German Nuclear Shutdown Will Cost 9,000-11,000 Jobs, New Dangers of Nuclear

Is the world already too dependent on nuclear power?

Germany's decision to shut down nuclear power generation years early, following the earthquake and nuclear disaster in Japan this March, will result in up to 11,000 job losses at E.ON, the country's largest energy company.

This was confirmed last week as E.ON posted a net loss of €1.49 billion for the quarter ending in June, compared with a profit of €1.63 billion for the same period last year. Company officials blamed the loss on the government's decision to bump up Germany's nuclear free date from 2036 to 2022, as well as on a new tax on nuclear fuel introduced last year.

In order to cut costs over the next years, CEO Johannes Teyssen said the the company's board needed to make deep job cuts, primarily in administrative areas, according to a report in DW-World.de.

"We cannot afford any unnecessary management levels, processes, and duplication of work," Teyssen said when presenting E.ON's half-year results in Dusseldorf.

The company is now projecting profit for the year in the order of €2.1-2.6 billion, a reduction of 30-40% on earlier estimates.

Meanwhile the nuclear shutdown is continuing to reverberate around the Germanan economy. Bayer, for example, employer of 35,000 in Germany, has threatened that they may have to pull out of Germany if energy prices are not competitive. As it is, Bayer is in the midst of a 4,500 worldwide layoffs, while planning to add 2,500 employees in Russia, China, Brazil or India.

In abandoning nuclear, Germany will have to replace the 23% share of the country's energy it produces. The share of renewables is expected to rise from an already high (in proportion to many countries) 17% to an estimated 35%.

The situation is also impacting other countries. A Swedish energy company blamed huge losses on the German decision. E.ON announced a 15% price hike to its 5 million U.K. residential customers and France, which is highly dependent on nuclear, is now faced with the sudden unrelated difficulty of extremely low water levels in rivers that are used to cool their reactors. At one point in June, Switzerland had requested that France shut down one of their reactors.

While just scratching the surface of recent developments, it is evident that, as countries struggle to readjust their power models in the wake of the Japan earthquake, there is another danger of nuclear power that has been overlooked.

That is that nuclear power is extremely addictive for world economies.

Deformed Fish Highlight Calls for Study of Oil Sands Impact on Athabasca River, Lake

A broad-based group of scientists, residents, first nations leaders, doctors and area politicians sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper yesterday insisting that the federal government commission an independent study on the impact of decades of growing oil sands industry on the Athabasca River and its watershed.

Perhaps unnoticed by many, this latest call by a united front of groups comes just a day after the conclusion of the World Energy Congress in Montreal, and two days prior to the beginning of the World Water Congress, also being held in Montreal.

It's hard to imagine any more appropriate timing to call for more rigorous environmental practices in the oil sands. Although, I wonder if the significance of these three events that are so closely related has been lost on many, if not most players, who are no doubt highly focused on their particular specialties.

 Further news on these events in the near future.

What is the cost to clean recycling - how much time, energy and water is used?

Here is a question that we do not readily find an answer for on the net:

What is the cost to clean recycling - how much time, energy and water is used?

Obviously these questions have been analyzed to death by the recycling business, at least from the perspective of what is sorted, cleaned and recycled under their roofs. To a lesser extent, municipalities also review all sorts of benchmarks

But what about the portion of the job that is handled domestically? Neither the recycling industry, nor municipalities, are overly concerned with the amount of time, energy and resources that go into cleaning recycling in the home.

I haven't been able to find any information on this on the internet.

It brings up another question: Is it better to clean containers being recycled thoroughly, superficially or not at all?

I have often noticed that some people put  their recycling out super clean, super neat and sorted to the nth degree. Now, our area has gone to the large "unsorted" recycling bins. So, sorting is obviously more efficiently handled at the processing plant.

What about cleaning the containers with food waste in them?

If left to dry out, does this waste present a huge problem? Or is the water, energy and time we expend in the home to clean one container a complete waste? Or worse?

Of course the recycler can be marginally more profitable if all the containers coming in are pre-cleaned. But at what cost?

What do people use? 500 ml of cold water to clean each tin, or a gallon of hot water? Has this been researched?

So, say there are approximately 13 million households in Canada. Say each household turns on the tap an average of twice per day - once hot, once cold - to rinse out recycle items. And let's say each time the tap is turned on the average usage is one liter. OK, that would be 13 million liters each of cold and hot water per day. It has been calculated that it takes approximately 150 kj to heat a liter of water by 25C. So, if these numbers are anywhere near correct, then each day 26 million liters of water are used in homes to rinse out recycling - and 1.95, or you might as well say 2 billion, kilojoules of energy are used to heat the water. Because I'm just guessing about everything, I'm not going to bother figuring out how to relate 2 billion kjs to anything. But you may be curious enough to put a value amount on 26 million liters. Here's one view on it... Halifax charges $2 for a cubic meter (m3 = 1000 liters) of water at a bulk fill station. So 26 million liters would go for $52,000.

What does this all mean? I don't know but, any way you look at it, there is a cost factor to in home recycling preparation.

I would like to follow up on this in the future.

Alternative Energy: Harnessing the power of imagination

I can't be 100% sure, but I do believe I am the first to propose this concept as an alternative energy source: Harness the power of imagination.

Although many would have you believe that you could get rich and successful, or get healed, by harnessing the power of imagination, I have yet to see anyone saying that this could be a source of alternate power that could be tapped in to in order to ultimately reduce carbon emissions across the planet.

I could, and am sure I will, give you lists of things that show what I mean. Some of these concepts you might even guess, if you had the inclination. But, there is a principle that for me was a little more nuanced, so I would like to put it down here now to kick off this discussion.

Any typical power generating process begins with an investment of capital. Whether to build a coal burning plant, nuclear reactor, wind turbines, solar reactor or any other project, the first step in actual construction is the investment of capital.

This is obviously a necessary step. What is not obvious, however, is that the act of investment effectively negates imagination from the equation. Once you have a monetary commitment to a certain operation -i.e. construction of a physical plant that will perform a task for a given purpose- it becomes directly counter-productive to continue to apply imagination to the problem of supplying power for the given purpose.

After all, the given purpose should be covered by the equipment to be acquired or constructed with the investment already made, therefore, it is assumed with good reason that any further imaginative effort in that specific direction is a waste.

But, what if we look at this another way? What if we propose that, if spending capital blocks imagination... then the reverse should hold true: if you apply imagination to the equation, energy will be created directly, rather than capital spent!

I believe this equation can be proven through art. Stay tuned for another Co2-Art project!