Explosives prompt Sweden nuclear plant probe
Thu Jun 21, 2012 10:51am EDT
* Small amount of explosive found on way into Swedish nuclear plant

* Police say explosive could not have caused much damage, open probe

* Alert levels raised after fresh nuclear safety incident (Adds details, quotes)

STOCKHOLM, June 21 (Reuters) - Sweden raised alert levels at its nuclear power plants and police launched an investigation after a routine check found a forklift truck entering on of the plans with a small amount of explosives on it

Police said on Thursday the small amount of explosive could not have caused much damage had it been set off, but opened a probe into sabotage, without saying who would want to carry out such an act. A spokesman said that so far there were no signs of a terror attempt on the facility.

The incident happened on Wednesday afternoon at the Ringhals nuclear power station, which is on the southwest coast near the city of Gothenburg, operator Vattenfall said in a statement...

Offline Nuclear Plant Squeezes Energy Access In Calif.

One of California's two nuclear power plants has been closed since the discovery of a radioactive leak in late January. With summer here — and increased energy use with it — the state is bracing for the possibility of rolling blackouts in San Diego, Los Angeles and Orange County. L.A. Times reporter Abby Sewell talks with Melissa Block about what's being done to stave off an energy calamity.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: One power plant in particular is on the minds of many here in Southern California. It's the San Onofre nuclear plant, roughly 60 miles south of Los Angeles. The plant was shut down back in January because of a leak that released a small amount of radioactive steam. It's been off-line ever since. And this week, nuclear regulators called what led to the leak, a significant, serious safety issue.

With San Onofre out of commission, officials are scrambling to find alternative sources of energy to keep from plunging Southern California into a summer of rolling blackouts. For more, I'm joined by Abby Sewell. She's been covering the story for the Los Angeles Times. And, Abby, let's start with the leak. I gather that tubes carrying radioactive water were vibrating excessively that led to the leak. What happened? What led up to this?

ABBY SEWELL: That's correct. Southern California Edison, the operator of the plant, had, within the last couple of years, replaced the steam generators, which are these massive pieces of equipment that have thousands of tubes carrying this radioactive water....

RWE pulls out of nuclear sector and puts fossil fuel plants on hold
21 June 2012

On June 20, German utility RWE said it was permanently withdrawing from building nuclear power plants and has also put on hold any plans for new fossil-fuelled projects. RWE, which operates nuclear reactors in Germany and owns a stake in the Netherlands’ only atomic power plant, has already withdrawn from the Horizon project in the UK, a nuclear joint venture with E.ON.


Chief executive-designate Peter Terium told journalists that the company is pulling out of nuclear because “the financial risk is no longer acceptable and is unreasonable for our shareholders”. Terium, who will take over as chief executive next month, said that decision was taken because of uncertainty over German energy policy.

...The plan to suspend until further notice any fossil-fuelled power plants is unexpected, and Terium said the freeze will stay in place until there is some clarity on the future of Germany’s energy regulatory framework. Further investment depends on the “future market design”, he added.

...

On the Chopping Block: State Budget Battles and the Future of Public Media


Since 2008, budget battles at the state level have eroded funding for public broadcasters around the country. Free Press and SaveTheNews.org have completed the first inventory of state funding cuts and examined the impact these cuts have had on local stations.

Download the full report: On the Chopping Block: State Budget Battles and the Future of Public Media.

Since 2008, state support for public broadcasting has declined at an alarming rate. More than $85 million in state funding has been cut from public broadcasters’ budgets since 2008.

However, that is only part of the story. If we use the 2008 appropriations as a baseline, we see that the cumulative loss in state funding over the past four years in these 24 states amounts to approximately $202 million. In other words, if the appropriations had remained level with those from 2008, more than $200 million in additional funding would have been allocated in these 24 states during this four-year period.

In this year’s round of state budget negotiations alone, state governments have slashed nearly $30 million from public media budgets.



In many states, the cuts are......

Energy giant pulls plug on nuclear power
Published: 18 Jun 12 12:17 CET


German power giant RWE will build no more nuclear power stations - not only in Germany, where nuclear power is to be phased out by 2022 - but anywhere in the world, the company announced on Monday.

RWE "will not build any nuclear power plants abroad," a company spokeswoman said, confirming a corresponding report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily.

At the end of March, RWE and its bigger rival E.ON decided they would pull out of their British nuclear power joint venture, Horizon Nuclear Power, the spokeswoman pointed out.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said the management of Germany's second biggest energy company held a secret meeting in an exclusive hotel in Istanbul on Friday and Saturday to discuss the major strategy change.

...The new plan is to pull out of the nuclear power business completely, and invest heavily in solar...

Zealots of the Atom: The Nuclear Cult
by KARL GROSSMAN

Nuclear scientists and engineers embrace nuclear power like a religion. The term “nuclear priesthood” was coined by Dr. Alvin Weinberg, long director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the laboratory’s website proudly notes this. It’s not unusual for scientists at Oak Ridge and other U.S. national nuclear laboratories to refer to themselves as “nukies.” The Oak Ridge website describes Weinberg as a “prophet” of “nuclear energy.”

This religious, cultish element is integral to a report done for the U.S. Department of Energy in 1984 by Battelle Memorial Institute about how the location of nuclear waste sites can be communicated over the ages. An “atomic priesthood,” it recommends, could impart the locations in a “legend-and-ritual…retold year-by-year.” Titled “Communications Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia,” the taxpayer-funded report says: “Membership in this ‘priesthood’ would be self-selective over time.”

Currently, Allison Macfarlane, nominated to be the new head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, says she is an “agnostic” on nuclear power—as if support or opposition to atomic energy falls on a religious spectrum. Meanwhile, Gregory Jaczko, the outgoing NRC chairman, with a Ph.D. in physics, was politically crucified because he repeatedly raised safety concerns, thus not revering nuclear power enough.

....

But when it comes to nuclear power, it’s more than that—it’s a religious adherence. Why? Does it have to do with nuclear scientists and engineers being in such close proximity to power, literally? Is it about the process through which they are trained—in the U.S., many in the nuclear navy and/or in the insular culture of the government’s national nuclear laboratories? These laboratories, originally under the Atomic Energy Commission and now the Department of Energy and managed by corporations, universities and scientific entities including Battelle Memorial Institute, grew out of the World War II Manhattan Project crash program to build atomic bombs. After the war, the laboratories expanded to pursue the development of all things nuclear. And is it about nuclear physics programs at universities serving as echo chambers?

Whatever the causes, the outcome is nuclear worship....

The Evolution of Saab: After Filing For Bankruptcy, Iconic Swedish Company Now Only Producing Electric Cars
By Climate Guest Blogger on Jun 15, 2012 at 11:32 am

Saab, the Swedish automaker left for dead after being jettisoned by General Motors in 2010, has been purchased by National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS). The company plans to turn Saab into an electrical vehicle maker.

NEVS is owned by Kai Johan Jiang a Chinese entrepreneur educated in Sweden, and Sun Investments, a Japanese company. The plan, according to NEVS is to “meld Swedish car design and manufacturing know-how with Japanese electric vehicle technology to promote premium electric vehicles in China.”

The goal, according to comments made Wednesday at the announcement of the purchase, is to design an electric vehicle for sale in China based on the existing Saab 9-3 small sedan platform using Japanese-made batteries. The car would go on sale in late 2013 or early 2014. Meanwhile, a team of roughly 200 designers — far fewer than the 3,000 employees Saab employed until recently — would be working in Trollhatan, Sweden, site of the Saab factory, on an entirely new vehicle.

Some analysts have questioned the acquisition, particularly the use of the 9-3 as the model for the first electric car:

“Because of the challenges of battery capacity, most electric cars were small and designed for city driving, while the Saab 9-3 was a midsize car, something that could leave it with a short driving range in its usual environment.”

But the shift for Saab is an illustration of the broad changes that car companies are....

Shibuya museum showcases last photo of loyal pooch Hachiko


Owner Yaeko Ueno, front row, second from right, and workers at Shibuya Station pray for the repose of “Chuken Hachiko” (Loyal Dog Hachiko) in Tokyo on March 8, 1935. (Provided by Shibuya Folk and Literary Shirane Memorial Museum)

By KAZUYA OMURO/ Staff Writer
Pretty much everyone who has visited Japan knows the story of Hachiko, a dog revered for its incredible loyalty to his owner, even long after his master's death.

Now, a museum in Tokyo is showcasing an exhibition of a snapshot of the Akita dog taken immediately after Hachiko's death in 1935.

Measuring 12 centimeters by 16 centimeters, the photograph can be viewed at the Shibuya Folk and Literary Shirane Memorial Museum in Shibuya Ward until July 22 as part of the "Shin Shuzo Shiryoten" (Exhibition of newly stored materials).

As the story goes, the dog, whose name was Hachi, waited at Shibuya Station every day for its owner, Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor of agriculture at the University of Tokyo, to return from work, and continued to do so for 10 years even after Ueno's death.

According to the museum...

Qmilch

Qmilch is a natural textile created from milk. Searching for an alternative to traditional chemically-treated fabrics, German microbiologist and fashion designer Anke Domaske developed a process that transforms the casein protein from milk into a biocompatible textile.
Qmilch has a texture similar to that of silk, and is...

James Lovelock: The UK should be going mad for fracking
Scientist James Lovelock is the man behind Gaia theory, and once predicted doom for our climate. He discusses nuclear (good), wind power (bad) and why fracking is the future

...

"Adapt and survive," he says, when asked why he has decided to move. After more than three decades living amid acres of trees he planted himself by hand, he and his wife Sandy have decided to downsize and move to an old lifeguard's cottage by the beach in Dorset. "I'm not worried about sea-level rises," he laughs. "At worst, I think it will be 2ft a century."

Given that Lovelock predicted in 2006 that by this century's end "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable", this new laissez-faire attitude to our environmental fate smells and sounds like of a screeching handbrake turn.

Indeed, earlier this year he admitted to MSNBC in an interview reported around the world with somewhat mocking headlines along the lines of "Doom-monger recants", that he had been "extrapolating too far" in reaching such a conclusion and had made a "mistake" in claiming to know with such certainty what will happen to the climate.

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Nestled deep into an armchair, Lovelock brushes a biscuit crumb from his lips, and lowers his cup of tea on to the table: "I'm neither strongly left nor right, but I detest the Liberal Democrats."

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