Alternative Energy / Nuclear Power

• Japan Shuts Down Last Nuclear Plant - What Now?

  On 5 May Hokkaido Electric Power shut down the No. 3 reactor at the utility's Tomari Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in the Hokkaido village of Tomari, the last of Japan’s 54 NPPs that were still functioning after the crisis caused after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that destroyed Tokyo Electric Power Company’s six reactor Fukushima Daiichi power complex.According to preliminary estimates, fiscal losses from the disaster and the subsequent shuttering of the NPPs are to over $300 billion and rising.The event is hardly insignificant, as Japan was without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in…

• Overcoming the Impossible: Developing Nuclear Fusion

  The ITER project, an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor,  seeks to do the possible with impractical tools. There is no doubt that humanity can accomplish fusion in a quick and dirty way by making a bomb, or run reactions that don’t produce useful amounts of energy outputs, but unlike fission the ability to run a steady state reaction that produces more energy than it takes to drive the reaction eludes us.The ITER effort is based on the tokamak, a donut looking thing that circulates fuel plasma around endlessly at temperatures and pressures that could get a net energy gain…

• Uranium Stocks are Massively Undervalued

  Sell-offs in today’s increasingly volatile markets can be lethal to those psychologically and financially not prepared for such fluctuations, but for the prepared, it is simply more than an opportunity to buy assets at discounted prices. This is doubly true for sectors that are more volatile than the broad market and the major indices tend to be. And one such sector is uranium. The fundamental story behind uranium is simple: more nuclear reactors are coming online, and these reactors need uranium as fuel. Moreover, the Megatons to Megawatts arrangement, by which Russian nuclear warheads were downblended and sold to the…

• A Wealth of New Uranium Deposits Discovered around the World

  The Athabasca basin of Canada hosts some of the world’s largest and highest-grade uranium mines of similar aged rocks. Last week Fission Energy Corp. and its 50% joint venture partner ESO Uranium reported a significant anomalous radioactivity was encountered in the final hole of the companies’ Patterson Lake South property exploration program.Fission Energy Patterson Lake Uranium Prospect Property.The Fission exploration follows a find by Hathor Exploration Ltd.. But Fission has a much superior land holding and their find so close to Hathor, which is following the Hathor strike suggests that Fission may have the bulk of the uranium reserve.Uranium Core…

• Mother Nature Mugs California's Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant

  On 11 March 2011 TEPCO’s Fukushima nuclear power plant was rattled by an offshore 9.0 on the Richter scale earthquake. The tremor subsequently generated a tsunami that effectively destroyed the complex, sending shock waves worldwide through the nuclear power industry, hoping that 24 years after Chernobyl, public amnesia and governmental commitments to curbing greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear power was moving back into the mainstream.Instead of a nuclear renaissance, Fukushima refocused a most unwelcome spotlight on existing nuclear power plants (NPPS) and their safety procedures.And in the U.S., of the nation’s 104 commercials, the NPP most assiduously avoiding the spotlight is…

• Pakistan Nuclear Power Plant in Karachi - Bad Idea

  Pakistan is deep in a power crisis. Quite aside from distressing domestic consumers, the country’s episodic and erratic electrical generating capacity is also nobbling Pakistani exports. Endemic energy shortages have crippled Pakistan’s textiles industry, which account for 63 percent of Pakistan’s exports and whose mills employ 20 percent of the nation’s workforce. An example. In the past year half of Faisalabad’s 250,000 power looms have gone out of business because of natural gas shortages, which power the looms. In discussing the power shortages Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Muzammil Sultan said, after noting that at least 200,000 workers have…

• U.S. Nuclear Industry Must Find Vast Supplies of Uranium before Next Year

  THE SUPPLY CRUNCH Although nuclear power growth will continue to be driven by emerging economies like China, India, South Korea and even Saudi Arabia, the biggest consumer of uranium in the world today is still the US. There are some 104 nuclear reactors operating in the US, generating about 20 percent of total US electricity. In terms of uranium consumed by utilities, that translates into 55 million pounds of uranium per year. Currently, however, uranium mining in the US only provides about 3.5-4 million lbs per year.In the late 1970s, the US was the world's largest uranium producer, yielding over…

• Japan to Reconsider Nuclear Power in an Attempt to Guarantee Electricity Supply

  Japan is facing an electricity crunch this summer, potentially so severe, that companies such as Komatsu, the world’s No. 2 maker of construction machinery, have said they will move factories overseas if electricity supply isn’t guaranteed. Bloomberg reports that all but one of Japan’s 54 reactors are now offline after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami last year crippled Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station. The reactors, which previously supplied 30 percent of Japan’s electricity, have either been closed by the disaster, by government order or not allowed to restart after regular maintenance shutdowns. The remaining one reactor…

• The Inevitability of the Nuclear Age

  I am firmly convinced that one of the best investment opportunities in the world today is in nuclear power. In this article I will discuss why that is, and how one can go about making such investments. The first point to be made in any discussion of a coming nuclear renaissance is that peak oil is real. In other words, oil production will continue to decline over the next couple decades, at a time when population and energy demand are rising. This creates a situation in which the energy market is being hit on both ends: on the supply side,…

• California's Nuclear Power Woes

  What a difference a year makes. In early 2011, America’s nuclear energy community and its proponents were cautiously hoping that America’s troubled nuclear power industry could experience a renaissance, 32 years after Three Mile Island and 25 years after Chernobyl, the U.S. and USSR’s worst nuclear catastrophes. Given the rising concern about global warming, nuclear advocates never ceased to point out that nuclear power plants (NPPs) produced zero greenhouse gas emissions, unlike fossil fuel fired thermal power plants burning coal or oil. And then, on 11 March 2011, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami effectively destroyed Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s six…