Module B1 Study Book - the Graduate School of the Environment

area of nuclear energy research, which is expected to receive €580m per
annum over the next five years under a separate Euratom research budget.
• May 06 See also “Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using
Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change” by Brice Smith of
the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research http://www.ieer.
org/reports/insurmountablerisks/summary.pdf
• Floating nuclear The world’s first floating nuclear combined heat and
power station (70MWe) is to be built by Russian nuclear submarine
builder Sevmash, under a contract negotiated by Rosenergoatom,
and is expected to be operational by 2010, with 2 of the KLT-40C
reactors used in Russian Icebeakers . It could lead to similar 20,000
tonne vessels used in Russia & abroad, especially in Asia and the
Middle East where demand for desalination plants is a key market.
Russia & China are reported to have signed an $86.5m contract.
Sergey Obozov of Rosenergoatom, responding to claims that it would
be a ‘floating Chernobyl’, said: ‘The reliability of (the) offshore nuclear
power plant will be the same with the Kalashnikov gun’.
(MPS June, Spiegel Magazine June 2006 )
• Uranium price “$5bn deal creates major power in uranium supply”
The Guardian , Tuesday February 13, 2007. Terry Macalister
The scramble for uranium to supply a future breed of nuclear reactors has led
to a $5bn (£2.5bn) merger of two of the sector's biggest mining companies,
Uranium One and UrAsia Energy, which is listed in London.
Neal Froneman, chief executive of Uranium One and proposed boss of
the Canadian-based combined group, said he expected to see the price of
uranium rise from the current level of $75 a pound to over $100 by the middle
of this year.
• ‘Keeping the Door Open . . . ‘ for the UK government’s [DTI] costbenefit
analysis on nuclear generation, [interesting and useful], go to
http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file31938.pdf
• And for their broader overview of the cost-benefit cases for the broad
range of ways of reducing carbon emissions, look at http://www.dti.
gov.uk/files/file31928.pdf
• PRO-NUCLEAR PRESENTATIONS: for lost of these, go to http://
www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2006/sym06prg.htm
• LOVELOCK See the site below for article, extracted from his latest
book. http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/scienceandnature/
story/0,,1738946,00.html
Workbook questions:
1. Why [apart from the need for weapons-grade plutonium] has nuclear
power been seen as a benign force by so many reasonable people?
2. Which stage of the nuclear power process do you consider most potentially
dangerous? Why?
3. If nuclear power were as dangerous as greenies say it is, wouldn’t we
have killed a lot more people by now?
4. Have green campaigns against nukes been entirely fair? Is not the CO2
argument a strong one?
62 Lecture: Nuclear Power