Thursday July 3, 2008, 6:47 am
Clean electricity from 'new renewables' - solar, wind, biomass and geothermal power - deserves strong support. But the collective capacity of these technologies to produce electricity in the decades ahead is limited. The International Energy Agency projects that, even with conitnued subsidy and research support, these new renewables can only provide around 6% of world electricity by 2030.

Environmentalists have played a valuable role in warning that catastrophic climate change is a real and imminent danger. It is crucially important that they be equally realistic about solutions. Even with maximum conservation - and a landscape covered by solar panels and windmills- we would still need large-scale source of around-the-clock electricity to meet much of our energy needs.

Thursday July 3, 2008, 7:06 am
Thanks Hans. Very good points.

Thursday July 3, 2008, 8:02 am
Thanks for this informative article Hans.

Thursday July 3, 2008, 4:06 pm

Italy Embraces Nuclear Power
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL NYT
Published: May 23, 2008

ROME — Italy announced Thursday that within five years it planned to resume building nuclear energy plants, two decades after a public referendum resoundingly banned nuclear power and deactivated all its reactors.

“By the end of this legislature we will put down the foundation stone for the construction in our country of a group of new-generation nuclear plants,” said Claudio Scajola, minister of economic development. “An action plan to go back to nuclear power can not be delayed anymore.”

The change for Italy is a striking sign of the times, reflecting growing concern in many European countries over the skyrocketing price of oil and energy security, as well as the warming effects of carbon emissions from fossil fuels. All have combined to make this once-scorned form of energy far more palatable.

“Italy has had the most dramatic, the most public turnaround, but the sentiments against nuclear are reversing very quickly all across Europe — Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and more,” said Ian Hore-Lacey, spokesman for the World Nuclear Association, an industry group based in London.

Nuclear power’s rehabilitation was underscored earlier this year when John Hutton, British Business Secretary, grouped it with “other low-carbon sources of energy” like biofuels. It had barely been mentioned in the government’s action plan on energy three years earlier.

Echoing the sentiment on Thursday, Mr. Scajola said: “Only nuclear plants safely produce energy on a vast scale with competitive costs, respecting the environment.”

A number of European countries have banned or restricted nuclear power over the last 20 years, including Italy, which closed all its plants. Germany and Belgium have long prohibited the building of new reactors, although operating ones were allowed to run their natural lifespan. France was one of the few countries that continued relying heavily on nuclear power.

Environmental groups in Italy immediately attacked any plan to bring back nuclear power. Giuseppe Onufrio, a director of Greenpeace Italy, called it “a declaration of war.”

Emma Bonino, an opposition politician who is vice president of the Italian Senate, said that it made no economic sense to build nuclear plants because they would not be ready for 2o years or longer.

“We should be investing more in solar and wind,” she said. “We should be moving much more quickly to improve energy efficiency, of buildings, for example. That’s something Italy has never done anything with.”

But conditions were very different in the 1980s, when European countries turned away from nuclear power: Oil cost under $50 a barrel, global warming was a fringe science and climate change had not been linked to man-made emissions. Perhaps more important for the public psyche, Europe’s nuclear bans and restrictions were almost all enacted in the years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union.

The equation has changed: Today, with oil approaching $150 a barrel, most European countries, which generally have no oil and gas resources of their own, have been forced by finances to consider new forms of energy — and fast. New nuclear plants take 20 years to build. Also, instead of Chernobyl, Europeans have more recently watched in horror as Russian president Vladamir Putin cut off the natural gas supply to Ukraine in a price dispute, leaving that country in darkness.

New green technologies, like solar power, wind and biofuel, have not yet been scaled up to the point where they can form the backbone of a country’s energy strategy, and it is not clear that they will ever achieve that success.

Italy is the largest net energy importer in Europe, but nearly all European countries rely heavily on imported energy — particularly oil and gas.

ENEL, Italy’s leading energy provider, announced this year it would close its oil-fire power plants because the fuel had become unaffordable. Italians pay the highest energy prices in Europe. ENEL has been building new coal plants to fill the void left by oil, a move that created controversy in itself: coal plants are cheaper but create relatively high levels of carbon emissions, even using the type of new “clean coal” technology that ENEL had planned.

A few European countries, like Germany and Poland, could likewise fall back on their abundant coal reserves if they turned away from oil and gas — but most of the coal mined in both countries is low grade and highly polluting.

After today’s government announcement opening Italy to nuclear power ENEL’s managing director, Fulvio Conti, said “We are ready.” But he added that “new regulation and strong agreement on the plan within the country” would be needed.

ENEL, which operates power plants in a number of European countries already has at least one nuclear plant, in Bulgaria, and has been researching so called 4th generation nuclear reactors. Italy old reactors still exist, but are too outdated to be re-opened and new ones would have to be built.

The Italian government laid out few specifics plan to back its announcement and in calls to the ministry, officials said they were still studying issues like exactly what kind of plants could be built and, whether a new referendum would be legally required to re-open Italy to nuclear power.

Indeed, Marzia Marzioli, who leads a citizens’ campaign against new coal plants in Italy, said nuclear was equally repellent. “As with coal, nuclear energy is the exact opposite of what we would like for Italy.

“It is a choice that doesn’t consider the alternatives,” such as solar power, she said.

To build nuclear plants, Italy would almost certainly have to improve its system of dealing with nuclear waste. Two hundred and thirty five tons of nuclear fuels are still being stored in the old plants that were shut down years ago.

Ms. Bonino said she was concerned that Italy would be unable to safely process nuclear waste from new reactors and also that fuel could be supplied to rogue states trying to acquire nuclear capability. “I think this plan is being offered to satisfy the business community but I worry that security and waste are issues,” she said.

We have all together done nothing much too long! The first oil crisis did not have enough impact...otherwise we would drive clean energy cars why are there no electrical cars on the streets powered with wind and solar energy?

Thursday July 3, 2008, 4:30 pm
Wozu brauchen wir Kernkraftwerke, bei uns kommt der Strom aus der Steckdose!

Thursday July 3, 2008, 5:45 pm
Auch bei uns, Johann, und in der Steckdose gibt's Wind-energie! Und bei euch?

Vergessen wir nicht: Atomkraft? Nein danke!
Sonne, Wind, Erde, Wasser - geben uns reichlich reine Energie!

(A translation if somebody would need it:
We have electricity in the wall socket, too, Johann, and there's wind-power in it. How about yours?

Let's not forget: Nuclear power? No thanks!
Sun, wind, earth, water - give us plenty of clean energy!)

Friday July 4, 2008, 12:37 am
No nuclear power in Austria thats for sure...accept the imports from France...Perhaps even sold as green Hydro power? Sun wind and water would not be enough here in Tyrol, Unless we would start from scratch...Forget the cars we drive forget the houses and start all over again...since we cannot within the next 20-30 years we will still need wood, oil and so on....

Saturday July 5, 2008, 1:16 pm
Yes, we figured it out the same day, and because it didn't work out over there, the world never found out.

What it is is this: the lead stores the rods. The fissile rods are brought out. Fission occurs. This produces heat. Inceased heat increases fission.

Now, what happens next is the bone of contention. If this process continues, eventually the rods get so hot, they literally melt the nuclear reactor and the dirt underneath it, melting all the way down to the center of Earth, in other words, the 'China Syndrome'.

This is what happened in Chernobyl.

What never made the nes is that the exact same experiment was conducted in the United States. The diffrence? It's so simple, it takes a genius to realize it. Heat compensating bands between the uranium.

It works just like a bridge - it gets hot and cold, the bands compensate for the expansion and contraction of the bridge segments.

In the same way, the bands in the rods allow the uranium to expand when it gets hot.

The experiment worked. The rods kept getting hotter...and hotter...until finally, they reached a point and never got hotter.

All because of something as simple as bands.

We have enough wind, solar, tidal, geothermal and wave for all our needs. All of these except solar have parity, and solar has recently achieved parity in Hawaii. (Bear in mind, Hawaii is 22 cents a kwatt hour, so solar is about that price. Some states are paying less than seven cents kwatt hour so it will be years before solar achieves parity nation-wide.)

What else can we do to reduce energy costs? Care2 is leading the way vegetarian/flexitarian. I believe in family planning. I have no children, and plan on one child and adoption.

Saturday July 5, 2008, 1:39 pm
Painting nuclear with a green brush may not be as realistic as this piece shows. Just how dependent is nuclear on fossil fuels? From the mining, transporting, processing, construction of power plants, construction of waste repositories, and upkeep on all of these... They are all mostly fossil-based, right?

Our safest reactor is the sun. If alternative energy technologies had been funded to the same level as nuclear, we would be swimming in clean energy! Most of the population lives near an ocean. Wind on the surface, currents beneath, and thermal energy conversion could all be used *NOW!* OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) units can be placed almost everywhere, quietly and efficiently producing electricity 24-hours a day, 365 days a year. Similarly, Hot Dry Rock technologies use the temperature differences between near surface rock and warmer rock temperatures down drill shafts. None of these have been funded the way nuclear technology has, so we are not comparing them on an even playing field.

No one solution is our silver bullet. We need all of them, including moderate use of smart nuclear power.

Saturday July 5, 2008, 1:41 pm

Visit 'killowatours.org for fab info for home and more

Saturday July 5, 2008, 1:56 pm
Interesting about Italy. This country also,

Italy's Italcemente is the world's fifth-largest cement producer. It is looking beyond reducing CO2 emissions by creating a cement that actually breaks down airborne pollutants.

While Italcemente's smog-eating cement has been used in Europe for several years, it was released in the United States only in 2007 under the name TX Active. It contains titanium dioxide, which, in the presence of sunlight, acts as a photocatalyer, hastening the decomposition of such pollutants as nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and ozone. TX Active also keeps a building shiny white – a quality admired by architects – by preventing the buildup of pollutants on the surface.

Research suggests that if 15 percent of the surface area of Milan, Italy, were covered in TX Active, air pollutants there could be reduced by 50 percent.

Did you know?

Concrete is very widely used in construction.

Its manufacture results in 7-10% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

This is more than emissions from aircraft around the world.

We drive our cars on it, we build skyscrapers with it.
But concrete, one of the most common building materials in the world, has an ugly secret: It's a major source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which contribute to global warming.

Roughly 5 to 10 percent of global CO2 emissions are related to the manufacture and transportation of cement, a major ingredient of concrete.
With cement production expected to grow exponentially in coming decades, the industry is trying to address its environmental challenges.

"There is not one single cement company on this planet that is not thinking about how to [reduce emissions]," says Franz-Josef Ulm, a professor of civil engineering who researches concrete at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

The manufacture of cement is relatively efficient when compared with other building materials, such as steel and wood. The problem is the scale at which it's produced – roughly 2.4 billion tons in 2006 and growing, Professor Ulm calculates.

"But there is also a great advantage to the mass production," Ulm says. "Any small change you make to it has a big impact [on CO2 emissions]."
Worldwide, manufacturers are experimenting with using organic waste materials as a substitute for some of the cement used in concrete. These materials can replace up to 25 percent of the cement in the mix. Less cement means less greenhouse gas produced.

A few coal-rich nations use fly ash, a residue created when coal is burned, as a supplementary cementing material. Brazil's excess of bagasse, the dry pulpy residue left after the extraction of juice from sugar cane, has proved a reliable composite in concrete. Likewise, the fine gray-white ash of rice husks, chemically similar to cement, is increasingly used as a substitute ingredient in Asia.

Despite these regional successes, some industry researchers doubt they are the answer.
"Rice husks are really not available worldwide in amounts that will make a difference," says Claus Pade, senior consultant at the nonprofit Concrete Centre at the Danish Technological Institute in Copenhagen.

Saturday July 5, 2008, 1:59 pm

http://www.care2.com/news/member/239636036/801227
An inspiring film on energy conservation, Killowatt ours.

Saturday July 5, 2008, 4:53 pm
Sorry but nothing has changed about nuclear energy, the same problems exist today like they did in the 70s but like drilling in ANWR and the gulf, we are being driven against a wall by forces that wanted this in the beginning. They just sat back and let this all happen and now they are saying we have no choice but, and I'm calling their bull, because we do have other avenues and one is conservation and cutting back on usage.
Those of us who have learned to survive on less will do just that survive. It's those people who are afraid of losing some of their conveniences that are pushing this. Those who push for an easy way out need to learn that sometimes there's 'just no easy way out'.

Saturday July 5, 2008, 4:53 pm
Sorry but nothing has changed about nuclear energy, the same problems exist today like they did in the 70s but like drilling in ANWR and the gulf, we are being driven against a wall by forces that wanted this in the beginning. They just sat back and let this all happen and now they are saying we have no choice but, and I'm calling their bull, because we do have other avenues and one is conservation and cutting back on usage.
Those of us who have learned to survive on less will do just that survive. It's those people who are afraid of losing some of their conveniences that are pushing this. Those who push for an easy way out need to learn that sometimes there's 'just no easy way out'.