Energy Policy

Nuclear – Mar 16

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-Older nuclear plants pose safety challenge: IAEA
-Protesters link arms around the world to decry nuclear power
The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster – One Year Later – Radio Ecoshock
-No Primrose Path
-Australia passes controversial nuclear waste bill
-IAEA: “significant” nuclear growth despite Fukushima

ODAC Newsletter – Mar 16

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Finally, a plausible explanation for the Obama-Cameron political orgy — ‘love-in’ doesn’t quite do it — in Washington this week. For Cameron the benefit of this floorshow was obvious — like Blair with Bush, revelling in the reflected glory of US power — but Obama’s motive remained a mystery. What could possibly justify gifting all that folderol and face time with the world’s most powerful man? Yesterday we got the answer: international cover for a politically motivated release from strategic petroleum reserves, that’s what.

The peak oil crisis: surging gasoline

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The Washington Post is beginning to understand the realities underlying America’s gasoline price problem and look behind the political bombast far enough to develop a somewhat realistic appraisal of our energy situation.

However, the newspaper has to take one more giant step before it comes completely in touch with reality. One searches in vain for any mention in a recent article that conventional petroleum production, from which our high-priced gasoline is made, has been stagnant for the last six years – i.e. global oil production is peaking. Once this threshold is crossed we (the press, the administration, political candidates, and the body politic) can begin a meaningful discussion of our options for the future.

A tough-oil world

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The principal cause of higher prices — a fundamental shift in the structure of the oil industry — cannot be reversed, and so oil prices are destined to remain high for a long time to come.

We are now entering a world whose grim nature has yet to be fully grasped. This pivotal shift has been brought about by the disappearance of relatively accessible and inexpensive petroleum — “easy oil,” in the parlance of industry analysts; in other words, the kind of oil that powered a staggering expansion of global wealth over the past 65 years and the creation of endless car-oriented suburban communities. This oil is now nearly gone.

Tough-oil reserves will provide most of the world’s new oil in the years ahead. One thing is clear: even if they can replace easy oil in our lives, the cost of everything oil-related — whether at the gas pump, in oil-based products, in fertilizers, in just about every nook and cranny of our lives — is going to rise. Get used to it. If things proceed as presently planned, we will be in hock to big oil for decades to come.

Contamination fears linger for Japanese children, workers one year after Fukushima meltdown

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We go to Japan to speak with Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of the Kyoto-based group Green Action, as Japan marks the first anniversary of the massive earthquake and tsunami that left approximately 20,000 dead or missing and triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It was the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl…We also speak with Saburo Kitajima, a contract laborer and union organizer from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. “The workers at the Fukushima plant are currently working under extreme circumstances.”

Review: Petroplague by Amy Rogers

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We have a brand-new entrant to the oil-eating-bug-runs-amok tradition: the self-published novel Petroplague. It’s a Crichton-esque thriller written by microbiology professor-turned author Amy Rogers, who says she aims to “blur the line between fact and fiction so well that you need a Ph.D. to figure out where one ends and the other begins.” The plot involves a batch of experimental, oil-hungry bacteria inadvertently loosed upon Los Angeles, which proceed to wreak a near biblical swath of destruction. Part ecology lesson and part cautionary tale, Petroplague is an entertaining entrĂ©e into the subject of oil depletion and its implications for society, human health and the environment.