US agrees to help Chile go nuclear, despite Japan disaster

Among the "urgent events" that President Obama said he discussed Monday with Chilean President Sebastián Piñera was the unfolding nuclear crisis in Japan that began March 11 when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami along the northeast coast.

While the crisis only appeared to be mentioned in passing during a press conference in Santiago during Mr. Obama's five-day regional tour, it has set off a firestorm of criticism against Mr. Piñera and caused a major rethink over energy policy here.

Yesterday, some 2,000 people marched through the capital to protest a new US-Chile nuclear power cooperation agreement signed Friday as radiation leaked from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant. The agreement promises cooperation in operating research reactors, handling civilian nuclear training and safety measures. It seemed a natural extension of Piñera's steady push for nuclear power to ensure electricity for Chile's world-leading copper industry.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2011/0321/US-agrees-to-help-Chile-go-nuclear-despite-Japan-disaster

I hope they wise up and head in better directions.

power. Kiss your ass good bye.

:slapsforehead:

But, how about, if they must, glacier-cooled nuclear plant up in the high mountains - coupled, I'd suggest, with hydroelectric and also wind and solar generation, developed under strict environmental regulation - where, correct me if I'm wrong, not only is tsunami risk eliminated but seismic risk is minimal.

If (and these are big 'ifs') the strict environmental regulation is in place and effectively applied, and the correct management, design and implementation and security procedures are followed, and the money is properly accounted for, raised and spent, then I'm sure that technically very safe (within a limited lifetime/timeframe) nuclear power stations can be (very expensively) built.

And this may well be the way pro-nuclear industry insiders are now thinking. It just makes things more expensive, so even more lovely money will be flowing the industry's way. Even if the higher associated costs of nuclear (and of fossil-fuel) industry ought to be diverting more and more investment into alternative, renewable and essentially long-term much more cost-effective green energy solutions.

But it is precisely in 'long-term' terms where the nuclear industry has its Achilles Heel. Because it remains the case that one huge overhanging problem has been identified and never solved and it is this: How do you safely store all the rapidly-accumulating but slowly-cooling (very slowly, in the radioactive sense, some elements) spent fuel that to this day we hold only in temporary storage?

:banghead:

under construction near the coast not far south of Agadir where there was a damaging earthquake in 1960?

Apparently, there is official silence, and military security-guarded construction work involving US technicians going on near Tan-Tan, where photography is not permitted, according to local Canary Islands press.

See also eg: http://www.yabiladi.com/forum/moroccan-nuclear-power-project-approved-44-865895.html

occurred in Chile

So I guess it figgers.