital Partners, Jack Jacometti of Shell) and academics (Dr. Benjamin Barber, John Gowdy of RPI, Jon Krosnick of Stanford and ... read more >>
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If you ask Jim Hansen to name the single most important thing required to avert catastrophic climate change, he’ll say this: don’t burn all the coal (nor unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands and oil shales). Ideally, we would also prefer to leave some of the oil, and much of the natural gas, in the ground — or at least use it for other purpose that didn’t require combusting it, such as for chemical feedstocks and lubricants. But the latter is, alas, unlikely.  As Described in Storms of Our Grandchildren (and elsewhere), if we accept that all the proven reserves of oil/gas will be burned (i.e., consumed up to the dashed line in the figure above), and yet also required that all coal combustion be phased out by the year 2030, then the level of atmospheric CO2 would likely peak at about 425 ppm. At that point, improved forestry, soil carbon sequestration and potentially geoengineering, could be used to gradually draw CO2 back down to levels of around 350 ppm — a value necessary to restore the Earth’s present energy imbalance of ~0.75 W/m2. In short, we’d have overshoot, but have a decent chance of recovering the climate system to a near-Holocene state before amplifying ...
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I got this a few days after the release, but this rural energy savings program (introduced by my new favorite Senator Jeff Merkley) compliments nicely with the Building Star and Home Star energy efficiency programs that have been unveiled. Now can we pass one of these? Press release below March 10, 2010 WASHINGTON, D.C. – Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley introduced legislation today to create jobs and lower energy bills for families and small businesses in rural communities by promoting energy-saving home renovations. The Rural Energy Savings Program would assist rural electric co-ops in offering “on-bill” financing to their customers, allowing families and businesses to repay the loan through savings on their monthly energy bill. Oregon has 18 electric co-ops serving communities across the state. Original co-sponsors of the Rural Energy Savings Program include Senators Jeff Merkley, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Tim Johnson (D-S.D), and Michael Bennett (D-Colo.). A companion bill in the House of Representatives was introduced by Representatives James Clyburn (D-S.C), Tom Perriello (D-Va.), Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), ... read more >>
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A good friend asked me the title question for this blog during the week. The question intrigued me enough to encourage some digging and computations. I would be interested in any questions that you have about the assumptions. Based on reading a number of different articles and checking through the tables provided by the Vermont Department of Health, the fluid that was leaking into the ground contained tritium at a concentration of approximately 2.5 million picocuries per liter. That is equal to 2.5 x 10^-6 curies per liter. The rate that it was leaving the pipe was roughly 100 gallons (370 liters) per day. If the leak had been going on for a year before being detected and stopped, the total quantity of fluid that left the pipe would equal 138,000 liters. The total activity released would be 0.35 curies. If a single person consumed every drop of that water, their whole body radiation dose would equal roughly 30 rem. According to a 1977 UNSCEAR study, the LD-50 (lethal dose for 50% of the population receiving the exposure) for tritium in adult rats was determined to be 1000 Rad. For the kind of low energy beta emissions that are produced by tritium, a rem is equal to a Rad. . ... read more >>
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Environmental groups file multiple legal challenges This blog post is an edited version of an article published in Fuel Cycle Week, V9:N366, March 3, 2010, by International Nuclear Associates, Washington, DC. The Sheep Mountain Alliance ( SMA), a Telluride, Colo., environmental group, and its legal counsel, the Energy Minerals Law Center ( EMLC), located in Durango, Colo, have taken a two-pronged approach to try to stop the development of the Pinion Ridge uranium mill. The 500 ton/day facility is being developed by Energy Fuels ( TSE:EFR) and will be located in Naturita, Colo., about 50 miles northwest of Telluride. The most significant legal action is a lawsuit filed in Montrose County District Court which alleges the County Commissioners erred by issuing a special use permit for industrial operations in an agricultural zone. Travis Stills, attorney for the Sheep Mountain Alliance, told FCW the claim is a uranium mill is not an allowed use in an agricultural zone and that the county should have re-zone the site to industrial uses before issuing the special use permit. Mediation may not work  For now a judge has told the county and the Sheep Mountain Alliance to develop a . ... read more >>
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The member nations of the European Union expect to achieve 20.3% renewable energy consumption by 2020, exceeding the 20% target. In a summary of national forecasts, the Commission says the EU will reach an overall share of 20.3% from renewable sources... ... read more >>
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As a sworn defender of the Constitution of the United States, I believe in the importance of making decisions at the right level. Our Constitution does a wonderful job of assigning limited powers to the federal government while reserving the remaining powers to states and individuals. There is healthy tension there and room for debate and discussion on the boundaries. One of the primary strengths of the Constitution and the union of states that it governs is the recognition that state boundaries are not absolute. The drafters recognized that taxation or other inhibitions of commerce among the various states would prevent achieving many of the benefits associated with being part of a larger, unified country. That is why Article 1, Section 8 gives the Congress of the federal government the right to regulate commerce among the various states and to ensure that "duties, imposts and excises" (i. e. taxes imposed by the federal government) are uniform among the states. I question the constitutionality of the assertion by the Vermont state legislature that they have the right to determine whether or not Vermont Yankee should be issued a certificate of public good. Shouldn't the ... read more >>
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Think of electrons as flotsam on a wave as it moves across the surface of the ocean. That's how scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) describe a previously unknown phenomenon, which they are calling "thermopower waves." A thermal wave is a moving pulse of heat that travels along microscopic wires known as carbon nanotubes to create an electrical current. (See the video below.) Michael Strano, MIT's Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, described this discovery at the press briefing for last week's MIT Energy Conference in Boston. Strano was the senior author of a paper describing the new findings that appeared in Nature Materials earlier this week; the lead author was Wonjoon Choi, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering at MIT. Carbon nanotubes are submicroscopic hollow tubes made of a "chicken-wire-like" lattice of carbon atoms. Nanotechnology is an emerging scientific research area with wide ranging potential applications in medicine, electronics, and energy. Because this is such a new discovery, Strano said, it's hard to predict exactly what the practical applications will be. ... read more >>
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Coles Hill site has an estimated 119 million pounds of uranium worth over $5 billion at current prices  This blog post is an edited version of an article published in Fuel Cycle Week, V9:N366, March 3, 2010, by International Nuclear Associates, Washington, DC.
The long-awaited study on the environmental and economic impacts of the giant Coles Hills deposit, a proposed uranium mine site in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, will start this month. The National Research Council will undertake an 18-month, $1.4 million review of the question of whether uranium can be mined and milled safely at the site. [study website] What's riding on the outcome is the development of a mine with a NI 43-101 report detailing a measured and indicated resource of 119 million pounds of uranium. Also, according to company managers, Virginia Energy (CVE:VAE) plans construction of a mill capable of producing 3.5 million pounds a year. Large mill needed for the mine The output yield of the mine is expected to be 1-2 lbs of uranium per ton of ore. Assuming the mine operates 350 days/year, the mill would have to process 5,000 tons/day of ore to produce 10,000/lb/day of U308. This is a large mill by ... read more >>
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