With escalating oil and gas costs and growing French electricity imports, Italy is changing is stance on nuclear power. The re-elected Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi promised on his campaign to recommit the country to nuclear power and an heated debate is now popping up from north to south.
The general impression is there is still strong local opposition for three main reasons: high construction costs, projected build times of one to two decades and no identifiable Italian community willing to see a nuclear reactor built in their neighborhood. Italy has also failed to resolve the issue of what to do with nuclear waste. A proposed dump in Basilicata region was shelved in 2003 after thousands of demonstrators staged road blocks, marches and hunger strikes.
Italy has not operated or built a nuclear power plant since it shut them all down after the Chernobyl accident of 1986. And recent problems at nuclear power stations in Slovenia and Japan have confirmed for many Italians that living close to a plant is a health hazard. The managing director of Enel, the government-backed firm most likely to build and operate the proposed reactors, warned that in order to proceed Silvio Berlusconi would need “new regulation and strong agreement on the plan within the country”.
Economic Development Minister Claudio Scajola recently announced a national energy strategy that includes the construction of new generation reactors within five years. Enel officials, though, noted that it would take seven to 10 years before they could actually bring a reactor on line. Politics believe nuclear power is the country’s only viable option and that the amount of extra energy produced through wind, solar and geothermal is limited.
“Only with nuclear power we will be able to produce energy on large scale, in a safe way, at competitive prices and with respect for the environment”, Scajola said. But Italy’s nuclear critics are skeptical. The fourth-generation reactor that the Italian government has pledged to build has not yet even been fully designed so Italian nuclear reactors won’t be the answer to any energy problem the country will be facing for one decade or more.
Environmental groups throughout the country are criticizing the idea to bring back nuclear power. Director of Greenpeace Italy, Giuseppe Onofrio, has pledged that he’ll fight ‘tooth and nail’ to keep Italy nuclear-free, while Vice President of the Italian Senate, Emma Bonino, said building nuclear plants would not meet current demand because they wouldn’t be ready for at least 20 years.
In the meantime Enel is planning to build a coal-fired power station in Albania and is looking into nuclear opportunities there and in Italy, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said recently. “We are working with the Albanian government for the construction of a coal plant and we want to push for nuclear” told Fulvio Conti, Enel chief executive, pointing out that Italy imports some 20% of its electricity from France which is largely produced by nuclear energy.
The debate is widely open and the impression is we’ll go on talking about a possible nuclear for a long time. Talking is the Italian national sport after soccer and I imagine people in a bar arguing endlessly about this controversial issue…
Sources:
Image courtesy of mandj98 at Flickr under Creative Commons
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Oh it’s a very happy day when you get to see a conflict like this one arise. And though it isn’t necessarily new, it’s oh so very entertaining. Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore was quoted at a chamber breakfast in Idaho Falls and the Idaho Environmental Forum in Boise this past week, as saying that the world needs to turn to nuclear power.
Conversely, a day later, Greenpeace published a piece on their website eviscerating nuclear power.
Oh let the fun begin!
As I mentioned, this is not a new argument, as Moore has recently taken up the reigns for causes Greenpeace opposes. Old-growth logging, keeping polyvinyl chlorides and now nuclear energy have definitely not endeared him towards his former environmental group.
However we don’t get to see so vividly the argument unfold like it has this week. Moore’s comments were reported on by Thursday of last week, and Greenpeace’s statement came out the day after. There is definitely some damage control happening; especially if the language and rhetoric from Greenpeace has anything to say about it.
Greenpeace banked their piece on the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, which our own Max Lindberg touched on in the latest edition of The Lindberg Report. Their impassioned plea to stop similar disasters from happening was nothing but a major scare tactic. The opening paragraphs would have even the most conservative thinker fleeing from a nuclear reactor, if there was no previous knowledge at hand.
In fact, it seems that if it wasn’t for Greenpeace, nuclear reactors with bad regulatory conditions and poor safety measures would be springing up all over the place.
As for what Moore had to say, he was somewhat more circumspect. Noting that there wasn’t enough potential for wind, solar, hydroelectric or geothermal to replace coal – which he described as having “…the worst health impacts of anything we are doing today,” – Moore pointed to Nuclear as the only clean path for us to take.
And as much as it would be nice to see fields of wind turbines or solar panels, and oceans worth of hydroelectric turbines, the incentive is not there; not to mention the sheer number of constructions that would need to be implemented.
Make sure you check out both articles. The Greenpeace one can be found here and Moore’s story can be found at the Idaho Statesmen here. And make sure to check out Max’s interview with Kenneth Bossong, co-director of UAEA, about the anniversary of Chernobyl.
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April 26 marks the 22nd anniversary of the 1986 nuclear accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Slavutych, Ukraine. That one incident resulted in hundreds and possibly thousands of deaths, lingering health issues, radioactive contamination of a wide swath of land, property losses and on-going clean-up costs totaling billions of dollars.The Ukranian-American Environmental Association sent out a release reminding everyon of the risks of nuclear power.
I spoke with Kenneth Bossong, co-director of UAEA, about the anniversary, and asked him to tell us more about his organization.
National Geographic Photo
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It's definitely not one of the 'Top Ten' lists you’re likely to be campaigning for, but independent environment group The Blacksmith Institute announced their top ten worst polluted places list on Wednesday.
The list contains regions from seven countries, affecting more than 12 million people, according to the research done by Blacksmith with Green Cross in Switzerland. Those 12 million people mentioned are well open to respiratory diseases such as asthma, as well as birth defects and premature death.
"These places are sapping the strength of the populations around them, and it's not rocket science to fix them," Richard Fuller, the nonprofit group's founder and director told reporters on a conference call.
What can help those situations? Political will, technology and funds, but all of these things are lacking in locations that include four regions of Russia, two former Soviet states, two regions of China and two of India.
In alphabetical order, the top ten places are:
• Sumgayit, Azerbaijan;
• Linfen, China;
• Tianying, China;
• Sukinda, India;
• Vapi, India;
• La Oroya, Peru;
• Dzerzhinsk, Russia;
• Norilsk, Russia;
• Chernobyl, Ukraine;
• Kabwe, Zambia.
The methodology behind the scoring focused more on scale and toxicity of the pollution, and the numbers of people affected and at risk. It also identified three key factors: mining, unregulated industries, and Cold War-era pollution (notably significant at Chernobyl, number 9 on the list).
None of the locations in the top ten are major cities or capitals, and none are tourist destinations. All were relatively remote, and thus suffered from a lack of enforcement and pollution controls.
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