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Grist reports that french nuclear power company EDF has decided that it is better to pursue renewable energy in the US rather than bating a dead horse - Big nuke company decides renewables are a better bet in the U.S..

The world’s largest operator of nuclear power plants is dumping its stake in American reactors, turning its focus instead to wind and solar power. French utility company EDF announced this week that it will sell its stake in Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG), which operates five nuclear reactors in New York and Maryland.

EDF cited cheap power produced by fracked natural gas as the big reason why it’s abandoning its American nuclear facilities. But the company said it will now focus its American business strategy not on fossil fuels but on renewable energy.

Bloomberg has a report on the ambitions of one time Australian tidal power company Atlantis - Morgan Stanley-Backed Atlantis Targets India, China for Tidal Power Plants.

Atlantis Resources Corp., an ocean- current turbine maker backed by Morgan Stanley, plans to expand in China, India and South Korea after winning a bid in the U.K. to build the world’s largest tidal-power project.

Atlantis Resources may start building a 50 megawatt tidal farm by 2012 in Gujarat, a western Indian state, and conduct commercial-scale trials in South Korea, Timothy Cornelius, the chief executive officer, said an interview today.

“China’s the next big market for tidal energy,” Cornelius, 34, said in Singapore at the Clean Energy conference. “It has the most natural tidal resources in the world and can be home to more than 1,000 megawatts of tidal energy.”

Global production of electricity harnessing the ocean waves may climb ten-fold to as much as 300 megawatts in the next couple of years, said Cornelius, a former submersible engineer who splits his time between Singapore and London. The potential to produce marine power economically is about 24,000 megawatts, he said. It costs 2.5 million pounds ($4.01 million) per megawatt for a minimum 200 megawatt-tidal project, he said.

The Business Spectator has an article on French plans to wind down nuclear power in favour of renewables - French carbon tax, feed-in tariff reform and CCS on horizon.

Germany’s neighbour France is also looking to shake up how it supports renewables as the country begins its “energy transition” away from nuclear.

France will introduce a carbon tax and a law to cap nuclear-power capacity as part of a new energy bill next year to boost renewable generation, President Francois Hollande told an environment conference last week. Hollande has vowed to reduce reliance on nuclear to half of total output by about 2025 while also keeping down consumers’ bills.

Among other things, the energy law in 2014 will define how renewables are financed. Hollande said last week that the above-market guaranteed prices currently paid to green energy producers “can lead to a waste of public funds, profit-taking and speculative behaviour.” Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects the shift in renewable support may move towards a greater use of tenders to keep costs low.

The New York Times reports that Japans Prime Minister during the Fukushima disaster thinks the country should completely abandon nuclear power - Japan’s Former Leader Condemns Nuclear Power.

In an unusually stark warning, Japan’s prime minister during last year’s nuclear crisis told a parliamentary inquiry on Monday that the country should discard nuclear power as too dangerous, saying the Fukushima accident had pushed Japan to the brink of “national collapse.”

In testimony to a panel investigating the government’s handling of the nuclear disaster, the former prime minister, Naoto Kan, also warned that the politically powerful nuclear industry was trying to push Japan back toward nuclear power despite “showing no remorse” for the accident. ...

In his testimony, Mr. Kan said that Japan’s plant safety was inadequate because energy policy had been hijacked by the “nuclear village” — a term for the power companies and pronuclear regulators and researchers that worked closely together to promote the industry. He said the only way to break their grip was to form a new regulatory agency staffed with true outsiders, like American and European experts.

“Gorbachev said in his memoirs that the Chernobyl accident exposed the sicknesses of the Soviet system,” Mr. Kan said, referring to the 1986 explosion of a reactor in Ukraine, which spewed radiation across a wide swath of Europe. “The Fukushima accident did the same for Japan.” ...

He complained that nuclear regulators and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, or Tepco, kept him in the dark about crucial details in the days immediately after a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, causing three of the plant’s reactors to melt down.

He said he tried to be fully open with the public and hid nothing. But he seemed to undermine that claim when he disclosed that in the early days of the crisis he feared it could spiral out of control, even as his own ministers were giving public reassurances that they had the plant under control.

He said he feared additional meltdowns could “release into the air and sea many times, no, many dozens of times, many hundreds of times the radiation released by Chernobyl.”

Those fears led to the most extraordinary moment of the crisis, when Mr. Kan walked into Tepco’s headquarters after being told the company wanted to evacuate its staff from the crippled plant. He demanded that they stay, saying he was prepared to put his own life on the line to prevent the disaster from worsening.

He also defended his visit to the plant on the day after the earthquake, which has been widely criticized for distracting plant personnel at a crucial juncture in their efforts to save the overheating reactors. Mr. Kan told the panel that he wanted to get an assessment directly from the plant manager because he felt Tepco officials in Tokyo were not giving him enough information.

But his strongest comments came at the end of his testimony, when a panel member asked if he had any advice for the current prime minister. Mr. Kan replied that the accident had brought Japan to the brink of evacuating metropolitan Tokyo and its 30 million residents, and that the loss of the capital would have paralyzed the national government, leading to “a collapse of the nation’s ability to function.”

He said the prospect of losing Tokyo made him realize that nuclear power was just too risky, that the consequences of an accident too large for Japan to accept.

“It is impossible to ensure safety sufficiently to prevent the risk of a national collapse,” Mr. Kan said. “Experiencing the accident convinced me that the best way to make nuclear plants safe is not to rely on them, but rather to get rid of them.”

The Business Insider has an article about a new French tidal power project being built by Irish company OpenHydro - Work Starts On The Worlds Largest Tidal Energy Project.

French utility giant Electricite de France is collaborating with Irish marine technology company OpenHyrdro to build the worlds largest tidal power station — essentially a giant underwater wind farm — off the northern coast of France (via Industrialinfo.com).

The new 8-megawatt facility consists of four tidal turbines and will be capable of generating enough energy to power around 4,000 homes. The first turbine was completed at the end of August and will undergo a series of tests before being installed on the subsea base at Paimpol-Bréha.

The project, which commenced work in 2008, will cost around €40 million ($56.5 million) and is expected to go live in 2012.

Bloomberg reports that ex-LDP leader Koizumi in Japan is advocating against restarting the countrys closed nuclear reactors - Abe Mentor Koizumi Reignites Post-Fukushima Nuclear Debate.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces another prominent opponent to his plans to return to nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster, as a former political mentor called for Japan to immediately abandon its reactors. Former Liberal Democratic Party Premier Junichiro Koizumi spoke out against atomic power today in his highest profile speech since retiring from politics in 2009. He joins three other former leaders who have turned against the industry that once provided more than a quarter of Japan’s electricity, with all of Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors now off-line.

The Boston Globe has an article on an enhanced geothermal power project in Oregon - Project to pour water into volcano to make power.

Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in Central Oregon this summer to demonstrate new technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise.

They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap, clean electricity that isn’t dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes — without shaking the earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents.

Renewable energy has been held back by cheap natural gas, weak demand for power and waning political concern over global warming. Efforts to use the earth’s heat to generate power, known as geothermal energy, have been further hampered by technical problems and worries that tapping it can cause earthquakes.

Even so, the federal government, Google and other investors are interested enough to bet $43 million on the Oregon project. They are helping AltaRock Energy, Inc. of Seattle and Davenport Newberry Holdings LLC of Stamford, Conn., demonstrate whether the next level in geothermal power development can work on the flanks of Newberrry Volcano, located about 20 miles south of Bend, Ore.

“We know the heat is there,’’ said Susan Petty, president of AltaRock. “The big issue is can we circulate enough water through the system to make it economic.’’

Adelaide Now has an update on some South Australian geothermal projects - Geothermal projects may make it in 2012.

DELAYED geothermal projects could make it across the line this year as two SA-focused companies move further toward producing power, the industry association says. Geothermal company Geodynamics plans to drill its Habanero-4 well in the first financial quarter, taking it toward producing power to Innamincka.

Australian Geothermal Energy Association chief executive Susan Jeanes said "this is the year the industry can prove itself". She said the Geodynamics project, that suffered a major setback with a well blowout at Habanero 3 well in 2009, would also work toward fracturing rocks to achieve circulation of super hot water for its 1MW plant.

SA geothermal company Petratherm has drilled a deep well at its Paralana project north of the Flinders Ranges and completed a successful fracture. ...

Ms Jeanes was upbeat about the industry saying if the drilling work was successful this year it could help lead the whole sector forward. "We expect, that given (Geodynamics) successfully proved the concept with Habanero one and three that they will be successful with Habanero one and four because they are drilling into the same geological structure," she said. "That success at Innamincka will provide a huge boost of confidence in the sector, then the sector hopes that will be followed by a successful well at Paralana."

Petratherm managing director Terry Kallis said plans to begin drilling on a second deep well in the Paralana project were still on track for later this year despite TRUenergys exit. "We havent changed our plans. were still on track to look to drill later this year," Mr Kallis said.

Bruce Schneier has an article in The Atlantic on the power struggle going on for control of the internet and its increasingly feudal social structure - The Battle for Power on the Internet.

We’re in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace. On one side are the traditional, organized, institutional powers such as governments and large multinational corporations. On the other are the distributed and nimble: grassroots movements, dissident groups, hackers, and criminals. Initially, the Internet empowered the second side. It gave them a place to coordinate and communicate efficiently, and made them seem unbeatable. But now, the more traditional institutional powers are winning, and winning big. How these two sides fare in the long term, and the fate of the rest of us who don’t fall into either group, is an open question—and one vitally important to the future of the Internet.

In the Internet’s early days, there was a lot of talk about its “natural laws”—how it would upend traditional power blocks, empower the masses, and spread freedom throughout the world. The international nature of the Internet circumvented national laws. Anonymity was easy. Censorship was impossible. Police were clueless about cybercrime. And bigger changes seemed inevitable. Digital cash would undermine national sovereignty. Citizen journalism would topple traditional media, corporate PR, and political parties. Easy digital copying would destroy the traditional movie and music industries. Web marketing would allow even the smallest companies to compete against corporate giants. It really would be a new world order.

This was a utopian vision, but some of it did come to pass. Internet marketing has transformed commerce. The entertainment industries have been transformed by things like MySpace and YouTube, and are now more open to outsiders. Mass media has changed dramatically, and some of the most influential people in the media have come from the blogging world. There are new ways to organize politically and run elections. Crowdfunding has made tens of thousands of projects possible to finance, and crowdsourcing made more types of projects possible. Facebook and Twitter really did help topple governments.

But that is just one side of the Internet’s disruptive character. The Internet has emboldened traditional power as well.

On the corporate side, power is consolidating, a result of two current trends in computing. First, the rise of cloud computing means that we no longer have control of our data. Our e-mail, photos, calendars, address books, messages, and documents are on servers belonging to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. And second, we are increasingly accessing our data using devices that we have much less control over: iPhones, iPads, Android phones, Kindles, ChromeBooks, and so on. Unlike traditional operating systems, those devices are controlled much more tightly by the vendors, who limit what software can run, what they can do, how they’re updated, and so on. Even Windows 8 and Apple’s Mountain Lion operating system are heading in the direction of more vendor control.

I have previously characterized this model of computing as “feudal.” Users pledge their allegiance to more powerful companies who, in turn, promise to protect them from both sysadmin duties and security threats. It’s a metaphor that’s rich in history and in fiction, and a model that’s increasingly permeating computing today.

The Washington post reports on the latest Snowden NSA revelations, this time about backdoors into big internet companies like Google and Yahoo not be considered sufficient so theyve worked out the weak points in the company internal networks as well - SSL Added and Removed Here! :).

The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.

By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.

According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video.

The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process.

The MUSCULAR project appears to be an unusually aggressive use of NSA tradecraft against flagship American companies. The agency is built for high-tech spying, with a wide range of digital tools, but it has not been known to use them routinely against U.S. companies.

Technology Review has a look at a new approach to CAES energy storage - Compressed-Air System Could Aid Wind Power.

SustainX, a startup in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, has received $20 million in venture capital to test its compressed-air energy storage technology on a large scale.

The technology could allow for a wider use of compressed-air storage, which in turn could make renewable energy more attractive, since it would allow wind power generated at night to be stored until daylight hours, when demand is higher. If its successful, the technology could decrease the need to build natural gas plants to supply peak power demand.

The need for storage is increasing as governments mandate the use of more renewable energy. SustainX has demonstrated a 40-kilowatt prototype and is now completing a one-megawatt system, slated to be deployed next year with the power company AES.

In conventional compressed-air storage, electricity is used to compress air, which is stored in underground caverns or aquifers. That air is then released to drive a turbine-generator to produce electricity when needed. Such storage costs roughly a tenth of what battery storage costs, but it isnt used much because in large part because it requires a location with underground storage space. SustainXs system eliminates this problem because it can efficiently use above-ground storage tanks rather than caverns.
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Storing compressed air in tanks aboveground is impractical with a conventional turbine-based system because of the large size and cost of the tanks. SustainXs technology reduces the cost of the tanks and other capital costs. "We do aboveground compressed-air energy storage at belowground prices," says cofounder and vice president Dax Kepshire.

The company reduces costs by using pistons, rather than turbines, to generate electricity. Gas turbines can only generate electricity from a narrow range of air pressures. The pistons can operate at a larger range—and because air can be compressed more, the system can store more energy. Whats more, the pistons operate well after the pressure in the tank has fallen too low to drive a turbine.

Gizmodo has a post on an unusually ambitious plan for space based solar power being promoted in Japan (being dubbed a "death star" in some quarters) - Japan Wants To Ring The Moon With Solar Panels To Power The Earth.

After the Fukushima boondoggle back in 2011, Japan has wholeheartedly embraced solar power as its alternative energy of choice. So much so, that one Japanese construction firm is campaigning to power the whole Earth with solar energy — that they will beam down from the moon.

The Shimizu Corporation wants to, essentially, build a ring of solar panels around the moon’s equator and transmitted back to the Earth via microwave. And they want to get the project, dubbed LUNA RING (yes, all caps), started by 2035.

BusinessWeek has a report on Kenyas plans for exploiting geothermal power - Kenya Aims to Make Geothermal Energy Main Power Source By 2014.

Kenya, Africa’s largest producer of geothermal power, is aiming for the energy supply to surpass hydro as the top contributor to the country’s electricity grid by 2014, said Silas Simiyu, chief executive officer of the state-owned Geothermal Development Co.

A 10-year, $2.6 billion exploration plan will involve sinking 566 wells in the Great Rift Valley, where shifting tectonic plates provide a key source of the energy, the company said in a statement yesterday. GDC is expected to begin drilling in Menengai in central Kenya this week, with an initial aim to find sufficient reserves to feed a 400-megawatt facility by 2014, Simiyu told reporters yesterday.

Over the next decade, the company aims to discover 2,336 megawatts of steam produced by hot underground rocks that boil water. The vapors are used to power turbines. Geothermal energy currently accounts for 12 percent of Kenya’s 1,405 megawatts of generation, including an installed capacity of 212 megawatts at a plant at Olkaria, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) outside of Nairobi, the capital.

“We should not see a situation of power shortages like we had before,” Simiyu said.

Drought in Kenya two years ago depleted water levels at hydropower dams, which supplies 55 percent of the country’s electricity. The resulting power rationing between August and October 2009 hindered growth in East Africa’s largest economy.

Kenya estimates the extent of its unexploited resources ranges between 7,000 megawatts and 10,000 megawatts at 14 “high- potential” locations valued at $30 billion, according to the statement.

The ABCs "7:30 Report" program has an update on the state of the Australian geothermal power industry - Geothermal industry pushes for more power.

MIKE SEXTON, REPORTER: Every year thousands of punters head to Birdsville in Outback Queensland for the annual races. Perhaps few would be aware though their tinnies are being kept on ice in part thanks to electricity generated from scolding hot water coming from deep beneath the desert floor.

CHRIS SMITH, ERGON ENERGY: The water comes up from the Artesian Basin at 98 degrees Celsius. The water then passes through a gas field heat exchanger which heats the gas and pressurises it and then it goes through a turbine and produces electricity.

MIKE SEXTON: The engineerings relatively simple and the outcome is emission-free power 24 hours per day that doesnt rely on the wind blowing or the sun shining.

CHRIS SMITH: The plant at Birdsville was custom-made when it was done, so its done quite some time ago. But technologys changed now and theres - this sort of plant is readily available and is being used throughout the world.

MIKE SEXTON: This is just one form of whats known as geothermal energy where the heat stored in subterranean rock formations is harnessed to generate electricity. Although the Birdsville plant is tiny, the geothermal potential in Australia is huge.

SUSAN JEANES, AUST. GEOTHERMAL ENERGY ASSN: The resource is vast. If we mined just one per cent of the national - the nations geothermal heat, in the top five kilometres of the crust we could make 26,000 times Australias annual energy supply. So theres no limitation on the resource.

MIKE SEXTON: Given the need for clean baseload power and the size of the resource, its no surprise that more than 50 geothermal licences have been issued in Australia. One of the more advanced is Petratherm, which has drilled shafts into hot rocks at Paralana in outback South Australia. The next step is to pump water down which converts to steam which is then used to drive turbines.

TERRY KALLIS, CEO, PETRATHERM: We estimate at Paralana alone we could produce 13,000 megawatts of power. Now thats about four times the power requirement of South Australia.

MIKE SEXTON: Excitement about the potential initially attracted investors prepared to take a risk on a new industry. But drilling wells hundreds of metres into granite in remote locations is a difficult and expensive business, and after years of promise, the industry has delivered only modest results. That, coupled with the GFC, has seen investors turning their backs on geothermal companies.