View of the Third World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in Sendau, Japan. Vanuatu’s President Baldwin Lonsdale told delegates he was attending because the Pacific island, hit by Cyclone Pam in early March, “wants to see a strong new framework on disaster risk reduction which will support us in tackling the drivers of disaster risk such as climate change". Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/IPS

By Jamshed Baruah
SENDAI, Japan , Mar 16 2015 (IPS)

Cyclone Pam has not only caused unprecedented damages to the Pacific island of Vanuatu but also lent urgency to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s plea that disaster risk reduction is in “everybody’s interest”.

“Sustainability starts in Sendai,” Ban declared at the opening of the Third World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR), the largest-ever high-level meeting on the theme, which kicked off on Mar. 14 in Sendai, the centre of Japan’s Tohoku region, which bore the brunt of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.

The conference is expected to conclude with the adoption on Mar. 18, when WCDRR is scheduled to close, of a new agreement on disaster risk reduction, which will provide guidance on how to reduce mortality and economic losses from disasters.“Disaster risk reduction advances progress on sustainable development and climate change [which] is intensifying the risks for hundreds of millions of people, particularly in small island developing states and coastal areas” – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

“This is the first stop on our journey to a new future to put our people of the world and this world onto a sustainable path,” Ban told government leaders and civil society representatives from around the world.

“Disaster risk reduction advances progress on sustainable development and climate change,” Ban said, adding that “climate change is intensifying the risks for hundreds of millions of people, particularly in small island developing states and coastal areas.”

Experts consider climate change as the cause for the increasingly unpredictable pattern of cyclonic activity affecting Vanuatu in recent years.

“I speak to you today with a heart that is so heavy,” said Vanuatu’s President Baldwin Lonsdale addressing the opening session, visibly fighting back his tears. “I stand to ask you to give a lending hand in responding to this calamity that has struck us.”

This is indeed a major calamity for the Pacific island nation. Every year it loses six percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to disasters. “This cyclone is a huge setback for the country’s development. It will have severe impacts for all sectors of economic activity including tourism, agriculture and manufacturing,” said Lonsdale.

“The country is already threatened by coastal erosion and rising sea levels, in addition to five active volcanos and earthquakes. This is why I am attending this conference and why Vanuatu wants to see a strong new framework on disaster risk reduction which will support us in tackling the drivers of disaster risk such as climate change.”

As Vanuata reeled under the impact of the cyclone, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of japan pledged four billion dollars in disaster prevention aid, mainly for developing countries.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) launched an initiative on Mar. 15 to scale up community and civic action on resilience, the so-called ‘One Billion Coalition for Resilience’.

The IFRC has committed itself to mobilising its network of 189 national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and 17 million volunteers around the world to increase different services that link disaster preparedness, emergency response and longer term recovery needs of local communities.

The Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, commended the IFRC’s efforts to galvanise actions toward making communities more resilient.

“We need to scale up our collective efforts to make sure that hazards don’t become disasters, and we will only be able to achieve this by building alliances at every level,” she said. ”Only in partnership can we contribute to transforming the lives of the most vulnerable people and support their efforts in building stronger communities.”

Apparently realising the need of the hour, top insurers from around the world have called on governments to step up global efforts to build resilience against natural disasters, highlighting that average economic losses from disasters in the last decade have amounted to around 190 billion dollars annually, while average insured losses were at about 60 billion dollars.

A ‘United for Disaster Resilience Statement’ was released Mar. 14 by top insurance companies, members of the UNEP Finance Initiatives’ Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI), the largest collaborative initiative between the United Nations and the insurance industry. PSI is backed by insurers representing about 15 percent of the world’s premium volume and nine trillion dollars in assets under its management.

The statement urges governments to adopt the U.N. Post-2015 Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction, emphasising that the insurance industry is well placed to understand the economic and social impact of disasters given that its core business is to understand, manage and carry risk.

Lauding the initiative, Achim Steiner, U.N. Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), said: “The vision and initiative demonstrated by the insurance industry – from the launch of the landmark Principles for Sustainable Insurance at the Rio+20 conference to the strong, united commitments made here in Sendai – provide inspiration and a way forward.”

Another PSI initiative launched in Sendai called on individual insurance organisations to help implement the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction by making voluntary, specific, measurable and time-bound commitments.

The voluntary commitments will follow the global framework afforded by the four Principles for Sustainable Insurance, and will show concrete actions that build disaster resilience, and promote economic, social and environmental sustainability.

These commitments will be aggregated and promoted en route to a major UNEP and insurance industry event in May this year, which will be hosted by the global reinsurer, Swiss Re.

The commitments will also be promoted by the PSI at the Global Insurance Forum of the International Insurance Society in New York in June. The forum will include a dedicated day at the U.N. headquarters for insurance industry leaders and U.N. officials to address sustainable development challenges and opportunities, from climate change and disaster risk, to financial inclusion and ageing populations.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Stop Elektrownia Północ campaigners trying to stop investment in Europe’s biggest new coal power plant. Credit: C. Kowalski/350.org

By Diana Maciaga
WARSAW, Oct 27 2014 (IPS)

Pomerania in northern Poland is famous for its unpolluted environment, fertile soils and historic heritage. So far, these valuable farmlands have been free from heavy industry but that situation might change as a shadow looms over the lives of Pomeranians.

Its name is Elektrownia Północ, also known as the North Power Plant and, ever since we learned about it, we have been determined to stop Elektrownia Pólnoc.

If built, this coal-fired power plant would contribute to the climate crisis with 3.7 million tons of coal burnt annually, and lock Poland into coal dependency for decades.

It threatens to pollute the Vistula River, Poland’s largest river, with a rich ecosystem that is home to many rare and endangered species.“The [Polish] government’s energy scenario, ironically labelled as sustainable, is based on coal and nuclear power. It promotes business as usual and hinders any development of renewable energy”

The threat of soil degradation and inevitable drainage keeps local farmers awake at night, not to mention the air pollution from the plant that will be a major health hazard, making the situation in Poland – already the most polluted country in Europe with more people dying from air pollution than from car accidents – even worse.

But this is not just about stopping one of a dozen fossil fuel projects currently under development. This is part of a much broader struggle.

While unemployment soars, the Polish government fails to stimulate green jobs and dismisses renewable energy as too expensive. At the same time, it is pumping billions into the coal industry. Unprofitable and un-modern, it thrives thanks to hidden subsidies that in the past 22 years added up to a mammoth sum equal to the country’s annual GDP.

The government’s energy scenario, ironically labelled as sustainable, is based on coal and nuclear power. It promotes business as usual and hinders any development of renewable energy.

The current government continues to block European Union climate policy, without which we can forget about a meaningful climate treaty being achieved in Paris next year.

All this takes place while we face the greatest environmental crisis in history and leaves us hopelessly unprepared for everything it brings about.

But Poland’s infamous coal dependence is all but given and the policy that granted our country the infamous nickname “Coal-land” is strikingly incompatible with the will of the Polish people. All around the country people are fighting coal plants, new mines and opposing fracking. We want Poland to be a modern country that embraces climate justice.

I went to New York to be part of the People’s Climate March, observe the U.N. Climate Summit and bring this very message from hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens whose voices had been ignored on domestic grounds to the international stage. Yet what I had not expected was how powerful an experience it would be.

With 400,000 people in the streets and thousands more all over the world, New York witnessed not only the largest climate march in history on Sep. 21 but a true change of tide: a beautiful, unstoppable wave of half a million representing hundreds of millions more – the stories unfolding, forming an epic tale not of loss or despair but of resilience, strength, responsibility and readiness to do what it takes to save this world.

For decades world leaders have been failing us, justifying their inaction with the supposed lack of people’s support, their talks poisoned by a ‘you move first’ approach.

The voices of those who marched echoing in the street and in the media, impossible to be ignored, left their mark on the Summit and resounded in many speeches given by world leaders. The march showed it more clearly than ever how strong the mandate for taking action is and, even more importantly, where the leadership truly lies.

Opening the Summit, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed to politicians to take action to ensure a low-carbon, climate resilient and better future. “There is only one thing in the way,” he said, “Us”.

The march proved that there is a counter-movement challenging this stagnation. From individuals to communities, from cities to neighbourhoods and families, millions are working to make a better world a reality. Against all adversities, people around the world embrace the urgency of action and lead where the supposed leaders have failed.

For me this is the single most important message and a source of hope to take back home. A new chapter of climate protection has opened written by the diverse, powerful stream which flooded the streets in New York and beyond – not to witness but to make history.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

* Diana Maciaga works with the Polish NGO Workshop for All Beings (Pracownia na rzecz Wszystkich Istot), which specialises in protection of the wildest treasures of Poland. She has participated in Global Power Shift and Power Shift Central & Eastern Europe and is sharing her experience through campaigns and coordinating a training for local Polish leaders – “Guardians of Climate”. She is currently one of the organisers of the Stop Elektrowni Północ (Stop the ‘North Power Plant’) campaign against a new coal-fired facility in Poland.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Police accost women protesting against the Kudankulam nuclear plant in India. Credit: K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS.

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, May 23 2013 (IPS)

For years India’s pro-liberalisation, Congress party-led coalition government chafed at civil society groups getting in the way of grand plans to boost growth through the setting up of mega nuclear power parks, opening up the vast mineral-rich tribal lands to foreign investment and selling off public assets.

Now, at the end of its tether, the Interior Ministry has cracked the whip on hundreds of non-governmental organisations engaged in activities that “prejudicially affect the public interest.”

"...The government is trying to promote globalisation while cracking down on the globalisation of dissent." -- Achin Vanaik
On Apr. 30 several NGOs were informed that the bank accounts through which they receive foreign funding had been frozen.

“It is shocking what the government has done – but not surprising given the increasingly authoritarian, undemocratic and repressive measures being directed…against anyone who is seen to challenge or disagree with their positions and decisions,” Lalita Ramdas, anti-nuclear campaigner and board chair of Greenpeace International, told IPS.

Ramdas said NGOs concerned with nuclear power, human rights, environment and ecology – areas where corporate and industrial interests were likely to be questioned – appeared to be particular targets of the government order.

Among the worst affected is the Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), a network of more than 700 NGOs that is currently challenging, in the Supreme Court, the government’s restrictions on foreign funding reaching groups that engage in activities that can be described as “political” in nature.

In its court petition INSAF described itself as an organisation that believes that “the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of India need to be safeguarded against blatant and rampant violations by the State and private corporations.”

INSAF said it has “actively campaigned against land grabs by corporations, ecological disaster by mining companies, water privatisation, genetically modified foods, hazardous nuclear power (and) anti-people policies of international financial institutions like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.”

INSAF declared in court that it “firmly believes in a secular and peaceful social order and opposes communalism and the targeted attacks on the lives and rights of people including religious minorities, and regularly organises campaigns, workshops, conventions, fact-findings, people’s tribunals, solidarity actions for people’s movements and educational publications.”

“With that kind of a profile we were expecting this crackdown,” Anil Chaudhary, coordinator of INSAF, told IPS. “Still, the government could have waited for the Supreme Court verdict.”

“At this rate,” he said, “organisations working against discrimination of women and (advocating) for their empowerment through participation in local bodies could be termed “political”, as (well as) organisations working for farmers’ rights.

“The same arbitrariness can be applied to green NGOs trying to protect the environment against mindless industrialisation.”

Chaudhary thinks it unfair that NGOs critical of government policies are being singled out. “Instead of selectively freezing the funding of groups under INSAF, the government should order a blanket ban on all foreign funding.”

Among INSAF’s many campaigns is an intiative to bring international financial institutions like the World Bank under legislative scrutiny for their activities in India.

It cannot have escaped the government’s attention that INSAF’s campaigns have run parallel to powerful movements for transparency and clean governance led by social activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal, founder of the Aam Admi Party (Common Man’s Party) that plans to contest general elections due in 2014.

Kejriwal, whose social activity led to the passage of the 2005 Right to Information Act, has also been closely associated with transparency campaigns led by Anna Hazare, who mounted a Gandhian-style fast against corruption in April 2011 that rallied over 100,000 ordinary people.

Street protests demanding good governance have since been a thorn in the side of the government.  When they peaked in December 2012, following the gang rape of a young woman in a bus in the national capital, police took to beating protestors.

The government, starting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has also been frustrated by NGOs’ efforts to stall work on a string of mega nuclear parks along peninsular India’s long coastline, especially at Jaitapur in Maharashtra, Mithi Virdi in Gujarat and Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu.

In February, the government froze the accounts of two leading Tamil Nadu-based NGOs allegedly associated with the protests at the site of the Kudankulam plant, signalling a new and tough stance against civil society groups fighting the displacement of farmers and fishermen by mega development projects.

The two NGOs, the Tuticorin Diocesan Association and the Tamil Nadu Social Service Society, received four million and eight million dollars respectively over a five-year period that ended in 2011, according to declarations they made to the government.

With strong backing from the Church, the groups continue to operate despite the freeze on their assets.

During the same five-year period a total of about 22,000 NGOs across India received roughly two billion dollars in foreign contributions, going by government records.

Unexpected protests have surfaced from among the Congress party’s partners in the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Devi Prasad Tripathi, general secretary of the Nationalist Congress Party and member of parliament, reminded Interior Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde that the UPA is “committed to protecting and promoting secular, democratic and progressive forces in the country.”

“Effectively, the government is trying to promote globalisation while cracking down on the globalisation of dissent,” commented Achin Vanaik, professor of political science at the Delhi University.

The government’s move stands in stark contrast to promises made not two years ago at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid and Development Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea, where 159 governments and member organisations honoured the vital role played by the non-profit sector by pledging to foster an “empowering” climate for civil society.

In his most recent report to the United Nations General Assembly, Maina Kiai, special rapporteur on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, noted with grave concern that India has repressed “peaceful protestors advocating economic, social and cultural rights, such as…local residents denouncing the health impact of nuclear power plants.”

By Johan Galtung
KYOTO, Apr 15 2013 (IPS)

It has not been this bad since the 1950-53 Korean War.

October 1962, the Cuba-USSR-U.S. crisis, comes to mind. There were horror visions of mushroom clouds. A proud Cuba, with a strong leader-dictatorship, a social revolution in the near past, was denied a normal place in the state system, bullied by the U.S. and some allies with sanctions and boycotts into isolation, which has lasted more than 50 years.

Johan Galtung. Credit: Courtesy of the author.

The Soviet Union shipped nuclear-tipped missiles for deployment as close to the U.S. as the U.S. missiles deployed in Turkey were to the Soviet Union. And in that lay the solution: tit for tat, one nuclear threat for the other, in negotiations kept secret, ultimately revealed by Robert McNamara.

Three countries were involved in 1962; in the current crisis five countries, three nuclear powers (China, North Korea, U.S.) with Japan and South Korea. There are unreconciled traumas, of Japan having colonised Korea (1910-45), attacking China and the U.S. during the Pacific War of 1931 to 1945; U.S. using nuclear bombs against Japan in 1945, occupying Japan and South Korea; North Korea attacking South Korea; United Nations-U.S. counter-attacking, ending in 1953 with an armistice; then 60 years of an immensely frustrating quest for unification with the annual U.S.-South Korea + Team Spirit exercises close to North Korea.

And, more recently, the U.S.-China competition for the number one economic world position, the U.S.’ efforts to build economic alliances with the European Union and with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and then the Japan-China conflict over the Diaoyu-Senkaku Islands.

To top it: North Korea’s threats about nuclear weapons, fascist like anybody threatening to turn others into ashes, but so far only verbal violence.

Nonetheless, even against a background like that, there are some ways of defusing this Three against Two pentagon.

Dae-Hwa Chung, a professor at Pusan National University in South Korea wrote about the 60 years conflict, with U.S. bullying North Korea by withholding a peace treaty and normalisation. His basic points: the Soviet Union pulled out of North Korea, but the U.S. remained in South Korea to encircle China; Soviet Union and China recognised South Korea, the United Nations recognised both, U.S. and Japan failed to live up to the agreement of cross-recognition, never recognised North Korea but made peace, and a de facto alliance, with South Korea.

One may speculate why. Both Koreas were dictatorships; South Korea acquired democratic features only in the 1990s. U.S. had a visceral hatred of North Korea for breaking the chain of U.S. war victories since the second War of Independence in 1812 by not capitulating, together with Japan and South Korea hoping for its collapse, even more so after the 1989-90 collapse and absorption of East Germany into Germany.

There are sombre speculations. Both Japan and U.S. have a history of losing wars on the Korean peninsula, Japan in the 1590s under shogun Hideyoshi, and then in 1945 to the U.S. and USSR; the U.S. in 1953, by not winning.

Hawks in both countries might keep the polarisation and nurse their own traumas to fuel a war of revenge, winning, not losing this time; not like the Bay of Pigs in Cuba 1961. For Japanese hawks, some in power under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the current crisis is a golden opportunity to “normalise” their own country, getting rid of Constitution Article 9 depriving Japan of the right to war, brushing away any reconciliation with the Koreas and China (by admitting Japanese wrongs from 1910-1931-1945) — to the contrary, making young Japanese proud of their country.

With strong, even existential motives such as these fueling North Korean, U.S. and Japanese intransigence, the prospects are dim.

And yet let us look for some glimmer of hope, however distant.

A bilateral deal like Cuba 1962 is difficult because the U.S.’ use of Turkey and the USSR’s use of Cuba were symmetric, inviting a tit for tat. What could North Korea give in return for the indispensable peace treaty-normalisation? Credible International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) control used to be the answer, but North Korea has crossed the red line and become a nuclear power.

North Korea could dismantle its verbal and physical threats, hoping for peace treaty-normalisation in return. Would the U.S., used to dictating outcomes giving nothing in return, agree? Like in 1962 keeping it secret, with a “profile in courage” narrative? Hopefully, but not very likely, some secret deals are in the making.

A multilateral deal involving the whole pentagon, giving goods for goods for international conviviality, would be the real Team Spirit. Concretely this would be a (North)East Asian Community with China, Taiwan, Hong Kong-Macao, Japan, the Korean peninsula; and Mongolia, the Russian Far East, maybe more.

The Community would relate equitably to the U.S. and the Pacific by extending TPP to include China and a fully recognised North Korea. The Diaoyu-Senkaku Islands with their exclusive economic zones would belong to the (North) East Asian Community. China-Japan would own it together, share the revenue, with a portion to sustain the community.

There would be mutual and equal benefits; everybody would gain.

And that is a problem for the minds hostage to zero-sum games and addicted to winning; at present found in all five, using patriotism to fuel such games. A change of mentality is needed, like in Europe in 1950. That may take centuries, but could also happen very quickly under enlightened statesmanship. None of the five qualifies for that, today. But together, in a summit meeting, buoyed by NGOs and media?

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant is struggling to find space to store tens of thousands of tonnes of highly contaminated water used to cool the broken reactors, the manager of the water treatment team has said.

About 200,000 tonnes of radioactive water, enough to fill more than 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools, are being stored in hundreds of gigantic tanks built around the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has already chopped down trees to make room for more tanks and predicts the volume of water will be more than tripled within three years.

“It’s a time-pressing issue because the storage of contaminated water has its limits, there is only limited storage space,” the water-treatment manager, Yuichi Okamura, told the AP news agency in an exclusive interview this week.

The Yotukura fishing village was one of the areas devastated by the Mar. 11, 2011 tsunami that caused the nuclear plant meltdown. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

Dumping massive amounts of water into the melting reactors was the only way to avoid an even bigger catastrophe after the meltdown at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactor, caused by the Mar. 11, 2011 tsunami.

Okamura remembers frantically trying to find a way to get water to spent fuel pools located on the highest floor of the 50m high reactor buildings.

Without water, the spent fuel likely would have overheated and melted, sending radioactive smoke for miles and affecting possibly millions of people.

But the measures to keep the plant under control created another huge headache for the utility: What to do with all the radioactive water that leaked out of the damaged reactors and collected in the basements of reactor buildings and nearby facilities.

“At that time, we never expected high-level contaminated water to turn up in the turbine building,” Okamura said.

He was tasked with setting up a treatment system that would make the water clean enough for reuse as a coolant, and was also aimed at reducing health risks for workers and at curbing environmental damage.

At first, the utility shunted the tainted water into existing storage tanks near the reactors.

Contaminated water

Meanwhile, Okamura’s 55-member team scrambled to get a treatment unit up and running within three months of the accident, a project that would normally take about two years, he said.

Using that equipment, TEPCO was able to circulate reprocessed water back into the reactor cores.

But even though the reactors now are being cooled exclusively with recycled water, the volume of contaminated water is still increasing, mostly because groundwater is seeping through cracks into the reactor and turbine basements.

Next month, Okamura’s group plans to flip the switch on new purifying equipment using Toshiba Corp. technology.

“By purifying the water using the ALPS system, theoretically, all radioactive products can be purified to below detection levels,” he said.

But in the meantime its tanks are filling up, mostly because leaks in reactor facilities are allowing groundwater to pour in.

Masashi Goto, a nuclear engineer and university lecturer, said the contaminated water build-up posed a major long-term threat to health and the environment.

He said he was worried that the radioactive water in the basements may already be getting into the underground water system, where it could reach far beyond the plant via underground water channels, possibly reaching the ocean or public water supplies.

“There are pools of some 10,000 or 20,000 tonnes of contaminated water in each plant, and there are many of these, and to bring all of these to one place would mean you would have to treat hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water which is mind-blowing in itself,” Goto said.

“It’s an outrageous amount, truly outrageous,” Goto added.

The plant will have to deal with contaminated water until all the melted fuel and other debris is removed from the reactor, a process that will easily take more than a decade.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

The catastrophe following the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactor in March 2011 has turned the old debate on nuclear power into a war of words between international agencies and independent experts with diametrically opposed views.

In their newest Uranium report, released Jul. 26, the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) all but ignored the lessons learned from Fukushima, predicting that by the year 2035, world nuclear electricity generating capacity will grow by 99 percent.

This forecast also effectively dismisses the financial constraints caused by the ongoing global economic crisis, which has brought countries in the eurozone to the brink of collapse.

Both agencies, mostly financed by industrialised countries, say that during the next two decades nuclear power will grow between 44 and 99 percent, and that uranium reserves, despite higher costs of extraction, are more “than adequate to meet (the) high-case requirements through 2035 and well into the foreseeable future.”

But for independent experts, these optimistic forecasts are typical of the sustained delusions of both agencies.

Mycle Schneider, co-author of the new ‘World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2012’ (WNISR), recalled that both agencies have a long history of exaggerated forecasts that never came true. “In 1973-1974, the IAEA forecast an installed nuclear capacity of 3,600-5,000 gigawatt (GW) in the world by 2000, ten times what it is today,” Schneider told IPS.

Schneider, a Paris-based consultant on energy and nuclear policy, has been a consultant to practically every Western European government, the European Union, the European Parliament, and numerous leading environmental organisations.

A member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), based at Princeton University, he is considered an international expert on nuclear policy.

“Even after the accident of Chernobyl, in 1985, the NEA forecast an installed nuclear capacity of 497-646 GW for the year 2000, still between 40 and 80 percent above reality,” Schneider added.

In sharp contrast to the NEA and IAEA, the WNISR, released Jul. 1, sees a collapsing nuclear power industry in most parts of the world, and gives it only marginal significance in the present and future global energy mix.

Particularly in the context of financial instability and ever-higher costs of construction, not to mention tight security requirements for nuclear reactors and a growing market for renewable energy resources, the report does not place nuclear power anywhere close to the top of the energy agenda.

“Nuclear electricity generation reached a maximum in 2006 with 2,660 terawatts per hour (TWh) and dropped to 2,518 TWh in 2011 (down 4.3 percent compared to 2010), while the nuclear share in the world’s power generation declined steadily from a historic peak of 17 percent in 1993 to about 11 percent in 2011,” the report says.

In addition, the report notes that, “Installed worldwide nuclear capacity decreased in the years 1998, 2006, 2009 and again in 2011, while the annual installed wind power capacity increased by 41 GW in 2011 alone.”

In contrast, global investment in renewable energy totaled 260 billion dollars in 2011, five percent above the previous year and almost five times the 2004 amount, the report indicates.

“The total cumulative investment in renewables has risen to over one trillion dollars since 2004 according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance,” Schneider told IPS. “Compare this to our estimate of nuclear power investment decisions of approximately 120 billion dollars over the same time period,” he added.

Schneider said that such contradictory developments show that “renewables and natural gas energy sources increasingly are more affordable and much faster to install” than nuclear power.

While the WNISR considers the Fukushima catastrophe to be a turning point in the development of nuclear power, the Uranium report by the NEA and the IAEA see it only as “bump in the road.”

As NEA’s Director General, Luis Echávarri, put it, “The Fukushima Daiichi accident … has had the effect of delaying the development of nuclear power programmes worldwide as the lessons from the accident are analysed and implemented.”

“Although most countries have reaffirmed their commitment to continue using nuclear power, a few have opted to phase out or not to reintroduce its use,” Echávarri added.

The NEA and IAEA repeat again earlier references to supposed plans for new nuclear power plant construction, “with the strongest expansion expected in China, India, the Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation,” and take nuclear power growth in other countries for granted.

However, the NEA and IAEA refuse to comprehensively quantify such growth. “(Its) speed and magnitude in generating capacity elsewhere is still to be determined,” the NEA and IAEA claim.

Such optimism can only be explained by a purposeful denial of actual energy developments since the accident at Fukushima, says Antony Froggatt, senior research fellow on energy, environment and resources at the London-based independent think-tank, Chatham House.

“The most significant post-Fukushima policy change outside of Japan has been in Germany,” Froggatt told IPS. “Within four months of the accident Germany adopted legislation that reintroduced and accelerated a previous phase-out plan for nuclear power.”

Germany’s phase-out of nuclear energy should be complete by Dec. 2022. Japan is also considering phasing out nuclear power within the next two decades.

“Other countries in Europe, including Belgium, Italy and Switzerland, have moved away from nuclear as well,” Froggatt added. In the developing world, countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Thailand “have also dropped plans to develop nuclear power.”

However, Froggatt pointed out that other governments, in the Czech Republic, France, Hungary and Britain, as well as India and Pakistan, have declared their intentions to continue developing nuclear power.

A good example of the uncertainty of the global energy sector is the People’s Republic of China.

“China is building 26 reactors, 40 percent of the global total,” Froggatt said. “Yet, it has suspended new construction to undertake further assessments and testing.”

Such uncertainty is already a strong argument against the NEA and IAEA’s optimistic forecasts. For nuclear electricity generation to actually increase by 99 percent during the next 23 years, hundreds of new nuclear power plants would have to be built in that period.

Present reality and immediate perspectives could not be farther from that kind of growth.  As Schneider’s report points out, since 2011, only nine reactors actually started up – against 21 that were shut down.

Additionally, Schneider said, “Of the 59 units presently under construction in the world, at least 18 are experiencing multi-year delays, while the remaining 41 projects were started within the past five years or have not yet reached projected start-up dates, making it difficult to assess whether they are running on schedule.”

(END)

At a protest to support solar energy at Brandenburger Gate in Berlin. Credit: Daan Bauwens/IPS

By Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Jun 10 2012 (IPS)

When the German government decided last year to phase out nuclear energy by 2022, following the catastrophe at the Fukushima power plant in Japan, it was clear that the process would require extraordinary effort, not only in further developing alternative energy sources, especially renewables, but also in upgrading the country-wide electricity grid.

Germany’s nuclear power plants generated a steady 20 percent of the total electricity consumed in the country last year. But renewable energy sources such as wind and sun are mainly generated in the north of the country, are prone to fluctuations, and need to be transported and managed by a new smart grid.

Consequently, the German government was set to install some 1,800 kilometres of new, high voltage power lines across the country by 2012, to improve the storage capacity of the present grid.

Despite the urgency, only 214 kilometres of new power lines have been installed as of Jun. 7.

Germany is one of the largest industrialised countries in the world to have officially renounced nuclear power. Other smaller European states, such as Italy, Belgium and Austria, have also pledged to phase out nuclear power or refrain from building new nuclear plants.

However, in order to truly move towards dependence on renewables, official figures estimate that Germany would need at least 3,800 kilometres of new power lines by 2022. This new grid is necessary to transport the wind energy generated in off-shore farms installed in the North Atlantic Ocean to the highly industrialised southern regions of the country, especially Bavaria and Baden Wuerttemberg.

In addition, at least 4,400 kilometres of the existing grid must be upgraded in that same period. In all, the new grid should cost some 32 billion euros, roughly 40 billion U.S. dollars.

Given the extraordinary boom renewable energy sources have experienced in the country over the past decade, the present inefficient grid constitutes the bottleneck of Germany’s energy revolution.

Huge potential

On a sunny, spring day in May, the country’s installed solar energy panels alone generated almost 75 percent of the daily electricity demand. On May 28, and the weekend before, the photovoltaic panels installed across Germany generated some 22,000 megawatts per hour, while consumption reached 28,000 MWs.

“In the face of this enormous amount of electricity generated, the present grid, which does not have sufficient storage capacity and cannot efficiently transport electricity, constitutes our main problem,” Helmut Jaeger, managing director of SOLVIS, a leading solar energy equipment manufacturer, said during a conference in Berlin on Jun. 6.

This deficiency of the grid also forces operators of wind turbines to shut them off for long periods of time, if the instant demand is not high enough to immediately consume the electricity generated by the wind farms.

To make matters worse, Germany has recently been on the brink of suffering power blackouts, after having shut down its oldest seven nuclear power plants. This past winter, during some periods of high consumption of electricity and low generation of wind and solar energy, Germany had to import electricity from neighbouring countries, especially from France.

Jaeger said that this risk continues, and could worsen if the coming winters turn out to be colder and longer than the one of 2011-2012.

German electricity operators have already developed small-scales schemes to deal with over-generation of electricity on sunny, windy days, and deficits during high consumption winter periods.

One of these schemes is the so called ‘energy butler’, an electronic device able to coordinate electricity demand and supply, according to instant prices, of small neighbourhoods already using photovoltaic and wind turbine installations, or of local combined heat and power stations.

“The most efficient way to use renewable energy is to consume it locally and immediately,” said Thomas Wolski, manager of a model local smart grid in the city of Mannheim, some 500 kilometres southeast of Berlin.

In the model of Mannheim, neighbouring houses using solar panels are linked to each other, in clusters of energy-efficient urban units. “The energy butler analyses the present supply of electricity and its price, compares it to the potential demand in the urban unit, and decides whether to start operating washing machines or temporarily shut off refrigerators and heating systems, in order to optimise consumption according to prices and supply,” Wolski told IPS.

In other schemes, industrial refrigerators are used as storage devices in periods of high supply of renewable energy, when electricity prices are low. This is the case for fisheries in the city of Cuxhaven, just 20 kilometres inshore of the North Atlantic Ocean.

In a small-scale smart grid, which encompasses 650 households, one communal swimming pool, several refrigerated warehouses, and combined heat and power stations, the local energy provider EWE has developed a cluster of generation and storage facilities.

“When the wind turbine parks installed off-shore generate high amounts of electricity, we cool down the refrigerated warehouses to extreme temperatures, and use them as accumulators,” Tanja Schmedes, managing director of EWE’s project, told IPS.

“Actually, we need temperatures of only minus 21 Celsius in the warehouses,” Schmedes said. “When wind energy is low, we release the stored energy from the refrigerators to the community.”

Such models are not enough to manage the enormous amounts of electricity the grid has to coordinate for Germany’s heavy industrial sector. Additionally, the present power lines are unable to efficiently transport electricity over hundreds of kilometres, said Stefan Kohler, director of the German Energy Agency (DENA), the semi-governmental office coordinating the exploitation of renewable energy sources and smart grids.

“We need a mixed grid, with 380-kilovolt electric lines able to transport alternate electricity over relatively short distances, and the so-called high-voltage, direct current lines, able to transport high amounts of electricity over long distances,” Kohler told IPS.

Kohler said that by 2020 at the latest, Germany must utilise at least three high-voltage direct current power lines “from Schleswig Holstein at the Baltic and North Atlantic Sea down to Bavaria”. Each one of these lines would be 900 kilometres long.

(END)

A year ago the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt was greeted with general satisfaction and considerable relief. Was it already possible to glimpse (for example, in the spectacle of the Egyptian leader being judged bedridden in a cage) the difficulties that lay ahead for North Africa and the Middle East fulfilling the promise of the “Arab Spring”?

The cruel end of Gaddafi, trapped and lynched on nearly live television, and his anonymous burial, was a foretaste of what lay ahead and would cause discomfort to the European powers and the United States, whose intelligence services had already warned of the precariousness of the process of change.

After a prolonged period of relative stability of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, thanks to the cooperation of Cairo, which received as much military aid as Tel Aviv, the alarms went off when the Palestinian government decided to go to the United Nations asking for admission.

The next blow came, as feared, from Iran, which confirmed its rejection of the inspectors’ demands and its refusal to stop its project to develop nuclear energy, which was suspected of being a cover for a nuclear weapons programme.

If London, Paris, and Washington do not succeed in changing Teheran’s path, Israel would be willing and ready to bomb the country’s nuclear sites. The U.S. and Iran find themselves at historical loggerheads. The regime of the ayatollahs cannot forgive Washington’s long support of the Shah, while Washington still smarts at the humiliation of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, which contributed significantly to making Jimmy Carter a one-term president. Both sides reserve the right to revile and spar with the other.

Iranian president Ahmadinejad recently took advantage of an opportunistic alliance with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to annoy the United States in its own “backyard”, paying visits to Caracas, Quito, and Havana. But this did not greatly displease Washington, as it isn’t clear whether the Iranian president has a clear strategy or whether this is simply theatre for his bosses, to whom he must give the impression of being a global player.

This may be also the case with his threat to close the Gulf of Hormuz, which the US has stated it would react to with force. It is the only case in which Obama has gone this far, moreover, in a year in which he would be best served by stability before the elections next November.

Closing the straits would mean economic ruin for Teheran, which would lose the income from its oil exports. Moreover, Ahmadinejad’s threat provoked Saudi Arabia to warn that it would follow the U.S.’ lead in terms of using force. The terror that this Hormuz eventuality has provoked in Washington is striking.

In this complex scenario, there is another awkward contestant and a humanitarian situation that has seized world attention: Syria, which since the explosion last spring has shown all signs of being the next domino to fall, became a central object of concern when domestic protests sparked systematic repression by the Assad regime and the detonation of “asymmetric” civil war much along the lines of that in Libya.

The other factor was the predictable surge in Islamism as a political force both in the transition of certain countries already in the grips of change (Tunisia, Egypt) and others where predictions see Islam as an essential character on the political stage. What we have yet to see is whether this Islamism will be compatible with the U.S.’s and Europe’s expectations of democracy.

While the dramatic developments above do not necessarily have direct effects on neighbouring countries, it is clear that Turkey is a reference point and essential protagonist, passively and actively. Given the doubtfulness of its entry into the European Union, Ankara needs to explore other areas in which to assert itself as a regional player. Erdogan has presented the Turkish model -with possible adjustments to the ideology of his Islamically-inclined party along the lines of Europe’s Christian democratic parties – as a formula for regimes seeking their own political-religious compromise.

Though plagued by internal problems, including the eternal challenge of the Kurds and the still unresolved face-off with the military – who resist any change to the system put in place by Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey – Erdogan faces the dilemma of looking across his border and seeing a crisis build in Syria and having to decide whether or not to intervene.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Joaquin Roy is ‘Jean Monnet’ Professor and Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami. jroy@Miami.edu

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