Permafrost thaw won’t run away with Earth’s climate: report
But melt could release over 100 billion tonnes of emissions within century
by Meagan Wohlberg


Melting permafrost in the Peel region of the Northwest Territories causes an effect called slumping, where portions of the landscape collapse and pour into nearby waterways. Photo: NWT Geoscience Office

Despite making a contribution of 100 billion tonnes to global warming emissions over the next century, permafrost thaw in the North is not anticipated to cause a catastrophic, runaway feedback loop with respect to climate change, according to a new report.

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“One of the things we want to emphasize is that we don’t think the permafrost thaw can turn into a runaway feedback loop situation, where it’s self-sustaining and climate change runs amok,” Olefeldt said. “When it comes to climate change, it’s still very much up to human decisions.”

The report finds that around 10 per cent of the carbon stores in frozen permafrost will be released through warming by the end of the century, totalling around 100 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.

In comparison, the combustion of fossil fuels is releasing around 10 billion tonnes per year alone.

Though considerably lower on the order of magnitude, Olefeldt said the impact of permafrost-related carbon emissions must be factored into current climate models being used to shape global policy on climate change....

Nuclear isn’t the only energy phase-out happening in Germany

By Craig Morris on 29 May 2015
Energy Transition

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...there has been no surge in coal power during the nuclear phase-out. In fact, total coal power production (both lignite and hard coal) fell by six percent last year alone. If German coal power is polluting Parisian air, the problem should be getting smaller.

...the journalist also believes that “numerous new [coal] plants are scheduled to come online in the next few years.” Tellingly, he does not provide a specific number or a link to a source – yet, the number is knowable.

German utility lobby group BDEW regularly updates its “power plant list” (PDF in German). The version from April 13 (which Reuters published in English on the same day) has a total of 74 projects, six of which would consume coal:


The two plants to be completed this year already started producing electricity this year and will therefore not “come online in the next few years.” Neither was a reaction to the nuclear phaseout of 2011; the Moorburg plant was first proposed in 2004, Mannheim in 2007.

Two weeks after the BDEW updated the list above, Mibrag announced that it was stepping away (report in German) from the Profen project entirely. A fourth project, Hamm D, should already be online, but various acids entered the boiler, and the plant has been delayed indefinitely. The latest word (report in German) is that the plant “may never generate electricity” because German utilities began building too many plants 10 years ago.

The fifth plant, RWE’s BoAplus Niederaussem, is especially interesting in this respect....

What if we all adopted the nuclear industry's interpretation of a 'planned' project?
MATTHEW WRIGHT 27 MAY

You’d have to wonder how nuclear energy receives such a wave of fandom from some quarters, particularly in the business and conservative press.

If you search the definitive list of reactors on Wikipedia, you’ll find that reactors are being decommissioned globally at a rate of knots, and many more are set to be decommissioned in the not too distant future. This includes the entire fleet in Germany and a significant portion but unspecified number of reactors in Japan.

If you looked further, you’d find that you could count the total number of reactors built in 2014 and 2015 on just one hand. In that period there was activity predominately in China -- with its centralised state control avoiding the scrutiny the technology gets everywhere, outside a lone reactor in Argentina being the exception -- but you could hardly get excited as that project was started when first of the Generation Ys were still in nappies in 1981.

So you’ve got a few plants getting built at a much slower pace than planned in China, and a bunch of plants ‘planned’ all over the place. But as is the case with almost all nuclear plans in the last 25 years, they’ve gone nowhere. They are plans (if a dream is a plan), but are not likely to be plants.

So why do we hear about these so called plans over and over?

The answer is the stockmarket...

16 maps that Americans don't like to talk about
by Max Fisher on May 27, 2015

The United States has a lot to be proud of: it is the most powerful country on Earth and a global leader in culture and innovation as well as international affairs, and has a well-earned reputation for freedom and democracy. But, like any country, it has its flaws, as well. And those flaws are important to remember and examine — even if many Americans would probably rather not think about them.

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#5
This 1939 map of redlining in Chicago is just a hint at the systematic discrimination against African Americans



The New Deal brought with it a number of government institutions meant to expand access to housing, including the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). This is an HOLC map of Chicago from 1939, with neighborhoods color-coded by stability, as judged by the government.

"On the maps, green areas, rated 'A,' indicated 'in demand' neighborhoods that, as one appraiser put it, lacked 'a single foreigner or Negro,'" Ta-Nehisi Coates explains in the Atlantic. "These neighborhoods were considered excellent prospects for insurance. Neighborhoods where black people lived were rated 'D' and were usually considered ineligible for FHA backing. They were colored in red."

This practice became known as "redlining," and would be the norm in the housing sector as a whole for decades to come, effectively denying black people the ability to own homes...

Redacted DOE report gives details on MOX boondoogle


The Savannah River Site, with the unfinished MOX facility in the foreground. In the background is Georgia's Vogtle reactor complex, where two new reactors are under construction. With the likely demise of the MOX project, their power won't be needed at SRS. Photo by High Flyer, special to SRS Watch.


For decades, some in the U.S. government backed by a few in the nuclear industry and perhaps more in what I call the “nuclear priesthood”–those who have conducted their careers in the shadows of the nuclear industry and in academic settings where they can promote all things nuclear–have espoused the idea of reprocessing used fuel rods (also known as high-level radioactive waste) and creating MOX (plutonium-based) fuel for use in commercial nuclear reactors.

It’s always been a stupid idea environmentally–reprocessing is perhaps the dirtiest of all nuclear industry processes–and an even stupider idea economically. That’s because reprocessing is so expensive that mining and enriching uranium from scratch is still cheaper and always will be. Use of plutonium fuel would also exacerbate nuclear accidents, another trait that makes it undesirable, even for most of the nuclear industry.

For some years, NIRS ran a NIX MOX campaign, that was fairly successful at keeping the MOX concept in the dark corners of the priesthood. But the idea keeps coming out again and again for air, and thanks primarily to the determined efforts of some South Carolina Congressmembers–who can count only money and a few jobs and refuse to acknowledge both the short-term dangers to their state and the long-term environmental devastation a major MOX program inevitably would deliver–the government began construction of one of the pillars of a MOX facility at the Savannah River Site several years ago.

Almost since the first shovel of construction dirt was turned, the government–particularly the Obama administration–has tried to kill the project, knowing that it is both unnecessary and unaffordable. And yet, those South Carolina Congressmembers keep the money flowing in. Not enough to actually build the thing, but that’s not the point for them. The point for them is money, pure and simple. It’s the flaunting of pork barrel politics at its most basic level.

A new report, commissioned by the Department of Energy (where the MOX program still has some backers), was “released” Friday. You’ll see below why we put “released” in quotes....

The accelerating decline of French nuclear power

For most people with any interest in energy issues, France is synonymous with nuclear power. With 78% of its electricity generated by the atom, it is by far the most nuclear-dependent country in the world. It’s state-owned flagship Electricite de France is the world’s largest nuclear utility. State-owned Areva is one of the largest nuclear reactor manufacturers in the world.

When nuclear industry lobbyists–anywhere in the world–try to find a success story for their technology, they invariably point to France.

But more rapidly than could have been imagined even five years ago, pointing a finger at France doesn’t evoke nuclear success. Rather, France, whose nuclear industry is in speedy and accelerating decline, today exemplifies the failure of nuclear power. Moreover, a closer look at France reveals where the world is headed: to a clean and surprisingly affordable nuclear-free and carbon-free energy system.

If that kind of energy future can come to France–and it increasingly appears that it will and sooner than might be expected–then it can come everywhere...