Nuclear

Saudis still planning more nukes. Do they know something we don’t?

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Despite the plans of major electricity users around the world to pull away from nuclear power after Fukushima, Saudi Arabia has announced that it’s planning to start building power reactors at a breakneck pace. This could be yet another sign that Matt Simmons was right about the Saudi oil peak, signalling the beginning of the end of the Oil Age. But we have to wonder if the Oil Sheiks can control their new atomic toy.

Nukes are forever

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Danish director Michael Madsen’s ‘Into Eternity’ masterfully debunks industry claims that nuclear power is ‘clean’ energy. And its deadpan Nordic style and lush cinematography is hauntingly beautiful, creating a meditative mood on the deeply troubling topic of nuclear waste. English and Finnish with subtitles. 75 minutes.

Germany exits the atom

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Chancellor Angela Merkel surprised many with her May 30 announcement of a complete shut down of all Germany’s reactors by January 1st, 2022 and the shutdown of 14 of Germany’s total of 17 reactors well before that date.  The German chancellor has, in nine months, gone from touting nuclear plants as a safe “bridge” to renewable energy and easing regulatory constraints on extending reactor lifetimes, to pushing the biggest and fastest nuclear exit strategy in any country using nuclear power.

Can renewable energy outshine fossil fuels?

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I’m not popular with environmentalists when I tell them that renewables can only provide a small fraction of the energy that fossil fuels do in powering industrial civilization. In fact, I was recently called a liar at the screening of an anti-nuke film for suggesting so.

How to wreck a planet 101

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Here’s one simple fact without which our deepening energy crisis makes no sense: the world economy is structured in such a way that standing still in energy production is not an option. In order to satisfy the staggering needs of older industrial powers like the United States along with the voracious thirst of rising powers like China, global energy must grow substantially every year. Even if usage grows somewhat more slowly than projected, any failure to satisfy the world’s requirements produces a perception of scarcity, which also means rising fuel prices. These are precisely the conditions we see today and should expect for the indefinite future. It is against this backdrop that three crucial developments of 2011 are changing the way we are likely to live on this planet for the foreseeable future.

Seymour Hersh on Iran’s nuclear capability, the Arab uprisings and Obama’s isolation

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is back in the news this week with another explosive article that is ruffling some feathers at the White House. Seymour Hersh says the United States might attack Iran based on distorted estimates of Iran’s nuclear and military threat—just like it did with Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. Hersh reveals that despite using Iranian informants and cutting-edge surveillance technology, U.S. officials have been unable to find decisive evidence that Iran has been moving enriched uranium to an underground weapon-making center.

Also in this interview are Hersh’s views on the growing independence of US intelligence agencies, Obama’s isolation and the impact of the Arab Spring. [Excerpts]

Nuclear Fusion: the elusive genie

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The recent announcement by two Italian researchers of a new method of attaining energy from nuclear fusion has brought back hopes of an easy and inexpensive way of generating energy. It is almost if the nuclear genie that Walt Disney had created in the 1950s is back with new promises of energy “too cheap to meter.” But what exactly do we expect from fusion? Why do we think it could solve our problems? Perhaps, these possibilities have been much overrated.