Kyodo Meiji Co. was tipped off on three separate occasions in mid-November that its milk formula may be contaminated with radioactive cesium, but ignored the information for about two weeks, sources said. The major food maker only looked into the matter after it was approached by Kyodo News and a citizens' group earlier this month, the sources said. Meiji said it had initially concluded that "further investigation was unnecessary" because one of the tipoffs was made by an anonymous caller an...

Radioactive water leaks at Kyushu Electric's Genkai reactor In this file photo, the Genkai nuclear power plant, owned by Kyushu Electric Power Co., is seen in Genkai, Saga Prefecture, on Dec. 7, 2009. (Mainichi) SAGA (Kyodo) -- Kyushu Electric Power Co. said Saturday that 1.8 tons of coolant water containing radioactive materials had leaked within a purification system at an idled reactor at its Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture. But the utility failed to report the leak to the l...

New Lab to Help Utilities "See" Grid of the Future By Heather Lammers, NREL WASHINGTON, D.C. -- With the simple flick of a light switch, you are connected to "the machine." The North American electric grid — the world's most complex transmission and distribution system — also is referred to as the world's largest machine. That same machine has run reliably on coal, natural gas and nuclear energy for decades. Now, it's time for a tune up. Newer power generation technologies such as wind and...

OK wrote, "Even if you are dealing with electricity from a solar cell, the efficiency of a battery electric vehicle is not that much better than a fuel cell vehicle, especially as the range of the vehicle increases." IIRC when we are looking at the amount of noncarbon generation needed to be deployed to meet transportation energy needs, the overall system efficiency of FCV requires 60% more generating infrastructure than does battery electric. That is a HUGE difference and it is the primary re...

Germany: Renewables revolution Europe's largest economy is boosting research on alternative energy sources and generating job opportunities. Quirin Schiermeier Katrin Kohnert Nature 480 , 279-280 (2011) doi:10.1038/nj7376-279a Published online 07 December 2011 This article was originally published in the journal Nature Marcus Bär is a prime target for headhunters. An electrical engineer, he leads an independent young-investigator group at the Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Materials and Ene...

Champion Companies of Photovoltaics By Pete Singer, Chief Editor, Photovoltaics World The supply chain behind today's photovoltaics industry is vast, including materials suppliers, equipment manufacturers, cell and module manufacturers and balance-of-system providers. In this section, we recognize those companies that are playing a key role in developing the solar industry to date. These organizations are helping to make solar more broadly available, easier to adopt, more efficient or cost-ef...

This is what Sourcewatch has to say about The American Spectator: "The American Spectator is a conservative political magazine founded by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. It is most famous for its attacks on the Clinton administration in the 1990s, including the Richard Mellon Scaife-funded Arkansas Project. It is operated by the nonprofit American Spectator Foundation, Inc. From The Power of Nightmares: ... neo-conservative magazine ... set up what was called the Arkansas Project to vilify then President ...

What does the person in charge of regulating grid reliability say about need for baseload electric? Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Mission: Reliable, Efficient and Sustainable Energy for Customers. Assist consumers in obtaining reliable, efficient and sustainable energy services at a reasonable cost through appropriate regulatory and market means. The Chair of FERC: Wind is least expensive option. Old concept of "baseload" no longer applies. Do not need coal or nuclear. Very cle...

That is actually a key point. In fact the directional forces at the plant site were only modestly in excess of design standards. The plant didn't experience anything approaching the 9.0 forces at the epicenter. Here is a first person narrative of what people on the scene observed, published in July. ...The authors have spoken to several workers at the plant who recite the same story: Serious damage to piping and at least one of the reactors before the tsunami hit. All have requested anonymity ...

Panel doubts TEPCO claim tsunami caused nuke accident December 06, 2011 By AKIRA SATO / Asahi Shimbun Weekly AERA Not a few members of the government panel looking into the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are skeptical about Tokyo Electric Power Co. pointing the finger of blame at an unprecedented tsunami. "The claim that tsunami alone caused the accident is nothing but a hypothesis," said panel member Hitoshi Yoshioka, vice president at Kyushu University, who has written ...

Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Amount of Strontium in Leaked Water, per TEPCO From TEPCO's December 6 press release page: 150 liters of this radioactive strontium-rich water leaked into the ocean from the evaporative condensation apparatus (part of the contaminated water treatment system), via the regular drains. Density: Strontium-89: 74,000 becquerels/cubic centimeter Strontium-90: 100,000 becquerels/cubic centimeter Total amount of radioactive materials (including cesium) that leaked into the o...

You wrote, "And if they double the price of the renewables... we would have passed this point years ago!" Perhaps you meant "halve" instead of "double"? I'm not surprised you don't see the point of the chart since it i can't be spun as helpful to nuclear or hurtful to the nuclear industry's competition. Let me help: the OP is about a rapidly escalating rate of installation of renewables; a rate that now exceeds that of fossil fuels. This, in turn, means that the built manufacturing base is...

(Image) Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis…. Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance using the latest data. Accelerating installations of solar- and wind-power plants led to lower equipment prices, making clean energy more competitive wi...

Only two facts are relevant to your determination of zealotry - Q 1) Does someone accept nuclear? Yes - not zealot No - possible zealot proceed to Q2 Q2) Is the person vocal in their rejection of nuclear? Yes - Zealot No - Irrelevant The facts that are brought to the table that determine the need for nuclear are not a consideration for you. You start and end with the absolute determination that the nuclear industry must be preserved and promoted.

Davis-Besse allowed to restart operations BY DAVID PATCH BLADE STAFF WRITER OAK HARBOR, Ohio — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given FirstEnergy a green light to restart the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant while ordering the company to investigate further the cause and extent of cracks discovered during October in the plant’s concrete shield building. In a “confirmatory action letter” to FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., Cynthia Pederson, the NRC’s acting regional administrator, wrote t...

Davis-Besse allowed to restart operations BY DAVID PATCH BLADE STAFF WRITER OAK HARBOR, Ohio — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given FirstEnergy a green light to restart the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant while ordering the company to investigate further the cause and extent of cracks discovered during October in the plant’s concrete shield building. In a “confirmatory action letter” to FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., Cynthia Pederson, the NRC’s acting regional administrator, wrote t...

Greenpeace activists break into French nuclear plant By Michael Mainville (AFP) – 4 hours ago PARIS — Activists from environmental group Greenpeace managed to sneak into a nuclear power plant near Paris on Monday in a move they said highlighted the dangers posed by France's reliance on atomic energy. Police confirmed the intrusion and said activists had tried to break into two other nuclear sites in the south of France. French energy giant EDF, which runs the nuclear plants that France rel...

Source: Bloomberg As much as 45,000 liters (11,870 gallons) of highly radioactive water leaked from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear station at the weekend and some may have reached the sea, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. The leakage shows the company known as Tepco is still struggling to control the disaster nine months after an earthquake and tsunami wrecked the plant. The water contained 1.8 millisieverts per hour of gamma radiation and 110 millisieverts of beta radiation, Tepco said in ...

"This proposal will lead to a subsidised plant creating subsidised fuel so that subsidised operators can produce subsidised electricity and then receive subsidised waste disposal. The only winners in this are the nuclear operators, already rich with their 18% domestic fuel price rises this year." The government has astonished the anti-nuclear lobby by outlining plans to spend £3bn of public money building a new mixed-oxide fuel (Mox) plant – months after announcing the closure of a similar faci...

Xenon 400,000 times normal found in Chiba air immediately after Fukushima nuke accident CHIBA -- Radioactive xenon-133 some 400,000 times normal levels was detected in the atmosphere here immediately after the outbreak of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, a radiation survey organization said. It took three months before the volume of radioactive substances returned to normal levels. The Chiba-based Japan Chemical Analysis Center made the announcement during a radiation re...

According to the proponents of nuclear power, since nuclear plants have a high capacity factor, they are entirely self sufficient and require no backup. If they have to purchase $140 million worth of power, that must come from "backup" power sources that are normally "standing by" right? Whether an element of the grid operates at a capacity factor of 1% (yes some do) or 85%, they are going to require the same amount of capacity to back them up when they go down. If I have a 50MW plant that I...

I wrote often about distributed renewables vs centralized thermal. I point out that the distributed grid doesn't eliminate utilities, but it does change their positioning from a centralized bottle-neck through which all energy must pass, to a peripheral role that supplements or augments the distributed resources. This chart is a good illustration of that. America and Germany Getting Their Clean Energy Just Desserts By John Farrell December 2, 2011 Germany is the unquestioned world leader ...

$1 Billion Solar Project Goes Ahead Without DOE Backing By Steve Leone, Associate Editor, RenewableEnergyWorld.com November 30, 2011 New Hampshire, USA -- Months after saying that it would have to scale back plans on military bases across the U.S., SolarCity announced Wednesday that it has secured financing and will move ahead with its $1 billion SolarStrong rooftop project. The company had received a conditional loan guarantee from the Department of Energy this summer, but it was u...

Well Mr. Chairman, if you did you job with a primary eye towards a regulator's obligation to the public rather than to the bottom line of the industry, there would be far less to worry about. Nuclear Power In 2012: Challenge Of Complacency By Margaret Ryan Published: December 2, 2011 US nuclear plant operations, while still very good, are trending in the wrong direction, says Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko, and complacency from years of safe operations, combined wit...

Trying to minimize the perception of harm doesn't decrease the input into the food chain. "Radioactive Ocean: NHK Survey Shows 1.74 Microsievert/Hr at Ocean Bottom off Fukushima" Radiation on the ship: 0.14 microsievert/hr, in the water 0.025 microsievert/hour. The number increases as it gets deeper. On the rock 1 microsievert/hour. Maximum number at the bottom of the ocean 1.74 microsievert/hour. Fine-grained sands at the bottom. The radiation level at the bottom of the ocean was max 70 time...

Bum steel creates dangers at Palisades nuclear plant, Massachusetts congressman warns WASHINGTON, D.C. – A recent investigation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that the failure of a water pump due to the corrosion of certain kinds of stainless steel components caused an August shutdown of the Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert. In a news release from his office, Congressman Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, questioned why a su...

You've slipped in a double negative, so let's rephrase for clarity: From: "The conclusion of the OP study is not that jet stream winds do not have high energy densities--they obviously do." To: "The study starts from the known high energy density of the jet streams." Right. Then you say that the winds achieved those energy densities due to lack of friction, not due to stronger force. That can't be stated because they did not look at the way extraction would affect the input of wind generati...

1) no one said you were opposed to wind turbines. 2) No one said that "erecting them will have absolutely no effect on wind flow". Reviewers comments: D.B. Kirk-Davidoff 1. Practical plans for generating electricity from winds aloft usual focus on the region from 1 km to 3 km in elevation. This is not only for technological reasons reasons (fewer concerns about interference with aviation, lower cost, mass of the kite tether) but also because decreasing atmospheric density with heigh means that ...

I have no trouble with open and honest discussion. I posted the Mainichi article this morning. Since then there has been more reporting. The TEPCO scenario referred to below is what is reported in that article. Institute of Applied Energy: Corium Could Be 2 Meters Deep into Concrete TEPCO's worst-case scenario (here and here) pales in comparison with the analysis by the Institute of Applied Energy, also presented on November 30 at the workshop held by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency....

The post that comment is in response to wrote: "Like you said, every joule of energy we take out of the ground-level winds is energy not available to drive the ecosystems that have existed for milleniums. What will be the effect of this, especially as the world shifts more to green energy solutions like wind?" To date we've installed 225Gw of wind turbines, most of them 1 to 1.5MW. The size will rise as we move offshore, but for now that range makes up most of the capacity. That means a lower ...