ITER Forum Website update 11/13B.J.Green (16/11/13)

1. Offshore power all at sea on priceMATT RIDLEYTHE TIMESOCTOBER 15, 2013 12:00AMhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/offshore-power-all-at-sea-on-price/story-fnb64oi6-

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HERE'S a short quiz. Question One: which source of energy is allowed to charge the highest price for its electricity? Question Two: which source of energy is expected to receive the greatest capital expenditure over the next seven years? The answer to both questions is offshore wind.Offshore wind farms are the elephant in the energy debate. Today, the British Energy Department estimates that electricity prices are 17 per cent higher as the result of green policies and that this will rise to 33 per cent by 2020 or 44 per cent if gas prices fall, as many expect. Offshore wind is the single-biggest contributor to that rise.Of the pound stg. 15 billion ($25.32bn) a year that the Renewable Energy Foundation thinks consumers are going to be paying in total green imposts by 2020, the bulk will go to support offshore wind. Britain is a proud leader in offshore wind. "The UK has more offshore wind installed than the rest of the world combined and we have ambitious plans for the future," says Energy Secretary Ed Davey.I wonder why that is. Could it be that other countries have looked at the technology and decided that it's far too costly? Chancellor George Osborne says he does not want Britain ahead on green energy. He should take a long hard look at why we are so far ahead on this extravagant folly.Currently we get under 3 per cent of our electricity from offshore wind, or less than 0.5 per cent of our total energy.If Davey's ambitions are realised and 20 per cent of our electricity comes from offshore wind in 2020, then we will need 20 gigawatts of capacity because wind turbines, even at sea, operate at less than 40 per cent of capacity. That's about six times what we have today and the cost of building it would be greater than the investment in

nuclear energy over the period.On the face of it, sticking wind turbines in the sea sounds like a great wheeze. There's no need to tangle with turbulent parish councils worried about their views, or to bribe landowners with annual payments. The wind blows a little more reliably and strongly. But the engineering problems have proved daunting. Three years ago the cement grouting began to dissolve on more than half of all Europe's offshore turbines, leading the turbines to move on their foundations. This necessitated hefty repairs and redesign. The urgency of meeting political targets was partly to blame. "There is an alarming asymmetry between construction risks and the number of players who can manage these risks effectively," says one insider.As a result, costs have not fallen as expected. The British government had set a target of cutting the price it offered to pay for offshore wind power to "only" double the wholesale price, but it quietly abandoned that ambition this northern summer when it announced that the "strike price" for offshore wind would drop only a little. Connecting cables and transformers, dealing with corrosion, losing days to seasickness, stopping pile-driving during the season when it might upset porpoises - these have all proved more challenging than expected and have added to the costs and delays. Many in the industry think that the lifespan of a turbine in the North Sea is going to be a lot shorter than the hoped-for 25 years. One study by Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University found that the operating efficiency of Danish offshore wind farms dropped from 39 per cent to 15 per cent after 10 years. Certainly, Britain's oldest offshore wind farm - off Blyth in Northumberland - has spent a good part of its first 12 years out of action.It is also becoming clear that monstrous turbines are not as environmentally clean as had been imagined. Last week the E3 billion ($4.29bn) Navitus Bay wind farm off the south coast of England revealed that it needed 35km of cabling to be dug. Sea birds are at risk, too. Pink-footed geese are apparently avoiding wind farms on migration, while songbirds are thought to be at risk of becoming confused by flashing blades while crossing the North Sea. The British Trust for Ornithology concluded that 2603 adult and 1056 immature gannets will be killed each year by existing and consented wind farms. Since gannet populations are currently growing, this may not matter much, but it is a far greater toll than taken by any other industry.

And then there is the risk of an oil tanker hitting a turbine, or hitting another ship because of having been squeezed into a narrow shipping lane past a wind farm. As Lord Greenway put it in the House of Lords this year, the risk of collision is increased by more than 400 per cent at some choke points and "if you place an object in the sea, either a fixed structure or a floating one, sooner or later a ship is bound to hit it".Of course, none of these objections is fatal in itself - all economic activity entails some risks. They are, however, a reminder that this very expensive form of electricity is not "clean".Yet even the high price on offer - pound stg. 155 per megawatt-hour compared with pound stg. 90 for nuclear and below pound stg. 50 for the typical wholesale price - may be too low to lure the investment needed if the target of 20GW of offshore power is to be met by 2020. With coal being phased out, gas restricted and onshore wind, wave, wood and water of limited capability, and even with a hugely ambitious nuclear program, we will need pound stg. 45bn invested in offshore wind by 2020, and a further pound stg. 54bn by 2030, if the lights are to be kept on. That is considerably more than in any other energy technology, even nuclear. Such sums are surely now unrealistic in a time when energy prices are a political hot potato. If you are sitting in the boardroom of an energy company worried about the reputational damage of putting up prices today, you must be getting cold feet about the future cost of offshore wind. Or, as a spokesman for the SSE energy company said last week: "Although we are continuing to develop offshore wind projects, it's now also becoming increasingly hard to see how a final decision on investment in new offshore wind capacity could be made before the 2015 election."The defenders of renewable energy used to argue that fossil fuel prices would rise inexorably as supplies ran out, thus making even expensive offshore wind look like a bargain. Some still do - Nicholas Stern made this argument to the BBC last week.But most now realise that the super abundance of shale gas and oil has postponed peak oil once again and is already driving down coal, gas and oil prices in the US, with other parts of the world likely to follow suit. There is very little chance now of offshore wind undercutting coal- or gas-fired power in coming decades.In short, Labour Party leader Ed Miliband's politicising of energy prices may have killed the industry he most cherishes. Soon the

energy debate will no longer be about whether offshore wind farms should or should not be built, but about how we are to fill the gap caused by the inevitable failure of the offshore wind industry to meet the capacity targets expected of it. And that's a difficult question, given that the obvious answer - shale gas - has just effectively been made less feasible by a new environmental rule passed by the European Parliament.

2.

The great climate fictionGREG SHERIDAN, FOREIGN EDITORTHE AUSTRALIANOCTOBER 17, 2013 12:00AM

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/the-great-climate-fiction/story-e6frg76f-1226741257158#

T is natural that when Tony Abbott told Asia-Pacific leaders he was going to repeal Australia's carbon tax he found no opposition, and a good deal of support instead. He mentioned it in plenary sessions and bilateral meetings with all the leaders.

In taking this action, Abbott is bringing us into line with Asia-Pacific practice. There is not one significant national carbon tax or emissions trading scheme operating anywhere in the Asia-Pacific.One of the most disagreeable defects of the Rudd and Gillard governments was the way they so often misrepresented reality, especially international reality. They tried to do this on such a scale that ultimately the public could see through it on many issues, especially boats and climate change. The politics of climate change the world over is full of rhetoric and devoid of action. If Australians are being asked to pay a tax, even if it's called an emissions trading scheme, they should compare what other countries are actually doing, not what some politician might once have said. The ABC in particular runs a constant propaganda campaign in favour of the idea that the world is moving to put a price on carbon. But the information is never specific. Any ABC interviewer with a speck of competence or professional standards should always ask the following: Name the specific scheme? Is it actually in operation? How much of the economy does it cover? What is the price of carbon? How much revenue does it raise?You can impose no real

cost on your economy, but still have a scheme to brag about if you have economy-wide coverage but a tiny price, or a big price but a tiny coverage. Either way you have a good headline scheme to fool the ABC with.But here are some actual facts. The UN Framework Convention on Climate has 195 members. Only 34 of those use anything resembling an emissions trading scheme. Of those, 27 are in the EU scheme. No one in the Asia-Pacific has an effective scheme.What about these Chinese schemes we hear so much about on the ABC? There are seven designated pilot projects in China. One - that's right, one - has begun operation. That is in Shenzhen. So far all the permits are given away for free. It has had no impact at all on carbon emissions. The Chinese government has indicated it may look at a national scheme for the five-year plan from 2016. This is at most speculative, and there are a million ways it could be completely ineffective, which is almost certainly the result. China is by far the world's biggest polluter. Its per capita emissions are now comparable with Europe's. It has some plans to reduce carbon intensity, that is, the amount of carbon per unit of production, but no plans to reduce the absolute size of its emissions.Japan has effectively abandoned plans for an ETS. No economy-wide carbon tax or ETS is operating today. South Korea has a plan, but it will issue all permits for free in the first period and is looking to redesign its scheme partly to avoid the impact on electricity prices, which Australia's scheme had. New Zealand has a notional scheme, but the price is a meaningless $1 per tonne. The US has no carbon tax or ETS and is unlikely ever to have one. The separate Californian scheme is frequently adduced by pro-tax Australian partisans. But this scheme covers only 37 per cent of emissions, compared with the Australian tax that covered 60 per cent of our emissions. More importantly, in California, 90 per cent of permits for electricity are given for free.The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative covers several northern states in the US. But the price is $2.55 per tonne and it covers only electricity.Canada does not have an ETS or a carbon tax. The Quebec scheme covers a minority of emissions and because the province is so reliant on hydro-electricity the scheme has little impact.Some of the biggest carbon emitters in Asia - like Indonesia and India - not only do not have national carbon taxes or ETS schemes, they have massive fuel subsidies to make carbon-based fuels accessible to all their people. A fuel subsidy is the opposite of a carbon tax, it is a carbon subsidy.The European scheme has a price of about $7. Famously, it covers a

substantially smaller proportion of its emissions than our carbon tax did. Equally famously, in its first five years it tended to raise about $500 million a year whereas our carbon tax raised $9 billion a year. So all of Europe combined imposed a cost on itself of one-18th of the cost Australia imposed on itself. Europe also allows, within its scheme, a certain amount of imports of Certified Emission Reduction Units, basically UN-approved carbon credits created in Third World countries. The price for these shonky bits of paper has now fallen below $1 per tonne.Labor's Mark Butler was yesterday repeating the ALP mantra, much recited, too, by the Greens and the ABC, that not a single reputable climate scientist or economist endorses direct action of the kind Abbott and his minister, Greg Hunt, propose. This is untrue. The vast majority of the governments of the world, certainly the US and Canada, are using direct action mechanisms to address greenhouse gas emissions. The rise of gas as an energy source has been the key driver of reductions in the US, but tighter automobile emissions standards and many other direct action measures have also been important. Australia would be extremely foolish to move substantially faster or further than most of the world. That is what we did in the biggest way with our hugely destructive carbon tax. To compare ourselves with the world we must be absolutely accurate about what the world is actually, really doing in its physical manifestation today, not what some EU bureaucrat or NGO activist is willing to say in an always unchallenging ABC interview. Even within Europe's compromised scheme there is a great deal of re-thinking as economic logic trumps climate change piety.The carbon tax and the ETS are based on a complete misrepresentation of what other countries are doing. Australians have never voted for either an ETS or a carbon tax and, unless the world changes radically, are unlikely to do so in the future. 

3. Since 1900, everything is better, even the climateBJORN LOMBORGTHE AUSTRALIANOCTOBER 21, 2013 12:00AM

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/since-1900-everything-is-better-even-the-climate/story-fni1hfs5-

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FOR centuries, optimists and pessimists have argued over the state of the world. Pessimists see a world where more people means less food, rising demand for resources means depletion and war, and, in recent decades, boosting production capacity means more pollution and global warming. One of the current generation of pessimists' sacred texts, The Limits to Growth, influences the environmental movement to this day.

The optimists, by contrast, cheerfully claim that everything - human health, living standards, environmental quality, and so on - is getting better. Their opponents think of them as "cornucopian" economists, placing their faith in the market to fix any and all problems.

But, rather than picking facts and stories to fit some grand narrative of decline or progress, we should try to compare across all areas of human existence to see if the world really is doing better or worse. Together with 21 of the world's top economists, I have tried to do just that, developing a scorecard spanning 150 years. Across 10 areas - including health, education, war, gender, air pollution, climate change, and biodiversity - the economists all answered the same question: What was the relative cost of this problem in every year since 1900, all the way to 2013, with predictions to 2050.

Using classic economic valuations of everything from lost lives, bad health and illiteracy to wetlands destruction and increased hurricane damage from global warming, the economists show how much each problem costs. To estimate the magnitude of the problem, it is compared with the total resources available to fix it. This gives us the problem's size as a share of gross domestic product. And the trends since 1900 are sometimes surprising.

Consider gender inequality. Essentially, we were excluding almost half the world's population from production. In 1900, only 15 per cent of the global workforce was female. What is the loss from lower female workforce participation? Even taking into account that someone has to do unpaid housework and the increased costs of female education, the loss was at least 17 per cent of global GDP in 1900. Today, with higher female participation and lower wage differentials, the loss is 7 per cent, - and projected to fall to 4 per

cent by 2050.

It will probably come as a big surprise that climate change is expected to be mostly an increasing net benefit - rising to about 1.5 per cent of GDP per year - in the period from 1900 to 2025. This is because global warming has mixed effects; for moderate warming, the benefits prevail. For Australia, the model shows that this is true through to 2050.

On the one hand, because CO2 works as a fertiliser, higher levels have been a boon for agriculture, which comprises the biggest positive impact at 0.8 per cent of GDP. Likewise, moderate warming prevents more cold deaths than the number of extra heat deaths it causes. It also reduces demand for heating more than it increases the costs of cooling, implying a gain of about 0.4 per cent of GDP. On the other hand, warming increases water stress, costing about 0.2 per cent of GDP, and negatively affects ecosystems like wetlands, at a cost of about 0.1 per cent.

As temperatures rise, however, the costs will rise and the benefits will decline, leading to a dramatic reduction in net benefits. After 2070, global warming will become a net cost to the world, justifying cost-effective climate action now and in the decades to come.

Yet, to put matters in perspective, the scorecard also shows us that the world's biggest environmental problem by far is indoor air pollution. Today, indoor pollution from cooking and heating with bad fuels kills more than three million people annually, or the equivalent of a loss of 3 per cent of global GDP. But in 1900, the cost was 19 per cent of GDP, and it is expected to drop to 1 per cent of GDP by 2050.

Health indicators worldwide have shown some of the largest improvements. Human life expectancy barely changed before the late 18th century. Yet it is difficult to overstate the magnitude of the gain since 1900: in that year, life expectancy worldwide was 32 years, compared to 69 now (and a projection of 76 years in 2050).

The biggest factor was the fall in infant mortality. For example, even as late as 1970, only about 5 per cent of infants were vaccinated against measles, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, and polio. By

2000, it was 85 per cent, saving about three million lives annually - more, each year, than world peace would have saved in the 20th century.

This success has many parents. The Gates Foundation and the GAVI Alliance have spent more than $US2.5 billion and promised another $US10bn for vaccines. Efforts by the Rotary Club, the World Health Organisation and others have reduced polio by 99 per cent worldwide since 1979.

In economic terms, the cost of poor health at the outset of the 20th century was an astounding 32 per cent of global GDP. Today, it is down to about 11 per cent, and by 2050 it will be half that.

While the optimists are not entirely right (loss of biodiversity in the 20th century probably cost about 1 per cent of GDP a year, with some places losing much more), the overall picture is clear. Most of the topics in the scorecard show improvements of 5 to 20 per cent of GDP. And the overall trend is even clearer. Global problems have declined dramatically relative to the resources available to tackle them.

Of course, this does not mean that there are no more problems. Although much smaller, problems in health, education, malnutrition, air pollution, gender inequality and trade remain large.

But realists should now embrace the view that the world is doing much better. Moreover, the scorecard shows us where the substantial challenges remain for a better 2050. We should guide our future attention not on the basis of the scariest stories or loudest pressure groups, but on objective assessments of where we can do the most good.

Bjorn Lomborg, editor of How Much Have Global Problems Cost the World? A Scorecard from 1900 to 2050, will attend Melbourne Creative Innovation 2013.

4. News Summary: Vietnam

Presses Nuclear PlansOctober 17, 2013 (AP)By The Associated Press

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/news-summary-vietnam-presses-nuclear-plans-20600322

POWER PLANTS: Vietnam is pressing ahead with its civilian nuclear energy program despite safety fears over the technology following the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Facing an energy crunch, Vietnam wants to build seven nuclear plants in the coming years.

SEEKING HELP: Foreign companies and governments are competing to get a toehold in an industry that could be worth an estimated $50 billion by 2030. But Japan's nuclear disaster overhangs the plans. Its nuclear plants are still shuttered following the March 2011 tsunami that caused a triple meltdown at the coastal Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.

U.S. SUPPORT: The United States and Vietnam recently disclosed they had agreed to allow U.S. firms to develop civilian nuclear power in Vietnam. Once President Barack Obama and U.S. energy officials sign it, Congress will have 90 days to either challenge it or let it take effect.

5. Strike price deal for Hinkley Point C21 October 2013

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Strike_price_deal_for_Hinkley_Point_C_2110131.html

EDF has concluded negotiations with government on the strike price for electricity generated by Hinkley Point C. The financing system will be put to the European Commission this week, said government.The team in place to build and operate two new EPR units at Hinkley Point C in Britain's county of Somerset will be led by EDF Group with a 45-50% stake. It has letters of intent with China National Nuclear

Corporation (CNNC) and China General Nuclear Corporation (CGN) to take 30-40% between them, while reactor designer Areva will take 10% and EDF continues talks with other "interested parties" regarding a potential stake of 15%. This consortium became possible after EDF and the UK government concluded negotiations on the contract for difference scheme that will be used to give a fixed income from the power supplied by the new power station. A price of £92.50 per MWh was agreed as the strike price for the project, meaning the government will top up EDF's income to this level if wholesale prices are lower. EDF will have to pay back to government if market prices are higher. The figure would be changed to £89.50 per MWh if EDF goes ahead with its second nuclear project, two further EPRs at Sizewell C.

The arrangement is slated to run for 35 years from 2023, or the start of operation of each reactor, whichever comes sooner. It includes protection for the investors against political risks in the form of potential "nuclear taxes, uranium and generation taxes" politically motivated shutdowns or the revision of the CfD scheme. Overall, EDF said the strike price should give about a 10% return on investment.A press conference in London today saw energy secretary Ed Davey explain that construction risk lies with EDF and its partners. They will not receive any money through the CfD until they produce some electricity, and if this comes later than 2023 the impact will hit the project investors instead of electricity consumers. Conversely, the deal was said to include clauses that recoup money for UK consumers if EDF is able to construct the units faster than expected.Approval hurdle Site preparations are well advanced at Hinkley, while the EPR design has approval from the Office of Nuclear Regulation and planning permission was granted in March. However, EDF and its partners will not make a final investment decision until the CfD deal with government is approved by the European Commission (EC) under state aid rules. Davey said that the UK was already in talks with the EC and would formally submit its plans this week."We are confident we can argue our case," said Davey, "because we have had this in the back of our minds all the time." He noted that state aid rules apply to the general topic of state intervention, rather than just issues of subsidy. The CfD, he said, is consistent with the policy of offering no advantage to new nuclear that is not also offered to other low-carbon forms of generation. By creating what he called a unique market for low carbon power, Davey said the UK was giving investors "longer visibility on low-carbon than any other country in the world."Team EPR The Hinkley Point C consortium brings together global experience in building Areva EPRs, including the designer itself. Areva has led construction of the first unit, Olkiluoto 3, while EDF has been

building Flamanville 3. In China, EDF and CGN have worked together in a joint venture to construct Taishan 1 and 2 and achieved faster progress than the European units.EDF will act as architect-engineer for Hinkley Point C. Contractors include Areva for the reactor system, its fuel and control and instrumentation; Bouyges and Laing O'Rourke, for civil engineering; and Costain for cooling water intake tunnels, which are seven metres in diameter and have a total length of 11 kilometres. Alstom will provide two steam turbines of gross capacity of about 1700 MWe and Rolls-Royce will provide some manufacturing of nuclear components. Government said UK companies could take up to 57% of the construction work. The total number of workers on the project could reach as high as 25,000, with 900 permanent jobs when the units are operational, said EDF.Hinkley Point C's supposed start-up date of 2023 appears to include about one year for EC approval and then construction time of eight years.Researched and writtenby World Nuclear News

6. Record winter ice cover in AntarcticaMATTHEW DENHOLMTHE AUSTRALIANOCTOBER 24, 2013 12:00AMhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/record-winter-ice-cover-in-antarctica/story-

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WINTER sea ice cover in the Antarctic has grown to its largest extent since satellite records began in the late 1970s, defying most climate models and muddying the waters of the global warming debate.The latest data from NASA's satellites shows the winter sea ice cover around the frozen continent reached a record 19.47 million sq km last month. That beats last winter's 19.44 million sq km -- itself a record.According to NASA, it is 3.6 per cent higher than the average maximum between 1981 and 2010, with the sea ice cover in Antarctica growing at 1.5 per cent a decade.The data runs contrary to the projections of many climate-change models. It also contrasts with observations of this year's Arctic summer minimum sea ice extent, which America's National Snow and Ice Data Centre says was about 30 per cent below levels seen in the early 1980s.

Scientists appear unable to definitively explain the phenomenon, but believe increasingly strong winds in Antarctica and an increase in rain and snow on the Southern Ocean are the most likely factors.Some fear the findings may fuel climate-change scepticism, given that sea ice is said to be the "canary in the coalmine" of global warming.However, experts in the field warn the increase in Antarctic sea ice extent is far outweighed by the decline in sea ice in the Arctic."You add the two together -- a strong decline in the Arctic and the weakly positive increase in the Antarctic -- then you're still getting a strong net decline globally," said Guy Williams, sea ice specialist with the Hobart-based Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre."It's a common myth and should be dispelled: that if sea ice disappears one season in the Arctic it magically reappears in the next season in the Antarctic. That couldn't be further from the truth. They are two completely different (climate) systems, responding to (global) warming in different ways."A growing body of research suggests the main reason for the increase in Antarctic sea ice is an increase in the force of polar winds. It shoves the sea ice together, causing ridging and creating thicker, longer lasting ice and promoting sea ice growth.There appears to be no definitive explanation for the increased wind intensity, although research papers have blamed everything from the ozone hole and increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to natural variations.Dr Williams said another factor promoting sea ice extent in the Antarctic was an increase in rain and snow over the Southern Ocean. The resulting fresher layer of water acted to protect ice and ice-producing conditions from warmer mid-level water that would otherwise melt ice and hinder its production.Adding to the complexity, parts of the Antarctic, such as the Bellingshausen Sea, are experiencing a rate of increase in ice-free conditions greater than in the regions of largest ice decline in the Arctic. Others, such as the Ross Sea, have had a significant increase in ice extent, of about 5 per cent each decade over the past 30 years.An important unanswered question is whether the volume of ice, as opposed to its extent, is increasing or decreasing. Dr Williams said this was unknown but it was hoped the next generation of satellites would give the answer.

He warned the factors promoting the growth of Antarctic sea ice cover may not hold the upper hand for ever. "We expected the Antarctic to be stable relative to the Arctic but at some point the trigger will come and we'll see a reduction," he said. "If you image the hypothesis that as you blow out (the sea ice from the continent) you make it thinner, then it becomes more volatile and vulnerable to more rapid retreat.

7. 'People, not climate' blamed for natural disastersJAMIE WALKER AND PIA AKERMANTHE AUSTRALIANOCTOBER 26, 2013 12:00AM

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/people-not-climate-blamed-for-natural-disasters/story-e6frg6xf-1226747172407

THE Australian scientist who had a lead role in writing a UN report on managing extreme events associated with climate change says human settlement patterns are more important than global warming in driving losses from natural disasters.

John Handmer, director of the Centre for Risk and Community Safety at Melbourne's RMIT University, spoke out as Tony Abbott blasted attempts to link the deadly NSW bushfires with climate change as "complete hogwash".

And deputy Greens leader Adam Bandt declared addressing global warming was more important than prescribed burning to reduce bushfire risk, sparking anger from land management experts who have fought for tougher action to tackle fire fuel loads.

Professor Handmer said the main driver worldwide of losses from natural disasters was the increased exposure of people to them, including to bushfires in Australia.

"That's more people, more economic activity and more settlement in hazardous areas and Australia is just as much a leader in that trend as anywhere else," he told The Weekend Australian.

A lead author of last year's special report on extremes by the UN

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Professor Handmer said from "an impact point of view", increased population in places vulnerable to floods, cyclones and other disasters outweighed climate change as a risk factor. "Climate change is important but not as important as these other factors," he said.

The Prime Minister re-entered the debate over the link between climate and the NSW bushfires -- which have claimed two lives and destroyed more than 200 homes since erupting outside of Sydney -- after clashing earlier in the week with the UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, whom he accused of "talking through her hat". In an interview with columnist Andrew Bolt published by News group papers, Mr Abbott was quoted as saying it was bizarre and "complete hogwash" to blame global warming when there had been worse fires stretching back to the earliest days of European settlement in Australia.

Mr Bandt said yesterday people were "grasping" at prescribed burning as a remedy to prevent fires such as those raging in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

"It is not a silver bullet, fuel reduction," he told ABC radio. "If you want to reduce the amount of fuel that's available to burn, the best thing that we can do is work to get global warming under control. If there is a scientific case for fuel reduction, we support scientifically determined and well-managed fuel reduction but what worries me is that we are focusing on that."

The royal commission into Victoria's 2009 Black Saturday bushfires found a "minimalist approach" to prescribed burning was key in allowing excessive fuel loads to accumulate, increasing bushfire intensity and putting lives at greater risk, and recommended a stronger prescribed burning program.

Former West Australian Land Management Department boss Roger Underwood said prescribed burning was a critical measure for effective bushfire protection.

"For Adam Bandt or anyone else to argue that it's useless just ignores history and ignores science," he said.

Will Steffen of the Climate Council -- the successor to the Climate Commission abolished by Mr Abbott -- said rising temperatures made bushfires more likely, but the current blazes in NSW could not be directly attributed to climate change. "Climate deals with long-term averages . . . (not) individual events,' he said.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING:

BEN PACKHAM

8. Bushfires raise temperature of climate rowJAMIE WALKERTHE AUSTRALIANOCTOBER 26, 2013 12:00AM

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/bushfires-raise-temperature-of-climate-row/story-e6frg6xf-1226747147570

PHILIP Gibbons has vivid memories of the one that nearly got away in Bemm River. It was a bushfire, not a fish, and he had been called out to protect the sleepy Victorian township after the surrounding forest went up on a hot, windy October day in 1988.

"It was a killer day," says Gibbons, who is now a land management expert at the Australian National University.

"There were fires everywhere. The whole thing just took off."

Despite suggestions to the contrary, there is nothing new about the landscape of southern Australia burning ahead of the acknowledged summer bushfire season.

This will be of limited consolation to the families of the two men who died fighting blazes in the Blue Mountains and southern NSW, not to mention the owners of the 200-plus homes that have been destroyed in the ongoing emergency. But it is central to the debate

on whether the incidence and severity of bushfires in Australia can be blamed on climate change and, if so, what can be done to abate the risk.

Arguably, that discussion descended to a new low when Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt tweeted: "Why Tony Abbott's plan means more bushfires for Australia and more pics like this of Sydney," alongside an image of the NSW capital wreathed in smoke.

After Environment Minister Greg Hunt accused Bandt of politicising a tragedy, the UN's point woman on climate change, Christiana Figueres, declared that bushfires were "absolutely" linked to global warming and the flames ringing Sydney were a harbinger of what was to come if emission levels didn't fall. The Prime Minister hit back, describing bushfires as part of the Australian experience and accusing her of "talking out of her hat" - earning a rebuke from former US vice-president and climate change activist Al Gore.

Abbott then ramped up the rhetoric in an interview with syndicated News group columnist Andrew Bolt, published yesterday, dismissing any link between climate change and the NSW bushfires as "complete hogwash".

Gibbons, a senior lecturer with the Fennes School of Environment and Society at ANU, shakes his head. "We know that bushfires have happened before in October, we know they have sometimes been very severe. That's not the issue. The question is: are we going to get more of these?"

In its recent fifth report, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said bushfires were set to increase in hotter and drier parts of the world.

That was an ominous portent for Australia's fire-prone southeast. But the trouble with bushfires is they don't fit into neat categories. Disasters such as the Black Saturday fires that killed 173 people in Victoria on February 7, 2009, are the deadly product of a chain reaction involving high temperatures, fuel loads, the dryness of the bush, humidity, wind and population demographics.

And as we saw this week when the army was pinged for starting the

State Mine blaze at the centre of the Blue Mountains emergency during a live-firing exercise, there must be an ignition source, which can as readily be human as an act of nature.

Climate scientists, firefighters, experts in fire behaviour and ecologists argue about which factor is more important, and how bushfires slot into the threat matrix of global warming.

Still, Richard Thorton, chief executive of the government-backed Bushfire and Natural Hazards Co-operative Research Centre, says one point can be made with confidence: "You can't attribute any particular fire to global warming or climate change in any sense."

The CSIRO's Kevin Hennessy concurs. A principal research scientist on climate impacts, he has helped model how the bushfire risk in Australia will be affected by climate change under the scenarios used by the IPCC to predict warming. The study found the number of extreme fire danger days in southeast Australia generally increases 5-25 per cent by 2020 for a low-emission scenario and 15-65 per cent for a high scenario. By 2050, the increases are 10-50 per cent for a low scenario and 100-300 per cent for a high scenario. That means more days with total fire bans.

While it's almost impossible to attribute an individual extreme weather event to climate change, he says the general risk of fire has increased due to a warming and drying trend that is partly due to rising greenhouse gas levels.

As Tasmanian fire scientist David Bowman says, our wide brown land is configured to "burn and burn and ... burn again". The fiery cycle starts in the Top End in the dry season, with the bushfire seasons tracking south in tandem with rising temperatures.

Grass fires erupt in central and southeast Queensland in early spring while humidity is relatively low. For central and southern NSW the danger peaks in December and January; in Victoria and Tasmania it tends to be in February and March.

Again, there are exceptions. In 1994 Canberra's bushfire season opened in August, in the depths of its frosty winter. This year's new year celebrations were barely over when Tasmania's Tasman

Peninsula was engulfed by fires that claimed 126 homes but, near miraculously, not a single life.

This could be seen to bear out a recent study by researchers Hamish Clarke, Christopher Lucas and Peter Smith, published in the International Journal of Climatology, that suggests fire seasons were becoming longer and the conflagrations more intense. Yet there was an important caveat to their findings: "Although these trends are consistent with projected impacts of climate change ... this study cannot separate the influence of climate change, if any, with that of natural variability," they reported.

The issue of fuel-load management generates intense heat. Sydneysider Christine Findlay, who earned a PhD in bushfire management from the University of NSW and styles herself as a whistleblower, argues that firestorms give the appearance of being caused by global warming, when the problem is actually the build-up of fuel on the forest floor.

John Handmer, a lead author of last year's special report for the IPCC on managing the risk of climate-related extremes and disasters, says people tend to focus on fuel loads because they can be tackled, albeit with limited success. "We can't do much about the weather," he says, "but we think we can do something about the fuel loads."

The royal commission into the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires recommended preventive burning be doubled in Victoria to reduce fuel loads, a target the state has struggled to meet.

While fuel loads are crucial, Handmer, the director of Centre for Risk and Community Safety at Melbourne's RMIT University, says their relative importance declines as fire conditions deteriorate.

Take Black Saturday. The bush north and east of Melbourne was primed to burn by heatwave conditions that culminated in a 45C day, turning leaves and undergrowth to tinder. The Forest Fire Danger Index was off the scale. Investigators would identify multiple ignition points, some deliberately lit. The landscape was hilly and homes dotted the ridgelines, allowing the flames to rush on to them after crowning in the thick eucalypt forests.

But the killer factor was the wind, in Handmer's assessment. "It's true that fire intensity is partly a factor of how dry and hot it is ... but if there is no wind you have got a good chance of containing that fire, no matter what the other circumstances," he says. "If there is very strong wind ... the ability to control that fire really goes down."

Yesterday, Will Steffen of the Climate Council - the successor of the Climate Commission abolished by Abbott - insisted it was a "no brainer" that rising temperatures made fires more likely, but that did not mean those still raging in NSW could be attributed directly to climate change.

Echoing what Gibbons tells Inquirer, he said: "The issue is not whether they are caused by climate change," he said. "The question is, is there an influence? Is the nature of these extreme events shifting because the climate is shifting? And the answer is unequivocally they are."

Climatic records have continued to tumble. Australia experienced its hottest month on record in January, and the monthly average for September was the warmest to be logged. On top of that, August and September were especially dry in the Sydney region.

Gibbons finds another set of statistics just as compelling: Australia's population is set to increase by 65 per cent by 2050, to 36 million. "The same fire occurring in the Blue Mountains in 2050 would destroy 300 homes, not 200," he warns.

By analysing weather data dating back to 1973, Hennessy and his team predicted that extreme fire weather days in the Blue Mountains area would increase from 1.5 days a year to four by 2050 under the worst of the IPCC's emission scenarios.

That is consistent with what could be expected from climate change as currently forecast, but with the "large variation in fire danger from year to year", he says much more research is needed.

9. Greenland drops uranium mining ban25 October 2013

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-Greenland_drops_uranium_mining_ban-2510134.html

Greenland's parliament has voted in favour of lifting the country's long-standing ban on the extraction of radioactive materials, including uranium. The move could enable the Kvanefjeld project to proceed.

The country introduced a zero-tolerance policy concerning the mining of uranium and other radioactive elements in 1988, while under Danish direct rule. However, in a 15-14 vote, the parliament yesterday voted to remove that ban, opening up the possibility for companies to begin mining uranium and rare earth minerals.The island of Greenland took a step towards greater autonomy from Denmark in 2009 with the official transition from 'home rule' to 'self rule.' This saw Greenland assume full authority over its mineral and hydrocarbon rights, which had formerly been overseen by Denmark. However, Greenland remains part of the kingdom of Denmark and its defence and foreign policies are still determined by Copenhagen.In September 2010, the Greenland government, led by the Inuit Ataqatigiit party, amended legislation to allow companies to conduct feasibility studies on potential mining projects containing elevated concentrations of radioactive elements. The government initiated a series of reports in 2012 to address the consequences of removing the zero-tolerance policy. These reports set out to address the regulatory roles of both Greenland and Denmark in managing uranium exploitation, identify all international conventions that would need to be adhered to, as well as investigating the potential environmental and health risks.The Danish government responded to Greenlan's move by saying that while it supported Greenland's decision to develop its mining industry, the extraction and export of uranium could potentially have "far-reaching foreign, defence and security implications." While calling for Greenland to ensure that the highest international standards are met during any future uranium mining and export, Denmark said that the two countries will now develop an agreement to establish a framework for further cooperation.

Australia's Greenland Minerals and Energy (GME) - owner of the Kvanefjeld uranium and rare earth element project in southern Greenland - welcomed the move. It said the "landmark decision" places Greenland "on the path to uranium-producer status, and thereby opens up coincident resources of rare earth elements to exploitation."The Kvanefjeld project is currently the subject of a definitive feasibility study to evaluate a mining operation for the production of uranium, rare earth elements and zinc. Pre-feasibility studies suggest that Kvanefjeld, with JORC-compliant indicated and inferred uranium resources of some 575 million pounds U3O8 (over 221,000

tU), could be among the bottom half of uranium producers in terms of cost and one of the lowest cost rare earth element producers in the world.GME said it is "now looking to work closely with regulatory bodies to lock in the configuration of the Kvanefjeld project." This will allow it to finalize environmental and social impact assessments and submit a mining licence application.Researched and writtenby World Nuclear News

10. Dispute over relevance of falling solar activityGRAHAM LLOYD, ENVIRONMENT EDITORTHE AUSTRALIANNOVEMBER 01, 2013 12:00AM

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/dispute-over-relevance-of-falling-solar-activity/story-e6frg8y6-1226750854173

SOLAR activity is falling more rapidly than at any time in the past 10,000 years, increasing the risk of a repeat of the Maunder Minimum which coincided with the "little ice age" of the 1600s, according to research by a leading British climate scientist.

BBC reports on work by Mike Lockwood of Reading University have sparked furious debate about the implications of weaker solar activity for the climate.

Professor Lockwood has said the late 20th century was a period when the sun was unusually active and a "grand maximum" occurred around 1985. Since then it has been getting quieter.

By studying certain isotopes in ice cores, the professor has been able to determine the level of solar activity over thousands of years.

According to the BBC, he found 24 different occasions in the past 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now, but the present rate of solar decline is faster.

Based on these findings, he has raised the risk of a new Maunder Minimum from less than 10 per cent to 25 to 30 per cent. A repeat of the Dalton solar minimum, he said, was "more likely than not" to occur.

In comments online, he rejected reports that his findings indicated a coming severe downturn in global surface temperature. He said the falling solar activity was more significant on a regional scale, indicating the possibility of harsher winters in Europe, because it increased the chances of more "blocking" low-pressure regions that would allow cold air to reach northern England.

The significance of solar activity in climate change has been a key area of dispute between climate scientists and sceptics. The established view of the climate scientists is that solar variation was well understood and had only a limited impact on global surface temperatures.

David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation said solar activity was an ongoing area of research, with the weak effect seen by Professor Lockwood in the data between low solar activity and severe cold winters in Europe questioned by other researchers, who had failed to find such a connection.

11. Lawrence Solomon: A global cooling consensus

Lawrence Solomon | 31/10/13 7:30 PM ET

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/10/31/lawrence-solomon-a-global-cooling-consensus/

Solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years

In the 1960s and 1970s, a growing scientific consensus held that the Earth was entering a period of global cooling. The CIA announced that the “Western world’s leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of detrimental global climatic change” akin to the Little Ice Age of the 17th and 18th centuries, “an era of drought, famine and political unrest in the western world.” President Jimmy Carter signed the National Climate Program Act to deal with the coming global cooling crisis. Newsweek magazine published a chilling article entitled “The Cooling World.”

In the decades that followed, as temperatures rose, climate skeptics mocked the global cooling hypothesis and a new theory emerged — that Earth was in fact entering a period of global warming.

Now an increasing number of scientists are swinging back to the thinking of the 1960s and

1970s. The global cooling hypothesis may have been right after all, they say. Earth may be entering a new Little Ice Age.

“Real risk of a Maunder Minimum ‘Little Ice Age,’” announced the BBC this week, in reporting startling findings by Professor Mike Lockwood of Reading University. “Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years [raising the risk of a new Little Ice Age] from less than 10% just a few years ago to 25-30%,” explained Paul Hudson, the BBC’s climate correspondent. If Earth is spared a new Little Ice Age, a severe cooling as “occurred in the early 1800s, which also had its fair share of cold winters and poor summers, is, according to him, ‘more likely than not’ to happen.”During the Little Ice Age, the Sun became eerily quiet, as measured by a near disappearance of the sunspots that are typically present. Solar scientists around the world today see similar conditions, giving impetus to the widespread view that cold times lie ahead. “When we have had periods where the Sun has been quieter than usual we tend to get these much harsher winters” echoed climatologist Dennis Wheeler from Sunderland University, in a Daily Express article entitled “Now get ready for an ‘Ice Age’ as experts warn of Siberian winter ahead.”Scientists at the Climate and Environmental Physics and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Berne in Switzerland back up theories that support the Sun’s importance in determining the climate on Earth. In a paper published this month by the American

Meteorological Society, the authors demolish the claims by IPCC scientists that the Sun couldn’t be responsible for major shifts in climate. In a post on her website this month, Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, all-but mocked the IPCC assertions that solar variations don’t matter. Among the many studies and authorities she cited: the National Research Council’s recent report, “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate,” and NASA, former home of global warming guru James Hansen.As NASA highlighted in a press release in January of this year, in citing the NRC report on solar variations: “There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate.” To bolster the argument that solar activity could explain the Little Ice Age as well as lesser changes, NASA then listed some dozen authorities, including Dan Lubin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, whose research on other sun-like stars in the Milky Way suggest that “the Sun’s influence could be overpowering.”

In the last two years, the scientific community’s openness to examining the role of the Sun in climate change – as opposed to the role of man – has exploded. Scientists are now rediscovering earlier works by scientists at the Danish National Space Center who as early as the 1990s published peer-reviewed articles demonstrating the Sun’s role in climate change. And by scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Pulkovo Observatory, whose predictions in the last decade that global cooling would start in this decade are

looking especially prescient.

All will be rediscovering the science of the 1960s and 1970s, which even earlier sounded the alarm on the coming period of global cooling. Those early scientists expected the cooling trend of the 1960s and 1970s to relent for several decades, as it in fact did. “None of us expected uninterrupted continuation of the trend,” explained Columbia University’s George Kukla in 2007, whose 1972 letter to the president triggered the U.S. government’s decision to take immediate action on the threat of global cooling.

Global warming always precedes an ice age, Kukla explained. The warming we saw in the 1980s and 1990s, in other words, was expected all along, much as the calm before the storm.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com. 

12. Implications for climate models of their disagreement with observationsPosted on October 30, 2013 | 488 Commentsby Judith Curry

http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/30/implications-for-climate-models-of-their-disagreement-with-observations/

How should we interpret the growing disagreement between observations and climate model projections in the first decades of the 21st century?  What does this disagreement imply for the epistemology of climate models?

One issue that I want to raise is the implications of the disagreement between climate models and observations in the 21st century, as per Fig 11.25 from the AR5.

Panel b) indicates that the IPCC views the implications to be that some climate models have a CO2 sensitivity too high — they lower the black vertical bar (indicating the likely range from climate models) to account for this.  And they add the ad hoc red stippled range, which has a slightly lower slope and lowered range  that is consistent with the magnitude of the current model/obs discrepancy. The implication seems that the expected warming over the last decade is lost, but future warming will continue at the expected (albeit slightly lower) pace.

The existence of disagreement between climate model predictions and observations doesn’t provide any insight in itself to why the disagreement exists, i.e. which aspect(s) of the model are inadequate, owing to the epistemic opacity of knowledge codified in complex models.

What IF?

For the sake of argument, lets assume (following the stadium wave and related arguments) that the pause continues at least into 2030′s.

Further, it is important to judge empirical adequacy of the model by accounting for observational noise.  If the pause continues for 20 years (a period for which none of the climate models showed a pause in the presence of greenhouse warming), the climate models will have failed a fundamental test of empirical adequacy.

Does this mean climate models are ‘falsified’?  Matt Briggs has a current post that is relevant, entitled Why Falsifiability, Though Flawed, Is Alluring.

You have it by now: if the predictions derived from a theory are probabilistic then the theory can never be falsified. This is so even if the predictions have very, very small probabilities. If the prediction (given the theory) is that X will only happen with probability &epsilon (for

those less mathematically inclined, ε is as small as you like but always > 0);, and X happens, then the theory isnot falsified. Period. Practically false is (as I like to say) logically equivalent to practically a virgin.

With a larger ensemble, perhaps there would be ‘some’ simulations with a 20+ year pause.

If the pause does indeed continue for another 2+ decades, then this arguably means that the scenario of time evolution of the predictions, on timescales of 3+ decades, has been been falsified.  This then brings us back to the ‘time of emergence‘ issue, i.e. whether the climate models are fit for the purpose of transient climate predictions, rather than merely equilibrium climate sensitivity.

If the climate models are not fit for the purpose of transient climate projections, and they are not fit for the purpose of simulating or projecting regional climate variability, what are they fit for?  Estimation of equilibrium climate sensitivity?  Maybe, but nearly all signals are pointing to a climate model sensitivity being systematically too high.  Well, ok, the climate models aren’t perfect, but it is argued that we are moving on a path that will make climate models fit for these purposes, as per the National Strategy for Advancing Climate Models.  Increasing model resolution, etc. are not going to improve the situation, IMO.

The argument is then made that climate models were really designed as research tools, to explore and understand climate processes.  Well, we have long reached the point of diminishing returns from climate models in terms of actually understanding how the climate system works; not just limited by the deficiencies of climate models themselves, but also by the fact that the models are very expensive computationally and not user friendly.

So, why are so much resources being invested in climate models?  A very provocative paper by Shackley et al.   addresses this question:

“In then addressing the question of how GCMs have come to occupy their dominant position, we argue that the development of global climate change science and global environmental ‘management’ frameworks occurs concurrently and in a mutually supportive fashion, so uniting GCMs and environmental policy developments in certain industrialised nations and international organisations. The more basic questions about what kinds of commitments to theories of knowledge underpin different models of ‘complexity’ as a normative principle of ‘good science’ are concealed in this mutual reinforcement. Additionally, a rather technocratic policy orientation to climate change may be supported by such science, even though it involves political choices which deserve to be more widely debated.”

If the discrepancy between climate model projections and observations continues to grow, will the gig be up in terms of the huge amounts of funding spent on general circulation/earth system models?

13. Hot News: Fusion Researchers Recommend ITER Design Tweaks21 October 2013 5:15 pm

http://news.sciencemag.org/europe/2013/10/hot-news-fusion-researchers-recommend-iter-design-tweaks

Scientific advisers to the ITER fusion reactor project have recommended several key changes to its design that could increase technical risks—but also smooth the path to producing excess energy. The recommendations, made last week by ITER’s

Science and Technology Advisory Committee (STAC), will have to be approved by the full ITER council in November. But if approved, as expected, “the chance of surprises later is reduced,” says Alberto Loarte, head of ITER’s confinement and modeling section. “The risk will pay off.”

ITER, being built in France by an international collaboration, aims to show that nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the sun, can be controlled on earth to produce energy. But reaching that goal involves heating hydrogen gas to more than 150 million°C so that hydrogen nuclei slam together with enough force to fuse. To do this, researchers are building a huge doughnut-shaped container called a tokamak to confine the ionized gas—or plasma—using enormously strong magnetic fields. ITER’s goal is to coax the plasma to produce 500 megawatts (MW) of heat, 10 times the 50 MW of power required to heat the plasma; this multiplying effect is known as a gain of 10.

The most significant change decided at the STAC meeting concerns a structure at the base of the tokamak vessel called the divertor. Its main function is to remove the helium that is the “exhaust” gas of the fusion reaction. The divertor is the only part of the vessel where the superhot plasma actually touches a solid surface, so it has to be able to absorb huge quantities of heat, as much as 10 MW per square meter of surface.

Existing plans call for making ITER’s first divertor with an outer layer of carbon. This is the safe option: Carbon is well proven in tokamak interiors; it can easily withstand the temperatures; and if any is blasted off into the plasma, it doesn’t affect the performance very much. The problem with carbon, however, is that it happily reacts with hydrogen, binding atoms into its structure. This wouldn’t be a problem during the early phases of ITER operation when researchers plan to use simple hydrogen or helium in the machine to get the hang of how it works. But a carbon coating could be a huge problem in later phases, when researchers plan to switch to real fusion fuel—a more reactive mixture of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. Tritium is radioactive and so needs to be carefully controlled and accounted for. Nuclear regulators would never accept a divertor material that absorbs tritium and so makes it impossible to locate.

To address that problem, planners had proposed running ITER for several years with the carbon-coated divertor, and then switching to one made of tungsten. Tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal: 3422°C. That should be fine for withstanding the heat produced during normal, steady ITER operations. But any unexpected bursts of heat could potentially melt the divertor, and tungsten—unlike carbon—instantly poisons the plasma, bringing fusion to a halt. So ITER’s operators would have to run the reactor much more carefully with a tungsten divertor, not pushing it to limits where the plasma might become unstable.

Despite this drawback of tungsten, STAC has recommended that ITER be built with a tungsten divertor from the start. “It was not an easy decision,” says STAC Chair Joaquín Sánchez, head of Spain’s National Fusion Laboratory in Madrid. The decision was made after years of research at other tokamak laboratories, in particular the Joint European Torus (JET) at Culham in the United Kingdom, which is the closest machine to ITER in size and design. Several years ago, JET researchers refitted the reactor with a tungsten divertor and beryllium lining (as ITER will have). After a year of testing, they confirmed that this “ITER-like wall” worked well enough not to cause problems for ITER.

Although some fusion researchers think that it would be safer to start ITER with a well understood carbon divertor, allowing them to push the reactor to extremes in search of high performance, starting with tungsten has advantages, too. Changing divertors is a complex process that would take many months. In addition, once operation with deuterium-tritium fuel has started, the interior of the vessel becomes radioactive (or “activated”), making it much harder to modify internal components. “If we start with tungsten, we save the cost of the change,” Sánchez says. “We know tungsten will be more difficult, but we will start learning earlier in the nonactivated phase and if there is a problem we can send people inside to fix it.”

The other design changes concern two separate magnetic coils to be inserted inside the reactor vessel to fine-tune control of the plasma. ITER’s main plasma-confining magnets are outside the vessel and act as something of a blunt instrument. About 5 years ago, researchers highlighted the fact that operators would have difficulty keeping the vertical position of the plasma steady, and so proposed some extra magnetic coils on the inside.

In addition to those for vertical stability, researchers proposed installing a second set of internal coils to combat a troubling phenomenon in superhot fusion plasma called edge-localized modes, or ELMs. ELMs occur when energy builds up in the plasma during fusion and then bursts out of the edge unpredictably, potentially damaging the lining or the divertor. The second set of coils deploys a magnetic field to roughen up the surface of the plasma so that it leaks energy at a constant rate rather than in erratic bursts.

Anything inside the vessel is subjected to extreme heat, radioactivity, and magnetic forces, so researchers had to persuade STAC that these two sets of coils could be made resilient enough to survive. “There was some reluctance in STAC and the ITER Organization because of the technical issues of installation,” Loarte says. Experiments at other labs around the world reassured them. “The results obtained were very positive,” he says.

STAC also took a hard look at the delivery schedule of components for ITER. The original plan called for everything—heating systems, instruments, ELM mitigation—to be in place when ITER is completed in 2020. But delays have meant that some items will be arriving later. “We needed to redo the schedule with a logic consistent with [achieving deuterium-tritium operation] faster. It was not consistent before and that led to criticism,” Loarte says. “Now we have to do the organizational part, which is not simple.”

14. The Promise of Fusion is Real, If it’s Properly Fundedhttp://peakoil.com/alternative-energy/the-promise-of-fusion-is-real-if-its-properly-funded

If energy research was an elementary school playground, the study of magnetic fusion might be the kid in the corner all alone, throwing pebbles at the ground with a frown on his face.

An outcast no one believes in, let alone wants to hang out with.

 

But there’s a real possibility that that lonely kid will one day become a CEO, a brain surgeon, or a visionary software entrepreneur. How many times has the next big thing been passed by in the name of popularity?

Driving magnetic fusion

Magnetic fusion is the controversial field that is always, in the words of its naysayers, fifty years away. Basically, by heating the hydrogen isotopes tritium and deuterium to ten times the temperature of the core of the sun, it’s possible to create a self-sustaining reaction like the one that fuels the stars in the sky. Possible, but not easy.

If realized, fusion energy could provide the world with an abundant, and relatively clean, energy source. While there are radioactive byproducts, fusion’s storage issues pale in comparison to those of fission (think 100 years versus hundreds of thousands).

And the fuel required is basically saltwater for the deuterium, and the tritium can be manufactured during the fusion process. The problem, as is the case all too often in long-term scientific endeavors, lies in the realm of payoffs. The naysayers are there for a reason: The quest for fusion energy has had its hiccups.

Enter ITER, the world’s largest magnetic fusion project to date. Currently being built in Cadarache, France, ITER is an agreement among the United States, China, South Korea, Russia, India, Japan and the European Union to build a working prototype for a future fusion reactor to show that actually producing electricity via fusion can be done. Essentially, ITER is the laboratory that will allow researchers to actually monitor, in real time, the fusion energy production process; its goal is to produce ten times the power (500 megawatts) required to start the reaction, for approximately ten minutes. The knowledge gleaned could very well lead to the next big thing in alternative energy: a commercial fusion reactor.

Lately, however, domestic economic realities have been an additional hurdle in an already difficult mission, putting America’s commitment to ITER, and fusion in general, in question. America would be wise to make a positive, definitive statement for three basic reasons.

 Overcoming obstacles to a fusion future

First and foremost, U.S. investment in ITER is relatively inexpensive. In exchange for less than 10 percent of ITER’s construction cost, America is privy to all experimental data and technology and can propose and run experiments on what will be by far the largest tokamak-style reactor ever built. Furthermore, America’s national laboratories, universities, and businesses will have the opportunity

to design and construct actual ITER technologies.

For perspective consider the Department of Energy’s Office of Science FY2014 budget request, in which spending on solar will reach $356 million next year, nearly triple the $120 million budget of ITER this past year. In fact, the combined research budgets for wind and geothermal energy will likely top $200 million in 2014, a proposed budget increase of 57 percent and 62 percent, respectively, from 2012. As far as revolutionary energy technologies go, the road ahead to ITER looks relatively affordable.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, to some degree failure is impossible. While it is certainly feasible that commercial fusion energy simply isn’t practical in the long term, huge advances in simulation, superconductors, materials and plasma science (to name a few) will inevitably be discovered in our quest to put a star in a jar. All of these areas represent significant bottlenecks to progress in numerous research and development projects.

Finally, magnetic fusion is increasingly on the research radar of the world’s most developed and rapidly developing nations: South Korea currently operates one of the world’s premiere tokamaks, K-STAR, and has announced plans to build by 2037 an actual fusion reactor capable of generating electricity; and Germany is developing a design alternate to ITER, called a stellerator, that will put any fusion device this side of the Atlantic to shame. Asia is likewise jumping on the fusion bandwagon. Either all of Eurasia is wrong, or they’re on to something. America will fail to follow suit at its technological and competitive peril.

After all, if America is to continue to be a technological world leader, it should stick to its word and demonstrate that it’s a reliable partner.

ITER has come a long way since the November day in 1985 when the idea was first proposed by Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Now, it might be all that stands in the way of an abundant supply of clean energy for the planet. America should place a little more faith in the kid in the corner.

15. Largest European Iter contract so farhttp://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Largest-European-Iter-contract-so-far-0111134.html

01 November 2013A Franco-German consortium has been awarded a contract for the supply of climatic, mechanical and electrical systems at thirteen buildings, including the Tokamak complex, at the Iter fusion reactor project.

The contract - worth some €530 million ($715 million) - was awarded to a consortium comprising three GDF-Suez subsidiaries (Cofely Axima, Cofely Endel and Cofely Ineo) and Germany-based engineering company M + W Group. It is the largest contract awarded so far by Fusion for Energy (F4E), the European Union's organization for coordinating Europe's contribution to the Iter project. Europe is responsible for the delivery of the 39 buildings that the 42-hectare Iter site at Cadarache in southern France will host.The contract covers the design, supply, installation and commissioning of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, the mechanical and electrical equipment for the Tokamak complex. This consists of the Tokamak, diagnostic and tritium buildings, plus the surrounding buildings. The HVAC system will be powerful enough to treat the air flow of one million cubic metres per hour. In addition, instrumentation and control systems, power supplies, interior and exterior lighting, gas and liquid piping will be installed. Fire detection and protection systems are also included.The consortium is scheduled to start work at the site next September. This work is expected to run for about five years. The consortium said that up to 450 people will be involved in the work at its peak in 2016. There are currently some 250 construction workers at the site, but by the end of 2014 this is expected to reach 2000 people.A separate contract, worth €500 million ($675 million), was awarded in January 2013 to a seven-company consortium called VFR for the construction of some of the buildings on the site. These include the central Tokamak Building, as well as separate specialist buildings for diagnostics, tritium, radio frequency heating, the cryoplant compressor and coldbox, ventilation and air conditioning, control, fast discharge, cleaning and site services.The Iter project is meant to take progress in nuclear fusion to a new level with the largest ever Tokamak unit, which should be capable of sustaining plasmas that produce 500 MWt for as long as seven minutes. Located within the EU, that bloc is funding half of the cost while the remainder comes in equal parts from the other partners: China, Japan, India, Russia, South Korea and the USA.After five years of gradual site preparation, construction was officially authorised in November last year. The facility is expected to reach full operation in 2027.Researched and writtenby World Nuclear News

16.

Nuclear option tests the ideology of true believers in climate changeGRAHAM LLOYDTHE AUSTRALIANNOVEMBER 09, 2013 12:00AM

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/nuclear-option-tests-the-ideology-of-true-believers-in-climate-change/story-e6frg6z6-1226756130799#

CLIMATE change diplomacy has always been a difficult beast, and this year is no exception. Poland, the host nation of next week's UN annual climate change conference, is regarded as Europe's most reluctant starter. To demonstrate, it kicked things off by holding a coal and climate summit. Australia's decision not to send a government minister to the talks has only added to the general expectation of looming failure.

Coming as it does midway through a negotiating period due to expire in 2015, this is not altogether unexpected. History shows the UN does not do deals until after the deadline.

But the atmosphere going into the Warsaw talks is certainly bleak for anyone who had hoped, as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon did, that the recently published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the science of climate change would provide an irresistible impetus to galvanise world leaders to action.

Arguments will continue about whether the latest IPCC report has increased or reduced certainty about what lies ahead.

The big question, however, is not whether climate change is real but

whether ideology has overwhelmed common sense in deciding how to respond.

It is impossible to consider climate change without confronting difficult issues of equity.

The conundrum remains that developed nations have been most responsible for building the atmospheric carbon dioxide account, and developing nations have a reasonable claim to repeat the experience to achieve the health, wealth, education and other benefits of development.

It is ironic that many of those who are most ideologically aligned to doing something about climate change are equally ideologically opposed to the option that many believe offers the best hope of success: nuclear power.

In the past week the nuclear option has united former Australian prime minister John Howard, a self-proclaimed climate change agnostic, and former NASA scientist James Hansen, one of the world's highest profile voices on climate change.

Howard used an address to the Global Warming Policy Foundation in Britain to argue that while combating climate change was often raised as a moral imperative, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty through the supply of energy had a moral attraction of its own.

For Hansen and a group of leading climate scientists, including Australia's Tom Wigley from the University of Adelaide and the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, support for nuclear is firmly rooted in combating what they believe to be an existential threat.

In an open letter to environment groups, the scientists have said continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change.

Hansen has been a long-time nuclear supporter, writing to US President Barack Obama on the issue in 2009. But his most recent intervention reflects a deep pessimism about global progress to limit

carbon dioxide emissions.

For Wigley it also reflects a realisation that existing forms of alternative energy will never be enough.

It is a message that infuriates many who believe that wind and solar are the best solution to cutting carbon emissions. Howard's advice in his London address was that "when public monies are involved, rent-seekers are thick on the ground".

It is illustrative to know that when opposition to nuclear power was at its height in the US following the Three Mile Island accident, the "go solar not nuclear" advertisements were funded by the heating oil companies that saw a threat from nuclear but not from the sun. They knew sunshine could never heat homes on winter nights.

Pessimism about the UN climate process and the public intervention of Hansen and Howard, united by different reasoning, raises the question of whether the anticipated nuclear renaissance is back after stalling in the wake of the Fukushima accident following the March 2011 tsunami in Japan.

Another indication is a documentary by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Robert Stone that can be seen as a call to arms for reluctant environmentalists.

In one sense, Pandora's Promise can be seen as the nuclear equivalent of Josh Fox's Gasland documentary that has helped build strident opposition to the fracking that has transformed the US's energy and carbon dioxide emissions profile through unconventional gas.

But Pandora's Promise makes uncomfortable viewing for many environmentalists who have had a longstanding ideological opposition to nuclear power.

It is unlikely to find the cult following of Gasland because it challenges ideologically entrenched positions and questions many deeply held convictions about radiation, nuclear waste, reactor safety and the real human cost, compared with existing forms of power generation.

Predictably, the documentary has been slammed for its criticism of the renewables industry and labelled as insensitive to the trauma of Fukushima. But Pandora's Promise is a signpost to the reassessment of nuclear power that is taking place among some of the world's biggest environmental thinkers.

"As a lifelong environmentalist I am against nuclear, but what if what I have been thinking all this time, and what my friends have been thinking, has been wrong?" asks Stewart Brand, founder and publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog.

British environmental writer Mark Lynas admits to the difficulty he faced leaving the anti-nuclear comfort zone but says the evidence is irresistible.

"The original Earth First slogan was no compromise in the defence of Mother Earth and it is still one I subscribe to at a very deep level," Lynas says.

The documentary charts the development of the nuclear power industry and the shortcuts taken on original reactor designs that have had long-term ramifications.

It explains why the new-generation nuclear reactors are different from those in operation today, because if everything went wrong, as happened in Fukushima or Chernobyl, the reactor would just shut down without any human intervention.

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates is funding research into a reactor that will use up the waste from existing power plants. There is a design for another reactor that is buried in the ground, where it goes through its body of fuel over 60 years untouched.

There are small modular reactors that can provide a local power source for a decentralised grid.

The critical issue is whether claims about technological advances in reactor design and improved safety can be taken seriously.

The documentary certainly exposes the heavy environmental cost of running the world on coal.

Wigley has made up his mind.

"I have been in the climate game for 40 years. We have got a problem and we need to decide what we are going to do about it," he says.

"My considered opinion is that the only really viable long-term solution is nuclear energy."

17. We must be open to climate viewsTIM FLORINTHE AUSTRALIANNOVEMBER 11, 2013 12:00AMhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/we-must-be-open-to-climate-views/story-e6frgd0x-1226756896514#

LAST month, The Guardian's Graham Readfearn lamented that "wrongheaded and simplistic views on climate denialism are a regular feature on the letters page of many newspapers", including The Australian.

On his Planet Oz blog, he added that if "a newspaper or other media outlet is publishing content which it knows is factually questionable or demonstrably wrong, does it have a responsibility to keep such pseudo-science statements off its pages?".

Readfearn is absolutely correct to ask where a newspaper should strike the balance and how to administer that balance. Not all views merit equal weighting. But it is important to remain open to a range of different viewpoints in order to advance a more nuanced discourse about climate science.

There is a premise underlying the politics of democratic institutions that a majority opinion is best. It sometimes leads to crazy outcomes, but on the whole it has proved to be the best system for government. Scarce research funds, including for climate science, are also allocated using the same democratic or consensus principles in Western countries.

Yet consensus is not the way that the scientific method works. Consensus is anathema to the scientific method. The scientific method involves continual testing and retesting of experimentally testable hypotheses in a process that leads to refining of current hypotheses and occasionally to major (paradigm) shifts in hypotheses.

In the past, political or religious ideology has often determined what was taught. The scientific method has won out in most instances, but it has never been easy. An example is the Lysenko affair in the USSR, which severely retarded Soviet capability in biological sciences.

Trofim Lysenko, the director of the Institute of Genetics from 1940-1965 within the USSR's Academy of Sciences during Stalinist times, taught anti-Mendelian doctrines of genetics. He succeeded in having scientific dissent from his theories formally outlawed in 1948.

This is only subtly different from what the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and The Guardian are advocating (and practising) regarding anthropogenic global warming climate change.

It is not that the warmist theories have no validity. It is that the bulk of people who advocate for them deny any validity for those who disagree with them. Science does not, and should not, work like this.

Interestingly, a version of Lysenko's non-Mendelian theories - epigenetics - is now an accepted paradigm. This is a result of non-ideological scientific research. The Guardian should desist from using "denier" when describing those people who disagree with the current scientific paradigm as broadcast by itself, the IPCC and other media outlets. The word denier is clearly associated with denial of the Holocaust in the minds of many of us familiar with 20th-century history.

The Guardian should be leading discussion, not playing the censorship card. There are many qualified climate scientists whose views are in synch with the IPCC. There are also many persons with some knowledge in the area and many more persons with no ability in the area who agree with it.

There are many reputable climate scientists, however, who do not agree with the IPCC paradigm. These include, but are certainly not limited to, Freeman Dyson, Mike Hulme, Judith Curry, Ross McKitrick, Nigel Calder, James Lovelock (originator of the Gaia hypothesis), Roy Spencer, Stephen McIntyre, Richard Lindzen (meteorologist, lead author IPCC AR3) and Ivar Giaever (Nobel laureate in chemistry).

There are some questions that should be asked by any thoughtful person who is interested in AGW climate change. Thoughtful persons can appreciate what are key questions, even if they do not possess a specialist scientific knowledge.

In the same way, persons such as myself who help judge the awarding of scarce competitively allocated funds for scientific projects cannot possibly have a specialised knowledge in all of the subjects they are adjudicating. However, such persons are able to logically reason their way around the key issues.

Frustratingly, it appears that the key questions on AGW climate science are not being asked by thoughtful non-specialist people because the same people have been encouraged to believe that the science is too complicated for them, and because they have been told that all expert climate scientists agree with the IPCC's position of certainty as regards AGW climate change.

Here are four key linked questions:

1. Is the rate of climate change increasing? Change is what climate does, so one does not need to be a climate scientist to deduce that it is important to address the question of whether the rate of change has increased. The IPCC has little to say on this scientifically, but continues to use phrases such as "unprecedented" global warming in its executive summaries.

2. Is a significant portion of climate change determined by human activity? Although our human footprint is heavy, it is not the only influence on climate. Scientists in the field of climate research refer to these influences as "forcings". Forcings can be terrestrial or extraterrestrial. The CO2 greenhouse effect is an example of a terrestrial forcing.

3. Is climate change significantly affected by human CO2 output, which nearly all warmists and sceptics agree is increasing? The IPCC modelling for the CO2 forcing effect has consistently grossly overestimated its effect on global warming.

4. If CO2 is a significant cause of global warming, then what should be done to combat it?

It is important for alternative views to be heard because an uncritical adherence to the AGW climate change paradigm could be siphoning off squillions that would be better spent on more important research and actions for the good of humanity and our Earth. A blinkered adherence to combating "the evils of CO2" can lead to solutions that do no good and may cause harm.

Tim Florin is professor of medicine at the University of Queensland.

18. Burnout is no cause for alarmBJORN LOMBORGTHE AUSTRALIANNOVEMBER 02, 2013 12:00AMhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/burnout-is-no-cause-for-alarm/story-fni1hfs5-1226751564513#

LAST week in this newspaper I pointed out that global warming is actually a net benefit for the world and for Australia, at least until 2050. This is because the benefits of agricultural CO2 fertilisation are much bigger than the costs of increased water stress, and because fewer cold deaths outweigh extra heat deaths. This is documented in the latest and most comprehensive, peer-reviewed article, collecting all published estimates showing an overwhelming likelihood that global warming below 2C is beneficial.

This does not imply that global warming is not a long-run problem. Moreover, cost-effective solutions are still warranted for the adverse effects by the year 2100 and beyond.

But it shows we need less scaremongering in the climate debate.To

many, the information was genuinely new in a debate entirely focused on one-sided negatives. To others, the information was genuinely outrageous. Environment Victoria's campaign director suggested I was "shameless" for making my case while "NSW is burning". But while the bushfires are definitely detrimental, they simply do not cancel out everything else. Yet in the past weeks they have been used as the latest cudgel to showcase the dangers of global warming and argue for strong carbon cuts.

UN climate change chief Christiana Figueres told CNN that global warming and bushfires were "absolutely" connected, and former US vice-president Al Gore made it even clearer on the ABC: "When the temperature goes up and when the vegetation and soils dry out, then wildfires become more pervasive and more dangerous. That's not me saying it, that's what the scientific community says."

The problem is, that is simply not what the science says. The latest peer-reviewed study on global fire, run with a record 16 climate models, tells us that sometimes heat and dryness lead to more fire, but sometimes lead to less fire. This is because with less precipitation the biomass burns more easily, but with less precipitation there is also less growth and hence less biomass to burn.

For Mediterranean-type ecosystems, such as southwest and south Australia, it turns out that more than half the time, future drying means less fire. Gore's generalisation is simply wrong.

For now, the models give strongly contradictory results about climate impacts on future fire across the world, some finding more fire in the tropics and less in boreal areas, others the exact opposite. Even within a single fire model, the large discrepancies in precipitation from different climate models means we are unsure if there will be more or less fire on more than half the planet's surface. This is also why there is no established scientific link (a so-called climate attribution) between current fire frequency and climate change.

Even Figueres accepts that. "The World Meteorological Organisation has not established the direct link between this wildfire and climate change," she said, though she optimistically added a

prophesying "yet" to her sentence. Instead she emphasised that we would see increasing heat waves (correct), and somehow looked satisfied, as if that were sufficient to link it to Australia's bushfires. However, it is likely that, in the long run, global warming will lead to more fire. Sixty per cent of the planet's surface will see a higher probability of fire by the end of the century, though more than one-fifth will see lower fire probability, including Mexico, most of South America, almost all of Africa below the Sahara, Southeast Asia, India and about half of Australia.

Moreover, global fire activity is estimated to have declined 10 per cent from its maximum around 1950. For the past 60 years we have seen less global fire activity, despite rising temperatures.

Even with global warming, the fire activity decline will likely continue until about 2025 and only then start going up.

It will still not reach current levels again before the second half of this century, and only later, possibly into the 22nd century, go above 1950s levels.

But Figueres argues that the Australian fires support the argument for substantial CO2 cuts. Somewhat undermining her argument with a "maybe", she insists that the pictures of bushfires are "an example of what we may be looking at unless we take actual vigorous action". Yet dramatic CO2 cuts would likely be one of the least effective ways to help fire. If we could get the entire rich world to cut emissions to the extent the EU has already promised for 2020, the cost would be at least $500 billion annually. Yet, towards the end of the century we would have spent more than $30 trillion, and reduced temperatures by only an immeasurable 0.1C. It would have virtually no impact on fire, even in 100 years.

Phil Cheney, a former head of CSIRO Bushfire Research, points out the main problem is the increasing fuel loads that dramatically increase fire danger. The obvious solution is "to increase the amount of prescribed burning and fuel management".

Such simple, smart and cost-effective solutions to bushfires don't negate the need to tackle global warming. But they underline how alarmist rhetoric often leads to bad policies. Bushfires are very poor

arguments for climate policies, and strong, immediate carbon cuts are costly ways to achieve tiny temperature reductions.

Smart climate policies need to focus on the most cost-effective solutions because green policies will be sustainable only if they are economical. We need to focus on R&D to create innovations that will bring down the price of green energy so it can eventually outcompete fossil fuels.

It is not shameless to correctly point out that global warming will likely be a net benefit till after 2050. Hopefully that fact can cool the climate conversation, so we can choose the better solutions.

Bjorn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, directs the Copenhagen Consensus Centre.

19. Nuclear 'the only realistic solution'GRAHAM LLOYDTHE AUSTRALIANNOVEMBER 05, 2013 12:00AMhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/nuclear-the-only-realistic-solution/story-e6frg6xf-1226753070020

RENEWABLE energy, such as wind and solar, is not enough to combat climate change and environmental groups should embrace nuclear energy as the only realistic solution, a group of leading climate scientists has said.

In an open letter to environment groups, the scientists -- including NASA climate science pioneer James Hansen and Australia's Tom Wigley -- safer nuclear power systems would be a practical means of addressing the climate change problem.

Release of the letter coincides with a new push by some environment advocates in Britain and the US to restart the debate on nuclear power that was building momentum but stalled after the Fukushima accident in Japan.

In an open letter published widely in the US yesterday, the group

said: "We appreciate your organisation's concern about global warming, and your advocacy of renewable energy. But continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change."

Dr Hansen, now with Columbia University Earth Institute and regarded as one of the most respected voices in climate change science, has long supported nuclear power.

The letter says renewables such as wind and solar and biomass would certainly play roles in future energy economy but they could not be scaled up fast enough to deliver cheap and reliable power at the scale the global economy required.

Professor Wigley, of the University of Adelaide and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, said the letter was addressed to advocacy groups that had opposed or not considered nuclear energy. "We asked them to reconsider the issue," he said.

"I have been in the climate game for 40 years . . . My considered opinion is that the only really viable long-term solution is nuclear energy."

The letter was also signed by Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution's department of global ecology, and Kerry Emanuel, atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

20. Germany Reinvents the Energy CrisisA love affair with renewables brings high prices, potential blackouts and worries about 'deindustrialization.'

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304448204579185720802195590

Nov. 8, 2013 6:28 p.m. ET

ObamaCare isn't the only policy train wreck in progress. Like Mao urging peasants to melt down their pots, pans and farm tools to turn China into a steel-producing superpower overnight, Germany dished out subsidies to encourage homeowners and farmers to install solar panels and windmills and sell energy back to the power company at inflated prices. Success—Germany now gets 25% of its power from renewables—has turned out to be a disaster.

As Germans rush to grab this easy money, carbon dioxide output has risen, not fallen, because money-strapped utilities have switched to burning cheap American coal to provide the necessary standby power when wind and sun fail.

Because the sun and wind are intermittent and the power grid is poorly arranged to accommodate them, brownouts and blackouts threaten this winter.

Because the bills are paid by households and businesses, electricity rates are triple those in the United States. An immediate panic is jobs, as prized industries head to the U.S. for cheaper energy unleashed by the shale revolution. Europe's top energy official now speaks frankly of the "deindustrialization in Germany."

In Britain, where policy has been nearly as generous to renewables, "It's fine being very, very green, but not if you're interested in manufacturing," complains a prominent CEO.

Democracy's great virtue is that it doesn't follow schemes off a cliff, but the normal adjustment mechanisms are hampered by the fact that Europe's energy disaster implicates the entire political spectrum.

Ed Miliband, leader of Britain's Labour Party, set the theme for next year's British election when he recently promised to freeze energy prices if elected. But Labour isn't about to disown the solar and wind subsidies it created. It wants to soldier on, shifting the cost to business. In Germany, conservative Angela Merkel embraced the opposition's energy

economics wholesale after Fukushima, leaving voters who are alarmed about energy prices no place to turn in September's election except Angela Merkel, who vaguely indicated some moderation of the energiewende (energy revolution) she launched and continues to champion.

An unwonted glimmer of reason has actually come from Mrs. Merkel's likely Social Democrat coalition partner, author of Germany's original green energy law, whose spokesman now says: "We need to ensure that renewable energy is affordable. And we need to put an end to the idea that we can pull out of nuclear and coal simultaneously. This won't work."

It's tempting to assume Europe's politicians were praying in the church of global warming. But more important is their subscription to resource-depletion ideology, which convinced them they'd picked a political winner because rising fossil fuel prices were guaranteed to make green energy look cheap in comparison.

"When more people consume oil and coal, the price will go up, but when more people consume renewable energy, the price of it will go down," explained Ms. Merkel's top energy adviser.

We have here an idea seemingly impervious to experience and part of the mental baggage of every politician likely to get elected in our world. "It is absolutely certain that [fossil energy] demand will go up a lot faster than supply. It's just a fact," President Obama explained in 2011. The U.S. "cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity on a resource that will eventually run out."

Mr. Obama mentioned shale exactly once in his speech—and only to say shale would run out too.

If all this were true, Europe wouldn't be in its present fix. Here's the real truth: The shale revolution is less revolutionary than it seems. It has shocked settled misconceptions only because it happened under the noses of Americans, in populated areas where the casual assumption was that "resources" would long ago have been dug out and carted

away.

In fact, the world's store of fossil hydrocarbons is truly vast, including almost unimaginable quantities of methane hydrates. The challenge is the technological and economic one of getting access to a given resource at an affordable price—a challenge ever since men used rags to soak up oil from natural seeps. For 150 years, the price of a barrel of oil has fluctuated between $10 and $100 (in 2011 dollars), a range that has been sufficient to call forth new reserves and feedstocks whenever needed to maintain hydrocarbons as a source of competitively priced energy.

Europe's energy crisis is a lot like ours of 40 years ago—self-inflicted. Europe's dream was untenable the minute energy prices began falling in a major trade competitor like the United States. The big question now is how far will the political upheaval go when an entire elite is implicated in an unsatisfactory energy experiment, which inevitably has become wrapped up in public disappointment with another failed elite project, the European Union itself.

Fascinating too will be the fate of Europe's shale. In Europe, government, not landowners, controls and benefits from mineral resources, creating the zero-sum resource politics that have made the Mideast a paragon of stability and civil progress. What about global warming? At least that answer is easier. European voters are coming out where Americans have, realizing that foreswearing cheap energy will do nothing for CO2 levels (and even less for climate) as long as others aren't foreswearing cheap energy too.

21. Indian scientists participate in global nuclear fusion projectAll India | Written by Monideepa Banerjie | Updated: November 10, 2013 12:34 IS

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/indian-scientists-participate-in-global-nuclear-fusion-project-444041?curl=1384243520

Paris:  23 Indian scientists are part of one of the biggest collaborations between India, France and 32 other countries at Cadarache in southern France, a project to produce electricity from nuclear fusion.

Scientists say electricity from nuclear fusion will be cheaper, cleaner and safer than power from nuclear fission that is used worldwide today. Called ITER, the project is, however, running two years behind schedule at the moment.  Many describe ITER as the world's most challenging scientific project. The biggest challenge: the construction site for a tokamak in which nuclear fusion will be triggered to produce electricity. India is building a cryostat - a giant 10-storey fridge to encase the tokamak where temperatures will equal that of the sun. But India is behind schedule.  Says Indranil Bandopadhyay, a fusion physicist overseeing India's contribution to the ITER project, "We are doing much better than some of the other domestic agencies. Maximum delay we have right now is in the cryostat of about 7 months. But that is overshadowed by delays in other components. Building is 23 months delayed. So the cryostat by seven months doesn't matter that much." 34 countries are collaborating in the 12-billion pound ITER project, raising questions about too many cooks, if not spoiling, then delaying the broth.

French scientist Jean Jacquinot doesn't entirely dismiss the problem. "There are drawbacks of course. The drawback is that there are many interfaces between the cooks as you said and these interfaces are difficult to manage," he says. "But it is also a huge learning process from which dozens of countries will benefit in future." The first demonstration power plant using nuclear fusion is expected to be ready only in the 2030s.

Mahboob Basha Syed, an engineer with Bhaba Atomic Research Centre who is overseeing the cryostat construction at Cadarache is optimistic. "30 to 40 years from now, we will hopefully see the fusion power plants

being commercially available in the world," he says.   The proof of the pudding, they say, is in the eating and the big question before the ITER fusion project is whether it will ever become commercially viable. Now that is a question it may take 40 years to answer. And many of us are not going to be around to see it.

22. 15 November 2013 Last updated at 03:43 GMT

Japan slashes climate reduction target amid nuclear shutdownhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24952155

Japan is to significantly slash its greenhouse gas reduction target in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

It will now aim to achieve a 2020 target of 3.8% below 2005 levels.

This replaces a previous commitment to reduce emissions by 25% from 1990 levels.

The moves come with all of Japan's nuclear power plants currently offline - forcing the country to increase its burning of fossil fuels.

The move was announced in Tokyo by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga. The new target represents a 3% rise over 1990s emissions levels, a comprehensive turnaround from the 25% reduction target.

But Mr Suga said the previous target - set under a government led by the now-opposition Democratic Party - had been "totally unfounded".

"Our government has been saying... that the 25% reduction target was totally unfounded and wasn't feasible," he said.

'Less ambition'Speaking at UN climate change talks in Warsaw, Japan's chief negotiator said the move was based on new circumstances.

"The new target is based on zero nuclear power in the future. We have to lower our ambition level," said Hiroshi Minami.

Acknowledging the move would attract criticism, he said the target could be adjusted if the nuclear situation changed.

Prior to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japan generated more than a quarter of its power from nuclear energy.

But since the disaster, its 50 reactors have been mostly idled for safety checks or scheduled maintenance, amid a public backlash against nuclear energy.

Japan's last operating nuclear reactor, at Ohi, was turned off in September and analysts say the country will be without nuclear power until December at the earliest.

So far, power companies have applied to restart about a dozen of the reactors but this will take time because of safety checks and legal hurdles.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to see the reactors back on line, as they are a vital part of his plan to turn the economy around.

Since the Fukushima disaster, Japan has been forced to import huge amounts of coal, liquid natural gas and other fuels.

23. Nuclear power could be answer for clean energy: Pranab MukherjeeBy PTI | 15 Nov, 2013, 07.30PM IST

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-

industry/energy/power/nuclear-power-could-be-answer-for-clean-energy-pranab-mukherjee/articleshow/25834801.cms

MUMBAI: Batting for nuclear power to fulfil India's energy needs, President Pranab Mukherjee today termed as "unacceptable" the low production of atomic power in the country and said this form of energy could be the answer to the nation's quest for clean energy.

He said only two per cent of the country's electricity requirement is fulfilled by nuclear power. "This position, I believe, every conscientious Indian citizen will agree is not acceptable," the President said.

Mukherjee was addressing the 56th graduation ceremony of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre Training School here.

He also lauded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his efforts to end the country's boycott by nuclear suppliers group and signing of the civil nuclear deal first with the US and later with other countries.

Pitching for nuclear energy, he said, "Between environmental protection, environmental requirement and developmental requirement, to have clean energy, perhaps we ought to concentrate on nuclear energy."

Mukherjee said that there is a shortage of 56 lakh million units of power in the country and one-fourth of households still

have no access to electricity.

He exhorted the atomic energy community to undertake public outreach measures to allay perceived fears and concerns about nuclear power.