Top Diaries

Biodiesels pollute more than crude oil, leaked data show | EurActiv

Greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels such as palm oil, soybean and rapeseed are higher than those for fossil fuels when the effects of Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) are counted, according to leaked EU data seen by EurActiv.
The default values assigned to the biofuels compare to those from Canada's oil sands - also known as tar sands - according to the figures, which should be released along with long-awaited legislative proposals on biofuels in the spring.
A spokesperson for the European Commission said she could "not comment on leaked documents, such as impact assessments which have not been published."

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Jan 27th, 2012 at 01:14:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Who Could Have Predicted?

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 03:51:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Foldable electric car to take to European streets | Sci-Tech | Deutsche Welle | 27.01.2012

The Hiriko automobile, which was conceived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, but built in Spain's Basque country, was finally unveiled at European Union headquarters in Brussels this week.
Hiriko, which is the Basque word for "city" or "urban," aims to revolutionize automobile design for those tight European street and parking spaces.
For decades, European car models like the Fiat 500 and the Mini have tread in this territory before, but the Hiriko actually folds up into itself vertically, like a baby stroller. As a result, when compacted, the car only takes up one-third the parking are of a Smart car.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Jan 27th, 2012 at 01:14:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Experts cast doubt on Japan nuclear plant tests | Environment | The Guardian

Last year, the Japanese government ordered the nuclear authorities to conduct tests on all Japan's reactors after the 11 March meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi raised questions about the safety of nuclear power, particularly in a country prone to earthquakes and tsunami.
...Currently only three of Japan's 54 reactors - just over 6% of its total nuclear capacity - are in operation after the Fukushima accident forced the closure of active reactors for safety checks. The latest closure came on Friday when a reactor at a plant near the Japan Sea was shut down for inspection.
Without approval for restarts, all Japan's reactors could all be shut by the end of April, boosting the use of fossil fuels and adding more than $30bn (£19bn) a year to energy costs, according to a government estimate.
...But Masashi Goto, a former nuclear power plant designer, said the stress tests at Ohi and elsewhere were next to useless.
...Hiromitsu Ino, an emeritus professor at Tokyo University and a fellow member of the nuclear safety agency advisory panel, said the tests were flawed because they had been introduced before the full facts of the Fukushima disaster were known.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Jan 27th, 2012 at 01:14:30 PM EST
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Hmm. Dont think they really have any options other than restarting them, tough, because Japan has quite uniquely crappy geography (and population density) for renewables. Onshore wind resource is crap, the offshore one would get wrecked by the first tsnuami to come along, regardless of size, and given the insanely high utilization of land in the japanese islands, the only place you could ever put solar cells is on rooftops, which doesnt work out to enough power when so much of your population lives in multistorage housing, geothermal appears to cause earthquakes, so that is just right out. Seriously, if Japan doesnt want to burn fossil, do they really have any alternatives to paying through the nose for the most seismic proof reactors they can design? Alternatives that keep the lights on, mind?

by Thomas on Fri Jan 27th, 2012 at 04:24:06 PM EST
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It has been proposed that the area around Fukushima be turned into a large solar energy park, as it is too contaminated to use for most purposes. A mix of solar and thermal solar could generate a significant amount of power spread over an area of >314 square kilometers, i.e. a ten kilometer radius around the existing plant. That might be the best and highest use of the land for the next century.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 01:07:24 AM EST
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Eh, if you are going to treat it as a sacrifice zone, just stick all the reactors in it. Better output per square mile. Heck, do both. Not like you cant stick solar panels on and around a reactor, even if it does look silly. This might not be the dumbest idea ever in general actually. How many nuke plants could we fit inside the chernobyl exclusion zone?

by Thomas on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 04:06:14 AM EST
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Re: Living off the Planet (4.00 / 3)

just stick all the reactors in it. Better output per square mile.

Until the next earthquake or tsunami, when it could all go boom again.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 06:03:31 AM EST
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But nuke plants don't go boom. It's impossible. They are safe.

by Katrin on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 08:05:12 AM EST
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and you don't have to worry about finding workers, as the yakuza will round up some deadbeats who couldn't pay their gambling debts to sponge up any radiation and work the dials.

what could possibly go wrong?

one should also certainly avoid sullying the majestic grandeur of nuke plants with 'silly' solar panels, too.

anyone believing otherwise has been indubitably brainwashed by greenpeace...

hello?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 10:32:29 AM EST
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Re: Living off the Planet (4.00 / 5)

...if you are going to treat it as a sacrifice zone...

It IS a sacrifice zone. The question is one of who makes the sacrifice and how much of a sacrifice. That will be whoever occupies the area for significant amounts of time. Working there 50 hours a week and living 10 km away is one level of sacrifice and the effects of just raising children 10 km away will be medically statistically significant for the children. Working and transiting the area for 50 hours per week but living 100 km away will still produce significant results for the workers, at a minimum. Perhaps the executives could be privileged to raise their families in the 10 to 20 km zone around the site.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 09:24:22 AM EST
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You can walk through the chernobyl exclusion zone and get no significant extra rads whatsoever as long as you stick to paths and roads which have been checked - the radiative contanimation doesnt just blanket the place, it is spotty, and the fukushima zone got hit much less hard, so industrializing the heck out of the place- for whatever purpose- is not going to negatively affect the workers as long as you go over the place with a geiger counter first. Given the value of japanese land, I sort of expect the exclusion zone to get turned into a series of disconnected exclusion hotspots after people go over the entire area in a fine grid with geiger counters. If that doesnt happen because of paranoia, making it an energy park makes a lot of sense.

by Thomas on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 02:03:40 PM EST
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Stray ingestion.

When you've written your diary about the two weeks you spent camping in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, you can begin to comment about the safe millennia of such a fine Japanese industrial park.

PS. Better if you wait a few decades for the Japanese water table data to come in.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 02:17:59 PM EST
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Well, I think we can assume that you have not spent time camping there either -so Thomas could return the point.

That something does not fit our prejudice does not make it laughable necessarily -and it does seem from scientific studies that fantasies about Chernobyl are way overblown. It may well be indeed that building in Fukushima would not be unthinkable (plus robots could probably do quite a lot of the work).

On the other hand, I would find it rather strange to react to the demonstration that the Fukushima area is highly vulnerable to a tsunami by building a concentration of reactors there.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

by Cyrille (cyrillev domain yahoo.fr) on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 03:30:45 PM EST
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I'm not the one claiming it's safe.

Or ignoring oppositional statistics.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Sun Jan 29th, 2012 at 09:23:15 AM EST
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I dont ignore oppositional statistics. I ignore bad statistics. You are referring to the way I slammed the high chernobyl numbers, right?
Correlation is not causation. It often hangs out with causation, drinks its beer and cadges its cigarettes, but they are not the same thing, and without a clear mechanism for two things to cause one another, any correlation is neigh-certain to be either spurious, or a case of both things having the same ultimate cause.

As an example: it has been widely reported that there are cancer clusters near some german nuclear power stations. Note that these power stations have been monitored by continious use of geiger counters for their entire operating lives, and have never released any radiation to the public. So why are there cancer clusters near them? Because they got built in century+ old industrial zones, and chemical toxins work just fine for causing cancers.
Blaming the cancers on a cause that is logically and physically impossible just means that the true cause goes undetected. Similarily, public health in the FSU has had one hell of a crisis. It was, and is a real crisis, those people are really ill, a lot of people actually died.
The step where I get off the train is where all of that gets assumed to be due to chernobyl in an enviorment which is deeply polluted by any metric, has an ongoing epidemic of alchoholism and a severe collapse of the economy and health services.

by Thomas on Sun Jan 29th, 2012 at 05:24:37 PM EST
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What industrial zones are you fantasising about? Nukes were built at a distance from industrial centres. I know how plenty of the sites looked, I have been demonstrating there. Your arguing that the cause was logically and physically impossible is wishful thinking.

by Katrin on Sun Jan 29th, 2012 at 05:50:57 PM EST
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.. wait, so your argument is that nuke plants which were monitored, and radiated nothing none-the-less cause cancer? There is an actual debate to be had about the magnitude of the impact of chernobyl. A debate with actual scientific uncertainties, due to crappy recordkeeping and general chaos.

The german cancer clusters cannot be attributed to the nuke plants because there is no possible causal link at all. Splitting atoms dont cause people to just spontaniously get cancer in an x kilometer radius, actual radiation has to hit actual cells. I dont know what the actual cause is, but I am quite confident that it is worth the time to look. Germany has been industrial for a long time, and the early industrialization very frequently disposed of toxins in extremely irresponsible ways.

by Thomas on Sun Jan 29th, 2012 at 06:18:17 PM EST
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Vivian Norris: Here Comes the Sun: Tunisia to Energize Europe

have you ever known people who work in nuclear plants, Thomas?

my dearest friend lost her father (a nuclear engineer) to thymus cancer when she was 12 and he was in his thirties. she remembers him telling her how rules and safety measures were routinely abused, dodged and flouted by employees.

perhaps it is better now, and this is hearsay.

humans are not very good at following rules 100% of the time, and the risks of nuclear electricity generation do not allow slack or play.

TuNur will benefit Tunisia by creating jobs and spurring investments in local education to aid the long term management of the plants after 2016... With this important first step, we are showing the world's governments, industries and consumers that what many thought to be science fiction is actually science fact. We hope that this is the first of many more such plants to be built in the desert regions of the world.
This week in Tunis, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, saw visits from the likes of Google's Eric Schmidt and the IMF's Christine Lagarde, as local members of civil society from Tunisia, members of both the traditional and renewable energy private sector, young business leaders, diplomats, NGOs focused on Green issues, and journalists, primarily from Africa and the Arab world, gathered to discuss the TuNur project and exchange ideas about how North Africa can look towards a stronger more stable economic future through true win-win collaborations.
If the disturbing story of how one Tunisian citizen lost hope, his economic livelihood destroyed and his family's future placed in peril, can serve as a lesson to what would best help the region, i.e. economic opportunity and growth, then may the memories of the martyrs of the Tunisian revolution live on through a better future for Tunisia and its people. Through utilizing local partners and management to develop the project, setting up new manufacturing industries (for example for the flat plate mirrors needed by TuNur), economic growth is assured. Up to five years of construction translating as up to 20,000, as well as hundreds of long term jobs and revenues for local governments, this North-South collaboration is not only needed but should be encouraged and replicated around the world.

why not go with the flow, and quit touting tech that can lay waste to all that makes life worth living?

methinks your faith is wildly misplaced, notwithstanding your excellent communication skills and marshalling of factoids to support your arguments.

your growing appreciation for the possibilities of other methodologies is noted, happily.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Mon Jan 30th, 2012 at 02:19:26 AM EST
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You can put your argument in bold as much as you want but that doesn't make it better. Nukes are monitored, right. More or less by themselves.

German nukes weren't built in places where we can expect toxins to have been dumped. Look on a map: they were built in rural areas.

Your theory depends on the information from the power stations being correct. The text you put in bold. Implicitly you say that the industry can be trusted to inform us correctly about radiation and radioactive particles being set free. Really, Thomas, isn't that naïve? Melo has already pointed that out.

As to the impact of Chernobyl, I recommend you look at all data about deaths and anomalies of newborn babies of that period, and all over Europe. There are enough data.

by Katrin on Mon Jan 30th, 2012 at 07:30:49 AM EST
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.. and by anyone else that cares to. I trust the nuclear industry not to lie about facts that can be checked by anyone with a piece of kit that costs 150 euro off amazon. Given nuclear paranoia, I am quite sure a heck of a lot of people in the vicinity of said plants made that investment and we would have fracking well heard about it if they were covering up leaks. Not to mention that those very detection systems are how we promptly learned about chernobyl! They didnt wait and hem and haw about reporting that spike, it got published instantly.

As to rural dumping, I live 30 klicks from a major remediation project. - a plantation that was established in 1860 to limit sand dune migration, and used to dump waste from paint production in 1920s. Utterly poisonous to this day, and picked as a dump site because it was not near people, and that was the height of enviormentally responsible thought back then. Germany industrialized earlier, is a world center of chemical industry, and fought two world wars (Which was not good for record keeping! or responsible industry during).
The first instinct when you see a spike in cancers anywhere in germany really should not be to blame the nearst reactor. It should be to test the soil and water. There is probably something there, and that means it might well be fixable.

by Thomas on Mon Jan 30th, 2012 at 02:13:13 PM EST
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In rural areas where the local farmers remember every lorry for decades you don't need records, Thomas. And that's the sort of areas nuclear power plants where built in, at least here in the north. You can hide dumps in a city. In rural areas people remember that there was something ( and that they had been told it was harmless, most likely).

by Katrin on Mon Jan 30th, 2012 at 03:00:53 PM EST
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nuke plants which were monitored, and radiated nothing none-the-less cause cancer?

Man, you are four years behind this news...

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Feb 3rd, 2012 at 04:34:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Wind energy making new inroads, building on success | AWEA

I would certainly want any activity in that area to be by trained adults who carry and regularly check radiation monitors and do not live anywhere close. It is hard enough to get adults to take proper precautions so the general area should certainly be a no go area for children. And, again, any effects are cumulative, so the time spent on site is important. Doing construction could involve relatively limited amounts of time for individual workers and routine maintenance could require even less. And most of the area is well above the height reached by the tsunami, so solar thermal and/or solar panels, if properly sited, should be ok.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Jan 28th, 2012 at 02:21:04 PM EST
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Re: Living off the Planet (4.00 / 3)

The U.S. wind industry installed just over 6,810 megawatts (MW) in 2011, 31 percent higher than 2010, and has more than 8,300 MW under construction, setting the stage for a strong 2012.
While California topped the list for megawatts installed in 2011 with 921, Illinois also had a very strong 2011, coming in with the second most megawatts installed for the year and rising to #4 on the overall list. Other traditional stalwarts like Iowa, Minnesota and Oklahoma rounded out the top five. Ohio came in as the fastest growing wind power state in 2011 with 101 megawatts installed leading to a more than 900% growth rate. Meanwhile, South Dakota joined Iowa as the states receiving the highest percentage of their electricity from wind with 20%. Overall, 30 states brought wind projects online in 2011 and construction is ongoing for 2012 projects in 31 states including the first wind projects in Nevada, Connecticut and Puerto Rico.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Jan 27th, 2012 at 01:16:04 PM EST
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Re: Living off the Planet (4.00 / 4)

Jahresbilanz Windenergie 2011: Deutscher Markt wächst wieder \| Bundesverband WindEnergie e.V.		Annual results for wind power 2011: German market is growing again \| German Federal Wind Energy Association
Nach aktuellen Erhebungen des Deutschen Windenergie-Instituts (DEWI) wurden 2011 in Deutschland 895 (2010: 754) Windenergieanlagen mit einer Leistung von 2.007 (2010: 1.551) Megawatt neu installiert. Das sind 456 MW mehr als 2010 und entspricht einem Zuwachs von 30 Prozent gegenüber dem Vorjahr. Da die Datenerhebung der europäischen Windstatistik angepasst werden soll, werden zukünftig nur noch an das Netz angeschlossene Anlagen berücksichtigt. Betrachtet man die an das Netz angeschlossene Leistung von 2.086 Megawatt in 2011 gegenüber 1.493 Megawatt in 2010 liegt der Zuwachs bei fast 40 Prozent.		According to recent surveys by the German Wind Energy Institute (DEWI), in 2011, 895 (2010: 754) new turbines have been installed in Germany with a combined power capacity of 2,007 megawatts (2010: 1551 megawatts). This is 456 MW more than in 2010, or an increase of 30 percent over the previous year. Since data collection is to be adjusted to European wind statistics, in the future, only grid-connected installations will be considered. Looking at the grid-connected power of 2086 megawatts in 2011 against 1493 megawatts in 2010, the growth is almost 40 percent.
...Der Deutsche Windenergiezubau liegt voraussichtlich im Trend des Weltmarktes. In 2011 könnten die prognostizierten 40.000 Megawatt um rund 2.000 Megawatt überschritten werden. Fast die Hälfte davon wurde - wie auch schon 2010 - in China installiert.		...German wind installations probably follow the world market trend. In 2011, the predicted 40,000 megawatts will likely be exceeded by about 3,000 megawatts. Almost half of that - as in 2010 already - were installed in China.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Jan 27th, 2012 at 01:16:14 PM EST
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Re: Living off the Planet (4.00 / 7)

Some perspective on the two posts, but first some news.

Today divers at one of Germany's offshore projects found the body of a missing worker at the base of foundation pile. The 31 year old worker was one of two who plunged into the sea during a construction accident, the other quickly rescued. This is to underscore that offshore wind involves very heavy machinery and vessels, in a complex operation, which in terms of scale during construction is like offshore oil and gas. Condolences to a brave worker.

The AWEA release underscores the negative effect of fracking on the wind industry. While the figures of 6.8 gigawatts installed are an increase over the 5.1 gigs installed in 2010, this should be compared to the 10+ gigs installed in 2009. The 2011 figures also reflect the last year of the DoE's Cash Grants Program, or it would have been even lower. Underneath the news is the poor financial state of the industry, due to the severe drop in turbine prices undercutting margins, for companies across the board.

In Germany, because of a change of European statistics, some 10% of 20010 installations were moved to 2011 when they were grid-connected. For the first times, there began to be significant growth in the south, in Bavaria and Rheinland-Pfalz with 165 and 258 MWs respectively. But onshore is not pushed hard enough here yet, though repowering is beginning to take hold.

More importantly, several of the northern states reached into the high 40's % of electrical demand met. Sachsen-Anhalt, Brandenberg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern were all between 48% and 46% of annual net demand. The very populous state of Lower Saxony hit 25% of demand.

The city-state of Bremen even has a cumulative capacity of 141 MWs, within the city limits, equating to 4.7% of electrical demand. For A City!

Germany in total now has some 29 gigs, compared to 40 gigs for amurka. There are 200 MWs offshore in Germany. The average turbine installed this year was 2.24 MWs, and a quarter of all turbines had rotor diameters greater than 90 meters. Enercon had nearly 60% market share.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri Jan 27th, 2012 at 04:51:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

What caught my eye most was that Siemens's share is practically nil.

Regarding off-shore wind, what level of installations do you expect this year and the next? When can annual installations get into the GW territory?

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Jan 27th, 2012 at 07:24:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

And the company they bought to enter manufacturing, Bonus, was once significant in Germany. It's not because of Siemens' technology, but that Enercon's long term management guarantees have won the market for now. Siemens is focused eslewhere, though i'll bet that changes.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri Jan 27th, 2012 at 07:31:41 PM EST
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