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_NEW: follow the development of the new web-presence wolframscharnhorst.blogspot.com reprint The global rebirth of nuclear power was meant to be well under way by now, writes Jim Green. But in fact, nuclear's share of world power generation is on a steady long term decline, and new reactors are getting ever harder to build, and finance. The only real growth area is decommissioning , but that too has a problem: where's the money to pay for it? The UK's planned Hinkley C nuclear plant is looking increasingly like a dead duck - or possibly parrot.  As the Financial Times reports today, Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has abandoned plans to examine the 'value of money' Hinkley C offers taxpayers - because no deal has been reached and none is expected before the general election in May. In other words, all that bullish talk about Hinkley C launching Britain's ' nuclear renaissance ' has melted away like a spring...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q01/2014 IEA World Energy Outlook special report sees rising role of governments in shaping investment decisions. Meeting the world’s growing need for energy will require more than $48 trillion in investment over the period to 2035, according to a special report on investment released today by the International Energy Agency (IEA) as part of the World Energy Outlook series. Today’s annual investment in energy supply of $1.6 trillion needs to rise steadily over the coming decades towards $2 trillion. Annual spending on energy efficiency, measured against a 2012 baseline, needs to rise from $130 billion today to more than $550 billion by 2035. “The reliability and sustainability of our future energy system depends on investment,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. “But this won’t materialise unless there are credible policy frameworks in place ...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q04/2013 Submit your Abstract for the next issue of the Quarterly Notes Scientists in Shanghai are attempting a breakthrough in nuclear energy: reactors powered by thorium, an alternative to uranium. The project is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a government body with close military ties that coordinates the country's science-and-technology strategy. The academy has designated thorium as a priority for China's top laboratories. The program has a budget of $350 million. And it's being spearheaded by the influential son of a former Chinese president. But even as China bulks up its military muscle through means ranging from espionage to heavy spending, it is pursuing this aspect of its technology game plan with the blessing - and the help - of the United States. China has enlisted a storied partner for its thorium push: Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The U.S. gove...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Tweet Around the world, cities, farmers, industries, energy suppliers, and ecosystems are increasingly competing for their daily water needs. Without proper water management, the costs of this situation can be high – not just financially, but also in terms of lost opportunities, compromised health and environmental damage. Without major policy changes and considerable improvements in water management, by 2050 the situation is likely to deteriorate, increasing uncertainty about water availability. This chapter summarises the key pressures on water, as well as the main policy responses. It starts by looking at current water challenges and trends and how they could affect the water outlook in 2050. It considers competing demands for water (from agriculture/irrigation, industry, electricity, domestic/urban supply, environment flows) and over-exploitation (both surface and groundwater), water stress, water-related disasters (e.g. floods), water po...

-- a _kt75 | reprint   Tweet How can you design a city by designing a car? Today’s automobiles are driven by an increasing number of users who live in cities. The United Nations reported in 2007 that migration patterns and population growth have created an equal split between inhabitants of cities and rural areas for the first time in human history. This general trend will continue for the next several decades and will produce a very urbanized world. In 1950, New York City was the only megacity on the planet, with 10 million occupants. Today, there are 25 megacities that are mostly in developing countries. To verify this trend, we need only to look at the rapid urbanization in China to see the mass migration of the rural poor to urban areas for economic opportunity. Population experts project that most of the urban growth will occur in Asia and Africa for the next several decades. Simultaneously, humanity’s thirst for personal mobility wil...

-- a _kt75 | reprint     Tweet ■ Case Ethiopia - Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Ethiopia has refused to halt work on a controversial giant dam across the river Nile that Egypt fears will severely curb its water supply. The refusal came after the Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, promised to "defend each drop of Nile water with our blood" and other senior Egyptian politicians called for the dam's destruction. A spokesman for the Ethiopian prime minister said on Tuesday that Morsi's speech was irresponsible and that the project would proceed as planned. "Nothing is going to stop the Renaissance Dam. Not a threat will stop it," Getachew Reda said via telephone. "None of the concerns the Egyptian politicians are making are supported by science. Some of them border on what I would characterise as fortune-telling." Ethiopia hopes its Grand Renaissance dam – which will cost more than $4.3bn (£2.8bn) – will form Afric...

-- a _kt75 | reprint     Tweet In recent years the electronics industry has gained notoriety for creating an endless stream of disposable products that make their way at life's end to developing countries, where poor people without safety gear cut and burn out valuable materials, spilling contaminants into their water, air, and lungs. Solar modules contain some of the same potentially dangerous materials as electronics, including silicon tetrachloride, cadmium, selenium, and sulfur hexafluoride, a potent greenhouse gas. So as solar moves from the fringe to the mainstream, insiders and watchdog groups are beginning to talk about producer responsibility and recycling in an attempt to sidestep the pitfalls of electronic waste and retain the industry's green credibility. Solar modules have an expected lifespan of at least 20 years so most have not yet reached the end of their useful lives. But now, before a significant number of dead ...

-- a _kt75 | post    Oil sands (also named: tar sands or, more technically, bituminous sands ) are a kind of unconventional petroleum deposit, i.e. represent fossil energy deposits. From the ir structure oil sands form a loose sand or partially consolidated sandstone containing naturally occurring compositions of sand , clay , and water, saturated with a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum technically referred to as bitumen (or colloquially tar due to its similar appearance, odour and colour) . Oil s ands have been exploited since Paleolithic times but the modern in dustrial (i.e. commercial) mining of this type of fossil fuel deposits has begun in the 1 920ies [ 1 ]. Since that time the mining has contin uously risen and has exper ienced a dramatic incr ease in the most recent years [ 2 ] , [ 3 ]. Acco rdingly, today the total production v olume of tar sands amounts to about 1.9 million barrel per day [ 4 ] and is estimated to conti nue to r i...

-- a _kt75 | post supporting information  💾 _download: server 1 | server 2 Inside Sustainability: Facts, Figures, Bullshit - Part I: Unemployment [_kt75 | reflections 01.1/2013] The first quarter of 2013 sees a further worsening of the job markets world wide. Accordingly, the official unemployment rate for Europe (Jan 2013) is reported with 11.7% (growing), for the USA 7.6% (indifferent), Australia 5.6% (growing), Asia 4.4% (growing). Whereas the booming countries in Asia still report low unemployment rates, Europe as well as the USA struggle with constantly high or growing job cuts. In particular the European crisis-hit countries Portugal (17.6% ↑ ), Spain (26.2% ↑ ), Italy (11.7% ↑ ), Greece (27.0% ↑ ), etc. report climbing (official) unemployment rates [ 1 ]-[ 4 ]. As analysed elsewhere, the official unemployment rates rarely reflect the real conditions [ 5 ]. Applying the conservative correction factor c f (includes also socially critical/precarious job arra...

-- a _kt75 | note 💾 _d ownload Paper : server 1 | server 2 😐 download troubles? get your free copy Along with the first issue of the Notes in 2013 a number of major development steps have been finalised. First of all and as a consequential step to consistently and consequentially integrate the individual project elements into the _kt75 | project, the Notes – originally the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - have been renamed to _kt75 | notes (on genuine sustainable development). Despite a different name, the key intention to provide recent and comprehensive sustainability information in a compact way remains the same. Accordingly, the present issue addresses topics like: Water and Power Supply Networks Oil Pipeline Projects (Keystone XL) Nuclear Power (Decommissioning in context of the ‘energy turnaround’) etc. More details about the _kt75 | notes are provided in the News section of this issue. Secondly, the technical update o...