Personal and spiritual growth
- Purpose of spirituality
- The benefits of modesty
- The more the better?
- Children develop their parents
- Perceptive reality
- The human needs
- Higher consciousness
- About the meaning of life
Global warming, climate change
- Definition of global warming
- Cause and effects of global warming
- Responsibility and global warming
- Energy consumption
- Reduce the energy demand
- Carbon footprint
- CO2 emissions by country
- Reason for climate change
- Global warming news
Nuclear energy, atomic power
Time for change
Most recent content
We control our perception ourselves.
Nuclear power
Weblog from Greenpeace about the meltdown of the nuclear industry
Greenpeace has announced a new weblog about the downsides of the nuclear industry.The blog is called "Nuclear Reaction" - blogging the meltdown of the nuclear industry".
The About-Section says:
"Welcome to Nuclear Reaction, where we'll be recording for history the meltdown of that most over-rated, over-subsidised and over-confident of industries, the nuclear industry.
Olkiluoto: Finlands new nuclear power plant
Finland's Olkiluoto nuclear power plant: The Olkiluoto construction project in Finland is rapidly becoming an example of all that can go wrong in economic terms with nuclear new build. It demonstrates the key problems of construction delays, cost overruns and hidden subsidies.
CO2 emission of electricity from nuclear power stations
One of the few pros of nuclear power is the relatively low emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the major causes of global warming. For this reason, it has been proposed as "the" method to mitigate the effects of climate change. However a recent life cycle analysis showed that nuclear power produces 4 to 10 times higher CO2 emissions per kWh electricity than renewable energies.
Cost of electricity from new nuclear power stations
Nuclear power station causing cancer
Demo against new nuclear power plants in Switzerland
Weckaktion gegen neue AKW
Demonstration in Bern (Switzerland) against new nuclear power plants. On Saturday, September 8, 14.30h, Bundesplatz, Bern
Wir wollen keine neuen Atomkraftwerke!
Samstag, 8. September 2007, 14.30 Uhr
Bundesplatz, Bern
Mit Festständen, Essen und Musik
Atomlobby und Bundesrat planen neue Atomkraftwerke in der Schweiz. Wir sagen entschieden NEIN. Wir fordern eine Energiewende statt neuer AKW.
The future of civil nuclear power applications
In July 2007, Oxford Research Group in London released a report about the future of civil nuclear power applications and about the threat of nuclear proliferation. It's title is "Too hot to handle?" A link to the full article is provided at the end of this text.
Here are the conclusions of the report:
Nuclear power phase-out pros and cons
Nuclear phase-out means the discontinuation of usage of nuclear power for electrical energy production. Usually because of concerns about nuclear energy, existing plants are either shut down or not renewed after being retired.
Many European countries have decided to phase-out nuclear power, for details see further below. Under the umbrella of global warming, lobbying organizations of the atomic industry are putting high pressure on several governments to postpone the planned shut down of nuclear power stations or even to cancel the phase-out altogether. Their main argument is the relatively low CO2 emission of nuclear power compared to fossil fuels coal, oil and natural gas. However nuclear energy should rather be compared to sustainable energies and not to fossils.
The general pros and cons of nuclear power are discussed on a separate page. Here we concentrate on the pros and cons of nuclear phase-out.
About the cost advantage of nuclear energy
Electricity from nuclear energy is considered to be economical and very cost effective, in particular compared to electricity from renewable energy sources like wind, water, sun, biomass or geothermal energy.
There are two main reasons for the relative low cost of nuclear power:
- Research and development for nuclear applications has been financed by the government, therefore these costs don't get transferred to the cost of electricity produced from nuclear power. However the cost of R&D for renewable energy sources is mostly financed privately and therefore added to the production cost. It is therefore included in the cost of renewable electricity.
- Nuclear power plants are underinsured for legal liability. The risk for nuclear catastrophes is not carried by the owner of the nuclear power plant, it is carried by the whole nation. Electricity from nuclear power would cost at least twice as much than today if operator companies of nuclear power plants were to insure the plants for the real risks.
Is nuclear power a global warming solution?
The contribution of nuclear energy to reduce the cause of global warming is only 10%
The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts a strong increase of the carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2030. Additionally, IEA investigated to which extent the above mentioned emissions of CO2 could be prevented if politics applied rigorous measures.
From all measures investigated, nuclear energy was found to have the least effect (only 10%). Almost 80% of the desired effects are due to increasing the energy efficiency.
This result is surprising, in particular if you think about how nuclear power is praised as solution to global warming by politicians like George W. Bush and Tony Blair. It seems like they would (again) head into the wrong direction.
Instead of talking about measures to increase the energy efficiency, which accounts for 80% of the effects, some politicians propagandize building nuclear power plants, which according to IEA can only account for 10% of the desired effects. Here the focus is clearly on the wrong subject!
