Minister of Economic Affairs Jyri Häkämies: Finland to Co-operate With Japan and Germany on Renevable Energy and Cleantech

Minister of Economic Affairs Jyri Häkämies pointed out the role of sustainable growth in Finland during the next decades (Photo: Jukka Seppälä/Creator's Fingerprints)

According to Finnish Minister of Economic Affairs Jyri Häkämies Finland continues to co-operate with countries like Germany and Japan which have made the decision to abandon nuclear power and are searching for clean alternatives to produce energy. Häkämies mentioned Finnish government already having cleantech co-operation with Japan that has made a decision of a major energy change and needs now new alternative energy solutions. In two months Minister Häkämies and President Sauli Niinistö will be participating a meeting in Germany concentrating on energy issues . The German Energy Minister had recently visited Finland and the countries are jointly making an EU-initiative in energy politics.

Minister Häkämies was setting sustainable growth as one of the main targits of  "Tulevaisuus 2030 (Future 2030)-project. Häkämies was giving the closing speech of "Tulevaisuuden taitajat - Tulevaisuus 2030" -seminarium in Helsinki 27th September 2012. The meeting was organized by the Prime Ministers Office as a part of citizens consulting process of Government Foresight 2030 -report. http://vnk.fi/ajankohtaista/tiedotteet/tiedote/en.jsp?oid=353659

The participants of the meeting were discussing ideas and topics covering possibilities of foreseeing the future national and global trends and how to react or control them.

More about the meeting can be found on my Finnish blog-site:  http://solarwindpronet-suomi.blogspot.fi/2012/09/ministerit-linjasivat-uusiutuvat.html
or on the official Tulevaisuus 2030-site (Finnish): http://www.2030.fi/tilaisuudet

JPS 

Finland Has No New Nokia In Sight - But the Network Of Clean-Tech Companies Could Be One In the Future

There is an ongoing discussion in Finland whether there exists a company capable of inheriting the role of Nokia as a global business leader. The Angry Birds-fenomen has been giving some hope that Finnish know-how in portable device gaming and entertainment business would create new nokialike enterprices.

But personally I think there perhaps will not exist one single super-company that rules the world in its own business sector. I believe that network of mid-sized or smaller companies have the possibility to win the game in the future. It's kind of less vulnerable model of making business if you don't have all the fuel in the same tank.

The recent hard times for Nokia have made some politicians desperate in Finland. If Nokia loses the game it will cause bad disturbances also in Finnish economy as whole.

But this kind of thinking may include some kind of ghosts of "back to 70ies" nostalgy. Big companies, ten year planning, bilateral trade with the Soviet Union, etc. I can hear here also the old centralized energy policy speaking: without nuclear power and other big power generating units we just can't manage; 'don't even speak about wind, biomass or solar - it's rubbish'.

And here's my point: new world economy - with plenty of uncertainties - needs a new kind of economical thinking. I see it extremely dangerous to lean on only one company or technology, especially if it needs decades to build and takes the major part of the money available in the market for investments and R&D money given by the taxpayers. If that technology fails it takes whole the national economy with it. And the negative psycological impact for the nation may be huge.

If we and our politicians and business leaders prefer technologies that don't take decades to become mature enough to start bringing back investments, though the profit would not be so huge but secure, we could be the overall winners in the long run. Clean technology - the renewables- wind, solar, waves, bioenergy are the great new wave of energy technology that's rolling around the world like a tsunami right now. And the other wave of big business opportunities will be decommissioning our own existing nuclear power plants safely and taking really good care of nuclear waste and the million-Hiroshimas-plutonium that's sleeping in there - for several hundreds of thousands of years.

This all needs political steering and guidance and also economical supporting by the state. In the beginning new technologies like wind and solar tend to overheat the market and the disturbances caused by costly R&D, over capacity in production and the competition of developing economies with their  low pricing, makes the new market unstable. To survive the industry needs some balancing subsidiaries that make the pricing of clean power generated with renewables competitive with conventional coal and nuclear power that have earned billions of subsidiaries, hidden or public, during the last decades. Now it's time for the renewables to get the big money.

 (If you have doubts about the subsidiaries got by the nuclear industry I suggest for you to do some critical research on the subject. In the USA the situation is mainly similar to other countries with NPPs, though they have their nuclear weapons production on the background. This link tells the US-situation in short: ROBERT F. KENNEDY Jr. - YOUTUBE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2p-UNk2kn-c   )

By supporting networks of clean tech companies we could create clusters that change the world, give us and other countries possibility to cut their carbon emmissions, reduce their particle emissions and eliminate the danger of worldwide nuclear isotope emissions connected with use and accidents of nuclear power. Meantime developing economies could have gain to safe, profitable way of generating power even to the villages far from big cities. And the dependance on rich countries and their powerful enterprises would deminish when they won't have to import the energy or fuel any more. This all would create prosperity the same way in these countries as it would do in our own country. It's a win-win situation that we could create now mostly with political decision making. But it takes some courage to be done.

JPS

What Is the Responsibilty Of Companies When Dealing With Nuclear Power Projects?

Nuclear power projects tend to be dealing with big money. And big money tends to finish critical thinking.

This photovoltage solar power station is under construction on Creete. Arab countries and most of the countries of tropical or subtropical climate zone would have at least as good possibilities as Greece  to use solar power as one of their main power generating sources. Nuclear is not needed nor rational.
When you look at recent new nuclear power projects, most of them are being planned by old nuclear weapon countries or new potential nuclear weapon countries. There are plenty of arab countries starting their nuclear era with several reactors per country plans. Some of them are also dreaming of own nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining, enriching and making their own fuel, perhaps recycling the old fuel rods to new fuel - plutonium.

The problem is the poor condition of nuclear industry. According to a recent report it's doing really badly worldwide. And that's why the industry begins to accept orders from countries like Egypt, Vietnam, Saudi- Arabia or United Arab Emirates. It's a question of money and industry surviving. Don't ask nasty questions - sell! Make money when you can!

LINK - WORLDNUCLEARREPORT:
http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/2012MSC-WorldNuclearReport-EN-V2.pdf

Nobody asks the right questions: why should countries having the best possibilities of using solar and wind power build nuclear? Countries lacking water for acriculture should construct nuclear power plants using huge amounts of cooling water. And if situated along seashores the risks of tsunamis occure once again.

Many of these countries have also huge plans to build wind, solar and wave power, but entering into nuke-club, it makes no sense.

Or, perhaps we should think once more. If Iran is going nuclear, why shouldn't all of its neighbours too?

A Finnish-origin international consulting company Pöyry won the deal for making plans to power Saudi-Arabia with wind, solar - and nuclear. I don't know what kind of analysis Pöyry made for Saudis about own uranium mining, enriching and constructing own fleet of nuclear power plants but  let's hope they found it inprofitable.

LINK - POYRY:
http://www.poyry.co.uk/sites/www.poyry.co.uk/files/poyry_energy_day_20120515_v_20.pdf

  LINK - POWER-ENG:
http://www.power-eng.com/articles/npi/print/volume-4/issue-3/nucleus/saudi-arabia-commits-100-billion-for-civil-nuclear-program.html

But things begin to be a little bit complicated when the representatives of Saudi-Arabian ruling dynasty openly tell their will to develop or buy nuclear warheads if Iran is having their own bomb.

LINK - NYTIMES:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-may-seek-nuclear-weapons-prince-says.html?_r=0

LINK - PRESSTV:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/26/252852/s-arabia-mulls-buying-pakistani-nukes/

  LINK - INQUISITR:
http://www.inquisitr.com/282628/saudi-arabia-to-purchase-nuclear-capable-missiles-from-china-video/

Should  companies share their knowledge and help making these nuclear dreams to become reality? Is money the only thing that steers nuclear business. Should we accept the amount of nuclear weapon countries to increase by tens of new muscle armies or perhaps hundreds of them - just to save our sick nuclear industry from starving to death?

I think it is ethically a wrong decision to let money steer this extremely dangerous industry.  Or some day we may wake up seeing a real nightmare - a nuclear dream come true.


JPS

Just In: Reactor Emergency Shutdown At Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant Due to Cooling Pump Failure

There was a emergency shutdown at Harrisburg Three Mile Island nuclear reactor on thursday 20th September at 2 pm, when one of the four cooling pumps failed. Big amount of steam was causing a jet-like sound according to local residents. A NRC official entered the control room to follow how the situation develops. According to news channels the NRC offficial and the representatives of the power company don't think there exists any danger to the public and claim the steam contained no detectable amounts of radioactive substances.


LINK - ENENEWS:
http://enenews.com/reactor-shutdown-at-three-mile-island-steam-release-sounded-like-a-jet-engine-official-admits-steam-may-be-radioactive-nrc-inspector-inside-control-room


The most severe accident in US nuclear history happened in 1979 just at Three Mile Island reactor. Then the accident caused acute radiation symptoms (hair loss, womiting, bleeding for some people and killed pet animals. Some researchers have found out that the accident caused widely cancer deaths for people living downwind from the plant. The official estimates of the radiation releases of the accident are shown out by many researchers to be severely underestimated.

Let's hope this accident won't turn out to be severe.

JPS

Solar Power In Israel

Israel has not been among the most active solar power countries. But now it seems that solar power generation is spreading rapidly in this land of plenty of sunny days. What do you think about a kibbutz that makes solar power a good new business? It's called  Arava Power Company, estimated to grow up to 2 billion USD Solar power enterpise in the future.

And their example has started a solar power boom in Israel. Now, for example,  the daytime peak power consumtion of the city of Eilat is covered by one third with solar power.

The Arab countries could also use their large desert areas to generate enough solar and wind energy for them and their neighbour countries.

LINK - NEW YORK TIMES:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/middleeast/kibbutz-in-israeli-desert-turns-to-solar-power.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast


 JPS

Just In: NRC Cover-Up - almost 100% Probability of Three Reactors Meltdown If Jocassee Dam Fails

The odds that Jocassee Dam in USA fails are much greater than odds were that a big tsunami hits Fukushima Daichi NPP. Also other dams with nuclear power plants downstream are likely to fail with far greater possibility than having a tsunami run over Japanese nuclear plants.

NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) has known that for a long time but has not been willing to publish the information or force the licencees to strenghten the facilities against water masses that are coming downstream after a major failure of a dam.

Now a couple of NRC-engineers have come out and made the whole story public. These whistleblowers are pointing out that these events are quite possible and that the consequences may be as severe as in Fukushima: multireactor simultaneous meltdowns, breaching of containment vessels and a large radioactive fallout.

LINK - ENENEWS: http://enenews.com/nrc-engineers-charge-regulators-with-coverup-reactor-melt-down-an-absolute-certainty-if-dam-failed

I remember Nuclear Engineer Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates having told about the inland tsunamis that dam failures could cause during the exeptionally high water emergency situation at some river areas and river-side nuclear reactors last year. It seems that he was once more right with his predictions - a second Fukushima scaled accident was really near then.

JPS

The Soviet Way of Getting Rid Of Nuclear Waste

The Russian Environmental Organization Bellona  told  new information about Russian nuclear waste and nuclear submarines dumping into the sea in Northern Siberia. There are more nuclear waste, old nuclear reactors and submarines with some of them the fuel still in reactor than previously known. The Russian authorities have given little by little new information about nuclear dumping that took mostly place during the Soviet era.

According to Norwegian sources 17 000 containers of radioactive waste, 19 ships with radioactive waste, 14 nuclear reactors, five of them filled with fuel are dumped there. Also 735 pieces of radioactive heavy machinery and K-27 nuclear submarine with two reactors full of fuel are on the sea bottom.

The scientists are worried about the possibility of fueled nuclear reactors to become critical and explode. And of course spreading of the radioactive contamination to the sea ecosystem is a serious issue.


LINK - ENENEWS: http://enenews.com/alarm-14-nuclear-reactors-dumped-in-ocean-some-filled-with-fuel-could-reachieve-criticality-explode


I just wonder how many containers of radioactive waste there are dumped by the western countries during 1940ies to 2000. Even now there are reports about the Italian Mafia to dump radioactive waste with old ships and getting paid for the ships by the insurance companies - a double fraud.

Let's hope the ships or the most dangerous waste can be taken out from the seabed to safer locations.

JPS