Category: Nuclear Power
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Saturday, July 13, 2013
Abelications of Abenomics on Uranium and Nuclear Power / Commodities / Nuclear Power
There's a three year downward trend in Chinese imports underway. The chart below, from Nomura Global Economics, shows the trend quite clearly.
China's exports and imports declined again in June. Exports fell 3.1 percent yoy - the most since the global financial crisis in 2008 - while imports dropped 0.7 percent. The poor June report follows a May collapse in export gains - fake invoices had inflated data for the first four months of the year, the bogus data enabled exporters to evade currency controls and bring extra money into the country. Trade growth might come in below the government's target of eight percent for the year.
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Monday, June 24, 2013
How Your Grandchildren can Reap Profits with These Nuclear Power Stocks / Companies / Nuclear Power
Greg Madison writes: Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Sellafield. Fukushima.
These are just the most famous names from an alarmingly long list of civilian nuclear incidents. Each of these accidents resulted sparked intense public debate on the future of civilian nuclear power.
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Friday, May 31, 2013
Civil Nuclear Power Energy Renaissance Restart / Commodities / Nuclear Power
The nuclear renaissance, and a bull market you should be aware of, has been restarted.
State of nuclear power in the USA
The USA has 104 nuclear power reactors in 31 states. Since 2001 these plants have achieved an average capacity factor of over 90 percent, generating up to 807 billion kWh per year and account for 20 percent of total electricity generated.
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Wednesday, May 08, 2013
Japan's Secret Nuclear Weapons Program / Politics / Nuclear Power
Peter Symonds writes: The Wall Street Journal published an article on May 1 entitled “Japan’s nuclear plan unsettles US.” It indicated concerns in Washington that the opening of a huge reprocessing plant could be used to stockpile plutonium for the future manufacture of nuclear weapons.
The Rokkasho reprocessing facility in northern Honshu can produce nine tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium annually, or enough to construct up to 2,000 bombs. While Japanese officials insist that the plutonium will be used solely to provide nuclear power, only two of the country’s 50 nuclear power reactors are currently operating.
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Wednesday, December 12, 2012
The Big Nuclear Energy Lie / Commodities / Nuclear Power
Matt Badiali writes: What are the Japanese doing in Uzbekistan?
For natural resource investors, it's one of the most important questions in the world. The country is a major gold producer. It also produces large amounts of natural gas, cotton, and copper. But these days, Japan has little interest in the traditional commodities Uzbekistan has to offer.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Germany's Energiewende And The End Of Nuclear Power / Politics / Nuclear Power
NUCLEAR SHOCK TREATMENT
For Ukraine and Japan, learning to do without nuclear power needed shock treatment: the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe, and the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The combined economic cost and losses due to these "unforseen nuclear accidents" will probably exceed $500 billion over the years and the decades. Nuclear accidents are in a class apart, for long term damage capability. Above all, certainly since Fukushima they cannot be kept away from and out of public debate.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Climate Change, Nuclear Power and the Red Queen Syndrome / Commodities / Nuclear Power
All through human evolution we have been harnessing increasingly effective forms of energy. From human power to horse power, to wood, coal, natural gas and uranium we've been working our way up the energy efficiency ladder. In reality what we've been doing is searching for the highest energy density to make energy production more efficient.
"The release of energy from splitting a uranium atom turns out to be 2 million times greater than breaking the carbon-hydrogen bond in coal, oil or wood. Compared to all the forms of energy ever employed by humanity, nuclear power is off the scale. Wind has less than 1/10th the energy density of wood, wood half the density of coal, and coal half the density of octane. Altogether they differ by a factor of about 50. Nuclear has 2 million times the energy density of gasoline." William Tucker, Understanding E=MC2
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Thursday, September 27, 2012
Nuclear Fusion Milestone Could Provide Power For Thousands of Years / Commodities / Nuclear Power
Michael A. Robinson writes: For decades, researchers have toiled away in the quest to provide nuclear power that is cheap, safe, and stable.
And for just as long, skeptics have said their work will never pay off.
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Monday, September 24, 2012
Japan Steps Away from Nuclear Power / Politics / Nuclear Power
As Japan and France move away from nuclear energy, is it the endgame for nuclear proponents?
As the world slouches into the 21st century, one of the global economic realities is that more and more developing nations, much less the "First World," are competing for fossil fuel resources whose production is rising more slowly than demand.
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Thursday, July 05, 2012
Germany's Energiewende ,The Losers Line Up / Politics / Nuclear Power
European business news, 3 July, took a partial break from European crisis response Stability Funds,
which have no money but nicely written "forward looking" prospectuses, to look at Germany's sinking
giants of postwar reconstruction and growth - the Big 4 power producer companies E.On, RWE,
Vattenfall and EnBW. These are all floundering with Germany's Energiewende transition plan. RWE
has the present headlines because, after spending about 1 billion euros on its Nordsee Ost wind park in
the North Sea, it finds that it cannot start production because Tenne-T TSO, the local power transport
(grid) operator has not built the connector to the 48-mill 295 MW windfarm 30 kilometres out to sea.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/stress-on-the-high-seas-germany-s-wind-power-revolution-in-the-doldrums-a-805505.html
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Nuclear Power Has a Bright Future / Commodities / Nuclear Power
If you asked Amir Adnani, chief executive of Uranium Energy Corp., why he was so bullish about uranium in 2007, his answer would be the same as it is today: There is not enough supply to meet demand. Investors might wonder if Fukushima has drawn the curtain on this industry, but Adnani says in this exclusive interview with The Energy Report that this is just the first act for nuclear power. Adnani is taking advantage of what he sees as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grow his Texas-based company, snapping up properties that are now "on sale."
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Thursday, May 24, 2012
Poor People Will Foot The Bill For Nuclear White Elephants / Politics / Nuclear Power
Dr Gerry Wolff submits: “There is absolutely no case for subsidising nuclear power” said Dr Gerry Wolff of the Energy Fair group, responding to the recently-published draft of the Energy Bill 2012. “The proposed ‘feed-in tariff with contracts for difference’ is a blank cheque to a nuclear industry that is already heavily subsidised.”
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Friday, March 30, 2012
Europe's Nuclear Exit Strategy / Politics / Nuclear Power
At this time in April 2012 the nuclear industry has springcleaned its rhetoric and is making predictable rearguard action, claiming it isn't dead yet. What almost any honest observer will say is that just one more Fukushima type disaster will totally seal the fate of nuclear power, relegating the nuclear industry back to only the domains of weapons, medicine, engineering and research. As the Japanese government is obliged almost daily to up the estimate of costs that it and taxpayers will have to bear for the Fukushima disaster - the latest estimate is for a total of around 11 trillion yen to 2020 - Japan moves further to a probable complete exit from nuclear power. The costs were simply too high, like the risks which are perceived by public opinion as far too high.
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Monday, March 26, 2012
New-Build Nuclear Power: A High-Risk Gamble / Politics / Nuclear Power
Dr Gerry Wolff writes: New report says there are five major areas of risk in putting money into new nuclear plants
According to a new report from the Energy Fair group (PDF, bit.ly/zGgbHF), anyone considering investing in new nuclear plants faces five major areas of risk: market risk, cost risk, subsidy risk, political risk and construction risk.
Monday, March 26, 2012
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS: The Very Real Possibility of A Global Nuclear Catastrophe / Politics / Nuclear Power
The Government Spends Trillions On Unlikely Threats … But Won’t Spend a Billion Dollars to Prevent the Very Real Possibility of Global Nuclear Catastrophe
We’re Spending Money Combating the Wrong Dangers
Studies show that people are worry about the wrong things.
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Sunday, March 25, 2012
Missing Presumed Dangerous - The World's Missing Nuclear Materials / Politics / Nuclear Power
About 50 heads of state will attend the Nuclear Security Summit on Monday and Tuesday 26 and 27 March in Seoul, South Korea, drawing US president Barack Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev as well as leaders from potential transit countries such as Moldova, Lebanon and some African states that smugglers may use to move illicit nuclear materials. Iran and North Korea, which are in violation of United Nations resolutions demanding a halt to their nuclear work, are among countries excluded from the summit because the conference organizers’ are seeking consensus.
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Friday, March 23, 2012
Nuclear Power Good Intentions Bad Directions / Commodities / Nuclear Power
One Year On - International Atomic Energy Agency
"Beneath the Pacific Ocean's floor deep in the Japanese trench, tectonic plate boundaries slipped repeatedly, triggering one of the most severe earthquakes in recent history. The earthquake's epicenter lay off the eastern coastline of Japan near the Fukushima Prefecture. The plates' movements generated a tsunami that swiftly drove forward ranks of waves towards the earthquake-battered Japanese coast.
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Friday, March 09, 2012
The Nuclear Power Revival / Commodities / Nuclear Power
Emerging from the shadow of Fukushima, the nuclear sector is on the cusp of a comeback, according to Mark Lackey, chief investment strategist with Toronto-based Pope & Company. Nuclear plants have been reopened, and as many as 200 new plants worldwide are scheduled to come online. At the same time, uranium supply shortages loom on the horizon, making for bullish fundamentals for uranium miners. Lackey's faith in the coal sectors also burns brightly. He reveals his favorites in both sectors in this exclusive Energy Report interview.
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Wednesday, February 29, 2012
India's Government Grudgingly Releases Report on Nuclear Power's Effect on Human Health / Politics / Nuclear Power
India is betting heavily on nuclear power to meet its surging energy needs. While India currently has six nuclear power plants (NPPs) with 20 reactors generating 4,780 megawatts, seven other reactors are under construction and are expected to generate an additional 5,300 megawatts.
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Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Why Not Thorium Fueled Nuclear Reactors Instead of Uranium? / Commodities / Nuclear Power
Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist, Casey Research writes: The Fukushima disaster reminded us all of the dangers inherent in uranium-fueled nuclear reactors. Fresh news yesterday about Tepco's continued struggle to contain and cool the fuel rods highlights just how energetic uranium fission reactions are and how challenging to control. Of course, that level of energy is exactly why we use nuclear energy – it is incredibly efficient as a source of power, and it creates very few emissions and carries a laudable safety record to boot.
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