27Dec

£250 Million for Nuclear Failure in UK

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Nuclear power is expensive, and the costs always seem to go up. And not just because of environmental catastrophes. The latest nuclear news out of the UK backs this statement up yet again.

“The taxpayer will have to stump up almost £250m more to bail out the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in the next financial year after falling asset sales and rising expenditure cut its income by 17.5%,” The Guardian notes.

“The shortfall is revealed in the NDA’s just-published draft business plan for 2012-15, which shows the impact of being unable to offload land to the private sector for new nuclear plants and the end of the contracts to supply Japan with mixed-oxide fuel.”

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21Dec

Germany Uses More Renewable Energy Than Ever Before, Surpassing Nuclear

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Germany Uses More Renewable Energy Than Ever Before, Surpassing Nuclear

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Among the world’s most developed countries, Germany seems to be on the right track concerning renewable energy production. The country’s renewable resources have been used more than the classic ones this year, reports BDEW, Germany’s Federal Association of Energy.

Therefore, nuclear power dropped to 17.4 percent after Chancellor Angela Merkel had decided to show down the oldest eight reactors, as a reaction to the disaster at Fukushima, Japan. Plans are that by 2022 they’ll have phased out all of the nuclear power plants today in function.

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13Dec

Gates-backed TerraPower pitches new nuclear tech

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Gates-backed TerraPower pitches new nuclear tech

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To leap to the next generation of nuclear power technology, Bill Gates-backed start-up TerraPower is approaching countries rather than individual utilities or financiers.

Gates last week disclosed that he brought up TerraPower’s fourth-generation nuclear power technology with government officials at the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology during a visit to China. “TerrPower is having very good discussions with [China National Nuclear Corporation] and various people in the Chinese government,” Gates told the Associated Press.

Bellevue, Wash.-based TerraPower then said that the company has visited energy experts in the U.S. France, India, Japan, Korea and Russia, but that “there were no deals to at this time.”

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30Nov

Germany vs. the UK on Nuclear Power

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While Germany and Japan are backing away from nuclear power, the United Kingdom is looking in completely the opposite direction – 8 new nuclear plants are scheduled to be built. As a close neighbor, Germany has a number of words on the topic (all of them polite, but not particularly flattering).

Germany’s announcement of zero nuclear was prompted by the Sendai quake and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown last spring, as Clean Technica readers may remember, but those phase-out plans were already in place. The announcement gave rise to fears of insufficient power feeding into the grid anyway. However, Jochen Flasbarth, president of Germany’s EPA, pretty much thinks the entire idea is ridiculous, and furthermore that nuclear power is not the answer to a stable power supply:

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25Nov

New Mars Curiosity Science Laboratory Will be Nuclear Powered Instead of Solar

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How nuke power bested solar in latest Mars mission

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Heading off on a long journey to Mars on Saturday is NASA’s new Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory which, once it lands on the Red Planet, will be powered by nuclear energy. Unlike previous Mars rovers — the Spirit and the Opportunity — which were powered by the sun and couldn’t work in dark crevasses, on the wrong side of mountains or at night, the Curiosity will power through all of those times and spaces like a champ. Slated to have a 23-month stay, the Curiosity’s engine could theoretically last a few decades.

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21Nov

Still plugging new nuclear power tech post-Fukushima

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If you thought the Fukushima disaster derailed nuclear power worldwide, look again.

Evacuations and the havoc caused by meltdowns at four reactor cores at the Fukushima power plant earlier this year prompted Japan to shift away from nuclear power and recatalyzed a nuclear phase-out in Germany. But many countries remain enthusiastic about nuclear power, and interest in newer technologies has increased because they are safer, according to a panel of industry professionals here at the MIT Energy Finance Forum on Friday.

“Our investors have a very long time horizon and the reason they supported it is the long-term societal implications and the potentially significant returns from that (so) we haven’t seen any wavering of support,” said Tyler Ellis, a project manager at TerraPower. “Our development partners are trying to accelerate the time scale (of building plants) due to the energy security and safety.”

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18Nov

Protests Delay India’s New Nuclear Build

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India's New Nuclear Build

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Protest at Jaitapur over planned construction of two new nuclear reactors.

A series of protests that began in October have delayed the hot start of two Russian 1000- MW VVER reactors in the Tamil Nadu state on India’s southernmost coastline. Additional protests, some of them violent, have set back the start of construction of two French 1650-MW EPR reactors in the Maharashtra state on India’s west coast some 400 km (250 miles) south of Mumbai.

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12Nov

Thorium: The Nuclear Power We’ve Never Known (Video)

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Imagine if nuclear power was safe, terror-proof, and fueled by a plentiful, ubiquitous element. Sound like a pipe dream? Maybe it is. Maybe not.

A couple nights ago, I dropped by the Vice magazine offices in Brooklyn to check out a new documentary on thorium put together by Motherboard.tv. (Full disclosure: the video was produced by Alex Pasternack, a former contributor here at TH.) The film, The Thorium Dream, examines the history of an alternative kind of nuclear power, one tested decades ago but never embraced.

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29Oct

Bavaria to Swap Nuclear for Fossil Energy

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Bavaria to Swap Nuclear for Fossil EnergyNuclear

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Going from sixty-to-zero on nuclear will require significant new fossil generation in the German state. Bavaria is expected to trade out their significant nuclear electricity portfolio for fossil generation in the coming decade, according to new analysis from Der Spiegel. While the contribution of non-hydro renewables is anticipated to increase from 10 to 36 percent of generating capacity, the largest increase comes from natural gas, which will increase its portfolio share from 10 to 46 percent, far more than any other single fuel. Spurred by recent fears following the Fukushima crisis in Japan, Bavaria is just the latest to abandon its nuclear investments in favor of fossil fuels, trading unlikely radiation risks for certain emissions and pollution increases from natural gas combustion.

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26Oct

Airborne Metro: A Giant Nuclear-Powered Airport That Flies 3,000 Passengers Across the Sky

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Airborne Metro A Giant Nuclear-Powered Airport That Flies 3,000 Passengers Across the Sky

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When it comes to aircraft, bigger is better. As size increases, so does efficiency, which is the thinking behind the monstrous Airbus A-380. But to be really efficient, you’d need to go bigger. Way bigger. We’re talking an aircraft so large that other aircraft could land on it, in-flight.

The “Airborne Metro” concept is just that: it’s like an express train in the sky. As part of a general metro or train system, though, you don’t get to take the express line directly from start to finish. Instead, you take a smaller bus or train to get to the express train, and then probably another smaller bus or train to get to your final destination once you get off the express. In the case of the Airborne Metro, you’d catch a regular aircraft at a regional airport, zip up to a giant flying airport, and then ride that for a couple thousand miles before taking another regular aircraft back down.

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