In a 15-14 vote, Greenland’s parliament voted to overturn the long-standing ban on uranium mining. The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed in a memo that it supported the decision given that Greenland has maintained control over its mineral resources since 2010. While the decision was close, the lifting of the ban should not come […]
Dozens of protesters from all over Japan turned up for the arrival of a shipment of mixed uranium-plutonium (MOX) at the port of Takahama in Fukui Prefecture after its two-month journey from France. According to a Japan Times article, this was the first shipment of MOX fuel since the March 11, 2011, quake/tsunami-triggered nuclear […]
The consensus about Fukushima’s nuclear disaster holds that human error caused the partial meltdown. Failure to anticipate what went wrong is at the heart of the matter. Over the weekend, a reactor at the the Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford, Conn., closed down because its designers back in the 1960s failed to anticipate […]
One of the greatest problems in the post-Cold War era has been what to do with the leftover highly enriched uranium [HEU], also known as weapons-grade uranium. When the US and USSR were engaged in the nuclear arms race, tons of the stuff was produced in the hopes it would never be used. The 1993 […]
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has announced his decision to restart two nuclear reactors in western Japan. As I noted in this blog a month ago, all of Japan’s nuclear reactors are offline. Before the Fukushima meltdown, 30% of the nation’s electricity came from uranium fission reactors. As a result of these shutdowns, there is […]
Two decades after achieving independence from the Soviet Union, Lithuania is still struggling to achieve energy independence. It appears to have taken some significant steps in that direction recently. First, it managed to get the foreign shareholders of Lietuvos Dujos, a Lithuanian natural gas company, to agree to divide the utility into three separate […]
Today the Foreign Policy Association hosted a conference on “The Future of Energy“. I had the pleasure of attending and, given that I am writing on energy, I also have some interesting insights to share. Especially interesting was the panel discussion “The Energy Picture, Redrawn.” The key insight is that energy is crucial for […]
Jochen Flasbarth, President of Umwelt Bundes Amt (UBA – Germany’s central federal authority on environmental matters), was in New York last week, where he discussed, among other things, Germany’s efforts to create a national electric supply that relies completely on renewable energy. Germany’s goal is to reduce its overall greenhouse gas emissions by 80-90% by the […]
I had the opportunity to go to a real stimulating talk the other day. Jochen Flasbarth, the President of the Federal Environment Agency of Germany, had just been to the big do at the NY Times, the “Energy for Tomorrow” conference. Flasbarth was on a panel, moderated by Tom Friedman, with worthies such as Carol […]
With the arrival of December, it’s time to check the rear-view mirror to see where we have been in order to have some clue as to where we are going. In the energy realm, 2011 was the Year of the Three Fs: Fukushima, Fracking and Finance. Japan is used to earthquakes, and the odd tsunami […]
The year is certainly not over yet – the annual international UN climate conference is ongoing in South Africa for the next ten days. Nevertheless, here’s a quick look at what we’ve seen – and what we might expect in 2012. Casting back to my look at 2010 and beyond, I predicted witch hunts from […]
Siemens, the German industrial giant, is, like the installation they created, picture above, a superstar. Peter Löscher, recently reappointed as CEO, has been driving the renewables end of their business relentlessly, seeing nothing but upside. Siemens has made a big move in announcing its total withdrawal from the nuclear power business. Siemens Abandoning Nuclear Power […]
You don’t have to tell me it’s the tenth anniversary of the Al Qaeda attacks on the US. I was there, thank you. There is plenty to be said on the subject, and politicians, pundits and the population at large are saying it. My only comment today on this is to consider the cost. According […]
We had a fabulous trip in, in the immortal phrase of Donald Rumsfeld, “Old Europe.” The only problem, Rummy, with your formulation is that … well, it’s wrong. France, in the Southwest, where we were for part of the trip, is smart, prosperous, progressive and with friendly folks. France, though, is far too reliant on […]
In what I can only imagine to be an explicit acknowledgement of the importance of nonproliferation in the context of the renewed fervor for nuclear power – Fukushima notwithstanding – two new NGO initiatives have recently launched. The first, launched earlier this month, is courtesy of the Bipartisan Policy Center. Their new “Nuclear Initiative” will […]