It has been a long and difficult road for those promoting nuclear power as a solution to South Africa’s electricity needs. Recently, so much has gone wrong for the nuclear lobby it is hard to imagine how it could be worse: Continue reading
Tag Archives: nuclear
Japanese officials continue to lie about Fukushima
Shigeo Nomura
At a conference in Stockholm in November one of the speakers was Shigeo Nomura, Executive Director of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.
Nomura made some contradictory statements about the Fukushima disaster, as well as some outlandish claims about the costs of nuclear power relative to renewable energy.
It was the tsunami?
Nuclear waste disposal sites likely to be close to nuclear power stations
I am in Upsala, Sweden, as a guest of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC). It has nearly 200 000 paying members, a full-time staff of about 90, and produces a magazine every two months for its members. It has been an interesting first day in Stockholm, with a lot to take in.
Sweden generates about half of its electricity from nuclear power, and, like all countries with nuclear power, the country is wrestling with the issue of what to do with the spent nuclear fuel, or in technical terms, the high level waste. This remains dangerously radioactive for thousands of years, and disposing of it safely is a huge engineering challenge. Continue reading
Official report on Fukushima – what can South Africa learn?
An independent in depth report on the Fukushima nuclear disaster commissioned by the Japanese parliament was released in July 2012, and it comes to some very important conclusions. As Eskom attempts to get approval to build three more nuclear plants along the southern coast, South Africa should be looking very closely at this report to see if there are lessons we should learn from it.
The earthquake or the tsunami?
The tsunami swamping the sea barrier at Fukushima
The nuclear industry has repeatedly made the claim Continue reading
Nuclear ‘renaissance’ stillborn
First published in Business Day, 23 July 2012
The nuclear power industry is deeply troubled, with little cause for optimism. There is growing worldwide public resistance to nuclear power stations, President Obama has terminated government subsidies in the USA for nuclear power, and Germany and Switzerland have committed to shutting down all their reactors. While the renewable energy industry has seen dramatic growth and constantly falling costs, the nuclear industry grapples with spiralling costs, the seemingly intractable waste disposal issue, and the ongoing huge economic and human costs of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
A renaissance?
Evacuations and after effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster
It is not unusual for those who favour nuclear power to downplay the effects of nuclear disasters that have happened. In the article “Nuclear power is a key part of SA’s future”, attributed to the South African Minister of Energy Dipuo Peters, I came across this example: ‘The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission to Fukushima at the end of May 2011 concluded that “to date no confirmed long-term health effects to any person have been reported as a result of radiation exposure from the nuclear accident”‘. Continue reading
Zuma confronts faith groups on nuclear power
At COP17 in Durban, there has been strong input from civil society that nuclear power is not the answer for South Africa.
Faith groups have long held the view that nuclear power is ethically indefensible, Continue reading
Nuclear power presentations and panel discussion at COP17 side event
The Heinrich Boell Foundation arranged a set of presentations and panel discussion on the theme of ‘Beyond coal and nuclear’. The three highly distinguished presenters were Kimiko Hirata of the Japanese organisation Kiko network which has its goal the prevention of dangerous climate change; Arne Jungjohann of the Washington office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation (HBF); and Michaele Schreyer, member of the supervisory board of HBF. Continue reading
The Nuclear-1 video they didn’t want you to see
As for any large project, the proposed building of a new nuclear power plant in South Africa required an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process to be completed by independent experts. This results in an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) which must be presented to the public via a public participation process.
During some of these presentations, Peter Becker, of the Koeberg Alert Alliance videoed the proceedings. Continue reading
KOEBERG ALERT ALLIANCE 