Posted on 07/08/2011 7:34:57 AM PDT by bananaman22
Japan’s 11 March catastrophe at its six-reactor Daichi Fukushima nuclear power complex has had global repercussions, hardly surprising given the trillions of dollars invested in civilian nuclear energy over the last five decades. Ironically, just a year ago the nuclear power industry saw itself on the verge of a renaissance, with worldwide concerns about global warming causing many to reconsider the merits of nuclear energy, which produces no greenhouse gases.
Events in Japan changed all that, and hit the “big three” exporters of civilian nuclear power technology hard – the U.S., France and the Russian Federation.
While the first two may have thrown up their collective hands in despair Moscow is rising to the challenge, seeing a potential silver lining in the nuclear cloud.
Quite aside from finishing Iran’s controversial Bushehr nuclear reactor, Russia’s nuclear industry is now offering a wide variety of services, from constructing NPPs to decommissioning them.
Last week Chilean Senators Guido Girardi, Jorge Pizarro, Fulvio Rossi and Gonzalo Uriarte flew to Moscow, where they met with various high level government officials, including Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko, who, according to a report in Santiago’s “El Mercurio” reportedly "surprised" the delegation by offering to build a nuclear plant in Chile. The nonplussed South American legislators responded that after the events in Japan it was "unthinkable" to build in Chile because the idea faced "great public opposition." Ever willing to be accommodating, Shmatko then promised his help in developing a pilot project for tidal energy in Chile.
Such shilling aside, Russia’s state nuclear concern Rosatom according to its press office has formed a special company, Rosatom Finance, to provide foreign currency funding to its enterprises. Rosatom Finance is registered in Cyprus and is wholly owned by OJSC Atomenergoprom and will provide financial support to Russian companies involved in nuclear energy such as CJSC Atomstroiekhsport, which builds nuclear power plants abroad, nuclear fuel producer TVEL and nuclear materials exporter Techsnabekhsport, among others. Full article at: Russia’s Nuclear Industry
If Chernobyl didn’t put them of the nuclear business why should an accident at a plant in another country?
If Chernobyl didn’t put them out of the nuclear business why should an accident at a plant in another country?
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