Bharat Rakshak

“The fact that uranium mining does not cause health hazard needs to be appropriately conveyed to the people so as to convince them and win their confidence,” the House panel said in its report reprimanding the atomic energy department.

DAE is heading for quick sand trying to argue the Uranium mining does not have a health hazard

Spain Ejects Clean Power Industry with Europe Precedent

By Alex Morales and Ben Sills - May 30, 2012

Spanish renewable-energy companies that once got Europe’s biggest subsidies are deserting the nation after the government shut off aid, pushing project developers and equipment-makers to work abroad or perish.

From wind-turbine maker Gamesa Corp. Tecnologica SA (GAM) to solar park developer T-Solar Global SA, companies are locked out of their home market for new business. These are the same suppliers that spearheaded more than $69 billion of wind and solar projects since 2004 that today supply more than 50 percent of Spain’s power demand on the most breezy and sunny days.

Saddled with a budget deficit more than twice the European Union limit and a ballooning gap between income and costs in its power system, Spain halted subsidies for new renewable-energy projects in January. The surprise move by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy one month after taking office helped pierce investor confidence in stable aid for clean energy across Europe.

“They destroyed the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium,” European Wind Energy Association Chief Executive Officer Christian Kjaer said in an interview. “The wider implication of this is that if Spanish politicians can do that, probably most European politicians can do that.”

Spain’s $69 billion of investment in power capacity from 2004 to 2011 was about triple the spending per capita in the U.S. in that period, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data and U.S. Census Bureau population estimates. Most of the 2012-2013 spending will be for the legacy of projects approved before the aid cuts to wind, solar, biomass and co-generation.
Spending Skids

Investment in solar photovoltaic alone is headed to skid to as little as $107 million in 2013 from $879 million this year and $1.5 billion last year, New Energy Finance estimated. For new wind projects, investment should plunge to $963 million in 2013 and $244 million in 2014 from $2 billion this year.

T-Solar, which became the world’s biggest solar-farm operator by leveraging its Spanish business, currently has more than 40 running in Spain, Italy and India. While it still makes solar panels in Orense, Spain, they’re bound for Peru.

“We have an important pipeline of projects, and it’s 100 percent outside Spain right now,” T-Solar Managing Director Juan Laso, who also heads the country’s photovoltaic power association, said in a telephone interview. “If you take such a brutal measure, what you do is oblige the industry to move out,” he said of the January moratorium.
Solaria, Gamesa

Solaria Energia y Medio Ambiente SA (SLR), a Madrid-based solar panel maker, slumped as much as 19 percent today to 30 euro cents a share after restating its 2011 earnings. The company lost 96 million euros last year compared with a 6.5 million-euro profit in 2010.

Gamesa, the world’s fourth-biggest wind-turbine maker by market share according to Navigant Consulting Inc. (NCI)’s BTM Consult unit, plans to reduce the factory output of its Spanish plants to 1,000 megawatts by 2013 from 1,200 megawatts at the end of last year.

Instead, Zamudio-based Gamesa is adding capacity in India where it plans to open a third factory this year. In 2011, the company got less than 9 percent of its revenue in its home nation, down from almost 33 percent in 2009. Former CEO Jorge Calvet didn’t mention Spain on a May 10 call with analysts after announcing the company’s first quarterly loss.

“The future is outside of Spain,” said Sean McLoughlin, clean energy analyst at HSBC Bank Plc in London. “Gamesa already moved most of their business out of Spain and the moratorium only helps to accelerate and complete that process.”

Thirty-one years ago, Spain erected its first wind turbine at Tarifa, a city on the peninsula’s southern tip that juts into the gusty Straits of Gibraltar which divide Spain from Morocco.
German Model

In the 2000s, Spain copied the German clean-power aid model, as did nations from Portugal to Israel and Japan, increasing subsidies to a pinnacle in 2007. That’s when a law granted 444 euros ($556) a megawatt-hour for home rooftop solar panels feeding the power grid, compared with an average 39 euros paid to competing coal- or gas-fired power plants .

By 2009, the consumer bill for clean-energy aid had risen to 6 billion euros a year, ahead of the 5.6 billion euros in Germany, whose economy is almost four times bigger, according to the Council of European Energy Regulators.
Rolling Subsidy Cuts

After four successive reductions in subsidies since then, the government on Jan. 27 this year announced the moratorium on aid for new projects. The next month Spain saw itself drop out of the 10 most attractive markets for renewable-energy investors for the first time, due to reduced aid, on an Ernst & Young ranking. Spain led the list from October 2003 through July 2006.

“What happened in Spain is that abruptly, they changed the industry by changing the policy, and that doesn’t help build a sustainable industry,” said Stephan Ritter, general manager of General Electric Co.’s European renewables unit.

“The history of Spanish wind energy policy is ‘We’re going to keep it stable’ and suddenly out of the blue this comes, and it’s a bomb,” the EWEA’s Kjaer said.

The decline started before this year. The 75,466 renewable energy jobs that existed in Spain at the industry’s peak in 2008 shrank to 54,925 in 2010, according to the Renewable Energy Producers Association’s most recent data. Including indirect jobs, the tally slumped from 131,229 to 111,455.

Iberdrola SA (IBE), based in Bilbao, became the world’s biggest owner of wind farms, taking its Spanish experience abroad over the past decade. It campaigned for solar subsidies to be ended, because much of the power-tariff deficit sits on the utilities’ balance sheets straining their finances. Iberdrola, which also runs gas, hydro and nuclear plants, is Spain’s biggest utility.
Solar Drag

Solar energy was the biggest drag on the system, accounting for almost half of the annual 6 billion euros of liabilities and producing just above 2 percent of the power , said Eduardo Tabbush, an analyst in London at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

With peak electricity demand at less than half of capacity, the country doesn’t need more power plants, he said. Spain has a capacity of 99 gigawatts, and peak demand of 44 gigawatts.

Spain’s power-system debt swelled to 23 billion euros as successive governments set electricity prices for consumers that didn’t cover the revenue utilities booked. Even with January’s moratorium, the electricity system racked up another 762 million euros of debt in the first two months of the year, according to the energy regulator.

Scapegoat for Policies?

“You’re making renewables a scapegoat for a problem that was created as a result of incredibly bad policies,” said Kjaer.

Spain is the world’s fourth-biggest wind energy market by cumulative installed capacity, and in solar photovoltaic power, it ties the U.S. for fourth, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The nation installed at least a gigawatt of wind power capacity every year since 2001, peaking at 3.5 gigawatts in 2007, according to the Spanish Wind Energy Association.

“At the moment there’s not a single project planned for 2013,” Heikki Willstedt, director of energy policy at the Spanish Wind Energy Association, said in an interview. “We have to keep a rhythm of installation over the next two or three years to keep the industry here in Spain.”

Solar power installations have been bumpier, totaling 550 megawatts, 2,760 megawatts, 70 megawatts, 390 megawatts and 430 megawatts for the five years through 2011, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data.

Even before the moratorium was established, opportunities were dimming for renewable power in Spain. The so-called pre- registry of wind projects, which had been approved to receive above-market electricity prices, was set to expire at the end of 2012. And a retroactive cap was set on the number of hours when solar generators can earn higher rates.
Acciona, Abengoa

Acciona SA (ANA), a developer of wind and solar projects that in 2011 derived more than three quarters of electricity sales in Spain, has less than half of its pipeline of new projects for 2012 in Spain. Energias de Portugal SA’s renewables division, based in Spain, has less than a fifth of its pipeline there.

At Abengoa SA (ABG), the portion of revenue from Spain fell to 27 percent last year from 39 percent in 2007. Abengoa has 1,210 megawatts of solar thermal plants either in construction or in a pre-construction phase, a third of it in Spain.

“It reaches a point where if more interesting markets open up and you have to export to those markets, many times it’s better to take the factories there,” said Willstedt. “All of this know-how could be lost quickly, or it’ll move away, or it could be bought by competitors.”

In a country where unemployment in April rose to 24.4 percent, the subsidy moratorium puts more positions at stake, according to Willstedt.
’Five Years on Ice’

In its March 30 budget, Spanish Premier Rajoy’s government gave no sign of when it would bring back subsidies, and the National Energy Commission, an advisory body, has published scenarios including a suspension until 2017.

“I don’t know any sector that can be put on ice for 5 years and then be taken out intact,” said T-Solar’s Laso.

Abengoa Chief Executive Officer Manuel Sanchez Ortega said Feb. 28 in an interview he thought the moratorium would last 18 months at the most.

“Then the industry will pick up the pace again,” Ortega said. “If it lasts more than 18 months we are running the serious risk of driving all this industry out of the country.”

To be sure, Spain is headed to meet its European Union target of getting 20 percent of all its energy from renewables by 2020. The country generated 23 percent of its electricity from renewable sources in 2010.

vina wrote:Cross posting.
For any proponent of renewables, this must be extremely, extremely disquieting. Fundamentally, renewable as a base grid app , is not a proven business model in the long term and is backed by massive and huge subsidies all over the world.

Spain Ejects Clean Power Industry with Europe Precedent

In the 2000s, Spain copied the German clean-power aid model, as did nations from Portugal to Israel and Japan, increasing subsidies to a pinnacle in 2007. That’s when a law granted 444 euros ($556) a megawatt-hour for home rooftop solar panels feeding the power grid, compared with an average 39 euros paid to competing coal- or gas-fired power plants .

RamaY wrote: He was representing an american nuclear company and went to India to present their business proposal. The Indian delegation asked them that if they can sell the power at 6Rs/KWH = $0.12/KWH. His team said it is impossible!

Then the Indian team showed them Indian nuclear power plants and how they are producing the nuclear electricity at that price.

vina wrote:
Solar energy was the biggest drag on the system, accounting for almost half of the annual 6 billion euros of liabilities and producing just above 2 percent of the power , said Eduardo Tabbush, an analyst in London at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

With peak electricity demand at less than half of capacity, the country doesn’t need more power plants, he said. Spain has a capacity of 99 gigawatts, and peak demand of 44 gigawatts.

"German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said. Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs."

22 gigawatts of electricity per hour

Mihir wrote:

22 gigawatts of electricity per hour

That literally means that electricity generation increased at a rate of 22GW per hour.

Or that the head of the "renewable energy think tank" has no idea what the difference between a watt and a watt-hour is.

A preliminary report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated the radiation doses that residents of Japan have received in the year following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. Dose rates in most Fukushima homes outside the 20 kilometre evacuation zone were comparable to reference levels for radon.
The nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi released significant amounts of radioactivity into the environment, with the majority of this dispersed by air along a track stretching about 50 kilometres to the northwest.
The WHO's study used radiological surveys and data available up to September 2011 and considered the location of people when the contamination occurred in March 2011. Japanese authorities acted quickly to evacuate people from within 20 kilometres of the plant and this uninhabited zone is the only part of Japan not covered by the study. Another 'deliberate evacuation area' was later declared to the northeast of the plant and it was conservatively assumed that residents stayed for four months before leaving.
The report noted that probably over 30% of the dose to Japanese citizens exposed to the contamination would have been received during the first year, with less than 70% to follow over a period of about 15 years. This is based on the experience of the Chernobyl accident of 1986, allowing for variation in the actual mix of isotopes released.
The report's headline conclusion is that most people in Fukushima prefecture would have received a radiation dose of between 1 and 10 mSv during the first year after the accident. This compares to levels of about 2.4 mSv they would have received from unavoidable natural sources, and the legal limit of 1 mSv from nuclear plants in normal operation. In two places the doses were higher - between 10 and 50 mSv.
<snip>.

RamaY wrote:^^ Chanakya ji

I submitted proposals for concentrated solar power generation in India and at that time the proposed tariff rate was Rs 11/KWH. We didnt make it because the whole process was rigged with political favoritism and the main contention was for land allocation - 10 acres for 1MW, and not power generation.

Fast forward 2yrs and today you can buy an existing license for a price. We are yet to see a plant run for profit for more than 5 yrs. Without the implied RE business, we are yet to see a profitable business.

My criteria was Rs8/KWH and even that is not enough in a couple of years.

We are yet to see the reality.

"German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said. Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs."

RamaY wrote:^^ Fast forward 2yrs and today you can buy an existing license for a price. We are yet to see a plant run for profit for more than 5 yrs. Without the implied RE business, we are yet to see a profitable business.
.

As per my understanding Land is not allotted but developer has to arrange for required land. Tariff that you indicated could be competitive

vina wrote: The entire economics will turn upside down if there was a largescale replacement of basic grid power with solar. The subsidy burden will be back breaking.

Germany has announced plans to upgrade and expand its electricity grid over the next decade in order to help renewable energy sources fill the gap left by its phase-out of nuclear power. An investment of some €20 billion ($25 billion) will be needed.

According to the grid operators, "The nuclear phase-out and the increased supply of renewable energy are major challenges for the current infrastructure and require further development of the networks." Their plan identifies the potential grid investments that may be needed in the coming period on the basis of various scenarios.
On-shore high-voltage grids in Germany will have to undergo considerable expansion in the next decade, the companies say. This expansion is necessary to facilitate German's energy transition and the development of the European electricity market. In addition to the upgrading of 4400 km of existing transmission lines, the grid operators anticipate that the construction of some 3800 km of new high-voltage lines will be needed over the next ten years. These network upgrades and additions would require investment of some €20 billion ($25 billion) by 2022.

New Delhi: India declined to sell nuclear technology to Iran, Iraq and Libya in the 1980s in spite of being offered "huge" sums of money, said a leading defence journal.
According to a report in the current issue of India Strategic (www.indiastrategic.in), all the three countries offered "huge" sums in the early 1980s, but the then prime minister Indira Gandhi said a firm "No". Surprisingly, then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was most upset and when his persistent efforts yielded no response, he went to the extent of sending only a junior minister for her funeral.

Iran asked for nuclear technology as well as a military training school for its officers somewhere in India, again offering substantial monetary compensation for both, but Indira Gandhi said India would not play its friends against one another.
<snip>

Iran and Iraq were then in the thick of their long, eight-year war, which cost each side heavy casualties and meant no victory for any side. Gandhi's special envoy for the Gulf, Romesh Bhandari, in fact was then shuttling between the Iranian and Iraqi capitals of Teheran and Baghdad to forge peace.
<snip>

Three places: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. And three more: Banqiao, Machhu II, Hiakud. Most people react with horror to the first trio, while the second three locations usually draw a blank look. In fact, the latter were the sites of three major hydroelectric dam failures: in China and India in 1975, 1979 and 1980, which were directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands. In contrast, the death toll directly associated with radiation exposure from the three best-known civil nuclear accidents is estimated by the World Health Organisation to be conservatively about 50, all associated with Chernobyl.

Nuclear power has had a pretty bad press recently. In the post-Fukushima world, major power companies such as the German-owned E.ON and RWE-npower have taken the decision not to invest in building new nuclear power stations in Britain, citing costs in the current economic climate.

Some activists argue that the economics of construction and operation of nuclear power stations are sufficiently prohibitive that increased investment in safe, renewable power supplies such as offshore wind projects are a more attractive option.


But why is nuclear power now so expensive? I suggest that it is at least partly due to an inflated analysis of the potential health risks associated with civilian nuclear waste in particular, and an exaggerated assessment of "nuclear risk" in general.

....
Indeed, "nuclear risk" is in a category all of its own, as was seen all too clearly last year when a major natural disaster, the Tohoku earthquake, which killed tens of thousands of people, was quickly overshadowed in the global collective consciousness by the consequent nuclear incident at the Fukushima plant, which killed no one.
<snip>

....
Nuclear technology then rapidly expanded as a result of the Manhattan Project, with the construction of superweapons capable of unleashing the explosive power of uncontrolled nuclear fission and, later, fusion. Iconic images of mushroom clouds became fixed in our minds following the devastations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And so, for many, civilian nuclear power and images associated with nuclear weapons remain intimately linked.

I believe that this emotional link between defence and civilian applications of nuclear technology constrains a rational, scientific analysis of the uses and relative benefits of nuclear power. Certainly, fears of the biological effects of invisible radiation can lead to some bizarre behaviour.

The Italian foreign ministry, for example, recommended that its citizens flew out of Tokyo to avoid potential radiation exposure in the first couple of weeks following the Fukushima leak. While the radiation levels in the Japanese capital rose significantly above normal, they remained lower than the typical average background radiation levels in Rome, leading to the bizarre situation of individuals being relocated to places with higher radiation levels than those they were leaving.

And a pervasive myth has taken hold that even tiny amounts of radiation are unsafe. In reality, this cannot be so, as humans have evolved in an invisible sea of naturally occurring radioactivity. Much of this arises from radioactive forms of potassium, uranium and thorium; remnants of the Earth's formation more than 4 billion years ago. Human bodies are bubbling with radioactivity, with around 7,000 atoms decaying each second due to radioactivity from potassium-40 and carbon-14.

Our understanding of the biological effects of radiation has been developed over more than 80 years, following the first meeting of the First International Congress of Radiology in London in 1925. Radiation-induced effects such as radiation sickness were noted to occur with exposure to specific organs only above a well-defined threshold dose. As to cancer, the probability of a malignant tumour arising is thought to be related to the quantity and type of radiation to which an individual has been exposed.


There have been three major accidents in nuclear power production in more than 14,000 "reactor years" of operational, civilian nuclear power. The reactor core meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 made headlines but the melted fuel remained contained within the main reactor vessel, with no measurable radiation health consequences.

At Chernobyl a steam explosion blew out the reactor-holding vessel, the reactor core caught fire and a radioactive plume belched into the atmosphere for 10 days, with an estimated five per cent of the entire reactor core released. Twenty eight people, mostly firefighters, died within a few weeks of exposure from acute radiation syndrome. According to the World Health Organisation, an additional 19 died between 1987 and 2004 of cancers which might have been radiation-induced.

In the 20 years following 1986, no statistically significant health effects on the wider population could be correlated to caesium-137 exposure from the Chernobyl release.
....
Our irrational fear of the atom stands in the way of the development of nuclear power and its potentially vital contribution to the long-term energy needs of an ever-increasing and energy-greedy world population.

Amber G. wrote:असतो मा सद्गमय...

Hiakud. Most people react with horror to the first trio, while the second three locations usually draw a blank look[/b]. In fact, the latter were the sites of three major hydroelectric dam failures: in China and India in 1975, 1979 and 1980, which were directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands.

I suggest that it is at least partly due to an inflated analysis of the potential health risks associated with civilian nuclear waste in particular, and an exaggerated assessment of "nuclear risk" in general.

arnab wrote:Actually the Banquio dam disaster in 1975 is the largest man made disaster ever. Officially China admitted (after 30 years) that it killed around 26,000 people and impacted the lives of 10 million. Other statistics cite over 170,000 being killed - much more than chernobyl.

Not sure about Hirakud - possibly some people point to its inability to control floods (leading to deaths) as the cause.

Sanku wrote:Such tactics raise questions about the intent and truthfulness of the author frankly.

arnab wrote:

Sanku wrote:Such tactics raise questions about the intent and truthfulness of the author frankly.

Why? for instance a while ago - your inability to identify Capt Saurabh Kalia correctly in a photograph did not (in your mind atleast) deter from the 'thrust' of your argument. In this case too - the thrust of the argument remains correct.

Amber G. wrote:^^^ In any case, these three dams together (as was done for TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima) did cause deaths in tens of thousands...

Theo_Fidel wrote:Nuclear kills over time. The fact that large chunks of the planet have been banned for human occupation is what allows nuclear to claim this. By that measure since CO2 is such a problem we should evacuate the planet. then we can claim zero deaths from coal as well.

vina wrote:

As per my understanding Land is not allotted but developer has to arrange for required land. Tariff that you indicated could be competitive

The peak rate for 'top tier" , all electric customers in Bangalore is of the order of close to 5 Rs or so, must be one of the most expensive power in India for domestic use. So even at Rs 8 (which wont even come close to Rs , you still need to give a subsidy of Rs 3 to ME, while in the current scheme of things with Rs 5 per unit, I subsidize a whole lot of people!

The entire economics will turn upside down if there was a largescale replacement of basic grid power with solar. The subsidy burden will be back breaking.

chaanakya wrote:Peak Rate is about Rs 8-11 Kwh. ( on energy exchanges)
If general tariff for contracted demand is about Rs 4 ( I am quoting old rate) and if demand exceeds the additional power is charged at 150% of prevailing rates for Industries. Coupled with Power factor penalty rates could be still higher.

vina wrote:In effect, what you are saying is that since nuclear is "dangerous" per current state , we should abandon it. However, that in my opinion is not smart and really not the route of progress.

charge less from Domestic consumers which is about 35% of total consumption

Gerard wrote:Interview with Gennady Yevstafiev, retired Lieutenant General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_05_01/73456303/

But interestingly enough India has close cooperation with the United States in nuclear matters. So, do you think that could be a leverage for the United States to apply some pressure to India?

No, I don’t think so. You know, the agreement with Bush Administration signed with India about scientific cooperation, but mainly in a nuclear field, in 2007 is of the particular interest to the United States because they know the Indians have a huge energy program which is based mostly on, due to rather poor energy resources, it is based mostly on the development of the nuclear industry. We benefit from this idea of Indians develop nuclear industry, Kudankulam which we are going to convert into something very spectacular.

But the Indian request is huge because Indians are planning within 20-25 years to build about 50 nuclear energy reactors and American industry which is not producing nuclear reactors now for the use in the United States, they have stopped producing them to the United States industry, they badly need some market for the advanced technologies in that. By the way, French are in the same boat, though of course French industry is of a much smaller size. That’s why the fight for Indian market in nuclear technology is basically a commercial fight for the share of Indian market. But the market is going to be so big that for the next 15 years there will be enough space for everybody to work on this market.

Mind you that Indians are very serious customers and they demand a lot of set benefits when they sign agreements and these set benefits would of course sponsor the Indian industry in developing their own technologies. And sooner or later they will produce more than 50% of what they need for themselves.