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Fukushima residents tour German renewable village ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

1 Dec

A group of Japanese from the Fukushima area visited Germany to learn about sustainable energy.

The group, organized and led by representatives of Greenpeace Japan, arrived Wednesday in the northeastern German village of Feldheim to learn how its 145 residents have taken advantage of the energy generated by a nearby windfarm and a biofuel plant that burns the waste from a local pig farm to become an entirely self-sustaining, energy-positive village.

via Fukushima residents tour German renewable village ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion.

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Fukushima and the inevitability of accidents | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

1 Dec

Governments regulate risky industrial systems such as nuclear power plants in hopes of making them less risky, and a variety of formal and informal warning systems can help society avoid catastrophe. Governments, businesses, and citizens respond when disaster occurs. But recent history is rife with major disasters accompanied by failed regulation, ignored warnings, inept disaster response, and commonplace human error. Furthermore, despite the best attempts to forestall them, “normal” accidents will inevitably occur in the complex, tightly coupled systems of modern society, resulting in the kind of unpredictable, cascading disaster seen at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Government and business can always do more to prevent serious accidents through regulation, design, training, and mindfulness. Even so, some complex systems with catastrophic potential are just too dangerous to exist, because they cannot be made safe, regardless of human effort.

via Fukushima and the inevitability of accidents | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

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The Fracturing of Pennsylvania – NYTimes.com

21 Nov

The people of Amwell are no strangers to the price of development — the loss of a farm’s spring, the sinking of a family home when the coal mine burrows beneath it — or the price of its absence — shuttered mills and lost jobs. But given our energy needs, the use of fracking and the number of wells are likely to grow. The question is whether regulations to address environmental and health issues can keep pace with a booming industry.

via The Fracturing of Pennsylvania – NYTimes.com.

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Did Fukushima kill the nuclear renaissance No, that renaissance died right here at home – The Tech

16 Nov

Bottom line: right now, independently of Fukushima, nuclear power doesn’t make economic sense.

On the eve of the Tohoku earthquake, U.S. nuclear power looked just as moribund as it is today. The cause of this decline is not renewed concerns about safety, or even that old red herring, waste disposal — instead, it is simple economics. Other technologies, particularly natural gas, offer much cheaper power than nuclear both today and in the foreseeable future.

In 2009, the MIT Future of Nuclear Power study released an update to its 2003 estimate of the costs of nuclear power. Estimating a capital cost of $4,000/kW and a fuel cost of $0.67/MMBtu, the study’s authors projected a cost of new nuclear power of 6.6 cents/kWh. Using the same modeling approach, the cost of electricity from a natural gas plant with capital costs of $850/kW and fuel costs of $5.16/MMBtu would be 4.4 cents/kWh.

What’s worse, the estimate of 6.6 cents/kWh assumes that nuclear power is able to secure financing at the same interest rate as natural gas plants.

via Did Fukushima kill the nuclear renaissance No, that renaissance died right here at home – The Tech.

Devastation at Japan Site, Seen Up Close – NYTimes.com

16 Nov

As we head into the holiday season remember nuclear radiation, the gift that keeps on giving:

While no one died in the nuclear accident, the environmental and human costs were clear during the drive to the plant through the 12-mile evacuation zone.

Untended plants outside an abandoned florist were withered, and dead. Crows had taken over a gas station. The dosimeters of the journalists on the bus buzzed constantly, recording levels that ticked up with each passing mile: 0.7 microsieverts in Naraha, at the edge of the evacuation zone, 1.5 at Tomioka, where Bavarian-style gingerbread houses had served as the welcome center for Fukushima Daiichi. It was there that Japanese visitors to the site were told a myth perpetuated over decades in Japan: that nuclear power is absolutely safe.

The level recorded just outside the center Saturday was 13 times the recommended maximum annual dosage for civilians.

At the plant, journalists, outfitted in full contamination suits, were kept aboard the bus in recognition of the much higher radiation levels there.

via Devastation at Japan Site, Seen Up Close – NYTimes.com.

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U.S. to Delay Decision on Pipeline Until After Election – NYTimes.com

10 Nov

The proposed project by a Canadian pipeline company had put President Obama in a political vise, squeezed between demands for secure energy sources and the jobs the project will bring, and the loud opposition of environmental advocates who have threatened to withhold electoral support next year if he approves it.

via U.S. to Delay Decision on Pipeline Until After Election – NYTimes.com.

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Here Comes Solar Energy – Krugman

7 Nov

Fracking NO!

… special treatment for fracking makes a mockery of free-market principles. Pro-fracking politicians claim to be against subsidies, yet letting an industry impose costs without paying compensation is in effect a huge subsidy. They say they oppose having the government “pick winners,” yet they demand special treatment for this industry precisely because they claim it will be a winner.

Solar YES! The cost of panels is dropping through the floor.

… Solyndra’s failure was actually caused by technological success: the price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn’t keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues — and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

via Here Comes Solar Energy – NYTimes.com.

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As Wind Energy Use Grows, Utilities Seek to Stabilize Power Grid – NYTimes.com

5 Nov

Sometimes wind power produced too much energy:

But with the rise of wind energy, utilities in the Pacific Northwest are sometimes dealing with the opposite: moments when there is too much electricity for the grid to soak up.

So in a novel pilot project, they have recruited consumers to draw in excess electricity when that happens, storing it in a basement water heater or a space heater outfitted by the utility. The effort is rooted in some brushes with danger.

via As Wind Energy Use Grows, Utilities Seek to Stabilize Power Grid – NYTimes.com.

Colorado – Boulder Votes to Remove Power Company – NYTimes.com

3 Nov

It’s called LOCALIZATION.

It’s called TAKING CONTROL of your life.

It’s the FUTURE.

Voters in Boulder passed two measures on Tuesday that would allow the city to lay plans to start a municipal utility and cut ties with Xcel Energy, its current, corporate power provider. Proponents say the move will give the city greater leeway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

via Colorado – Boulder Votes to Remove Power Company – NYTimes.com.

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Fears of Fission Rise at Stricken Nuclear Plant in Japan – NYTimes.com

3 Nov

Nuclear Disaster, the gift that keeps on giving:

The unexpected bursts — something akin to flare-ups after a major fire — are extremely unlikely to presage a large-scale nuclear reaction with the resulting large-scale production of heat and radiation. But they threaten to increase the amount of dangerous radioactive elements leaking from the complex and complicate cleanup efforts, raising startling questions about how much remains uncertain at the plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

via Fears of Fission Rise at Stricken Nuclear Plant in Japan – NYTimes.com.

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