Cold Air Currents: Articles of interest
"The NDA has asked General Electric to come up with a detailed proposal, including costings, of how to licence and build a nuclear fast reactor on the Sellafield site to burn the plutonium stockpile without the need to first convert it to Mox fuel."Fast breeder reactors promise to close the nuclear fuel cycle, by using the 'waste' of traditional reactors as fuel.
There is a distinct and categorical correlation between the energy consumption and income of a nation — each reinforcing the other. Look around you: every step into progress comes with an addition of demand for energy — cars, ships and aircraft to move, hospitals to give quality healthcare, education, as it follows the model of e-connectivity, production of more and better goods, irrigation for better farming. In fact, every element of our lives is increasingly going to become energy-intensive — that is a necessary prerequisite for development.
... technical analysis for a group of developing countries says Western nations have a duty to absorb CO2 over the coming decades.
---Clouding all issues remains the Kyoto accord. Japan seems to have firmly entered the camp declaring Kyoto a dead issue, joining Russia and Canada (signatories). Can there be doubt this is due to their desire to increase emissions through increased use of coal and gas in electricity generation, as plans for nuclear expansions were scuttled by Fukushima?
"Japan is particularly concerned about losing economic competitiveness given that its main economic rivals are not covered by any internationally binding targets.
"The world's number one emitter (China) has no obligations under Kyoto, the number two emitter (US) is not a party and the number three emitter (India) has no obligations,"
What these findings illustrate is that the term ‘Energy’ is often confused with ‘Electricity', a mistake often made in the media and in Government communications. Electricity is actually projected to be the smallest component of Scotland’s energy demand (heat and transport energy being greater).
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Any 21st century energy policy must be sustainable. To guide the development of sustainable energy policy, the Institution created the ‘Energy Hierarchy’, a simple tool stating that energy policy must start with energy demand reduction, and then proceed with improving energy efficiency before considering different types of energy supply...Only when the first two tiers of the Hierarchy have been fulfilled, should more effective ways of supplying energy be considered. Current Scottish energy policy fails in this regard by promoting supply-side technologies before first dealing with demand-side issues.
"The plummeting costs of solar mean we've got no option but to act so that we stay within budget and not threaten the whole viability of the Fits scheme," said Barker. "Although I fully realise that adjusting to the new lower tariffs will be a big challenge for many firms, it won't come as a surprise to many in the solar industry who've themselves acknowledged the big fall in costs and the big increase in their rate of return over the past year."
The department of energy and climate change admitted its expectations had been far too low, with three times as much solar installed as it had projected, with over 100,000 installations so far.
The cut will almost double the payback period for householders, meaning someone installing £10-12,000 solar panels will only be in credit after 18 years rather than 10. The rate will be reduced from 43.3p per kWh of solar electricity to just 21p, cutting returns from around 7% to 4%."
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Tuesday certified an amended version of the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR), the third-generation reactor design offered separately by GE-Hitachi and Toshiba, which has been chosen for new nuclear builds at the South Texas Project (STP) site. The NRC’s decision means that nuclear developers in the U.S. can use the reactor..."'via Blog this'
"...two nuclear plants produce one-third of the country's total power output, but the share is expected to grow to 50 per cent around 2025, with two new reactors at Temelin.
By 2060, nuclear power is expected to account for 80 per cent of the mix, according to a revamped energy strategy drafted by the Czech industry ministry and due to be submitted to the government by the end of the year."
'via Blog this'Population is the issue you blame if you can't admit to your own impacts: it's not us consuming, it's those brown people reproducing. It seems to be a reliable rule of environmental politics that the richer you are, the more likely you are to place population growth close to the top of the list of crimes against the planet.
The new report, inflated though its figures seem to be, will gravely disappoint the population obsessives. It cites Paul Murtaugh of Oregon State University, whose research shows that:
"An extra child born today in the United States, would, down the generations, produce an eventual carbon footprint seven times that of an extra child in China, 55 times that of an Indian child or 86 times that of a Nigerian child."
"The "real enemy here," Mr. Rowe continues, isn't the EPA. "It's what a whole lot of people who call themselves entrepreneurs, but really are living on their lobbyist, are doing getting legislators around the country to require utilities to buy power from stuff that has no connection with the economics at all.""
"Global warming is real, according to a major study released today. Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, teh Berkeley Earth Sufrace Temperature study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1 degree C since the mid-1950's"
