webfarmer | A Mere Flesh Wound

Nuclear trouble is brewing in Germany. Too bad the same can't be said for in the United States. The Obama people are looking to sell out to nuclear to get a climate deal that may not be worth having frankly.

Vattenfall's Nuclear Plants in Hot Water - Deutsche Welle - 09 Jul 09

"Sweden's government-owned electric utility, Vattenfall, has admitted that fuel rods may have been damaged when one of its German nuclear power plants underwent an emergency shutdown last Saturday. The company said it discovered that 'possibly a few' of the 80,000 uranium fuel rods inside the reactor were 'defective.' Vattenfall has blamed the plant manager for failing to install discharge detectors on a transformer as promised to German authorities."

Vattenfall Says Kruemmel’s Halt Was 'Bitter Setback' (Update2) - Bloomberg - 09 Jul 09

"Vattenfall will lose about 1 million euros ($1.4 million) of operating income a day from the halt of its two reactors in the country, Hatakka said today in an interview. 'It’s also a hit for nuclear power in Germany,' said Christian Kleindienst, a Munich-based analyst with Unicredit SpA who has a 'market weight' rating on the company’s senior notes. Kleindienst said 10 percent of Vattenfall’s operating income may be affected by the outages."

Obama Makes Nuclear Compromise to Pass Clean Energy Bill - Guardian (UK) - 08 Jul 09

"The Obama administration endorsed a revival of America's nuclear industry yesterday in an effort to build forward momentum for climate change legislation before the Senate. The seal of approval for nuclear power – a cause embraced by Republican senators – came on day one of a full-on lobbying effort by the White House for one of Obama's signature issues."

G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change by Dr. James Hansen - Huffington Post - 09 Jul 09

"With a workable climate bill in his pocket, President Obama might have been able to begin building that global consensus in Italy. Instead, it looks as if the delegates from other nations may have done what 219 U.S. House members who voted up Waxman-Markey last month did not: critically read the 1,400-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 and deduce that it's no more fit to rescue our climate than a V-2 rocket was to land a man on the moon."

"For all its 'green' aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like 'cap-and-trade' scheme. Here are a few of the bill's egregious flaws:

* It guts the Clean Air Act, removing EPA's ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants.

* It sets meager targets -- 2020 emissions are to be a paltry 13% less than this year's level -- and sabotages even these by permitting fictitious 'offsets,' by which other nations are paid to preserve forests - while logging and food production will simply move elsewhere to meet market demand.

* Its cap-and-trade system, reports former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro, 'has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives.'

* It fails to set predictable prices for carbon, without which, Shapiro notes, 'businesses and households won't be able to calculate whether developing and using less carbon-intensive energy and technologies makes economic sense,' thus ensuring that millions of carbon-critical decisions fall short.

There is an alternative, of course, and that is a carbon fee, applied at the source (mine or port of entry) that rises continually. I prefer the 'fee-and-dividend' version of this approach in which all revenues are returned to the public on an equal, per capita basis, so those with below-average carbon footprints come out ahead."