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A look at nuclear energy production and policies in selected countries around the world, as the UK government announces its long-term nuclear energy plans.
UNITED STATES
The United States is the world’s largest supplier of commercial nuclear power, with more than 100 licensed commercial nuclear power plants. In 2006, these generated about 20% of the country’s national energy production, and met 9% of the country’s energy needs.
FRANCE
France has more than 50 nuclear power plants, which produce 79% of its electricity output. The nuclear fleet meets just under half of the nation’s energy needs. France is a substantial exporter of nuclear electricity to other European countries. France’s energy policy stems from its reaction to the oil crises of the 1970s, when the government decided to pursue nuclear power as a means of assuring its energy security.
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Nigeria’s oil sector has long produced uncertainty in prodigious quantities, but the past few days may mark a record.
Depending on who you listen to, crude output in Africa’s biggest producer has slipped dramatically.
The latest in a string of worrisome pronouncements came on Wednesday, when Lamido Sanusi, the respected new governor of the central bank, was quoted as telling an audience in Kenya that production had fallen to about 1m barrels of oil a day.
If the governor being quoted correctly (the central bank has been reluctant to issue a copy of his speech), something pretty monumental has happened since the first three months of this year, when the bank’s own official figure was an average of 1.68m b/d of oil, gas and condensates.
Sanusi’s remarks tally with what Levi Ajuonuma, spokesman for the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, told the FT in Abuja last month: namely that the industry was reeling from years of attacks on its installations in the Niger Delta, home to about 90 per cent of the country’s petroleum.
“We are at around 800,000 [to] 1m [barrels per day],” says Ajuonuma. Another senior government official echoed that estimate, as did Bismarck Rewane, a well-connected investment banker, who put production at between 800,000 and 1.1m b/d.
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The failure of government departments to cut their carbon emissions could hit taxpayers, MPs have warned.
The Environmental Audit Committee said it was “unconvinced” that the government would reach its own target of reducing emissions by 12.5% by 2011.
It said departments could end up paying better performing private firms under the Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme which is to be introduced next year.
The government said there was no proof that taxpayers would be affected.
‘Leadership crucial’
The committee also warned that the government was slipping in the proportion of renewable energy it was using.
Insulation, solar panels and energy efficient combined heat and power boilers should be installed in government offices, the MPs said.
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A company based in Berkeley, CA, is developing lightweight, high-energy batteries that can use the surrounding air as a cathode. PolyPlus is partnering with a manufacturing firm to develop single-use lithium metal-air batteries for the government, and it expects these batteries to be on the market within a few years.
The company also has rechargeable lithium metal-air batteries in the early stages of development that could eventually power electric vehicles that can go for longer in between charges.
Water power: A prototype battery made by PolyPlus uses lithium metal as the anode and salt water as the cathode to power an LED. As the battery discharges, lithium ions diffuse into the water, but the device doesn’t harm the surrounding clown fish. Credit: PolyPlus
Interest in lithium metal-air batteries has been growing in recent years, along with the demand for lighter power sources for devices ranging from plug-in hybrid vehicles to laptops. In lithium-ion batteries, the electrodes are made of materials such as graphite, while in a lithium-metal battery, the anode is made up entirely of lithium metal, and the surrounding air can act as the cathode.
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A startup snags funding to start early work on a low-budget test reactor.
General Fusion, a startup in Vancouver, Canada, says it can build a prototype fusion power plant within the next decade and do it for less than a billion dollars. So far, it has raised $13.5 million from public and private investors to help kick-start its ambitious effort.
Power pistons: General Fusion’s reactor is a metal sphere with 220 pneumatic pistons designed to ram its surface simultaneously. The ramming creates an acoustic wave that travels through a lead-lithium liquid and eventually accelerates toward the center into a shock wave. The shock wave compresses a plasma target, called a spheromak, to trigger a fusion burst. The thermal energy is extracted with a heat exchanger and used to create steam for electricity generation. To produce power, the process would be repeated every second.
Unlike the $14 billion ITER project under way in France, General Fusion’s approach doesn’t rely on expensive superconducting magnets–called tokamaks–to contain the superheated plasma necessary to achieve and sustain a fusion reaction. Nor does the company require powerful lasers, such as those within the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to confine a plasma target and compress it to extreme temperatures until fusion occurs.
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The Indian city of Ahmedabad has announced plans to launch a new project converting the city’s municipal waste into fuel.
As well as reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill, it is hoped that the scheme will help the city move towards energy self-sufficiency.
The deal, signed between Indian civic company Amedabad Municipal and Japanese waste management and recycling firm Creative, will see the waste turned into pellets that can safely be burned for energy in power generation plants.
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The biggest three power generation companies in China produced more greenhouse gases last year than the entire of the UK, a new report has revealed.
According to Greenpeace, Huaneng, Datang and Guodian emitted 769 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2008 from 316 million tonnes of coal.
The environmental group’s report – entitled Polluting Power: Ranking China’s Biggest Power Companies – also noted that China’s leading power companies are still dependent on inefficient coal-fired power plants.
What’s more, only three of the top ten utilities firms were found to be generating ten percent or more of their electricity from renewable energy sources.
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Universities in England should reduce their carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, it has been suggested.
Launching a new consultation into the matter, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has called for a carbon reduction strategy that exceeds national targets for the sector.
The proposals, which were produced with Universities UK and GuildHE, also called for emission cuts of 35 percent by 2020 against the 1990 baseline.
HEFCE is calling for feedback on its suggestions, which aim to reduce carbon emissions generated by energy use, transport, water consumption, waste and procurement.
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India has resisted the external imposition of climate change law – and with good reason. But its about-turn is to be applauded.
Here’s the best news I’ve seen all year: India is finally lumbering into action on climate change.
Though this country is likely to be hit harder than almost anywhere else by the climate crash, not least because its food production is largely dependent on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers, which are rapidly retreating, it has almost been a point of pride in India not to respond to the requests of richer nations to limit its emissions.
I think there are several reasons for this, not all of them discreditable. The first is that Indian people and governments have rightly perceived that when it comes to acting on climate change, most developed countries are all leaf and no plums. They make grand statements (remember the G8 meeting) about the need to cut emissions, but in most cases they haven’t been translating them into domestic policy (the UK is now an exception). With some justice, India has suspected that it is being urged to implement global policies that the rich nations have no intention of honouring.
Indians are also painfully aware that the rich nations in the past deliberately prevented their nation from developing. England, for example, banned the import of calico (cotton cloth) from India, in order to protect its own textile industries. It went on to smash Indian looms and cut off the thumbs of Indian weavers in order prevent them from making their superior products. As Ha Joon Chang shows in his book Kicking Away the Ladder, England’s industrial revolution was made possible by preventing India’s. Many people there suspect that attempts to limit India’s future greenhouse gas emissions have the same purpose.
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German carbon capture plan appears to be a victim of ‘numbyism’ – not under my backyard.
It was meant to be the world’s first demonstration of a technology that could help save the planet from global warming – a project intended to capture emissions from a coal-fired power station and bury them safely underground.
But the German carbon capture plan has ended with CO2 being pumped directly into the atmosphere, following local opposition at it being stored underground.
The scheme appears a victim of “numbyism” – not under my backyard.
Opposition to the carbon capture plan has contributed to a growing public backlash against renewable energy projects, raising fears that Europe will struggle to meet its low-carbon commitments. Last week, the Danish firm Vestas blamed British “nimbies” opposing wind farms for its decision to close its turbine factory on the Isle of Wight.
Many countries continue to use coal for generating power as it is the cheapest and most readily available fuel in the world. It will probably power the development of China and India. But coal is also seen as the dirtiest fuel. So, Vattenfall’s Schwarze Pumpe project in Spremberg, northern Germany, launched in a blaze of publicity last September, was a beacon of hope, the first scheme to link the three key stages of trapping, transporting and burying the greenhouse gases.
The Swedish company, however, surprised a recent conference when it admitted that the €70m (£60.3m) project was venting the CO2 straight into the atmosphere. “It was supposed to begin injecting by March or April of this year but we don’t have a permit. This is a result of the local public having questions about the safety of the project,” said Staffan Gortz, head of carbon capture and storage communication at Vattenfall. He said he did not expect to get a permit before next spring: “People are very, very sceptical.”
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