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Suddenly A Nasty Fight over Subsidies for Nukes in Europe
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com
The meltdowns at Fukushima Number 1 that have caused so much havoc have also paralyzed Japan’s nuclear power industry. The last of its 54 reactors will be taken off line in May for scheduled maintenance, but none has been restarted due to local resistance. “Deindustrialization” is gripping the power-starved country. TEPCO, owner of the Fukushima plant, is being bailed out with trillions of yen in taxpayer money, or rather in debt that Japan has to issue even as it’s sinking deeper into a fiscal quagmire. Meanwhile, new revelations seeped out about the nuclear industry’s controlling relationship with the government: conspiracies had squashed stiffer regulations. Japan Inc. at work. Five years later, the people of Fukushima paid the price. For that fiasco, the emails that documented it, its deadly and ongoing impact, and the anger it caused, read.... A Revolt, the Quiet Japanese Way.
And now, halfway around the world, in the European Union, nuclear power industries are also lining up to suck at the teat of the taxpayer, but ingeniously not taxpayers in their own countries, at least not directly, but taxpayers in other countries. Turns out, France, the UK, Poland, and the Czech Republic, which are all planning or building nuclear power plants, are pressuring the European Union to open up the spigot.
This emerged when the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung obtained letters the four had sent to Brussels in preparation for the meeting of the European economics and energy ministers later next week. Their goal: get the EU to reclassify nuclear energy as low-emission technology, a heavily subsidized category that includes solar and wind power; it would make nuclear power eligible for the same subsidies. Their argument: Europe's commitment to shift to low-emission power generation by 2050 would have to be “technology neutral.”
If the four countries succeed, the EU could subsidize not only construction of nuclear power plants but also the sale of their electricity to the tune of billions of euros—to be paid by all taxpayers in the EU via the EU budget, 20% of which falls upon German taxpayers. Alas, it’s precisely Germany that has decided to exit nuclear power.
After a decade of tergiversation about shifting from fossil and nuclear power to renewables, Germany reacted to the Fukushima disaster with lightning speed. Within three months, it revoked the licenses of 7 of its 17 nuclear power plants and then voted to exit nuclear power altogether by 2022, a very expensive undertaking. Hence, efforts to get German taxpayers to subsidize nuclear power in other countries aren’t going to go over very well.
France, on the other hand, is up to its neck in nuclear power: nearly 80% of its electricity production derives from it, part of which it exports to its neighbors. The government owns 85% of EDF, the utility in charge of the 58 reactors, and 78.9% of Areva, an industrial conglomerate focused on nuclear power. Both have run into difficulties. One of their costliest problems is the advanced EPR (European Pressurized Reactor), started in 2006, that is now mired in economic and political trouble, after huge cost overruns, technical difficulties, and endless delays. So EU subsidies would be one heck of a bailout.
The UK is planning 4 nuclear power plants, but construction hasn't begun as no one is eager to plow billions of pounds into a technology whose future is in question. But a hefty European subsidy would change that.
“The Trojan horse of nuclear states," is what Tobias Münchmeyer, a German energy expert at Greenpeace, called the reclassification of nuclear power. And he exhorted his government not to fall for it. It might end up shifting subsidies from sacrosanct renewable energies to nukes.
Ah yes, the ancient problem of subsidies. Bureaucrats and officials choose winners and losers and hand taxpayers the bill. In the jungle of EU regulations and subsidies, this fight could get nasty. So far, reactions have been muted. EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger would listen to the positions of the member states, he said. Officials in the German government declined to comment. In France, a spokesperson for Industry Minister Eric Besson came out swinging. "There is no French initiative in this direction," he said. Clearly, EU political maneuvering has started.
Back to Japan where the cozy relationship between the nuclear power industry and government is under attack. Though nothing may change in the end, the people are trying to make their voices heard, and sometimes it takes the form of something ... lighter. And utterly cynical. It shows just how much trust the people have left in TEPCO and the government.... Nuclear Contamination As Seen By Dark Japanese Humor (mostly pics).
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Clean up on Spent Fuel Pool 4.
Just like the marine life enjoys the oil they become mersed in because shipping oil is okay evidently.
wow that's pretty dark
have a nice day
I'm just hoping they can scrounge enough money to keep the pumps running on the SFPs and build dry casks to decommission the stupid things.
At the rate the economy is slumping it looks like they won't even be able to afford sand and borax for Chernobyl style burials.
I think that's sand and boron.
But, I've got an extra box of Borax in the laundry room it you think it will help.
Afterall, TEPCO did try throwing bath salts in one othe reactors at one point....Maybe you're right...They are in need of Borax.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-tracer-was-bat...
If this weren't so freakin sad, I'd be laughing may ass off.
Boron is a neutron poison. It stops the chain reaction by absorbing neutrons, and the resulting isotope is nonradioactive and stable. It does nothing to stop the radiation from fission products that are already present.
Laundry borax would work. Borosilicate 'Pyrex' glass would work. Or a high-tech metal boride compound would work. That latter item has some advantages, in that it cold survive the high temperatures of molten corium for a while. Metal boride rods pushed into a corium blob could help prevent recriticality events.
What I find amusing is that some sites have recommended taking small doses of boric acid internally, claiming it 'absorbs radiation' or some such nonsense. If you have a critical mass of fissionable material inside you, you've got problems that a little boron will not solve.
[edit]
Oh, and you add borax to the sand, not expecting it to enter the fissionable corium blob, but just in hopes that the resulting molten glass will eventually dilute the corium enough to stop fissioning and begin to cool off.
thorium seems to be the answer to pressurized radiation reactors.
technology has been around for decades,
why no dialogue about thorium as nuclear fuel?????
It's in the same place as the 'Unicorn turds as nuclear fuel' dialog, on Robotrader's blog ...
:)
Well, go ahead, tell us what you know.
Can I butt in?
Nuclear is a fuking disaster, economically and enviromentally
It's a sham energy and only politicians are dumb enough and corrupt enough to prop up this total failure
Hydrocarbons Rule. Game Over.
Paging Steve from Virginia ... please come to the white courtesy phone.
Thorium is like the nuclear industry's betamax. It somehow should've been 'better' but never quite caught on.
Why, you can practically drink FLiBe + daughter nuclides without harm. And there's some 'then-a-miracle-occurs' process by which neutron poisons are scrubbed from the melt, even while it's hotter than a Fukushima corium blob. And fluorides don't eat through every other substance on the periodic chart.
There, how's that for a discussion?
Urban R: Understandable language please!
<sarc off> (Fx'd fer'ya)
The only Thorium reactor design I have seen employs molten fluoride salts, specifically Lithium and Beryllium Fluorides, as a medium to suspend the Thorium proto-fuel. Supposedly a proof-of-concept reactor was built back in the '50s, and it worked, but it proved useless for breeding Plutonium, so the nuke-lab boffins shut it down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flibe_Energy
Some of the European nuclear development as well is in the thorium direction ... thorium has the 'downside' it does not produce suitable nuclear explosives for nuclear weapons, which is why the Americans put it on the shelf.
But thorium does seem to be the new wave of nuclear, in Europe and in China.
Once the lights start going out in Germany and Japan, and power gets much more expensive, they will likely be back on board too.
.... and India.
But, Banksters know, nothing big goes forward untill they control the real revenue stream from it.
The US has enough false flag materials. Everything in good order here.
No Comment! Germans need to lay off the Soylent Green!
beer drinkers over wine drinkers
ZZ TOP [ BEER DRINKERS & HELL RAISERS ] LIVE IN GERMANY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq7z3j-8L04
Nuclear energy is a low-emission technology unless you count radiation emissions.
Subsidies for a technology from Germany that it considers too dangerous and is phasing out? Not a chance in hell that Germany will agree. If France wants more nuclear weapons, let French taxpayers pay for them.
No, it takes enourmous amounts of cold fresh water (no seawater) to run them and massive amounts of fossile fuel/energy to build them, to process the uranium, and to run nuclear reprocessing plants. 40% of fresh water supply in France is used by the Nuclear industry. Only about 10% of the energy of fission processes is "captured" in steam turbine, the rest flies out the door inmediately.
That, and the Tritium and spent fuel emissions of EVERY fission nuclear plant.
The "low-emission" story is another PURE FANTASY.
"No, it takes enourmous amounts of cold fresh water (no seawater) to run them..."
Seawater is used for cooling all over the the world...the one closest to me (Crystal River) is an example.
http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/nuclear/state_profiles/florida/fl.html
And the manatees love the warm water discharge in the winter ;-)
"No, it takes enourmous amounts of cold fresh water (no seawater)"
Funny that every single nuclear power station in the UK is on the coast. Why? Because they use seawater for cooling.
They require fresh water to circulate inside the reactor. Salt water leads to corrosion, and maintenance on those things when they rust out is a beeyotch.
Yes, that's the issue.
Though Nuclear Fission plants can, and are used for desalination. (they generate heat and electricity) http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/te_1235_prn.pdf
France's nuclear plants, as well as most other european ones are inland though, and require plentiful fresh water supplies.
"These 4 get their cooling water directly from the ocean and can thus dump their waste heat directly back into the sea, which is slightly more economical." - French coastal reactors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
"Nine out of the UK's ten existing nuclear power stations use carbon dioxide gas (CO2) to cool the reactor core.".
http://www.edfenergy.com/energyfuture/key-info/safety/cooling
The achilles heel of the BWR seems to be FRESH water cooling.
check this - skip to 3:31 in http://vimeo.com/38373787
Yes, but these AGR plants (UK only AFAIK) have other problems. And the issue here is the French and other mainland BWR, ABWR and EPR, not AGR.
So... I stand by what I said, and the junks on my post were IMO incorrect.
Not a chance in hell that Germany will agree.
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As the Germans will agree, under one form or another, it means there is at least one change of that in US citizen paradise.
In hell, no chance it will pass.
In US citizen paradise, one chance at least.
Yes but, but, but, the emissions are very VERY heavy particles and they sink lower than other particles, therefore they are "Low Emissions"
Case closed. Game, set and match.