Video Fwd: NO NUKES IN INDIA

Organizing Notes
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2011/04/no-nukes-in-india.html
NO NUKES IN INDIA
Wednesday, April 20, 2011




Japan's nuclear crisis seems to have given fresh impetus to protests against a proposed nuclear power complex in India.

While one person was killed and at least 20 others injured after police clash with protesters in Maharashtra state, critics say the Jaitapur site lies on an active fault-line increasing the risk to residents.

Prerna Suri reports from New Delhi.

Video and Text Fwd: GERMANS PROTEST NUCLEAR POWER

Organizing Notes
Sunday, March 27, 2011
GERMANS PROTEST NUCLEAR POWER




Tens of thousands of Germans took to the streets Saturday to protest against nuclear power. Under the banner "Fukushima means: no more nuclear power stations," marches took place in Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and capital Berlin, ahead of the vote in wealthy Baden-Wuerttemberg Sunday, where the nuclear issue was set to play a key role. In Berlin alone, police said the "organisers' aim of getting 50,000 would be basically achieved."

On Sunday the Associated Press reported:

German chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have suffered a historic defeat in a state ballot after almost six decades in power there, preliminary results showed Sunday, in an election that amounted to a referendum on the party's stance on nuclear power.

The opposition anti-nuclear Greens doubled their voter share in Baden-Wuerttemberg state and seemed poised to win their first-ever state governorship, according to preliminary results released by the state electoral commission.

"We have secured what amounts to a historic electoral victory," the Greens' leader Winfried Kretschmann told party members in Stuttgart.

The Greens secured 24.2 percent of the vote, with the center-left Social Democrats down 2 percentage points at 23.1 percent. That secures them a narrow lead to form a coalition government with a combined 71 seats in the state legislature, the results showed.

See more video from Germany here

Video Fwd: GERMAN ACTIVISTS TRY TO BLOCK NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENT 독일 활동가들, 핵폐기물 수송을 막으려 시도

From Bruce Gagnon blog
GERMAN ACTIVISTS TRY TO BLOCK NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENT
Nov. 8, 2010



'A forest in Germany has been turned into a struggle over nuclear power.

More than 17,000 policemen were used to keep a trainload of nuclear waste on the move to a storage site at Gorleben.

Protesters are doing everything they can to stop it, including trying to blockade the tracks.

Al Jazeera's Guy Henderson reports from Leitstade, Germany.'

Text Fwd: LATEST GN NEWSLETTER AVAILABLE ON-LINE

Bruce Gagnon blog on June 11, 2010

LATEST NEWSLETTER AVAILABLE ON-LINE

The latest edition of the Global Network newsletter is now available on-line. You can find it here

It is getting good reviews so far, I think the color photos/graphics/cartoons make such a difference. Sadly the black and white print version does not offer such good contrasts.

Hope you find the newsletter useful and educational. And of course we hope it inspires you to share the space issue with others.

Text Fwd: SPACE NUCLEAR POWER - OBAMA GIVES GO AHEAD FOR MORE

* Bruce Gagnon blog
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
SPACE NUCLEAR POWER - OBAMA GIVES GO AHEAD FOR MORE

This video (all in French but with important archival film footage) is about Cosmos 954, a Soviet nuclear-powered space surveillance satellite that was launched on September 18, 1977 and crashed in the region of Great Slave Lake near Yellowknife, Canada. Canada and the U.S. launched an immediate cleanup and recovery, called "Operation Morning Light". This report was aired on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation a few months after the accident.

The Russian satellite disintegrated and rained radioactive debris which covered some 124,000 square kilometers. Two hundred and twenty Canadian Armed Forces and the U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Emergency Search Team combed the area until October 1978, trying to salvage fragments of the satellite. But according to the Atomic Energy Control Commission (now the Canadian Nuclear Safety) only 0.1% of the atomic energy source on Cosmos 954 was recovered.

There have been several other space nuclear power accidents over the years. According to journalist Karl Grossman, "In 1964 a U.S. Navy navigational satellite with a SNAP-9A (SNAP for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power) nuclear generator on-board failed to achieve orbit and fell to the Earth, disintegrating upon hitting the atmosphere. The 2.1 pounds of plutonium fuel dispersed widely. A study by a group of European health and radiation protection agencies subsequently reported that 'a worldwide soil sampling program carried out in 1970 showed SNAP-9A debris present at all continents and at all latitudes.' Long linking the SNAP-9A accident to an increase of lung cancer in people on Earth was Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, who was involved in isolating plutonium for the Manhattan Project."

Then in 1996 the Russian Mars '96 space mission failed to achieve orbit after launch and burned up as it reentered Earth's atmosphere. The space craft was carrying 200 grams of plutonium on-board and the flaming reentry was witnessed by a NASA scientist who was on a star gazing trip as it landed in the mountains of Chile and Bolivia. Those governments, not having the capability to locate the radiological debris, asked then President Bill Clinton to send them assistance. He refused and only the Boston Globe and Christian Science Monitor reported the accident as most of the media ignored this important story.

In 2003 the NASA space shuttle Colombia burned up when it reentered Earth's atmosphere due to heat shields having blown off during launch. All the astronauts on-board were killed. The flaming reentry was watched on TV as the debris was spread across several southern states. NASA immediately sent in search teams and told the public to stay away from the debris. One local sheriff was heard on National Public Radio telling the public that NASA told him the debris could be radioactive. I myself saw NASA personnel in haz-mat suits on TV and it was clear that a nuclear generator or reactor had to have been on the shuttle. To this day NASA denies the story.

In the soon to be published Global Network newsletter, Space Alert, Karl Grossman writes about Obama's plan to restart plutonium production at the Department of Energy nuclear labs across the nation. This is being done as Obama intends to increase the use of nuclear power for missions to Mars and for nuclear rockets.

All we need is one failed rocket, or one falling nuclear powered spacecraft, to spread deadly plutonium-238 across the planet. This stuff lasts for thousands of years and we can't take a chance by playing space nuclear Russian roulette.

Text Fw: OBAMA PROPOSES MARS MISSIONS - OF THE NUCLEAR VARIETY

* Image source: same as the below link

Bruce Gagnon blog

Thursday, April 15, 2010

OBAMA PROPOSES MARS MISSIONS - OF THE NUCLEAR VARIETY

Obama went to the space center in Florida today and made a proposal to send humans to asteroids by 2025 and to Mars by the mid-2030's.

In an interview on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews I heard Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) talking about the plasma rocket that they hope can get astronauts to the red planet in just 39 days. See the interview here.

Sen. Nelson mentions former astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz who is working to develop the plasma rocket. In an interview published in 2009 Chang-Diaz talks about the absolute need for nuclear power in space in order to make the trip to Mars. Here are some excerpts:

Seed: We’ve been sending people and machines into space for more than half a century, but we’re still mostly using chemical rockets.

FCD: Well, part of the problem with electric propulsion back then, and to a lesser degree today, is that it’s hard to get enough electricity to power the rocket. Typically, electricity in space comes from sunlight, solar power. That works okay in Earth orbit and other places close to the Sun. But people have to realize sooner or later that, if we’re ever going to explore Mars and beyond, we have to make a commitment to developing high-power electricity sources for space. What we really need is nuclear power to generate electricity in space. If we don’t develop it, we might as well quit, because we’re not going to go very far. Nuclear power is central to any robust and realistic human exploration of space. People don’t really talk about this at NASA. Everybody is still avoiding facing this because of widespread anti-nuclear sentiment [the legacy of the 1997 Cassini campaign].

Seed: What has to happen to make that change?

FCD: In 1958, the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, was able to actually navigate under the north polar cap and surface on the other side. No other submarine had ever been able to do that before. It was an eye-opener, a game-changer, a paradigm shift. The idea was that nuclear power enabled a completely different class of missions for these types of ships. Now, nuclear submarines are common. Something similar has to happen in space.

In fact, with the power close to what a nuclear submarine generates, you could use VASIMR [plasma rocket] to fly humans to Mars in 39 days. A chemical rocket makes the trip in eight months. That’s eight months of exposing your astronauts to debilitating cosmic radiation and weightlessness. By the time they get to where they’re supposed to work, they’re gonna be in bad shape—almost invalids! They’ll have to spend a big chunk of their time just recovering from the trip. That’s simply not a smart way to conduct an exploration program. By not addressing the key problems of limited power and propulsion, NASA is forced to work with extremely complicated and expensive mission architectures that are very limited in capability.

Seed: So you believe that in the long run it would be more cost-effective to develop nuclear-electric capabilities in space, even given potential regulatory difficulties?

FCD: Absolutely. People have fears of nuclear power in space, but it’s a fear that isn’t really based on any organized and clear assessment of the true risks and costs. When you send these missions based on chemical propulsion to Mars, they aren’t only going to be extremely expensive, but also extremely fragile. Imagine being on Earth, watching astronauts on an eight-month death trip from which there is no return, all because they made a small mistake or something failed. It would be an agonizing process, and there would be a lot of questions asked if you lost a crew. Well, in space, power is life. You can plan against a lot of contingencies by simply having more power available for a crew to use.

Seed: But the larger versions of VASIMR really need nuclear power to perform. What if NASA chooses not to develop space-based nuclear power?

FCD: We would hope that, if not the US, maybe the Europeans, the Chinese, the Russians, or somebody else will develop a nuclear-electric power capability that we can marry up to this rocket. We have to realize that the US is no longer the only player. The US may choose not to do this, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world will follow—not anymore. We no longer live in a confrontational world like the one that fueled the Apollo program in the 1960s. We live in a world that has to cooperate, to collaborate. The US has a tremendous opportunity to still be the leader here, but if it isn’t, others will be. Information is traveling faster everywhere now; technology has gained a foothold and developed in the nooks and crannies of the planet. The world has changed, and the US no longer has a monopoly on knowledge. We need to collaborate to build a capable space infrastructure so that we can truly explore.See the full interview here.

UPDATE: Journalist Karl Grossman reports the following:

There was an editorial in Space News on March 1 saying that "Obama's NASA budget also includes support for nuclear thermal propulsion and nuclear electric propulsion research under a $650 million Exploration Technology and Demonstration funding line projected to triple by 2013."

It went on: "Nuclear propulsion research experienced a brief revival seven years ago when then NASA-Administrator Sean O'Keefe established Project Prometheus to design reactor-powered spacecraft capable of carrying unprecedented arrays of science instruments to the outer planets.

Mr O'Keefe's successor, Mike Griffin, wasted little time pulling the plug on NASA's nuclear ambitions -- and a billion dollars worth of other technology projects -- as he focused the agency's limited resource on getting astronauts back to the Moon.

Obama is reversing course again and resuscitating the space nuclear program.

Text Fwd: South Korea, “The most Dangerous Country in the World”

_____________________________________________________________________________________
*The text below was sent from Torbjörn Björkman, a Sweden journalist who visited South Korea from Dec. 1 to 7, 2009, thanks to introduction by Agneta Noberg who has visited South Korea last April when there was the International Conference against the Asia Pacific Missile Defense and for the End of Arms Race. Torbjörn Björkman works for the Swedish Friendship Organisation, Sweden, which has a long time history, and founded after the end of the Korean war. When the organization was set up, it was centred around the Swedish investigators who had visited the North Korea and investigated the indiscriminate U.S. bombings against the civilians during the Korean war, 1950 to 1953.

His organization publishes the magazine four times a year (In the below image, a photo of Pyeongyang, North Korea is in cover). He has also translated Bruce Gagnon’s No Gun Ri visit report in last October, 2009 in Swedish
Torbjörn Björkman has himself visited the North Korea four times before. It was his first visit to South Korea, this time and he has met the activists from various organizations to interview them (Photo below). Bruce Gagnon has also met many of them in Torbjörn Björkman’s article here, in August 2009. The emphases below are by No Base Stories of Korea.

Click the images for larger view

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Torbjörn Björkman says on Feb. 3, 2010

"This is a translation of the article in the weekly paper Proletären no 3 in January and Korea Information, the paper from the Swedish Friendship Organisation, Sweden. Proletären is printed in 4.000 copies. The Swedish Friendship Organisation in 400 copies. It´s nearly the same article in the two papers."

Click the image for larger view
_____________________________________________________________________________________

South Korea, “The most Dangerous Country in the World”
by Lena Thomsson based on the talk with Torbjörn Björkman

Click the image for larger view

North Korea gets some attention in Swedish mass media, but there have been very few reporters from Western countries to North Korea. But North Korea couldn’t exist without it’s antipole South Korea. However, no Swedish reporter gives any interest to South Korea, this big country with more than 50 millions inhabitants.

In December 2009, Torbjörn Björkman visited Seuol to learn more about South Korea.

- I made an interview with Agneta Noberg this autumn, Torbjörn Björkman says. She works with spreading information about Nato and took part in an Conference in South Korea. During the discussion with her, I got the idea to go there. Our knowledge about South Korea is very bad. We know less about South Korea, than about North Korea, despite our knowledge about North Korea comes from the imperialistic propaganda.

- My visit in Seoul turned to be quite different to what I have thought and could expect, continue Torbjörn Björkman. Many persons in organisations that I meet see South Korea as a prison.

One of them Torbjörn Björkman met in Seoul was Kim Young-je working as unification director of the KCTU, Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

- We must get human rights, Kim Young-je said. The division between North and South is one of the big problems of the humanity.

Is caught in two sentences the Korean problem, in a new way for me. The construction of the Korean peninsula in two separate stats; The Democratic Peoples Republic Korea and The Republic [of] Korea, is a product of the US Imperialism and is total undemocratic. The most of the Koreans had [chosen a] united Korea. Without to understand the US oppressing of South- and North Korea we can’t see the questions of the human rights. The US-imperialism is the problem. This is the background to that the Korean peninsula is one of the most militarized areas in the world, were the government force an expansion of the already very large military exercise areas and where US now are expanding there bases. South Korea has 40 times more military investments than North Korea. It is easy to se[se] the grotesque proportions in armaments of South Korea, one of the most armed military in Asia. One of the representatives of Veterans for Peace in Korea proclaimed that South Korea is the most dangerous country in the world. The best way to describe the Korean peninsula is to describe the US-imperialistic tyrannize over the Korean people. In South Korea, it occurs through agents in the South Korea government. Against North US all the time have trade restrictions and an alert political blockade that affect the country with brutal power.

Torbjörn Björkman knows the problem. The journey to Seoul was his first to South Korea, but he has visited North Korea several times. The people in South and North suffer hard through the 38th degree. South Koreas formal democratic freedom, have great restrictions through the National Security Act, implemented after the war and give no different political opinions any space. Any contact with North Korea and North Koreans is prohibited. Any, that break this law, can be put in prison. Under the president Kim Dae Jung, they used a smoother use of this act, but now the mode of application now is harder. The acts make the two formal resolutions between North and South unlawful. The lay make North Korea to an anti nation, a treachery state and an enemy.

- US make a mistake in the division of the Korean peninsula and the prevent of the unification, says Lee Kyeong-won from PKAR, Pan Korean Alliance for reunification of Korea, when he let Torbjörn Björkman to make his first interview after got away from prison, accused for broken the National Security Act when he visited the North Korea. Through this act the US continue to dominant the country.

2008 it was still possible to go to North Korea, but not any more. The only way to get permission is to travel in groups, for instance a sport club.

In a party organised by Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea, SPARK, Torbjörn Björkman was invited to say some worlds. He says:

- I got enthusiastic applause from the 200 gests when I told them that I love North Korea and that it’s a very nice country and nice people and that I have been in Pyongyang 4 times. I said that I worked for the united Korea and for better relations between North and South. They saw it important what I said, that I spoke positively about North Korea. I got greetings with me to give to there relatives in North, the next time when I go there. They saw it important that I spoke positively about North Korea.

- South Korea is a prison for the people, says Torbjörn Björkman, because they cannot speak free or cannot contact there relatives or friends in the North.

- The right wing in South Korea has been strong since the Japanese colonial time. In 1997 started a broad people movement that chose Kim Dae Jung to president. His ”sunshine politic” pushed North and South near to another and ended in a summit with him and Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang 2000 and gave Kim Dae Jung the Nobel Peace Price this year.

The first real opening in the contacts between North and South was not in the political field, but through the sport. The trade unions that worked for unification decides to organise a football match with workers from South and North. The right wing didn’t dare to oppose it and the match accomplished in Pyongyang the 15th of August 1999.

- The South Korean workers are forbidden to speak, said Kim Young-je. We are forbidden to discuss about socialism and communism. We have censure against our thinking. We in South are prisoners. In North are 25 millions forced to isolate themselves.

- Even if South Korea has a high economical standard, we cannot speak of human rights in a country that control of the minds.

Unavoidable, a discussion about the Korean peninsula must include the question about nuclear weapons. What is the South Koreans saying in that question?

- This question is very important in South Korea, says Torbjörn Björkman. All the organisations I met had it in there program. PKAR have the nuclear weapon as the central question.

Lee Kyeong-won says:
- The central question in the Korean peninsula is the nuclear weapons. US have the nuclear umbrella in South. We must have a peace treaty, we must have collaboration between US and North Korea, but US do not want peace. That is why there will be no honest discussions.

- The SPARK started 1994 just because the nuclear question, under the first crisis about the North Korean nuclear weapons, said Oh Hye-Ran, one of the investigators in SPARK, when the meet Torbjörn Björkman in her office in central Seoul. We are fighting against the hostile politic against North Korea and we want peace and unification between North and South. We want that the South break the connections with US and that US leave the Korean peninsula. We want that the armistice will chance to a peace treaty.

In the SPARK's Office also works the peace investigator [K]o Yong-Dae. He wants to discuss the classification of weapons that started under the 90th. The weapons were divided into protection weapons and aggressive weapons, defensive and offensive, a theory that disappeared among the investigators when Nato expanded eastward.

The Korean Peninsula is a centre for develop new systems of weapon, says Yo Yong-Dae. It is important to let people know about this, to get them to understand the train of thought.

Trade unions, the peace movement and the movement for the united Korea are in different ways connected to each other. Even the trade unions have an opinion in the question of nuclear weapon.

The majority of the South Koreans be aware of that North Korea has nuclear weapons because the treat from US, says Kim Young-je. The trade unions are against nuclear weapons. They want them to be liquidated, but they are aware of that North Korea has them against the US threat.

Cheong Wook-sik from the organisation Peace Network says:
- The central question is not if North Korea are threatening with nuclear weapons, but that we have to built the Korean Peninsula as a zone without nuclear weapons and in the long run create a world without nuclear weapons.

- The militarism is central for the Korean question in south, where the government se[se] North Korea as the main enemy, he continues. Men it’s an asymmetric threat. South Koreans military investments with US support are much bigger than North Koreas. North Korea wants a peace agreement, not this armistice. However, US do not accept this. There is an unbalance in military power. South Korea-US has the initiative in the case of conventional weapon. Therefore North Korea has to built nuclear weapons and missiles.

- I cannot understand the critic against North Korea, accused in lack of democratic rights, says Cheong Wook-sik, if you at the same time accused China or South Korea in those deficits.

Torbjörn Björkman have a great memory from the journey; a protest meeting on the way to another meeting in the question for unification between South and North. The protest meeting was outside of the KCTU and was to support the ongoing streak among the railway workers. To catch the trade unions leader stood many police officers outside the building. The right wing government Lee Myung-bak sees all streaks as illegal and the trade unions leaders arrested. Björkman says:

- There is no accident occurrence that we met police officers against workers in streak when we went to a meeting about unification between North and South. The solution of two stats and the workers fight in South is a direct result of that US made South Korea to there vassal state. This is also a product of the Japanese colonial power, there fascism and there fight against the communism, that is the people influence.

In the meeting about unification, we put ourselves with enthusiasm behind a big photo with Kim Jung Il and Kim Dae Jung in the summit the year 2000.

Kim Bung Tae is a represent for Veterans for Peace in Korea. He says:
- I have a brother [in law] who is artist in North Korea. He recently got a gold medal in Beijing for his art. As South Korean, I have no possibility to meet or to get in contact with my brother [in law]. That is why I ask you, that the next time you come to Pyongyang, give my brother [in law] a greeting from me.

We let the old soldier get the last word before, we say “Good Bye”:
- I am glad to meet real friends for peace.

Lena Thomsson (* Lena Thomsson is wife of Torbjörn Björkman)
_____________________________________________________________________________________

* Sent from Agneta Noberg on Wed, Feb 3, 2010


National Security Archive Update, February 2, 2010

Seeing human rights in the "proper manner"
The Reagan-Chun Summit of February 1981

For more information:
202/994-7000 or wampler@gwu.edu

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington, DC, February 2, 2010 - Twenty-nine years ago today, less than two weeks after his inauguration, President Ronald Reagan rolled out the welcome mat at the White House for South Korean president and strongman Chun Doo Hwan, despite internal U.S. government concerns about Chun's poor human rights record. Over the previous year, Chun's regime had brutally suppressed the Kwangju student protests and thrown dissident leader Kim Dae Jung into prison. Nevertheless, the new administration, keen to send a strong signal of support for key anti-Communist allies, decided to reverse the previous U.S. policy of voicing public criticism of South Korean repression of its domestic opposition.

Today, the National Security Archive is posting a set of formerly classified documents that provide a revealing window into this pivotal moment in U.S.-South Korean relations. The materials include the memorandum of conversation of Reagan's meeting with Chun on February 2, 1981, Reagan's State Department briefing book, as well as White House memos and State Department cables. The records illuminate the delicate balancing act Reagan's advisers chose to follow in squaring the White House's eagerness to reinvigorate the security relationship with Seoul with the need to avoid the impression of uncritical approval of Chun's repressive human rights policies.

Among other insights into the risky new policy, the documents (acquired through the Freedom of Information Act and from presidential libraries) describe:

* Secretary of State Alexander Haig's acknowledgement that Reagan's invitation to Chun "spoke louder than words" about the administration's desire to strengthen ties to South Korea.

• National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen's euphemistic take on the state of play in South Korea: "Human rights survives as a concept, but in a broadened context."

* Chun's response to Reagan's assurance about potential U.S. approaches to Pyongyang: "I take your words as a gift, and they will allow me to return home with an easy mind."

* U.S. assurances that South Korea can rely on it for supplies and technology for its nuclear power program.

Reagan's warm reception of Chun was the public side of a strategy that favored handling human rights concerns behind closed doors. In the short term, the new U.S. approach engendered deep mistrust and suspicion of the U.S. for its role in legitimizing the South Korean government. Over the longer term, the combination of public political support and private encouragement of reform yielded mixed results.

This year, the National Security Archive will publish through ProQuest a major document collection, "U.S.-Korean Relations, 1968-2000," which explores the complex history of the two countries' ties.

http://www.nsarchive.org/

_____________________________________________________________________________________
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PRIVACY NOTICE The National Security Archive does not and will never share the names or e-mail addresses of its subscribers with any other organization. Once a year, we will write you and ask for your financial support. We may also ask you for your ideas for Freedom of Information requests, documentation projects, or other issues that the Archive should take on. We would welcome your input, and any information you care to share with us about your special interests. But we do not sell or rent any information about subscribers to any other party.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

* Two videos about Gwangju

1. Kwangju Uprising - news cast (Youtuve URL)
'American news casts on the 1980 Kwangju Uprising in South Korea.'



2. Resurrection of Oppression: May, Month of Uprising (Link is HERE)


'The video informed at the PKAR (Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification) was screened on the May 12 press interview for the release of the six arrested unification activists under the National Security Law. The press interview was participated by more than 100 people from the 80 organizations.

The video compares the current situation of the oppression by the Lee, Myung Bak government, South Korea to the oppression of the military dictatorship, in the city of Kwangju during the two weeks since May 18, 1980 when the general and soon-self-becoming President, Chun, Doo-Hwan murdered more than 2000 Kwangju citizens for cementing his regime, against the Korean people’s wish of the Democracy, called “The Spring of Seoul”, after the death of the precedent military dictatorship, Park, Jung-Hee who had been murdered by his staff months before.'

Text Fwd: Landmark nuclear power plant deal sounds energy alarm within South Korea

* Image source/ caption: Same as the link below

'South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, seated, claps his hands together when Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) President and CEO Kim Ssang Su, left, and Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) President Khaldoon Khalifa al-Mubarak, right, shake hands after signing a contract in Abu Dhabi Dec. 27.'

Hankyoreh
Landmark nuclear power plant deal sounds energy alarm within South Korea:As KEPCO consortia secures APR contract in UAE, environmentalists say nuclear power plant export is little cause for celebration in S.Korea
Dec. 28, 2009

South Korea has picked up project rights for a 40 billion dollar (47 trillion Won) nuclear power plant project in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) announced Sunday (local time) that a consortium led by the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) was selected as the final contractor for the project. The KEPCO consoritium beat out France’s AREVA and a U.S. consortia led by General Electric Co. and the Japanese firm Hitachi Ltd.

The UAE project is the largest-scale overseas project order ever picked up by South Korea. The selection is further significant in that it marks the first exportation of South Korea’s independently developed nuclear power plant model APR. Environmental groups, meanwhile, continue to question the safety and utility of nuclear power plants.

Project Details and Selection Factors

The KEPCO consortium will begin work on the power plant next year in Sila, a city located 330 kilometers west of the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi. There will be four 1,400 MW-capacity plants at the location generating a total of 5,600 MW of power. Analysts say out of the 40 billion dollars, an estimated 20 billion dollars will go into design, construction and early operating expenses, while the remaining 20 billion dollars will go towards after service expenses for a period of 60 years after construction is completed for items such as plant fuel, operating costs, maintenance and waste treatment.

The primary factor in the selection of the South Korean nuclear power plant model, which has never been exported before, was its cost competitiveness. According to data from the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, the APR’s construction unit cost of 2,300 dollars per kilowatt (kW) was lower than those of its competitors AREVA at 2,900 dollars per kW, and GE at 3,583 dollars per kW. In terms of electricity generation unit cost, the South Korean model’s 3.03 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) was lower than AREVA’s 3.93 cents kWh, and less than half Hitachi’s 6.86 cents kWh.

Criticism from Environment Groups

Questions about its utility and safety make nuclear power a controversial energy source throughout the world. The chief concern has to do with fatal damages that could result from radiation leakage in the event of an accident. For this reason, environment groups have maintained that nuclear power cannot be a fundamental alternative for combating climate change and that the construction of nuclear power plants should be minimized.

These arguments factor into the dark shadow lurking behind all the praise about the export of South Korea’s first nuclear power plant model. Environmental activists are noting that the dazzling copy about the largest power plant export in South Korea’s history masks continued concerns about environmental safety. In particular, they are pointing out that while the Lee administration is heralding a “nuclear power Renaissance” and talking up nuclear power as a green energy resource, safety concerns and other issues remain topics of debate within the international community. Indeed, nuclear power, unlike other renewal energy sources like wind and solar power, is not included in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an instrument for greenhouse gas reductions included under article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol. Although countries like France and Japan place a high emphasis on nuclear power and have been arguing for its inclusion, no conclusion was reached on the matter at the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Environmental activists are also claiming that the benefits of nuclear power plant construction as a future industry are questionable, since global demand for nuclear power plant construction is not very large and Korea still has not secured original technology. “There is a demand for new plants mainly in countries where civil society is not active, like China and countries in the Middle East, but there is no explosive demand at the worldwide level,” said Energy Justice Actions head Lee Heon-seok. “Also, because we still do not have the original technology, nuclear power plants lack future prospects in industry terms,” Lee noted.

Yanglee Won-young, head of Korean Federation for Environmental Movement’s committee on climate and energy, says,　“Nuclear power may conceivably be a necessary temporary substitute for fossil fuels, but a better alternative would be to promote energy efficiency or develop renewable energy sources.” Yanglee added, “It is undesirable for South Korea to go all in on nuclear power.”

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]　


* Related article

Yonhap news
2009/12/28 10:07 KST
S. Korea eyes nuclear plant deal from Turkey: officials


* Related blog

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/12/text-fwd-s-korea-becomes-worlds-6th.html
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Text Fwd: S. Korea becomes world's 6th nuclear reactor exporting nation