December 29, 2009

China Leads World In New Nuclear Plant Projects

China Has Most Nuclear Projects


Source: Global Times December 29 2009
By Ji Beibei


China has the largest number of nuclear powered projects under construction in the world, officials from the National Energy Administration said.

Zhang Guobao, director of the administration, said during a meeting of energy Sunday that there are eight new nuclear power stations under construc-tion with designed capacity of 31.4 million kilowatts.

He said the eight projects accounts for more than 30 percent of nuclear power generating units under construction across the globe, Jinan Daily reported Monday.

One of the projects is the Haiyang nuclear power plant in Shandong Province. Construction of the project officially started Monday and its first nuclear unit will be put into operation in 2014, China National Radio (CNR) reported.

The 120 billion yuan ($17 billion) project is the second in China that uses advanced AP1000 technology, or the third-generation reactor designed by US-based Westinghouse Electric Co. The first application is Sanmen project in Zhejiang Province.

Once all the eight power units go into operation in 2020, they will have the capacity of the output of the Three Gorges Dam project in 2008.

Besides, the project can help China reduce green house gas emission per GDP because it emits 50 million tons less of green house gas compared with thermal power plants of the same scale, the report said.

Nuclear power is important to China especially in coastal areas where there's a high demand for power to fuel rapid economic growth, the World Nuclear Association said.

The association said China should achieve self-sufficiency in nuclear reactor design and construction in order to enhance the proportion of nucle-ar power in the whole power structure.

An earlier report by China Energy News quoted Zhang Huazhu, director general of China Nuclear Energy Association, as saying factors such as the lack of talent might affect the development of nuclear plants in China.

"There is a shortage of mature technicians in this field and this shortage may last for five to six years," said Zhang.

There are four tertiary education institutions offering related training, including Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Xi'an Jiao Tong University and Harbin Engineering University.

Getting sufficient uranium ore is another challenge facing Chinese nuclear power development.

China demand for uranium ore will be 10 times greater by 2030, the second in the world, as a result of rapid expansion of nuclear power projects, Reuters reported December 10.

But Director Zhang and Pan Zhiqiang, an official from China Nuclear Engineering Group Corporation, said the demand for uranium ore should not effect the nation's nuclear power development.

China's power was produced by fossil fuels, of which 80 percent come from coal, 2 percent from oil and 1 percent from gas, the World Nuclear Association said in 2006.



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December 5, 2009

CLIMATE GATE


This Is Unbelievable If It was Not True

NEWS REPORTER AT COPENHAGEN CONFERENCE 10TH DEC 2009 GETS SHUT DOWN AFTER ASKING ONE QUESTION REGARDING THE LEAKED CLIMATEGATE EMAILS

Censorship Is Not Science.





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Here's a video that will concisely point out Who's Who in Climate Gate; Who's Who and What They Did to cover their tracks. A nice soundtrack, too.






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Professor Phil Jones Exposed



Professor Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, has announced that he is stepping down from his post as Director of the CRU until an independent investigation and revue is complete. The revue comes as a result of the allegations following the publications of emails and software data taken from the CRU by persons known on the Web as only “hadley hack” last month.

Professor Jones says he will be stepping aside during the investigation and cooperating fully with the investigators. Vice-Chancellor Edward Acton will also be stepping aside during the investigation. Professor Peter Liss, so far not named in any of the implicating emails, will be taking over the role of Director.

Of course, the global warming alarmists are up in arms about the “stolen data” and the “bad timing” and making all kinds of conspiranoid claims about who the hadley hack was, what was released, and why. This further relegates them, in my mind, into the realm of the delusional religionist and shows them to be logically brain dead.

“It has created confusion,” said Nicholas Stern, a leading Gorebot economist (meaning climate change cashier), “and confusion never helps scientific discussions.” Apparently Mr. Stern didn’t finish the fifth grade, or otherwise he would have learned that science is all about debate, confusion over the theory, and general bickering about who is right about what. That’s what the scientific vetting process is, at its core. Using the Scientific Method, a research scientist extracts data in as controlled and careful a way as possible. Then he presents it to his peers, who endlessly nit-pick and bicker over it.

Once again, of course, Stern turned to the old “consensus makes correctness” attitude, saying, “The degree of skepticism among real scientists is very small.” There wasn’t much skepticism over the earth being flat, over Newton’s Law, or any of the others that maverick skeptics challenged and proved wrong either. Thank God for skeptics like Galileo, Einstein, and many others!

He then repeats the mantra about Five Degrees and how we’re all going to cook when global temperatures rise that much by century’s end. This totally discounts, of course, the Medieval Warming Period wherein the temperature was a full six degrees higher and Vikings made settlements in then-recently-thawed Greenland and agricultural production reached its highest levels up to that point in human history.

Oh, and the seas weren’t flooding New York or Miami either.

What Stern is really upset about is that their “strategy” won’t be going through at Copenhagen to create a new world market, enforced by governments, in carbon trading. Trading by which Stern, Gore, and all their buddies would profit immensely, being the forces who control the current carbon trading markets in the West.

In other words, if people don’t keep believing in global warming, then poor sobs like Stern might lose their billions in future income potentials. Boo hoo.

Read the AP’s lopsided reporting at this link.

Meanwhile, tomorrow we’ll get back to the business of real environmental issues and problems. You know, the ones that the global warming alarmists gloss over in their continual push for global taxation so they can keep riding the gravy train.


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Professor Bob Carter ( Bob's a Member of the Australian Environmental Foundation ) He uses the Scientific method on the popular theory with global warming being linked to CO2 levels. He examines the hypothesis and it fails the test........... Video Explains clearly & concisely.




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John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel will be joining 30,000 scientists to sue Al Gore to debunk global warming fraud. He said global warming supporters are not open to scientific, objective discussion but have been silencing their oposition to cover their faulty science. Coleman hopes that the lawsuit will bring the truth of the matter to the public eye and force media and government outlets to give a more balanced report on the claims.

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This above video gives background about the 70s ice age scare with an update about some of the principal figures involved. Newsweek, April 28, 1975


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For Those Who Enjoy A Little Humour



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THE URANIUM CONUNDRUM
AUSTRALIA IN FOCUS

NOW, let's get this straight. Much of the media in the past week has been lambasting Tony Abbott for being a conservative, yet the new Liberal leader is open to a discussion on nuclear energy for Australia.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who is ostensibly on the progressive side of politics, has ruled out such a discussion.

Abbott is a “humans-are-causing-climate-change” agnostic/sceptic, but one with a professed open mind on the subject.

We know where Rudd stands - he believes urgent action is needed lest Bendigo and Charleville become the new seaside places to build that weekender. Yet there is a considerable body of scientific opinion on the side of the argument that nuclear offers a way to provide large quantities of electricity with comparably low carbon emissions.

So a conservative wants to hold a conversation about how nuclear could help reduce emissions, but the left does not.


As someone once famously said: please explain.

But here is the delicious irony: the talk fest now under way in Copenhagen is expected to provide a major boost to the global move towards nuclear generated power, according to the latest energy report out of Brussels from BNP Paribas Fortis Bank. “The much delayed renaissance in the US nuclear power industry will be guaranteed by the Copenhagen accord,” the report adds. The bank is expecting US Energy Secretary Steven Chu to provide government funding for up to another 10 power plants. (Are you with us so far, Kevin?)

The bank is, as a result of the upsurge in nuclear plant building programs, expecting uranium spot prices to hit $US95/lb next year, almost double their present levels (the price dropped by US50c to $US45/lb last week). The forecast is still a long way from the $US140/lb peak in 2007 but get this - the bank says the looming uranium shortage will mean that figure will be reached again “before too long”.

Just in the past week we have seen Armenia announce a new 1000 megawatt nuclear plant, the South African power utility say the only way it can reach its emission reduction target by 2020 is if the country has a nuclear plant operating, India has announced four new 700MW plants and Mississippi regulators have approved expanding the generation capacity of the Grand Gulf nuclear power station in that state.

So, while sobbing uncontrollably about your recently acquired gold stocks which are now looking a little limp or cursing yourself for not getting in on the ground floor for potash and phosphate, this might be the time to start paying attention to what the uranium plays are up to.

In the past 24 hours, for example, we’ve seen a number of announcements.

WildHorse Energy has begun drilling at its 72sq km Mecsek Hills uranium project in Hungary, Extract Resources announced some exciting assays from its Rossing South project in Namibia including 28m at 0.45 per cent U3O8, Aura Energy has committed $1.6 million to define a uranium resource at its Storsjon project in Sweden, and Impact Minerals has started the first drill program at its Botswana uranium project.

This is no time for nodding off when someone mentions uranium.

Indeed Interesting Times Lay Ahead For The Uranium Bulls

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December 4, 2009

Uranium Producer Paladin Energy Resolves Dispute Over Shares With Areva





PERTH, Australia — Paladin Energy Ltd. (TSX:PDN), an Australian uranium producer that's listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, said Thursday it has resolved a two-year-long dispute between its subsidiary Summit Resources Ltd. and Areva NC Pty Ltd.

Paladin announced Thursday it has reached a settlement that resolves the dispute with Areva, "and thereby paves the way for Paladin and Areva work co-operatively as shareholders of Summit Resources Ltd."

In April 2007, Summit entered into a strategic alliance with Areva, a subsidiary of the French nuclear enterprise. Under the alliance, Areva would subscribe for shares in Summit, giving it marketing rights over two-thirds of Summit's uranium production from its Australian projects.

Later that month, the directors of Summit recommended acceptance of a takeover offer by Paladin. At the close of the offer, Areva held 10.5 per cent of the shares in Summit and Paladin held 82 per cent.

In August of that year, Summit announced it agreed to settle a legal dispute with Resolute Ltd. and Mt Isa Uranium Pty Ltd.

Areva applied to intervene in the proceedings, seeking to restrain Summit and the defendants from making the agreement binding.

Its application to intervene was heard this summer and a judgement has yet to be delivered.

On Oct. 16, Summit entered into a conditional agreement with Areva, Resolute and Paladin without any party admitting liability to another.

If the settlement agreement becomes unconditional by the court, Areva's application to intervene will be dismissed, the strategic alliance will end, and Summit will pay A$4.5 million to Areva.

Shares in Paladin were trading down less that a per cent at C$4.03 on the Toronto Stock Exchange Tuesday.

December 3, 2009

Australia's Clean Future In Nuclear Power


WE may not be getting an emissions trading scheme any time soon but the climate and energy crises still need fixing with real urgency.


Applying the EU price of $41 per tonne of CO2, cost to current power sources would result in nuclear power becoming marginally cheaper than coal and natural gas generation.




For climate, the issue is excess greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. For energy, the crisis is dwindling supplies of those fuels and air pollution from coal combustion.

Replacement energy sources need to be reliable, plentiful and economic to deploy. They need to be low-carbon to minimise global warming. Business-as-usual or half measures risks saddling future generations with a climatically hostile planet and energy scarcity.

Nuclear power is one obvious replacement source, but typically raises five objections.

First, readily available uranium supplies are limited. If the world was wholly powered by present-style nuclear reactors there would be at most a few decades of energy before cheap uranium was exhausted.


Second, nuclear accidents have happened in the past, suggesting this technology is dangerous.

Third, expansion of nuclear power would risk the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Fourth, we would leave future generations with the legacy of long-lived nuclear waste.

Fifth, large amounts of energy (and possibly greenhouse gases) would be required to mine, mill and enrich uranium and to build and later decommission nuclear power stations.

All the above points have merit, although their relative importance comparedwith climate change and critical energy shortages is debatable. But there is little point in debating these objections because none will apply to future nuclear energy generation.

Almost all today's nuclear power stations are thermal reactors. These use water to slow the neutrons that cause uranium atoms to split (fission) and to carry the heat generated in this reaction to a steam turbine to generate electricity.

Because of the gradual build-up of fission products (neutron poisons) through time, we end up getting less than 1 per cent of the useable energy out of the uranium. The rest is thrown out as that long-lived waste.

In contrast, newer fast reactors are able to use almost all of the energy in uranium. There is enough energy in already mined uranium and stored plutonium from existing stockpiles to supply all the world's power needs for more than three centuries before we need to mine any more uranium.

Fast reactors can be used to burn all existing reserves of plutonium and the nuclear waste from the past and present generation of thermal reactors. With additional uranium mining, there is enough energy in proven deposits to supply the entire world for many thousands of years. This deals with the first objection.

As to the second objection, modern reactors use passive safety systems requiring no operator intervention to shut down the reaction. This makes them safe. So safe that a certification assessment for Westinghouse's AP-1000 reactor put the risk of a core meltdown such as the one that occurred at in the US in 1979 at Three Mile Island at once every 24 million reactor years.

Comparing the flawed Chernobyl design to today's reactors is like saying modern aviation is too dangerous because the Hindenburg airship exploded in 1937.

On the third objection, proliferation, the nuclear fuel used by fast reactors is initially very radioactive, making it impossible to divert to a nuclear weapons program without an expensive, heavily shielded, off-site reprocessing facility that would be readily detected.

In fact, the only nuclear waste materials that will ever leave an Integral Fast Reactor complex (which has on-site recycling) are fission products, which decay to background levels of radiation within a few hundred years.

Unlike conventional nuclear waste, which can last for hundreds of thousands of years (the fourth objection), the waste from IFRs can be more readily stored because of its small volume (150 times less than used nuclear fuel from thermal reactors) and short storage times.

The fifth objection, concerning greenhouse gases generated in building nuclear power plants, has never stood up to detailed life-cycle analysis.

Renewable energy sources (such as wind and solar) use significantly more raw materials per unit of energy generated than even present-generation nuclear power stations and the full life-cycle emissions, including nuclear fuel production, are similar from both sources. When energy storage and fossil-fuel back-up are included, wind and solar emissions are much higher.

A possible sixth objection could be that we don't need nuclear power when we can use renewable energy. This is a valid objection for countries with abundant hydropower, conventional geothermal power or biomass, the only three renewable sources of proven reliable power that can deliver energy 24 hours a day at an acceptable cost. Solar and wind sources, however, still rely heavily on fossil fuels to deliver reliable, continuous energy.

At today's pace of commercial development we won't see many fast nuclear reactors delivering power to the grid before 2020. This will seem too late for some, but at the present pace, non-hydro renewables will only meet 2 per cent of global energy use.

Either option, therefore, requires radically accelerated research, development and deployment if it is to make a difference to climate change and energy supply. What's required is a project of Manhattan-style proportions or the audacity of the moon-shot vision.

Let's be clear. We have the means to fix the climate and energy crises, or at least avert the worst consequences. New generation nuclear power, supported by an expansion of the thermal reactor fleet, is one possible path to success and one that all nations should support. Rationally considering energy planning requires letting go of old-school thinking about exciting new technologies.


Martin Nicholson is the author of Energy in a Changing Climate. Barry Brook is professor of climate change at the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute.


December 2, 2009

Uranium Spot Price Rises To US$45.50 P/Lb

Weekly Spot Ux U3O8 Price
as of November 30, 2009
Change from previous (week)


U3O8 Price $45.50 +2.50


CURRENT LONG TERM - MEDIUM & SPOT URANIUM PRICING
As At 2ND DECEMBER 2009

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Uranium Long Term Price

U3O8 Long Term Price

US$62.00

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Uranium Mid Term Price

U3O8 Current Spot Price
US$50.00

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Uranium Spot Price

U3O8 Current Spot Price
US$45.50

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URANIUM PRICING OVERVIEW

It wasn't until last week that the market got some much needed good news. A preliminary prospectus was filed in Canada for the formation of a uranium investment fund. Uranium Investment Corp is looking to raise as much as C$150 million to invest in uranium products. TradeTech reports that the company intends to use almost all of the money it raises to acquire uranium products.

The supply side saw a number of sellers hit the market ahead of the announcement from the DOE and this served to drive prices down during the first few weeks of the month. Buyers were quick to take advantage of the bargains on offer, with 14 transactions totalling 1.6 million pounds U3O8 equivalent concluded during the first three weeks of November.

However, there were another 8 transactions totalling over 1.1 million pounds U3O8 that were concluded in the last week of the month, despite it being a short week. These deals not only helped to clear the market of most of the discounted supply, buyers also seemed willing to pay more to secure material. TradeTech reports that by month-end, prices had increased US$1.25 from the November 27 Spot Price Indicator.

Fellow-consultant Ux Consulting reports that buying interest in the U3O8 spot market last week was widespread, with buyers including US and non-US utilities, traders, producers, and financial entities, which included both existing players as well as new entrants. This trend continued into this week, notes UxC, with buyers increasingly raising bids. This encouraged the now more discretionary sellers to raise their offers in turn.

All up, it is beginning to look like the aggressive sellers of the past few months are being replaced by increasingly aggressive buyers. Yet with the end of the year quickly nearing, it seems the sellers that had to sell have now pretty much shifted their goods. On the buy side, it's the new entrants in the market and the potential for more to follow that has extended increased interest.

Yet how much the spot price will rise is still a hard question to answer, as it depends both on the depth and aggressiveness of buyers and the price level that would make sellers happy enough to bring more supplies to the market.

The gap between the spot uranium price and the term price is also closing after longs months of an unmoved long-term price. Sellers in the term market have begun to lower prices in an effort to compete with various "buy and hold" options available to utility companies. This saw both mid- and long-term prices come under pressure during November.

TradeTech's Mid-Term U3O8 Price Indicator was down US$5.00 to US$50.00 per pound U3O8 over last month. The Long-Term Price Indicator for November 30 is US$60.00 per pound U3O8, which was also down US$5.00 from the October 31 level.

UxC's long term price indicator has now dropped to US$62/lb.


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