Tick tock, tick tock… The ticking sound that our friends in Germany might be hearing is the countdown to 2022, the year in which the country has pledged to be completely nuclear free.

Meanwhile, halfway across the globe, Japan is still dealing with the aftermath of the meltdown at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility. The disaster greatly damaged public confidence in the safety of nuclear power, leading many countries to question their own commitment to nuclear power.

As Germany, Japan, and other countries seek to phase out nuclear power, they need to design strategies for filling the “energy gap” created by nuclear power’s absence. Renewable energy sources provide the clearest, cleanest path for filling this gap, and many different forms of renewables currently exist as viable options.

Germany-based TimberTower develops massive, easily assembled wooden towers that can be used as the base for wind turbines, much the way wood was used as the foundation for windmills for many centuries. More flexible, renewable and easier to manufacture and produce than metal turbines, the wooden towers make sense for a forest-rich region.

Clean technology company SunPods Inc.—headquartered in San Jose, Calif.—designs and manufactures modular solar array units that help make solar power more accessible and affordable. Unlike conventional customized ground-mounted solar arrays that require extensive onsite assembly and construction, SunPods (which stands for “Sun Power on Demand”) are configured and built in a factory before being delivered to virtually any site — a process that reduces installation time by up to 85 percent, allowing sunny regions to readily harvest the solar power available to them.

Tidal power presents another option for renewable energy for countries with available coastline. IT Power—based in Bristol, UK—is developing an innovative tidal energy device that uses oscillating horizontal hydrofoils instead of traditional rotating blades to generate renewable energy. This pioneering approach offers many advantages over existing tidal stream technology by maximizing the area that can be swept—and hence the power captured—in a given depth of water.

Wind, solar, tidal power, and other renewables all have a role to play in helping countries seeking to move away from nuclear achieve their energy goals. How these countries fill “the energy gap” will be a bellwether for others working to diversify their energy mix.

Susan Gladwin leads the Autodesk Clean Tech Partner Program, which provides emerging clean tech companies powerful software and opportunities to help them develop solutions that address our most pressing environmental issues. In North America, Europe, Japan and Singapore, the Autodesk Clean Tech Partner Program offers $150,000 of Autodesk software for $50.

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In front of a packed house of dignitaries, delegates and energy industry leaders assembled for the 2012 World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Korean Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik each independently reaffirmed their country’s commitment to nuclear power as an essential part of a low carbon future. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi on Monday morning, the two leaders outlined their country’s clean energy and energy efficiency accomplishments over the last several years, and outlined the framework for transitioning to a low carbon energy economy in the years to come.

“We will gradually change the current energy mix dominated by coal,” Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said at the opening session of the 2012 World Future Energy Summit, by raising the output of “natural gas, renewable energy and nuclear energy,” referring to nuclear as “safe, reliable and technologically mature.”

Premier Wen outlined a long list of Chinese accomplishments in renewable energy and energy efficiency, capping them off by reporting that China now gets 11% of its electricity from renewable energy.

But Premier Wen underscored that the transition to clean energy would not be sudden. “Fossil fuels will continue for a long time,” Wen told conference attendees. “So we need to follow a low-carbon approach to carbon-intense technologies,” Wen said.

Premier Wen was not alone in committing to nuclear energy in the long term. In the second keynote address at the opening session of the 2012 WFES, Korean Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik told conferees that “To accelerate the worldwide spread of renewable energy and for it to replace fossil fuels we must promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”

The message from Prime Minister Kim was very clear: climate change is a serious issue that poses a threat to people all over the planet. “Humanity faces a serious challenge with global climate change,” Kim said.

And if you take Prime Minister Kim’s words at face value, his government is backing up their clean energy talk with clean energy action. According to Kim, the “green government has invested 2% of GDP [gross domestic product] in renewable energy and clean technologies and has set a goal to be the worlds fifth largest clean energy economy.”

Wrapping up the morning’s powerhouse session of Asian leaders, UN Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon praised the promise of “sustainable energy,” demanding that “energy poverty must end.”

“It is not acceptable that 3 billion people have to rely on wood, coal and charcoal and animal waste for cooking and heating,” said the Secretary General.

Article by Timothy Hurst, appearing courtesy ecopolitology.

Tim Hurst’s travel expenses to the 2012 World Future Energy Summit were covered by Masdar.

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Renewable sources of energy provided a greater share of U.S. domestic energy production than nuclear during the first nine months of 2011, according to a new report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

In its latest monthly energy review, the EIA reports that renewable energy — including solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and biomass/biofuels — provided 11.95 percent of energy production during the first three-quarters of 2011, compared with 10.62 percent from nuclear.

During the same period in 2010, about 10.85 percent of domestic energy production came from renewables; in 2009, it was 10.33 percent.

Among renewable sources, hydropower produced the largest contribution of total domestic energy, with 4.35 percent, followed by biomass (3.15 percent) and biofuels (2.57 percent). In the electricity sector, renewable sources provided 12.73 percent of net electrical generation in the U.S., according to the report.

photo: Bigod

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A U.S. government-funded report has concluded that small, modular nuclear reactors may be the best option for continuing to develop the U.S. nuclear power industry in the wake of the disaster at Fukushima, Japan.

The report, prepared by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, said that smaller reactors that can essentially be mass-produced could be a safe, economically viable alternative to building larger nuclear reactors.

Larger reactors produce gigawatts of power and can cost $10 billion to build, while the modular reactors would generate 600 megawatts or less and could replace aging, 200- to 400-gigawatt coal plants that will be phased out in the coming decades, according to the report.

Co-authored by Robert Rosner, former director of the Argonne National Laboratory, the report said that the smaller reactors could be factory-built as modular components and then shipped to local sites for assembly.

Rosner said that an important safety aspect of the modular reactors is that they are designed to eliminate the need for human intervention during an emergency, as the reactors can be cooled by thermal convection, rather than manually-operated pumps.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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Thorium is a naturally-occurring, radioactive, and amazingly abundant metal that was discovered in 1828 by Swedish chemist, Jons Jakob Berzelius. The mineral, named after the Norse god of thunder, has languished in relative obscurity for many years as opposed to its much more recognized cousin, uranium. However, conversations have been popping up about thorium in recent years and how it can be a game-changer in the energy industry. Thorium has incredible potential as an ultra-safe, clean, and cheap nuclear energy source which can power the world for millennia.

Thorium is found naturally in rocks in the form of thorium-232, and has a half-life of about 14 billion years. Estimates by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) show it is about three times more common in the Earth’s crust than uranium. It can be obtained through various methods, most commonly through the extraction from monazite sands.

Known reserves of thorium are not well-known due to lack of exploratory research. The US Geological Service estimates that the USA, Australia, and India hold the largest reserves. India is believed to have the lion’s share of thorium deposits. In the United States, Idaho contains a large vein deposit. The world has an estimated total of 4.4 million tons

A newly created organization known as the Weinberg Foundation has taken up the cause of promoting thorium energy. The foundation was named after Dr. Alvin Weinberg, a nuclear energy researcher in the 1960s who laid out the vision of safe and abundant thorium power. He pioneered the Molten Salt Reactor using thorium in its liquid fuel form at the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This reactor had an inherently safer design and dramatically reduced the amount of atomic waste in comparison to typical nuclear reactors. Unfortunately, the thorium reactor program was not fully pursued due to political and military reasons.

The Weinberg Foundation has been pressing thorium nuclear energy into mainstream political discussion. As concerns over energy security and climate change rise, thorium is being promoted as the antidote. Its benefits include the following:

- Thorium reactors offer absolutely zero possibility of a meltdown because it cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming; fission would stop by default.

- Thorium reactions do not create weapons-grade by-products.

- Waste from a thorium reactive stays radioactive for only a few hundred years rather than tens of thousands of years.

- Pure thorium from the ground does not require enrichment, as opposed to uranium.

There are many benefits to thorium, it is a wonder that it is not already being widely used as a nuclear fuel. However, there are projects underway in the United States, China, India, and elsewhere. Germany and India already have existing commercial power stations powered by thorium. India has a goal of meeting 30 percent of its energy needs from thorium by the year 2050. In the US, a reactor project is ongoing in Odessa Texas and should be operational by 2015.

Time will tell whether or not thorium is truly adopted as a major energy source. It is out there, the technology is out there. All that is required is the political will and economic investment to help this potential energy panacea by realized.

Article by David A. Gabel, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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In the past several decades, there is no question that the opportunity for investment in the clean energy economy has increased exponentially. In fact, the Pew Environment Group predicts that, if legislative policies are initiated by G-20 countries as expected, more than $2.3 trillion will be invested in clean power assets over the next 10 years. This will, no doubt, provide companies enormous opportunities to compete for investments, jobs and export markets.

In 2010, for the first time in decades, the renewable energy sector surpassed the nuclear energy sector worldwide. Global investments in wind energy reached $79 billion, a record level. Much of this growth has been credited to financial incentives for companies that adopt renewable energy sources from countries such as Germany and Italy.

The most current clean energy race numbers available are from 2010. As is to be expected, every type of clean energy, including solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind, saw an increase in usage from the G-20 countries. In total, the global investment in clean energy rose 30 percent in 2010, to a total of $243 billion. Conversely, the use of biofuels dropped significantly in 2010, with G-20 countries showing the lowest investment in the biofuel sector since 2005.

So, globally speaking, who’s winning the race to be the cleanest – energy wise?

Extending its continuing lead among the G-20, China increased its clean energy usage significantly. The total investment in clean energies made by the country increased 39 percent in 2010. Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew’s Clean Energy Program in Washington, called this increase “remarkable,” noting that the changes in China’s clean energy usage came mainly in the areas of wind turbines. In fact, China is now a world’s leader in the area of wind turbine and solar module production, surprising few experts in the field.

In a surprising turn of events, however, Germany overtook the United States in 2010 to become the second largest clean energy market in the world.

Whereas China’s goal is to establishing 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020, and the European Union has set the goal of generating 20 percent of its power from renewable resources by the same year, the U.S. lacks a similarly concrete goal. In 2009, President Barack Obama’s plan for producing 25 percent of the country’s electricity with renewable resources was nullified by Congress.

The president more recently turned his sights inward, announcing the Better Buildings Initiative with a goal of seeing a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency by 2020 in the U.S. If this exciting, yet perhaps lofty, goal is achieved, the country’s collective corporate energy bills would decrease by approximately $40 billion.

The country’s focus on saving green duly noted, the U.S. is still lagging behind in efforts to go green, while the rest of the G-20 speeds ahead in the race.

The irony of the U.S. being behind with its renewable energy goals lies in the fact that they are home to some of the best producers of clean energy technologies in the world.

Article by Bari Faye Siegel, a technology writer and marketing consultant at Noveda Technologies, an innovative leader in real-time, web-based energy management, solar PV monitoring and water management. Noveda also offers real-time collaboration tools that leverage social media to educate and empower stakeholder communities and make the smart grid a reality today. For more information, visit www.noveda.com.

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Some latest scuttlebutt from the world of nuclear fusion has all the ingredients of a Hollywood thriller screenplay (and for those who remember Inside Greentech’s Greentech Avenger, you know I know scuttlebutt!)

There’ve been all kinds of cinematic ideas, and personalities, on the front lines of the crazy world of cleantech innovation. Wild claims from charismatic mad scientists abound.

So hearing word that a tiny company has potentially cracked the code of fusion energy and created a working megawatt-scale reactor that actually produces more power than it requires is something I’d normally dismiss as yet another tale from the lunatic fringe.

But, in this case, I trust the source. So, whether you believe nuclear energy is cleantech or not—and especially if you don’t—read on.

In researching a new Kachan report on new safer, cleaner nuclear technology, we interviewed dozens of scientists at nuclear research outfits like Flibe Energy, General Atomics, General Fusion, Helion Energy, Hyperion Power Generation, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), Invap, Lightbridge, NuScale, Ottawa Valley Research, QPower, Radix Power and Energy Corp, Rare Earth Extraction Co., Rhodia, Scandinavian Advanced Technology (SCATEC), Terra Power, Thor Energy, Thorium One International, Tri Alpha Energy and U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF).

Most fusion organizations are pursuing big, capital-intensive tokamaks and other reactors. But one interviewee, in a face-to-face conversation in an exotic location abroad, told us of a small company he’s involved with that he claims has built a working 1MW fusion reactor the size of a rice cooker (though it’s dubious that approximation includes the requisite shielding, cooling, turbines, etc.) The company is now apparently in the process of building a 10MW version that it plans to trial in 2012.

If true, it would turn a lot of heads, in particular at organizations like the international €15 billion ($20.4 billion) ITER project, the multi-billion dollar U.S. National Ignition Facility, and smaller fusion companies like General Fusion, Helion Energy and Tri Alpha Energy. And maybe, just maybe, represent a new energy production paradigm.

A generic tokamak-based design for a fusion reactor. NOT the design employed by our secretive fusion company. ITER’s tokamak is 98 feet tall and is taking years to build. Administrators expect ITER to require somewhere between €30 billion ($41 billion) and €50 billion ($68 billion) to hit its goals by 2040. Illustration source: Splung.com.

More on the company in a moment. First, a quick primer on fusion:

Why fusion matters
Nuclear fusion has represented a Holy Grail of power potential since the 1950s. Fusion reactors, in theory, mimic the internal processes of the sun and other stars by fusing atoms. Typically, this means combining a plasma of hydrogen atoms into helium. This is in contrast to today’s fission reactors, which typically split solid uranium atoms. The fusion process would emit heat that would ultimately drive electricity generators and could serve many other purposes, such as keeping buildings warm and firing up high-temperature industrial operations.

The potential advantages of fusion are enormous. Compared to conventional fission, a fusion reactor theoretically ticks several very important boxes in today’s safety-conscious nuclear energy world. Here’s an excerpt from the fusion benefits section of our report on nuclear innovations:

* It cannot melt down, so the potential for a radioactive leak is miniscule. Fusion tends to run on very little fuel, and the fuel stops fusing as soon as conditions become imperfect. Thus, a loss of power to the reactor would shut down the reaction, with no threat of runaway, uncontrollable events. While this would carry financial consequences, it does not pose the safety risk associated with conventional fission reactors, in which large volumes of fuel can carry on fissioning in an outage. In fission, if cooling and/or control mechanisms fail, meltdown can ensue, as happened at Fukushima.
* It produces relatively little radioactivity. The levels are extremely low and very short-lived compared to the long-lived, highly toxic radioactive waste of conventional fission reactors.
* Its waste poses little weapons proliferation risk. The waste that fusion produces cannot be used to make bombs, although some believe that the tritium that it breeds does pose a proliferation risk.
* There are potential uses for fusion’s helium waste. Helium is widely used in the medical industry for, among other things, cooling the superconducting magnets in MRI scanners, and in welding.
* Most components of a potential fusion fuel are plentiful. Most fusion projects aim to use deuterium and tritium. Deuterium is plentiful—it’s the stuff that Canadian CANDU “heavy water” reactors use as moderators in fission reactions. It occurs commonly in water. It’s so common in seawater that, according to fusion company Helion Energy, the potential energy in 1 barrel of seawater equals that of 700 barrels of oil. The other hydrogen isotope, tritium, does not occur naturally. Fusion fuel makers will have to obtain their first doses from either CANDU reactors, where it is a byproduct, or from other sources, like the weapons community. But the good news is that once fusion starts, it breeds its own new tritium.
* It requires very little fuel. Most proposed fusion reactors rely on very small amounts of deuterium and tritium. ITER, the massive international fusion project in France, plans to deploy a mere 2 grams of deuterium and tritium at any one time in its 98-foot-tall reactor. By comparison, utilities typically load fission reactors with hundreds of rods of uranium at a time.
* Fuel costs are low. If a year’s worth of coal carries a value of “1”, then the combined cost of the deuterium and tritium would be 0.0005. The uranium in fission would cost 0.1, significantly more than fusion fuel.
* It does not emit CO2 or other greenhouse gases. While this is also true for fission reactions, it adds to the appeal of fusion as a baseload clean energy source.

If fusion sounds too good to be true, that’s because, so far, it has been. As of this writing, there’s been no independent verification that anyone has yet successfully built a working fusion reactor that can produce sustained energy greater than that put into it.

Enter our small fusion company. Our source, concerned he was telling us too much, initially wouldn’t even reveal its name.

The fission wonder down under?
As mentioned, this company and its story seem to have all the elements of a Hollywood thriller:

* Harnessing the power of nature! The analogy most often applied to fusion is harnessing the reaction of the sun. But this company’s fusion reaction, fueled by deuterium and tritium, isn’t nearly as high temperature, our source claims, and is more “rooted in nature.” Specifically, the reaction is said not to require the high temperature, high pressure or accelerated particles of others’ approaches. “The key is not how many neutron hits you generate, but how you sustain them, how well you can control them.” For a 40-watt power input, the reactor is said to be able to generate a megawatt.
* Exotic locales! The company is based in Australia. Why? “Everyone’s expecting big nuclear innovations to come out of China, or France,” said our source. But it’s replicated its intellectual property and technology “around the world in case they get infiltrated.”
* Self-funded by mad scientist! The technology’s inventor has apparently tinkered with his design for 40 years, and self-funded the company’s early stages, reinvesting income from earlier lucrative inventions. Now, strategic investors are said to include family money, such as a Shanghai real estate baron and decedents of American industrialist John Pitcairn, Jr.
* Culture of secrecy! The company’s secrecy about its actual progress makes Apple look sophomoric. In development since the 90s, it has sworn employees and investors not to let on how successful its research has been. It’s said to have retained the former head of Israel’s counter terrorism unit as its chief of security.
* No to takeover offers! The company is said to have already fielded a buyout attempt by General Electric (NYSE:GE). The founder apparently didn’t want the invention owned by just one corporation, characterizing it an invention for mankind, apparently.
* Requisite military involvement! The company is said to be secretly working with the Australian Air Force and Navy, and the U.S. Department of Defense, and aims to trial a 10MW version of its reactor in 2012 with an Australian utility.
* Political and industrial upheaval! If fusion can be made to work at scale, it could indeed affect the world in profound ways. All the ingredients for drama!

More about this secretive company, and other companies working to radically improve nuclear power as we know it today, is available in Kachan’s new Emerging Nuclear Innovations report, just released. This 64-page report rounds up 6 months of looking carefully at the nuclear power industry for companies best placed to usurp big, conventional fission of the type that powers the 432 non-military nuclear reactors that exist worldwide today.

Beyond fusion, the report also looks at improvements in conventional light water reactors (LWRs), including boiling water reactors (BWRs) and pressurized water reactors (PWRs), use of thorium as a fuel in molten salt and solid fuel reactors, molten salt reactors (MSRs), fast neutron reactors (FNRs), pebble bed reactors (PBRs) and modular reactors.

So don’t write off the nuclear power industry after Fukushima. Despite last March’s meltdown in Japan, the World Nuclear Association believes that in the 33 countries that currently operate nuclear reactors, capacity will increase 52-200%, to between 559 and 1,087 gigawatts in 2030 (up from 367 gigawatts today). Among countries that don’t already use nuclear power, those with plans to do so could add another 30-123 gigawatts, and new potential entrants could increase that by yet another 13-140 gigawatts.

Expect that new, safer nuclear technologies—possibly even fusion—will be part of that growth.

Article by Dallas Kachan, appearing courtesy Kachan & Co.

A former managing director of the Cleantech Group, Dallas Kachan is now managing partner of Kachan & Co., a cleantech research and advisory firm that does business worldwide from San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. Kachan & Co. staff have been covering, publishing about and helping propel clean technology since 2006. Kachan & Co. offers cleantech research reports, consulting and other services that help accelerate its clients’ success in clean technology. Details at www.kachan.com.

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The good news is that on 8 November the International Energy Agency released its 2011 “World Energy Outlook.”

While it will cheer nuclear advocates, overall the report makes for grim reading.

Pulling no punches, the report states at the outset, “There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is underway.”

Stripped of its cautious language, the IEA report essentially noted that should present trends continue, the world’s governments through a lack of progressive initiative embracing alternative energy sources would continue to rely on ‘tried and true” fossil fuels, resulting in increased pollution, more fossil-fuel dependency and increasingly upward energy prices.

For environmentalists, this is all good news, but the report contained a caveat virtually anathema to all green movements, that accordingly, governments should reconsider their reluctance to embrace nuclear power, as it does not generate greenhouse gases.

Like many discussions in Western economies since 2008, when the global recession first began to draw blood, the issue of reliable energy production ultimately devolves down to dollars and cents issues.

The grim reality for environmentalists is that no single renewable energy resource, from wind power to solar energy through biofuels, has remotely become competitive with kilowatt hours of electrical energy generated by coal or oil-fired power plants. The debate pits those opposed to a transition to greener technologies to those considering the bottom line, despite greenhouse gas emissions.

Even worse for the environmentalists, the IEA report advocates that as a short-term solution, governments ought to reconsider nuclear power, as it produces zero CO2 emissions. Projecting into the future the report notes, “A low-nuclear future would also boost demand for fossil fuels: the increase in global coal demand is equal to twice the level of Australia’s current steam coal exports and the rise in gas demand is equivalent to two-thirds of Russia’s current natural gas exports. The net result would be to put additional upward pressure on energy prices, raise additional concerns about energy security and make it harder and more expensive to combat climate change. The consequences would be particularly severe for those countries with limited indigenous energy resources which have been planning to rely relatively heavily on nuclear power”

But while sketching out a bleak scenario should governments remain largely disengaged to the larger issues involved in energy production, the IEA report nevertheless ends on a cautiously optimistic note, with its authors concluding, “International concern about the issue of energy access is growing. The United Nations has declared 2012 to be the ‘International Year of Sustainable Energy for All’ and the Rio+20 Summit represents an important opportunity for action. More finance, from many sources and in many forms, is needed to provide modern energy for all, with solutions matched to the particular challenges, risks and returns of each category of project. Private sector investment needs to grow the most, but this will not happen unless national governments adopt strong governance and regulatory frameworks and invest in capacity building. The public sector, including donors, needs to use its tools to leverage greater private sector investment where the commercial case would otherwise be marginal. Universal access by 2030 would increase global demand for fossil fuels and related CO2 emissions by less than 1%, a trivial amount in relation to the contribution made to human development and welfare.”

Accordingly, what is most notable about the IEA report is two things.

First, energy options beyond dependence on traditional fossil fuels such as coal and oil not only exist, but are available in significant amounts to make a serious contribution.

Secondly, as Germany’s experience in weaning itself off nuclear energy is showing, the alternatives are more expensive than current power production modes.

According to the IEA’s scenarios then, the issue of global power production over the next two-three decades devolves upon two major issues.

The first is cost, which will undoubtedly be an uphill struggle for many governments seeking to meet the population’s rising energy demands, who will be loathe to endure increasing energy bills.

The second consideration is the contentious issue of global warming, and the impact of traditional fossil fuel-fired power plants belching vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

While even the most diehard proponents of traditional power plant electrical generation to not deny that their facilities emit significant amounts of carbon dioxide, they denigrate the concerns of environmentalists as ‘fuzzy science.”

So, at the end of the day, the two fundamental issues facing the world’s nations seeking to satiate their population’s demand for reliable and inexpensive power devolve down to cost and scientific projections. We’ll leave the final word to the IEA, which laid out three scenarios, ranging from best- to worst-case – “The wide difference in outcomes between these three scenarios underlines the critical role of governments to define the objectives and implement the policies necessary to shape our energy future.” Accordingly, the major question is whether global governments will have both the cash and political will “to shape our energy future” to the best possible ends.

Article by John C.K. Daly, appearing courtesy Oilprice.com.

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According to a report in Renewables International, it could well be.

The publication said negotiations carried out by a coalition headed by the Social Democrats has convinced politicians to phase out nuclear, following in the footsteps of Germany and Switzerland, where authorities decided to move away from nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Belgium has a 2003 law that outlines the planned shutdowns between 2015 and 2025 but political inertia meant it was never enforced. The phasing would start in 2015 with three reactors being unplugged then. Altogether, Belgium has seven nuclear reactors at two plants, Doel and Tihange. 5860 MW will be lost with the nuclear exit of these two stations.

However, a successful transition from nuclear to alternative energy will depend on replacement capacity, Johan Albrecht, an expert from the Itinerar thinktank, told Reuters. The state of the economy will also influence the outcome of this decision. If demand for electricity decreases with a recession, then it will be easier to take capacity off the grid; if the economy goes stronger, it will be harder, he added.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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On September 12th, Iran brought its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr online, connecting it to the country’s electrical grid. Iranian officials at the opening ceremony said that the 1,000 megawatt plant has begun generating electricity at 40 percent of its capacity and will reach full capacity by the year’s end following further testing.

Quite aside from demonstrating Iran’s touching post-Fukushima faith in nuclear energy despite being a seismically active country, Bushehr represents a Rorschach test of sorts for all the fears and anxieties in the Middle East, in which everyone looking at the facility has his preconceptions reaffirmed.

“Axis of Evil” charter member Iran insists that Bushehr represents the government’s determination to husband is vast oil reserves by promoting other energy sources, as its economy has hammered by more than three decades of U.S.-led sanctions.

Iran has been subjected to increasingly militant rhetoric from both Tel Aviv and Washington over its civilian nuclear energy program, with thinly veiled threats of possible military action if Tehran does not abandon its efforts, even though they are completely complaint under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran has signed and which Tehran pointedly underlines, it’s nemesis and harshest critic Israel has not.

Russia signed a $1 billion contract in 1995 for building the Bushehr plant and last month the country’s Rosatom supplied the power station’s uranium fuel. The United States urged Russia to delay the startup until Iran proves that it’s not developing nuclear weapons, to no avail, as Moscow replied that that the Bushehr project has been closely supervised by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

Russian officials said that Iran had signed a pledge to ship all the spent uranium fuel from Bushehr back to Russia for reprocessing, excluding the possibility that any of it could used to make nuclear weapons.

Russia has insisted that the Bushehr project is essential for persuading Iran to cooperate with the IAEA and fulfill its obligations under international nuclear nonproliferation agreements.

Many aspects of Iran’s uranium enrichment activities trouble the international community, so much so that in June the U.N. Security Council slapped a fourth set of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. The sanctions followed Iran’s refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process which can be used for the production of fuel for power plants when uranium is enriched to a level of 3-4 percent purity, as well as material for nuclear warheads if enriched to more 90 percent purity. Equally worrying is the fact that Iran received its centrifuge designs from Pakistan, the world’s first Muslim nuclear state, which developed its own nuclear weapons in response to India’s weapon program.

Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is purely peaceful, aimed at producing nuclear energy, but the United States and Israel in particular believe that Tehran’s real goal is to produce atomic weaponry.

And Israel has more reason than most to be concerned, as it developed its own nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s at its Dimona reactor by hoodwinking the IAEA, a fact finally proven in 1986 by Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who leaked details of the program to Britain’s Sunday Times and was subsequently kidnapped back to Israel, tried on charges of treason and espionage and subsequently served an 18-year prison sentence. If any nation has a concept of how to covertly develop nuclear weaponry, it is Israel.

So, Bushehr finally comes down to seeing what you want to see there.

That said, international law is not, despite the efforts of the Bush 2 administration, the issue of a nation’s unilaterally “cherry picking” through intelligence for material supporting national agendas stands in stark contrast to building an international consensus for general behavior through the rule of law. Unilaterally ascribing the worst possible motives to a nation rather than letting international law resolve issues will eventually leave the globe in the jungle, with survival of the strongest.

Any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, unlike its attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 or its 2007 strike on reported Syrian nuclear facilities, will become an international incident, as at Buhshehr alone, according to Russian Federation Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko, “around 1,500 (Russian) people” now work at Bushsehr and “several hundred people – depending on our agreement with Iran – will be engaged in operating the plant.”

The world has uneasily lived with Pakistan’s nuclear “Muslim bomb” for 13 years. Whatever the reality of Iran’s nuclear program, if it does indeed mask a weapons component, why would Iran feel tempted to use it to strike Israel, as it would inevitably provoke massive retaliation from Israel’s nuclear arsenal, estimated at several hundred atomic weapons, deployed by a triad of aircraft, missiles and submarines.

To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, who famously observed, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” perhaps sometimes a nuclear power plant is just… a nuclear power plant.

Article by John C.K. Daly, appearing courtesy OilPrice.com.

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