Green Light for Nuclear Energy?

Event 1: Energycrisis in Norway?

Electricity-prices in the Nordic countries have skyrocketed last week. Why?

• Cold and dry weather has driven demand up (and reduced the water in the dams that will be used for generating hydroelectric power in the months to come)   
• Sweden has it's nuclear powerstations running at only 60% of full capacity (40% is out for maintenance) 
• The network infrastructure (the grid) does not have the neccessary capacity. The prices are therefore almost 100% higher in the eastern- and northern parts of Norway compared to the southern and western parts (where the supply is more in line with demand). 
• The oilfield Ormen Lange has been "electrified" and the electricity to drive this offshore installation comes from the part of the Norwegian grid where there is a big gap between supply and demand (and therefore record high energyprices)
• The cable between Holland and Norway is currently out of operation. Because this cable is terminated in the south-western part of Norway, the import over this cable will only reduce the prices in that region and not help the gap in the rest of the country (due to grid limitations as mentioned above)                 

What does this price-increase lead to? 

• Energy-intensive industrial heavyweights have cut production and politicians are afraid the situation will lead to loss of jobs 
• Private households have to pay record high prices for electricity and with all the publicity there will be more talk about isolation and other efforts that can reduce energy demand  
• Statnett will put the mobile gas power plants in readiness so that they can be started up in the case of energy shortages: At a press conference in Oslo on Thursday afternoon, Oil and Energy Minister Terje Riis-Johansen informed about the power situation in the Nordic countries together with Auke Lont, CEO of Statnett. The mobile gas power plants will not alleviate the difficult situation in the power market today (their production capacity is too low), but they could prove invaluable if a line or a transformer goes down in central Norway and Bergen, explained CEO Auke Lont in Statnett. "Today's emergency plan is not good enough in the event of a power line- or transformer failure. We will during this week ask the Oil and Energy Minister for approval and start putting the spare power plants in emergency preparedness. When approved we will have the gas supplies and a crew ready to put the two mobile gas power plants into operation in two to three hours notice"said Lont. (Today it will take two to three weeks from Statnett requesting permission to use the spare power plants until a permission by the authorities is given).

Comment: Too much focus on increased energy generation
In a leading Norwegian financial newspaper, a journalist said today that there is too much focus on generating more energy - rather than focusing on reducing the demand. I couldn't agree more.  IEA says that 57% (!) of future CO2 cuts must come as a result of reduced demand for energy (better isolated houses etc.). The effect on CO2 cuts are 4 times higher (per USD) for energysaving projects compared to for example windmill-projects.

In the book I mentioned yesterday, "Whole Earth Discipline: an Ecopragmatist Manifesto", the American social entrepreneur and technology guru Stewart Brand says that the Greens must admit that nuclear power is the lesser of two evils. He used to be against nuclear power - but has now changed his opinion.

As mentioned above, it is the re-entry of swedish nuclear power that will normalize the Nordic energy markets. Sweden and other countries that previously said that they plan to reduce the dependency on nuclear energy - have turned and many are now planning new generation nuclear powerplants (a big one is currently being built in Finland).

• Climate changes: the scientists who know the most about these issues are the most worried
• Nuclear power: the scientists who know the most about this topic are the least worried

Is it time to re-introduce the discussions about nuclear energy in Norway? (It is a knowledgeintensive industry and Norway also has huge amounts of Thorium which may very well be the fuel for next generation power plants).    

   

Event 2:
The first meeting of the High-Level Taskforce for climate services selected Jan Egeland of Norway and Mahmoud Abu-Zeid of Egypt as co-chairs.

In September 2009, World Climate Conference-3 decided to establish a Global Framework for Climate Services to “strengthen production, availability, delivery and application of science-based climate prediction and services”. Terms of reference were recently approved, and the composition of a High-Level Taskforce of independent advisers endorsed. The newly set up Taskforce will follow up with recommendations for proposed elements of the GFCS. Its report will be published before the next quadrennial World Meteorological Congress in May 2011.

Co-chair of the taskforce, Jan Egeland is the Executive Director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger. Mr Egeland was the UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator from June 2003 to December 2006.
"This is a sort of sequel to the IPCC (IPCC) which has gathered science- women and men to document possible changes in the climate. What we should do is to create the system that brings information out to farmers, health workers, humanitarian organizations and small, vulnerable island community in the Pacific Ocean - about climate change and extreme weather," said Egeland. "This may help to save many human lives and livelihoods in the south. It is a matter of life or death".

Progress:
The ventilation system subcontractor sent a guy to our house this morning - to replace the big and noisy fan with a smaller and less noisy fan (on which the output effect can be adjusted without the howling sound we get now). He also said that he would install some temperature measurement points that can be read from a PC in their office.

He did, however, leave after a while - without changing the fan and without leaving any message for us (so we don't know why he left or when he will return).

The pictures below show:

• Have they installed rubber bushing on one side of the fan? (to reduce the noise by stopping the vibrations from the fan to spread to the rest of the ventilation system)
• A new set of icicles seem to build outside the two bedrooms. Outside the bedroom to the left (with a new window and hence low thermal transmittance, U-factor) there are even icicles hanging from under the roof ridge and from the window frame. Still haven't figured out why this is happening.