Some good news: Europe is to decommission 150 nuclear reactors by 2030 because of the conclusions made of Fukushima Daichi disaster last year and a growing opposition to nuclear power among citizens and politicians. Also economical succee of new nuclear reactors or relicencing the old ones have been widely questioned by economists, politicians and environmentalists.
Now the economically good thing is that decomssioning the reactors means big business to companies doing the work. A whole new industry is to be constructed - no one has great experince on this subject. the economists have calculated that in Europe alone it means 81,5 Billion Dollar new market. Not so good for nuclear power companies and taxpayers!
Link - GLOBALDATA:
http://www.globaldata.com/PressReleaseDetails.aspx?PRID=174&Type=Industry&companyID=jpr
It seems like Europe has taken the right direction to go - let's hope the other continents will follow!
JPS
SOLARWINDPRONET
About me
- Solarwindadmin
- Teacher, activist, interested in energy technology, climate change, environmental issues and global security.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Monday, June 4, 2012
1000 Watts of Solar Electricity with 1000 dollars - plug and play!
While many solar power companies and solar panel manufacturers have been facing economically tuff times some of the players have found out the name of the game.
First Solar is struggling with large losses, but has everything needed to cope the harsch situation.
Link - TECHNOLOGYREVIEW:
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/40373/?mod=related
Solar City has been successful in developing leasing system that cuts the building costs of a solar power system for the consumer - the company has made the installation and joining the new system easy - and the profit for the customer is coming with the cut down power bills.
Link - TECHNOLOGYREVIEW:
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/40352/?mod=related
But the most surprising, at least for me, was the price of the 1000 Watts solar energy package of SpinRay Energy : about 1000 dollars for plug-in solution including micro-inverters. When do we get such affordable systems available for consumers in Europe! 1 kilowatt is a good saving in everyday electricity consumption.
Link - CNET:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-57432731-54/got-a-deck-solar-panels-now-a-plug-in-appliance/?tag=txt;title
By the way - did you know that wind power industry employed 190 000 workers in Europe in 2010. Great stuff!
Link - (finnish) Kymen sanomat:
http://www.kymensanomat.fi/Mielipide---Sana-on-vapaa/2012/05/28/Tuulivoimarakentaminen+luo+miljardin+euron+ty%C3%B6t/2012313489628/69
And Apple is growing solar. They are building huge solar power plants to power their own production - ZERO-CO2 emmissions!
Link - (Finnish) CO2-RAPORTTI:
http://www.co2-raportti.fi/index.php?page=ilmastouutisia&news_id=3414
JPS
RADIOACTIVE TUNA REACHED US WEST COAST LAST AUTUMN
Radioactive bluefin tuna is being caught at US west coast for several months now. Each one of the studied fish samples contained Cs 134 and Cs 137 of Fukushima Daichi origin. The amount was 10 times of that of the previous year, but the scientists were surprised to find tainted fish after it had migrated 6000 km across the sea. This gives us just new evidence of nuclear catastrophes to be global issues that must be prevented at any costs. When food supply is compromised and billions of people are affected by even low amounts of radioactive particles, then thousands or tens of thousands are going to get ill by this man made disaster. New epidemiological studies suggest that the radiation - cancer (and plenty of other diseases) -ratio is linear: at low doses you get the same (or slightly increased) amount of illnesses per bequerel or sievert than you get with higher doses. When you spread the radiation to the entire world, it will cause as many sick people as delivered the same amount in a smaller area. But it is news only when 10 000 people get sick at the same time in one city in a few weeks time. When 10 000 people get sick around the world during next 50 years nobody cares. You can't even trace the bad work of radiation then. That's why the nuclear industry denies that low level radiation is harmful for people. So they don't have to pay anything to the folks suffering their toxic fallouts. Everything's just fine! Clean, safe power!
Link - ENENEWS:
http://enenews.com/top-cancer-doctor-irresponsible-to-say-cesium-in-tuna-is-nothing-to-worry-about-you-have-radioactive-material-in-fish-which-is-being-eaten-by-people-video
Link - SOLARWINDPRONET: http://solarwindpronet.blogspot.fi/2012/01/too-hot-to-handle-what-if-nuclear.html
JPS
Link - ENENEWS:
http://enenews.com/top-cancer-doctor-irresponsible-to-say-cesium-in-tuna-is-nothing-to-worry-about-you-have-radioactive-material-in-fish-which-is-being-eaten-by-people-video
Link - SOLARWINDPRONET: http://solarwindpronet.blogspot.fi/2012/01/too-hot-to-handle-what-if-nuclear.html
JPS
Monday, May 28, 2012
HALF OF THE DAYTIME ELECTRICITY GERMANY NEEDS IS SOLAR POWER
Last week Germany made new records: half of the electricity the country produces came from solar power stations - equivalent to 20 nuclear power plants!
Some people still believe solar, wind and other renewable energy sources are just some kind of marginable eco-fanatic stuff not to be considered as serious alternatives in power generating.
But this kind of thinking is outdated, based on fairy tales told by nuclear industry (both NP- and Military sections) and irresponsible politicians, who think the ordinary people just doesn't understand.
One of the leading industrial countries has made the decision to make the renewables to a reality. Germany leads now the competition of developing smart grids: in a few years they will have small renewable energy units combined to one 200 MW virtual power plant. This new kind of smart grid technology allows little power plants to be handled as a one big unit and to trade electricity in European electricity market. The computerized smart network keeps power output stable and secure and the effectivity of small solar and wind power plants will be enhanced.
Siemens is among the companies to create such a new technology - a company that finished all of its new activities in nuclear industry after Fukushima disaster. German industry is showing us all an example how to adopt quickly new strategies and winning technologies. Let's see how Japan, The USA and China will react. China is already the leader in the world in building new wind power capacity. Japan needs desperately new solutions to replace its doomed nuclear power arsenal. Obama is still trying to run 1990's energy politics by building new unprofitable, hazardous and widely opposed nuclear power plants. But Wall Street and Taxpayers will be the first to ruin these plans: without huge subsidiaries new NPPs won't be possible. Nuclear power is worldwide the most expensive way to generate electricity, if all costs are to be counted. That's how it is. And the Germans now it.
Link - ENFORMABLE:
http://enformable.com/2012/05/germany-can-show-the-world-what-resolve-and-sound-governance-can-accomplish/
JPS
Saturday, May 19, 2012
COULD THE ECONOMY OF GREECE BE SAVED BY SOLAR AND WIND ENERGY?
While writing this I'm listening to on-line TV-broadcast of Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE). There our Minister of Europian Affairs and Foreign Trade Mr. Alexander Stubb is guessing whether Greece is capable of paying its national debt or not.
For some months now I have been thinking why southern European countries are not building solar, wind and wave energy capacity. They have much more sunny days than for example Germany and North European countries, and the coastlands of Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy are having also plenty of wind available.
Only Spain has begun some kind of serious renewable energy program, the others are just outsiders. When politicians speak whether Greece is capable of paying its debts, nobody is speaking about a new alternative way of arranging things internationally.
New technology offers new possibilities that can be ignored beacuse of lack of former experience on that spectacular area. Nobody could have seriously claimed a few years ago that Germany will be the leader in solar technology in the world in just three years. Or thought that Saudi -Arabia will build 41 000 MW of solar capacity during the next 20 years, keeping in mind that it has huge oil reservoirs and the price of energy is there record low.
Link: - Techi:
http://www.techi.com/2011/12/germany-captures-43-of-the-worlds-solar-power/
Link: - Cleantechnica:
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/11/109-billion-increase-for-solar-in-saudi-arabia/
But this kind of new technology is giving us free tools to arrange economies of whole countries or entire continents. Imagine an energy network that is Europe-wide, consisting of wind-, solar-, water-, wave- and biomass-based electricity generating power plants. This smart network could make it possible to ensure enough energy in every part of Europe, keeping sustainibility as a main target in mind. CO2 -emissions would be going down and stability and security of energy production could be enhanced.
The slow adapting of new renewable energy technology and smart grids especially in Southern Europe have been a major issue to take the first steps to reach that goal. Large scale nuclear power and weapons programs have been also hindering the willingness to introduce new environmentally better technologies.
Only after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima the eyes of the world are beginning to open. Many countries have decided to start develop safe energy production technologies. And willingness to invest in renewables is higher than ever.
On this background I would like to see some wise men and women, experts on energy and economical issues, to count whether it could be possible to rearrange the national economies of Greece and Spain and other southern European countries by investing on their renewable energy sector by building together with these countries enormous solar, wind, wave and biomass power stations and smart grids needed for transportation of energy to continental Europe. So it would be possible for these countries to pay their debt in electricity during the decades to come. Meantime they could get the energy they need themselves, and the construction work and sustaining the power generating system would offer thousands of working places and the economical activity that is desperately needed there. And the risks for accidents and pollution would be almost zero for them. No nuclear waste, no decontamination needed, unlike with nuclear power.
The constucting work could be started without delay - new wind mills could be built within the first year, new solar power stations could be productive in a few years, locally minor investments to renewables could be started straight away. No need for ten year planning and construction time as for nuclear pover - the capacity could be built little by little - and the power generating capacity would start to pay the investments back from the first megawatt produced. And what would be the upper limit, would 41 000 megawatts like for Saudi-Arabia , be realistic - or twice or ten times that much? That question could be answered by wind- solar- and wave energy engineers and companies in co-operation with technical universities and researchers.
After constructing investments the costs of keeping the powerplants and smart grids running is relatively low when we speak about solar and wind energy. The income for the countries and investors that have made bad loans with Greece (and other countries of Southern Europe) during recent years would be quite safe and there would not be huge risks included. The sun is shining quite often, the wind blows somewhere whole the time and the sea is rarely calm.
JPS
For some months now I have been thinking why southern European countries are not building solar, wind and wave energy capacity. They have much more sunny days than for example Germany and North European countries, and the coastlands of Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy are having also plenty of wind available.
Only Spain has begun some kind of serious renewable energy program, the others are just outsiders. When politicians speak whether Greece is capable of paying its debts, nobody is speaking about a new alternative way of arranging things internationally.
New technology offers new possibilities that can be ignored beacuse of lack of former experience on that spectacular area. Nobody could have seriously claimed a few years ago that Germany will be the leader in solar technology in the world in just three years. Or thought that Saudi -Arabia will build 41 000 MW of solar capacity during the next 20 years, keeping in mind that it has huge oil reservoirs and the price of energy is there record low.
Link: - Techi:
http://www.techi.com/2011/12/germany-captures-43-of-the-worlds-solar-power/
Link: - Cleantechnica:
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/11/109-billion-increase-for-solar-in-saudi-arabia/
But this kind of new technology is giving us free tools to arrange economies of whole countries or entire continents. Imagine an energy network that is Europe-wide, consisting of wind-, solar-, water-, wave- and biomass-based electricity generating power plants. This smart network could make it possible to ensure enough energy in every part of Europe, keeping sustainibility as a main target in mind. CO2 -emissions would be going down and stability and security of energy production could be enhanced.
The slow adapting of new renewable energy technology and smart grids especially in Southern Europe have been a major issue to take the first steps to reach that goal. Large scale nuclear power and weapons programs have been also hindering the willingness to introduce new environmentally better technologies.
Only after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima the eyes of the world are beginning to open. Many countries have decided to start develop safe energy production technologies. And willingness to invest in renewables is higher than ever.
On this background I would like to see some wise men and women, experts on energy and economical issues, to count whether it could be possible to rearrange the national economies of Greece and Spain and other southern European countries by investing on their renewable energy sector by building together with these countries enormous solar, wind, wave and biomass power stations and smart grids needed for transportation of energy to continental Europe. So it would be possible for these countries to pay their debt in electricity during the decades to come. Meantime they could get the energy they need themselves, and the construction work and sustaining the power generating system would offer thousands of working places and the economical activity that is desperately needed there. And the risks for accidents and pollution would be almost zero for them. No nuclear waste, no decontamination needed, unlike with nuclear power.
The constucting work could be started without delay - new wind mills could be built within the first year, new solar power stations could be productive in a few years, locally minor investments to renewables could be started straight away. No need for ten year planning and construction time as for nuclear pover - the capacity could be built little by little - and the power generating capacity would start to pay the investments back from the first megawatt produced. And what would be the upper limit, would 41 000 megawatts like for Saudi-Arabia , be realistic - or twice or ten times that much? That question could be answered by wind- solar- and wave energy engineers and companies in co-operation with technical universities and researchers.
After constructing investments the costs of keeping the powerplants and smart grids running is relatively low when we speak about solar and wind energy. The income for the countries and investors that have made bad loans with Greece (and other countries of Southern Europe) during recent years would be quite safe and there would not be huge risks included. The sun is shining quite often, the wind blows somewhere whole the time and the sea is rarely calm.
JPS
Friday, May 18, 2012
IS COVER -UP OF A NUCLEAR CATASTROPHY A PROFITABLE BUSINESS - YES, SAYS US-STUDY
HOW COULD A COVER-UP OF A CATASTROPHE, THAT MAKES PEOPLE SUFFER, GET SICK AND DIE, BE PROFITABLE?
The answer can be found on a Department of Homeland Security -funded study. If you tell the people facts about a nuclear power plant accident or a dirty bomb terrorist attack it can cause severe disturbance on economy, people get scared , don't spend money, the investors and workers leave the area etc. This all could end up to fifteen times as costly as hiding the facts.
So the real costs of the disaster could not any more be connected to the accident and people just pay for their costs of medical care by themselves. That's the way how nuclear industry worldwide have been acting since the beginning of the nuclear era, and this is the way how IAEA wants it to be. The WHO must obey IAEA decisions and their VETO: studies that tell something different are not allowed to be made public. The lack of information is a powerful tool.
Japan government have used this tool with both hands engaged - Japanese people is being hidden the real severity of Fukushima Daichi -accident. People, especially children are suffering hard for this type of covering up the truth. How long does it take before the crouds in Japan find out what's really going on there and get angry and frustrated. This could mean a real "changing of the guards" in Japan, a revolution of ethics and moral thinking that could lead to a society of sustainable values and fresh environmental thinking, but also bring back the old values like importance of hard work, honesty, honour and social responsibility.
A large scale employment of renewable energy production systems could lead Japan out of this nightmare but there is still awful lot to do in containing the nowbeing nuclear disaster, a task seem to be almost impossible.
Meanwhile, the children and families now living in badly contaminated areas should be offered safe living at areas less contaminated and TEPCO and other nuclear power companies should pay real compensations for their lost homes and property.
We are lucky to have social media and websites like Fukushima Diary, Enformable, Fairewinds, EX-SKF, ENENEWS, Beyond Nuclear and numerous other homesites or blogs informing the people around the world of the real studies, independent news and relevant facts on energy and nuclear issues. For many individuals living in danger areas this has been the only way to get trustworthy information - even governments and politicians have been informed this way.
But the first thing to do now is to throw this kind of "profitable" pro-nuke-polluted-world-studies
http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/05/can-we-cope-terror-attack-los-angeles
where they belong: into the TRASH!
JPS
The answer can be found on a Department of Homeland Security -funded study. If you tell the people facts about a nuclear power plant accident or a dirty bomb terrorist attack it can cause severe disturbance on economy, people get scared , don't spend money, the investors and workers leave the area etc. This all could end up to fifteen times as costly as hiding the facts.
So the real costs of the disaster could not any more be connected to the accident and people just pay for their costs of medical care by themselves. That's the way how nuclear industry worldwide have been acting since the beginning of the nuclear era, and this is the way how IAEA wants it to be. The WHO must obey IAEA decisions and their VETO: studies that tell something different are not allowed to be made public. The lack of information is a powerful tool.
Japan government have used this tool with both hands engaged - Japanese people is being hidden the real severity of Fukushima Daichi -accident. People, especially children are suffering hard for this type of covering up the truth. How long does it take before the crouds in Japan find out what's really going on there and get angry and frustrated. This could mean a real "changing of the guards" in Japan, a revolution of ethics and moral thinking that could lead to a society of sustainable values and fresh environmental thinking, but also bring back the old values like importance of hard work, honesty, honour and social responsibility.
A large scale employment of renewable energy production systems could lead Japan out of this nightmare but there is still awful lot to do in containing the nowbeing nuclear disaster, a task seem to be almost impossible.
Meanwhile, the children and families now living in badly contaminated areas should be offered safe living at areas less contaminated and TEPCO and other nuclear power companies should pay real compensations for their lost homes and property.
We are lucky to have social media and websites like Fukushima Diary, Enformable, Fairewinds, EX-SKF, ENENEWS, Beyond Nuclear and numerous other homesites or blogs informing the people around the world of the real studies, independent news and relevant facts on energy and nuclear issues. For many individuals living in danger areas this has been the only way to get trustworthy information - even governments and politicians have been informed this way.
But the first thing to do now is to throw this kind of "profitable" pro-nuke-polluted-world-studies
http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/05/can-we-cope-terror-attack-los-angeles
JPS
Thursday, May 3, 2012
JAPAN FACING NO NUCLEAR PLANT IN SERVICE -SITUATION THE 5TH MAY 2012
Japan is running its economy and society without nuclear power first time for decades beginning the 5th of May this year. All of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors are out of commercial service from this weekend on. A growing majority of Japanese are against restarting any of the nuclear power plants when the cause and the real severity and all the consequences of Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant accident with 3 melt-out reactors and extremely dangerous reactor 4 with its spent fuel pool possibly collapsing and burning if severe earthquakes will occur is still not fully understood.
Link - The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21554239?fsrc=rss%7Casi
Over 70 organizations sent a letter to UN-Head Ban Ki-Moon: the world is in danger because of spent fuel pool of FD reactor4 - International Expertize is needed. The worst case scenario: about 85 times Chernobyl Cesium -release possible!
Link - Greenaction:
http://fukushima.greenaction-japan.org/2012/05/01/an-urgent-request-on-un-intervention-to-stabilize-the-fukushima-unit-4-spent-nuclear-fuel/
The problems of Talvivaara Uranium Mine in Northern Finland continue: lots of death birds found in processing water basin last week. The journalists that found the birds were stopped by police and the mining company is claiming they had no right to be there.
Link (in Finnish - use google translator) - HelsinginSanomat: http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/Talvivaaran+allasalueelta+l%C3%B6ytyi+kymmeni%C3%A4+kuolleita+lintuja/a1305560856341
(reminder: Talvivaara -critical marathon -blues by Carlos F-Major, link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooXtDWjbX_4 :-)
JPS
Link - The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21554239?fsrc=rss%7Casi
Over 70 organizations sent a letter to UN-Head Ban Ki-Moon: the world is in danger because of spent fuel pool of FD reactor4 - International Expertize is needed. The worst case scenario: about 85 times Chernobyl Cesium -release possible!
Link - Greenaction:
http://fukushima.greenaction-japan.org/2012/05/01/an-urgent-request-on-un-intervention-to-stabilize-the-fukushima-unit-4-spent-nuclear-fuel/
The problems of Talvivaara Uranium Mine in Northern Finland continue: lots of death birds found in processing water basin last week. The journalists that found the birds were stopped by police and the mining company is claiming they had no right to be there.
Link (in Finnish - use google translator) - HelsinginSanomat: http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/Talvivaaran+allasalueelta+l%C3%B6ytyi+kymmeni%C3%A4+kuolleita+lintuja/a1305560856341
(reminder: Talvivaara -critical marathon -blues by Carlos F-Major, link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooXtDWjbX_4 :-)
JPS
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