Saturday, August 18, 2007
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Saturday, August 18, 2007
Nuclear Power
1. Warming up to nuclear power Craig Pridemore was a University of Washington student when he started his career influencing public policy. He and his friends made a road trip to Richland in the early 1980s to protest planned construction of five nuclear-power plants. Now, the Vancouver state senator, who remains an environmentalist and successfully sponsored legislation this session to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, reluctantly concedes nuclear power might need to play a role in the monumental task of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States he said so in testimony before a state House committee. He's not th Related: • Warming • up • to • nuclear • power 2. National Review - President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more Related: • National • Review • President • George • W • Bush • and • Indian • prime • minister • Manmohan • Singh • met • at • the • White • House • in • a • historic 3. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 4. Warming up to nuclear power ... 1980s to protest planned construction of five nuclear-power plants. Now, the Vancouver state senator, who ... a book, "Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Revolution," that will be published by Island ... of Seven industrialized countries, including Britain, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United States, Related: • Warming • up • to • nuclear • power 5. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 6. 5/18/2007: Global Business Briefs: Vedanta Resources PLC Vedanta Resources PLC Executive Chairman Anil Agarwal said that in addition to producing coalfired power, the metals-and-mining company would also like to expand into nuclear-power production. The company, which is listed and based in London but has Related: • 5182007 • Global • Business • Briefs • Vedanta • Resources • PLC 7. Science News - Chinese nuclear pact signed - U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China
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A new life-cycle study prepared by Germany?s ko-Institut (Institute for Applied Ecology) ? *German was prepared as a working paper to guide discussions about the future of nuclear power ? have re-opened the debate, with advocates saying nuclear power is very clean and that the benefits
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August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more Related: • Science • News • Chinese • nuclear • pact • signed • US • exports • of • nuclearpower • technology • to • China 8. Is Systemic Risk Underestimated? The question of systemic risk, that is, the possibility of a generalized failure of the financial system, such as a stock market crash, is something that regulators think about a great deal and quite deliberately discuss a good bit less, since fear becomes a driving element in any market panic.The reason for the heightened concern about systemic risk is the proliferation of new instruments and strategies, including credit default and total return swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and other exotica, very high levels of leverage, very low risk premia (that means that investors are cavalier about risk and aren't asking to be paid very much to assume risk), and large, unsustainable (in the long term) global imbalances. Many of these new instruments have not been around long enough to have been tested in a recession or a market break. Thus, even though investors and brokers have models of how they will behave, they have never been tested in certain real-world scenarios.The risk of these novel investments is compounded by internal inconsistencies in money and capital flows. At a minimum, the widespread low risk premia don't mesh well with the global imbalances story. Presumably, the smart money recognizes that there will be a readjustment, hopefully gradual, but any realignment will create a lot of uncertainty and asset repricing. But no one wants to get out too early and miss the upside, so it appears that a lot of investors are assuming they will know when to abandon their current strategy and won't be trampled in a rush for the exits.Mind you, it's important to note that things could unwind in a messy, painful way, without having a market break or crisis. Think of the end of the dot com era. A tremendous amount of wealth was wiped out, but it was merely a large market correction. But the bubble in debt markets, which are much larger and more levered than the equity markets, increases the risk of a nasty outcome.There are two views of this situation, each with its own construct. One is the majority perspective, well represented by the Fed. It sees the complexity of the financial system in organic terms. The notion of diversification, of spreading risk, means greater safety and resilience. No one would disagree with that concept, but the question is whether high leverage, greatly increased trading volumes, and new instruments, particularly ones that require very high level math skills to understand, changes the nature of the risks enough to obviate the advantages of diversification and risk transfer. Although regulators and economists would never admit to this analogy, the mainstream sees the changes in the financial system in evolutionary terms: it is progressing by developing more complicated and diverse instruments, more complicated institutional relationships, more interdependencies. In biology, you see a similar pattern when you go from simple organisms to more complicated ones.Consider this speech, "Credit Markets Innovations and Their Implications," from Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Fed:The latest wave of credit market innovations has elicited some concerns about their implications for the stability of the financial system, concerns similar to those associated with earlier periods of rapid change in financial markets....The recent changes in credit markets have been dramatic. We have seen rapid growth of structured credit products, credit default swaps and new types of collateralized debt and loan obligations. Although these instruments are very new, they are the natural extension of earlier innovations in credit markets. Over a long period we have seen innovations ranging from the syndication of bank loans and the direct provision of credit through the capital markets, to the spread of asset-backed securities and products that separate different parts of the payments stream and different dimensions of the risk in a credit obligation into different instruments.These changes have contributed to a substantial reduction in the share of total credit held by banks. They have produced a greater separation or distance between the entity that first arranges a loan and those who end up holding the risk, and more intermediaries in that chain. And they have contributed to a dramatic increase in the number and diversity of creditors to any individual borrower, and a greater capacity to actively trade credit risk...Some aspects of this latest wave of innovation are different in substance"therefore potentially in their implications"from their predecessors. And these differences require attention...The first is about the role of market liquidity and liquidity risk in how credit markets work. Credit market innovations have transformed the financial system from one in which most credit risk is in the form of loans, held to maturity on the balance sheets of banks, to a system in which most credit risk now takes an incredibly diverse array of different forms, much of it held by nonbank financial institutions that mark to market and can take on substantial leverage.... Hedge funds, according to one recent survey, account for 58 percent of the volume in credit derivatives in the year to the first quarter of 2006.Financial shocks take many forms. Some, such as in 1987 and 1998, involve a sharp increase in risk premia that precipitate a fall in asset prices and that in turn leads to what economists and engineers call "positive feedback" dynamics. As firms and investors move to hedge against future losses and to raise money to meet margin calls, the brake becomes the accelerator: markets come under additional pressure, pushing asset prices lower. Volatility increases. Liquidity in markets for more risky assets falls.In systems where credit is more market-based and more credit risk is in leveraged financial institutions outside the banking system, a sharp rise in asset-price volatility and the concomitant reduction in market liquidity, can potentially have greater negative effects on credit markets. If losses in these institutions force them to withdraw from credit markets, credit availability will decline, unless or until other institutions in a stronger financial position are willing to step in. The greater connection between asset-price volatility, market liquidity and the credit mechanism is the necessary consequence of a system in which credit risk is dispersed outside the banking system, including among leveraged funds. This does not make the system less stable, though, only different. For if risk is spread more broadly, shocks should be absorbed with less trauma. Moreover, the system as a whole may be less vulnerable to distortions introduced by the moral hazard associated with the access that banks have to the safety net.A second issue we need to consider stems from the complexity of the new credit instruments, the challenges they present in terms of valuation and risk measurement and their short history of experience in times of stress.Even the most sophisticated participants in the markets for these instruments find the risk management challenges associated with these instruments daunting. This raises the prospect of unanticipated losses. Default rates are harder to predict where there has been a substantial change in the financial attributes of borrowers. The prices of instruments may not respond as expected to a given change in losses or in the value of the assets underlying these instruments. Hedging strategies may prove to be less effective than expected. Similarly rated instruments can behave very differently in stress events....A third issue relates to the dynamics of failure and the infrastructure that supports these markets. The dramatic growth in the volume of over-the-counter derivatives and the growth in the number and size of leveraged funds inevitably complicate the resolution of the failure of a large financial institution that is active in these markets. The sheer number of financial contracts that would have to be unraveled in the context of a default, the challenge that a former colleague of mine likes to refer to as "unscrambling the eggs," could exacerbate and prolong uncertainty, and complicate the process of resolution...All these challenges merit attention. They describe some of the risks that have accompanied the substantial benefits of credit market innovation. And they help illustrate why these broad changes in financial markets may have contributed to a system where the probability of a major crisis seems likely to be lower, but the losses associated with such a crisis may be greater or harder to mitigate....There are several crucial admissions in Geithner's speech. First, no one understands the complexity and operation of the total system (at a minimum, one set of important players, hedge funds, hide their activities). Second, it is a given that some of the new instruments will behave in unexpected, probably adverse ways, in a stress event. Third, the Fed has much less influence than in the past because banks are no longer where the action is.But not to worry. The system is Darwinian. Market discipline operates as a predatory force, wiping out the weak members of the herd. To take a page from Emile Durkheim, this organic view of the financial system contrasts with the minority perspective, which sees it in mechanical terms. Richard Bookstaber, a hedge fund manager, risk management expert, and author of "A Demon of Our Own Design" (reviewed in the Economist) sees markets not in terms of their resilience but their vulnerability. He comes by his perspective from personal experience. He can claim to have helped cause not only the 1987 crash (as one of the designers of portfolio insurance that led to automated selling, turning a decline into a rout) but also the Long Term Capital Management meltdown that nearly created a financial crisis (an investigation he led into trading losses at Salomon led them to shut down their bond arbitrage desk, which lowered liquidity in the market, making it harder for LTCM to unwind its positions).In a Wall Street Journal interview, Bookstaber describes the gears and plumbing of the financial system:Financial markets are like jetliners and nuclear-power plants, he says: They are highly complex systems that require numerous interrelated steps to work together. But the "tight coupling" of these steps means when one of them goes wrong, the error rapidly ripples through the entire system, producing disasters like the ValuJet crash in 1996 or the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.Bookstaber's observation about "tight coupling" intuitively seems correct and fundamentally important. Financial markets players deal with each other through innumerable, rigid processes which require industry members to act in prescribed ways: counterparty agreements, exchange rules, regulatory requirements. In a crisis, the players lack the ability to suspend the rules.After the 1987 stock market crash, the major stock and commodity exchanges created circuit breakers, which, like control rods in a nuclear reactor, stop the action, hopefully long enough for the situation to normalize. But the credit markets, the focus of innovation and of Geithner's speech, operate through not through centralized exchanges but over the counter, among dealers. They have no circuit breakers. We can only hope they never need them. Related: • Is • Systemic • Risk • Underestimated 9. Things Can Go Wrong
One argument that the rose-colored glasses set likes to bandy about in discussions regarding the growing dangers associated with new age finance is the lack of confirmation from finance industry insiders, who presumably know best. Another point of rebuttal: the fact that few individuals, especially those who work on Wall Street and who have been milking the business for years, are short-sided or stupid enough to do anything that puts the ponzi finance cash cow in serious jeopardy. In "A Street Pioneer Fears a Blowup," the Wall Street Journal offers fascinating insights from one master of the universe that serve to undermine both assertions.
Like many pessimistic observers, Richard Bookstaber thinks financial derivatives, Wall Street innovation and hedge funds will lead to a financial meltdown.
What sets Mr. Bookstaber apart is that he has spent his career designing derivatives, working on Wall Street and running a hedge fund.
"The financial markets that we have constructed are now so complex, and the speed of transactions so fast that apparently isolated actions and even minor events can have catastrophic consequences," Mr. Bookstaber writes in a new book that is part memoir and part treatise.
Mr. Bookstaber has a doctorate in economics and now runs a hedge fund at FrontPoint Partners, which was bought last year by Morgan Stanley.
But it is his prior positions at Morgan Stanley and Salomon Brothers (since absorbed into Citigroup Inc.) that form the core of his book, "A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds and the Perils of Financial Innovation," published last month. In those jobs, he says, he played a small part in causing both the 1987 stock-market crash and the 1998 collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management LP.
"The odds are pretty high that we'll see other dislocations that match the type of turmoil we saw with the crash in 1987 and with the LTCM crisis," Mr. Bookstaber, 56 years old, says in an interview. "Any one derivative, with some exceptions, may be easy to track. But by the time you layer a lot of them one on top of the other, it becomes increasingly complex, so a small, unexpected event can propagate in surprising and nonlinear ways -- and there's no way to anticipate all these possible events."
His pessimism isn't widely shared by the financial industry or regulators. Financial innovation and hedge funds have "greatly enhanced the liquidity, efficiency and risk-sharing capabilities of our financial system," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in April. Officials at Morgan Stanley declined to comment on the book.
Author and economic consultant Peter Bernstein, who encouraged Mr. Bookstaber to write the book after hearing him speak, attributes Mr. Bookstaber's unusual point of view to the fact that "his focus is risk management, which makes for these kinds of attitudes: that things can go wrong."
Mr. Bookstaber says his views have been sought out by the Government Accountability Office, which is preparing a report on hedge funds.
His first experience with the destructive power of derivatives came in 1987 while he was helping design and market "portfolio insurance" for Morgan Stanley. Portfolio insurance was devised in the early 1980s by finance theorists as a way for big institutional investors to use budding options-pricing theory to protect their portfolios from losses. When stocks went down, portfolio insurance required an investor to sell stock-index futures according to a formula, then to buy futures when stocks rose again.
The problem was that when many investors did the same thing, their sales of stock-index futures helped pull down the entire stock market. That dynamic fueled the 1987 crash. Mr. Bookstaber, who sold portfolio insurance to investors in Japan and managed it for such Morgan Stanley clients as Chrysler, Ford Motor Co. and Gillette, writes, "Through my role in implementing portfolio insurance, I had helped precipitate a financial crisis of monumental proportions."
In 1998, as head of Salomon Brothers' risk-management team, he tried to find out why a strategy employed by the firm's bond arbitrage desk, with some of Wall Street's smartest minds, was facing more than $100 million in losses. Even after intensive study, the cause remained an "enigma," Mr. Bookstaber writes. But he did conclude that declining interest rates were causing the strategy to lose money even though it was designed to be interest-rate neutral. His findings, he says, encouraged the new owners of Salomon, which had just merged with Smith Barney, to close the bond arbitrage unit and liquidate its positions.
Mr. Bookstaber says as Salomon closed out its positions, other traders stepped out of the way and liquidity -- the ease of trading -- in the underlying markets dried up. This, he said, precipitated LTCM's crisis. That hedge fund used many of the same strategies as Salomon, where many of its founders had worked. When Russia's default on its foreign debt in the summer of 1998 triggered a plunge in many markets, LTCM found it couldn't liquidate except at fire-sale prices. In parts of the debt markets, trading practically halted. The Fed then organized a private-sector bailout of the fund to limit damage to the financial system.
Eric Rosenfeld, who went to school with Mr. Bookstaber and worked at Salomon before leaving to help found LTCM, says LTCM's problem wasn't complex, illiquid strategies, but the fact that many firms had similar strategies with similar risk tolerances. Selling by one triggered selling by others. Firms need to keep that in mind, he said, and favor "much more liquid [investments] and much less leverage."
Mr. Bookstaber doubts the ability of regulators or firms' own risk managers to prevent disaster. He describes how in 1993 one trader's positions at Morgan Stanley were revalued with each new trade. So to hide a loss, the trader avoided making new trades. "The firm lost more than $100 million by the time someone noticed that the trader hadn't traded for nearly a month," he writes.
Financial markets are like jetliners and nuclear-power plants, he says: They are highly complex systems that require numerous interrelated steps to work together. But the "tight coupling" of these steps means when one of them goes wrong, the error rapidly ripples through the entire system, producing disasters like the ValuJet crash in 1996 or the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.
The solution, he says, is for Wall Street to strive for less complexity and not trade every instrument that can be dreamed up. He admits doing this would require some government oversight -- even though his book argues that regulation makes things worse by adding to complexity.
Mr. Bookstaber's son David, one of two sons who work with him at FrontPoint, says his father is "not a real evangelizer ... he's more of an academic" who loves to deconstruct complex situations. Asked how his father works in an industry about which he has so much foreboding, David says, "He won't let us develop systems or theories that are too complex."
I suppose the bulls will dismiss Mr. Bookstaber's comments as more "fear mongering," right? Related: • Things • Can • Go • Wrong 10. British Medical Journal - Reporting and preventing medical mishaps: lessons from non-medical near miss reporting systems -
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Europe re-walks nuclear energy path with Finland reactor May 13th, 2007 Nuclear Plant in Finland ? blueness of the Baltic Sea and verdant forests, Olkiluoto is home to two of Finland s four nuclear power ? of one of the most sophisticated nuclear plants in Nordic Europe, one feels privileged to have a day
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To take charge of the party and offered. China aims to develop its own nuclear power technology based on AP. The NSWMA says there are close to three million tyres at the landfills across the island
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July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more
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# posted by paola2000 : 3:33 PM Friday, February 09, ? management in Iran s nuclear sector, to improve nuclear power technology, to establish a nuclear technology center and to provide some specific types of industrial technology. Projects that were allowed
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A recent report on Zee News has stated that Bangladesh has asked for India?s help in setting up a 600MW nuclear reactor in its quest to generate 1500 ? proliferation?. Then, there is the general Western mistrust of nuclear power in the hands of a muslim country ? MW of nuclear energy to meet the current shortfall. (the report may be found at http
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?more Related: • British • Medical • Journal • Reporting • and • preventing • medical • mishaps • lessons • from • nonmedical • near • miss • reporting • systems • 11. China Aims to Develop Its Own Nuclear Power Technology Based On AP1000 - Resource Investor
Resource Investor, VA - Apr 25, 2007Within the year, China had begun to invite interested parties to bid for contracts that would introduce third generation nuclear power technology into the ?
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CCTV
Chinese vice premier calls for development of new nuclear power ?CCTV, China - May 16, 2007BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) " China should further develop the new generation nuclear power technology to ensure the sustainable development of the economy, ?Chinese vice premier calls for development of new nuclear power ? People?s Daily Onlineall 2 news articles
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August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more
Zee News
China mulling plan to patent its own nuclear power plantsZee News, India - Apr 25, 2007Chinese experts will study current third-generation nuclear power technology and develop its own reactor by 2017, vice director of the systems engineering ?
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August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
More Market Players Needed if China Is to Meet Nuclear Power TargetResource Investor, VA - 6 hours ago? awarded a $5.3 billion contract to US-based Westinghouse over the importation and installation of its third generation AP1000 nuclear power technology. ?
?more Related: • China • Aims • to • Develop • Its • Own • Nuclear • Power • Technology • Based • On • AP1000 • Resource • Investor 12. Standard Handbook of Powerplant Engineering
Amazon Price: $98.75I teach power plant technology in an applied sciences college of a large urban university. One of the ongoing challenges of teaching is finding a comprehensive textbook. Although not perfect as a textbook this is a great reference for developing student?s foundation in power plant technology ?more
But, while embracing new, renewable forms of power generation, it would be unwise to overlook changes in nuclear power technology. The state produces no coal on its own, which is good because coal is a losing proposition (so-called ? ?more
Amazon Price: $89.95The most important decisions that society will ever make will be made in the next 20 years. How do we replace the burning of fossil fuels that has been the main driver for civilization?s enormous progress of the last century? This no nonsense book examines all of the foreseeable energy resources that will be available and with impeccable logic, facts, good old common sense and detailed engineering analysis Eerkens peals away the myths and half truths that special interest groups hawk to push their own agendas. It is clear that we must heed Eerkens warning, it is imperative that we act responsibly to protect the future for our children. ?more
A framework agreement has been signed between Westinghouse with its partner Shaw and China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company to supply four AP1000 third-generation nuclear power reactors. The sites specified for the 1100 MWe ? ?more
China should further develop the new generation nuclear power technology to ensure the sustainable development of the economy, Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said on Tuesday. Zeng made the remarks when inspecting the 10MW ? ?more
Amazon Price: $17.13Stephen Johnson?s ?Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion? is a highly detailed account of the last months of the US Navy nuclear submarine, lost in the Atlantic off the Azores on May 22, 1968, and of the various official investigations aimed at uncovering the reasons for that loss. Johnson follows the official chronology established by the Navy (in contrast to Ed Offley in ?Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon, The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion?) but reaches a different conclusion as to the underlying cause of the disaster (the Navy inquiries in general favored a torpedo accident of some kind, but Johnson believes some other equipment failure - perhaps a battery explosion or maybe merely a trash disposal unit that failed to seal properly - that led to an uncontrolled descent to a depth where the great pressure crushed the hull). The evidence for and against each proposed cause is examined in detail. All in all, an engrossing and well-written book. ?more
Nuclear Power Technology has come a long way and it does provide about 17 percent of the world?s electricity. But with more and more technology forming everyday, that number will likely increase. However, nuclear power politics do come ? ?more
Lantos, a California Democrat who backed legislation to allow exports of nuclear-power technology to India, is also dissatisfied with the Indian government?s discussions with Iran on a gas pipeline. Lantos said he supports Bush ? ?more
It is a more advanced version of the latest French and German N4 and Konvoi power plant units, and represents state-of-the-art nuclear power technology, he said. Olkiluoto has also been determined to become the site of disposal of ? ?more Related: • Standard • Handbook • of • Powerplant • Engineering 13. Standard Handbook of Powerplant Engineering
Amazon Price: $98.75I teach power plant technology in an applied sciences college of a large urban university. One of the ongoing challenges of teaching is finding a comprehensive textbook. Although not perfect as a textbook this is a great reference for developing student?s foundation in power plant technology ?more
Amazon Price: $184.99This book presents the latest data on power plants and provides much needed formulas and rules of thumb for sizing equipment based on plant size and arrangement. The book has many examples of equipment and has a good section although somewhat out of date on permitting of power plants. I would recommend it for any power plant engineer especially those just entering the power generation industry. ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
Amazon Price: $18.94This is a solid, well-researched book that presents Heisenberg in a fair light, for once.
One of the problems with reader/reviewer bias is that many people are pre-disposed to finding fault with any suggestions that conflict with what they want to hear or believe. Regarding the Farm Hall recordings, some people have latched onto the idea that Heisenberg and others knew of the build up of the Holocaust, but continued to work for the Bomb project.
What they are usually referring to is a section in which Heisenberg talked about five Jewish scientists, whom he obviously cared about, who had been arrested and later killed; and even though Heisenberg was talking openly about putting out feelers to see if they could be helped or saved (which alone could have put him at great risk), this somehow translates into guilt in some people?s eyes.
As for him ?not co-operating with Hitler?? nobody in their right mind could possibly think that was an option. As I believe the book shows, Heisenberg did the next best thing, which was to work half-heartedly on the German Bomb. He basically killed it in 1942.
The fact that Heisenberg could come up with the correct basic bomb structure - path and critical mass analysis, in very short order almost certainly means that he could have brainstormed the right methodology years earlier if the German scientists had been 100% committed to producing a bomb for Hitler. If they had been Nazis.
To me, this fine book is one more step in the right direction, in underscoring the very fact that not all Germans were Nazis.
Hitler may have been a charismatic leader, but he made so many catastrophic errors, such as the insane decision to declare war on the USA in the hope that the Japanese would help him against the Russians - they never lifted a finger - that it is as true to say that Hitler lost the War as to say that the Allies won it.
A fair and highly recommended book. ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more Related: • Standard • Handbook • of • Powerplant • Engineering 14. Indian Energy: A Delicate Balancing Act ... the ambit of economic sanctions under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, by which foreign companies making ... $20 million in one year in Iran's energy sector would be blacklisted. The political undertones ... any concession to India in accessing international nuclear-power technology to be linked to breaking ties Related: • Indian • Energy • A • Delicate • Balancing • Act 15. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 16. Europe re-walks nuclear energy path with Finland reactor (With Images) - Indian Muslims
Indian Muslims, CA - May 13, 2007It is a more advanced version of the latest French and German N4 and Konvoi power plant units, and represents state-of-the-art nuclear power technology," he ?
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CCTV
Chinese vice premier calls for development of new nuclear power ?CCTV, China - 15 hours agoBEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) " China should further develop the new generation nuclear power technology to ensure the sustainable development of the economy, ?Chinese vice premier calls for development of new nuclear power ? People?s Daily Onlineall 5 news articles
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China Approves Largest Nuclear Power PlantBritish Industry, UK - May 14, 2007? Westinghouse Electric Company according to framework agreements signed between the US company and China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation. ?
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NTPC wants to produce nuclear powerNDTV.com, India - May 10, 2007For the expertise in nuclear power technology NTPC in its approach paper has proposed a tie-up with BARC and Nuclear power corporation of India (NPCIL). ?
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Deal to see Indian defense spending soarAsia Times Online, Hong Kong - 19 hours ago? the deal that will allow India to access international nuclear-power technology, to enable the US to garner several defense contracts with India. ?
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Contract signed on import of third generation nuclear power technologyInterfax.cn (subscription), China - 22 hours agoINTERFAX-CHINA - Chinese companies State Nuclear Power Technology, Sanmen Nuclear Power and Shandong Nuclear Power signed a memorandum of understanding with ?
?more Related: • Europe • rewalks • nuclear • energy • path • with • Finland • reactor • With • Images • Indian • Muslims 17. Business Wire - Westinghouse / Shaw Consortium Selected for China Nuclear New Build Program
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
A recent report on Zee News has stated that Bangladesh has asked for India?s help in setting up a 600MW nuclear reactor in its quest to generate 1500 ? proliferation?. Then, there is the general Western mistrust of nuclear power in the hands of a muslim country ? MW of nuclear energy to meet the current shortfall. (the report may be found at http
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March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more
suriname nuclear plantSuriname?s proposed construction of a nuclear power facility, ? challenge in the near future. A ground-breaking ceremony for the smelter and power plant is scheduled ? the years, consistently called on the governments guilty of shipping nuclear waste across the Caribbean
Posted in Caricomblog.com - news, info and features related to? ( 30 links from 7 sites) by heatray
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The Conspirators? Hierachy: The story of the Committee 300 This URL contains the whole artical READ! . ? the OLYMPIANS (they truly believe they are equal in power and stature to the legendary gods of Olympus
Posted in Slavery in the U.S.A ( 0 links from 0 sites)
?more Related: • Business • Wire • Westinghouse • Shaw • Consortium • Selected • for • China • Nuclear • New • Build • Program 18. The Conspirators? Hierachy: The New World Orders?
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China is planning to develop its own patented technology for third generation nuclear power generating plants which could be available before the end of the next decade, said an official with the country?s atomic energy authority Wednesday. ?more
Deal to see Indian defense spending soarAsia Times Online, Hong Kong - 18 hours ago? the deal that will allow India to access international nuclear-power technology, to enable the US to garner several defense contracts with India. ?
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For many people, the immediate thought is nuclear warfare ? to convince the general population about how much safer and cleaner the nuclear power technology ? of publicly traded nuclear power companies. It s no secret that about 20 percent of the United States
Posted in Market Matador - The Latest Financial Resource on the? ( 74 links from 45 sites)
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China is looking to fuel its nuclear power industry with largely self-developed technology by 2020 as it gradually reduces its reliance on imported technology, a senior academic of the nation?s top science institute said Monday. ?more
Contract signed on import of third generation nuclear power technologyInterfax.cn (subscription), China - 21 hours agoINTERFAX-CHINA - Chinese companies State Nuclear Power Technology, Sanmen Nuclear Power and Shandong Nuclear Power signed a memorandum of understanding with ?
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suriname nuclear plantSuriname?s proposed construction of a nuclear power facility, ? challenge in the near future. A ground-breaking ceremony for the smelter and power plant is scheduled ? the years, consistently called on the governments guilty of shipping nuclear waste across the Caribbean
Posted in Caricomblog.com - news, info and features related to? ( 30 links from 7 sites) by heatray
?more Related: • The • Conspirators • Hierachy • The • New • World • Orders 19. Palisades security questioned From "Kalamazoo Gazette": A nuclear-power watchdog group is calling on Congress to investigate what it calls a major security breach at Palisades Nuclear Plant detailed in an article in Esquire magazine Related: • Palisades • security • questioned 20. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 21. Vedanta Plans Move into Nuclear Power Vedanta Resources' executive chairman said in addition to producing coal-fired power, the metals-and-mining company would like to expand into nuclear-power production. Related: • Vedanta • Plans • Move • into • Nuclear • Power 22. Vedanta Plans Move into Nuclear Power Vedanta Resources' executive chairman said in addition to producing coal-fired power, the metals-and-mining company would like to expand into nuclear-power production.
Related: • Vedanta • Plans • Move • into • Nuclear • Power 23. NTPC wants to produce nuclear power - NDTV.com
NDTV.com, India - May 10, 2007For the expertise in nuclear power technology NTPC in its approach paper has proposed a tie-up with BARC and Nuclear power corporation of India (NPCIL). ?
?more
China Approves Largest Nuclear Power PlantBritish Industry, UK - May 14, 2007? Westinghouse Electric Company according to framework agreements signed between the US company and China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation. ?
?more
Deal to see Indian defense spending soarAsia Times Online, Hong Kong - 3 hours ago? the deal that will allow India to access international nuclear-power technology, to enable the US to garner several defense contracts with India. ?
?more
Amazon Price: $15.00In Megawatts and Megatons, Garwin and Charpak collaborated on an excellent description of nuclear power and weapons, starting with discussions of nuclear physics and energy, and ending with a narrative of post WWII international relations, centered upon arms control and prevention of use of nuclear weapons.
The authors have strong opinions on the proper use of nuclear energy and the means to reduce dependence on nuclear weapons, as one would imagine from two scientific practitioners. As such, they have presented a well-developed argument that aims to convince the reader that the U.S. should modify its energy and nuclear weapons policies to reduce the threats of global warming and nuclear contamination as well as nuclear conflict and terrorism.
Unfortunately for the layman, the technical nature of the first portion of the book may make difficult reading for the reader without a background in science or engineering, although the authors do make an effort to describe the concepts so that the non-expert may understand.
I recommend this book for anyone with an interest in the technical description of nuclear power and weapons, nuclear policy, and recommendations new policy directions. ?more
Amazon Price: $18.94This is a solid, well-researched book that presents Heisenberg in a fair light, for once.
One of the problems with reader/reviewer bias is that many people are pre-disposed to finding fault with any suggestions that conflict with what they want to hear or believe. Regarding the Farm Hall recordings, some people have latched onto the idea that Heisenberg and others knew of the build up of the Holocaust, but continued to work for the Bomb project.
What they are usually referring to is a section in which Heisenberg talked about five Jewish scientists, whom he obviously cared about, who had been arrested and later killed; and even though Heisenberg was talking openly about putting out feelers to see if they could be helped or saved (which alone could have put him at great risk), this somehow translates into guilt in some people?s eyes.
As for him ?not co-operating with Hitler?? nobody in their right mind could possibly think that was an option. As I believe the book shows, Heisenberg did the next best thing, which was to work half-heartedly on the German Bomb. He basically killed it in 1942.
The fact that Heisenberg could come up with the correct basic bomb structure - path and critical mass analysis, in very short order almost certainly means that he could have brainstormed the right methodology years earlier if the German scientists had been 100% committed to producing a bomb for Hitler. If they had been Nazis.
To me, this fine book is one more step in the right direction, in underscoring the very fact that not all Germans were Nazis.
Hitler may have been a charismatic leader, but he made so many catastrophic errors, such as the insane decision to declare war on the USA in the hope that the Japanese would help him against the Russians - they never lifted a finger - that it is as true to say that Hitler lost the War as to say that the Allies won it.
A fair and highly recommended book. ?more
China plans to patent its own nuclear power plantsChina Daily, China - Apr 25, 2007Under a framework agreement with US-based Westinghouse signed in December, 2006, China will acquire advance nuclear power technology in exchange for ?
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Amazon Price: $132.05Excellent reference text for nuclear engineering undergrads.
Book not limited to neutronics coverage, goes a bit into radiation protection, and other essential topics that are a must read for any serious reader. ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45NEN is filled with tons of facts, yet is a quick read and a very good primer on the subject of nuclear energy. For those who are concerned about carbon emissions, nuclear energy is the ONLY economically viable alternative to petroleum for electricity generation. Anyone who thinks solar and wind can fill this void is simply wrong. It takes hundreds of windmills to produce the same power as a single nuclear or coal plant. Solar cells are approximately 20% efficient, and like wind farms, require vast tracts of land. Additionally, both are completely dependent on weather conditions. Sheryl Crow?s vacuous endorsement of these ?alternatives? on the Bill Maher show once again demonstrates the majority?s poverty of understanding of these basic facts. This is not surprising; nuclear energy has received a bad rap from environmentalists for decades. Issues with waste and proliferation are easily solvable with prudent policies. The real problem is fear: an intense, quivering fear cultivated by the environmental movement that leaves us incapable of dealing with our energy problems in an intelligent manner.
Although I am not a global warming catastrophist, I believe it is prudent to limit what we pump into the atmosphere. Sure, driving hybrid cars helps a little, but remember that all of our automobiles combined emit less than half of the carbon produced by our power plants. The greatest single strategy to limit carbon emissions is producing electricity with nuclear power. Environmentalists need to abandon their religious dogma and accept this fact; otherwise, they relinquish their right to shrill hectoring about global warming.
Here is what I would propose as a simple roadmap to lower CO2 emissions:
1) Gradually phase out all coal/gas/oil power plants and replace with nuclear plants. 2) Continue to develop rapid-recharge high-capacity lithium ion battery technology for automobiles. 3) Investigate other energy storage alternatives like ultracapacitors, which may be practical in the near future. 4) Reform and streamline industrial processes to reduce emissions. 5) Investigate prudent sources of ethanol (no corn, please) and biodiesel fuels. 6) Continue nuclear fusion research. ?more
Amazon Price: $89.95The most important decisions that society will ever make will be made in the next 20 years. How do we replace the burning of fossil fuels that has been the main driver for civilization?s enormous progress of the last century? This no nonsense book examines all of the foreseeable energy resources that will be available and with impeccable logic, facts, good old common sense and detailed engineering analysis Eerkens peals away the myths and half truths that special interest groups hawk to push their own agendas. It is clear that we must heed Eerkens warning, it is imperative that we act responsibly to protect the future for our children. ?more Related: • NTPC • wants • to • produce • nuclear • power • NDTVcom 24. Science News - Chinese nuclear pact signed - U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
August 1, 2001 " Among the various traditional ?grands programmes? typical of the French public intervention in high-tech industries, the nuclear programme is often considered ? ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more Related: • Science • News • Chinese • nuclear • pact • signed • US • exports • of • nuclearpower • technology • to • China 25. South Asian News - Sensors may cure contentious boxing judging
Sensors may cure contentious boxing judgingRaw Story - Named the Automated Boxing Scoring System (ABSS), the equipment was developed by AIS and CSIRO researchers, while an Indian manufacturer inserted sensors inside gloves. Wu Ching-Kuo, the new president of the Amateur Boxing International Association
Food calendarDetroit Free Press - Sunetra Humbad: Cookbook author and cooking instructor presents four-part beginners Indian cooking class in her home. Choose Raw Food Meal: With Michael Dwyer. 7-8:30 p.m. May 24. Pasta Italiano: With Francesca Giarraffa. 7-9 p.m. May 30.
TheCancerBlog.com blogOrlando Sentinel - This doll depicted is the Caucasian doll but also available is an an African American, Asian, Hispanic and American Indian doll While I?m big on raw and natural nutrition as a way to help prevent cancer, the variables that bring it into our lives are
Four dead in clashes in India?s Assam stateRaw Story - wounded in clashes between two groups in India?s north-eastern state of Assam over a highway blockade to protest the killing of a man by the Indian Army in a counter-insurgency operation, a news report said Monday. State officials told the IANS news
The past in the present: India, Pakistan and history Open Democracy - theory developed, among others, by Jinnah, the leader of the Pakistan Movement held that there lived in the Indian absolute power, might be better placed to take the first tentative steps to true devolution in Pakistan but he is too raw a
Of collagen and kibbehEgypt Today - Raw fish, anyone? One would never have thought Asian cuisine would take off in such a big way here in Cairo, but it s Beige and rusty orange color schemes and comfortable seating set off by Indian friezes and wall hangings are elegant but
Danish brewer Carlsberg to expand in IndiaRaw Story - the local Indian group not to disclose the value of the deal. The brewery would also offer several of the Carlsberg group?s current brands, he added. In addition, Carlsberg is building a brewery in the state of Rajasthan, south-west of New Delhi that was
Szechuan Alligator, White-Chocolate Pork: Lincoln Center Dining Bloomberg - includes a slab of homemade pate served with gherkins and cubes of aspic ($7.50), snails in garlic butter ($9.50) and raw Upper West Side Indian ?It smells like home,? said my companion as we walked into Sapphire, a spacious room filled
Real Kitchen Nightmares - London Nutritionists Challenge British Chefs Onlypunjab.com - Diners looking for meat free options on restaurant menus are still often getting a raw deal on quality, choice and value unless you are madly in love with the white crumbly stuff perhaps the best option is to head for the reliability of the Indian
Arvind Mills, ICICI Bank, Jet Airways, State Bank: India?s Equity Stockhouse Canada - Overseas investors bought a net 1.92 billion rupees ($45.4 million) worth of Indian shares on May 10, according to the latest India?s biggest motorcycle maker reported a third straight drop in net income as higher raw material prices and sales
East India Company againDaily Pioneer - The country?s advantage of rich iron ore reserves must not be frittered away by positioning of this country as a raw Indian iron ore export has been growing at over 70 per cent for the last few years. In 2005-06, the production of iron ore was
Online Press Release PRWeb - The Horror of Writing Raw Dog Screaming Press presents The Horror of Writing. This event takes place at the Barnes & Noble in Annapolis, Maryland, on Thursday October 14th. Horror authors and editors such as Douglas Winter will be on hand to offer a
Delaware?s shipwrecksDelaware Online - in 1785, its captain lost navigational bearing, and the Faithful Steward ran aground on the shoals just north of the Indian one time, Lewes, New Castle and Wilmington, when America " until the country began its own manufacturing " would send raw
Financial adviser could be the next Food Network starCedar Creek Pilot - Many of his dishes have Italian underpinnings, although Grella said he?s trying to branch out into Asian and Indian cuisines. Once, at a Boston venue, he dined on raw oysters over lemon curd. That inspired him to create his own seared scallops over
How the World WorksSalon - for Brazilian exports of oranges and orange juice to Florida, where big-time producers like Tropicana are hungry for raw Areva, a state-owned French nuclear-power company, and Suzlon, an Indian wind-power company, are in a takeover battle for
Lucknow, May 14 Tribune - IB, RAW informed Thiruvananthapuram, May 14 Taking a serious note of the anonymous threat call from Saudi Arabia on the life Lalu too has been very eager to capitalise upon Indian Railways in his bid to refurbish his image as a development-oriented
Curtains go up as Cannes film festival turns 60Express India - Cannes, May 16: Cannes Film Festival opens on Wednesday with a mix of arthouse movie making and raw star power fitting for 2007: Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world.
WORLD NOTESPeoples Weekly World - governments went ahead May 2 with negotiations over the exchange of natural resource products from the North for raw With the anticipated incorporation of other U.S., Australian and Indian unions, leaders project an eventual Unite membership
The Flawed Metaphor of the Spellings SummitInside Higher Ed - High school students are your raw material, as Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri told us. We need more productive education does things wrong, and a crisis is almost upon us, best symbolized by that coming tsunami of Chinese and Indian Related: • South • Asian • News • Sensors • may • cure • contentious • boxing • judging 26. National Review - President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45Kicking The Carbon Habit: Global Warming And The Case Of Renewable And Nuclear Energy doesn?t adopt the usual focus on cutting oil consumption: instead it focuses on reducing coal use. Coal-fired plants produce over half of the electricity in the US, accounting for some 40 percent of the country?s greenhouse gasses. Sweet doesn?t advocate a singular path of change another unusual feature but proposes a mix of environmentally sound technologies from wind power to nuclear reactors. Chapters survey not just techniques but political pros and cons, social effects, and environmental impact. ?more
Amazon Price: $17.13Stephen Johnson?s ?Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion? is a highly detailed account of the last months of the US Navy nuclear submarine, lost in the Atlantic off the Azores on May 22, 1968, and of the various official investigations aimed at uncovering the reasons for that loss. Johnson follows the official chronology established by the Navy (in contrast to Ed Offley in ?Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon, The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion?) but reaches a different conclusion as to the underlying cause of the disaster (the Navy inquiries in general favored a torpedo accident of some kind, but Johnson believes some other equipment failure - perhaps a battery explosion or maybe merely a trash disposal unit that failed to seal properly - that led to an uncontrolled descent to a depth where the great pressure crushed the hull). The evidence for and against each proposed cause is examined in detail. All in all, an engrossing and well-written book. ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more
August 1, 2001 " Among the various traditional ?grands programmes? typical of the French public intervention in high-tech industries, the nuclear programme is often considered ? ?more
July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more Related: • National • Review • President • George • W • Bush • and • Indian • prime • minister • Manmohan • Singh • met • at • the • White • House • in • a • historic 27. Science News - Chinese nuclear pact signed - U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
China and the United States on Saturday signed a memorandum of understanding for Westinghouse Electric Co. to provide technology for four nuclear power units to be built in China?. ?more
China is planning to develop its own patented technology for third generation nuclear power generating plants which could be available before the end of the next decade, said an official with the country?s atomic energy authority Wednesday. ?more
TOKYO - Executives from some 100 Japanese companies will gather in Tokyo this week with counterparts from about 50 Chinese firms, seeking energy saving, clean coal and nuclear power technologies and hoping to clinch future deals?. ?more
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
August 1, 2001 " Among the various traditional ?grands programmes? typical of the French public intervention in high-tech industries, the nuclear programme is often considered ? ?more Related: • Science • News • Chinese • nuclear • pact • signed • US • exports • of • nuclearpower • technology • to • China 28. Weekly Standard, The - The India syndrome: U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy melts down
August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more Related: • Weekly • Standard • The • The • India • syndrome • US • nuclear • nonproliferation • policy • melts • down 29. Insight on the News - symposium - pros and cons of nuclear power - Statistical Data Included
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
Westinghouse, US engineering and construction services contractor Shaw Group Inc. - which holds a 20 percent stake in Westinghouse - and China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Co. signed a companion agreement to follow through with ? ?more
The head of China?s Atomic Energy Authority says the country aims to develop domestic nuclear power technologies through the transfer and refinement of technology from overseas?. ?more Related: • Insight • on • the • News • symposium • pros • and • cons • of • nuclear • power • Statistical • Data • Included 30. Science News - Micromachine runs on nuclear power - Technology - Brief Article
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
Conditions Becoming Favorable For US Nuclear Power PlantsMondaq News Alerts (subcription), UK - May 3, 2007? fuels by building coal, oil, gas and other fossil fuel powerplants and avoid the risks and negative publicity associated with nuclear power technology. ?
?more Related: • Science • News • Micromachine • runs • on • nuclear • power • Technology • Brief • Article 31. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 32. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 33. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 34. Dismal presidency plunges U.S. into dark Arctic night ... we've known it isn't security's greatest challenge. Nuclear proliferation and the possibility of a suitcase ... bomb exploding in a major city is. Libya's abandoning of its nuclear program aside, not ... all are either planning for or considering nuclear-power capabilities. Of course they all say it's Related: • Dismal • presidency • plunges • US • into • dark • Arctic • night 35. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 36. Business Wire - Westinghouse / Shaw Consortium Selected for China Nuclear New Build Program
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more Related: • Business • Wire • Westinghouse • Shaw • Consortium • Selected • for • China • Nuclear • New • Build • Program 37. China plans to patent its own nuclear power plants (China Economic Net)
China is planning to develop its own patented technology for third generation nuclear power generating plants which could be available before the end of the next decade, said an official with the country?s atomic energy authority Wednesday. ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more Related: • China • plans • to • patent • its • own • nuclear • power • plants • China • Economic • Net 38. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 39. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 40. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 41. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 42. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 43. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 44. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 45. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 46. Megawatts and Megatons: The Future of Nuclear Power and
Amazon Price: $15.00In Megawatts and Megatons, Garwin and Charpak collaborated on an excellent description of nuclear power and weapons, starting with discussions of nuclear physics and energy, and ending with a narrative of post WWII international relations, centered upon arms control and prevention of use of nuclear weapons.
The authors have strong opinions on the proper use of nuclear energy and the means to reduce dependence on nuclear weapons, as one would imagine from two scientific practitioners. As such, they have presented a well-developed argument that aims to convince the reader that the U.S. should modify its energy and nuclear weapons policies to reduce the threats of global warming and nuclear contamination as well as nuclear conflict and terrorism.
Unfortunately for the layman, the technical nature of the first portion of the book may make difficult reading for the reader without a background in science or engineering, although the authors do make an effort to describe the concepts so that the non-expert may understand.
I recommend this book for anyone with an interest in the technical description of nuclear power and weapons, nuclear policy, and recommendations new policy directions. ?more
Amazon Price: $184.99This book presents the latest data on power plants and provides much needed formulas and rules of thumb for sizing equipment based on plant size and arrangement. The book has many examples of equipment and has a good section although somewhat out of date on permitting of power plants. I would recommend it for any power plant engineer especially those just entering the power generation industry. ?more
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
Amazon Price: $18.94This is a solid, well-researched book that presents Heisenberg in a fair light, for once.
One of the problems with reader/reviewer bias is that many people are pre-disposed to finding fault with any suggestions that conflict with what they want to hear or believe. Regarding the Farm Hall recordings, some people have latched onto the idea that Heisenberg and others knew of the build up of the Holocaust, but continued to work for the Bomb project.
What they are usually referring to is a section in which Heisenberg talked about five Jewish scientists, whom he obviously cared about, who had been arrested and later killed; and even though Heisenberg was talking openly about putting out feelers to see if they could be helped or saved (which alone could have put him at great risk), this somehow translates into guilt in some people?s eyes.
As for him ?not co-operating with Hitler?? nobody in their right mind could possibly think that was an option. As I believe the book shows, Heisenberg did the next best thing, which was to work half-heartedly on the German Bomb. He basically killed it in 1942.
The fact that Heisenberg could come up with the correct basic bomb structure - path and critical mass analysis, in very short order almost certainly means that he could have brainstormed the right methodology years earlier if the German scientists had been 100% committed to producing a bomb for Hitler. If they had been Nazis.
To me, this fine book is one more step in the right direction, in underscoring the very fact that not all Germans were Nazis.
Hitler may have been a charismatic leader, but he made so many catastrophic errors, such as the insane decision to declare war on the USA in the hope that the Japanese would help him against the Russians - they never lifted a finger - that it is as true to say that Hitler lost the War as to say that the Allies won it.
A fair and highly recommended book. ?more
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more
Amazon Price: $98.75I teach power plant technology in an applied sciences college of a large urban university. One of the ongoing challenges of teaching is finding a comprehensive textbook. Although not perfect as a textbook this is a great reference for developing student?s foundation in power plant technology ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45NEN is filled with tons of facts, yet is a quick read and a very good primer on the subject of nuclear energy. For those who are concerned about carbon emissions, nuclear energy is the ONLY economically viable alternative to petroleum for electricity generation. Anyone who thinks solar and wind can fill this void is simply wrong. It takes hundreds of windmills to produce the same power as a single nuclear or coal plant. Solar cells are approximately 20% efficient, and like wind farms, require vast tracts of land. Additionally, both are completely dependent on weather conditions. Sheryl Crow?s vacuous endorsement of these ?alternatives? on the Bill Maher show once again demonstrates the majority?s poverty of understanding of these basic facts. This is not surprising; nuclear energy has received a bad rap from environmentalists for decades. Issues with waste and proliferation are easily solvable with prudent policies. The real problem is fear: an intense, quivering fear cultivated by the environmental movement that leaves us incapable of dealing with our energy problems in an intelligent manner.
Although I am not a global warming catastrophist, I believe it is prudent to limit what we pump into the atmosphere. Sure, driving hybrid cars helps a little, but remember that all of our automobiles combined emit less than half of the carbon produced by our power plants. The greatest single strategy to limit carbon emissions is producing electricity with nuclear power. Environmentalists need to abandon their religious dogma and accept this fact; otherwise, they relinquish their right to shrill hectoring about global warming.
Here is what I would propose as a simple roadmap to lower CO2 emissions:
1) Gradually phase out all coal/gas/oil power plants and replace with nuclear plants. 2) Continue to develop rapid-recharge high-capacity lithium ion battery technology for automobiles. 3) Investigate other energy storage alternatives like ultracapacitors, which may be practical in the near future. 4) Reform and streamline industrial processes to reduce emissions. 5) Investigate prudent sources of ethanol (no corn, please) and biodiesel fuels. 6) Continue nuclear fusion research. ?more
August 1, 2001 " Among the various traditional ?grands programmes? typical of the French public intervention in high-tech industries, the nuclear programme is often considered ? ?more Related: • Megawatts • and • Megatons • The • Future • of • Nuclear • Power • and 47. Consortium to provide nuclear quartet
Company to provide four AP1000 nuclear power plants in China. ?more
Lantos, a California Democrat who backed legislation to allow exports of nuclear-power technology to India, is also dissatisfied with the Indian government?s discussions with Iran on a gas pipeline. Lantos said he supports Bush ? ?more
The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) has selected the Westinghouse/Shaw Consortium and Westinghouse?s AP1000 passive Generation III ? ?more
Last night, National Public Radio?s Living on Earth show included a 6-minute segment on the inclusion of incentives for constructions of advanced nuclear power technology as one of the options to reduce greenhouse gases in the new ? ?more
? Iranian developments that should have lessened the tensions, including the diminishing domestic popularity of the provocative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Tehran s apparent technical failures in nuclear power technology. ? ?more
Beijing, March 1 (Xinhua) China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Co. has selected Westinghouse Electric Co. of the US to provide technology for four nuclear power generating units to be built in China, according to a framework contract ? ?more Related: • Consortium • to • provide • nuclear • quartet 48. British Medical Journal - Reporting and preventing medical mishaps: lessons from non-medical near miss reporting systems -
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Amazon Price: $132.05Excellent reference text for nuclear engineering undergrads.
Book not limited to neutronics coverage, goes a bit into radiation protection, and other essential topics that are a must read for any serious reader. ?more Related: • British • Medical • Journal • Reporting • and • preventing • medical • mishaps • lessons • from • nonmedical • near • miss • reporting • systems • 49. Re: Finishing my degree?
from Coastline Community College toward the end of my enlistment in 2002, and then transfered all of those credits over to a Big Ten school when my enlistment ended (a? ?more
People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) has selected the Westinghouse/Shaw Consortium and Westinghouse?s AP1000 passive Generation III technology as the basis for four new nuclear power plants to be ? ?more
President George W. Bush last month signed a bill exempting India from US nuclear nonproliferation laws to enable the United States to sell nuclear power technology to India. On signing the bill into law, Bush declared that some of the ? ?more
China and the United States on Saturday signed a memorandum of understanding for Westinghouse Electric Co. to provide technology for four nuclear power units to be built in China. ?more
In response to the article, China Needs to Develop Its Own Nuclear Power Technology. ? ?more
Westinghouse, US engineering and construction services contractor Shaw Group Inc. which holds a 20 percent stake in Westinghouse and China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Co. signed a companion agreement to follow through with ? ?more
We can affect climate change by taxing oil more and laxing regulations on trade of nuclear-power technology and coal-gasification technology to highly polluting countries such as China and India. But then again, if this is going to be ? ?more
The IAEA publishes numerous technical documents many of which can be downloaded as pdf files. IAEA Light Water Cooled Reactor Project Nuclear Power Technology Development Section -? ?more Related: • Re • Finishing • my • degree 50. Looking at the VHTR
, PBMR, Electricity, Westinghouse, Hydrogen, DOE. ?more
16 memorandum between the US Dept. of Energy and the People?s Republic of China for the sale of four Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized-water reactors to China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Co. for an undisclosed sum. ?more
, 28 (SNPTC) ? ?more
For countries which has nuclear power technology, it would be ideal to get Australia to agree to ?rent? nuclear fuel - ie Australia becomes the world?s nuclear waste dump. But I don?t buy into this argument because we have better ? ?more
During the 1990s, the Argentine government had sold nuclear power technology to the Iranians, however, the Bush Administration convinced them not to ship the items and the deal was terminated. The Iranians were upset, extremely upset. ? ?more
The canceled programs include efforts to improve human resources management in Iran s nuclear sector, to improve nuclear power technology, to establish a nuclear technology center and to provide some specific types of industrial ? ?more
Lantos, a California Democrat who backed legislation to allow exports of nuclear-power technology to India, is also dissatisfied with the Indian government s discussions with Iran on a gas pipeline. Lantos said he supports Bush ? ?more
After almost two years of negotiations and lobbying, the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) eventually selected the Westinghouse/ Shaw Consortium and Westingho. read more. ?more Related: • Looking • at • the • VHTR 51. Introduction to Nuclear Engineering (3rd Edition)
Amazon Price: $132.05Excellent reference text for nuclear engineering undergrads.
Book not limited to neutronics coverage, goes a bit into radiation protection, and other essential topics that are a must read for any serious reader. ?more
Indian energy: A delicate balancing actAsia Times Online, Hong Kong - 3 hours agoIt is apparent that elements of the political establishment in the US want any concession to India in accessing international nuclear-power technology to be ?
?more
Amazon Price: $9.95Excellent analysis! This book is especially important in today?s environment when we are trying to reduce our dependency on oil. ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45Kicking The Carbon Habit: Global Warming And The Case Of Renewable And Nuclear Energy doesn?t adopt the usual focus on cutting oil consumption: instead it focuses on reducing coal use. Coal-fired plants produce over half of the electricity in the US, accounting for some 40 percent of the country?s greenhouse gasses. Sweet doesn?t advocate a singular path of change another unusual feature but proposes a mix of environmentally sound technologies from wind power to nuclear reactors. Chapters survey not just techniques but political pros and cons, social effects, and environmental impact. ?more
Conditions Becoming Favorable For US Nuclear Power PlantsMondaq News Alerts (subcription), UK - May 3, 2007? fuels by building coal, oil, gas and other fossil fuel powerplants and avoid the risks and negative publicity associated with nuclear power technology. ?
?more
France s ThatcherFrontPage magazine.com, CA - May 9, 2007Remember that France has some of the most advanced nuclear power technology in the world, and wants to perfect and export 4 th generation reactors to ?
?more
China to import 3-G nuclear tech from USCCTV, China - Apr 24, 2007China will import third generation nuclear power technology from the United States. The plan was announced at an international exhibition on nuclear power ?
?more
Zee News
China mulling plan to patent its own nuclear power plantsZee News, India - Apr 25, 2007Chinese experts will study current third-generation nuclear power technology and develop its own reactor by 2017, vice director of the systems engineering ?
?more
Amazon Price: $18.45NEN is filled with tons of facts, yet is a quick read and a very good primer on the subject of nuclear energy. For those who are concerned about carbon emissions, nuclear energy is the ONLY economically viable alternative to petroleum for electricity generation. Anyone who thinks solar and wind can fill this void is simply wrong. It takes hundreds of windmills to produce the same power as a single nuclear or coal plant. Solar cells are approximately 20% efficient, and like wind farms, require vast tracts of land. Additionally, both are completely dependent on weather conditions. Sheryl Crow?s vacuous endorsement of these ?alternatives? on the Bill Maher show once again demonstrates the majority?s poverty of understanding of these basic facts. This is not surprising; nuclear energy has received a bad rap from environmentalists for decades. Issues with waste and proliferation are easily solvable with prudent policies. The real problem is fear: an intense, quivering fear cultivated by the environmental movement that leaves us incapable of dealing with our energy problems in an intelligent manner.
Although I am not a global warming catastrophist, I believe it is prudent to limit what we pump into the atmosphere. Sure, driving hybrid cars helps a little, but remember that all of our automobiles combined emit less than half of the carbon produced by our power plants. The greatest single strategy to limit carbon emissions is producing electricity with nuclear power. Environmentalists need to abandon their religious dogma and accept this fact; otherwise, they relinquish their right to shrill hectoring about global warming.
Here is what I would propose as a simple roadmap to lower CO2 emissions:
1) Gradually phase out all coal/gas/oil power plants and replace with nuclear plants. 2) Continue to develop rapid-recharge high-capacity lithium ion battery technology for automobiles. 3) Investigate other energy storage alternatives like ultracapacitors, which may be practical in the near future. 4) Reform and streamline industrial processes to reduce emissions. 5) Investigate prudent sources of ethanol (no corn, please) and biodiesel fuels. 6) Continue nuclear fusion research. ?more Related: • Introduction • to • Nuclear • Engineering • 3rd • Edition 52. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 53. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 54. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 55. NASA reorganizes for new mission - Space.com - MSNBC.com
power technology research under Project Prometheus also will be folded into the new Exploration Systems office. ?We?re up to this challenge,? NASA Administrator Sean O?Keefe told ? ?more
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more Related: • NASA • reorganizes • for • new • mission • Spacecom • MSNBCcom 56. Nuclear Now
, do as much research as you can, with an understanding of what these terms means, it will make a lot more sense to you, better if you did not know what the terms meant. ?more
Nuclear Power Technology has come a long way and it does provide about 17 percent of the world?s electricity. But with more and more technology forming everyday, that number will likely increase. However, nuclear power politics do come ? ?more
However, it is just sad that such stark commentary about America comes from a leader of a nation who is so very active in exporting not only nuclear power technology, but as well as nuclear arms equipments and know-how. ? ?more
Lantos, a California Democrat who backed legislation to allow exports of nuclear-power technology to India, is also dissatisfied with the Indian government?s discussions with Iran on a gas pipeline. Lantos said he supports Bush ? ?more Related: • Nuclear • Now 57. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 58. Resume cooling mechanical engineer Expert Resume: Mechanical Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, Power This Kkai Associate offers expertise specific to poultry cooling, theme park drive. Resume of TVS: mechanical engineer, manufacturing engineer, drive train, gear and bearing consultant, metal cutting. rapid-response-consulting.com Mechanical Engineer Jobs - RefineryPowerGeneration - North Refinery/Power/Generation - North, Delaware. watt, mega-watt, megawatt, generator, condenser, cooling. NEW Feature: Engineer Resume Tips! >. thinkenergygroup.com Level I Mechanical Engineer Well practiced proficiency completing complex maintenance and troubleshooting within highly complex environments, up to and including nuclear-power cooling s Resume: Entry Level Mechanical Engineer. levelslot.info Mechanical Engineer by RFA Minnesota Engineering Mechanical engineering services firm for Reverse, Systems. Cooling and Lube Engineer - The same client is looking for an engineer to work. Please send resume to: RFA/Minnesota Engineering 11495 Valley. rfamec.com Engineering Analysis and Design of Combustion Systems Mechanical engineer with specialties in combustion thermodynamics analysis and system design. Engineering >> Heating / Cooling, Mechanical, Structural Analysis, Mechanical Engineer, Expert. cecon.com Applied Motion Systems - Mechanical Engineer Mechanical Engineer. We are looking for a creative and. including provisions for water cooling. in machine design, to submit a resume. The successful candidate will gain experience designing mechanical. kinemation.com Mechanical Test Engineer And cooling systems; integrate the designs with computer. Mechanical Test Engineer Primary Skills: hydraulics; test equip design. To submit a resume for this position, you must place. net-temps.com Mechanical Engineer Jobs - MechanicalPowerBOP - State of, North Mechanical/Power/BOP - State of, North Carolina. watt, mega-watt, megawatt, generator, condenser, cooling. NEW Feature: Engineer Resume Tips! >. thinkenergygroup.com Electronic Cooling Solutions Mechanical Engineer; Electronic Cooling Solutions Inc. is seeking a Mechanical Engineer to work on the design of. Please submit your resume to: 612 National Avenue. Mountain View, CA 94043. E-mail to. ecooling.com William E. Krouse Computer-Internet Resume This is the Resume of William E. Krouse, PE. College Degreed in Mechanical Engineering and well trained in. Senior Mechanical Engineer, Salt Water Cooling and Fire Fighting Branches. Visited. nothinbut.net Electronic Cooling Solutions Mechanical Engineer; Electronic Cooling Solutions Inc. is seeking a Mechanical Engineer to work on the design of. Please submit your resume to: 612 National Avenue. Mountain View, CA 94043. E-mail to. ecooling.com Related: • Resume • cooling • mechanical • engineer 59. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 60. Nuclear Energy Now: Why the Time Has Come for the World?s Most Misunderstood Energy Source
Amazon Price: $18.45NEN is filled with tons of facts, yet is a quick read and a very good primer on the subject of nuclear energy. For those who are concerned about carbon emissions, nuclear energy is the ONLY economically viable alternative to petroleum for electricity generation. Anyone who thinks solar and wind can fill this void is simply wrong. It takes hundreds of windmills to produce the same power as a single nuclear or coal plant. Solar cells are approximately 20% efficient, and like wind farms, require vast tracts of land. Additionally, both are completely dependent on weather conditions. Sheryl Crow?s vacuous endorsement of these ?alternatives? on the Bill Maher show once again demonstrates the majority?s poverty of understanding of these basic facts. This is not surprising; nuclear energy has received a bad rap from environmentalists for decades. Issues with waste and proliferation are easily solvable with prudent policies. The real problem is fear: an intense, quivering fear cultivated by the environmental movement that leaves us incapable of dealing with our energy problems in an intelligent manner.
Although I am not a global warming catastrophist, I believe it is prudent to limit what we pump into the atmosphere. Sure, driving hybrid cars helps a little, but remember that all of our automobiles combined emit less than half of the carbon produced by our power plants. The greatest single strategy to limit carbon emissions is producing electricity with nuclear power. Environmentalists need to abandon their religious dogma and accept this fact; otherwise, they relinquish their right to shrill hectoring about global warming.
Here is what I would propose as a simple roadmap to lower CO2 emissions:
1) Gradually phase out all coal/gas/oil power plants and replace with nuclear plants. 2) Continue to develop rapid-recharge high-capacity lithium ion battery technology for automobiles. 3) Investigate other energy storage alternatives like ultracapacitors, which may be practical in the near future. 4) Reform and streamline industrial processes to reduce emissions. 5) Investigate prudent sources of ethanol (no corn, please) and biodiesel fuels. 6) Continue nuclear fusion research. ?more
Amazon Price: $17.13Stephen Johnson?s ?Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion? is a highly detailed account of the last months of the US Navy nuclear submarine, lost in the Atlantic off the Azores on May 22, 1968, and of the various official investigations aimed at uncovering the reasons for that loss. Johnson follows the official chronology established by the Navy (in contrast to Ed Offley in ?Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon, The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion?) but reaches a different conclusion as to the underlying cause of the disaster (the Navy inquiries in general favored a torpedo accident of some kind, but Johnson believes some other equipment failure - perhaps a battery explosion or maybe merely a trash disposal unit that failed to seal properly - that led to an uncontrolled descent to a depth where the great pressure crushed the hull). The evidence for and against each proposed cause is examined in detail. All in all, an engrossing and well-written book. ?more
July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more
Amazon Price: $98.75I teach power plant technology in an applied sciences college of a large urban university. One of the ongoing challenges of teaching is finding a comprehensive textbook. Although not perfect as a textbook this is a great reference for developing student?s foundation in power plant technology ?more
Amazon Price: $13.22Contains perspectives on environmental risks of nuclear power compared to other energy sources. The book is circa 1999, and some parts are out of date: - In presenting the risks of air pollution from autos, the author points to the higher death toll from (producing electricity from coal-fired power plants) electric cars vs. relatively reduced levels of sulphor dioxide from gas-powered cars. Then, he seems way off base in saying ?Los Angeles plans to completely ban gas-powered automobiles in just a few more years.? Huh? - Likewise, the book is not current in the plans to dispose of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants at Yucca Mountain, NV. He says the spent fuel will be encased in vitrified glass logs that will not corrode or release radioactive materials. The current plan is to use corrosion-resistant metal containers. He is right to say that disposal of nuclear waste is not ?unsolvable? from a technical standpoint, although it remains to be seen whether it is solvable politically. ?more
Amazon Price: $56.00 ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45Kicking The Carbon Habit: Global Warming And The Case Of Renewable And Nuclear Energy doesn?t adopt the usual focus on cutting oil consumption: instead it focuses on reducing coal use. Coal-fired plants produce over half of the electricity in the US, accounting for some 40 percent of the country?s greenhouse gasses. Sweet doesn?t advocate a singular path of change another unusual feature but proposes a mix of environmentally sound technologies from wind power to nuclear reactors. Chapters survey not just techniques but political pros and cons, social effects, and environmental impact. ?more
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Amazon Price: $9.95Excellent analysis! This book is especially important in today?s environment when we are trying to reduce our dependency on oil. ?more Related: • Nuclear • Energy • Now • Why • the • Time • Has • Come • for • the • Worlds • Most • Misunderstood • Energy • Source 61. U.S. uranium sales down as price soars
As the price of uranium surged another $7 over the past week, the U.S. Energy Department may scale back its inventory sale and open a strategic reserve.
Uranium prices hit $120 per pound Monday, the weekly pricing date, on the heels of expected growing demand and a new futures trading product offered by the New York Mercantile Exchange and uranium analyst Ux Consulting.The price has jumped from $56 per pound last October. It was around $20 at the start of 2005.
Analysts like UXC President Jeff Combs attribute the low uranium price " around $10 through the 1980s and 1990s " to a market with a false bottom, since government inventories fed demand.
Governments like the United States, intent on addressing proliferation, controlled uranium programs. The inventory was also increased after the Cold War when weapons-grade uranium from the former Soviet Union was blended down to energy stock.
The United States still sells from its inventory, which competes against suppliers. When the price was low, there was little incentive to invest in exploring, mining and producing uranium.
Ed Rutkowski of the U.S. Energy Department?s Nuclear Fuel Supply Security group told StockInterview.com this year?s sale will likely be a small amount.
?We don?t plan to dump uranium,? he said. ?We have a lot of inventory, but uranium miners are worried that DOE would affect the market. We want to be good neighbors with them.? With an enhanced demand for uranium to fuel a nuclear-power boom worldwide, supplies are quickly dwindling. While that is incentive to build the uranium industry, it worries the Energy Department and U.S. nuclear plants, which need a constant and affordable supply.
Like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which stockpiles oil in case of emergency, the department is looking into a uranium reserve.
?There is an interest in the creation of a nuclear fuel reserves,? Rutkowski told StockInterview.com. ?The reserve would be to safeguard against supply disruptions, whether these are environmental or through force of nature.?
Copyright 2007 by UPI Related: • US • uranium • sales • down • as • price • soars 62. Gazette, The (Colorado Springs) - Playing dirty
July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
August 1, 2001 " Among the various traditional ?grands programmes? typical of the French public intervention in high-tech industries, the nuclear programme is often considered ? ?more
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
This article was originally published in Houston Business Journal , March 2007. The changes that have already taken place mean that the questions now becomes one of how big the upsurge in nuclear power will be and how soon will it begin. ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
China is planning to develop its own patented technology for third generation nuclear power generating plants which could be available before the end of the next decade, said an official with the country?s atomic energy authority Wednesday. ?more
The head of China?s Atomic Energy Authority says the country aims to develop domestic nuclear power technologies through the transfer and refinement of technology from overseas. ?more Related: • Gazette • The • Colorado • Springs • Playing • dirty 63. Iran, Israel, and the Middle East
(such as creating incentives for Iran to open up its facilities to permanent inspection by the UN-run International Atomic Energy Agency) ? ?more
Westinghouse Electric Company and its consortium partner, The Shaw Group, say China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company have selected the Westinghouse AP1000 as the technology basis for four new nuclear power plants to be ? ?more
The canceled programs include efforts to improve human resources management in Iran s nuclear sector, to improve nuclear power technology, to establish a nuclear technology center and to provide some specific types of industrial ? ?more
The South African members of the consortium are PBMR (Pty) Ltd, the company responsible for the development of the PBMR technology, and M-Tech Industrial, of Potchefstroom. Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Technology, ? ?more
However, there are international embargoes on the transfer of nuclear power technology to Pakistan, so China is its only supplier. To get around worries about proliferation, Siddiqui suggests setting up ?nuclear parks? to supply ? ?more
We can affect climate change by taxing oil more and laxing regulations on trade of nuclear-power technology and coal-gasification technology to highly polluting countries such as China and India. But then again, if this is going to be ? ?more
Nuclear Nuclear Power Technology Technician Colleges, org insurance online. Sports bloopers video clips Leicester shoppingIncluding a spell, education centers in the United. Com intopsite acadamey and atlantic Technical Center Coconut ? ?more
?If you can use nuclear power technology to make nuclear weapons, and you want to get rid of the nuclear weapons, shouldn?t you stop handing out the nuclear power technology?? George W. TweedleDum patted Alice on the head. ? ?more Related: • Iran • Israel • and • the • Middle • East 64. Heisenberg?s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb
Amazon Price: $18.94This is a solid, well-researched book that presents Heisenberg in a fair light, for once.
One of the problems with reader/reviewer bias is that many people are pre-disposed to finding fault with any suggestions that conflict with what they want to hear or believe. Regarding the Farm Hall recordings, some people have latched onto the idea that Heisenberg and others knew of the build up of the Holocaust, but continued to work for the Bomb project.
What they are usually referring to is a section in which Heisenberg talked about five Jewish scientists, whom he obviously cared about, who had been arrested and later killed; and even though Heisenberg was talking openly about putting out feelers to see if they could be helped or saved (which alone could have put him at great risk), this somehow translates into guilt in some people?s eyes.
As for him ?not co-operating with Hitler?? nobody in their right mind could possibly think that was an option. As I believe the book shows, Heisenberg did the next best thing, which was to work half-heartedly on the German Bomb. He basically killed it in 1942.
The fact that Heisenberg could come up with the correct basic bomb structure - path and critical mass analysis, in very short order almost certainly means that he could have brainstormed the right methodology years earlier if the German scientists had been 100% committed to producing a bomb for Hitler. If they had been Nazis.
To me, this fine book is one more step in the right direction, in underscoring the very fact that not all Germans were Nazis.
Hitler may have been a charismatic leader, but he made so many catastrophic errors, such as the insane decision to declare war on the USA in the hope that the Japanese would help him against the Russians - they never lifted a finger - that it is as true to say that Hitler lost the War as to say that the Allies won it.
A fair and highly recommended book. ?more
August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45Kicking The Carbon Habit: Global Warming And The Case Of Renewable And Nuclear Energy doesn?t adopt the usual focus on cutting oil consumption: instead it focuses on reducing coal use. Coal-fired plants produce over half of the electricity in the US, accounting for some 40 percent of the country?s greenhouse gasses. Sweet doesn?t advocate a singular path of change another unusual feature but proposes a mix of environmentally sound technologies from wind power to nuclear reactors. Chapters survey not just techniques but political pros and cons, social effects, and environmental impact. ?more
PRESS TV
China to patent nuclear power plantsPRESS TV, Iran - Apr 27, 2007China will acquire advance nuclear power technology in exchange for purchasing four nuclear reactors from the Westinghouse under a framework agreement with ?
?more
Faux Renaissance: Global Warming, Radioactive Waste Disposal, and ?Arms Control Today - May 4, 2007Investors in developed countries continue to shy away from nuclear power technology because of the continuing high financial risk they see in the sector. ?
?more
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Amazon Price: $13.22Contains perspectives on environmental risks of nuclear power compared to other energy sources. The book is circa 1999, and some parts are out of date: - In presenting the risks of air pollution from autos, the author points to the higher death toll from (producing electricity from coal-fired power plants) electric cars vs. relatively reduced levels of sulphor dioxide from gas-powered cars. Then, he seems way off base in saying ?Los Angeles plans to completely ban gas-powered automobiles in just a few more years.? Huh? - Likewise, the book is not current in the plans to dispose of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants at Yucca Mountain, NV. He says the spent fuel will be encased in vitrified glass logs that will not corrode or release radioactive materials. The current plan is to use corrosion-resistant metal containers. He is right to say that disposal of nuclear waste is not ?unsolvable? from a technical standpoint, although it remains to be seen whether it is solvable politically. ?more
Japan, US agree on nuke power technology planFinancial Express, India - Apr 24, 2007APR 24 : Japan and the US agreed on a plan to develop nuclear power technology, boosting prospects for Japan s Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. to secure ?
?more Related: • Heisenbergs • War • The • Secret • History • of • the • German • Bomb 65. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 66. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 67. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 68. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 69. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 70. Alberta Tories Support Nuking the Tarsands At least one Alberta Tory knows the difference between power and energy. Though apparently one delegate at this weekends PC Convention thinks the Liberals are still in power in Ottawa.Nuclear power is for creating electrical energy, the use that is being looked at for the Tarsands is to produce steam for injection into the oilsands to release the bitumin, which is neither efficient nor cheap. Nuclear power to just produce steam is like hunting flies with a shotgun.
Also Saturday, delegates voted to explore using nuclear power plants to assist oilsands development.
Delegate Bill Dearborn of Medicine Hat said the oilsands need a nuclear option as a bulwark against any future federal raids on Alberta's resource-based economy.
"We're familiar with these Liberal governments in Ottawa that have imposed unfair taxes on the oil and gas industry in the past,'' he said.
But delegate Don Dabbs said he has participated in a past provincial study on nuclear power and that it's not the way to go to generate steam power for the oilsands.
"A reactor to generate steam is not the principal purpose of a nuclear reactor. It's for electrical energy.
"It's a very expensive source of steam.''Thomas Savery (1650-1715) Thomas Savery was an English military engineer and inventor who in 1698, patented the first crude steam engine, based on Denis Papin's Digester or pressure cooker of 1679.
Thomas Savery had been working on solving the problem of pumping water out of coal mines, his machine consisted of a closed vessel filled with water into which steam under pressure was introduced. This forced the water upwards and out of the mine shaft. Then a cold water sprinkler was used to condense the steam. This created a vacuum which sucked more water out of the mine shaft through a bottom valve.
BoilersThe high-pressure steam for a steam engine comes from a boiler. The boiler's job is to apply heat to water to create steam. There are two approaches: fire tube and water tube.
A fire-tube boiler was more common in the 1800s. It consists of a tank of water perforated with pipes. The hot gases from a coal or wood fire run through the pipes to heat the water in the tank, as shown here:
In a fire-tube boiler, the entire tank is under pressure, so if the tank bursts it creates a major explosion.
More common today are water-tube boilers, in which water runs through a rack of tubes that are positioned in the hot gases from the fire. The following simplified diagram shows you a typical layout for a water-tube boiler:
In a real boiler, things would be much more complicated because the goal of the boiler is to extract every possible bit of heat from the burning fuel to improve efficiency.
Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR or CANDU).
The CANDU reactor design has been developed since the 1950s in Canada. It uses natural uranium (0.7% U-235) oxide as fuel, hence needs a more efficient moderator, in this case heavy water (D2O).**
** with the CANDU system, the moderator is enriched (ie water) rather than the fuel, - a cost trade-off.
The moderator is in a large tank called a calandria, penetrated by several hundred horizontal pressure tubes which form channels for the fuel, cooled by a flow of heavy water under high pressure in the primary cooling circuit, reaching 290'C. As in the PWR, the primary coolant generates steam in a secondary circuit to drive the turbines. The pressure tube design means that the reactor can be refuelled progressively without shutting down, by isolating individual pressure tubes from the cooling circuit.
ACANDU fuel assembly consists of a bundle of 37 half metre long fuel rods (ceramic fuel pellets in zircaloy tubes) plus a support structure, with 12 bundles lying end to end in a fuel channel. Control rods penetrate the calandria vertically, and a secondary shutdown system involves adding gadolinium to the moderator. The heavy water moderator circulating through the body of the calandria vessel also yieldssome heat (though this circuit is not shown on the diagram above).
Steam generator (nuclear power)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThis is an article about nuclear power plant equipment. For other uses, see steam generator.
Steam generators are heat exchanger used to convert water into steam from heat produced in a nuclear reactor core. They are used in pressurized water reactors between the primary and secondary coolant loops.
In commercial power plants steam generators can measure up to 70 feet in height and weigh as much as 800 tons. Each steam generator can contain anywhere from 3,000 to 16,000 tubes, each about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The coolant is pumped, at high pressure to prevent boiling, from the reactor coolant pump, through the nuclear reactor core, and through the tube side of the steam generators before returning to the pump. This is referred to as the primary loop. That water flowing through the steam generator boils water on the shell side to produce steam in the secondary loop that is delivered to the turbines to make electricity. The steam is subsequently condensed via cooled water from the tertiary loop and returned to the steam generator to be heated once again. The tertiary cooling water may be recirculated to cooling towers where it sheds waste heat before returning to condense more steam. Once through tertiary cooling may otherwise be provided by a river, lake, ocean. This primary, secondary, tertiary cooling scheme is the most common way to extractusable energy from a controlled nuclear reaction.
These loops also have an important safety role because they constitute one of the primary barriers between the radioactive and non-radioactive sides of the plant as the primary coolant becomes radioactive from its exposure to the core. For this reason, the integrity of the tubing is essential in minimizing the leakage of water between the two sides of the plant. There is the potential that if a tube bursts while a plant is operating; contaminated steam could escape directly to the secondary cooling loop. Thus during scheduled maintenance outages or shutdowns, some or all of the steam generator tubes are inspected by eddy-current testing.
In other types of reactors, such as the pressurised heavy water reactors of the CANDU design, the primary fluid is heavy water. Liquid metal cooled reactors such as the in Russian BN-600 reactor also use heat exchangers between primary metal coolant and at the secondary water coolant.
Boiling water reactors do not use steam generators, as steam is produced in the pressure vessel.
See:
Sustainable Capitalism
Tarsands To Go Nuclear
Nuke The Tar Sands
Dion Pro Nuke
Cutting Your NoseEnergyCANDUPeak OilTar SandsFind blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:Canada, Greenplan, Alberta, Saskatchewan, GaryLunn, JohnBaird, CleanCoal, hydro, nuclear, nuclear power, Ontario Power Workers Union, EPCOR, Utilities, Greenhouse gases, CO2, Conservatives, Government, eak-oil, Tarsands, water, Pembina, Klein, oil, nukes, nuclear, gas, water, drought, Alberta, Canada,AECL, candu, nuclear, nuclear-power, EnergyProbe, privatization, Conservatives, Flaherty, Munn, Government, Alberta, tarsands, nuke, nukes, power, energy, Related: • Alberta • Tories • Support • Nuking • the • Tarsands 71. Future Technology May 6, 2007 5:58 am
Certassar (a.k.a. Rune Johnsson) posted a photo:
(From the "Nordic EXceptional Trendshop exhibition 2006")
Google News
Longtime oilman sees bright future for conventional oil and gasMyWestTexas.com, TX - 2 hours agoI think there is a tremendous future for young people. I think, too, the advances in technology are another way to induce students to get into energy ?
Recent Blog PostsNews Blitz Aside, Read the Facts on Indian PointFor such a nuclear-powered future to arrive, however, we?ll need to get beyond our nuclear-power past. In the now-standard histories, the beginning of the end of nuclear power arrived on March 28, 1979, with the meltdown of the uranium ?Il grande equivocoThus, according to Exxon Mobil, ?the Peak Oil theory has raised questions about the future of the oil and gas industry, how resources are estimated, the current supply situation, the role of technology and other factors in determining ?Packaging BecomesAnd as more technology can be squeezed onto everything smaller/cheaper the likelihood that we?ll see more of this rather than less. And the wine stereo? Picked up by Uleshka on a recent visit to the southern hemisphere.Changes, challenges to shape future of Times, PIThough their long, costly legal fight is over, Seattle?s two daily newspapers still face tough business choices crucial to their long-term survival. Original post by epryne@seattletimes.com.Technology and the future of our childrenA discussion of technology and its influence on our children.
Yahoo NewsUpdate on technology updates in CISD (The Celina Record)The Celina ISD Technology Department has been working to improve the Celina School District by increasing security measures, raising TAKS scores, improving communication, and preparing for the future.Working to prevent future blackouts (Pasadena Star-News)ROSEMEAD - A new grid management technology pioneered by Southern California Edison could help prevent regional power blackouts in the future, according to John Bryson, president and CEO of SCE parent company Edison International.Media servers, Blu-ray & HD DVD technology to revolutionise music & movies (AME Info)The future of home entertainment is an exciting one; so say the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA(R)), the U.S. trade association for consumer technology and owner and producer of the International CES, the world?s largest tradeshow for consumer technology.
MSN SearchFuture Technology : Leader in Thermal ManagementHi-Pot Test - All of our boards are 100% Hi-Pot tested, per customer specification, using Hi-Pot testing machine. Future Technology has less than 1% Hi-Pot failureFuture Technology : Leader in Thermal ManagementFuture Technology offers the highest quality and reliability in the industry due to its unique manufacturing process. WE MEET TOP COMMERCIAL SPECS IPC 6012 and 6013PC World - Browse Future TechnologyMy Pages lets you save articles for quick access. Just click the Add to My Pages icon. You can save up to 10 articles.
On EbayFUTURE INTERNET TECHNOLOGY IS HERE = VIDEO EMAIL + MORE
US $0.99End Date: Friday May-11-2007 10:02:14 PDTBuy It Now for only: US $0.99Buy it now Add to watch list1998 PEYTON MANNING UD 3 FUTURE SHOCK TECHNOLOGY ROOKIE
US $2.00 (0 Bid)End Date: Wednesday May-09-2007 18:49:29 PDTBid now Add to watch listSLEEPERS WAKE TECHNOLOGY&THE FUTURE OF WORK BARRY JONES
US $4.10 (0 Bid)End Date: Tuesday May-08-2007 19:11:44 PDTBid now Add to watch listRelated: • Future • Technology • May • 6 • 2007 • 558 • am 72. Renewable energy boom drives up share prices
Hamburg - A boom in renewable energy shows no sign of petering out, with investors greedy for shares in wind-generator companies which are booking huge new sales.Two sales announcements in Germany this week illustrated why a giddy bidding war has developed between Indian and French interests for one of the main German builders of rotor-turbines, Repower.Nordex, a company based in the German port-city of Rostock, said Friday it had just landed an order for 120 turbines with an option for 100 more, the biggest order since the company was founded in 1985.Customer Babcock and Brown was initially purchasing 289 megawatts of generating capacity for wind parks in Portugal and France, said Nordex, which is also to supply foundations, transformers and electrical systems.If all options were exercised, the contract would be worth more than 700 million euros (950 million dollars). The contract fitted Nordex?s aim of raising sales by 50 per cent yearly, an executive, Thomas Richterich, said.The previous day, Hamburg-based Repower said it had won a Californian order for 75 wind generators with a total capacity of 150 megawatts for Enxco, a US unit of French power company EDF Energies Nouvelles.Each of the huge generators has a rotor diameter of 92 metres.Analysts say the worldwide orders are driven by legislative pressure on power companies to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and generate at least some of their electricity using wind or the sun.Investors see no sign the trend will end soon.Nordex shares shot up 8 per cent Friday morning to 27.45 euros on German markets before settling to 25.40.Repower Systems shares were steady at 156.95 euros, well ahead of the current offers of 150 euros per share from Suzlon of India and 140 euros from Areva, the French nuclear-power group.Earlier this week, Repower raised new equity with institutional investors happy to pay 151.50 euros per share, a clear hint that investment professionals expect a counter-bid from Areva.A Repower spokeswoman said Friday the Hamburg-based company?s board would comment next week on the Suzlon bid. Previously Repower said both bidders would make good parents.Shares in Nordex, and another company, Vestas Wind Systems, have been driven higher by takeover speculation.German manufacturers of solar-power equipment have also been boosted by the renewables trend.Solar World, which opened a new wafer-production plant at Freiberg in Germany?s Saxony state Friday, said it would continue to add wafer capacity at the site, doubling output by 2009 compared to today.The company said it was even contemplating quadrupling output, which is measured by the power-generation capacity of the photovoltaic cells it makes: 1,000 megawatts per year was conceivable.Solar World mainly sells its modules to owners of homes and other buildings seeking energy self-sufficiency.Germany?s pre-2005 government of Social Democrats and Greens chose renewable energy as a technology where Germans could lead the world.That bet has turned out a good one, but an electrical industry group, VDE, is cautioning that Germany actually spends too little on research into better energy technology.?Japan is spending 30 dollars per capita on energy research, and even the United States spends 10 dollars a head. Here in Germany it is only 6.20 dollars,? said VDE spokesman Wolfgang Schroeppel.He said annual federal grants of 400 million euros for energy research in Germany were just not enough to sustain the lead. He demanded Berlin hike the budget to 1 billion euros annually.Schroeppel warned that only 8 per cent of all research and development spending in Germany was devoted to energy topics, and in the European Union the rate was even worse, 3 per cent. Related: • Renewable • energy • boom • drives • up • share • prices 73. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 74. He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm guns to a stone stairway
He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm guns to a stone stairway. VonSchlichten explained, as they went down, that the guns of KingKankad?s Town were the only artillery above 75-mm on Uller innon-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier andstrapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankadshowed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, whereyoung Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied fromtextbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Kankadshowed her the repair-shops, where two-score descendants of Kraganriever-chieftains were working on contragravity equipment, under thesupervision of a Scottish-Afrikaner and his Malay-Portuguese wife; thesmall-arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran rifles andpistols and auto-weapons were being turned out; the machine-shop; thephysics and chemistry labs; the hospital; the ammunition-loadingplant; the battery of 155-mm Long Toms, built in Kankad?s own shops,which covered the road up the sloping rock-spine behind the city; theprinting-shop and book-bindery; the observatory, with a big telescopeand an ingenious orrery of the Beta Hydrae system; the nuclear-powerplant, part of the original price for giving up brigandage.Related: • He • led • the • way • past • a • pair • of • long • 90mm • guns • to • a • stone • stairway 75. How Green is Nuclear Power The Christian Science Monitor In Kansas, where winds blow strong, the push for clean energy includes not only new wind turbines but also new nuclear-power plants as part of a "carbon-free" solution to Related: • How • Green • is • Nuclear • Power 76. How Green is Nuclear Power The Christian Science Monitor In Kansas, where winds blow strong, the push for clean energy includes not only new wind turbines but also new nuclear-power plants as part of a "carbon-free" solution to Related: • How • Green • is • Nuclear • Power 77. The Delusion of Expertise: I learned something ?
The Delusion of Expertise:
I learned something this weekend about the high cost of the subtledelusion that creative technical problem-solving is the preserve ofa priesthood of experts, using powers and perceptions beyond the ken ofordinary human beings.
Terry Pratchett is the author of the Discworld seriesof satirical fantasies. He is " and I don?t say this lightly, orwithout having given the matter thought and study " quiteprobably the most consistently excellent writer of intelligent humorin the last century in English. One has to go back as far as P.G.Wodehouse or Mark Twain to find an obvious equal in consistentquality, volume, and sly wisdom.
I?ve been a fan of Terry?s since before his first Discworld novel;I?m one of the few people who remembers Strata, his 1981 firstexperiment with the disc-world concept. The man has been somethinglike a long-term acquaintance of mine for ten years " one ofthose people you?d like to call a friend, and who you think would liketo call you a friend, if the two of you everarranged enough concentrated hang time to get that close. But we?reboth damn busy people, and live five thousand miles apart.
This weekend, Terry and I were both guests of honor at a hybridSF convention and Linux conference called Penguicon held in Warren,Michigan. We finally got our hang time. Among other things, Itaught Terry how to shoot pistols. He loves shooter games, but asa British resident his opportunities to play with real firearms arestrictly limited. (I can report that Terry handled my .45 semi withremarkable competence and steadiness for a first-timer. I can alsoreport that this surprised me not at all.)
During Terry?s Guest-of-Honor speech, he revealed his past as(he thought) a failed hacker. It turns out that back in the 1970sTerry used to wire up elaborate computerized gadgets from TimexSinclair computers. One of his projects used a primitive memorychip that had light-sensitive gates to build a sort of perceptronthat could actually see the difference between a circle and a cross.His magnum opus was a weather station that would log readings oftemperature and barometric pressure overnight and deliver weatherreports through a voice synthesizer.
But the most astonishing part of the speech was the followup inwhich Terry told us that despite his keen interest and elaboratehomebrewing, he didn?t become a programmer or a hardware tech becausehe thought techies had to know mathematics, which he thought he had notalent for. He then revealed that he thought of his projects as asort of bad imitation of programming, because his hardware andsoftware designs were total lash-ups and he never really knew what hewas doing.
I couldn?t stand it. ?And you think it was any different forus?? I called out. The audience laughed and Terry passed offthe remark with a quip. But I was just boggled. Because I know thatalmost all really bright techies start out that way, ascompulsive tinkerers who blundered around learning by experience beforethey acquired systematic knowledge. ?Oh ye gods and little fishes?, Ithought to myself, ?Terry is a hacker!?
Yes, I thought ?is? " even if Terry hasn?t actually tinkeredany computer software or hardware in a quarter-century. Being ahacker is expressed through skills and projects, but it?s really akind of attitude or mental stance that, once acquired, is never reallylost. It?s a kind of intense, omnivorous playfulness that tends tocolor everything a person does.
It burst upon me that Terry Pratchett has the hacker nature.Which, actually, explains something that has mildly puzzled me foryears. Terry has a huge following in the hacker community "knowing his books is something close to basic cultural literacy forInternet geeks. One is actually hard-put to think of any other writerfor whom this is as true. The question this has aways raised for meis: why Terry, rather than some hard-SF writer whose work explicitlycelebrates the technologies we play with?
The answer now seems clear. Terry?s hackerness has leaked into hiswriting somehow, modulating the quality of the humor. Behind thedrollery, I and my peers worldwide have accurately scented a mind likeour own.
I said some of this the following day, when I ran into Terrysurrounded by about fifty eager fans in a hallway. The natureof the conference was such that about three-quarters of them werehackers, many faces I recognized. I brought up the topic again,emphasizing that the sort of playful improvisation he?d beendescribing was very normal for us, and that I thought it waskind of sad he?d been blocked by the belief that hackers needto know mathematics, because about all we ever use is some piecesof set theory, graph theory, combinatorics, and Boolean algebra.No calculus at all.
Terry then admitted that he had at one point independentlyre-invented Boolean algebra. I didn?t find this surprising " Idid that myself when I was about fifteen; I didn?t mention this,though, because the moment was about Terry?s mind and not mine. Ithink reinventing Boolean algebra is probably something a lot ofbright proto-hackers do.
?Terry,? I said, fully conscious of the peculiar authority Iwield on this point as the custodian of the Jargon File, the how-to onHow To BecomeA Hacker and several other related documents, ?you are ahacker!?
The crowd agreed enthusiastically. Somebody handed Terry one ofthe ?Geek? badge ribbons the convention had made for attendees whowanted to identify themselves as coming from the Linux/programmingside. Much laughter ensued when it was discovered that the stickumon the ribbon had lost its virtue, and a nearby hacker had to ceremoniallyaffix the thing to Terry?s badge holder with a piece of duct tape.
Terry actually choked up a little while this was going on, and Idon?t think there was anyone there who didn?t understand why. To thekind of teenager and young man he must have been " bright,curious, creative, proud of his own ability " it must have beenvery painful to conclude that he would never cut it as the techie heso obviously wanted to be. He ended up doing public-relations workfor the British nuclear-power industry instead.
The whole sequence of events left me feeling delighted that I andmy friends could deliver the affirmation Terry had deserved so longago. But also " and here we come to the real point of thisessay " I felt very angry at the system that had fed the youngTerry such a huge load of cobblers about the nature of whatprogrammers and hardware designers do.
I?m not referring to the obvious garbage about needing abrain-bending amount of mathematics. No; they fed Terry something muchsubtler and more crippling, a belief that real techies actually know whatthey?re doing. The delusion of expertise.
The truth is that programmers only know what they?re doing when thejob is not very interesting. When you?re breaking new ground in anytechnical field, exploration and improvisation is the nature of thegame. Your designs are going to be lash-ups because you don?t yetknow any better and neither does anyone else.Systematization comes later, with the second system, during there-write and the re-think. Einstein had it right; imagination ismore valuable than knowledge, and people like Terry with ademonstrated ability to creatively wing it make far better hackersthan analytically smart but unimaginative people who can onlyfollow procedures.
The thought that Terry may have spent thirty years of working daysgrinding out press releases for the Central Electricity GeneratingBoard because he didn?t know this, rather than following his dreamsinto astronomy or programming or hardware design, bothers the crap outof me. If Terry was bright enough to invent Boolean algebra, he wasbright enough to cut it in any of these fields. The educationalsystem failed him by putting artificial requirements in his way andmaking him believe they were natural ones. It failed him even morefundamentally by teaching him a falsehood about the nature ofexpertise.
In doing this, it failed all of us. How many bright kids withfirst-class minds, I wonder, end up under-employed because of craplike this? How much creative potential are we losing?
OK, some might answer, so we got the Discworld fantasiesinstead?that ain?t exactly chopped liver. The thing is, I?m notsure that was actually a trade-off. I?m enough of a writer myselfto believe that you can?t block a writing talent like Terry?s merely bydropping him into a more demanding day job. It will come out.
On the other hand, one thing I am sure of is that youdon?t need intelligence or talents like Terry?s just to do PR. Oneway or another, this man was going to do something with more lastingeffects than soothing British farmers about radiation leaks. Inventingone of the funniest alternate worlds of the last hundred years duringyour free time is nice, and I devoutly hope he will get to keep doingit for decades to come " but in a society that valued and nurturedgenius properly, I think Terry might have helped re-imagine the realworld just as radically during his day job.
But he didn?t. Tot it up to the cost of taking creativity tooseriously, of undervaluing improvisation and play and imagination.And wonder how much else that error has cost us.Related: • The • Delusion • of • Expertise • I • learned • something • 78. He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm guns to a stone stairway
He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm guns to a stone stairway. VonSchlichten explained, as they went down, that the guns of KingKankad?s Town were the only artillery above 75-mm on Uller innon-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier andstrapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankadshowed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, whereyoung Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied fromtextbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Kankadshowed her the repair-shops, where two-score descendants of Kraganriever-chieftains were working on contragravity equipment, under thesupervision of a Scottish-Afrikaner and his Malay-Portuguese wife; thesmall-arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran rifles andpistols and auto-weapons were being turned out; the machine-shop; thephysics and chemistry labs; the hospital; the ammunition-loadingplant; the battery of 155-mm Long Toms, built in Kankad?s own shops,which covered the road up the sloping rock-spine behind the city; theprinting-shop and book-bindery; the observatory, with a big telescopeand an ingenious orrery of the Beta Hydrae system; the nuclear-powerplant, part of the original price for giving up brigandage.Related: • He • led • the • way • past • a • pair • of • long • 90mm • guns • to • a • stone • stairway 79. India has China in its range
written by: Siddharth Srivastava, 13-Apr-07
NEW DELHI - Even as India celebrates the successful test-firing on Thursday of its home-grown Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missile - capable of delivering a 1.5-tonne nuclear or conventional payload over much of Asia - officials admit that the test had the tacit approval of the United States.
The US is striving to build India as a strategic counterweight to China, along with Japan and Australia.
Last May, during a period of frenzied negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal with Washington, New Delhi postponed testing of the Agni-III so as not to invite the ire of nuclear hawks in the US Congress, which was deliberating the nuclear pact that now stands approved.
According to reports last year, Washington put pressure on New Delhi to agree to a future moratorium on testing of dual-use missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload and testing another atomic bomb as a quid pro quo for the civilian nuclear deal.
India, however, rejected such a commitment as a back-door entry to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has not signed the CTBT as it feels that the treaty came into existence after those who possessed nuclear weapons had developed the know-how.
Strategic equations have obviously changed now, with a combination of business interests, India?s record as a responsible democratic nation, and the China factor coming into play.
Agni-III, given its range of 3,000 kilometers, has been specifically designed to build a minimum nuclear deterrence against China, with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai very much in the radar. Agni-III is said to possess a high degree of accuracy with a medium-to-large nuclear payload.
Beijing reacted immediately to the Indian firing, saying it hoped that India, ?as a country with an important influence in this region, can work to maintain and promote peace and stability in the region?. Indian officials have said Agni-III is not China-centric, but an effort to build overall security.
India, of course, has traditional rival Pakistan already covered via its Agni-I (700-800km range) and Agni-II (2,000km-plus range) missiles that are now being inducted into the armed forces. As per the agreed norms, New Delhi informed Islamabad about Agni-III prior to the test.
Not to be undone, Pakistan, with help from China and North Korea, is in the process of inducting the nuclear-capable Shaheen-II missile, tested for the first time in March 2004, which can strike Indian targets over a range of 2,000km.
Apart from gaining more security muscle in the region, the success of Agni-III is significant on other counts. The maiden test of Agni-III failed last July 9, so Indian scientists had to work on the technical glitches.
The Agni is one of five missiles that have been developed by India. The others are the short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi, the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), the multi-purpose Akash (Sky) and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra) missile.
Other benefits It would seem that India is also now reasonably sure of its acceptance as a nuclear exception among the global community that will allow it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the international market. Indian efforts have now moved to turning around nations that form part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with success on this count. India needs approval from the NSG so that it can implement its nuclear agreement with the US.
Heavyweights France, the United Kingdom and Canada have already backed the deal. The business potential and diplomatic efforts have had important countries such as China and Australia rethink their approach. Those two countries have hinted that they will not be averse to doing nuclear business with India. Russia has already chalked out its nuclear-power engagement with India.
South Africa and Brazil have been co-opted by promises of New Delhi?s support in securing business deals and expertise in software and information technology.
Japan has been difficult, but Indian officials are sure that given the massive business opportunities, especially in software to upgrade Japanese companies, and extensive diplomatic efforts, Japan will come around and has already considerably softened its stand. Tokyo is pretty much clued into a US-India-Japan ?axis of democracy? to counter the might of China.
Thus the timing of the Agni-III test seems to be right. Politically, the Congress-led New Delhi government has been criticized for being feeble to India?s internal and external security threats, because of repeated terrorist attacks and the need to tread carefully in dealing with Beijing.
Given the ongoing detailed negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the nuclear pact with the US as well the benefits of nuclear power that will flow in times to come, it was only prudent for New Delhi to gain a few political points given the immediacy of electoral politics.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the success of the Agni-III missile is an ?impressive illustration? of India mastering the strategic high technologies to uphold national security.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Published in: Asia Times Related: • India • has • China • in • its • range 80. India Spreads Nuclear Wings ... Agni-3 has been designed to build a nuclear deterrent against China. For its traditional rival ... fuel and technology from the international market. Canada, France and the United Kingdom support the ... while Russia has already spelled out its nuclear-power engagement with India. New Delhi is actively Related: • India • Spreads • Nuclear • Wings 81. 30 years later, Clamshell Alliance still doesn't see nukes as the answer Thirty years after a huge anti-Seabrook demonstration, David Tirrell-Wysoki of the Associated Press bureau in Concord demonstrates why it's good to have reporters cover one place for a long time: They bring perspective. In this case, the dormant anti-nuclear-power crowd is being revitalized along with the nuclear-power industry, as nukes are cited as a way to fight global warming. Related: • 30 • years • later • Clamshell • Alliance • still • doesnt • see • nukes • as • the • answer 82. India has China in its range
written by: Siddharth Srivastava, 13-Apr-07
NEW DELHI - Even as India celebrates the successful test-firing on Thursday of its home-grown Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missile - capable of delivering a 1.5-tonne nuclear or conventional payload over much of Asia - officials admit that the test had the tacit approval of the United States.
The US is striving to build India as a strategic counterweight to China, along with Japan and Australia.
Last May, during a period of frenzied negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal with Washington, New Delhi postponed testing of the Agni-III so as not to invite the ire of nuclear hawks in the US Congress, which was deliberating the nuclear pact that now stands approved.
According to reports last year, Washington put pressure on New Delhi to agree to a future moratorium on testing of dual-use missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload and testing another atomic bomb as a quid pro quo for the civilian nuclear deal.
India, however, rejected such a commitment as a back-door entry to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has not signed the CTBT as it feels that the treaty came into existence after those who possessed nuclear weapons had developed the know-how.
Strategic equations have obviously changed now, with a combination of business interests, India?s record as a responsible democratic nation, and the China factor coming into play.
Agni-III, given its range of 3,000 kilometers, has been specifically designed to build a minimum nuclear deterrence against China, with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai very much in the radar. Agni-III is said to possess a high degree of accuracy with a medium-to-large nuclear payload.
Beijing reacted immediately to the Indian firing, saying it hoped that India, ?as a country with an important influence in this region, can work to maintain and promote peace and stability in the region?. Indian officials have said Agni-III is not China-centric, but an effort to build overall security.
India, of course, has traditional rival Pakistan already covered via its Agni-I (700-800km range) and Agni-II (2,000km-plus range) missiles that are now being inducted into the armed forces. As per the agreed norms, New Delhi informed Islamabad about Agni-III prior to the test.
Not to be undone, Pakistan, with help from China and North Korea, is in the process of inducting the nuclear-capable Shaheen-II missile, tested for the first time in March 2004, which can strike Indian targets over a range of 2,000km.
Apart from gaining more security muscle in the region, the success of Agni-III is significant on other counts. The maiden test of Agni-III failed last July 9, so Indian scientists had to work on the technical glitches.
The Agni is one of five missiles that have been developed by India. The others are the short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi, the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), the multi-purpose Akash (Sky) and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra) missile.
Other benefits It would seem that India is also now reasonably sure of its acceptance as a nuclear exception among the global community that will allow it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the international market. Indian efforts have now moved to turning around nations that form part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with success on this count. India needs approval from the NSG so that it can implement its nuclear agreement with the US.
Heavyweights France, the United Kingdom and Canada have already backed the deal. The business potential and diplomatic efforts have had important countries such as China and Australia rethink their approach. Those two countries have hinted that they will not be averse to doing nuclear business with India. Russia has already chalked out its nuclear-power engagement with India.
South Africa and Brazil have been co-opted by promises of New Delhi?s support in securing business deals and expertise in software and information technology.
Japan has been difficult, but Indian officials are sure that given the massive business opportunities, especially in software to upgrade Japanese companies, and extensive diplomatic efforts, Japan will come around and has already considerably softened its stand. Tokyo is pretty much clued into a US-India-Japan ?axis of democracy? to counter the might of China.
Thus the timing of the Agni-III test seems to be right. Politically, the Congress-led New Delhi government has been criticized for being feeble to India?s internal and external security threats, because of repeated terrorist attacks and the need to tread carefully in dealing with Beijing.
Given the ongoing detailed negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the nuclear pact with the US as well the benefits of nuclear power that will flow in times to come, it was only prudent for New Delhi to gain a few political points given the immediacy of electoral politics.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the success of the Agni-III missile is an ?impressive illustration? of India mastering the strategic high technologies to uphold national security.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Published in: Asia Times Related: • India • has • China • in • its • range 83. Dixy?s energy plan could have saved nation considerable grief
The newspaper headline read: ?Summer bummer: $4 a gallon?? If she were alive today, my old friend, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, would undoubtedly be playing the familiar game of ?I told you so.? She was never given to bragging, but she could have pointed directly to an extremely important report she once submitted to the President of the United States. I have recounted her experience in detail in my newly published book, ?She Should Have Been President; The Wisdom of Dixy Lee Ray,? and I will offer a brief repeat here because it is perfectly in line with the ?I told you so? game she might have played with regard to the outrageously increasing cost of gasoline to American motorists. Back in 1973, President Richard Nixon called Dixy to a meeting in the Oval Office. It was the time of a national energy crisis brought on by the shortage of gasoline. Dixy was the chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which was staffed by many of the brightest scientific minds in the nation. Nixon asked Dixy, a world-renowned marine biologist, to come up with a plan to make America self-sufficient in energy of all kinds. Dixy put her A.E.C. scientists to work on the project and also summoned other highly reputed scientists from industry and the colleges and universities to help with the project. Six months later, Dixy returned to the Oval Office and handed Nixon the finished project, a brilliant proposal for a new U.S. strategy on all forms of energy. She told Nixon that ?total self-sufficiency? was not a wise idea but that a plan to end our dependency upon foreign oil and other products was doable. The plan would have authorized Congress to forge ahead with an end to the unfortunate ban on oil refineries, a resumption of the stalled program for more nuclear power plants, and renewed efforts to explore other energy sources " such as solar power, wind power, and all other potential producers of energy. Nixon thanked Dixy for her extraordinary effort, but she saw that he seemed listless and no longer interested in the energy shortage. Little wonder. The Watergate scandal had already broken, and Nixon knew then, late in 1973, that his days as President of the U.S. were near an end. In fact, he never submitted Dixy?s plan to Congress, and it is probably still sitting there on a shelf of the Oval Office. Had her plan for ending the energy shortage been adopted by Congress, we would no longer be dependent upon countries in the Middle East, South America, and elsewhere for a supply of oil. Also, we would not now be embroiled in Iraq or any other nation in the Middle East, Asia, or South America. At the same time, many more refineries would have been built, and gasoline would now be substantially lower in price than the coming $4-a-gallon envisaged by the newspaper headline. And, with more nuclear-power plants on line, energy would be plentiful and much lower in cost than at present. Yes, the Watergate scandal cost a President his job, but it did much more damage than that. It reminds us that an enterprising member of Congress could do his nation a great favor by finding Dixy?s report and getting it passed into law by Congress. I have tried to get the ball rolling with letters to members of the Washington State delegation, but, thus far, there has been no response. Dixy would have said: ?I told you so.? What a tragedy! Related: • Dixys • energy • plan • could • have • saved • nation • considerable • grief 84. China moves to shrink its carbon footprint
Within a year, China is expected to outpace the US in carbon dioxide emissions.By Peter Fordhttp://www.csmonitor.comWith China?s carbon footprint expected to outsize America?s within a year, officials in Beijing appear to be backing away from their view that global warming is a Western problem that developed countries must solve.
While still insisting on their right to industrialize hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, Chinese leaders are showing the first tentative signs of readiness to accept mandatory emissions-reductions targets. And they are setting themselves all kinds of green goals.As the world?s No. 2 greenhouse-gas culprit " closing in on the 6 billion tons of CO2 produced by the US annually " China is under pressure both from other nations and from its own scientists? predictions of a potentially catastrophic future if global warming is not curbed.
?Climate change has become a huge challenge to China?s social and economic sustained development,? Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Meteorological Administration, said Monday. ?China is determined to mitigate and respond to climate change as a responsible nation.?
The signals of how it will do so are mixed. On the one hand, Premier Wen Jiabao announced earlier this month, on a visit to Japan, that his country would ?proactively participate in building an effective framework from 2013? to replace the Kyoto Protocol?s binding targets for greenhouse-gas reductions.
That regime, which will emerge from several years of global negotiations, seems certain to impose binding targets on every nation: At the moment, China is not obliged to meet any Kyoto standards because it is a developing country.
At the same time, China?s first Climate Change Assessment Report, dated September 2006 but broadly distributed last weekend, rejects obligatory ceilings.
?If we prematurely assume responsibilities for mandatory greenhouse-gas emissions reductions, the direct consequence will be to constrain China?s current energy and manufacturing industries and weaken the competitiveness of Chinese products,? the report warns, adding that, ?For a considerable time to come, developing the economy and improving people?s lives remains the country?s primary task.?
Four months ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris predicted that China would not be emitting more heat-trapping CO2 than the US until 2010. But with Chinese growth steaming ahead at an annual 11.1 percent so far this year, and with energy-intensive industries such as aluminum expanding by 43 percent, the energy watchdog has brought its estimate forward by two years.
Grim outlook if China doesn?t act
If nothing were done, within 25 years China?s emissions would be double the combined output of all industrialized nations, said Fatih Birol, the IEA?s chief economist. That is largely because China is fueling its growth with coal, a noxious source of CO2 and other pollutants. As the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world, China uses the fossil fuel to generate 69 percent of its primary energy, according to official figures.
The effects are visible and getting worse, Chinese scientists are warning.
On the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, ?one quarter of the glaciers that existed 350 years ago have disappeared,? Qin Dahe, a former Chinese climate-change negotiator, said Monday. At current melt rates, ?another quarter will disappear by 2050.?
Those glaciers, he said, ?are vital to people?s economy and livelihood? in most of China and South Asia. ?The water from these glaciers supports life for half the world?s population.?
?Climatic warming may have serious consequences for our survival environment, as China?s economic sectors such as agriculture and coastal regions suffer grave negative effects,? the Climate Change Assessment Report predicts.
Water shortages and high temperatures could reduce harvests by 10 percent by 2030; wheat, rice, and corn output could collapse by as much as 37 percent after 2050, the report says. ?If we do not take any action, climate change will seriously damage China?s long-term grain security.?
Such grim prospects have prompted the government to set its own emissions goals. Most ambitiously, the new assessment pledges to reduce CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 80 percent by 2050.
En route, the authorities are aiming for a 20 percent drop in energy use per GDP unit by 2010 " slightly more ambitious than President Bush?s hope that US industry will voluntarily cut its emissions intensity by 18 percent by 2012.
Even if China reached half its goal, the resulting reductions in emissions growth would still be larger than the EU-15?s Kyoto CO2 goal of cutting 682 million tons annually by 2012, according to the Center for Clean Air Policy in Washington.
China?s goal is nearly in line with a target set by Greenpeace, which just released a report urging more use of renewable energy. ?China has to get rid of its dependency on coal,? said Yang Ailun, Greenpeace China?s climate expert. ?With enforcement of energy-efficiency targets and also the decision to close down 50 gigawatts of [China?s] least-efficient coal-fired plants, the trend of massive coal-fired plant installment will be slowed from 2008.?
The government has also set itself the target of producing 16 percent of energy needs from renewable resources by 2020, much of which would come from hydro if the authorities meet another 2020 target: to harness 70 percent of hydro potential.
A push for nuclear energy
At the same time, China is finalizing a deal with Westinghouse Electric to buy four third-generation nuclear-power plants, along with the technological know-how to build its plants in the future.
By 2020, China plans to have multiplied installed nuclear-generating capacity fivefold from 2000 figures, to 40 gigawatts.
The government cannot guarantee meeting these targets, however: Last year, officials say, energy use per unit of GDP fell by only 1.2 percent, instead of 4 percent. This was partly because regional governments " that know they are judged on economic growth rather than on their green credentials " simply ignored Beijing?s environmental edicts. Even if China does reduce its energy use per GDP unit by 4 percent a year until 2010, its growth rate is so high that by current trends it will still be emitting 30 percent more greenhouse gases in 2010 than it did in 2005.
? Staff writer Mark Clayton contributed to this report.
Green challenges for China
Planned carbon cuts: China hopes to reduce its emissions-to-GDP ratio by 20 percent by 2010, 80 percent by 2050; the White House?s goal is 18 percent by 2012. Renewable resources should supply 16 percent of energy by 2020.
Risks, challenges: If emissions rates don?t change, water shortages and high temperatures could cut harvests by 10 percent by 2030. China?s ratio of energy-to-GDP fell 1.2 percent in 2006; its goal was 4 percent. China is the world?s top producer and user of coal.see original Related: • China • moves • to • shrink • its • carbon • footprint 85. Evan Bayh April 27, 2007 4:17 am
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By Jim Polson and Christopher Donville
April 16 (Bloomberg) " The New York Mercantile Exchange,the world's largest energy market, plans futures contracts inuranium, the raw material for fueling nuclear-power reactors, tocapitalize on increasing demand for the commodity.
Contracts, beginning May 6 for trades May 7, will beprovided under a 10-year agreement with Ux Consulting Co., whichpublishes price indexes for the radioactive metal, Nymex said ina statement today. Off-exchange futures also will be offered,NYMEX said.
Uranium, used to generate about 16 percent of the world'selectricity, has surged in price, closing at a record $113 apound in the spot market last week. Prices have gained in thepast year on rising demand for the metal from power plantoperators and speculators amid concern for potential shortages.Nymex said it expects to create a benchmark contract.
?The uranium market would benefit from additional pricetransparency,'' Ux Consulting President Jeff Combs said in thestatement.
The new contract will be for U308, concentrated uraniumdioxide known as yellowcake, the exchange said in a subsequentstatement today. The contract will be for 250 pounds and will belisted for 36 consecutive months, and will settle for cash at thespot month-end price published by Ux Consulting.
Utilities in Asia, Europe and the U.S. are preparing tobuild new plants on concern over rising levels of carbon-dioxideproduced by plants that burn coal, an alternative fuel. A robustfutures market will assist ?budget and investment decisions inthis critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power,'' Combssaid.
Bilateral Contracts
Utilities now purchase most of their uranium under bilateralcontracts of 10 years or more.
?Our interest for a long time has been increasingcompetition in the market,'' said Craig Nesbit, a spokesman forChicago-based Exelon Corp., operator of the largest group of U.S.nuclear power plants. Nesbit said he didn't know if the companywould participate in the new Nymex market.
Lyle Krahn, a spokesman for Cameco Corp., the world'slargest uranium producer, did not immediately return a call forcomment on the Nymex announcement.
The price of uranium has more than doubled since Oct. 23when Cameco said construction of its Cigar Lake mine inSaskatchewan, the world's largest undeveloped high-grade uraniumdeposit, would be delayed because of an underground flood. Thecompany is working to plug the flow of water before draining themine and resuming construction.
Reactor In Finland
Paris-based Areva SA is building a nuclear reactor inFinland, Europe's first since a 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl,Ukraine. China ordered four reactors from Toshiba Corp.'sWestinghouse unit for a record $5.3 billion in December.
About $200 billion will be spent worldwide on nuclear powerby 2030, according to the Paris-based International EnergyAgency. A surge in prices for competing power plant fuel andconcern that carbon dioxide from coal and natural-gas burningplants accelerate global warming are driving the revival, itsaid.
Shares of Nymex Holdings Inc., parent of the exchange, fell18 cents to $131.27 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
To contact the reporter on this story:Jim Polson in New York at jpolson@bloomberg.net
Related: • Nymex • Plans • Uranium • Futures • Contracts • Starting • in • May • Update4 87. The Delusion of Expertise: I learned something ?
The Delusion of Expertise:
I learned something this weekend about the high cost of the subtledelusion that creative technical problem-solving is the preserve ofa priesthood of experts, using powers and perceptions beyond the ken ofordinary human beings.
Terry Pratchett is the author of the Discworld seriesof satirical fantasies. He is " and I don?t say this lightly, orwithout having given the matter thought and study " quiteprobably the most consistently excellent writer of intelligent humorin the last century in English. One has to go back as far as P.G.Wodehouse or Mark Twain to find an obvious equal in consistentquality, volume, and sly wisdom.
I?ve been a fan of Terry?s since before his first Discworld novel;I?m one of the few people who remembers Strata, his 1981 firstexperiment with the disc-world concept. The man has been somethinglike a long-term acquaintance of mine for ten years " one ofthose people you?d like to call a friend, and who you think would liketo call you a friend, if the two of you everarranged enough concentrated hang time to get that close. But we?reboth damn busy people, and live five thousand miles apart.
This weekend, Terry and I were both guests of honor at a hybridSF convention and Linux conference called Penguicon held in Warren,Michigan. We finally got our hang time. Among other things, Itaught Terry how to shoot pistols. He loves shooter games, but asa British resident his opportunities to play with real firearms arestrictly limited. (I can report that Terry handled my .45 semi withremarkable competence and steadiness for a first-timer. I can alsoreport that this surprised me not at all.)
During Terry?s Guest-of-Honor speech, he revealed his past as(he thought) a failed hacker. It turns out that back in the 1970sTerry used to wire up elaborate computerized gadgets from TimexSinclair computers. One of his projects used a primitive memorychip that had light-sensitive gates to build a sort of perceptronthat could actually see the difference between a circle and a cross.His magnum opus was a weather station that would log readings oftemperature and barometric pressure overnight and deliver weatherreports through a voice synthesizer.
But the most astonishing part of the speech was the followup inwhich Terry told us that despite his keen interest and elaboratehomebrewing, he didn?t become a programmer or a hardware tech becausehe thought techies had to know mathematics, which he thought he had notalent for. He then revealed that he thought of his projects as asort of bad imitation of programming, because his hardware andsoftware designs were total lash-ups and he never really knew what hewas doing.
I couldn?t stand it. ?And you think it was any different forus?? I called out. The audience laughed and Terry passed offthe remark with a quip. But I was just boggled. Because I know thatalmost all really bright techies start out that way, ascompulsive tinkerers who blundered around learning by experience beforethey acquired systematic knowledge. ?Oh ye gods and little fishes?, Ithought to myself, ?Terry is a hacker!?
Yes, I thought ?is? " even if Terry hasn?t actually tinkeredany computer software or hardware in a quarter-century. Being ahacker is expressed through skills and projects, but it?s really akind of attitude or mental stance that, once acquired, is never reallylost. It?s a kind of intense, omnivorous playfulness that tends tocolor everything a person does.
It burst upon me that Terry Pratchett has the hacker nature.Which, actually, explains something that has mildly puzzled me foryears. Terry has a huge following in the hacker community "knowing his books is something close to basic cultural literacy forInternet geeks. One is actually hard-put to think of any other writerfor whom this is as true. The question this has aways raised for meis: why Terry, rather than some hard-SF writer whose work explicitlycelebrates the technologies we play with?
The answer now seems clear. Terry?s hackerness has leaked into hiswriting somehow, modulating the quality of the humor. Behind thedrollery, I and my peers worldwide have accurately scented a mind likeour own.
I said some of this the following day, when I ran into Terrysurrounded by about fifty eager fans in a hallway. The natureof the conference was such that about three-quarters of them werehackers, many faces I recognized. I brought up the topic again,emphasizing that the sort of playful improvisation he?d beendescribing was very normal for us, and that I thought it waskind of sad he?d been blocked by the belief that hackers needto know mathematics, because about all we ever use is some piecesof set theory, graph theory, combinatorics, and Boolean algebra.No calculus at all.
Terry then admitted that he had at one point independentlyre-invented Boolean algebra. I didn?t find this surprising " Idid that myself when I was about fifteen; I didn?t mention this,though, because the moment was about Terry?s mind and not mine. Ithink reinventing Boolean algebra is probably something a lot ofbright proto-hackers do.
?Terry,? I said, fully conscious of the peculiar authority Iwield on this point as the custodian of the Jargon File, the how-to onHow To BecomeA Hacker and several other related documents, ?you are ahacker!?
The crowd agreed enthusiastically. Somebody handed Terry one ofthe ?Geek? badge ribbons the convention had made for attendees whowanted to identify themselves as coming from the Linux/programmingside. Much laughter ensued when it was discovered that the stickumon the ribbon had lost its virtue, and a nearby hacker had to ceremoniallyaffix the thing to Terry?s badge holder with a piece of duct tape.
Terry actually choked up a little while this was going on, and Idon?t think there was anyone there who didn?t understand why. To thekind of teenager and young man he must have been " bright,curious, creative, proud of his own ability " it must have beenvery painful to conclude that he would never cut it as the techie heso obviously wanted to be. He ended up doing public-relations workfor the British nuclear-power industry instead.
The whole sequence of events left me feeling delighted that I andmy friends could deliver the affirmation Terry had deserved so longago. But also " and here we come to the real point of thisessay " I felt very angry at the system that had fed the youngTerry such a huge load of cobblers about the nature of whatprogrammers and hardware designers do.
I?m not referring to the obvious garbage about needing abrain-bending amount of mathematics. No; they fed Terry something muchsubtler and more crippling, a belief that real techies actually know whatthey?re doing. The delusion of expertise.
The truth is that programmers only know what they?re doing when thejob is not very interesting. When you?re breaking new ground in anytechnical field, exploration and improvisation is the nature of thegame. Your designs are going to be lash-ups because you don?t yetknow any better and neither does anyone else.Systematization comes later, with the second system, during there-write and the re-think. Einstein had it right; imagination ismore valuable than knowledge, and people like Terry with ademonstrated ability to creatively wing it make far better hackersthan analytically smart but unimaginative people who can onlyfollow procedures.
The thought that Terry may have spent thirty years of working daysgrinding out press releases for the Central Electricity GeneratingBoard because he didn?t know this, rather than following his dreamsinto astronomy or programming or hardware design, bothers the crap outof me. If Terry was bright enough to invent Boolean algebra, he wasbright enough to cut it in any of these fields. The educationalsystem failed him by putting artificial requirements in his way andmaking him believe they were natural ones. It failed him even morefundamentally by teaching him a falsehood about the nature ofexpertise.
In doing this, it failed all of us. How many bright kids withfirst-class minds, I wonder, end up under-employed because of craplike this? How much creative potential are we losing?
OK, some might answer, so we got the Discworld fantasiesinstead?that ain?t exactly chopped liver. The thing is, I?m notsure that was actually a trade-off. I?m enough of a writer myselfto believe that you can?t block a writing talent like Terry?s merely bydropping him into a more demanding day job. It will come out.
On the other hand, one thing I am sure of is that youdon?t need intelligence or talents like Terry?s just to do PR. Oneway or another, this man was going to do something with more lastingeffects than soothing British farmers about radiation leaks. Inventingone of the funniest alternate worlds of the last hundred years duringyour free time is nice, and I devoutly hope he will get to keep doingit for decades to come " but in a society that valued and nurturedgenius properly, I think Terry might have helped re-imagine the realworld just as radically during his day job.
But he didn?t. Tot it up to the cost of taking creativity tooseriously, of undervaluing improvisation and play and imagination.And wonder how much else that error has cost us.Related: • The • Delusion • of • Expertise • I • learned • something • 88. Another Look at Nuclear Energy
The site of what is arguably the world?s leading research program in nuclear energy lies just a short drive from the city of Marseille through the picturesque and romantic countryside of southern France. At Cadarache, the Commissariat à l?énergie atomique, the French atomic energy agency, operates a complex of research facilities that is soon to be the home of ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which will be the most advanced and powerful Tokamak fusion reactor ever built. This reactor is being funded by the EU, China, Russia, the United States, and others.
Though famous as the future site of ITER, Cadarache is also soon to be home to one of the world?s most advanced fission reactors. On March 21, engineers began building the advanced Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR), to be used to test and evaluate advanced technologies. It is expected to operate for 50 years.
Work on the JHR is just one more sign of French dominance in the nuclear energy industry. In the United States, where nuclear energy technology was invented, only 19.4 percent of electricity is supplied by nuclear power plants. In France, by comparison, 78.5 percent of electricity is generated by nuclear power. The situation is much the same in other European nations. Lithuania, Slovakia, and Belgium all generate more than half of their electricity using nuclear power. Other nations producing more than 40 percent of their electricity using nuclear power include Ukraine, Sweden, Bulgaria, Armenia, and Slovenia. Meanwhile, a growing list of nations, including Russia, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and India, have nuclear power plants under construction.
Notably absent from that list is the United States. Hamstrung by irrational fears, miles of red tape, and onerous bureaucratic regulatory obstacles, no new domestic nuclear power plants have been ordered and built in America for over 30 years, even though the United States has the largest per capita demand for energy. The resulting lack of new nuclear capacity in the face of rising energy demand brings on short-term and long-term consequences. Short-term problems caused by a lack of electrical capacity include rolling blackouts, disruptions in daily life like stopped elevators, non-working traffic signals, loss of refrigerated products, etc. Among long-term problems we face rising electrical costs, termination of marginal industries, and no industrial expansion, among many, many others. Those consequences are entirely unnecessary because nuclear power provides an economical and safe method of producing abundant electricity.
Energy Options
Though alternative energy options like solar and wind power continue to get favorable press, their large drawbacks limit their practicality. Both are inefficient and subject to environmental disruptions. Cloudy days substantially reduce output from solar ?farms,? and wind power is subject to the vagaries of the weather. Moreover, vast swaths of territory must be covered with solar panels and parabolic mirrors or windmills in order to generate large amounts of power. In southern California, for instance, Stirling Energy Systems is building a 500-megawatt solar installation that, according to Wired magazine, is expected to cover 4,500 acres of land with 20,000 large, dish-shaped mirrors.
The only really viable alternatives for future large-scale generation lie with the four technologies that already provide the bulk of the nation?s power: hydropower, natural gas, nuclear, and coal. Of those, hydropower, providing 6.5 percent of U.S. electricity, has already peaked, and is likely to undergo a slow decline in usage in the future as smaller dams are dismantled to restore the natural course of some rivers. That leaves natural gas, coal, and nuclear power as options.
While natural gas has been highly touted as an energy source because it is considered a relatively clean fuel and because gas plants are relatively inexpensive to build, gas is an unlikely candidate for future large-scale power generation. During the 1990s, construction of gas-fired plants, which now provide 18.7 percent of U.S. electricity, increased because of relatively low fuel prices. In recent years, however, natural gas prices have increased substantially.
Moreover, domestic gas supplies are likely to be insufficient to support long-term expansions in gas-fired generation, even if domestic gas production increases. A recent study by Canada?s National Energy Board concluded: ?Production increases alone are not sufficient to meet the projected future requirements for natural-gas demand, including power generation. Consequently, any increases in demand for gas-fired generation would necessitate a reduction in gas consumption by other consumers and the development of further sources of gas supply.? Those other sources of supply would be foreign, most likely Russian, sources. Already Europe is dependent on Russian gas and in each of the last two years faced supply disruptions at the hands of the Kremlin.
Gas isn?t going away any time soon, but it is clearly not the best solution to the nation?s long term need for energy. Coal, which already provides almost 50 percent of U.S. electricity, is a better option because the United States holds the world?s largest reserves of the fuel. But even coal " though it will remain a useful fuel far into the future " fares poorly in comparison to nuclear energy.
Not far from my home, one nearby road crosses a rail line that leads to a coal-fired plant. As with most rail lines, trains here seem to be synchronized to run at times of maximum inconvenience. Most of these trains on this line are known as ?unit trains,? consisting of an engine or two plus one hundred 90-ton coal cars. It takes all the coal hauled by one of these trains to fuel a typical 1,000-megawatt generating plant for a single day! And even though the coal itself is cheap at the mouth of the mine, transportation costs mount substantially by the time the unit train reaches a power plant. According to the University of Wyoming, ?Coal at the mine mouth is about $5 per ton. By the time it gets to Illinois, the cost is $30 per ton. A train load of coal is worth $50,000 when it leaves the mine. When it pulls into the power plant in Chicago it is worth $300,000! For the user, up to 80% of the cost of the coal is in the transportation.?
The Nuclear Option
Even though coal remains an attractive option, nuclear energy is far superior. For one thing, despite the bad press it gets, nuclear is safer. No one in the United States has died as a result of nuclear-power generation. That can?t be said for coal. Historically, more than 100 lives have been lost annually at train crossings owing to coal-hauling unit trains.
Those tragic accidents are examples of the numerous accidents related to fossil-fuel energy generation that claim many lives each year. According to scientist and acclaimed science-fiction author Ben Bova, ?If you count up the number of people killed in coal mine disasters or oil well accidents and the wars being fought over oil, nuclear power looks positively benign. Then there are the natural gas and propane explosions that kill hundreds each year and destroy millions of dollars? worth of property.?
Finally, and far worse still if we are to believe the Environmental Protection Agency (a practice to be carefully considered), coal-fired plants in the United States annually cause 24,000 early deaths " including 2,800 from lung cancer. According to the EPA, emissions of fine particle pollution (or soot) resulted in an average loss of 14 years of life for the victims, along with 38,200 non-fatal heart attacks and 534,000 asthma attacks each year. (For more on concerns about radiation and the safety of nuclear energy, see article "Myths About Nuclear Energy.")
All things being equal, the economics of energy production also favor nuclear energy over coal. Instead of the 100 or so train cars of coal it takes to run the average coal plant each day, nuclear energy uses a comparatively tiny amount of uranium for fuel, making nuclear energy very efficient by comparison. The relatively tiny fuel requirements of nuclear power plants result in operational cost savings, and new technology developed by a private team of scientists in Australia and leased to General Electric promises to reduce costs even more.
Presently, nuclear fuel is commonly enriched by a clumsy process using centrifuge technology, but the Australian team has found a way to enrich uranium much more efficiently using lasers. ?The technology, said Michael Goldsworthy, a nuclear scientist and leader of the project, may halve enrichment costs, which he estimated accounted for 30 percent of the price of nuclear fuel,? the Sydney Morning Herald reported on May 27, 2006.
The power stored in uranium fuel boggles the mind. Suppose you have in your hand a penny-sized piece of the uranium isotope U235. It would seem strangely heavy because its density is more than 2.5 times that of the metal in a modern penny. An enormous amount of energy is pent up in the disc, but it is not hot " either thermally or radioactively. With a half-life of over 700 million years it gives up its radioactivity gradually, (A half-life is the amount of time it takes for a radioactive substance to give up half of its radiation.) and being an ?alpha emitter,? its radiation is too weak to penetrate your skin. You could wear it as a necklace your entire life without any danger.
Let?s further suppose you are Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average living in the Midwest. The average amount of heat energy necessary to heat your house through the snowy days and clear, still, cold Iowa nights from October to March is 80 million BTUs " the BTU being a measure of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. Not only would the energy stored in that penny-sized bit of uranium be enough to heat your house for one heating season, it would be enough to heat the average house for more than six years! In fact, a single pickup load of U235 has the equivalent energy of the coal carried in 36,500 large coal cars.
Today, most existing nuclear power plants require uranium fuel that is comprised of about 3 percent U235, with the balance being the more abundant U238 isotope. All told, it takes just six truckloads of uranium to power a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor for a year.
Breeder Reactors
Clearly, uranium is a much more efficient source of energy than coal. More advanced technologies that are available now compound that efficiency. According to the Hyperphysics archive developed by Georgia State University physics professor Carl R. Nave, ?Under appropriate operating conditions, the neutrons given off by fission reactions can ?breed? more fuel from otherwise non-fissionable isotopes.? The right type of reactor can take advantage of this phenomenon in order to generate more fuel while it is operating.
According to Professor Nave, a so-called fast-breeder reactor ?can produce about 20% more fuel than it consumes by the breeding reaction. Enough excess fuel is produced over about 20 years to fuel another such reactor. Optimum breeding allows about 75% of the energy of the natural uranium to be used compared to 1% in the standard light water reactor.? That is, the same amount of raw fuel could yield 75 times as much energy as it does now!
Split More Atoms
Because nuclear fuel contains such a tremendous amount of energy, incurs relatively little in the way of transportation and fuel costs, and currently is used in reactors built decades ago, electricity generated from that fuel in existing reactors is incredibly cheap. In measurements of economic efficiency that take into account production costs, current U.S. nuclear plants come out on top when compared to coal, natural gas, and petroleum. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, ?In 2005, nuclear power had the lowest production cost of the major sources of electricity, with production cost of 1.72 cents/kWh. Coal had a cost of 2.21 cents/kWh, natural gas 7.51 cents/kWh, and petroleum 8.09 cents/kWh.?
The low cost comes from the fact that the initial costs of construction for most existing reactors have long since been recovered. Moreover, new nuclear-power plants carry an initial price tag that is competitive with the cost of new coal-fired plants. The Associated Press reported on March 21 that Duke Energy Corp. ?estimated it would cost $1.53 billion to build a single coal-fired power unit at its Cliffside power plant in western North Carolina.? That plant would generate 800 megawatts. By comparison, in 1996 General Electric signed a $1.8 billion contract to build an advanced boiling-water nuclear reactor in Taiwan. Under the terms of that contract, GE even agreed to supply the fuel for the 1,350 megawatt facility. Today, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a similar plant of 1,450 megawatts ?could be built in the U.S. for $1,445 per kilowatt.? That works out to approximately $2.1 billion in construction costs. Figured on a per kilowatt basis, Duke Energy?s proposed coal facility will cost $1,912 per kilowatt to build. In other words, at present a reactor can be built in the United States for less money than it takes to build a coal-fired plant.
And imagine how much less expensive reactor construction would be if more than a decade?s worth of regulatory obstacles were removed from the path of future nuclear construction. Construction of the Watt Bar 1 nuclear plant in Tennessee was started in 1973 and the plant went on-line in February 1996. Nearly 23 years. (This plant, incidentally, set the record of 512 days of continuous operation without refueling or any maintenance downtime.) Meanwhile in China, according to World Nuclear News, Westinghouse is building four ?AP1000 third-generation nuclear power reactors.? From start to finish, construction of those plants is expected to take only four years.
As good as existing designs have been, the new ones are even better. The major U.S. players have new passive reactor designs that take advantage of natural convection and gravity to provide cooling without the necessity of pumps. The Westinghouse AP1000 reactors that are to be built in China are expected to cost only $1,200 per kilowatt installed and have robust safety features. General Electric has developed their ESBWR (the Economic & Simplified Boiling Water Reactor) with similar safety features and economic advantages. European, Asian, and South African developers have offerings that may advance their technologies over those of the United States.
One of the more noteworthy is Toshiba?s 4S (Super Safe, Small and Simple) reactor that is buried in the ground, requires no operator, and provides 10 megawatts of electricity for 30 years without refueling. After 15 years, the neutron reflectors will have to be rotated; otherwise no maintenance is necessary. Toshiba has offered a 4S reactor to the town of Galena, Alaska, at no charge except for the fuel, which would cost less than one-third what the town now pays for diesel fuel. It?s a great deal that, like most nuclear plants, is hamstrung by the cost of paperwork. The next step for this village of 675 souls is to come up with $20,000,000 to pay for an environmental impact statement.
The future is bright for nuclear power. The big question is: will the future be bright for an America that abandons nuclear power? Low-cost energy is essential for the future of all Americans. Climbing energy costs weaken the competitiveness of American industry on the world market. Traditionally, Americans have enjoyed cheap, plentiful power, and that has helped give American industry a competitive edge and led to higher standards of living. Nuclear energy, an American invention, can help keep it that way for decades to come.
It is not too late for U.S. utilities to switch from coal and gas to nuclear power. They did it in France, according to PBS Frontline, when the thought of dependence on foreign fuel sources proved intolerable. ?A popular French riposte to the question of why they have so much nuclear energy is ?no oil, no gas, no coal, no choice,?? Frontline reported. And it worked. According to Frontline, ?Today, nuclear energy is an everyday thing in France.? In matters of nuclear power at least, it?s about time for America to follow the French example.
Ed Hiserodt is the author of Under-Exposed: What If Radiation Is Really Good for You?
An Achilles? Heel for Nuclear Energy?
By Dennis Behreandt
It doesn?t take very much fuel to run a nuclear reactor. And that is a very good thing these days because after decades of neglect, the nuclear-energy industry may be facing a fuel shortage. According to some analysts, because no new reactors have been ordered in the United States for over 30 years, there was less perceived need for the development of new sources of uranium ore. Instead of developing new sources, plants relied on supplies in existing commercial and government inventories. As a result, just as the world is considering moving back to nuclear energy in a big way, the industry may be facing a fuel shortage.
Fortunately, rising prices have spurred interest in uranium mining, and mines that once were closed when uranium was selling at $9 per pound in 2001 are being brought back into operation now that uranium prices are expected to hit $110 per pound. In addition, with possibly millions of dollars to be had, there is a rush to find new sources. ?There?s a lot of staking going on,? prospector Mike Shumway told the International Herald Tribune on March 28. ?It?s like the gold rush.?
U.S. reserves are not limitless, but there is uranium to be had. According to Australia?s Uranium Information Centre, world reserves stand at 4.7 million tons. According to the UIC, that?s ?enough to last for some 70 years.? That doesn?t seem like much fuel, but existing technologies can extend that supply almost indefinitely. The answer, according to physicist Bernard Cohen, is the breeder reactor. In his 1990 book The Nuclear Energy Option, Cohen pointed out: ?A breeder reactor not only generates electricity, but it produces its own plutonium fuel with extra to spare.? The result, says Cohen, is a fuel supply that ?will last for thousands of years.? Additionally, thorium, which is more abundant than uranium, can be bred into fissile U233 and should take care of things till the sun goes out. Sleep well.Related: • Another • Look • at • Nuclear • Energy 89. Geothermal Resources Council (Geothermal Heat Pump) Encourages worldwide research and development on geothermal energy resources and utilization. Calendar of events, workshops, membership information, publications, related links and other information.A&A Companies offers Geothermal heating and air conditioning solutions in Delaware and Maryland. Companies (Click buttons below) More Information A&A Geothermal, Inc. Heating and CoolingInformation on renewable energy, including wind and solar power; nuclear-power safety issues and Introduction. Heat from the earth can be used as an energy source in many ways, from large and Most people do not realize that with new construction, geothermal heating, cooling & hot water can be installed for less money than a conventional system when you consider the monthly costs associated Geothermal energy is a form of renewable energy derived from heat deep in the earth s crust.Geothermal Heat Pumps. 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Investor 6305 Carpinteria Ave., Suite 300, Carpinteria, CA 93013 Tel: 805-899-9199 Fax: 805-899-1115 Roof Wind Designer is intended to provide users with an easy-to-use means for accurately determining roof systems design wind loads for many commonly encountered building types that are subject NASA, Intelligent Systems Division at Ames Research Center 05.12.2006 - World Wind 1.3.5 The World Wind Team is pleased to announce the release of World Wind 1 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for GameCube - GameSpot offers reviews, previews cheats and more The Wind Waker is a strong achievement in every way, from its stunning graphical presentation Income Statement: Quarterly (Jan '07) Annual (2007) Annual (2006) Total Revenue: 76.07 285.30 266.32 Gross Profit: 59.05 220.44 208.93 Operating Income -1.66 -5.04 23.89Manufacturer of the Jacobs wind turbines. They are an upwind, horizontal axis. There are five models available: 10 kw to 20 kw. Renewable Energy, Solar and Wind Home Power Systems, Energy Efficiency Equipment, Appliances, Direct Wind Power has a versatility of uses. The wind turbines below are used worldwide for battery Serving the communities of Dubois, Hudson, Lander, Riverton and Shoshoni. Related: • How • Wind • Energy • Works • Wind • guage 91. Laughing all the (Bond prices) way to the tank Times Online - The AA predicts that petrol prices will hit a record high of 1 a litre this summer bad news for motorists already reeling from Budget increases to fuel duty and road tax. With the Chancellor determined to squeeze polluters , savvy Seattle Post Intelligencer - PHOENIX -- Faded copper boomtowns in the Pinal Mountains, 85 miles east of Phoenix, are about to boom again. Soaring copper prices have companies scrambling to open new mines in the mineral-rich Globe-Miami Mining District or restart older operations Boston Globe - LOS ANGELES -- Thomas Properties Group Inc., which develops and manages multifamily, office and retail real estate, said Friday it priced its public offering of 8 million shares at $16 each. Originally, seven million shares were to be sold. The USA Today - Her electric bill, which used to be about $800 a month, has jumped to $1,800. She's shut down a large freezer of frozen treats and now closes the store an hour early to cut costs but fears she still may have to raise prices and lay off some workers Street.Com - The futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the Forbes - SINGAPORE (XFN-ASIA) - Oil prices were mixed in Asian trading hours in a market driven by healthy fundamentals and a focus on US refineries' return to production, traders said. At 11.36 am here (0336 GMT), the New York Mercantile Exchange's main oil CNN Money - LONDON (Reuters) -- U.S. crude prices fell nearly a dollar Thursday, but benchmark Brent crude rose for a second day on renewed concern over Iran's nuclear program. Benchmark U.S. declined 91 cents to $62.22, pushed lower by news that Enbridge had Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - The launch of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in platinum is set to upset a fragile market balance and prices, already supported by strong industrial demand, are bound to hit new record highs, analysts say. Prices jumped this week USA Today - BAGHDAD At the al-Hurriya gas station in Baghdad recently, the line was advancing so slowly that some drivers just pushed their cars along instead of running the engine and wasting fuel. Taxi driver Mohammed Khlaif Auwaid, 32, said he had been in San Diego Union-Tribune - CHARLOTTE, N.C. Steelmaker and scrap metal recycler Nucor Corp. said Thursday that its first quarter earnings increased 4 percent as strong metal prices offset lower production. While steel production fell 4 percent from the year-ago period, the Related: • Laughing • all • the • Bond • prices • way • to • the • tank 92. The New American Magazine: Another Look at Nuclear Energy
The site of what is arguably the world?s leading research program in nuclear energy lies just a short drive from the city of Marseille through the picturesque and romantic countryside of southern France. At Cadarache, the Commissariat à l?énergie atomique, the French atomic energy agency, operates a complex of research facilities that is soon to be the home of ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which will be the most advanced and powerful Tokamak fusion reactor ever built. This reactor is being funded by the EU, China, Russia, the United States, and others.
Though famous as the future site of ITER, Cadarache is also soon to be home to one of the world?s most advanced fission reactors. On March 21, engineers began building the advanced Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR), to be used to test and evaluate advanced technologies. It is expected to operate for 50 years.
Work on the JHR is just one more sign of French dominance in the nuclear energy industry. In the United States, where nuclear energy technology was invented, only 19.4 percent of electricity is supplied by nuclear power plants. In France, by comparison, 78.5 percent of electricity is generated by nuclear power. The situation is much the same in other European nations. Lithuania, Slovakia, and Belgium all generate more than half of their electricity using nuclear power. Other nations producing more than 40 percent of their electricity using nuclear power include Ukraine, Sweden, Bulgaria, Armenia, and Slovenia. Meanwhile, a growing list of nations, including Russia, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and India, have nuclear power plants under construction.
Notably absent from that list is the United States. Hamstrung by irrational fears, miles of red tape, and onerous bureaucratic regulatory obstacles, no new domestic nuclear power plants have been ordered and built in America for over 30 years, even though the United States has the largest per capita demand for energy. The resulting lack of new nuclear capacity in the face of rising energy demand brings on short-term and long-term consequences. Short-term problems caused by a lack of electrical capacity include rolling blackouts, disruptions in daily life like stopped elevators, non-working traffic signals, loss of refrigerated products, etc. Among long-term problems we face rising electrical costs, termination of marginal industries, and no industrial expansion, among many, many others. Those consequences are entirely unnecessary because nuclear power provides an economical and safe method of producing abundant electricity.
Energy Options
Though alternative energy options like solar and wind power continue to get favorable press, their large drawbacks limit their practicality. Both are inefficient and subject to environmental disruptions. Cloudy days substantially reduce output from solar ?farms,? and wind power is subject to the vagaries of the weather. Moreover, vast swaths of territory must be covered with solar panels and parabolic mirrors or windmills in order to generate large amounts of power. In southern California, for instance, Stirling Energy Systems is building a 500-megawatt solar installation that, according to Wired magazine, is expected to cover 4,500 acres of land with 20,000 large, dish-shaped mirrors.
The only really viable alternatives for future large-scale generation lie with the four technologies that already provide the bulk of the nation?s power: hydropower, natural gas, nuclear, and coal. Of those, hydropower, providing 6.5 percent of U.S. electricity, has already peaked, and is likely to undergo a slow decline in usage in the future as smaller dams are dismantled to restore the natural course of some rivers. That leaves natural gas, coal, and nuclear power as options.
While natural gas has been highly touted as an energy source because it is considered a relatively clean fuel and because gas plants are relatively inexpensive to build, gas is an unlikely candidate for future large-scale power generation. During the 1990s, construction of gas-fired plants, which now provide 18.7 percent of U.S. electricity, increased because of relatively low fuel prices. In recent years, however, natural gas prices have increased substantially.
Moreover, domestic gas supplies are likely to be insufficient to support long-term expansions in gas-fired generation, even if domestic gas production increases. A recent study by Canada?s National Energy Board concluded: ?Production increases alone are not sufficient to meet the projected future requirements for natural-gas demand, including power generation. Consequently, any increases in demand for gas-fired generation would necessitate a reduction in gas consumption by other consumers and the development of further sources of gas supply.? Those other sources of supply would be foreign, most likely Russian, sources. Already Europe is dependent on Russian gas and in each of the last two years faced supply disruptions at the hands of the Kremlin.
Gas isn?t going away any time soon, but it is clearly not the best solution to the nation?s long term need for energy. Coal, which already provides almost 50 percent of U.S. electricity, is a better option because the United States holds the world?s largest reserves of the fuel. But even coal " though it will remain a useful fuel far into the future " fares poorly in comparison to nuclear energy.
Not far from my home, one nearby road crosses a rail line that leads to a coal-fired plant. As with most rail lines, trains here seem to be synchronized to run at times of maximum inconvenience. Most of these trains on this line are known as ?unit trains,? consisting of an engine or two plus one hundred 90-ton coal cars. It takes all the coal hauled by one of these trains to fuel a typical 1,000-megawatt generating plant for a single day! And even though the coal itself is cheap at the mouth of the mine, transportation costs mount substantially by the time the unit train reaches a power plant. According to the University of Wyoming, ?Coal at the mine mouth is about $5 per ton. By the time it gets to Illinois, the cost is $30 per ton. A train load of coal is worth $50,000 when it leaves the mine. When it pulls into the power plant in Chicago it is worth $300,000! For the user, up to 80% of the cost of the coal is in the transportation.?
The Nuclear Option
Even though coal remains an attractive option, nuclear energy is far superior. For one thing, despite the bad press it gets, nuclear is safer. No one in the United States has died as a result of nuclear-power generation. That can?t be said for coal. Historically, more than 100 lives have been lost annually at train crossings owing to coal-hauling unit trains.
Those tragic accidents are examples of the numerous accidents related to fossil-fuel energy generation that claim many lives each year. According to scientist and acclaimed science-fiction author Ben Bova, ?If you count up the number of people killed in coal mine disasters or oil well accidents and the wars being fought over oil, nuclear power looks positively benign. Then there are the natural gas and propane explosions that kill hundreds each year and destroy millions of dollars? worth of property.?
Finally, and far worse still if we are to believe the Environmental Protection Agency (a practice to be carefully considered), coal-fired plants in the United States annually cause 24,000 early deaths " including 2,800 from lung cancer. According to the EPA, emissions of fine particle pollution (or soot) resulted in an average loss of 14 years of life for the victims, along with 38,200 non-fatal heart attacks and 534,000 asthma attacks each year. (For more on concerns about radiation and the safety of nuclear energy, see article "Myths About Nuclear Energy.")
All things being equal, the economics of energy production also favor nuclear energy over coal. Instead of the 100 or so train cars of coal it takes to run the average coal plant each day, nuclear energy uses a comparatively tiny amount of uranium for fuel, making nuclear energy very efficient by comparison. The relatively tiny fuel requirements of nuclear power plants result in operational cost savings, and new technology developed by a private team of scientists in Australia and leased to General Electric promises to reduce costs even more.
Presently, nuclear fuel is commonly enriched by a clumsy process using centrifuge technology, but the Australian team has found a way to enrich uranium much more efficiently using lasers. ?The technology, said Michael Goldsworthy, a nuclear scientist and leader of the project, may halve enrichment costs, which he estimated accounted for 30 percent of the price of nuclear fuel,? the Sydney Morning Herald reported on May 27, 2006.
The power stored in uranium fuel boggles the mind. Suppose you have in your hand a penny-sized piece of the uranium isotope U235. It would seem strangely heavy because its density is more than 2.5 times that of the metal in a modern penny. An enormous amount of energy is pent up in the disc, but it is not hot " either thermally or radioactively. With a half-life of over 700 million years it gives up its radioactivity gradually, (A half-life is the amount of time it takes for a radioactive substance to give up half of its radiation.) and being an ?alpha emitter,? its radiation is too weak to penetrate your skin. You could wear it as a necklace your entire life without any danger.
Let?s further suppose you are Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average living in the Midwest. The average amount of heat energy necessary to heat your house through the snowy days and clear, still, cold Iowa nights from October to March is 80 million BTUs " the BTU being a measure of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. Not only would the energy stored in that penny-sized bit of uranium be enough to heat your house for one heating season, it would be enough to heat the average house for more than six years! In fact, a single pickup load of U235 has the equivalent energy of the coal carried in 36,500 large coal cars.
Today, most existing nuclear power plants require uranium fuel that is comprised of about 3 percent U235, with the balance being the more abundant U238 isotope. All told, it takes just six truckloads of uranium to power a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor for a year.
Breeder Reactors
Clearly, uranium is a much more efficient source of energy than coal. More advanced technologies that are available now compound that efficiency. According to the Hyperphysics archive developed by Georgia State University physics professor Carl R. Nave, ?Under appropriate operating conditions, the neutrons given off by fission reactions can ?breed? more fuel from otherwise non-fissionable isotopes.? The right type of reactor can take advantage of this phenomenon in order to generate more fuel while it is operating.
According to Professor Nave, a so-called fast-breeder reactor ?can produce about 20% more fuel than it consumes by the breeding reaction. Enough excess fuel is produced over about 20 years to fuel another such reactor. Optimum breeding allows about 75% of the energy of the natural uranium to be used compared to 1% in the standard light water reactor.? That is, the same amount of raw fuel could yield 75 times as much energy as it does now!
Split More Atoms
Because nuclear fuel contains such a tremendous amount of energy, incurs relatively little in the way of transportation and fuel costs, and currently is used in reactors built decades ago, electricity generated from that fuel in existing reactors is incredibly cheap. In measurements of economic efficiency that take into account production costs, current U.S. nuclear plants come out on top when compared to coal, natural gas, and petroleum. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, ?In 2005, nuclear power had the lowest production cost of the major sources of electricity, with production cost of 1.72 cents/kWh. Coal had a cost of 2.21 cents/kWh, natural gas 7.51 cents/kWh, and petroleum 8.09 cents/kWh.?
The low cost comes from the fact that the initial costs of construction for most existing reactors have long since been recovered. Moreover, new nuclear-power plants carry an initial price tag that is competitive with the cost of new coal-fired plants. The Associated Press reported on March 21 that Duke Energy Corp. ?estimated it would cost $1.53 billion to build a single coal-fired power unit at its Cliffside power plant in western North Carolina.? That plant would generate 800 megawatts. By comparison, in 1996 General Electric signed a $1.8 billion contract to build an advanced boiling-water nuclear reactor in Taiwan. Under the terms of that contract, GE even agreed to supply the fuel for the 1,350 megawatt facility. Today, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a similar plant of 1,450 megawatts ?could be built in the U.S. for $1,445 per kilowatt.? That works out to approximately $2.1 billion in construction costs. Figured on a per kilowatt basis, Duke Energy?s proposed coal facility will cost $1,912 per kilowatt to build. In other words, at present a reactor can be built in the United States for less money than it takes to build a coal-fired plant.
And imagine how much less expensive reactor construction would be if more than a decade?s worth of regulatory obstacles were removed from the path of future nuclear construction. Construction of the Watt Bar 1 nuclear plant in Tennessee was started in 1973 and the plant went on-line in February 1996. Nearly 23 years. (This plant, incidentally, set the record of 512 days of continuous operation without refueling or any maintenance downtime.) Meanwhile in China, according to World Nuclear News, Westinghouse is building four ?AP1000 third-generation nuclear power reactors.? From start to finish, construction of those plants is expected to take only four years.
As good as existing designs have been, the new ones are even better. The major U.S. players have new passive reactor designs that take advantage of natural convection and gravity to provide cooling without the necessity of pumps. The Westinghouse AP1000 reactors that are to be built in China are expected to cost only $1,200 per kilowatt installed and have robust safety features. General Electric has developed their ESBWR (the Economic & Simplified Boiling Water Reactor) with similar safety features and economic advantages. European, Asian, and South African developers have offerings that may advance their technologies over those of the United States.
One of the more noteworthy is Toshiba?s 4S (Super Safe, Small and Simple) reactor that is buried in the ground, requires no operator, and provides 10 megawatts of electricity for 30 years without refueling. After 15 years, the neutron reflectors will have to be rotated; otherwise no maintenance is necessary. Toshiba has offered a 4S reactor to the town of Galena, Alaska, at no charge except for the fuel, which would cost less than one-third what the town now pays for diesel fuel. It?s a great deal that, like most nuclear plants, is hamstrung by the cost of paperwork. The next step for this village of 675 souls is to come up with $20,000,000 to pay for an environmental impact statement.
The future is bright for nuclear power. The big question is: will the future be bright for an America that abandons nuclear power? Low-cost energy is essential for the future of all Americans. Climbing energy costs weaken the competitiveness of American industry on the world market. Traditionally, Americans have enjoyed cheap, plentiful power, and that has helped give American industry a competitive edge and led to higher standards of living. Nuclear energy, an American invention, can help keep it that way for decades to come.
It is not too late for U.S. utilities to switch from coal and gas to nuclear power. They did it in France, according to PBS Frontline, when the thought of dependence on foreign fuel sources proved intolerable. ?A popular French riposte to the question of why they have so much nuclear energy is ?no oil, no gas, no coal, no choice,?? Frontline reported. And it worked. According to Frontline, ?Today, nuclear energy is an everyday thing in France.? In matters of nuclear power at least, it?s about time for America to follow the French example.
Ed Hiserodt is the author of Under-Exposed: What If Radiation Is Really Good for You?
An Achilles? Heel for Nuclear Energy?
By Dennis Behreandt
It doesn?t take very much fuel to run a nuclear reactor. And that is a very good thing these days because after decades of neglect, the nuclear-energy industry may be facing a fuel shortage. According to some analysts, because no new reactors have been ordered in the United States for over 30 years, there was less perceived need for the development of new sources of uranium ore. Instead of developing new sources, plants relied on supplies in existing commercial and government inventories. As a result, just as the world is considering moving back to nuclear energy in a big way, the industry may be facing a fuel shortage.
Fortunately, rising prices have spurred interest in uranium mining, and mines that once were closed when uranium was selling at $9 per pound in 2001 are being brought back into operation now that uranium prices are expected to hit $110 per pound. In addition, with possibly millions of dollars to be had, there is a rush to find new sources. ?There?s a lot of staking going on,? prospector Mike Shumway told the International Herald Tribune on March 28. ?It?s like the gold rush.?
U.S. reserves are not limitless, but there is uranium to be had. According to Australia?s Uranium Information Centre, world reserves stand at 4.7 million tons. According to the UIC, that?s ?enough to last for some 70 years.? That doesn?t seem like much fuel, but existing technologies can extend that supply almost indefinitely. The answer, according to physicist Bernard Cohen, is the breeder reactor. In his 1990 book The Nuclear Energy Option, Cohen pointed out: ?A breeder reactor not only generates electricity, but it produces its own plutonium fuel with extra to spare.? The result, says Cohen, is a fuel supply that ?will last for thousands of years.? Additionally, thorium, which is more abundant than uranium, can be bred into fissile U233 and should take care of things till the sun goes out. Sleep well.Related: • The • New • American • Magazine • Another • Look • at • Nuclear • Energy 93. That was the crux of it
That was the crux of it. The plutonium bomb, from a militarystandpoint, was as obsolete as the flintlock musket had been at thetime of the Second World War. He reviewed, quickly, the history ofweapons-development since the beginning of the Atomic Era. Theemphasis, since the end of the Second World War, had all been onnuclear weapons and rocket-missiles. There had been the H-bomb, itselfobsolescent, and the Bethe-cyle bomb, and the subneutron bomb, and theomega-ray bomb, and the nega-matter bomb, and then the end ofcivilization in the Northern Hemisphere and the rise of the newcivilization in South America and South Africa and Australia. Today,the small-arms and artillery his troops were using were merely slightrefinements on the weapons of the First Century, and all the modernnuclear weapons used by the Terran Federation were produced at theSpace Navy base on Mars, by a small force of experts whose skills werealmost as closed to the general scientific and technical world as thesecrets of a medieval guild. The old A-bomb was an historicalcuriosity, and there was nobody on Uller who had more than a layman?sknowledge of the intricate technology of modern nuclear weapons. Therewere plenty of good nuclear-power engineers on Gongonk Island, but howlong would it take them to design and build a plutonium bomb?Related: • That • was • the • crux • of • it 94. India has China in its range
written by: Siddharth Srivastava, 13-Apr-07
NEW DELHI - Even as India celebrates the successful test-firing on Thursday of its home-grown Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missile - capable of delivering a 1.5-tonne nuclear or conventional payload over much of Asia - officials admit that the test had the tacit approval of the United States.
The US is striving to build India as a strategic counterweight to China, along with Japan and Australia.
Last May, during a period of frenzied negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal with Washington, New Delhi postponed testing of the Agni-III so as not to invite the ire of nuclear hawks in the US Congress, which was deliberating the nuclear pact that now stands approved.
According to reports last year, Washington put pressure on New Delhi to agree to a future moratorium on testing of dual-use missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload and testing another atomic bomb as a quid pro quo for the civilian nuclear deal.
India, however, rejected such a commitment as a back-door entry to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has not signed the CTBT as it feels that the treaty came into existence after those who possessed nuclear weapons had developed the know-how.
Strategic equations have obviously changed now, with a combination of business interests, India?s record as a responsible democratic nation, and the China factor coming into play.
Agni-III, given its range of 3,000 kilometers, has been specifically designed to build a minimum nuclear deterrence against China, with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai very much in the radar. Agni-III is said to possess a high degree of accuracy with a medium-to-large nuclear payload.
Beijing reacted immediately to the Indian firing, saying it hoped that India, ?as a country with an important influence in this region, can work to maintain and promote peace and stability in the region?. Indian officials have said Agni-III is not China-centric, but an effort to build overall security.
India, of course, has traditional rival Pakistan already covered via its Agni-I (700-800km range) and Agni-II (2,000km-plus range) missiles that are now being inducted into the armed forces. As per the agreed norms, New Delhi informed Islamabad about Agni-III prior to the test.
Not to be undone, Pakistan, with help from China and North Korea, is in the process of inducting the nuclear-capable Shaheen-II missile, tested for the first time in March 2004, which can strike Indian targets over a range of 2,000km.
Apart from gaining more security muscle in the region, the success of Agni-III is significant on other counts. The maiden test of Agni-III failed last July 9, so Indian scientists had to work on the technical glitches.
The Agni is one of five missiles that have been developed by India. The others are the short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi, the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), the multi-purpose Akash (Sky) and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra) missile.
Other benefits It would seem that India is also now reasonably sure of its acceptance as a nuclear exception among the global community that will allow it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the international market. Indian efforts have now moved to turning around nations that form part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with success on this count. India needs approval from the NSG so that it can implement its nuclear agreement with the US.
Heavyweights France, the United Kingdom and Canada have already backed the deal. The business potential and diplomatic efforts have had important countries such as China and Australia rethink their approach. Those two countries have hinted that they will not be averse to doing nuclear business with India. Russia has already chalked out its nuclear-power engagement with India.
South Africa and Brazil have been co-opted by promises of New Delhi?s support in securing business deals and expertise in software and information technology.
Japan has been difficult, but Indian officials are sure that given the massive business opportunities, especially in software to upgrade Japanese companies, and extensive diplomatic efforts, Japan will come around and has already considerably softened its stand. Tokyo is pretty much clued into a US-India-Japan ?axis of democracy? to counter the might of China.
Thus the timing of the Agni-III test seems to be right. Politically, the Congress-led New Delhi government has been criticized for being feeble to India?s internal and external security threats, because of repeated terrorist attacks and the need to tread carefully in dealing with Beijing.
Given the ongoing detailed negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the nuclear pact with the US as well the benefits of nuclear power that will flow in times to come, it was only prudent for New Delhi to gain a few political points given the immediacy of electoral politics.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the success of the Agni-III missile is an ?impressive illustration? of India mastering the strategic high technologies to uphold national security.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Published in: Asia Times Related: • India • has • China • in • its • range 95. FAIR Says Nukes Piece Not Last Sunday, "60 Minutes" ran a piece "On How France Is Becoming The Model For Nuclear Energy Generation." Media watchdog group FAIR has objected to the piece on the grounds that it amounted to nuclear-power boosterism. The thrust of the objection was that "60 Minutes" did not provide a balanced argument - that "the program spoke only to nuclear power supporters (in France and elsewhere), thereby allowing their rhetoric to go unchallenged." I asked "60 Minutes" Producer Frank Devine, who produced the piece, to respond to FAIR's complaint. "We were not debating nuclear power in this piece," said Devine. "This was a piece on the French approach. It was not to look at nuclear power, pro or con. God knows we're aware of the shortcomings in nuclear power. [Correspondent] Steve [Kroft] has done two pieces from inside Chernobyl. I worked with him on a piece on security problems at U.S. power plants after Sept. 11." "You really have to look at '60' over the course of 30 whatever years it is," he continued. "We've covered nuclear power from all sides. You have to take this in context." Devine said the piece wasn't initially envisioned as one focused on nuclear power. "We set out to do a piece, years ago, on how the French approach differs from ours," he said. "It developed into a piece on how the French are influencing the U.S. government." As to the argument that CBS News is pushing nuclear power, Devine said "60 Minutes" wasn't pushing anything - just letting "the deputy secretary of energy have his say and asking 'how has the U.S. been influenced by the French nuclear program?'" Related: • FAIR • Says • Nukes • Piece • Not 96. LinkFest 4.22.07
More Power!
That was Friday's exclamation mark on a week that was all upside. This was the 3rd consecutive week of gains for the Dow, with 15 of the past 16 sessions in the green. The Industrials tacked on 2.8%, as ; Caterpillar (CAT) and Honeywell (HON) showed the upside of a weak dollar. The S&P500 added 2.2%. Its less than 3% from its all-time highs of March 2000. The laggards? Technology (Nasdaq gained 1.4%) and small caps (Russell 2000 rose 1.2%). ;
A combination of more M&A activity, better earnings then (lowered) expectations, and perceived modest inflation data were the key reasons given.
Barron's Trader column noted that "why the market climbed isn't nearly as telling as how it climbed. The market's breadth wasn't always convincing, with fewer stocks contributing to this advance than during the February rise. Stocks look stretched in the short term, with the S&P 500 running more than 3.5% ahead of its 30-day moving average." But, they noted, momentum remains to the upside.
The coming week will focus on earnings, and the prelim look at Q1 GDP out on Friday. ;
Given all that, we have lots of good stuff to cover this week. With no further adieu, linkfest:
INVESTING & TRADING
? ; S&P500 is Back in Black for the first time since April 2000
? A profit gusher of epic proportions: ; The grand total: $785 billion, a 29% increase over 2005. Those returns obliterated the previous cyclical peak, $444 billion, achieved in 2000 at the height of the tech explosion. Put simply, American companies are enjoying the most sumptuously profitable period in the 500's 53-year history. Last year post-tax profit margins hit 7.9%. That's 27% higher than the 6.2% posted in 2000, then lauded as exceptional. (Fortune) See also 20 most profitable companies.
? Short Interest Precludes Correction: The record number of short bets has created a floor under the markets. Consider that if you think you are not investing with the herd . . .
? Is the Dow's Recovery a Mere Illusion? The dollar's decline makes the performance of U.S. equities rather less impressive to global investors, especially Europeans, as Barron's Roundtable member Marc Faber has emphasized repeatedly. While the Standard & Poor's 500 was up 15.8% in dollars last year, it gained only about 1.6% when measured in euros. And the S&P 500's 1.6% nominal gain for the first quarter was nil in euro terms. (Barron's)
? 1987 versus 2007?: I keep saying I am not a fan of this parallel, but that doesn't stop Street.com readers from sending me all sorts of charts . . .
? Uranium Contract To Debut on Nymex ; The futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal (Wall Street Journal)
? An Actively Managed ETF?
? Great minds don't think alike about index funds: When John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, introduced the first retail index fund in 1976, he sparked a revolution in investing: Throw out the fund manager, keep costs low, and weight the stocks in the portfolio by their current market value. Today, $3 trillion in pensions and mutual funds are indexed. Now Jeremy Siegel, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and author of Stocks for the Long Run, has reinvented indexing. Since June, his company, WisdomTree, has rolled out more than two dozen funds that are indexed according to a company's earnings or dividends, rather than market capitalization. (USA Today)
? Goldfinger Brown?s £2 billion blunder in the gold bullion market
? Stocks vs. Real Estate: Both real estate and stocks have had their day, but the question you need answered is this: Which contender is the superior long-term bet today? (CNN Money)
? Why Hot Funds Are Tripping Up Some Investors: In recent months, however, some ETFs have begun diverging widely from the performance of the benchmarks they are supposed to follow. At the same time, several newer ETFs with short track records are failing to match the hypothetical rates of return they would have achieved in previous years if they had existed then. (free Wall Street Journal)
? U.S. Dollar Index Breaks Down ; ;
? Mutual fund tax bite at record $24 billion: ; Mutual fund investors got slammed by Uncle Sam in 2006. A report by Lipper, a fund research company, found that shareholders in taxable fund accounts paid at least $23.8 billion in taxes. That figure reflects the impact on investors who simply held their funds and reinvested their distributions - those who sold fund shares during the year would have paid even higher taxes. (CNN Money)
;? Uh-oh -- I don't like the sound of this Tax the Middle-Aged! (Slate) ;
? Fascinating reading: ; All the reporting the WSJ did on the options-backdating scandal ended up winning them a Pulitzer Prize for public service reporting; The Journal moved ALL of their related articles out from behind the sub-only firewall: Pulitzer for Perfect Payday
INTERNATIONAL
? Global Markets Driving the Dow: The rest of the world is carrying the U.S. stock market. Fast-galloping overseas economies, flush world capital markets and a sagging dollar fatten multinationals' earnings and furnish the fuel for commodity-related stocks to surge. (Barron's) If no Barron's, go here.
? China Selloff II: The Attack of the Giant Jitters: For the second time in less than two months, a drop inChinese stock prices rattled markets across Asia and was felt modestly in Europe and the U.S. Investors said Chinese stocks are becoming a measure of their tolerance for risk everywhere. The main factor triggering the fall in the Shanghai Composite Index -- it was down 7% at one point Thursday before finishing with a 4.5% loss -- was concern among Chinese investors that Beijing might move to brake growth in the world's fourth-biggest economy with an interest-rate increase. (free Wall Street Journal)
? Japan's Savers May Be Ready to Spend, Fueling Growth: Japan's penny-pinching savers and earnest salarymen may at last be ready to loosen their purse strings as bank deposits earn more and millions of workers collect retirement windfalls. Economists forecast consumer spending will accelerate this year as demand awakens in the world's second-largest economy after a decade of deflation and stagnant wages. (Bloomberg)
? Overseas investors look at the Shanghai Stock Exchange as a way to gauge the health of the Chinese economy. They really shouldn't. Investor Beware (Portfolio)
? Many Savers, Few Spenders Leave South China Mall Almost Empty: South China Mall stands as a symbol of China's failure to stimulate more spending by its 1.3 billion people and to curb runaway investment in real-estate projects. The results: A record $232.5 billion trade gap with the U.S. and increasing concern about unsustainable growth at home. (Bloomberg) ;
ECONOMY
No Wall. No Worry. No build:
? Why This Isn't Stagflation: For some reason, the word stagflation keeps creeping back into the lexicon. It really shouldn't be. As we have noted for quite some time, we are experiencing a form of "demi-stagflation." ; Growth is below the long term trend, inflation is above. Call it stagflation lite or blahflation, ; but it is not the 10% inflation, 1% growth of the 1970s. So why are so many concerned about stagflation?
? Inflation Confined to Rest-of-the-World, Avoiding U.S.
? The New York Fed hosted a conference on the Euro and the Dollar this week -- most of the presentations will soon be online for your econo-geek viewing pleasure
? March tax receipts in California came up 7.4% short
HOUSING
? Big Drop in LI Luxury Real Estate Prices: Some local regions have already shown drops of 8-12%, according to Zillow.com ; ;
? ; Real estate cheerleader concedes price drop: Satan must be shoveling snow out of his driveway, because the underworld has frozen over. By that I mean that the National Association of Realtors has finally conceded that home prices are falling nationwide. (San Diego Union Tribune)
? Industrial Real Estate is Booming
? How did a strawberry picker earning $15,000 a year qualify for a loan of $720,000?? (San Francisco Gate)
? Still Renting: Based on the current outlook for housing, I will likely be renting for one to two more years. While many factors that influence housing prices have turned negative, I suspect we have not yet hit bottom. In fact, housing prices should head lower throughout the rest of this year and next year as well (PIMCO)
? How to Sell Your House (CNN Money);
SENTIMENT/PSYCHOLOGY
? ; Genuinely contrarian: How to tell when "good" news really isn't " and act accordingly. (Marketwatch)
? The hardest trade to make right now? Shorting: Cody Willard had an intriguing post on shorting into strength Friday: (If no RM, then see The Hardest Trade to Make?)
? ; Stock Market Psychology: Perspectives
? As Dow finds new peak, the doubters are only digging in (Marketwatch);
WAR/MEDIA/POLITICS/ENERGY
? Daniel Gross' satirical Slate column this week compares the various presidential candidates to stocks, complete with Buy Sell and Hold recommendations. Hilarious: Obama Is Google. McCain Is GM
? Wall Street Antes Up for 2008: Wall Street ranked as the top source of large campaign donations for presidential candidates in the early part of the 2008 campaign, aided by traditional contributors and new donations from the private-money industry, according to newly released campaign-finance reports. (free WSJ) ; see also Pickens's New Commodity: Giuliani
? America?s ?Seinfeld? strategy in Iraq: (How did I ever miss this one? ; In ?The Opposite,? George breaches the most fundamental laws in his universe " for example, the age-old principle that ?bald men with no jobs and no money, who live with their parents, don?t approach strange women.? Similarly, in its geopolitical incarnation, adherents to the Costanza doctrine cast aside many of the fundamental tenets they learnt at staff college or graduate school. Let me name a few . . . (Financial Times) ? Behind high gas prices: The refinery crunch: Each spring, just before the summer driving season, gasoline prices skyrocket. And every year, these four words appear in news reports nationwide as a big reason for the runup: "lack of refining capacity." (CNN Money)
? A Media Fourfer:
-In a Troubled Time, a New Business Magazine: S. I. Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast, said in an interview that he had no patience with Portfolio skeptics. ?Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead,? he said. ?I don?t think we?re going to trample on Forbes or Fortune. I think we?re going to help the whole field. We?re going to bring excitement to it, and we?re going to bring luxury and fashion advertisers into it.?
-Best-Informed Also View Fake News, Study Says: survey respondents who seemed to know the most about what?s going on " who were able to identify major public figures, for example " were likely to be viewers of fake news programs like Jon Stewart?s ?The Daily Show? and ?The Colbert Report?; those who knew the least watched network morning news programs, Fox News or local television news.
-Newspapers Lose Readers, Advertisers, Now Analysts: Readers were the first to abandon U.S. newspapers. Then advertisers and investors. Now analysts are joining the exodus
- In case you were wondering who?s to blame for the Virginia Tech massacre, here's a list of over 50, with the appropriate media attribution ; ; ;
TECHNOLOGY & SCIENCE
? At last, music is the winner: In truth, its radical new online strategy looks more like an act of desperation than a progressive rethink of DRM. It's perhaps best understood as a gallant attempt to kick-start the shiny new vehicle (online retail) before the wheels fall off the terminally ill one (CD retail) while hopefully closing the gap on its rivals in the same cavalier manoeuvre. (The Age) see also: Apple holds upper hand in music negotiations
? The Next People's Car: The $2500 auto from Tata (Forbes)
? Microsoft, Adobe Set A Collision Course on Web: Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Inc. are on a collision course as they seek to dominate a new kind of software that will change how personal computers and the Web work together.The companies have been partners in the past, and Adobe is one of the largest makers of software for computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system. The companies have also tussled before, but they have generally stayed in their corners of the tech arena. (free Wall Street Journal)
? What Time is Dinner? The evolution of mealtimes.
? ; Big Box Watch tracks new retail construction of several national retailers within the United States. The retailers tracked here all have major expansion plans within the United States, or the opening of a new location will have a significant economic or political impact on the locale community. (Google Maps Mashup via kottke) ; ;
? Circuit City, Napster to offer music service (Reuters)
? The Technology, Entertainment, Design conference (TED) has posted all of its presenters speeches online.
? Dell brings back XP on home systems: ; Amid significant customer demand, the computer maker said on Thursday that it has returned to offering the older Windows version as an option on some of its consumer PCs. Like most computer makers, Dell switched nearly entirely to Vista-based systems following Microsoft's mainstream launch of the operating system in January. However, the company said its customers have been asking for XP as part of its IdeaStorm project, which asks customers to help the company come up with product ideas. (C/Net) ; See also: PC Market Sends Conflicting Signals (free Wall Street Journal)
? Humans are the planet's best long distance runners: hot, sweaty, natural-born runners.
? Pollock's Fractals: A retrospective of his work several years ago at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City drew lines around the block, and an award-winning film of his life and art was released at the end of 2000. Apparently "Jack the Dripper" captured some aesthetic dimension"some abiding logic in human perception"beyond the scope of his critics. That logic, says physicist and art historian Richard Taylor, lies not in art but in mathematics " specifically, in chaos theory and its offspring, fractal geometry. See also Whatever Happened to... Chaos Theory? ; and Random Fractals and the Stock Market
? The End of a 1,400-Year-Old Business: What entrepreneurs starting family businesses can learn from the demise of Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi
? Are you tired of talking to computer phone prompts? Do you want to talk to a human? Try Dial-a-Human!
MUSIC BOOKS MOVIES TV FUN!
? I just added three new books got to my summer reading list this week: Dan Gross' Pop!: Why Bubbles Are Great For The Economy sounds like just the sort of counterintuitive analysis that makes economics and investing so intriguingly fascinating.
Next up: Todd Buchholz' New Ideas from Dead CEOs: Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office: I enjoyed Buchholz' New Ideas from Dead Economists so much that this new book went right on my list.
Given the current state of the greenback, this book couldn't be any more timely: H. W. Brands' The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War over the American Dollar. The money men are the 5 key players in American financial history: Alexander Hamilton, Nicholas Biddle, Jay Cooke, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan. The book is as much about history and biography as it is finance.
? How NOT To Write A Personal Finance Book
? Music for the Jazz Damaged: A lovely podcast of songs programmed to engage those who are jazz damaged. Forget interminably long solos or boring improv -- these jazz greats feature beautiful melody and gorgeous musicality.
? Neil Young Live at Massey Hall: ; I haven't heard this new CD/DVD yet, but the reviews are great, and the live version of Needle and the Damage Done is outstanding.
? A Pardon for Jim Morrison? Gov. Charlie Crist is being asked to pardon the late Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, 38 years after he was convicted of exposing himself during a Miami concert. Dave Diamond, a cable TV producer from Dayton, Ohio, wrote to Crist last month asking for the pardon. Diamond said the goal is to remember the Melbourne, Fla., native as an artist, not a rock 'n' roll bad boy with a rap sheet.
? Fortune's Sue Callaway test drives the new $1.4 million-dollar Bugatti Veyron (see the video, also)
? Suicide Food Reminds me of cow/waiter/steak in Douglas Adams' ; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where the food literally speaks for itself.
Is that " might it be -- yes, I think it is " its. . . ; its . . . ; actually sunny out! Wow -- what a welcome change. Break out the cigars and gardening tools, Spring is here !Related: • LinkFest • 42207 97. An Iranian Agent In Phoenix Nuclear Reactor?
American authorities have arrested a Phoenix man on suspicion of violating the trade embargo with Iran -- by supplying the mullahs with details of an American nuclear reactor. Mohammed Alavi stepped off a flight from Iran to LAX and into the arms of FBI agents on April 9th:A former engineer at the nation's largest nuclear power plant has been charged with taking computer access codes and software to Iran and using it to download details of plant control rooms and reactors, authorities said. ...
Mohammad Alavi, who worked at the triple-reactor Palo Verde power plant west of Phoenix, was arrested April 9 at Los Angeles International Airport when he arrived on a flight from Iran, authorities said. ...
He is charged with a single count of violating a trade embargo that prohibits Americans from exporting goods and services to Iran. If convicted, he would face up to 21 months in prison.
According to court records, the software is used only for training plant employees, but allowed users access to details on the Palo Verde control rooms and the plant layout. In October, authorities alleged, the software was used to download training materials from Tehran, using a Palo Verde user identification.
The FBI said there was no evidence to suggest the software access was linked to the Iranian government, which has clashed with the West over attempts to develop its own nuclear program.
This story sounds a little odd. While Teheran would like as much information on nuclear plants as they can get, Phoenix has hardly demonstrated the most reliability of American plants. The kinds of material downloaded do not appear to have a great deal of value for the Iranians. A training manual would assist in operating facilities in a general sense, but the Russians would have to train them on the specifics for the Bushehr plant.
One could consider that layouts and operational specifics of the plant would assist terrorists interested in it for a potential target. The FBI says that this has no connection to any terror investigation, though, and in the event, the Iranians would have been better off leaving Alavi in place. Alavi left that job eight months ago, which means his use in determining the best plan for a terrorist attack would have been significantly diminished. The software that Alavi used doesn't have anything to do with the operation of the reactor either, accoring to the plant's owners.
It does demonstrate that the Iranians are working all angles in attempting to penetrate the nuclear-power industry, if the allegations are true. Someone in Teheran wants that information badly. We need to understand why.Related: • An • Iranian • Agent • In • Phoenix • Nuclear • Reactor 98. The Delusion of Expertise: I learned something ?
The Delusion of Expertise:
I learned something this weekend about the high cost of the subtledelusion that creative technical problem-solving is the preserve ofa priesthood of experts, using powers and perceptions beyond the ken ofordinary human beings.
Terry Pratchett is the author of the Discworld seriesof satirical fantasies. He is " and I don?t say this lightly, orwithout having given the matter thought and study " quiteprobably the most consistently excellent writer of intelligent humorin the last century in English. One has to go back as far as P.G.Wodehouse or Mark Twain to find an obvious equal in consistentquality, volume, and sly wisdom.
I?ve been a fan of Terry?s since before his first Discworld novel;I?m one of the few people who remembers Strata, his 1981 firstexperiment with the disc-world concept. The man has been somethinglike a long-term acquaintance of mine for ten years " one ofthose people you?d like to call a friend, and who you think would liketo call you a friend, if the two of you everarranged enough concentrated hang time to get that close. But we?reboth damn busy people, and live five thousand miles apart.
This weekend, Terry and I were both guests of honor at a hybridSF convention and Linux conference called Penguicon held in Warren,Michigan. We finally got our hang time. Among other things, Itaught Terry how to shoot pistols. He loves shooter games, but asa British resident his opportunities to play with real firearms arestrictly limited. (I can report that Terry handled my .45 semi withremarkable competence and steadiness for a first-timer. I can alsoreport that this surprised me not at all.)
During Terry?s Guest-of-Honor speech, he revealed his past as(he thought) a failed hacker. It turns out that back in the 1970sTerry used to wire up elaborate computerized gadgets from TimexSinclair computers. One of his projects used a primitive memorychip that had light-sensitive gates to build a sort of perceptronthat could actually see the difference between a circle and a cross.His magnum opus was a weather station that would log readings oftemperature and barometric pressure overnight and deliver weatherreports through a voice synthesizer.
But the most astonishing part of the speech was the followup inwhich Terry told us that despite his keen interest and elaboratehomebrewing, he didn?t become a programmer or a hardware tech becausehe thought techies had to know mathematics, which he thought he had notalent for. He then revealed that he thought of his projects as asort of bad imitation of programming, because his hardware andsoftware designs were total lash-ups and he never really knew what hewas doing.
I couldn?t stand it. ?And you think it was any different forus?? I called out. The audience laughed and Terry passed offthe remark with a quip. But I was just boggled. Because I know thatalmost all really bright techies start out that way, ascompulsive tinkerers who blundered around learning by experience beforethey acquired systematic knowledge. ?Oh ye gods and little fishes?, Ithought to myself, ?Terry is a hacker!?
Yes, I thought ?is? " even if Terry hasn?t actually tinkeredany computer software or hardware in a quarter-century. Being ahacker is expressed through skills and projects, but it?s really akind of attitude or mental stance that, once acquired, is never reallylost. It?s a kind of intense, omnivorous playfulness that tends tocolor everything a person does.
It burst upon me that Terry Pratchett has the hacker nature.Which, actually, explains something that has mildly puzzled me foryears. Terry has a huge following in the hacker community "knowing his books is something close to basic cultural literacy forInternet geeks. One is actually hard-put to think of any other writerfor whom this is as true. The question this has aways raised for meis: why Terry, rather than some hard-SF writer whose work explicitlycelebrates the technologies we play with?
The answer now seems clear. Terry?s hackerness has leaked into hiswriting somehow, modulating the quality of the humor. Behind thedrollery, I and my peers worldwide have accurately scented a mind likeour own.
I said some of this the following day, when I ran into Terrysurrounded by about fifty eager fans in a hallway. The natureof the conference was such that about three-quarters of them werehackers, many faces I recognized. I brought up the topic again,emphasizing that the sort of playful improvisation he?d beendescribing was very normal for us, and that I thought it waskind of sad he?d been blocked by the belief that hackers needto know mathematics, because about all we ever use is some piecesof set theory, graph theory, combinatorics, and Boolean algebra.No calculus at all.
Terry then admitted that he had at one point independentlyre-invented Boolean algebra. I didn?t find this surprising " Idid that myself when I was about fifteen; I didn?t mention this,though, because the moment was about Terry?s mind and not mine. Ithink reinventing Boolean algebra is probably something a lot ofbright proto-hackers do.
?Terry,? I said, fully conscious of the peculiar authority Iwield on this point as the custodian of the Jargon File, the how-to onHow To BecomeA Hacker and several other related documents, ?you are ahacker!?
The crowd agreed enthusiastically. Somebody handed Terry one ofthe ?Geek? badge ribbons the convention had made for attendees whowanted to identify themselves as coming from the Linux/programmingside. Much laughter ensued when it was discovered that the stickumon the ribbon had lost its virtue, and a nearby hacker had to ceremoniallyaffix the thing to Terry?s badge holder with a piece of duct tape.
Terry actually choked up a little while this was going on, and Idon?t think there was anyone there who didn?t understand why. To thekind of teenager and young man he must have been " bright,curious, creative, proud of his own ability " it must have beenvery painful to conclude that he would never cut it as the techie heso obviously wanted to be. He ended up doing public-relations workfor the British nuclear-power industry instead.
The whole sequence of events left me feeling delighted that I andmy friends could deliver the affirmation Terry had deserved so longago. But also " and here we come to the real point of thisessay " I felt very angry at the system that had fed the youngTerry such a huge load of cobblers about the nature of whatprogrammers and hardware designers do.
I?m not referring to the obvious garbage about needing abrain-bending amount of mathematics. No; they fed Terry something muchsubtler and more crippling, a belief that real techies actually know whatthey?re doing. The delusion of expertise.
The truth is that programmers only know what they?re doing when thejob is not very interesting. When you?re breaking new ground in anytechnical field, exploration and improvisation is the nature of thegame. Your designs are going to be lash-ups because you don?t yetknow any better and neither does anyone else.Systematization comes later, with the second system, during there-write and the re-think. Einstein had it right; imagination ismore valuable than knowledge, and people like Terry with ademonstrated ability to creatively wing it make far better hackersthan analytically smart but unimaginative people who can onlyfollow procedures.
The thought that Terry may have spent thirty years of working daysgrinding out press releases for the Central Electricity GeneratingBoard because he didn?t know this, rather than following his dreamsinto astronomy or programming or hardware design, bothers the crap outof me. If Terry was bright enough to invent Boolean algebra, he wasbright enough to cut it in any of these fields. The educationalsystem failed him by putting artificial requirements in his way andmaking him believe they were natural ones. It failed him even morefundamentally by teaching him a falsehood about the nature ofexpertise.
In doing this, it failed all of us. How many bright kids withfirst-class minds, I wonder, end up under-employed because of craplike this? How much creative potential are we losing?
OK, some might answer, so we got the Discworld fantasiesinstead?that ain?t exactly chopped liver. The thing is, I?m notsure that was actually a trade-off. I?m enough of a writer myselfto believe that you can?t block a writing talent like Terry?s merely bydropping him into a more demanding day job. It will come out.
On the other hand, one thing I am sure of is that youdon?t need intelligence or talents like Terry?s just to do PR. Oneway or another, this man was going to do something with more lastingeffects than soothing British farmers about radiation leaks. Inventingone of the funniest alternate worlds of the last hundred years duringyour free time is nice, and I devoutly hope he will get to keep doingit for decades to come " but in a society that valued and nurturedgenius properly, I think Terry might have helped re-imagine the realworld just as radically during his day job.
But he didn?t. Tot it up to the cost of taking creativity tooseriously, of undervaluing improvisation and play and imagination.And wonder how much else that error has cost us.Related: • The • Delusion • of • Expertise • I • learned • something • 99. The Delusion of Expertise: I learned something ?
The Delusion of Expertise:
I learned something this weekend about the high cost of the subtledelusion that creative technical problem-solving is the preserve ofa priesthood of experts, using powers and perceptions beyond the ken ofordinary human beings.
Terry Pratchett is the author of the Discworld seriesof satirical fantasies. He is " and I don?t say this lightly, orwithout having given the matter thought and study " quiteprobably the most consistently excellent writer of intelligent humorin the last century in English. One has to go back as far as P.G.Wodehouse or Mark Twain to find an obvious equal in consistentquality, volume, and sly wisdom.
I?ve been a fan of Terry?s since before his first Discworld novel;I?m one of the few people who remembers Strata, his 1981 firstexperiment with the disc-world concept. The man has been somethinglike a long-term acquaintance of mine for ten years " one ofthose people you?d like to call a friend, and who you think would liketo call you a friend, if the two of you everarranged enough concentrated hang time to get that close. But we?reboth damn busy people, and live five thousand miles apart.
This weekend, Terry and I were both guests of honor at a hybridSF convention and Linux conference called Penguicon held in Warren,Michigan. We finally got our hang time. Among other things, Itaught Terry how to shoot pistols. He loves shooter games, but asa British resident his opportunities to play with real firearms arestrictly limited. (I can report that Terry handled my .45 semi withremarkable competence and steadiness for a first-timer. I can alsoreport that this surprised me not at all.)
During Terry?s Guest-of-Honor speech, he revealed his past as(he thought) a failed hacker. It turns out that back in the 1970sTerry used to wire up elaborate computerized gadgets from TimexSinclair computers. One of his projects used a primitive memorychip that had light-sensitive gates to build a sort of perceptronthat could actually see the difference between a circle and a cross.His magnum opus was a weather station that would log readings oftemperature and barometric pressure overnight and deliver weatherreports through a voice synthesizer.
But the most astonishing part of the speech was the followup inwhich Terry told us that despite his keen interest and elaboratehomebrewing, he didn?t become a programmer or a hardware tech becausehe thought techies had to know mathematics, which he thought he had notalent for. He then revealed that he thought of his projects as asort of bad imitation of programming, because his hardware andsoftware designs were total lash-ups and he never really knew what hewas doing.
I couldn?t stand it. ?And you think it was any different forus?? I called out. The audience laughed and Terry passed offthe remark with a quip. But I was just boggled. Because I know thatalmost all really bright techies start out that way, ascompulsive tinkerers who blundered around learning by experience beforethey acquired systematic knowledge. ?Oh ye gods and little fishes?, Ithought to myself, ?Terry is a hacker!?
Yes, I thought ?is? " even if Terry hasn?t actually tinkeredany computer software or hardware in a quarter-century. Being ahacker is expressed through skills and projects, but it?s really akind of attitude or mental stance that, once acquired, is never reallylost. It?s a kind of intense, omnivorous playfulness that tends tocolor everything a person does.
It burst upon me that Terry Pratchett has the hacker nature.Which, actually, explains something that has mildly puzzled me foryears. Terry has a huge following in the hacker community "knowing his books is something close to basic cultural literacy forInternet geeks. One is actually hard-put to think of any other writerfor whom this is as true. The question this has aways raised for meis: why Terry, rather than some hard-SF writer whose work explicitlycelebrates the technologies we play with?
The answer now seems clear. Terry?s hackerness has leaked into hiswriting somehow, modulating the quality of the humor. Behind thedrollery, I and my peers worldwide have accurately scented a mind likeour own.
I said some of this the following day, when I ran into Terrysurrounded by about fifty eager fans in a hallway. The natureof the conference was such that about three-quarters of them werehackers, many faces I recognized. I brought up the topic again,emphasizing that the sort of playful improvisation he?d beendescribing was very normal for us, and that I thought it waskind of sad he?d been blocked by the belief that hackers needto know mathematics, because about all we ever use is some piecesof set theory, graph theory, combinatorics, and Boolean algebra.No calculus at all.
Terry then admitted that he had at one point independentlyre-invented Boolean algebra. I didn?t find this surprising " Idid that myself when I was about fifteen; I didn?t mention this,though, because the moment was about Terry?s mind and not mine. Ithink reinventing Boolean algebra is probably something a lot ofbright proto-hackers do.
?Terry,? I said, fully conscious of the peculiar authority Iwield on this point as the custodian of the Jargon File, the how-to onHow To BecomeA Hacker and several other related documents, ?you are ahacker!?
The crowd agreed enthusiastically. Somebody handed Terry one ofthe ?Geek? badge ribbons the convention had made for attendees whowanted to identify themselves as coming from the Linux/programmingside. Much laughter ensued when it was discovered that the stickumon the ribbon had lost its virtue, and a nearby hacker had to ceremoniallyaffix the thing to Terry?s badge holder with a piece of duct tape.
Terry actually choked up a little while this was going on, and Idon?t think there was anyone there who didn?t understand why. To thekind of teenager and young man he must have been " bright,curious, creative, proud of his own ability " it must have beenvery painful to conclude that he would never cut it as the techie heso obviously wanted to be. He ended up doing public-relations workfor the British nuclear-power industry instead.
The whole sequence of events left me feeling delighted that I andmy friends could deliver the affirmation Terry had deserved so longago. But also " and here we come to the real point of thisessay " I felt very angry at the system that had fed the youngTerry such a huge load of cobblers about the nature of whatprogrammers and hardware designers do.
I?m not referring to the obvious garbage about needing abrain-bending amount of mathematics. No; they fed Terry something muchsubtler and more crippling, a belief that real techies actually know whatthey?re doing. The delusion of expertise.
The truth is that programmers only know what they?re doing when thejob is not very interesting. When you?re breaking new ground in anytechnical field, exploration and improvisation is the nature of thegame. Your designs are going to be lash-ups because you don?t yetknow any better and neither does anyone else.Systematization comes later, with the second system, during there-write and the re-think. Einstein had it right; imagination ismore valuable than knowledge, and people like Terry with ademonstrated ability to creatively wing it make far better hackersthan analytically smart but unimaginative people who can onlyfollow procedures.
The thought that Terry may have spent thirty years of working daysgrinding out press releases for the Central Electricity GeneratingBoard because he didn?t know this, rather than following his dreamsinto astronomy or programming or hardware design, bothers the crap outof me. If Terry was bright enough to invent Boolean algebra, he wasbright enough to cut it in any of these fields. The educationalsystem failed him by putting artificial requirements in his way andmaking him believe they were natural ones. It failed him even morefundamentally by teaching him a falsehood about the nature ofexpertise.
In doing this, it failed all of us. How many bright kids withfirst-class minds, I wonder, end up under-employed because of craplike this? How much creative potential are we losing?
OK, some might answer, so we got the Discworld fantasiesinstead?that ain?t exactly chopped liver. The thing is, I?m notsure that was actually a trade-off. I?m enough of a writer myselfto believe that you can?t block a writing talent like Terry?s merely bydropping him into a more demanding day job. It will come out.
On the other hand, one thing I am sure of is that youdon?t need intelligence or talents like Terry?s just to do PR. Oneway or another, this man was going to do something with more lastingeffects than soothing British farmers about radiation leaks. Inventingone of the funniest alternate worlds of the last hundred years duringyour free time is nice, and I devoutly hope he will get to keep doingit for decades to come " but in a society that valued and nurturedgenius properly, I think Terry might have helped re-imagine the realworld just as radically during his day job.
But he didn?t. Tot it up to the cost of taking creativity tooseriously, of undervaluing improvisation and play and imagination.And wonder how much else that error has cost us.Related: • The • Delusion • of • Expertise • I • learned • something • 100. Alabama April 19, 2007 7:30 pm
doncon402 posted a photo:
Home of Jefferson Davis (White House of the Confederacy) Located in Montgomery, Alabama: April 13, 2007
www.civilwaralbum.com/misc/montgomery1.htm
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Alabama governor, Chinese delegation hold trade talks (The Daily Comet)Gov. Bob Riley told a Chinese delegation Thursday that he will lead a second trade mission to the country later this year and would like to open a trade office in the growing market for Alabama products.
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Related: • Alabama • April • 19 • 2007 • 730 • pm 101. Owner operator contracts Guidelines for CarrierOwner-Operator Contracts Introduction Good business practices dictate that business relationships between parties should be governed by a written contract. Like any agreement, the contract should clearly define each party's. ontruck.org Restaurant Doctor Management Resources-Restaurant Management Agreement The owner contracts with the operator to run the restaurant business with the expectation the operator can generate sufficient income from the restaurant to pay the costs of operation, cover the owner. restaurantdoctor.com In the papers 19 April NTL abandons direct debit surcharge MySpace to launch news aggregation service owner operator contracts. enn.ie Blackhawk Transport: Why Join Blackhawk as an Owner Operator We offer one of best Owner Operator compensation contracts in the industry. Owner operators pulling their own trailers earn 80% line haul revenue or 72% line haul revenue with a Blackhawk. blackhawktransport.com PST Registration Database - Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Contracts, Funding & Fees. Owner - address, type, contact and amendment In addition if Owner. Operator - address and contact; Facility self-certification and UST. tceq.state.tx.us Obac Contract Guidelines Operator Contracts I. Format AND Provisions. 1. Written Contract(a) All contracts should be in written format.(b) Contracts should be written, to the greatest extent. obac.ca Commodities Corner: Nuclear Plants Face Steep Costs Supply disruptions and dwindling inventories have created a perfect storm in the uranium market -- and electric utilities hope they can wait out the bad weather. The price of uranium, which fuels nuclear-power plants, has soared to $113 a pound, from less than $20 three years ago. cattlenetwork.com Knox Mill loses one restaurant, gains two Camden(April 13): Abby Alden may be relocating her Natalie's at the Mill restaurant to the Camden Harbor Inn on Camden's tony Bay View Street, but taking its place will be not one but two new eateries. rockland.villagesoup.com City of Bethlehem - Ordinances - Article 538 538.03 Garage Owner Insurance Requirement. Every Tow Operator which contracts with the City of Bethlehem as provided above, shall maintain at its own expense during. bethlehem-pa.gov Columbia Helicopters celebrates its 50th Anniversary The company wasn’t much to look at in 1957. A single, small helicopter flown by an owner who sold rides on the weekend while continuing to drive trucks or work as a longshoreman during the week. The owner’s “staff†included his wife and brothers, who would help out with various tasks. shephard.co.uk Motor Vehicle Tax Manual Operator contracts will be a little easier to spot, because of the recurring name; and there usually will be some sort of contract document. Nevertheless, examinations of these types of. window.state.tx.us P B Transportation: Owner-Operators Express, contracts with an experienced, dedicated team of professional owner-operators.. Owner Operator Commitment. 2,500 miles/week; 10,000 miles/month; 120,000. pbtransportation.com Obac Guidelines for Improving CarrierOwner-Operator Contracts IntroductionGood business practice dictates that any business-to-business relationship should be gov. O-O Resources January 2, 2003 Guidelines for Improving Carrier/Owner-Operator Contracts. obac.ca Single OwnerOperator Certification Coverage or payments for GL claims. Multi-Unit Operator(M2) Certification_____ A multi-unit operator employs or sub-contracts DJs who perform shows that are booked 7 or more at a time. M2 owner. djnet.com Station access contracts - Station access contracts: Office of Rail Passenger Station Access Agreement(single station) for contracts between a station facility owner and the operator of regular scheduled passenger train services. rail-reg.gov.uk Blackhawk Transports Formula for Success: Create a Company Culture We not only offer one of the best Owner Operator compensation contracts in the industry, we have a commitment to safety and provide a stable lifestyle through a steady base of non-seasonal business that. blackhawktransport.com Related: • Owner • operator • contracts 102. IRAN MAKING 'NUKE BOMB' FUEL
April 19, 2007 -- VIENNA, Austria - Iran has begun producing nuclear fuel in its underground uranium-enrichment plant, according to a confidential document from the U.N. atomic watchdog.
The document, obtained yesterday by news services, said Tehran had started up 1,312 centrifuge machines, divided into eight cascades, or networks, in the Natanz complex, in an accelerating campaign to lay a basis for "industrial scale" enrichment.
Both moves flew in the face of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government stop enriching uranium over fears that its professed civilian nuclear-power program is a cover for mastering the means to build atomic bombs. Related: • IRAN • MAKING • NUKE • BOMB • FUEL 103. IRAN MAKING 'NUKE BOMB' FUEL
April 19, 2007 -- VIENNA, Austria - Iran has begun producing nuclear fuel in its underground uranium-enrichment plant, according to a confidential document from the U.N. atomic watchdog.
The document, obtained yesterday by news services, said Tehran had started up 1,312 centrifuge machines, divided into eight cascades, or networks, in the Natanz complex, in an accelerating campaign to lay a basis for "industrial scale" enrichment.
Both moves flew in the face of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government stop enriching uranium over fears that its professed civilian nuclear-power program is a cover for mastering the means to build atomic bombs. Related: • IRAN • MAKING • NUKE • BOMB • FUEL 104. Renewable energy boom drives up share prices
A boom in renewable energy shows no sign of petering out, with investors greedy for shares in wind-generator companies which are booking huge new sales.
Two sales announcements in Germany this week illustrated why a giddy bidding war has developed between Indian and French interests for one of the main German builders of rotor-turbines, Repower.
Nordex, a company based in the German port-city of Rostock, said Friday it had just landed an order for 120 turbines with an option for 100 more, the biggest order since the company was founded in 1985.
Customer Babcock and Brown was initially purchasing 289 megawatts of generating capacity for wind parks in Portugal and France, said Nordex, which is also to supply foundations, transformers and electrical systems.
If all options were exercised, the contract would be worth more than 700 million euros ($950 million). The contract fitted Nordex?s aim of raising sales by 50 percent yearly, an executive, Thomas Richterich, said.
Hamburg-based Repower said it had won a Californian order for 75 wind generators with a total capacity of 150 megawatts for Enxco, a US unit of French power company EDF Energies Nouvelles.
Each of the huge generators has a rotor diameter of 92 metres.
Analysts say the worldwide orders are driven by legislative pressure on power companies to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and generate at least some of their electricity using wind or the sun.
Investors see no sign the trend will end soon.
Nordex shares shot up 8 percent Friday morning to 27.45 euros on German markets before settling to 25.40.
Repower Systems shares were steady at 156.95 euros, well ahead of the current offers of 150 euros per share from Suzlon of India and 140 euros from Areva, the French nuclear-power group.
Earlier this week, Repower raised new equity with institutional investors happy to pay 151.50 euros per share, a clear hint that investment professionals expect a counter-bid from Areva.
A Repower spokeswoman said Friday the Hamburg-based company?s board would comment next week on the Suzlon bid. Previously Repower said both bidders would make good parents.
Shares in Nordex, and another company, Vestas Wind Systems, have been driven higher by takeover speculation.
German manufacturers of solar-power equipment have also been boosted by the renewable trend.
Solar World, which opened a new wafer-production plant at Freiberg in Germany?s Saxony state Friday, said it would continue to add wafer capacity at the site, doubling output by 2009 compared to today.
The company said it was even contemplating quadrupling output, which is measured by the power-generation capacity of the photovoltaic cells it makes: 1,000 megawatts per year was conceivable.
Solar World mainly sells its modules to owners of homes and other buildings seeking energy self-sufficiency.
Germany?s pre-2005 government of Social Democrats and Greens chose renewable energy as a technology where Germans could lead the world.
That bet has turned out a good one, but an electrical industry group, VDE, is cautioning that Germany actually spends too little on research into better energy technology.
?Japan is spending 30 dollars per capita on energy research, and even the United States spends 10 dollars a head. Here in Germany it is only 6.20 dollars,? said VDE spokesman Wolfgang Schroeppel.
He said annual federal grants of 400 million euros for energy research in Germany were just not enough to sustain the lead. He demanded Berlin hike the budget to one billion euros annually.
Schroeppel warned that only 8 percent of all research and development spending in Germany was devoted to energy topics, and in the European Union the rate was even worse, 3 percent. Related: • Renewable • energy • boom • drives • up • share • prices 105. uranium futures NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we'll just have to wait for it all to play out....some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.Yeah, things are happening fast.The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there's no taking delivery of actual uranium, it's just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it's done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, "We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader."
UxC President Jeff Combs said "The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities"based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality."
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we'll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.I'd rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
"Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing," Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn't say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
"The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players," said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it's selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value Related: • uranium • futures 106. Can the U.S. Make Iran Budge?
Mahmoud AhmadinejadHere are some possible ways for the U.S. to influence Iran: Get tough, get tougher or stay away. Writing in the current issue of the New Republic, several prominent thinkers in foreign policy suggest approaches to one of the U.S.'s big diplomatic hurdles, in a range of proposals that underscore the complexity of the task (subscription required). In the get-tough camp, veteran U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross makes the case for increasing the financial pressure on Tehran to make it too costly for the government to pursue nuclear weapons.
"Penalties, more than inducements, are the key to altering the Iranian position," says Mr. Ross, who has been a leading Middle East adviser to both Democratic and Republican administrations. "If the cost is international isolation and economic deprivation, the picture changes for a significant part of the Iranian elite." Among other steps, he wants to see Europeans remove $18 billion in loan guarantees for companies doing business in Iran. He is open to offering up a carrot, too, saying promises to allow Iran's civil nuclear-power program should be part of the package.
Meanwhile, neoconservative author Robert Kagan says the U.S. needs to ratchet up a credible military threat to Tehran to clear the way for more flexible diplomacy. Without a viable U.S. military option, Tehran isn't likely to respond to international pressure, he says. He points to the recent detention of British sailors as evidence of Tehran's resistance to tamer diplomacy.
But to promote democratic culture in Iran, any direct U.S. involvement can be counterproductive, says Laura Secor, an editor of the op-ed page at the New York Times. In particular, U.S. support for opposition movements in Iran only undermines those voices, by tainting them as pawns of the U.S. government. "Getting involved with the Iranian opposition might make us feel good, but it will only hurt the people we seek to help," she says. " Jim Winston
Related: • Can • the • US • Make • Iran • Budge 107. India has China in its range
written by: Siddharth Srivastava, 13-Apr-07
NEW DELHI - Even as India celebrates the successful test-firing on Thursday of its home-grown Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missile - capable of delivering a 1.5-tonne nuclear or conventional payload over much of Asia - officials admit that the test had the tacit approval of the United States.
The US is striving to build India as a strategic counterweight to China, along with Japan and Australia.
Last May, during a period of frenzied negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal with Washington, New Delhi postponed testing of the Agni-III so as not to invite the ire of nuclear hawks in the US Congress, which was deliberating the nuclear pact that now stands approved.
According to reports last year, Washington put pressure on New Delhi to agree to a future moratorium on testing of dual-use missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload and testing another atomic bomb as a quid pro quo for the civilian nuclear deal.
India, however, rejected such a commitment as a back-door entry to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has not signed the CTBT as it feels that the treaty came into existence after those who possessed nuclear weapons had developed the know-how.
Strategic equations have obviously changed now, with a combination of business interests, India?s record as a responsible democratic nation, and the China factor coming into play.
Agni-III, given its range of 3,000 kilometers, has been specifically designed to build a minimum nuclear deterrence against China, with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai very much in the radar. Agni-III is said to possess a high degree of accuracy with a medium-to-large nuclear payload.
Beijing reacted immediately to the Indian firing, saying it hoped that India, ?as a country with an important influence in this region, can work to maintain and promote peace and stability in the region?. Indian officials have said Agni-III is not China-centric, but an effort to build overall security.
India, of course, has traditional rival Pakistan already covered via its Agni-I (700-800km range) and Agni-II (2,000km-plus range) missiles that are now being inducted into the armed forces. As per the agreed norms, New Delhi informed Islamabad about Agni-III prior to the test.
Not to be undone, Pakistan, with help from China and North Korea, is in the process of inducting the nuclear-capable Shaheen-II missile, tested for the first time in March 2004, which can strike Indian targets over a range of 2,000km.
Apart from gaining more security muscle in the region, the success of Agni-III is significant on other counts. The maiden test of Agni-III failed last July 9, so Indian scientists had to work on the technical glitches.
The Agni is one of five missiles that have been developed by India. The others are the short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi, the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), the multi-purpose Akash (Sky) and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra) missile.
Other benefits It would seem that India is also now reasonably sure of its acceptance as a nuclear exception among the global community that will allow it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the international market. Indian efforts have now moved to turning around nations that form part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with success on this count. India needs approval from the NSG so that it can implement its nuclear agreement with the US.
Heavyweights France, the United Kingdom and Canada have already backed the deal. The business potential and diplomatic efforts have had important countries such as China and Australia rethink their approach. Those two countries have hinted that they will not be averse to doing nuclear business with India. Russia has already chalked out its nuclear-power engagement with India.
South Africa and Brazil have been co-opted by promises of New Delhi?s support in securing business deals and expertise in software and information technology.
Japan has been difficult, but Indian officials are sure that given the massive business opportunities, especially in software to upgrade Japanese companies, and extensive diplomatic efforts, Japan will come around and has already considerably softened its stand. Tokyo is pretty much clued into a US-India-Japan ?axis of democracy? to counter the might of China.
Thus the timing of the Agni-III test seems to be right. Politically, the Congress-led New Delhi government has been criticized for being feeble to India?s internal and external security threats, because of repeated terrorist attacks and the need to tread carefully in dealing with Beijing.
Given the ongoing detailed negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the nuclear pact with the US as well the benefits of nuclear power that will flow in times to come, it was only prudent for New Delhi to gain a few political points given the immediacy of electoral politics.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the success of the Agni-III missile is an ?impressive illustration? of India mastering the strategic high technologies to uphold national security.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Published in: Asia Times Related: • India • has • China • in • its • range 108. French bidders drop demand for majority of Repower Hamburg - French nuclear-power giant Areva dropped Tuesday its insistence on majority control of Repower, a builder of wind generators, in a move that Related: • French • bidders • drop • demand • for • majority • of • Repower 109. French bidders drop demand for majority of Repower Hamburg - French nuclear-power giant Areva dropped Tuesday its insistence on majority control of Repower, a builder of wind generators, in a move that Related: • French • bidders • drop • demand • for • majority • of • Repower 110. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Russia is starting work on a seagoing nuclear-power plant, ignoring the protests of environmentalists, who have it in their heads that a floating Russian nuclear-power plant is somehow a bad thing. ?They point to a history of naval and nuclear accidents in Russia and the former Soviet Union, most notoriously at Chernobyl in 1986,? the Associated Press writes.
The Russians counter that the 2000 sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk " seemingly Exhibit A in the argument that this is a bad idea " is actually evidence that the floating nuclear station, designed to bring power to remote areas, will be perfectly safe. ?The floating power plants will house reactors similar to those used in the Russian submarine fleet,? the AP writes. ??The most reliable test of such a reactor was the Kursk tragedy. After the boat was raised, specialists proved that the reactor could be put into service at that very moment,? [Sergei] Kiriyenko, [head of the Russian atomic energy agency,] said.?
" Mark Gongloff
Related: • What • Could • Possibly • Go • Wrong 111. India has China in its range
written by: Siddharth Srivastava, 13-Apr-07
NEW DELHI - Even as India celebrates the successful test-firing on Thursday of its home-grown Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missile - capable of delivering a 1.5-tonne nuclear or conventional payload over much of Asia - officials admit that the test had the tacit approval of the United States.
The US is striving to build India as a strategic counterweight to China, along with Japan and Australia.
Last May, during a period of frenzied negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal with Washington, New Delhi postponed testing of the Agni-III so as not to invite the ire of nuclear hawks in the US Congress, which was deliberating the nuclear pact that now stands approved.
According to reports last year, Washington put pressure on New Delhi to agree to a future moratorium on testing of dual-use missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload and testing another atomic bomb as a quid pro quo for the civilian nuclear deal.
India, however, rejected such a commitment as a back-door entry to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has not signed the CTBT as it feels that the treaty came into existence after those who possessed nuclear weapons had developed the know-how.
Strategic equations have obviously changed now, with a combination of business interests, India?s record as a responsible democratic nation, and the China factor coming into play.
Agni-III, given its range of 3,000 kilometers, has been specifically designed to build a minimum nuclear deterrence against China, with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai very much in the radar. Agni-III is said to possess a high degree of accuracy with a medium-to-large nuclear payload.
Beijing reacted immediately to the Indian firing, saying it hoped that India, ?as a country with an important influence in this region, can work to maintain and promote peace and stability in the region?. Indian officials have said Agni-III is not China-centric, but an effort to build overall security.
India, of course, has traditional rival Pakistan already covered via its Agni-I (700-800km range) and Agni-II (2,000km-plus range) missiles that are now being inducted into the armed forces. As per the agreed norms, New Delhi informed Islamabad about Agni-III prior to the test.
Not to be undone, Pakistan, with help from China and North Korea, is in the process of inducting the nuclear-capable Shaheen-II missile, tested for the first time in March 2004, which can strike Indian targets over a range of 2,000km.
Apart from gaining more security muscle in the region, the success of Agni-III is significant on other counts. The maiden test of Agni-III failed last July 9, so Indian scientists had to work on the technical glitches.
The Agni is one of five missiles that have been developed by India. The others are the short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi, the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), the multi-purpose Akash (Sky) and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra) missile.
Other benefits It would seem that India is also now reasonably sure of its acceptance as a nuclear exception among the global community that will allow it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the international market. Indian efforts have now moved to turning around nations that form part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with success on this count. India needs approval from the NSG so that it can implement its nuclear agreement with the US.
Heavyweights France, the United Kingdom and Canada have already backed the deal. The business potential and diplomatic efforts have had important countries such as China and Australia rethink their approach. Those two countries have hinted that they will not be averse to doing nuclear business with India. Russia has already chalked out its nuclear-power engagement with India.
South Africa and Brazil have been co-opted by promises of New Delhi?s support in securing business deals and expertise in software and information technology.
Japan has been difficult, but Indian officials are sure that given the massive business opportunities, especially in software to upgrade Japanese companies, and extensive diplomatic efforts, Japan will come around and has already considerably softened its stand. Tokyo is pretty much clued into a US-India-Japan ?axis of democracy? to counter the might of China.
Thus the timing of the Agni-III test seems to be right. Politically, the Congress-led New Delhi government has been criticized for being feeble to India?s internal and external security threats, because of repeated terrorist attacks and the need to tread carefully in dealing with Beijing.
Given the ongoing detailed negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the nuclear pact with the US as well the benefits of nuclear power that will flow in times to come, it was only prudent for New Delhi to gain a few political points given the immediacy of electoral politics.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the success of the Agni-III missile is an ?impressive illustration? of India mastering the strategic high technologies to uphold national security.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Published in: Asia Times Related: • India • has • China • in • its • range 112. pitufa
2002; Storper and Venables, 2002). Accordingly, the theory that we shall seek to
elaborate here puts considerable emphasis on the role of the region as a source of critical
developmental assets in the form of increasing returns effects and positive externalities.
In addition, we aver that because agglomeration is a principal source of these
productivity-enhancing outcomes, urbanization is less to be regarded as a problem to be
reversed than as an essential condition of durable development.
II. Regions in Today's World Economy
These questions about the geographic foundations of development and growth are
made yet more urgent by the current empirical realities of globalization. It is
fundamentally mistaken to equate globalization with the notion that development today
involves a simple spreading out of economy activity, or the transformation of the
economic order into a liquefied space of flows. On the contrary, globalization has been
accompanied by the assertion and reassertion of agglomerative tendencies in many
different areas of the world, in part because of the very openness and competitiveness
that it ushers in (Puga and Venables, 1999; Scott, 1998). Thus, for example, 40% of US
employment is currently located in counties constituting just 1.5% of its land area;
equally, the geographical density of employment in many sectors has been increasing in
recent years (Kim, 2002).
Dense regional agglomerations of economic activity are major sources of growth in
economies at virtually every stage of development today, as suggested by the worldwide
expansion and spread of industrial clusters. It has been suggested, for example, that 380
separate clusters of firms in the United States employ 57% of the total workforce and
8
8
generate 61% of the nation's output and fully 78% of its exports (Rosenfeld, 1995;
OECD, 1998). Other researchers, using more conservative measures, still find that 30%
of the US workforce is accounted for by globally-oriented local employment clusters
(Porter, 2001). The OECD, for its part, concludes that local industrial districts account
for 30% of total employment in Italy (and 43% of that country's exports) and 30% of total
employment in Holland.
The most striking forms of agglomeration in evidence today are the superagglomerations
or city-regions that have come into being all over the world in the last
few decades, with their complex internal structures compris ing multiple urban cores,
extended suburban appendages, and widely-ranging hinterland areas, themselves often
sites of scattered urban settlements (Hall, 2001; Scott et al., 2001). These city-regions are
locomotives of the national economies within which they are situated, in that they are the
sites of dense masses of interrelated economic activities that also typically have high
levels of productivity by reason of their jointly-generated agglomeration economies and
their innovative potentials. In many adva nced countries, evidence shows that major
metropolitan areas are growing faster than other areas of the national territory, even in
those countries where, for a time in the 1970s, there appeared to be a turn toward a
dominant pattern of non- metropolitan growth (Summer et al., 1993; Frey and Speare,
1988; Forstall, 1993). In less-developed countries, too, such as Brazil, China, India and
South Korea, the effects of agglomeration on productivity are strongly apparent, and
economic growth typically proceeds at an especially rapid rate in the large metropolitan
regions of those countries. The same metropolitan regions are at once the most important
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foci of national growth and the places where export-oriented industrialization is most apt
to occur (Scott, 1998; 2002).
These findings fit well with the observation that previous rounds of market opening
and technological progress have tended to reinforce urbanization, not weaken it (Eaton
and Eckstein, 1997; Black and Henderson, 1998; Kim, 1995; Glaeser, 1998; Puga and
Venables, 1998). Recent accounts of the formation of an Atlantic economy in the late
Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries argue that it emerged on the basis of strong
agglomeration processes in Europe and America, with the main centers of production
maintaining their dominant positions through strong increasing returns to scale (Crafts
and Venables, 2001; Williamson, 1998). Today's wave of globalization appears to be
similarly anchored in (and is also partially responsible for) an expanding intercontinental
patchwork of urban and regional economic systems. In sum, large-scale agglomeration --
and its counterpart, regional economic specialization -- is a worldwide and historically
persistent phenomenon that is intensifying greatly at the present time by the forces
unleashed by globalization. This leads us to claim that national economic development
today is likely not to be less but rather more tied up with processes of geographical
concentration compared with the past.
Moreover, as globalization and international economic integration have moved
forward, older conceptions of the broad structure of world economic geography as
comprising separate blocs (First, Second and Third Worlds), each with its own
developmental dynamic, appear to be giving way to another vision. This alternative
vision seeks to build a common theoretical language about the development of regions
and countries in all parts of the world, as well as about the broad architecture of the
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emerging world system of production and exchange. At the same time, it recognizes that
territories are arrayed at different points along a vast spectrum of developmental
characteristics.
These are strong claims, and they call for extended justification, which we proceed to
elaborate in the next section. Meanwhile, it is worth pointing out that a long tradition of
econometric analysis dating back to Carlino (1979), Kawashima (1975), and Sveikauskas
(1975) provides prima facie evidence in favor of these assertions. This line of work has
demonstrated time and again that in the more economically-advanced countries, urban
centers persistently exhibit signs of significant and positive productivity effects as a
function of their size. A branch of this literature has more recently focussed on less
developed parts of the world, and draws broadly similar conclusions (cf. Chen, 1996;
Henderson, 1988; Lee and Zang, 1998; Mitra 2000; Shukla, 1996; Sueyoshi, 1992). This
literature as a whole tends to adopt traditional conceptualizations of the problem in terms
of so-called urbanization and localization economies, but we consider these concepts to
be internally chaotic, and instead we shall seek in the following to replace them with
more analytically sustainable categories. There is probably also a tendency in this
literature to understate the impacts of urbanization on productivity because the
parameters of the econometric models on which it is based are never calibrated over
counterfactual cases of economic systems in which dense agglomerations of capital and
labor are absent.
We now consider how the empirical realities we have alluded to can be accounted for
by contemporary concepts of agglomeration, which we employ in turn as essential
components of an updated development theory. This theory seeks to accommodate the
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cases of both poor and rich countries, and to shed some new light on the phenomenon of
uneven spatial and economic development on a world scale.
III. The Fundamentals of Agglomeration
The analytical decomposition of agglomeration processes. Cities always appear as
privileged sites for economic growth because they economize on capital-intensive
infrastructure (which is particularly scarce in developing areas), thus permitting
significant economies of scale to be reaped at selected locations. But to this obvious basic
factor underlying agglomeration, we must add three further sets of phenomena that
complement and intensify its effects, namely (a) the dynamics of backward and forward
inter- linkage of firms in industrial systems, (b) the formation of dense local labor markets
around multiple workplaces, and (c) the emergence of localized relational assets
promoting learning and innovation effects. Some brief commentary on these points is
now in order.
Even though transport and communications costs tend to decline over time, the
friction of distance in general continues to have powerful effects on locational outcomes.
Improvements in transport and communications processes (e.g. the development of canal
systems, railroads, the interstate highway network, the postal service, or the telegraph and
the telephone) have rarely if ever slowed down the urbanizing tendencies of modern
capitalism, even as they have encouraged its spatial extension. Rather, improvements of
these sorts have almost always tended to reinforce the clustering of economic activity
both by widening the market range of any given center and by helping to spark off new
rounds of specialization in established urban areas. This state of affairs also seems to be
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true in the present period in which internet-based broad-band communications
technologies have made possible instantaneous transmission of complex messages across
the globe at extremely low cost. More accurately, we should say that many inter-firm
transactions can be executed cheaply over long distances, while others resist being
stretched out by reason of the high linkage costs that they involve, even in a world of
rapidly improving transport and communications technologies. Small- scale, non-routine
flows with ambiguous information content are notably averse to extension over long
distances. This resistance is intensified where firms compete with one another by means
of product differentiation, and where markets are characterized by much uncertainty. In
circumstances like these, firms find it difficult to stabilize their output profiles, thus
necessitating external transactional relations that are constantly shifting in size, form, and
origin or destination, and that are therefore expensive per unit of distance and time.
Dense agglomerations containing large numbers of firms allow both suppliers and buyers
to compensate for variability and uncertainty by providing ready access to needed
resources on short notice. Considerable gains in productivity typically flow to firms from
this localized concentration of many different suppliers and buyers. Among the more
important of these gains are the ability to maintain low overheads while achieving high
flexibility in both internal and external operations. One especially powerful phenomenon
is the continuing importance of face-to-face contacts for the transmission of complex and
uncertain messages (Leamer and Storper, 2001) and for the establishment of mutual
confidence and accurate evaluation of potential partners in constantly changing business
relationships (Storper and Venables, 2002).
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Comparable dynamics of matching highly differentiated demands and supplies
apply to labor markets. When firms need specialized workers, but are subject to rapid
shifts in their product and process designs (as in the case of fashion-oriented or
technologically- innovative industries), they usually strive as far as possible to achieve
flexibility in their use of labor. At the same time, they seek to avoid the risk of costly
delays in finding the various skills on which they depend. To overcome this problem,
they need direct access to large and variegated pools of specialized talent. Equally, if
workers are to invest in building up their competencies, but are unable to secure longterm
employment contracts, they will prefer to locate where there are many potential
employers. In turn, rapid search and rehire processes will compensate them for high
turnover. In all of these circumstances, geographical concentration has major
productivity-raising effects for firms, and income-raising effects for workers. Firms
benefit from the possibility of adjusting their capacity levels as needed, while minimizing
the risks of not finding the workers they require for expansion and change. Workers gain
by having strong incentives to invest in their own talents and becoming more specialized,
but are able to offset the associated risks by being in a place where the existence of
multiple employment opportunities raises their chances of finding a job (Jayet, 1983).
These search-and-matching processes in the local environment are carried out by means
of relatively complex transactions, often operating through dense social networks
(Granovetter, 1986). Geographical concentration lowers the costs of these transactions
and raises the probability of successful matching for all parties.
Regional concentrations of economic activity have another advantage, which is
purely dynamic in nature. There is mounting evidence that creativity and learning have a
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distinctive geography, with regions playing active roles as sites of continuous and
informal but cumulatively significant improvements in industrial products and processes
(Dunning, 1998; Feldman, 2000; Jaffe et al, 1993; Russo, 1985; Saxenian, 1994; Scott,
1999). Silicon Valley, of course, is the classic reference here, though the phenomenon of
localized innovation has been observed in many other industrial clusters. The spatial
proximity of large numbers of firms locked into dense networks of interaction provides
the essential conditions for many-sided exchanges of information to occur, and out of
which new understandings about process and product possibilities are constantly being
generated. Specialized regional economies are the locus of intense knowledge spillovers,
thereby helping to raise the rate of innovation, and to promote long-term growth
(Antonelli, 1994; Audretsch and Feldman, 1996; Jaffe et al., 1993; Noteboom, 1999).
Each of these factors underlying geographic concentration has the effect of
creating positive externalities for both firms and workers. Our account thus far actually
understates the power of agglomeration in certain ways, for geographical concentrations
of the sort we are describing also constitute living human communities with many
additional effects on economic performance (Temple and Johnson, 1998; Storper, 1997;
Woolcock, 1998). Oftentimes, clusters of firms operate as powerful socialization
mechanisms, becoming veritable engines for turning out new talent through workers? onthe-
job experiences and participation in work-related netwo rks (Grabher, 1993). Firms
come together, too, in both formal and informal organizations that help to streamline their
interactions, to accelerate information transfers, to build trust and reputation effects, and
to promote their joint interests (Asheim, 2000; Becattini, 1990). Relationships like these
contribute to the stock of collective assets in any given agglomeration. Their effects are
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thus frequently positive, though they may also on occasions be negative when local
conditions and institutional environments induce problems such as rent-seeking behavior
or inter-organizational rivalries.
The agglomeration-development nexus. Cities are a necessary corollary of
industrialization because they allow for complex agglomerations of specialized activities
to emerge while economizing on infrastructure under conditions of national scarcity. In
many developing countries, urban growth is pushed further forward by modernization of
the agricultural sector, displacing labor, and generating large-scale migration from
countryside to city (Alonso, 1980; Kelley and Williamson, 1984; Todaro, 1969).
This, however, is at best a partial view of the dynamic properties of the
relationship between urbanization and economic development. To begin with, the
emphasis on infrastructure (a common theme in many discussions of development) is
only one among many reasons for agglomeration. As we saw above, actual
agglomerations are characterized by many additional sources of productivity gain through
their transactional structures, local labor markets, learning effects, and so on. These
phenomena can sustain the advantages of agglomeration even in the face of rapidly rising
costs of urban concentration due to congestion, pollution, escalating land prices, crime,
family breakdown, etc. Such costs are especially high in developing countries, but still
they fail to arrest urban growth (Storper, 1991; Azzoni, 1986). Another way in which
many older arguments underestimate the force of geographical concentration is that they
often take large-scale, capital- intensive manufacturing industries to be the privileged
motors of development and growth in developing countries. As activities like these
relocate outward to other regions, so -- it is held --geographical polarization reversal will
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occur (Townroe and Keen, 1984). We now know, however, that developing countries
also move ahead on the basis of many different kinds of sectors, some of which generate
strong systems of externalities, and tend to be marked by forceful agglomeration and
urbanization tendencies wherever they appear on the landscape. These sectors include
small-scale indigenous manufacturing, low-technology industries, craft-based industries,
and a wide array of services (Nadvi and Schmitz, 1994; Scott, 2002). Polarization
reversal is far from being a universal characteristic of the development process.
The particular patterns of agglomeration that make their appearance in any given
instance vary widely depending on local circumstances and the local mix of sectors, and
this diversity is further augmented by the role that historical path dependencies play in
the evolution of regional economies (Fujita et al., 1999). This is an important reason why,
in fact, there are many variations in the character of urban systems in both the developing
and developed countries as a whole, rather than convergence toward any single type.
What is common to all is the underlying functional link between agglomeration,
urbanization, and development.
This link, moreover, is susceptible to self-reinforcement over time by the
locational dynamics of expanding industrial systems. When a sector first comes into
being in a given part of the world (a country, a continent), the firms involved in it are
often located in a wide variety of places. This is because young, or emerging, or
recently- implanted industries tend to be relatively independent of (or have no opportunity
to tap into) pre-existing place-dependent positive externalities, especially where these
have developed in relation to older sectors and hence have little specific utility for new
industries. However, this first stage of development, characterized as it is by an open
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"window of locational opportunity," is almost always followed by a second where the
large initial number of locations is whittled down as the industry's local external
environment responds to growing demands for inputs of materials, services, labor, and so
on, and as geographically- focused increasing returns effects come into being at selected
locations (Scott and Storper, 1987). Thus, a few places begin to move ahead as their selfreinforcing
concentrations of capital and labor make them progressively more efficient, in
both static and dynamic terms. Success breeds success (up to some point of diminishing
returns, at least), and the advantages of these places then become locked in, marginalizing
competitor locations and effectively crowding them out of the field (Krugman and
Obstfeld, 1991). In this manner, what begins initially as a relatively open window of
locational opportunity for an industry eventually closes around a small number of core
agglomerations.
The frequency and scope of windows of locational opportunity are controlled by
many factors, of which internal economies of scale (in production, R&D, transacting, and
so on) are especially important. In industries where this feature results in oligopolistic
supply structures (e.g. sectors producing commercial aircraft or nuclear-power
generators) only a few regions will be able to attract relevant investments and to acquire
production capacity. Major shifts in the core locations of these industries can generally
occur only when there are important technological changes in products and processes,
thereby undermining the advantages of existing producers and, by extension, the regions
in which they are concentrated. By contrast, in sectors where optimal scale is achieved at
low rates of output (e.g. clothing, shoes, jewelry, and many kinds of business services or
electronics industries) there are relatively many potential windows of locational
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opportunity. Sectors of this sort are able to engage in significant forms of product
differentiation from one place to another, thus making it possible for latecomers to enter
the market and to create distinctive niches for themselves. This point is exemplified by
the recent history of the global shoe industry (Gereffi, 1995; Schmitz, 2001). Once
agglomeration occurs, (and depending on the nature of further major technological
shifts), the locational pattern of these sectors becomes locked in, and local developmental
effects intensify.
We have argued that urbanization is one of the major drivers of the process of
development in the contemporary world. This argument, to be sure, is by no means novel.
However, we have sought to re-express the older Hirschman-Myrdal-Perroux approach in
terms of recent advances in the theory of agglomeration and economic geography, and on
this basis to redress some of the imbalance that currently appears to exist between macroeconomic
approaches to the development question and what we earlier alluded to as
development ?on the ground?. This attempt to achieve a more balanced perspective is not
only significant in conceptual terms but also as a practical matter, for it reveals important
instruments (as we shall indicate) by means of which policy-makers can approach critical
tasks of economic development from a bottom- up and hence locally nuanced perspective.
One important corollary of our argument is that increasingly uneven densities of spatial
development can actually enha nce overall rates of economic growth and are hence not
necessarily or always undesirable, though we shall argue that this also sometimes gives
rise to an increasingly uneven spatial distribution of income, and hence to social and
political predicaments tha t can undermine developmental programs that fail to pay
adequate attention to this circumstance. We have further suggested that the complex
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nexus of relationships linking urbanization and development operates in countries at
every level of GDP per capita and that economic development can be achieved on the
basis of a wide variety of manufacturing and service sectors. These sectors include even
simple craft- or small firm-based industries, which were once thought of as the very
antithesis of any kind of durable development (Piore and Sabel, 1984; Wade, 1990). It is
especially urgent to refocus attention on the developmental potential of cities and regions
in the context of globalization, because they are the loci of intense positive externalities
in the increasingly borderless global system of economic relationships. In less-developed
countries, in particular, agglomeration is critical to development not only because it is a
source of enhanced economic productivity, but also because it is a basic condition of
specialization within the global division of labor and an essential foundation of exportoriented
growth.
IV. Developmental Disparities in the Contemporary World System
Regional divergence or convergence? The increasing liberalization of economic
exchange as globalization has proceeded, combined with steady improvements in
technologies of transportation and communication has encouraged the world-wide spread
of dense productive agglomerations (cf. Krugman and Venables, 1993). This effect is
complemented by two others. First, agglomerations in different parts of the world find
themselves increasingly caught up in relations of competition and complementarity with
one another. Inter-agglomeration competition occurs when producers in different places
are operating on the same markets; complementarity is present when differentially
specialized agglomerations are linked together via long-distance commodity chains
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(Feenstra and Hanson, 1996). Second, agglomerations are also often deeply connected to
more peripheral, less-densely-developed areas, especially where certain types of
production units within wider commodity chains find it advantageous to locate at
decentralized sites. This phenomenon is especially characteristic of branch plant
operations with relatively standardized production activities and hence with low-cost
procurement and distribution structures. The net result of the two tendencies noted here is
the proliferation of complex trade flows, between different agglomerations and between
agglomerations and peripheral areas, at national and international scales, and these flows
are expanding with globalization.
Neoclassical theories of development hold that the spatial integration of economic
activity in these ways tends progressively to eliminate inter-regional differences in living
standards, by promoting some combination of structural and compositional convergence
among participating economies. In fact, the actual record is quite wayward, with
convergence occurring in some places at some times, and divergence occurring on other
occasions. At the present moment, the play of regional and global economic forces
involves many complex cross-currents in which some parts of the world (East Asia and a
few metropolitan regions of Latin America) are doing relative ly well, while other parts
(Africa between the tropics, much of the former Soviet Union, and certain peripheral
regions in more developed countries) are falling steadily behind.
The predicaments of uneven spatial development are most dramatically expressed
in the observation that 50% of global GDP today is produced by only 15% of the world?s
people, most of them concentrated in the Triad nations of the North. Conversely, the
poorer half of the world?s population produces just 14% of global GDP. Moreover,
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world trade has become more concentrated among the Triad nations, to the relative
detriment of North-South commercial relations. Most of the developing world has been a
relative loser in this process, again with the exception of East Asia. At the same time,
much of the world?s most important trading activities (increasingly in the form of intrafirm
trade) occur between a relatively limited number of subnational regions or
agglomerations (US Department of Commerce, 1998; Fujita, Krugman and Venables,
1999; Barnes and Ledebur, 1998; Andersson and Andersson, 2000; Beaverstock, Smith
and Taylor, 2000) . This process, in turn, accentuates the growth of selected regions, and
helps to generate the contemporary phenomenon of large city-regions (as previously
defined) scattered across the continents in an integrated world-wide mosaic. Many
different parts of the developing world are deeply involved in this process, as exemplified
by city-regions like Mexico, São Paulo, Cairo, Bombay, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and so
on. One consequence of this trend, however, is that interregional income inequalities
within many developing countries are increasing. Indeed, even in many developed
countries, the recent period of intensive globalization has been accompanied by widening
gaps in per capita incomes between sub- national regions. The phenomenon is further
accentuated where labor mobility is relatively low (as it is in the UK and most of
continental Europe compared to the US) (Duranton and Monastiriotis, 2002).
Per capita income differences between countries diverged over much of the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, but showed signs of convergence from the 1960s to
the 1980s. Over the last decade or so, this tendency toward income convergence between
countries2 has been reversed, notwithstanding the dramatic improvements in technologies
2 Even though some analyses contend that this claim that spatial income differences are increasing is less
tenable if population-weighted measures are used for countries (Sala-I-Martin, 2002), they agree that when
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of spatial interaction that have been occurring (Dowrick and De Long, 2001; Clark and
Feenstra, 2001). Similarly, as Pomerantz (2000) points out, the ?great divergence? of
income levels in the Nineteenth Century occurred even though communications and
transportation costs were declining rapidly.
The dynamics of differential regional development. Considerable further light can
be shed on these issues by further analysis of the ways that regional development
processes may contribute to durable structural and compositional differences between
economies, but also about the potential to enhance the abilities of less developed regions
to overcome these barriers. In particular, why do some regions succeed in establishing
high-performing economic systems while others remain stillborn, stagnate, or decline
even as spatial interaction costs fall? We have already shown in our earlier discussion of
windows of locational opportunity how increasing returns effects reinforce growth
opportunities for regions that begin (even accidentally) to move ahead as production foci
in any given sector, while progressively closing off opportunities for others. Certain
endogenous features of agglomerations also have great impacts on local developmental
prospects. Economic historians have shown, for example, that even in industries where
best practices diffuse rapidly from country to country (as in the case of cotton mills and
railroads in the Nineteenth Century), factor productivity is often quite uneven over space
(Clark, 1987; Clark and Feenstra, 2001). What is additionally puzzling is that such
differences emerge not only in cases where technologies and managerial practices are
similar, but also in industries that tend uniformly to locate in large urban centers (as with
much of the electronics industry today). All this implies that there are significant
countries are used as units of measure, post-war trends toward greater convergence have been decisively
reversed in recent years.
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endogenous -- local and national -- determinants of how well agglomerations function,
and hence how they contribute to economic development in their local and national
contexts. By the same token, increasing trade, foreign investment, and the international
diffusion of technology do not automatically bring about convergence in productivity and
development levels (Clark and Feenstra, 2001; Landes, 1998; Mokyr, 1985; Wade, 1990;
North and Thomas, 1973).
Many of the endogenous conditions underlying local economic development and
facilitating entry into the world economy are cultural or institutional, in the specific sense
that they entail the formation of routines of economic behavior that potentiate and shape
activities such as production, entrepreneurship, and innovation (Haggard, 1990; Rodrik,
1999). These routines are, in effect, untraded forms of interdependency between
economic agents, and hence they collectively constitute the relational assets of the
regional economy (Storper, 1997). Standard theories of economic development do not
probe adequately into these processes (Putnam, 2000; Uzzi, 1996). Neoclassical theories,
including newer augmented versions, assume that successful behavior will emerge more
or less spontaneously out of the wider economic or social context (Mankiw et al., 1992).
Others, like the new growth theory, put their faith in the accumulation of stocks of
knowledge leading to generalized positive externality effects throughout the economy
(Romer, 1990; Lucas, 1988). The latter idea, though it may be useful as a starting point,
says little about the concrete habits and relationships through which knowledge and
savoir- faire are created and deployed in economic action (Johnson and Lundvall, 1992;
Rosenberg, 1982; Stiglitz, 1987; Nelson, 1992). Such relational assets resemble non-rival
goods, in the sense that they are not freely reproducible from one place to another, nor are
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substitutes available. Moreover, there are certain barriers to gaining access them, since
access is determined through complex processes of belonging to networks and
successfully passing screening tests given by existing members (Storper and Venables,
2002). This is why untraded interdependencies tend to have a strongly place-bound and
culturally-rooted character and often cannot be transferred easily " if at all -- from
successful to less successful regions (Becattini, 1990; Putnam et al., 1993). It follows
that because such assets are therefore --- at least partially " excludable in character, they
behave much like scale effects in enhancing the advantages of their home regions (as well
as their business enterprises and network members) and placing them into imperfect
competition with other regions.
These observations indicate that regional economic development involves a
mixture of exogenous constraints, the reorganization and build-up of local asset systems,
and political mobilization focused on institutions, socialization, and social capital. More
generally, the extent to which any region succeeds in creating localized increasing returns
effects -- which depend importantly on these cultural and institutional foundations -- is
critical to the entire development process. A direct extension of this point is the claim
that the success of national economies (as indicated above all by accession to
membership in the global high- income convergence club) is, in significant ways, related
to the rise of dynamic and creative agglomerations, as has recently been the case with the
high-performance Asian economies. If this claim is correct, it follows that for countries to
join the high- income convergence club in today?s world, they will have to sustain
successful agglomerated development processes, (though this remark in no way implies
that balanced and sustainable rural development is not also an essential ingredient of any
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pathway to national development). Agglomeration is a central concern that can neither be
equated to urbanization as a simple demographic phenomenon, nor dissolved away into
the realm of macro-economics.
V. The regional dimensions of development policy
In view of these remarks, one of the important tasks of any viable development
policy must be to cultivate those multiple and important benefits that flow from
regionalized production systems as they encounter the complex intra- and inter-regional
conditions that govern the logic of agglomeration. A number of negative aspects of interregional
competition must also be brought under control if development is to proceed
with any degree of smoothness.
Over the last half century, regional development policy has in practice tended to
assume the guise of stimulus packages applied to given localities in the attempt to initiate
take-off or to counter stagnation. The types of packages selected for these purposes vary
greatly from country to country, but they generally comprise programs such as subsidies
to industry, tax breaks, infrastructure provision, governmental schemes to direct new
capital investments to lagging areas, labor retraining programs, and so on (Donahue,
1997; Harrison et al., 1996). Approaches like these are not necessarily always devoid of
positive effects, but in the light of our earlier discussion, they are certainly problematical
when they occur in a vacuum, by which we mean a failure to attend to the critical
organizational and institutional foundations of regional growth and competitiveness, as
discussed above.
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Since the 1980s, a burgeoning body of literature and practical experiments has
accumulated in which these foundations have indeed been shown to be essential bulwarks
of the regional development process (cf. Bianchi, 1992; Scott, 2001; Schmitz, 2001).
More specifically, as we have noted, regional economies are internally tied together
through human and organizational interdependencies -- often untraded -- that have a
strong public-goods or quasi-public goods character, meaning that they are the source of
positive externalities that are freely available to all (or at least significant numbers of)
firms but the property of none. Such positive externalities are observable in diverse
domains of regional economic activity, including dense information flows, learning
processes, the emergence of craft or design traditions, business network formation, and so
on (Scott, 2002; Storper, 1997). In this regard, we can refer to a ?regional economic
commons? representing the elements of economic advantage that emerge out of the
collective order of agglomeration, but that by their nature cannot be reduced to individual
ownership and control. These elements are crucial for overall regional success, especially
in a globalizing economy.
Concomitantly, new kinds of policy interventions based on the concept of regional
economies as aggregates of physical and relational assets need to be identified and
refined. This is because their development-enhancing synergies are subject to two main
problems. First, the supporting conditions for maximizing such positive externalities tend
to be undersupplied where market relations alone prevail (Bator, 1958; Mishan, 1981).
They include skills training, labor market information, technological research, and so on
(Johanssen et al., 2001; Braczyk et al., 1998; Maskell, 1998). They would be
undersupplied because, insofar as they are mobile and freely available, there is a strong
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temptation for potential producers to try and free ride on other producers? investments in
them, by poaching these resources from the regional resource pool. It is hence essential
to build forms of policy intervention in order to rectify this problem. Second, even in the
vital center of a regional economy functioning on the basis of untraded
interdependencies, there are significant moral hazards which can generate severe negative
externalities if left on their own. These include the emergence of low trust relations
between manufacturers and subcontractors, or threats to the reputation of regional
product quality due to free rider behavior. It is also possible for a regional economy to go
down the wrong pathway, as for example when some producers choose short-term
behaviors in product and labor markets which oblige their competitors to imitate them,
but where the aggregate result is an adverse selection dynamic for the regional system as
a whole, and this in turn locks the economy into an undesirable low-level equilibrium.
The many-sided regional economic commons that develops alongside dense
industrial agglomerations, then, represent a critical domain of beneficial policy
intervention. There are different frameworks within which such intervention can be
undertaken. These include governmental agencies, civic associations, private-public
partnerships, or a host of other possible institutional arrangements, depending on local
traditions and political sensibilities. Although the need for such action exists in regions
at every degree of poverty or prosperity, it is probably most difficult to achieve in
localities that have high deficits of basic physical and relational assets to begin with. This
sort of intervention, in any of its institutional guises, has little resemblance to traditional
urban policy, with its emphasis on infrastructure, housing, transportation, and urban
public finance; it is instead oriented toward the problem of coordination of urban
28
28
production systems. Moreover, since it depends so greatly on the active consent of many
different individuals and groups, such intervention calls for a high degree of social and
political engagement, in which firms, workers, and other stakeholders in the local
economy are brought into meaningful public debate about what is at issue and about the
preferred shape of collective outcomes. There is indeed a role for collective action in
promoting regional increasing- returns effects and raising the long-term rate of economic
growth, and this claim is entirely consistent with the same point made for the economy as
a whole by the new growth theory (Romer, 1990; Lucas, 1988), as well as by the large
theoretical and empirical literatures on the social and institutional foundations of
successful markets.
A confirmed anti-dirigiste such as Lal (1983) would certainly raise objections at this
point to the effect that it is always better to live with market failures than with the
?inevitable? gaffes of public agencies and their encouragement of rent-seeking behavior.
No matter how salutary this warning may be, it is tempered to the extent that the notion
of a regional economic commons " offering compensating returns to coordination -- can
be enhanced and sustained by such interventions and that lack thereof can destroy the
commons, with aggregate outcomes that drag down overall economic performance.
Moreover, the recent body of theory and scholarship on agglomeration effects to which
we refer here allows increasingly rigorous empirical and theoretical tests to be be applied
to interventions in regional economic performance.
Rising levels of local activism in the matter of regional economic development,
however, do create some additional risks. These take many different forms ranging from
irrational development races, through fiscal wars over subsidies and investments, to the
29
29
poaching of one region?s talent and resources by another, to locational tournaments for
large inward investments (Donahue, 1997a; Bartik, 1991). Interregional competition in
pursuit of first-mover advantages is a striking instance of this problem. It is perhaps most
clearly evident where several different regions are all striving to become incubators of
some critical infant industry, and hence to emerge eventually as the leading centers of
that industry as it matures. But in the presence of agglomeration economies, only one or a
few champion regions are likely to be successful in any given production niche over the
long run, implying that in the absence of informed coordination from the beginning,
considerable misallocation of resources will in all likelihood have occurred. In general,
securing positive-sum returns to development at the interregional scale " and in a world
where many individual regions are actively striving to build internal developmental
competencies " appears to demand some additional layer of regulatory oversight. Certain
European Union injunctions against ?social dumping? are attempts to establish interregional
coordination of this type, though they remain insufficiently specific to be fully
operational.
At the same time, the formerly widespread policies of central governments to
promote regional income equalization have been considerably diluted in recent years in
both developed and developing countries,3 thereby helping to accentuate the processes of
interregional income divergence already noted. Globalization as it is being molded by
the ideology of the Washington Consensus, may encourage further watering down of
these policies, especially where this is accompanied by the enforcement of contractionary
monetary policies and fiscal austerity programs in developing countries (Stiglitz, 2002).
3 As Davezies (2000) notes, this dilution concerns mostly wage-based income equalization policies in the
European countries. Certain kinds of transfer payments compensate in part for this dilution.
30
30
As a corollary, many countries are also concentrating their public expenditures on their
most dynamic, globally- linked agglomerations at the expense of basic equity issues both
within these agglomerations and between them and other areas of the national territory
(Acs, 2000; Phillips, 2002). The concomitant tensions built into the contemporary
development process -- at all geographical scales, whether intrametropolitan,
interregional or international -- can lead to political backlash in which even the
potentially positive aspects of development and globalization may not be recognized
because of a failure to deal with their more egregiously negative effects, including the
exacerbation of social and interregional inequalities. Such backlashes occurred in the
1920s, when virtually all of the main immigrant-receiving American countries shut the
door to further immigration, contributing to the end of progress in construction of the
North Atlantic global economy and with it, the many decades long slowdown in world
economic growth (Williamson, 1998).
All of this suggests that the regional components of economic development policy
under contemporary conditions pose a knife-edge dilemma. On the one hand, policy
needs to be designed in ways that strengthen agglomeration economies in various ways.
On the other hand, isolated attempts to strengthen agglomeration economies may
intensify disparities in per capita incomes along many different lines of cleavage
(Wagner, 2001a, 2001b). These two aspects of the question are in constant tension with
one another in today?s world, as exemplified by current debates in which some analysts
hold that development policy is best focused on productivity improvements in dynamic
agglomerations, (thereby maximizing national growth rates, but increasing social
tensions), while other analysts suggest that limiting inequality through appropriate forms
31
31
of income redistribution (social and/or inter-regional) can lead to more viable long-run
development programs (Aghion, 1998; Amsden, 1989). In any case, for virtually every
country, there is today a serious and much neglected policy issue involving the
achievement of more effective forms of central/regional coordination and a more
appropriate spatial distributions of political power (Bolton et al., 1996; Cheshire and
Gordon, 1998; Donahue, 1997b; Inman and Rubinfeld, 1997; Wagner, 2001b)
Analogous tensions over development disparities recur at every level of geographic
scale in the world economy (Held et al., 1999), and especially at the global scale itself. In
the current regime of intensified globalization in which market imperatives consistently
outrun existing institutional capacities for effective regulation, the balance appears to be
strongly in favor of increasing inequalities. The discussion laid out here presents the case
for an explicit consideration of the economic geography of globalization in relation to its
regional foundations, and this issue needs henceforth to figure prominently in any
reorganization of the institutions comprising a new multi- scalar system of governance.
The competing claims of growth and equity remain firmly on the agenda, even if the
current pressures of spatial economic reorganization make it necessary to re-think the
ways in which we can best achieve balanced responses to them.
VI. Conclusion: development theory through the lens of economic geography
Conventional economic theories of development and trade have by and large
ignored questions of economic geography. Today some of this neglect is being rectified
by economists with an interest in agglomeration economies and regional dynamics (see,
for example, Fujita et al., 1999). In our view, however, this perspective can be taken
further. The existence of pervasive agglomeration economies based on externalities and
increasing returns effects calls for a full recognition of the region as an organic unit of
economic reality. This is because agglomeration economies represent a potent,
immobile, and -- given their status as public and quasi-public goods -- a highlyproblematic
al element of the entire development process. As such, regions exist as
keystones of economic organization just as firms, sectors, and nations do. Development
theory needs now to recognize this point and take it into account.
As we indicated at the beginning of this paper, economists have tended to
privilege macro-economic variables as the best possible line of attack on the problem of
development. But this level of observation, though obviously important, is no longer (if
it ever was) the uniquely privileged point of entry to an understanding of development,
and all the more so today given that the barriers between national economies are in
certain respects breaking down, thus enhancing tendencies to agglomeration at selected
locations all over the world. Moreover, while development theories directed at poorer
countries have at times recognized the fundamental two-way connection between
industrialization and urbanization, they have tended to focus on the problem of
hyperurbanization and its negative social repercussions, rather than on the region as a
locus of high-productivity outcomes. Our point is that one of the most fundamental issues
for developing countries today is how to create and sustain the kinds of agglomerations
without which they can never hope for entry into the highest ranks of the global
economy, while ensuring that income disparities remain well within the limits of the
socially just and politically tolerable.
This state of affairs poses many new questions for development theory and policy
at the regional, national and international scales. We have sought in the present paper to
move beyond elements of development theory that impede a fuller recognition of the
geographical realities of the globalization process and to sketch out the beginnings of
some broad responses to the questions raised by this exercise.
Related: • pitufa 113. Exporter China is paying big for U.S. expertise
The instruments, designed to help researchers study possible sources of hydrogen fuel for hybrid vehicles, carry a hefty price tag - about $100,000 each. Advanced Materials Corp. has sold units to customers in Italy, Singapore, Taiwan, India and other countries.
But one nation has bought more than any other: China.
The country better known for flooding the U.S. market with cheap toys and other items is injecting billions of dollars into the bottom lines of U.S. manufacturers of certain big-ticket, highly engineered products - including locomotives, nuclear-power plants, and aircraft. But analysts warn that demand will likely wane as China's manufacturing capabilities improve.Related: • Exporter • China • is • paying • big • for • US • expertise 114. Nuclear Plants Face Steep Costs COMMODITIES CORNERMONDAY, APRIL 16, 2007By MATTHEW DALTONSUPPLY DISRUPTIONS AND DWINDLING INVENTORIES have created a perfect storm in the uranium market -- and electric utilities hope they can wait out the bad weather. The price of uranium, which fuels nuclear-power plants, has soared to $113 a pound, from less than $20 three years ago. And market participants expect uranium to become even more expensive, at least in the short term.The price of fuel, which includes the uranium and enrichment costs, is only about 28% of the total cost of operating a nuclear plant. That's a much lower impact than fuel costs have at coal- or natural gas-burning plants. But if prices don't moderate, nuclear plants will be somewhat less profitable -- particularly if the enrichment process grows more expensive, as predicted by the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade organization. Related: • Nuclear • Plants • Face • Steep • Costs 115. Natural energy - Energy heads into sensitive areas
Energy heads into sensitive areasBillings Gazette - As the methane, or natural gas, is tapped out beneath the flat rangeland of eastern Wyoming, energy companies are migrating west and into richer habitat along the Powder River, where protected birds such as the sage grouse live. Federal rules mandate Source: www.billingsgazette.net
Focus Energy Trust continues distributions of $0.14 per unitForbes - Focus Energy Trust is a natural gas weighted energy trust. Focus is committed to maintaining its emphasis on operating high-quality oil and gas properties, delivering consistent distributions to unitholders, and ensuring financial strength and Source: www.forbes.com
What?s behind ?Mideast nuclear-power club? Xinhua News Agency - After a meeting with GCC chief Abdulrahman al-Attiyah in Riyadhon Thursday, ElBaradei told a press conference that ?it is a natural right for the GCC countries to possess nuclear energy in order to use it for peaceful purposes.? ?Nothing Source: news.xinhuanet.com
Baradei begins Jordan visitMENAFN - This will help us fulfill our energy needs,? he said, adding that he will discuss the issue with Baradei. According to Maher Hijazin, director of the Natural Resources Authority, the country has ?tens of thousands of tonnes? of uranium reserves. Source: www.menafn.com
Energy Minister G ler: Suspension of the Nabucco Project is out of Turkish Weekly - Energy and Natural Resources Minister Hilmi G ler said on Wednesday that the suspension of the Nabucco project which will enable the ?transportation of the Azerbaijani natural gas to Europe via Turkey? was out of question. Minister G ler answered Source: www.turkishweekly.net
Is Arnold having second thoughts on LNG?San Francisco Gate - A day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger?s office issued a statement saying liquefied natural gas ?should be part of California?s energy portfolio,? the Republican governor seemed to be having second thoughts about shipping the fuel from afar to meet Source: www.sfgate.com
Illinois EPA Issues Air Permit for the Construction of the Secure PR Newswire - The Secure Energy Decatur Gasification Plant is a coal to pipeline quality synthetic natural gas conversion facility planned for an existing industrial site in Decatur, Illinois. The plant will convert up to 1.4 million tons per year of high-sulfur Source: sev.prnewswire.com Related: • Natural • energy • Energy • heads • into • sensitive • areas 116. Led Bib, at the Vortex 10/4/07
A totally incendiary (two) sets from Led Bib at the Vortex, this Tuesday. Another of The Babel label?s great young progressive jazz acts? they were there promoting their new album Sizewell Tea (apparently released April 23rd, but available some places already).
Going in to see this was a fairly on-the-whim sort of thing, based pretty much on hearing their track on this month?s Jazzwise cover-mounted Babel sampler CD (pretty decent, plus you get a free magazine with it, too). I guess they?re a sort of punk-funk-jazz quintet; more ?jazzy? than Babel-mates Acoustic Ladyland or Polar Bear, but sharing that hot contemporary-London-jazz feel; a bunch of music-school graduates coming through from a background of growing up listening to rock music?
Led Bib is: Liran Donin (bass), Toby McLaren (keyboards), Chris Williams (alto sax, left in picture above), Pete Grogan (also alto sax), and Mark Holub, the group leader (on drums). The gig itself was a bit of a slow start; the band making it onto the Vortex stage almost an hour after the scheduled start, and with the first set seemingly thrown off-kilter by PA issues; the second set was a lot more cooking? The twin sax line up is cool; in a band like Polar Bear, for example, the saxes (Pete Wareham and Mark Lockheart, in that case) tend to stick quite close together, weaving around a single line. With Led Bib, Grogan and Williams play the heads tight together in free swirls, but then separate with very much their own distinctive voices; Grogan plays a more considered, traditional line, with occasional Coltrane-tinges, while Williams is more stream-of-consciousness: every now and then moving into great bursts of bebop-Marshall-Allen. Liran Donin is a great bassist, contributing a couple of brilliantly melodic solos. Toby McLaren was laying the groove well-down with some tight Fender Rhodes, perfectly meshed with Holub?s restrained but inspired drumming. Holub is a New Jersey ex-pat, and you can hear a strong New York-downtown vibe in their music; free-jazz but with the awareness that ?people are listening?. Really fantastic group; the nuclear-power reference from their Sizewell Tea is probably pretty apt, just a great fun uplifting band? Sample sounds are available on their myspace and Babel pages?Related: • Led • Bib • at • the • Vortex • 10407 117. Whole house fans - Pour some dry, bite-size cereal...
Whole house fans - Pour some dry, bite-size cereals into a bag,Pour some dry, bite-size cereals into a bag, or grab a whole grain ... Whole grain cereals = 1/2 cup cooked or 1 ounce of ready-to-eat ...Source: www.oznet.ksu.eduWhole in the Wall Restaurant Whole in the Wall restaurant is a natural foods restaurant located in Binghamton, ... From our now famous whole-wheat bread & bagels (baked fresh daily) to our to-die ...Source: www.wholeinthewall.comThe Wonderful World of Whole Grains Whole grain foods are the best choice because they have not been refined, so ... Whole grains contain the entire grain kernel (rich in fiber and other nutrients) ...Source: www.metrokc.govWhole Buildings Information on renewable energy, including wind and solar power; nuclear-power ... Whole Building Design Guide ... energy use, "whole" buildings levy the ...Source: www.ucsusa.orgSo NoTORIous: Whole - TV.com TV.com is your reference guide to So NoTORIous episode Whole. ... Tell the world what you think of Whole, write a review for this episode. Write a Review ...Source: www.tv.comFind Your Next Used Car, Truck or SUV - Over 1 million cars Your source for used cars, trucks and SUV's from both dealers and private sellers. View color photos, detailed vehicle specifications and compare prices. Buy or sell ...Source: www.autoextra.comWhole Foods Whole food saves lives. Add premium whole food to your diet. ... The absolute easiest way to add Whole Foods to your daily diet. ...Source: www.frequencyrising.comWhole Dog Journal Subscription based monthly guide to natural dog care and training.Source: www.whole-dog-journal.com Related: • Whole • house • fans • Pour • some • dry • bitesize • cereal
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Top Sites About "Nuclear Power"Last updated :
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Saturday, August 18, 2007
Nuclear Power
1. Warming up to nuclear power Craig Pridemore was a University of Washington student when he started his career influencing public policy. He and his friends made a road trip to Richland in the early 1980s to protest planned construction of five nuclear-power plants. Now, the Vancouver state senator, who remains an environmentalist and successfully sponsored legislation this session to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, reluctantly concedes nuclear power might need to play a role in the monumental task of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States he said so in testimony before a state House committee. He's not th Related: • Warming • up • to • nuclear • power 2. National Review - President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more Related: • National • Review • President • George • W • Bush • and • Indian • prime • minister • Manmohan • Singh • met • at • the • White • House • in • a • historic 3. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 4. Warming up to nuclear power ... 1980s to protest planned construction of five nuclear-power plants. Now, the Vancouver state senator, who ... a book, "Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Revolution," that will be published by Island ... of Seven industrialized countries, including Britain, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United States, Related: • Warming • up • to • nuclear • power 5. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 6. 5/18/2007: Global Business Briefs: Vedanta Resources PLC Vedanta Resources PLC Executive Chairman Anil Agarwal said that in addition to producing coalfired power, the metals-and-mining company would also like to expand into nuclear-power production. The company, which is listed and based in London but has Related: • 5182007 • Global • Business • Briefs • Vedanta • Resources • PLC 7. Science News - Chinese nuclear pact signed - U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Central Ohio woman who is among the nation. China vice premier Wu Yi takes lead on economic. Laborious quest to replace Bruce Arena as coach of the men. Mumps outbreak means hospitals hurting for staff. Was taken over by American businessmen Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr. Mr Rudd said he had discussed the current review with the premier
Posted in Ali Yusef stands outside a Devon Avenue devon. ( 6 links from 6 sites)
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December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
A new life-cycle study prepared by Germany?s ko-Institut (Institute for Applied Ecology) ? *German was prepared as a working paper to guide discussions about the future of nuclear power ? have re-opened the debate, with advocates saying nuclear power is very clean and that the benefits
Posted in Bioenergy pact between Europe and Africa ( 2,700 links from 119 sites) by biopact
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August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more Related: • Science • News • Chinese • nuclear • pact • signed • US • exports • of • nuclearpower • technology • to • China 8. Is Systemic Risk Underestimated? The question of systemic risk, that is, the possibility of a generalized failure of the financial system, such as a stock market crash, is something that regulators think about a great deal and quite deliberately discuss a good bit less, since fear becomes a driving element in any market panic.The reason for the heightened concern about systemic risk is the proliferation of new instruments and strategies, including credit default and total return swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and other exotica, very high levels of leverage, very low risk premia (that means that investors are cavalier about risk and aren't asking to be paid very much to assume risk), and large, unsustainable (in the long term) global imbalances. Many of these new instruments have not been around long enough to have been tested in a recession or a market break. Thus, even though investors and brokers have models of how they will behave, they have never been tested in certain real-world scenarios.The risk of these novel investments is compounded by internal inconsistencies in money and capital flows. At a minimum, the widespread low risk premia don't mesh well with the global imbalances story. Presumably, the smart money recognizes that there will be a readjustment, hopefully gradual, but any realignment will create a lot of uncertainty and asset repricing. But no one wants to get out too early and miss the upside, so it appears that a lot of investors are assuming they will know when to abandon their current strategy and won't be trampled in a rush for the exits.Mind you, it's important to note that things could unwind in a messy, painful way, without having a market break or crisis. Think of the end of the dot com era. A tremendous amount of wealth was wiped out, but it was merely a large market correction. But the bubble in debt markets, which are much larger and more levered than the equity markets, increases the risk of a nasty outcome.There are two views of this situation, each with its own construct. One is the majority perspective, well represented by the Fed. It sees the complexity of the financial system in organic terms. The notion of diversification, of spreading risk, means greater safety and resilience. No one would disagree with that concept, but the question is whether high leverage, greatly increased trading volumes, and new instruments, particularly ones that require very high level math skills to understand, changes the nature of the risks enough to obviate the advantages of diversification and risk transfer. Although regulators and economists would never admit to this analogy, the mainstream sees the changes in the financial system in evolutionary terms: it is progressing by developing more complicated and diverse instruments, more complicated institutional relationships, more interdependencies. In biology, you see a similar pattern when you go from simple organisms to more complicated ones.Consider this speech, "Credit Markets Innovations and Their Implications," from Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Fed:The latest wave of credit market innovations has elicited some concerns about their implications for the stability of the financial system, concerns similar to those associated with earlier periods of rapid change in financial markets....The recent changes in credit markets have been dramatic. We have seen rapid growth of structured credit products, credit default swaps and new types of collateralized debt and loan obligations. Although these instruments are very new, they are the natural extension of earlier innovations in credit markets. Over a long period we have seen innovations ranging from the syndication of bank loans and the direct provision of credit through the capital markets, to the spread of asset-backed securities and products that separate different parts of the payments stream and different dimensions of the risk in a credit obligation into different instruments.These changes have contributed to a substantial reduction in the share of total credit held by banks. They have produced a greater separation or distance between the entity that first arranges a loan and those who end up holding the risk, and more intermediaries in that chain. And they have contributed to a dramatic increase in the number and diversity of creditors to any individual borrower, and a greater capacity to actively trade credit risk...Some aspects of this latest wave of innovation are different in substance"therefore potentially in their implications"from their predecessors. And these differences require attention...The first is about the role of market liquidity and liquidity risk in how credit markets work. Credit market innovations have transformed the financial system from one in which most credit risk is in the form of loans, held to maturity on the balance sheets of banks, to a system in which most credit risk now takes an incredibly diverse array of different forms, much of it held by nonbank financial institutions that mark to market and can take on substantial leverage.... Hedge funds, according to one recent survey, account for 58 percent of the volume in credit derivatives in the year to the first quarter of 2006.Financial shocks take many forms. Some, such as in 1987 and 1998, involve a sharp increase in risk premia that precipitate a fall in asset prices and that in turn leads to what economists and engineers call "positive feedback" dynamics. As firms and investors move to hedge against future losses and to raise money to meet margin calls, the brake becomes the accelerator: markets come under additional pressure, pushing asset prices lower. Volatility increases. Liquidity in markets for more risky assets falls.In systems where credit is more market-based and more credit risk is in leveraged financial institutions outside the banking system, a sharp rise in asset-price volatility and the concomitant reduction in market liquidity, can potentially have greater negative effects on credit markets. If losses in these institutions force them to withdraw from credit markets, credit availability will decline, unless or until other institutions in a stronger financial position are willing to step in. The greater connection between asset-price volatility, market liquidity and the credit mechanism is the necessary consequence of a system in which credit risk is dispersed outside the banking system, including among leveraged funds. This does not make the system less stable, though, only different. For if risk is spread more broadly, shocks should be absorbed with less trauma. Moreover, the system as a whole may be less vulnerable to distortions introduced by the moral hazard associated with the access that banks have to the safety net.A second issue we need to consider stems from the complexity of the new credit instruments, the challenges they present in terms of valuation and risk measurement and their short history of experience in times of stress.Even the most sophisticated participants in the markets for these instruments find the risk management challenges associated with these instruments daunting. This raises the prospect of unanticipated losses. Default rates are harder to predict where there has been a substantial change in the financial attributes of borrowers. The prices of instruments may not respond as expected to a given change in losses or in the value of the assets underlying these instruments. Hedging strategies may prove to be less effective than expected. Similarly rated instruments can behave very differently in stress events....A third issue relates to the dynamics of failure and the infrastructure that supports these markets. The dramatic growth in the volume of over-the-counter derivatives and the growth in the number and size of leveraged funds inevitably complicate the resolution of the failure of a large financial institution that is active in these markets. The sheer number of financial contracts that would have to be unraveled in the context of a default, the challenge that a former colleague of mine likes to refer to as "unscrambling the eggs," could exacerbate and prolong uncertainty, and complicate the process of resolution...All these challenges merit attention. They describe some of the risks that have accompanied the substantial benefits of credit market innovation. And they help illustrate why these broad changes in financial markets may have contributed to a system where the probability of a major crisis seems likely to be lower, but the losses associated with such a crisis may be greater or harder to mitigate....There are several crucial admissions in Geithner's speech. First, no one understands the complexity and operation of the total system (at a minimum, one set of important players, hedge funds, hide their activities). Second, it is a given that some of the new instruments will behave in unexpected, probably adverse ways, in a stress event. Third, the Fed has much less influence than in the past because banks are no longer where the action is.But not to worry. The system is Darwinian. Market discipline operates as a predatory force, wiping out the weak members of the herd. To take a page from Emile Durkheim, this organic view of the financial system contrasts with the minority perspective, which sees it in mechanical terms. Richard Bookstaber, a hedge fund manager, risk management expert, and author of "A Demon of Our Own Design" (reviewed in the Economist) sees markets not in terms of their resilience but their vulnerability. He comes by his perspective from personal experience. He can claim to have helped cause not only the 1987 crash (as one of the designers of portfolio insurance that led to automated selling, turning a decline into a rout) but also the Long Term Capital Management meltdown that nearly created a financial crisis (an investigation he led into trading losses at Salomon led them to shut down their bond arbitrage desk, which lowered liquidity in the market, making it harder for LTCM to unwind its positions).In a Wall Street Journal interview, Bookstaber describes the gears and plumbing of the financial system:Financial markets are like jetliners and nuclear-power plants, he says: They are highly complex systems that require numerous interrelated steps to work together. But the "tight coupling" of these steps means when one of them goes wrong, the error rapidly ripples through the entire system, producing disasters like the ValuJet crash in 1996 or the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.Bookstaber's observation about "tight coupling" intuitively seems correct and fundamentally important. Financial markets players deal with each other through innumerable, rigid processes which require industry members to act in prescribed ways: counterparty agreements, exchange rules, regulatory requirements. In a crisis, the players lack the ability to suspend the rules.After the 1987 stock market crash, the major stock and commodity exchanges created circuit breakers, which, like control rods in a nuclear reactor, stop the action, hopefully long enough for the situation to normalize. But the credit markets, the focus of innovation and of Geithner's speech, operate through not through centralized exchanges but over the counter, among dealers. They have no circuit breakers. We can only hope they never need them. Related: • Is • Systemic • Risk • Underestimated 9. Things Can Go Wrong
One argument that the rose-colored glasses set likes to bandy about in discussions regarding the growing dangers associated with new age finance is the lack of confirmation from finance industry insiders, who presumably know best. Another point of rebuttal: the fact that few individuals, especially those who work on Wall Street and who have been milking the business for years, are short-sided or stupid enough to do anything that puts the ponzi finance cash cow in serious jeopardy. In "A Street Pioneer Fears a Blowup," the Wall Street Journal offers fascinating insights from one master of the universe that serve to undermine both assertions.
Like many pessimistic observers, Richard Bookstaber thinks financial derivatives, Wall Street innovation and hedge funds will lead to a financial meltdown.
What sets Mr. Bookstaber apart is that he has spent his career designing derivatives, working on Wall Street and running a hedge fund.
"The financial markets that we have constructed are now so complex, and the speed of transactions so fast that apparently isolated actions and even minor events can have catastrophic consequences," Mr. Bookstaber writes in a new book that is part memoir and part treatise.
Mr. Bookstaber has a doctorate in economics and now runs a hedge fund at FrontPoint Partners, which was bought last year by Morgan Stanley.
But it is his prior positions at Morgan Stanley and Salomon Brothers (since absorbed into Citigroup Inc.) that form the core of his book, "A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds and the Perils of Financial Innovation," published last month. In those jobs, he says, he played a small part in causing both the 1987 stock-market crash and the 1998 collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management LP.
"The odds are pretty high that we'll see other dislocations that match the type of turmoil we saw with the crash in 1987 and with the LTCM crisis," Mr. Bookstaber, 56 years old, says in an interview. "Any one derivative, with some exceptions, may be easy to track. But by the time you layer a lot of them one on top of the other, it becomes increasingly complex, so a small, unexpected event can propagate in surprising and nonlinear ways -- and there's no way to anticipate all these possible events."
His pessimism isn't widely shared by the financial industry or regulators. Financial innovation and hedge funds have "greatly enhanced the liquidity, efficiency and risk-sharing capabilities of our financial system," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in April. Officials at Morgan Stanley declined to comment on the book.
Author and economic consultant Peter Bernstein, who encouraged Mr. Bookstaber to write the book after hearing him speak, attributes Mr. Bookstaber's unusual point of view to the fact that "his focus is risk management, which makes for these kinds of attitudes: that things can go wrong."
Mr. Bookstaber says his views have been sought out by the Government Accountability Office, which is preparing a report on hedge funds.
His first experience with the destructive power of derivatives came in 1987 while he was helping design and market "portfolio insurance" for Morgan Stanley. Portfolio insurance was devised in the early 1980s by finance theorists as a way for big institutional investors to use budding options-pricing theory to protect their portfolios from losses. When stocks went down, portfolio insurance required an investor to sell stock-index futures according to a formula, then to buy futures when stocks rose again.
The problem was that when many investors did the same thing, their sales of stock-index futures helped pull down the entire stock market. That dynamic fueled the 1987 crash. Mr. Bookstaber, who sold portfolio insurance to investors in Japan and managed it for such Morgan Stanley clients as Chrysler, Ford Motor Co. and Gillette, writes, "Through my role in implementing portfolio insurance, I had helped precipitate a financial crisis of monumental proportions."
In 1998, as head of Salomon Brothers' risk-management team, he tried to find out why a strategy employed by the firm's bond arbitrage desk, with some of Wall Street's smartest minds, was facing more than $100 million in losses. Even after intensive study, the cause remained an "enigma," Mr. Bookstaber writes. But he did conclude that declining interest rates were causing the strategy to lose money even though it was designed to be interest-rate neutral. His findings, he says, encouraged the new owners of Salomon, which had just merged with Smith Barney, to close the bond arbitrage unit and liquidate its positions.
Mr. Bookstaber says as Salomon closed out its positions, other traders stepped out of the way and liquidity -- the ease of trading -- in the underlying markets dried up. This, he said, precipitated LTCM's crisis. That hedge fund used many of the same strategies as Salomon, where many of its founders had worked. When Russia's default on its foreign debt in the summer of 1998 triggered a plunge in many markets, LTCM found it couldn't liquidate except at fire-sale prices. In parts of the debt markets, trading practically halted. The Fed then organized a private-sector bailout of the fund to limit damage to the financial system.
Eric Rosenfeld, who went to school with Mr. Bookstaber and worked at Salomon before leaving to help found LTCM, says LTCM's problem wasn't complex, illiquid strategies, but the fact that many firms had similar strategies with similar risk tolerances. Selling by one triggered selling by others. Firms need to keep that in mind, he said, and favor "much more liquid [investments] and much less leverage."
Mr. Bookstaber doubts the ability of regulators or firms' own risk managers to prevent disaster. He describes how in 1993 one trader's positions at Morgan Stanley were revalued with each new trade. So to hide a loss, the trader avoided making new trades. "The firm lost more than $100 million by the time someone noticed that the trader hadn't traded for nearly a month," he writes.
Financial markets are like jetliners and nuclear-power plants, he says: They are highly complex systems that require numerous interrelated steps to work together. But the "tight coupling" of these steps means when one of them goes wrong, the error rapidly ripples through the entire system, producing disasters like the ValuJet crash in 1996 or the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.
The solution, he says, is for Wall Street to strive for less complexity and not trade every instrument that can be dreamed up. He admits doing this would require some government oversight -- even though his book argues that regulation makes things worse by adding to complexity.
Mr. Bookstaber's son David, one of two sons who work with him at FrontPoint, says his father is "not a real evangelizer ... he's more of an academic" who loves to deconstruct complex situations. Asked how his father works in an industry about which he has so much foreboding, David says, "He won't let us develop systems or theories that are too complex."
I suppose the bulls will dismiss Mr. Bookstaber's comments as more "fear mongering," right? Related: • Things • Can • Go • Wrong 10. British Medical Journal - Reporting and preventing medical mishaps: lessons from non-medical near miss reporting systems -
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more
Europe re-walks nuclear energy path with Finland reactor May 13th, 2007 Nuclear Plant in Finland ? blueness of the Baltic Sea and verdant forests, Olkiluoto is home to two of Finland s four nuclear power ? of one of the most sophisticated nuclear plants in Nordic Europe, one feels privileged to have a day
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To take charge of the party and offered. China aims to develop its own nuclear power technology based on AP. The NSWMA says there are close to three million tyres at the landfills across the island
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July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
# posted by paola2000 : 3:33 PM Friday, February 09, ? management in Iran s nuclear sector, to improve nuclear power technology, to establish a nuclear technology center and to provide some specific types of industrial technology. Projects that were allowed
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A recent report on Zee News has stated that Bangladesh has asked for India?s help in setting up a 600MW nuclear reactor in its quest to generate 1500 ? proliferation?. Then, there is the general Western mistrust of nuclear power in the hands of a muslim country ? MW of nuclear energy to meet the current shortfall. (the report may be found at http
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?more Related: • British • Medical • Journal • Reporting • and • preventing • medical • mishaps • lessons • from • nonmedical • near • miss • reporting • systems • 11. China Aims to Develop Its Own Nuclear Power Technology Based On AP1000 - Resource Investor
Resource Investor, VA - Apr 25, 2007Within the year, China had begun to invite interested parties to bid for contracts that would introduce third generation nuclear power technology into the ?
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CCTV
Chinese vice premier calls for development of new nuclear power ?CCTV, China - May 16, 2007BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) " China should further develop the new generation nuclear power technology to ensure the sustainable development of the economy, ?Chinese vice premier calls for development of new nuclear power ? People?s Daily Onlineall 2 news articles
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August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more
Zee News
China mulling plan to patent its own nuclear power plantsZee News, India - Apr 25, 2007Chinese experts will study current third-generation nuclear power technology and develop its own reactor by 2017, vice director of the systems engineering ?
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August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
More Market Players Needed if China Is to Meet Nuclear Power TargetResource Investor, VA - 6 hours ago? awarded a $5.3 billion contract to US-based Westinghouse over the importation and installation of its third generation AP1000 nuclear power technology. ?
?more Related: • China • Aims • to • Develop • Its • Own • Nuclear • Power • Technology • Based • On • AP1000 • Resource • Investor 12. Standard Handbook of Powerplant Engineering
Amazon Price: $98.75I teach power plant technology in an applied sciences college of a large urban university. One of the ongoing challenges of teaching is finding a comprehensive textbook. Although not perfect as a textbook this is a great reference for developing student?s foundation in power plant technology ?more
But, while embracing new, renewable forms of power generation, it would be unwise to overlook changes in nuclear power technology. The state produces no coal on its own, which is good because coal is a losing proposition (so-called ? ?more
Amazon Price: $89.95The most important decisions that society will ever make will be made in the next 20 years. How do we replace the burning of fossil fuels that has been the main driver for civilization?s enormous progress of the last century? This no nonsense book examines all of the foreseeable energy resources that will be available and with impeccable logic, facts, good old common sense and detailed engineering analysis Eerkens peals away the myths and half truths that special interest groups hawk to push their own agendas. It is clear that we must heed Eerkens warning, it is imperative that we act responsibly to protect the future for our children. ?more
A framework agreement has been signed between Westinghouse with its partner Shaw and China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company to supply four AP1000 third-generation nuclear power reactors. The sites specified for the 1100 MWe ? ?more
China should further develop the new generation nuclear power technology to ensure the sustainable development of the economy, Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said on Tuesday. Zeng made the remarks when inspecting the 10MW ? ?more
Amazon Price: $17.13Stephen Johnson?s ?Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion? is a highly detailed account of the last months of the US Navy nuclear submarine, lost in the Atlantic off the Azores on May 22, 1968, and of the various official investigations aimed at uncovering the reasons for that loss. Johnson follows the official chronology established by the Navy (in contrast to Ed Offley in ?Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon, The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion?) but reaches a different conclusion as to the underlying cause of the disaster (the Navy inquiries in general favored a torpedo accident of some kind, but Johnson believes some other equipment failure - perhaps a battery explosion or maybe merely a trash disposal unit that failed to seal properly - that led to an uncontrolled descent to a depth where the great pressure crushed the hull). The evidence for and against each proposed cause is examined in detail. All in all, an engrossing and well-written book. ?more
Nuclear Power Technology has come a long way and it does provide about 17 percent of the world?s electricity. But with more and more technology forming everyday, that number will likely increase. However, nuclear power politics do come ? ?more
Lantos, a California Democrat who backed legislation to allow exports of nuclear-power technology to India, is also dissatisfied with the Indian government?s discussions with Iran on a gas pipeline. Lantos said he supports Bush ? ?more
It is a more advanced version of the latest French and German N4 and Konvoi power plant units, and represents state-of-the-art nuclear power technology, he said. Olkiluoto has also been determined to become the site of disposal of ? ?more Related: • Standard • Handbook • of • Powerplant • Engineering 13. Standard Handbook of Powerplant Engineering
Amazon Price: $98.75I teach power plant technology in an applied sciences college of a large urban university. One of the ongoing challenges of teaching is finding a comprehensive textbook. Although not perfect as a textbook this is a great reference for developing student?s foundation in power plant technology ?more
Amazon Price: $184.99This book presents the latest data on power plants and provides much needed formulas and rules of thumb for sizing equipment based on plant size and arrangement. The book has many examples of equipment and has a good section although somewhat out of date on permitting of power plants. I would recommend it for any power plant engineer especially those just entering the power generation industry. ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
Amazon Price: $18.94This is a solid, well-researched book that presents Heisenberg in a fair light, for once.
One of the problems with reader/reviewer bias is that many people are pre-disposed to finding fault with any suggestions that conflict with what they want to hear or believe. Regarding the Farm Hall recordings, some people have latched onto the idea that Heisenberg and others knew of the build up of the Holocaust, but continued to work for the Bomb project.
What they are usually referring to is a section in which Heisenberg talked about five Jewish scientists, whom he obviously cared about, who had been arrested and later killed; and even though Heisenberg was talking openly about putting out feelers to see if they could be helped or saved (which alone could have put him at great risk), this somehow translates into guilt in some people?s eyes.
As for him ?not co-operating with Hitler?? nobody in their right mind could possibly think that was an option. As I believe the book shows, Heisenberg did the next best thing, which was to work half-heartedly on the German Bomb. He basically killed it in 1942.
The fact that Heisenberg could come up with the correct basic bomb structure - path and critical mass analysis, in very short order almost certainly means that he could have brainstormed the right methodology years earlier if the German scientists had been 100% committed to producing a bomb for Hitler. If they had been Nazis.
To me, this fine book is one more step in the right direction, in underscoring the very fact that not all Germans were Nazis.
Hitler may have been a charismatic leader, but he made so many catastrophic errors, such as the insane decision to declare war on the USA in the hope that the Japanese would help him against the Russians - they never lifted a finger - that it is as true to say that Hitler lost the War as to say that the Allies won it.
A fair and highly recommended book. ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more Related: • Standard • Handbook • of • Powerplant • Engineering 14. Indian Energy: A Delicate Balancing Act ... the ambit of economic sanctions under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, by which foreign companies making ... $20 million in one year in Iran's energy sector would be blacklisted. The political undertones ... any concession to India in accessing international nuclear-power technology to be linked to breaking ties Related: • Indian • Energy • A • Delicate • Balancing • Act 15. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 16. Europe re-walks nuclear energy path with Finland reactor (With Images) - Indian Muslims
Indian Muslims, CA - May 13, 2007It is a more advanced version of the latest French and German N4 and Konvoi power plant units, and represents state-of-the-art nuclear power technology," he ?
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CCTV
Chinese vice premier calls for development of new nuclear power ?CCTV, China - 15 hours agoBEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) " China should further develop the new generation nuclear power technology to ensure the sustainable development of the economy, ?Chinese vice premier calls for development of new nuclear power ? People?s Daily Onlineall 5 news articles
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China Approves Largest Nuclear Power PlantBritish Industry, UK - May 14, 2007? Westinghouse Electric Company according to framework agreements signed between the US company and China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation. ?
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NTPC wants to produce nuclear powerNDTV.com, India - May 10, 2007For the expertise in nuclear power technology NTPC in its approach paper has proposed a tie-up with BARC and Nuclear power corporation of India (NPCIL). ?
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Deal to see Indian defense spending soarAsia Times Online, Hong Kong - 19 hours ago? the deal that will allow India to access international nuclear-power technology, to enable the US to garner several defense contracts with India. ?
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Contract signed on import of third generation nuclear power technologyInterfax.cn (subscription), China - 22 hours agoINTERFAX-CHINA - Chinese companies State Nuclear Power Technology, Sanmen Nuclear Power and Shandong Nuclear Power signed a memorandum of understanding with ?
?more Related: • Europe • rewalks • nuclear • energy • path • with • Finland • reactor • With • Images • Indian • Muslims 17. Business Wire - Westinghouse / Shaw Consortium Selected for China Nuclear New Build Program
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
A recent report on Zee News has stated that Bangladesh has asked for India?s help in setting up a 600MW nuclear reactor in its quest to generate 1500 ? proliferation?. Then, there is the general Western mistrust of nuclear power in the hands of a muslim country ? MW of nuclear energy to meet the current shortfall. (the report may be found at http
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March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more
suriname nuclear plantSuriname?s proposed construction of a nuclear power facility, ? challenge in the near future. A ground-breaking ceremony for the smelter and power plant is scheduled ? the years, consistently called on the governments guilty of shipping nuclear waste across the Caribbean
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The Conspirators? Hierachy: The story of the Committee 300 This URL contains the whole artical READ! . ? the OLYMPIANS (they truly believe they are equal in power and stature to the legendary gods of Olympus
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?more Related: • Business • Wire • Westinghouse • Shaw • Consortium • Selected • for • China • Nuclear • New • Build • Program 18. The Conspirators? Hierachy: The New World Orders?
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China is planning to develop its own patented technology for third generation nuclear power generating plants which could be available before the end of the next decade, said an official with the country?s atomic energy authority Wednesday. ?more
Deal to see Indian defense spending soarAsia Times Online, Hong Kong - 18 hours ago? the deal that will allow India to access international nuclear-power technology, to enable the US to garner several defense contracts with India. ?
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For many people, the immediate thought is nuclear warfare ? to convince the general population about how much safer and cleaner the nuclear power technology ? of publicly traded nuclear power companies. It s no secret that about 20 percent of the United States
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China is looking to fuel its nuclear power industry with largely self-developed technology by 2020 as it gradually reduces its reliance on imported technology, a senior academic of the nation?s top science institute said Monday. ?more
Contract signed on import of third generation nuclear power technologyInterfax.cn (subscription), China - 21 hours agoINTERFAX-CHINA - Chinese companies State Nuclear Power Technology, Sanmen Nuclear Power and Shandong Nuclear Power signed a memorandum of understanding with ?
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suriname nuclear plantSuriname?s proposed construction of a nuclear power facility, ? challenge in the near future. A ground-breaking ceremony for the smelter and power plant is scheduled ? the years, consistently called on the governments guilty of shipping nuclear waste across the Caribbean
Posted in Caricomblog.com - news, info and features related to? ( 30 links from 7 sites) by heatray
?more Related: • The • Conspirators • Hierachy • The • New • World • Orders 19. Palisades security questioned From "Kalamazoo Gazette": A nuclear-power watchdog group is calling on Congress to investigate what it calls a major security breach at Palisades Nuclear Plant detailed in an article in Esquire magazine Related: • Palisades • security • questioned 20. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 21. Vedanta Plans Move into Nuclear Power Vedanta Resources' executive chairman said in addition to producing coal-fired power, the metals-and-mining company would like to expand into nuclear-power production. Related: • Vedanta • Plans • Move • into • Nuclear • Power 22. Vedanta Plans Move into Nuclear Power Vedanta Resources' executive chairman said in addition to producing coal-fired power, the metals-and-mining company would like to expand into nuclear-power production.
Related: • Vedanta • Plans • Move • into • Nuclear • Power 23. NTPC wants to produce nuclear power - NDTV.com
NDTV.com, India - May 10, 2007For the expertise in nuclear power technology NTPC in its approach paper has proposed a tie-up with BARC and Nuclear power corporation of India (NPCIL). ?
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China Approves Largest Nuclear Power PlantBritish Industry, UK - May 14, 2007? Westinghouse Electric Company according to framework agreements signed between the US company and China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation. ?
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Deal to see Indian defense spending soarAsia Times Online, Hong Kong - 3 hours ago? the deal that will allow India to access international nuclear-power technology, to enable the US to garner several defense contracts with India. ?
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Amazon Price: $15.00In Megawatts and Megatons, Garwin and Charpak collaborated on an excellent description of nuclear power and weapons, starting with discussions of nuclear physics and energy, and ending with a narrative of post WWII international relations, centered upon arms control and prevention of use of nuclear weapons.
The authors have strong opinions on the proper use of nuclear energy and the means to reduce dependence on nuclear weapons, as one would imagine from two scientific practitioners. As such, they have presented a well-developed argument that aims to convince the reader that the U.S. should modify its energy and nuclear weapons policies to reduce the threats of global warming and nuclear contamination as well as nuclear conflict and terrorism.
Unfortunately for the layman, the technical nature of the first portion of the book may make difficult reading for the reader without a background in science or engineering, although the authors do make an effort to describe the concepts so that the non-expert may understand.
I recommend this book for anyone with an interest in the technical description of nuclear power and weapons, nuclear policy, and recommendations new policy directions. ?more
Amazon Price: $18.94This is a solid, well-researched book that presents Heisenberg in a fair light, for once.
One of the problems with reader/reviewer bias is that many people are pre-disposed to finding fault with any suggestions that conflict with what they want to hear or believe. Regarding the Farm Hall recordings, some people have latched onto the idea that Heisenberg and others knew of the build up of the Holocaust, but continued to work for the Bomb project.
What they are usually referring to is a section in which Heisenberg talked about five Jewish scientists, whom he obviously cared about, who had been arrested and later killed; and even though Heisenberg was talking openly about putting out feelers to see if they could be helped or saved (which alone could have put him at great risk), this somehow translates into guilt in some people?s eyes.
As for him ?not co-operating with Hitler?? nobody in their right mind could possibly think that was an option. As I believe the book shows, Heisenberg did the next best thing, which was to work half-heartedly on the German Bomb. He basically killed it in 1942.
The fact that Heisenberg could come up with the correct basic bomb structure - path and critical mass analysis, in very short order almost certainly means that he could have brainstormed the right methodology years earlier if the German scientists had been 100% committed to producing a bomb for Hitler. If they had been Nazis.
To me, this fine book is one more step in the right direction, in underscoring the very fact that not all Germans were Nazis.
Hitler may have been a charismatic leader, but he made so many catastrophic errors, such as the insane decision to declare war on the USA in the hope that the Japanese would help him against the Russians - they never lifted a finger - that it is as true to say that Hitler lost the War as to say that the Allies won it.
A fair and highly recommended book. ?more
China plans to patent its own nuclear power plantsChina Daily, China - Apr 25, 2007Under a framework agreement with US-based Westinghouse signed in December, 2006, China will acquire advance nuclear power technology in exchange for ?
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Amazon Price: $132.05Excellent reference text for nuclear engineering undergrads.
Book not limited to neutronics coverage, goes a bit into radiation protection, and other essential topics that are a must read for any serious reader. ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45NEN is filled with tons of facts, yet is a quick read and a very good primer on the subject of nuclear energy. For those who are concerned about carbon emissions, nuclear energy is the ONLY economically viable alternative to petroleum for electricity generation. Anyone who thinks solar and wind can fill this void is simply wrong. It takes hundreds of windmills to produce the same power as a single nuclear or coal plant. Solar cells are approximately 20% efficient, and like wind farms, require vast tracts of land. Additionally, both are completely dependent on weather conditions. Sheryl Crow?s vacuous endorsement of these ?alternatives? on the Bill Maher show once again demonstrates the majority?s poverty of understanding of these basic facts. This is not surprising; nuclear energy has received a bad rap from environmentalists for decades. Issues with waste and proliferation are easily solvable with prudent policies. The real problem is fear: an intense, quivering fear cultivated by the environmental movement that leaves us incapable of dealing with our energy problems in an intelligent manner.
Although I am not a global warming catastrophist, I believe it is prudent to limit what we pump into the atmosphere. Sure, driving hybrid cars helps a little, but remember that all of our automobiles combined emit less than half of the carbon produced by our power plants. The greatest single strategy to limit carbon emissions is producing electricity with nuclear power. Environmentalists need to abandon their religious dogma and accept this fact; otherwise, they relinquish their right to shrill hectoring about global warming.
Here is what I would propose as a simple roadmap to lower CO2 emissions:
1) Gradually phase out all coal/gas/oil power plants and replace with nuclear plants. 2) Continue to develop rapid-recharge high-capacity lithium ion battery technology for automobiles. 3) Investigate other energy storage alternatives like ultracapacitors, which may be practical in the near future. 4) Reform and streamline industrial processes to reduce emissions. 5) Investigate prudent sources of ethanol (no corn, please) and biodiesel fuels. 6) Continue nuclear fusion research. ?more
Amazon Price: $89.95The most important decisions that society will ever make will be made in the next 20 years. How do we replace the burning of fossil fuels that has been the main driver for civilization?s enormous progress of the last century? This no nonsense book examines all of the foreseeable energy resources that will be available and with impeccable logic, facts, good old common sense and detailed engineering analysis Eerkens peals away the myths and half truths that special interest groups hawk to push their own agendas. It is clear that we must heed Eerkens warning, it is imperative that we act responsibly to protect the future for our children. ?more Related: • NTPC • wants • to • produce • nuclear • power • NDTVcom 24. Science News - Chinese nuclear pact signed - U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
August 1, 2001 " Among the various traditional ?grands programmes? typical of the French public intervention in high-tech industries, the nuclear programme is often considered ? ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more Related: • Science • News • Chinese • nuclear • pact • signed • US • exports • of • nuclearpower • technology • to • China 25. South Asian News - Sensors may cure contentious boxing judging
Sensors may cure contentious boxing judgingRaw Story - Named the Automated Boxing Scoring System (ABSS), the equipment was developed by AIS and CSIRO researchers, while an Indian manufacturer inserted sensors inside gloves. Wu Ching-Kuo, the new president of the Amateur Boxing International Association
Food calendarDetroit Free Press - Sunetra Humbad: Cookbook author and cooking instructor presents four-part beginners Indian cooking class in her home. Choose Raw Food Meal: With Michael Dwyer. 7-8:30 p.m. May 24. Pasta Italiano: With Francesca Giarraffa. 7-9 p.m. May 30.
TheCancerBlog.com blogOrlando Sentinel - This doll depicted is the Caucasian doll but also available is an an African American, Asian, Hispanic and American Indian doll While I?m big on raw and natural nutrition as a way to help prevent cancer, the variables that bring it into our lives are
Four dead in clashes in India?s Assam stateRaw Story - wounded in clashes between two groups in India?s north-eastern state of Assam over a highway blockade to protest the killing of a man by the Indian Army in a counter-insurgency operation, a news report said Monday. State officials told the IANS news
The past in the present: India, Pakistan and history Open Democracy - theory developed, among others, by Jinnah, the leader of the Pakistan Movement held that there lived in the Indian absolute power, might be better placed to take the first tentative steps to true devolution in Pakistan but he is too raw a
Of collagen and kibbehEgypt Today - Raw fish, anyone? One would never have thought Asian cuisine would take off in such a big way here in Cairo, but it s Beige and rusty orange color schemes and comfortable seating set off by Indian friezes and wall hangings are elegant but
Danish brewer Carlsberg to expand in IndiaRaw Story - the local Indian group not to disclose the value of the deal. The brewery would also offer several of the Carlsberg group?s current brands, he added. In addition, Carlsberg is building a brewery in the state of Rajasthan, south-west of New Delhi that was
Szechuan Alligator, White-Chocolate Pork: Lincoln Center Dining Bloomberg - includes a slab of homemade pate served with gherkins and cubes of aspic ($7.50), snails in garlic butter ($9.50) and raw Upper West Side Indian ?It smells like home,? said my companion as we walked into Sapphire, a spacious room filled
Real Kitchen Nightmares - London Nutritionists Challenge British Chefs Onlypunjab.com - Diners looking for meat free options on restaurant menus are still often getting a raw deal on quality, choice and value unless you are madly in love with the white crumbly stuff perhaps the best option is to head for the reliability of the Indian
Arvind Mills, ICICI Bank, Jet Airways, State Bank: India?s Equity Stockhouse Canada - Overseas investors bought a net 1.92 billion rupees ($45.4 million) worth of Indian shares on May 10, according to the latest India?s biggest motorcycle maker reported a third straight drop in net income as higher raw material prices and sales
East India Company againDaily Pioneer - The country?s advantage of rich iron ore reserves must not be frittered away by positioning of this country as a raw Indian iron ore export has been growing at over 70 per cent for the last few years. In 2005-06, the production of iron ore was
Online Press Release PRWeb - The Horror of Writing Raw Dog Screaming Press presents The Horror of Writing. This event takes place at the Barnes & Noble in Annapolis, Maryland, on Thursday October 14th. Horror authors and editors such as Douglas Winter will be on hand to offer a
Delaware?s shipwrecksDelaware Online - in 1785, its captain lost navigational bearing, and the Faithful Steward ran aground on the shoals just north of the Indian one time, Lewes, New Castle and Wilmington, when America " until the country began its own manufacturing " would send raw
Financial adviser could be the next Food Network starCedar Creek Pilot - Many of his dishes have Italian underpinnings, although Grella said he?s trying to branch out into Asian and Indian cuisines. Once, at a Boston venue, he dined on raw oysters over lemon curd. That inspired him to create his own seared scallops over
How the World WorksSalon - for Brazilian exports of oranges and orange juice to Florida, where big-time producers like Tropicana are hungry for raw Areva, a state-owned French nuclear-power company, and Suzlon, an Indian wind-power company, are in a takeover battle for
Lucknow, May 14 Tribune - IB, RAW informed Thiruvananthapuram, May 14 Taking a serious note of the anonymous threat call from Saudi Arabia on the life Lalu too has been very eager to capitalise upon Indian Railways in his bid to refurbish his image as a development-oriented
Curtains go up as Cannes film festival turns 60Express India - Cannes, May 16: Cannes Film Festival opens on Wednesday with a mix of arthouse movie making and raw star power fitting for 2007: Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world.
WORLD NOTESPeoples Weekly World - governments went ahead May 2 with negotiations over the exchange of natural resource products from the North for raw With the anticipated incorporation of other U.S., Australian and Indian unions, leaders project an eventual Unite membership
The Flawed Metaphor of the Spellings SummitInside Higher Ed - High school students are your raw material, as Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri told us. We need more productive education does things wrong, and a crisis is almost upon us, best symbolized by that coming tsunami of Chinese and Indian Related: • South • Asian • News • Sensors • may • cure • contentious • boxing • judging 26. National Review - President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45Kicking The Carbon Habit: Global Warming And The Case Of Renewable And Nuclear Energy doesn?t adopt the usual focus on cutting oil consumption: instead it focuses on reducing coal use. Coal-fired plants produce over half of the electricity in the US, accounting for some 40 percent of the country?s greenhouse gasses. Sweet doesn?t advocate a singular path of change another unusual feature but proposes a mix of environmentally sound technologies from wind power to nuclear reactors. Chapters survey not just techniques but political pros and cons, social effects, and environmental impact. ?more
Amazon Price: $17.13Stephen Johnson?s ?Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion? is a highly detailed account of the last months of the US Navy nuclear submarine, lost in the Atlantic off the Azores on May 22, 1968, and of the various official investigations aimed at uncovering the reasons for that loss. Johnson follows the official chronology established by the Navy (in contrast to Ed Offley in ?Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon, The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion?) but reaches a different conclusion as to the underlying cause of the disaster (the Navy inquiries in general favored a torpedo accident of some kind, but Johnson believes some other equipment failure - perhaps a battery explosion or maybe merely a trash disposal unit that failed to seal properly - that led to an uncontrolled descent to a depth where the great pressure crushed the hull). The evidence for and against each proposed cause is examined in detail. All in all, an engrossing and well-written book. ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more
August 1, 2001 " Among the various traditional ?grands programmes? typical of the French public intervention in high-tech industries, the nuclear programme is often considered ? ?more
July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more Related: • National • Review • President • George • W • Bush • and • Indian • prime • minister • Manmohan • Singh • met • at • the • White • House • in • a • historic 27. Science News - Chinese nuclear pact signed - U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
China and the United States on Saturday signed a memorandum of understanding for Westinghouse Electric Co. to provide technology for four nuclear power units to be built in China?. ?more
China is planning to develop its own patented technology for third generation nuclear power generating plants which could be available before the end of the next decade, said an official with the country?s atomic energy authority Wednesday. ?more
TOKYO - Executives from some 100 Japanese companies will gather in Tokyo this week with counterparts from about 50 Chinese firms, seeking energy saving, clean coal and nuclear power technologies and hoping to clinch future deals?. ?more
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
August 1, 2001 " Among the various traditional ?grands programmes? typical of the French public intervention in high-tech industries, the nuclear programme is often considered ? ?more Related: • Science • News • Chinese • nuclear • pact • signed • US • exports • of • nuclearpower • technology • to • China 28. Weekly Standard, The - The India syndrome: U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy melts down
August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more Related: • Weekly • Standard • The • The • India • syndrome • US • nuclear • nonproliferation • policy • melts • down 29. Insight on the News - symposium - pros and cons of nuclear power - Statistical Data Included
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
Westinghouse, US engineering and construction services contractor Shaw Group Inc. - which holds a 20 percent stake in Westinghouse - and China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Co. signed a companion agreement to follow through with ? ?more
The head of China?s Atomic Energy Authority says the country aims to develop domestic nuclear power technologies through the transfer and refinement of technology from overseas?. ?more Related: • Insight • on • the • News • symposium • pros • and • cons • of • nuclear • power • Statistical • Data • Included 30. Science News - Micromachine runs on nuclear power - Technology - Brief Article
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
Conditions Becoming Favorable For US Nuclear Power PlantsMondaq News Alerts (subcription), UK - May 3, 2007? fuels by building coal, oil, gas and other fossil fuel powerplants and avoid the risks and negative publicity associated with nuclear power technology. ?
?more Related: • Science • News • Micromachine • runs • on • nuclear • power • Technology • Brief • Article 31. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 32. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 33. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 34. Dismal presidency plunges U.S. into dark Arctic night ... we've known it isn't security's greatest challenge. Nuclear proliferation and the possibility of a suitcase ... bomb exploding in a major city is. Libya's abandoning of its nuclear program aside, not ... all are either planning for or considering nuclear-power capabilities. Of course they all say it's Related: • Dismal • presidency • plunges • US • into • dark • Arctic • night 35. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 36. Business Wire - Westinghouse / Shaw Consortium Selected for China Nuclear New Build Program
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more Related: • Business • Wire • Westinghouse • Shaw • Consortium • Selected • for • China • Nuclear • New • Build • Program 37. China plans to patent its own nuclear power plants (China Economic Net)
China is planning to develop its own patented technology for third generation nuclear power generating plants which could be available before the end of the next decade, said an official with the country?s atomic energy authority Wednesday. ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more Related: • China • plans • to • patent • its • own • nuclear • power • plants • China • Economic • Net 38. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 39. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 40. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 41. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 42. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 43. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 44. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 45. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 46. Megawatts and Megatons: The Future of Nuclear Power and
Amazon Price: $15.00In Megawatts and Megatons, Garwin and Charpak collaborated on an excellent description of nuclear power and weapons, starting with discussions of nuclear physics and energy, and ending with a narrative of post WWII international relations, centered upon arms control and prevention of use of nuclear weapons.
The authors have strong opinions on the proper use of nuclear energy and the means to reduce dependence on nuclear weapons, as one would imagine from two scientific practitioners. As such, they have presented a well-developed argument that aims to convince the reader that the U.S. should modify its energy and nuclear weapons policies to reduce the threats of global warming and nuclear contamination as well as nuclear conflict and terrorism.
Unfortunately for the layman, the technical nature of the first portion of the book may make difficult reading for the reader without a background in science or engineering, although the authors do make an effort to describe the concepts so that the non-expert may understand.
I recommend this book for anyone with an interest in the technical description of nuclear power and weapons, nuclear policy, and recommendations new policy directions. ?more
Amazon Price: $184.99This book presents the latest data on power plants and provides much needed formulas and rules of thumb for sizing equipment based on plant size and arrangement. The book has many examples of equipment and has a good section although somewhat out of date on permitting of power plants. I would recommend it for any power plant engineer especially those just entering the power generation industry. ?more
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
Amazon Price: $18.94This is a solid, well-researched book that presents Heisenberg in a fair light, for once.
One of the problems with reader/reviewer bias is that many people are pre-disposed to finding fault with any suggestions that conflict with what they want to hear or believe. Regarding the Farm Hall recordings, some people have latched onto the idea that Heisenberg and others knew of the build up of the Holocaust, but continued to work for the Bomb project.
What they are usually referring to is a section in which Heisenberg talked about five Jewish scientists, whom he obviously cared about, who had been arrested and later killed; and even though Heisenberg was talking openly about putting out feelers to see if they could be helped or saved (which alone could have put him at great risk), this somehow translates into guilt in some people?s eyes.
As for him ?not co-operating with Hitler?? nobody in their right mind could possibly think that was an option. As I believe the book shows, Heisenberg did the next best thing, which was to work half-heartedly on the German Bomb. He basically killed it in 1942.
The fact that Heisenberg could come up with the correct basic bomb structure - path and critical mass analysis, in very short order almost certainly means that he could have brainstormed the right methodology years earlier if the German scientists had been 100% committed to producing a bomb for Hitler. If they had been Nazis.
To me, this fine book is one more step in the right direction, in underscoring the very fact that not all Germans were Nazis.
Hitler may have been a charismatic leader, but he made so many catastrophic errors, such as the insane decision to declare war on the USA in the hope that the Japanese would help him against the Russians - they never lifted a finger - that it is as true to say that Hitler lost the War as to say that the Allies won it.
A fair and highly recommended book. ?more
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more
Amazon Price: $98.75I teach power plant technology in an applied sciences college of a large urban university. One of the ongoing challenges of teaching is finding a comprehensive textbook. Although not perfect as a textbook this is a great reference for developing student?s foundation in power plant technology ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45NEN is filled with tons of facts, yet is a quick read and a very good primer on the subject of nuclear energy. For those who are concerned about carbon emissions, nuclear energy is the ONLY economically viable alternative to petroleum for electricity generation. Anyone who thinks solar and wind can fill this void is simply wrong. It takes hundreds of windmills to produce the same power as a single nuclear or coal plant. Solar cells are approximately 20% efficient, and like wind farms, require vast tracts of land. Additionally, both are completely dependent on weather conditions. Sheryl Crow?s vacuous endorsement of these ?alternatives? on the Bill Maher show once again demonstrates the majority?s poverty of understanding of these basic facts. This is not surprising; nuclear energy has received a bad rap from environmentalists for decades. Issues with waste and proliferation are easily solvable with prudent policies. The real problem is fear: an intense, quivering fear cultivated by the environmental movement that leaves us incapable of dealing with our energy problems in an intelligent manner.
Although I am not a global warming catastrophist, I believe it is prudent to limit what we pump into the atmosphere. Sure, driving hybrid cars helps a little, but remember that all of our automobiles combined emit less than half of the carbon produced by our power plants. The greatest single strategy to limit carbon emissions is producing electricity with nuclear power. Environmentalists need to abandon their religious dogma and accept this fact; otherwise, they relinquish their right to shrill hectoring about global warming.
Here is what I would propose as a simple roadmap to lower CO2 emissions:
1) Gradually phase out all coal/gas/oil power plants and replace with nuclear plants. 2) Continue to develop rapid-recharge high-capacity lithium ion battery technology for automobiles. 3) Investigate other energy storage alternatives like ultracapacitors, which may be practical in the near future. 4) Reform and streamline industrial processes to reduce emissions. 5) Investigate prudent sources of ethanol (no corn, please) and biodiesel fuels. 6) Continue nuclear fusion research. ?more
August 1, 2001 " Among the various traditional ?grands programmes? typical of the French public intervention in high-tech industries, the nuclear programme is often considered ? ?more Related: • Megawatts • and • Megatons • The • Future • of • Nuclear • Power • and 47. Consortium to provide nuclear quartet
Company to provide four AP1000 nuclear power plants in China. ?more
Lantos, a California Democrat who backed legislation to allow exports of nuclear-power technology to India, is also dissatisfied with the Indian government?s discussions with Iran on a gas pipeline. Lantos said he supports Bush ? ?more
The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) has selected the Westinghouse/Shaw Consortium and Westinghouse?s AP1000 passive Generation III ? ?more
Last night, National Public Radio?s Living on Earth show included a 6-minute segment on the inclusion of incentives for constructions of advanced nuclear power technology as one of the options to reduce greenhouse gases in the new ? ?more
? Iranian developments that should have lessened the tensions, including the diminishing domestic popularity of the provocative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Tehran s apparent technical failures in nuclear power technology. ? ?more
Beijing, March 1 (Xinhua) China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Co. has selected Westinghouse Electric Co. of the US to provide technology for four nuclear power generating units to be built in China, according to a framework contract ? ?more Related: • Consortium • to • provide • nuclear • quartet 48. British Medical Journal - Reporting and preventing medical mishaps: lessons from non-medical near miss reporting systems -
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Amazon Price: $132.05Excellent reference text for nuclear engineering undergrads.
Book not limited to neutronics coverage, goes a bit into radiation protection, and other essential topics that are a must read for any serious reader. ?more Related: • British • Medical • Journal • Reporting • and • preventing • medical • mishaps • lessons • from • nonmedical • near • miss • reporting • systems • 49. Re: Finishing my degree?
from Coastline Community College toward the end of my enlistment in 2002, and then transfered all of those credits over to a Big Ten school when my enlistment ended (a? ?more
People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) has selected the Westinghouse/Shaw Consortium and Westinghouse?s AP1000 passive Generation III technology as the basis for four new nuclear power plants to be ? ?more
President George W. Bush last month signed a bill exempting India from US nuclear nonproliferation laws to enable the United States to sell nuclear power technology to India. On signing the bill into law, Bush declared that some of the ? ?more
China and the United States on Saturday signed a memorandum of understanding for Westinghouse Electric Co. to provide technology for four nuclear power units to be built in China. ?more
In response to the article, China Needs to Develop Its Own Nuclear Power Technology. ? ?more
Westinghouse, US engineering and construction services contractor Shaw Group Inc. which holds a 20 percent stake in Westinghouse and China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Co. signed a companion agreement to follow through with ? ?more
We can affect climate change by taxing oil more and laxing regulations on trade of nuclear-power technology and coal-gasification technology to highly polluting countries such as China and India. But then again, if this is going to be ? ?more
The IAEA publishes numerous technical documents many of which can be downloaded as pdf files. IAEA Light Water Cooled Reactor Project Nuclear Power Technology Development Section -? ?more Related: • Re • Finishing • my • degree 50. Looking at the VHTR
, PBMR, Electricity, Westinghouse, Hydrogen, DOE. ?more
16 memorandum between the US Dept. of Energy and the People?s Republic of China for the sale of four Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized-water reactors to China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Co. for an undisclosed sum. ?more
, 28 (SNPTC) ? ?more
For countries which has nuclear power technology, it would be ideal to get Australia to agree to ?rent? nuclear fuel - ie Australia becomes the world?s nuclear waste dump. But I don?t buy into this argument because we have better ? ?more
During the 1990s, the Argentine government had sold nuclear power technology to the Iranians, however, the Bush Administration convinced them not to ship the items and the deal was terminated. The Iranians were upset, extremely upset. ? ?more
The canceled programs include efforts to improve human resources management in Iran s nuclear sector, to improve nuclear power technology, to establish a nuclear technology center and to provide some specific types of industrial ? ?more
Lantos, a California Democrat who backed legislation to allow exports of nuclear-power technology to India, is also dissatisfied with the Indian government s discussions with Iran on a gas pipeline. Lantos said he supports Bush ? ?more
After almost two years of negotiations and lobbying, the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) eventually selected the Westinghouse/ Shaw Consortium and Westingho. read more. ?more Related: • Looking • at • the • VHTR 51. Introduction to Nuclear Engineering (3rd Edition)
Amazon Price: $132.05Excellent reference text for nuclear engineering undergrads.
Book not limited to neutronics coverage, goes a bit into radiation protection, and other essential topics that are a must read for any serious reader. ?more
Indian energy: A delicate balancing actAsia Times Online, Hong Kong - 3 hours agoIt is apparent that elements of the political establishment in the US want any concession to India in accessing international nuclear-power technology to be ?
?more
Amazon Price: $9.95Excellent analysis! This book is especially important in today?s environment when we are trying to reduce our dependency on oil. ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45Kicking The Carbon Habit: Global Warming And The Case Of Renewable And Nuclear Energy doesn?t adopt the usual focus on cutting oil consumption: instead it focuses on reducing coal use. Coal-fired plants produce over half of the electricity in the US, accounting for some 40 percent of the country?s greenhouse gasses. Sweet doesn?t advocate a singular path of change another unusual feature but proposes a mix of environmentally sound technologies from wind power to nuclear reactors. Chapters survey not just techniques but political pros and cons, social effects, and environmental impact. ?more
Conditions Becoming Favorable For US Nuclear Power PlantsMondaq News Alerts (subcription), UK - May 3, 2007? fuels by building coal, oil, gas and other fossil fuel powerplants and avoid the risks and negative publicity associated with nuclear power technology. ?
?more
France s ThatcherFrontPage magazine.com, CA - May 9, 2007Remember that France has some of the most advanced nuclear power technology in the world, and wants to perfect and export 4 th generation reactors to ?
?more
China to import 3-G nuclear tech from USCCTV, China - Apr 24, 2007China will import third generation nuclear power technology from the United States. The plan was announced at an international exhibition on nuclear power ?
?more
Zee News
China mulling plan to patent its own nuclear power plantsZee News, India - Apr 25, 2007Chinese experts will study current third-generation nuclear power technology and develop its own reactor by 2017, vice director of the systems engineering ?
?more
Amazon Price: $18.45NEN is filled with tons of facts, yet is a quick read and a very good primer on the subject of nuclear energy. For those who are concerned about carbon emissions, nuclear energy is the ONLY economically viable alternative to petroleum for electricity generation. Anyone who thinks solar and wind can fill this void is simply wrong. It takes hundreds of windmills to produce the same power as a single nuclear or coal plant. Solar cells are approximately 20% efficient, and like wind farms, require vast tracts of land. Additionally, both are completely dependent on weather conditions. Sheryl Crow?s vacuous endorsement of these ?alternatives? on the Bill Maher show once again demonstrates the majority?s poverty of understanding of these basic facts. This is not surprising; nuclear energy has received a bad rap from environmentalists for decades. Issues with waste and proliferation are easily solvable with prudent policies. The real problem is fear: an intense, quivering fear cultivated by the environmental movement that leaves us incapable of dealing with our energy problems in an intelligent manner.
Although I am not a global warming catastrophist, I believe it is prudent to limit what we pump into the atmosphere. Sure, driving hybrid cars helps a little, but remember that all of our automobiles combined emit less than half of the carbon produced by our power plants. The greatest single strategy to limit carbon emissions is producing electricity with nuclear power. Environmentalists need to abandon their religious dogma and accept this fact; otherwise, they relinquish their right to shrill hectoring about global warming.
Here is what I would propose as a simple roadmap to lower CO2 emissions:
1) Gradually phase out all coal/gas/oil power plants and replace with nuclear plants. 2) Continue to develop rapid-recharge high-capacity lithium ion battery technology for automobiles. 3) Investigate other energy storage alternatives like ultracapacitors, which may be practical in the near future. 4) Reform and streamline industrial processes to reduce emissions. 5) Investigate prudent sources of ethanol (no corn, please) and biodiesel fuels. 6) Continue nuclear fusion research. ?more Related: • Introduction • to • Nuclear • Engineering • 3rd • Edition 52. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 53. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 54. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 55. NASA reorganizes for new mission - Space.com - MSNBC.com
power technology research under Project Prometheus also will be folded into the new Exploration Systems office. ?We?re up to this challenge,? NASA Administrator Sean O?Keefe told ? ?more
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more Related: • NASA • reorganizes • for • new • mission • Spacecom • MSNBCcom 56. Nuclear Now
, do as much research as you can, with an understanding of what these terms means, it will make a lot more sense to you, better if you did not know what the terms meant. ?more
Nuclear Power Technology has come a long way and it does provide about 17 percent of the world?s electricity. But with more and more technology forming everyday, that number will likely increase. However, nuclear power politics do come ? ?more
However, it is just sad that such stark commentary about America comes from a leader of a nation who is so very active in exporting not only nuclear power technology, but as well as nuclear arms equipments and know-how. ? ?more
Lantos, a California Democrat who backed legislation to allow exports of nuclear-power technology to India, is also dissatisfied with the Indian government?s discussions with Iran on a gas pipeline. Lantos said he supports Bush ? ?more Related: • Nuclear • Now 57. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 58. Resume cooling mechanical engineer Expert Resume: Mechanical Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, Power This Kkai Associate offers expertise specific to poultry cooling, theme park drive. Resume of TVS: mechanical engineer, manufacturing engineer, drive train, gear and bearing consultant, metal cutting. rapid-response-consulting.com Mechanical Engineer Jobs - RefineryPowerGeneration - North Refinery/Power/Generation - North, Delaware. watt, mega-watt, megawatt, generator, condenser, cooling. NEW Feature: Engineer Resume Tips! >. thinkenergygroup.com Level I Mechanical Engineer Well practiced proficiency completing complex maintenance and troubleshooting within highly complex environments, up to and including nuclear-power cooling s Resume: Entry Level Mechanical Engineer. levelslot.info Mechanical Engineer by RFA Minnesota Engineering Mechanical engineering services firm for Reverse, Systems. Cooling and Lube Engineer - The same client is looking for an engineer to work. Please send resume to: RFA/Minnesota Engineering 11495 Valley. rfamec.com Engineering Analysis and Design of Combustion Systems Mechanical engineer with specialties in combustion thermodynamics analysis and system design. Engineering >> Heating / Cooling, Mechanical, Structural Analysis, Mechanical Engineer, Expert. cecon.com Applied Motion Systems - Mechanical Engineer Mechanical Engineer. We are looking for a creative and. including provisions for water cooling. in machine design, to submit a resume. The successful candidate will gain experience designing mechanical. kinemation.com Mechanical Test Engineer And cooling systems; integrate the designs with computer. Mechanical Test Engineer Primary Skills: hydraulics; test equip design. To submit a resume for this position, you must place. net-temps.com Mechanical Engineer Jobs - MechanicalPowerBOP - State of, North Mechanical/Power/BOP - State of, North Carolina. watt, mega-watt, megawatt, generator, condenser, cooling. NEW Feature: Engineer Resume Tips! >. thinkenergygroup.com Electronic Cooling Solutions Mechanical Engineer; Electronic Cooling Solutions Inc. is seeking a Mechanical Engineer to work on the design of. Please submit your resume to: 612 National Avenue. Mountain View, CA 94043. E-mail to. ecooling.com William E. Krouse Computer-Internet Resume This is the Resume of William E. Krouse, PE. College Degreed in Mechanical Engineering and well trained in. Senior Mechanical Engineer, Salt Water Cooling and Fire Fighting Branches. Visited. nothinbut.net Electronic Cooling Solutions Mechanical Engineer; Electronic Cooling Solutions Inc. is seeking a Mechanical Engineer to work on the design of. Please submit your resume to: 612 National Avenue. Mountain View, CA 94043. E-mail to. ecooling.com Related: • Resume • cooling • mechanical • engineer 59. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 60. Nuclear Energy Now: Why the Time Has Come for the World?s Most Misunderstood Energy Source
Amazon Price: $18.45NEN is filled with tons of facts, yet is a quick read and a very good primer on the subject of nuclear energy. For those who are concerned about carbon emissions, nuclear energy is the ONLY economically viable alternative to petroleum for electricity generation. Anyone who thinks solar and wind can fill this void is simply wrong. It takes hundreds of windmills to produce the same power as a single nuclear or coal plant. Solar cells are approximately 20% efficient, and like wind farms, require vast tracts of land. Additionally, both are completely dependent on weather conditions. Sheryl Crow?s vacuous endorsement of these ?alternatives? on the Bill Maher show once again demonstrates the majority?s poverty of understanding of these basic facts. This is not surprising; nuclear energy has received a bad rap from environmentalists for decades. Issues with waste and proliferation are easily solvable with prudent policies. The real problem is fear: an intense, quivering fear cultivated by the environmental movement that leaves us incapable of dealing with our energy problems in an intelligent manner.
Although I am not a global warming catastrophist, I believe it is prudent to limit what we pump into the atmosphere. Sure, driving hybrid cars helps a little, but remember that all of our automobiles combined emit less than half of the carbon produced by our power plants. The greatest single strategy to limit carbon emissions is producing electricity with nuclear power. Environmentalists need to abandon their religious dogma and accept this fact; otherwise, they relinquish their right to shrill hectoring about global warming.
Here is what I would propose as a simple roadmap to lower CO2 emissions:
1) Gradually phase out all coal/gas/oil power plants and replace with nuclear plants. 2) Continue to develop rapid-recharge high-capacity lithium ion battery technology for automobiles. 3) Investigate other energy storage alternatives like ultracapacitors, which may be practical in the near future. 4) Reform and streamline industrial processes to reduce emissions. 5) Investigate prudent sources of ethanol (no corn, please) and biodiesel fuels. 6) Continue nuclear fusion research. ?more
Amazon Price: $17.13Stephen Johnson?s ?Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion? is a highly detailed account of the last months of the US Navy nuclear submarine, lost in the Atlantic off the Azores on May 22, 1968, and of the various official investigations aimed at uncovering the reasons for that loss. Johnson follows the official chronology established by the Navy (in contrast to Ed Offley in ?Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon, The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion?) but reaches a different conclusion as to the underlying cause of the disaster (the Navy inquiries in general favored a torpedo accident of some kind, but Johnson believes some other equipment failure - perhaps a battery explosion or maybe merely a trash disposal unit that failed to seal properly - that led to an uncontrolled descent to a depth where the great pressure crushed the hull). The evidence for and against each proposed cause is examined in detail. All in all, an engrossing and well-written book. ?more
July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more
Amazon Price: $98.75I teach power plant technology in an applied sciences college of a large urban university. One of the ongoing challenges of teaching is finding a comprehensive textbook. Although not perfect as a textbook this is a great reference for developing student?s foundation in power plant technology ?more
Amazon Price: $13.22Contains perspectives on environmental risks of nuclear power compared to other energy sources. The book is circa 1999, and some parts are out of date: - In presenting the risks of air pollution from autos, the author points to the higher death toll from (producing electricity from coal-fired power plants) electric cars vs. relatively reduced levels of sulphor dioxide from gas-powered cars. Then, he seems way off base in saying ?Los Angeles plans to completely ban gas-powered automobiles in just a few more years.? Huh? - Likewise, the book is not current in the plans to dispose of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants at Yucca Mountain, NV. He says the spent fuel will be encased in vitrified glass logs that will not corrode or release radioactive materials. The current plan is to use corrosion-resistant metal containers. He is right to say that disposal of nuclear waste is not ?unsolvable? from a technical standpoint, although it remains to be seen whether it is solvable politically. ?more
Amazon Price: $56.00 ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45Kicking The Carbon Habit: Global Warming And The Case Of Renewable And Nuclear Energy doesn?t adopt the usual focus on cutting oil consumption: instead it focuses on reducing coal use. Coal-fired plants produce over half of the electricity in the US, accounting for some 40 percent of the country?s greenhouse gasses. Sweet doesn?t advocate a singular path of change another unusual feature but proposes a mix of environmentally sound technologies from wind power to nuclear reactors. Chapters survey not just techniques but political pros and cons, social effects, and environmental impact. ?more
March 18, 2000 " The same problems in hospital medical care which cause nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, also cause countless near misses. Estimates of ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Amazon Price: $9.95Excellent analysis! This book is especially important in today?s environment when we are trying to reduce our dependency on oil. ?more Related: • Nuclear • Energy • Now • Why • the • Time • Has • Come • for • the • Worlds • Most • Misunderstood • Energy • Source 61. U.S. uranium sales down as price soars
As the price of uranium surged another $7 over the past week, the U.S. Energy Department may scale back its inventory sale and open a strategic reserve.
Uranium prices hit $120 per pound Monday, the weekly pricing date, on the heels of expected growing demand and a new futures trading product offered by the New York Mercantile Exchange and uranium analyst Ux Consulting.The price has jumped from $56 per pound last October. It was around $20 at the start of 2005.
Analysts like UXC President Jeff Combs attribute the low uranium price " around $10 through the 1980s and 1990s " to a market with a false bottom, since government inventories fed demand.
Governments like the United States, intent on addressing proliferation, controlled uranium programs. The inventory was also increased after the Cold War when weapons-grade uranium from the former Soviet Union was blended down to energy stock.
The United States still sells from its inventory, which competes against suppliers. When the price was low, there was little incentive to invest in exploring, mining and producing uranium.
Ed Rutkowski of the U.S. Energy Department?s Nuclear Fuel Supply Security group told StockInterview.com this year?s sale will likely be a small amount.
?We don?t plan to dump uranium,? he said. ?We have a lot of inventory, but uranium miners are worried that DOE would affect the market. We want to be good neighbors with them.? With an enhanced demand for uranium to fuel a nuclear-power boom worldwide, supplies are quickly dwindling. While that is incentive to build the uranium industry, it worries the Energy Department and U.S. nuclear plants, which need a constant and affordable supply.
Like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which stockpiles oil in case of emergency, the department is looking into a uranium reserve.
?There is an interest in the creation of a nuclear fuel reserves,? Rutkowski told StockInterview.com. ?The reserve would be to safeguard against supply disruptions, whether these are environmental or through force of nature.?
Copyright 2007 by UPI Related: • US • uranium • sales • down • as • price • soars 62. Gazette, The (Colorado Springs) - Playing dirty
July 26, 2005 " We need more aggressive, less risk-averse spy agencies. This was the mantra we heard in the wake of our being blindsided by Osama bin Laden on Sept. ?more
August 24, 2002 " Inventors of the tiniest machines have tapped various power sources for their devices: electricity, light, even DNA. Now, Amir Lal of Cornell University ? ?more
August 27, 2001 " Q: Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? Yes: Nuclear-power generation is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and emits no air pollutants. Sharply ? ?more
August 1, 2001 " Among the various traditional ?grands programmes? typical of the French public intervention in high-tech industries, the nuclear programme is often considered ? ?more
December 16, 2006 " BATON ROUGE, La. " The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE:SGR) announced today that the People?s Republic of China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company (SNPTC) ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
This article was originally published in Houston Business Journal , March 2007. The changes that have already taken place mean that the questions now becomes one of how big the upsurge in nuclear power will be and how soon will it begin. ?more
December 18, 2006 " Shares of the Shaw Group Inc. surged 12 percent to $34.24 mid- Monday morning after the company announced a joint venture to build four nuclear power ? ?more
China is planning to develop its own patented technology for third generation nuclear power generating plants which could be available before the end of the next decade, said an official with the country?s atomic energy authority Wednesday. ?more
The head of China?s Atomic Energy Authority says the country aims to develop domestic nuclear power technologies through the transfer and refinement of technology from overseas. ?more Related: • Gazette • The • Colorado • Springs • Playing • dirty 63. Iran, Israel, and the Middle East
(such as creating incentives for Iran to open up its facilities to permanent inspection by the UN-run International Atomic Energy Agency) ? ?more
Westinghouse Electric Company and its consortium partner, The Shaw Group, say China?s State Nuclear Power Technology Company have selected the Westinghouse AP1000 as the technology basis for four new nuclear power plants to be ? ?more
The canceled programs include efforts to improve human resources management in Iran s nuclear sector, to improve nuclear power technology, to establish a nuclear technology center and to provide some specific types of industrial ? ?more
The South African members of the consortium are PBMR (Pty) Ltd, the company responsible for the development of the PBMR technology, and M-Tech Industrial, of Potchefstroom. Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Technology, ? ?more
However, there are international embargoes on the transfer of nuclear power technology to Pakistan, so China is its only supplier. To get around worries about proliferation, Siddiqui suggests setting up ?nuclear parks? to supply ? ?more
We can affect climate change by taxing oil more and laxing regulations on trade of nuclear-power technology and coal-gasification technology to highly polluting countries such as China and India. But then again, if this is going to be ? ?more
Nuclear Nuclear Power Technology Technician Colleges, org insurance online. Sports bloopers video clips Leicester shoppingIncluding a spell, education centers in the United. Com intopsite acadamey and atlantic Technical Center Coconut ? ?more
?If you can use nuclear power technology to make nuclear weapons, and you want to get rid of the nuclear weapons, shouldn?t you stop handing out the nuclear power technology?? George W. TweedleDum patted Alice on the head. ? ?more Related: • Iran • Israel • and • the • Middle • East 64. Heisenberg?s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb
Amazon Price: $18.94This is a solid, well-researched book that presents Heisenberg in a fair light, for once.
One of the problems with reader/reviewer bias is that many people are pre-disposed to finding fault with any suggestions that conflict with what they want to hear or believe. Regarding the Farm Hall recordings, some people have latched onto the idea that Heisenberg and others knew of the build up of the Holocaust, but continued to work for the Bomb project.
What they are usually referring to is a section in which Heisenberg talked about five Jewish scientists, whom he obviously cared about, who had been arrested and later killed; and even though Heisenberg was talking openly about putting out feelers to see if they could be helped or saved (which alone could have put him at great risk), this somehow translates into guilt in some people?s eyes.
As for him ?not co-operating with Hitler?? nobody in their right mind could possibly think that was an option. As I believe the book shows, Heisenberg did the next best thing, which was to work half-heartedly on the German Bomb. He basically killed it in 1942.
The fact that Heisenberg could come up with the correct basic bomb structure - path and critical mass analysis, in very short order almost certainly means that he could have brainstormed the right methodology years earlier if the German scientists had been 100% committed to producing a bomb for Hitler. If they had been Nazis.
To me, this fine book is one more step in the right direction, in underscoring the very fact that not all Germans were Nazis.
Hitler may have been a charismatic leader, but he made so many catastrophic errors, such as the insane decision to declare war on the USA in the hope that the Japanese would help him against the Russians - they never lifted a finger - that it is as true to say that Hitler lost the War as to say that the Allies won it.
A fair and highly recommended book. ?more
August 1, 2005 " LAST WEEK, President Bush played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear ? ?more
Amazon Price: $18.45Kicking The Carbon Habit: Global Warming And The Case Of Renewable And Nuclear Energy doesn?t adopt the usual focus on cutting oil consumption: instead it focuses on reducing coal use. Coal-fired plants produce over half of the electricity in the US, accounting for some 40 percent of the country?s greenhouse gasses. Sweet doesn?t advocate a singular path of change another unusual feature but proposes a mix of environmentally sound technologies from wind power to nuclear reactors. Chapters survey not just techniques but political pros and cons, social effects, and environmental impact. ?more
PRESS TV
China to patent nuclear power plantsPRESS TV, Iran - Apr 27, 2007China will acquire advance nuclear power technology in exchange for purchasing four nuclear reactors from the Westinghouse under a framework agreement with ?
?more
Faux Renaissance: Global Warming, Radioactive Waste Disposal, and ?Arms Control Today - May 4, 2007Investors in developed countries continue to shy away from nuclear power technology because of the continuing high financial risk they see in the sector. ?
?more
August 8, 2005 " President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest"and the U.S. government ? ?more
December 21, 1985 " The House of Representatives has endorsed a resolution"already passed by the Senate"to permit U.S. exports of nuclear-power technology to China. This ?agreement for nuclear cooperation,? based o ?more
Amazon Price: $13.22Contains perspectives on environmental risks of nuclear power compared to other energy sources. The book is circa 1999, and some parts are out of date: - In presenting the risks of air pollution from autos, the author points to the higher death toll from (producing electricity from coal-fired power plants) electric cars vs. relatively reduced levels of sulphor dioxide from gas-powered cars. Then, he seems way off base in saying ?Los Angeles plans to completely ban gas-powered automobiles in just a few more years.? Huh? - Likewise, the book is not current in the plans to dispose of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants at Yucca Mountain, NV. He says the spent fuel will be encased in vitrified glass logs that will not corrode or release radioactive materials. The current plan is to use corrosion-resistant metal containers. He is right to say that disposal of nuclear waste is not ?unsolvable? from a technical standpoint, although it remains to be seen whether it is solvable politically. ?more
Japan, US agree on nuke power technology planFinancial Express, India - Apr 24, 2007APR 24 : Japan and the US agreed on a plan to develop nuclear power technology, boosting prospects for Japan s Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. to secure ?
?more Related: • Heisenbergs • War • The • Secret • History • of • the • German • Bomb 65. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 66. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 67. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 68. Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas ?
Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas Potential Clout Alarms Big European Buyers;Previous Effort FizzledBy RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITEFebruary 2, 2007; Page A1Russia and Iran " which hold nearly half the world?s natural-gas reserves " are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.
Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don?t work together to influence markets. That?s a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.
During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ?a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it.? His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world?s largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.
While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn?t likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.
Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.Comparing gas prices is difficult because until recently, there hasn?t been a global market for the fuel. Asian gas-delivery contracts have tended to be pegged to the price of crude oil, while in the U.S., spot gas prices are typically set by trading at a Louisiana pipeline hub. U.S. gas cost between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in the 1990s, but has averaged more than twice that in recent years. A contract for the delivery of gas in March closed yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $7.54 per thousand cubic feet, up over the past few weeks due to the cold weather.
The prospect of Russia and Iran working together to influence markets can?t be comforting for Western countries. While Russia doesn?t have the same pariah status as Iran, Moscow has under Mr. Putin faced increasing criticism for using its vast energy riches as a diplomatic lever. Early last year, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine in a pricing dispute that briefly reduced the volumes delivered further down the pipeline in Europe.
Together Russia and Iran hold more than 40% of the world?s known gas reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Moscow has cultivated relations with Tehran in recent years, building a nuclear-power plant in Iran and last year selling it air-defense missiles. Moscow has also resisted efforts to increase international pressure on Iran over concerns about Tehran?s nuclear ambitions.
In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Putin rejected charges that Russia uses energy as a political weapon and he downplayed any price-fixing rationale for creating an OPEC-like structure. ?We do not intend to set up a cartel, but I think it?s right to coordinate our activities,? he said, ?bearing in mind the key goal of absolutely reliable supplies to the main consumers of energy.?
A previous effort to create an organization of gas exporters fizzled, and many are doubtful this one would succeed. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which included Russia, Iran and Qatar, was formed in 2001 but hasn?t met since 2005. ?At the moment, they haven?t gotten it together to even meet, much less coordinate anything,? says Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. As for talk by Russia and Iran of a gas OPEC, he says: ?I?m unexcited by it.?
It isn?t known exactly how a gas cartel would operate, but OPEC has been a huge market force for decades. For a period in the 1970s, OPEC members set prices for their oil, and Western countries paid up. But oil demand eventually fell because of the high prices. In response, OPEC started cutting back output to influence prices and let market forces do the rest. That is still the strategy it employs today: In recent months, alarmed about falling oil prices, OPEC announced production cuts totaling 1.7 million barrels a day.
Talk of creating a gas cartel appears partly to be an outcome of dissatisfaction among gas suppliers with the emerging international gas market. After investing billions of dollars into boosting output over the past five years, ?it?s difficult to place all of this gas in the market at a price that they?re comfortable with,? says Ira Joseph, executive director of international gas at PIRA Energy, a New York-based energy consultant. The discussion of a cartel, he says, is ?in large part a reflection of that.?
India and China, both growing importers of tankers full of liquefied natural gas, have used their huge demand potential as leverage in negotiating long-term pricing. There is concern among gas suppliers that other Asian buyers, in particular Japanese and Korean utilities, may seek similar pricing when numerous long-term contracts begin to expire in coming years.
While oil is traded in a global marketplace, gas is bought and sold in fragmented markets. The U.S., for instance, gets most of its gas from domestic sources as well as Canada and Trinidad. Europe gets most of its gas from the North Sea, Russia and exporters from North Africa and the Middle East.
Russia?s interest in pooling its gas supply would be unusual, given that it never joined OPEC, despite being the world?s second-largest oil exporter, perhaps because it didn?t want to submit to quotas set by other countries. It has resisted past calls to curtail output to support prices.
Still, Mr. Putin has been working to strengthen Moscow?s ties with other major gas producers. After he visited Algeria last year, Gazprom last month reached a series of cooperation agreements with Algeria?s Sonatrach, Europe?s No. 3 supplier. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for an explanation from Algeria and Russia, since they could use their 35% share of the European market to potentially fix prices.
Next week, Mr. Putin travels to the Persian Gulf on a trip that will include the first-ever visit by a Russian leader to Qatar, which controls the world?s third-largest gas reserves.
Iran state television quoted Mr. Khamenei as saying on Monday: ?Iran and Russia can establish the structure for an organization of gas cooperation like OPEC, as half of the world?s gas reserves are in Russia and Iran.?
Earlier this week, Qatari Oil Minister Hamad al-Attiya said on television that he thought it would be difficult to form a gas producers? organization, but didn?t rule it out. He pointed out that most gas-supply contracts are typically long term because of LNG?S up-front production costs, extending more than 20 years. That would undercut any concerted effort to make short-term adjustments to production or otherwise influence prices. Related: • Russia • and • Iran • Discuss • A • Cartel • For • Natural • Gas • 69. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 70. Alberta Tories Support Nuking the Tarsands At least one Alberta Tory knows the difference between power and energy. Though apparently one delegate at this weekends PC Convention thinks the Liberals are still in power in Ottawa.Nuclear power is for creating electrical energy, the use that is being looked at for the Tarsands is to produce steam for injection into the oilsands to release the bitumin, which is neither efficient nor cheap. Nuclear power to just produce steam is like hunting flies with a shotgun.
Also Saturday, delegates voted to explore using nuclear power plants to assist oilsands development.
Delegate Bill Dearborn of Medicine Hat said the oilsands need a nuclear option as a bulwark against any future federal raids on Alberta's resource-based economy.
"We're familiar with these Liberal governments in Ottawa that have imposed unfair taxes on the oil and gas industry in the past,'' he said.
But delegate Don Dabbs said he has participated in a past provincial study on nuclear power and that it's not the way to go to generate steam power for the oilsands.
"A reactor to generate steam is not the principal purpose of a nuclear reactor. It's for electrical energy.
"It's a very expensive source of steam.''Thomas Savery (1650-1715) Thomas Savery was an English military engineer and inventor who in 1698, patented the first crude steam engine, based on Denis Papin's Digester or pressure cooker of 1679.
Thomas Savery had been working on solving the problem of pumping water out of coal mines, his machine consisted of a closed vessel filled with water into which steam under pressure was introduced. This forced the water upwards and out of the mine shaft. Then a cold water sprinkler was used to condense the steam. This created a vacuum which sucked more water out of the mine shaft through a bottom valve.
BoilersThe high-pressure steam for a steam engine comes from a boiler. The boiler's job is to apply heat to water to create steam. There are two approaches: fire tube and water tube.
A fire-tube boiler was more common in the 1800s. It consists of a tank of water perforated with pipes. The hot gases from a coal or wood fire run through the pipes to heat the water in the tank, as shown here:
In a fire-tube boiler, the entire tank is under pressure, so if the tank bursts it creates a major explosion.
More common today are water-tube boilers, in which water runs through a rack of tubes that are positioned in the hot gases from the fire. The following simplified diagram shows you a typical layout for a water-tube boiler:
In a real boiler, things would be much more complicated because the goal of the boiler is to extract every possible bit of heat from the burning fuel to improve efficiency.
Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR or CANDU).
The CANDU reactor design has been developed since the 1950s in Canada. It uses natural uranium (0.7% U-235) oxide as fuel, hence needs a more efficient moderator, in this case heavy water (D2O).**
** with the CANDU system, the moderator is enriched (ie water) rather than the fuel, - a cost trade-off.
The moderator is in a large tank called a calandria, penetrated by several hundred horizontal pressure tubes which form channels for the fuel, cooled by a flow of heavy water under high pressure in the primary cooling circuit, reaching 290'C. As in the PWR, the primary coolant generates steam in a secondary circuit to drive the turbines. The pressure tube design means that the reactor can be refuelled progressively without shutting down, by isolating individual pressure tubes from the cooling circuit.
ACANDU fuel assembly consists of a bundle of 37 half metre long fuel rods (ceramic fuel pellets in zircaloy tubes) plus a support structure, with 12 bundles lying end to end in a fuel channel. Control rods penetrate the calandria vertically, and a secondary shutdown system involves adding gadolinium to the moderator. The heavy water moderator circulating through the body of the calandria vessel also yieldssome heat (though this circuit is not shown on the diagram above).
Steam generator (nuclear power)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThis is an article about nuclear power plant equipment. For other uses, see steam generator.
Steam generators are heat exchanger used to convert water into steam from heat produced in a nuclear reactor core. They are used in pressurized water reactors between the primary and secondary coolant loops.
In commercial power plants steam generators can measure up to 70 feet in height and weigh as much as 800 tons. Each steam generator can contain anywhere from 3,000 to 16,000 tubes, each about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The coolant is pumped, at high pressure to prevent boiling, from the reactor coolant pump, through the nuclear reactor core, and through the tube side of the steam generators before returning to the pump. This is referred to as the primary loop. That water flowing through the steam generator boils water on the shell side to produce steam in the secondary loop that is delivered to the turbines to make electricity. The steam is subsequently condensed via cooled water from the tertiary loop and returned to the steam generator to be heated once again. The tertiary cooling water may be recirculated to cooling towers where it sheds waste heat before returning to condense more steam. Once through tertiary cooling may otherwise be provided by a river, lake, ocean. This primary, secondary, tertiary cooling scheme is the most common way to extractusable energy from a controlled nuclear reaction.
These loops also have an important safety role because they constitute one of the primary barriers between the radioactive and non-radioactive sides of the plant as the primary coolant becomes radioactive from its exposure to the core. For this reason, the integrity of the tubing is essential in minimizing the leakage of water between the two sides of the plant. There is the potential that if a tube bursts while a plant is operating; contaminated steam could escape directly to the secondary cooling loop. Thus during scheduled maintenance outages or shutdowns, some or all of the steam generator tubes are inspected by eddy-current testing.
In other types of reactors, such as the pressurised heavy water reactors of the CANDU design, the primary fluid is heavy water. Liquid metal cooled reactors such as the in Russian BN-600 reactor also use heat exchangers between primary metal coolant and at the secondary water coolant.
Boiling water reactors do not use steam generators, as steam is produced in the pressure vessel.
See:
Sustainable Capitalism
Tarsands To Go Nuclear
Nuke The Tar Sands
Dion Pro Nuke
Cutting Your NoseEnergyCANDUPeak OilTar SandsFind blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:Canada, Greenplan, Alberta, Saskatchewan, GaryLunn, JohnBaird, CleanCoal, hydro, nuclear, nuclear power, Ontario Power Workers Union, EPCOR, Utilities, Greenhouse gases, CO2, Conservatives, Government, eak-oil, Tarsands, water, Pembina, Klein, oil, nukes, nuclear, gas, water, drought, Alberta, Canada,AECL, candu, nuclear, nuclear-power, EnergyProbe, privatization, Conservatives, Flaherty, Munn, Government, Alberta, tarsands, nuke, nukes, power, energy, Related: • Alberta • Tories • Support • Nuking • the • Tarsands 71. Future Technology May 6, 2007 5:58 am
Certassar (a.k.a. Rune Johnsson) posted a photo:
(From the "Nordic EXceptional Trendshop exhibition 2006")
Google News
Longtime oilman sees bright future for conventional oil and gasMyWestTexas.com, TX - 2 hours agoI think there is a tremendous future for young people. I think, too, the advances in technology are another way to induce students to get into energy ?
Recent Blog PostsNews Blitz Aside, Read the Facts on Indian PointFor such a nuclear-powered future to arrive, however, we?ll need to get beyond our nuclear-power past. In the now-standard histories, the beginning of the end of nuclear power arrived on March 28, 1979, with the meltdown of the uranium ?Il grande equivocoThus, according to Exxon Mobil, ?the Peak Oil theory has raised questions about the future of the oil and gas industry, how resources are estimated, the current supply situation, the role of technology and other factors in determining ?Packaging BecomesAnd as more technology can be squeezed onto everything smaller/cheaper the likelihood that we?ll see more of this rather than less. And the wine stereo? Picked up by Uleshka on a recent visit to the southern hemisphere.Changes, challenges to shape future of Times, PIThough their long, costly legal fight is over, Seattle?s two daily newspapers still face tough business choices crucial to their long-term survival. Original post by epryne@seattletimes.com.Technology and the future of our childrenA discussion of technology and its influence on our children.
Yahoo NewsUpdate on technology updates in CISD (The Celina Record)The Celina ISD Technology Department has been working to improve the Celina School District by increasing security measures, raising TAKS scores, improving communication, and preparing for the future.Working to prevent future blackouts (Pasadena Star-News)ROSEMEAD - A new grid management technology pioneered by Southern California Edison could help prevent regional power blackouts in the future, according to John Bryson, president and CEO of SCE parent company Edison International.Media servers, Blu-ray & HD DVD technology to revolutionise music & movies (AME Info)The future of home entertainment is an exciting one; so say the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA(R)), the U.S. trade association for consumer technology and owner and producer of the International CES, the world?s largest tradeshow for consumer technology.
MSN SearchFuture Technology : Leader in Thermal ManagementHi-Pot Test - All of our boards are 100% Hi-Pot tested, per customer specification, using Hi-Pot testing machine. Future Technology has less than 1% Hi-Pot failureFuture Technology : Leader in Thermal ManagementFuture Technology offers the highest quality and reliability in the industry due to its unique manufacturing process. WE MEET TOP COMMERCIAL SPECS IPC 6012 and 6013PC World - Browse Future TechnologyMy Pages lets you save articles for quick access. Just click the Add to My Pages icon. You can save up to 10 articles.
On EbayFUTURE INTERNET TECHNOLOGY IS HERE = VIDEO EMAIL + MORE
US $0.99End Date: Friday May-11-2007 10:02:14 PDTBuy It Now for only: US $0.99Buy it now Add to watch list1998 PEYTON MANNING UD 3 FUTURE SHOCK TECHNOLOGY ROOKIE
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US $4.10 (0 Bid)End Date: Tuesday May-08-2007 19:11:44 PDTBid now Add to watch listRelated: • Future • Technology • May • 6 • 2007 • 558 • am 72. Renewable energy boom drives up share prices
Hamburg - A boom in renewable energy shows no sign of petering out, with investors greedy for shares in wind-generator companies which are booking huge new sales.Two sales announcements in Germany this week illustrated why a giddy bidding war has developed between Indian and French interests for one of the main German builders of rotor-turbines, Repower.Nordex, a company based in the German port-city of Rostock, said Friday it had just landed an order for 120 turbines with an option for 100 more, the biggest order since the company was founded in 1985.Customer Babcock and Brown was initially purchasing 289 megawatts of generating capacity for wind parks in Portugal and France, said Nordex, which is also to supply foundations, transformers and electrical systems.If all options were exercised, the contract would be worth more than 700 million euros (950 million dollars). The contract fitted Nordex?s aim of raising sales by 50 per cent yearly, an executive, Thomas Richterich, said.The previous day, Hamburg-based Repower said it had won a Californian order for 75 wind generators with a total capacity of 150 megawatts for Enxco, a US unit of French power company EDF Energies Nouvelles.Each of the huge generators has a rotor diameter of 92 metres.Analysts say the worldwide orders are driven by legislative pressure on power companies to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and generate at least some of their electricity using wind or the sun.Investors see no sign the trend will end soon.Nordex shares shot up 8 per cent Friday morning to 27.45 euros on German markets before settling to 25.40.Repower Systems shares were steady at 156.95 euros, well ahead of the current offers of 150 euros per share from Suzlon of India and 140 euros from Areva, the French nuclear-power group.Earlier this week, Repower raised new equity with institutional investors happy to pay 151.50 euros per share, a clear hint that investment professionals expect a counter-bid from Areva.A Repower spokeswoman said Friday the Hamburg-based company?s board would comment next week on the Suzlon bid. Previously Repower said both bidders would make good parents.Shares in Nordex, and another company, Vestas Wind Systems, have been driven higher by takeover speculation.German manufacturers of solar-power equipment have also been boosted by the renewables trend.Solar World, which opened a new wafer-production plant at Freiberg in Germany?s Saxony state Friday, said it would continue to add wafer capacity at the site, doubling output by 2009 compared to today.The company said it was even contemplating quadrupling output, which is measured by the power-generation capacity of the photovoltaic cells it makes: 1,000 megawatts per year was conceivable.Solar World mainly sells its modules to owners of homes and other buildings seeking energy self-sufficiency.Germany?s pre-2005 government of Social Democrats and Greens chose renewable energy as a technology where Germans could lead the world.That bet has turned out a good one, but an electrical industry group, VDE, is cautioning that Germany actually spends too little on research into better energy technology.?Japan is spending 30 dollars per capita on energy research, and even the United States spends 10 dollars a head. Here in Germany it is only 6.20 dollars,? said VDE spokesman Wolfgang Schroeppel.He said annual federal grants of 400 million euros for energy research in Germany were just not enough to sustain the lead. He demanded Berlin hike the budget to 1 billion euros annually.Schroeppel warned that only 8 per cent of all research and development spending in Germany was devoted to energy topics, and in the European Union the rate was even worse, 3 per cent. Related: • Renewable • energy • boom • drives • up • share • prices 73. uranium futures
NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).
This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).
UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.
Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.
And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we?ll just have to wait for it all to play out.?some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).
andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.
Yeah, things are happening fast.
The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there?s no taking delivery of actual uranium, it?s just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it?s done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, ?We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader.?
UxC President Jeff Combs said ?The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities?based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality.?
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we?ll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.
I?d rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
?Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing,? Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn?t say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
?The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players,? said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.
My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it?s selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value. Related: • uranium • futures 74. He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm guns to a stone stairway
He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm guns to a stone stairway. VonSchlichten explained, as they went down, that the guns of KingKankad?s Town were the only artillery above 75-mm on Uller innon-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier andstrapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankadshowed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, whereyoung Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied fromtextbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Kankadshowed her the repair-shops, where two-score descendants of Kraganriever-chieftains were working on contragravity equipment, under thesupervision of a Scottish-Afrikaner and his Malay-Portuguese wife; thesmall-arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran rifles andpistols and auto-weapons were being turned out; the machine-shop; thephysics and chemistry labs; the hospital; the ammunition-loadingplant; the battery of 155-mm Long Toms, built in Kankad?s own shops,which covered the road up the sloping rock-spine behind the city; theprinting-shop and book-bindery; the observatory, with a big telescopeand an ingenious orrery of the Beta Hydrae system; the nuclear-powerplant, part of the original price for giving up brigandage.Related: • He • led • the • way • past • a • pair • of • long • 90mm • guns • to • a • stone • stairway 75. How Green is Nuclear Power The Christian Science Monitor In Kansas, where winds blow strong, the push for clean energy includes not only new wind turbines but also new nuclear-power plants as part of a "carbon-free" solution to Related: • How • Green • is • Nuclear • Power 76. How Green is Nuclear Power The Christian Science Monitor In Kansas, where winds blow strong, the push for clean energy includes not only new wind turbines but also new nuclear-power plants as part of a "carbon-free" solution to Related: • How • Green • is • Nuclear • Power 77. The Delusion of Expertise: I learned something ?
The Delusion of Expertise:
I learned something this weekend about the high cost of the subtledelusion that creative technical problem-solving is the preserve ofa priesthood of experts, using powers and perceptions beyond the ken ofordinary human beings.
Terry Pratchett is the author of the Discworld seriesof satirical fantasies. He is " and I don?t say this lightly, orwithout having given the matter thought and study " quiteprobably the most consistently excellent writer of intelligent humorin the last century in English. One has to go back as far as P.G.Wodehouse or Mark Twain to find an obvious equal in consistentquality, volume, and sly wisdom.
I?ve been a fan of Terry?s since before his first Discworld novel;I?m one of the few people who remembers Strata, his 1981 firstexperiment with the disc-world concept. The man has been somethinglike a long-term acquaintance of mine for ten years " one ofthose people you?d like to call a friend, and who you think would liketo call you a friend, if the two of you everarranged enough concentrated hang time to get that close. But we?reboth damn busy people, and live five thousand miles apart.
This weekend, Terry and I were both guests of honor at a hybridSF convention and Linux conference called Penguicon held in Warren,Michigan. We finally got our hang time. Among other things, Itaught Terry how to shoot pistols. He loves shooter games, but asa British resident his opportunities to play with real firearms arestrictly limited. (I can report that Terry handled my .45 semi withremarkable competence and steadiness for a first-timer. I can alsoreport that this surprised me not at all.)
During Terry?s Guest-of-Honor speech, he revealed his past as(he thought) a failed hacker. It turns out that back in the 1970sTerry used to wire up elaborate computerized gadgets from TimexSinclair computers. One of his projects used a primitive memorychip that had light-sensitive gates to build a sort of perceptronthat could actually see the difference between a circle and a cross.His magnum opus was a weather station that would log readings oftemperature and barometric pressure overnight and deliver weatherreports through a voice synthesizer.
But the most astonishing part of the speech was the followup inwhich Terry told us that despite his keen interest and elaboratehomebrewing, he didn?t become a programmer or a hardware tech becausehe thought techies had to know mathematics, which he thought he had notalent for. He then revealed that he thought of his projects as asort of bad imitation of programming, because his hardware andsoftware designs were total lash-ups and he never really knew what hewas doing.
I couldn?t stand it. ?And you think it was any different forus?? I called out. The audience laughed and Terry passed offthe remark with a quip. But I was just boggled. Because I know thatalmost all really bright techies start out that way, ascompulsive tinkerers who blundered around learning by experience beforethey acquired systematic knowledge. ?Oh ye gods and little fishes?, Ithought to myself, ?Terry is a hacker!?
Yes, I thought ?is? " even if Terry hasn?t actually tinkeredany computer software or hardware in a quarter-century. Being ahacker is expressed through skills and projects, but it?s really akind of attitude or mental stance that, once acquired, is never reallylost. It?s a kind of intense, omnivorous playfulness that tends tocolor everything a person does.
It burst upon me that Terry Pratchett has the hacker nature.Which, actually, explains something that has mildly puzzled me foryears. Terry has a huge following in the hacker community "knowing his books is something close to basic cultural literacy forInternet geeks. One is actually hard-put to think of any other writerfor whom this is as true. The question this has aways raised for meis: why Terry, rather than some hard-SF writer whose work explicitlycelebrates the technologies we play with?
The answer now seems clear. Terry?s hackerness has leaked into hiswriting somehow, modulating the quality of the humor. Behind thedrollery, I and my peers worldwide have accurately scented a mind likeour own.
I said some of this the following day, when I ran into Terrysurrounded by about fifty eager fans in a hallway. The natureof the conference was such that about three-quarters of them werehackers, many faces I recognized. I brought up the topic again,emphasizing that the sort of playful improvisation he?d beendescribing was very normal for us, and that I thought it waskind of sad he?d been blocked by the belief that hackers needto know mathematics, because about all we ever use is some piecesof set theory, graph theory, combinatorics, and Boolean algebra.No calculus at all.
Terry then admitted that he had at one point independentlyre-invented Boolean algebra. I didn?t find this surprising " Idid that myself when I was about fifteen; I didn?t mention this,though, because the moment was about Terry?s mind and not mine. Ithink reinventing Boolean algebra is probably something a lot ofbright proto-hackers do.
?Terry,? I said, fully conscious of the peculiar authority Iwield on this point as the custodian of the Jargon File, the how-to onHow To BecomeA Hacker and several other related documents, ?you are ahacker!?
The crowd agreed enthusiastically. Somebody handed Terry one ofthe ?Geek? badge ribbons the convention had made for attendees whowanted to identify themselves as coming from the Linux/programmingside. Much laughter ensued when it was discovered that the stickumon the ribbon had lost its virtue, and a nearby hacker had to ceremoniallyaffix the thing to Terry?s badge holder with a piece of duct tape.
Terry actually choked up a little while this was going on, and Idon?t think there was anyone there who didn?t understand why. To thekind of teenager and young man he must have been " bright,curious, creative, proud of his own ability " it must have beenvery painful to conclude that he would never cut it as the techie heso obviously wanted to be. He ended up doing public-relations workfor the British nuclear-power industry instead.
The whole sequence of events left me feeling delighted that I andmy friends could deliver the affirmation Terry had deserved so longago. But also " and here we come to the real point of thisessay " I felt very angry at the system that had fed the youngTerry such a huge load of cobblers about the nature of whatprogrammers and hardware designers do.
I?m not referring to the obvious garbage about needing abrain-bending amount of mathematics. No; they fed Terry something muchsubtler and more crippling, a belief that real techies actually know whatthey?re doing. The delusion of expertise.
The truth is that programmers only know what they?re doing when thejob is not very interesting. When you?re breaking new ground in anytechnical field, exploration and improvisation is the nature of thegame. Your designs are going to be lash-ups because you don?t yetknow any better and neither does anyone else.Systematization comes later, with the second system, during there-write and the re-think. Einstein had it right; imagination ismore valuable than knowledge, and people like Terry with ademonstrated ability to creatively wing it make far better hackersthan analytically smart but unimaginative people who can onlyfollow procedures.
The thought that Terry may have spent thirty years of working daysgrinding out press releases for the Central Electricity GeneratingBoard because he didn?t know this, rather than following his dreamsinto astronomy or programming or hardware design, bothers the crap outof me. If Terry was bright enough to invent Boolean algebra, he wasbright enough to cut it in any of these fields. The educationalsystem failed him by putting artificial requirements in his way andmaking him believe they were natural ones. It failed him even morefundamentally by teaching him a falsehood about the nature ofexpertise.
In doing this, it failed all of us. How many bright kids withfirst-class minds, I wonder, end up under-employed because of craplike this? How much creative potential are we losing?
OK, some might answer, so we got the Discworld fantasiesinstead?that ain?t exactly chopped liver. The thing is, I?m notsure that was actually a trade-off. I?m enough of a writer myselfto believe that you can?t block a writing talent like Terry?s merely bydropping him into a more demanding day job. It will come out.
On the other hand, one thing I am sure of is that youdon?t need intelligence or talents like Terry?s just to do PR. Oneway or another, this man was going to do something with more lastingeffects than soothing British farmers about radiation leaks. Inventingone of the funniest alternate worlds of the last hundred years duringyour free time is nice, and I devoutly hope he will get to keep doingit for decades to come " but in a society that valued and nurturedgenius properly, I think Terry might have helped re-imagine the realworld just as radically during his day job.
But he didn?t. Tot it up to the cost of taking creativity tooseriously, of undervaluing improvisation and play and imagination.And wonder how much else that error has cost us.Related: • The • Delusion • of • Expertise • I • learned • something • 78. He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm guns to a stone stairway
He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm guns to a stone stairway. VonSchlichten explained, as they went down, that the guns of KingKankad?s Town were the only artillery above 75-mm on Uller innon-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier andstrapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankadshowed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, whereyoung Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied fromtextbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Kankadshowed her the repair-shops, where two-score descendants of Kraganriever-chieftains were working on contragravity equipment, under thesupervision of a Scottish-Afrikaner and his Malay-Portuguese wife; thesmall-arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran rifles andpistols and auto-weapons were being turned out; the machine-shop; thephysics and chemistry labs; the hospital; the ammunition-loadingplant; the battery of 155-mm Long Toms, built in Kankad?s own shops,which covered the road up the sloping rock-spine behind the city; theprinting-shop and book-bindery; the observatory, with a big telescopeand an ingenious orrery of the Beta Hydrae system; the nuclear-powerplant, part of the original price for giving up brigandage.Related: • He • led • the • way • past • a • pair • of • long • 90mm • guns • to • a • stone • stairway 79. India has China in its range
written by: Siddharth Srivastava, 13-Apr-07
NEW DELHI - Even as India celebrates the successful test-firing on Thursday of its home-grown Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missile - capable of delivering a 1.5-tonne nuclear or conventional payload over much of Asia - officials admit that the test had the tacit approval of the United States.
The US is striving to build India as a strategic counterweight to China, along with Japan and Australia.
Last May, during a period of frenzied negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal with Washington, New Delhi postponed testing of the Agni-III so as not to invite the ire of nuclear hawks in the US Congress, which was deliberating the nuclear pact that now stands approved.
According to reports last year, Washington put pressure on New Delhi to agree to a future moratorium on testing of dual-use missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload and testing another atomic bomb as a quid pro quo for the civilian nuclear deal.
India, however, rejected such a commitment as a back-door entry to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has not signed the CTBT as it feels that the treaty came into existence after those who possessed nuclear weapons had developed the know-how.
Strategic equations have obviously changed now, with a combination of business interests, India?s record as a responsible democratic nation, and the China factor coming into play.
Agni-III, given its range of 3,000 kilometers, has been specifically designed to build a minimum nuclear deterrence against China, with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai very much in the radar. Agni-III is said to possess a high degree of accuracy with a medium-to-large nuclear payload.
Beijing reacted immediately to the Indian firing, saying it hoped that India, ?as a country with an important influence in this region, can work to maintain and promote peace and stability in the region?. Indian officials have said Agni-III is not China-centric, but an effort to build overall security.
India, of course, has traditional rival Pakistan already covered via its Agni-I (700-800km range) and Agni-II (2,000km-plus range) missiles that are now being inducted into the armed forces. As per the agreed norms, New Delhi informed Islamabad about Agni-III prior to the test.
Not to be undone, Pakistan, with help from China and North Korea, is in the process of inducting the nuclear-capable Shaheen-II missile, tested for the first time in March 2004, which can strike Indian targets over a range of 2,000km.
Apart from gaining more security muscle in the region, the success of Agni-III is significant on other counts. The maiden test of Agni-III failed last July 9, so Indian scientists had to work on the technical glitches.
The Agni is one of five missiles that have been developed by India. The others are the short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi, the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), the multi-purpose Akash (Sky) and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra) missile.
Other benefits It would seem that India is also now reasonably sure of its acceptance as a nuclear exception among the global community that will allow it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the international market. Indian efforts have now moved to turning around nations that form part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with success on this count. India needs approval from the NSG so that it can implement its nuclear agreement with the US.
Heavyweights France, the United Kingdom and Canada have already backed the deal. The business potential and diplomatic efforts have had important countries such as China and Australia rethink their approach. Those two countries have hinted that they will not be averse to doing nuclear business with India. Russia has already chalked out its nuclear-power engagement with India.
South Africa and Brazil have been co-opted by promises of New Delhi?s support in securing business deals and expertise in software and information technology.
Japan has been difficult, but Indian officials are sure that given the massive business opportunities, especially in software to upgrade Japanese companies, and extensive diplomatic efforts, Japan will come around and has already considerably softened its stand. Tokyo is pretty much clued into a US-India-Japan ?axis of democracy? to counter the might of China.
Thus the timing of the Agni-III test seems to be right. Politically, the Congress-led New Delhi government has been criticized for being feeble to India?s internal and external security threats, because of repeated terrorist attacks and the need to tread carefully in dealing with Beijing.
Given the ongoing detailed negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the nuclear pact with the US as well the benefits of nuclear power that will flow in times to come, it was only prudent for New Delhi to gain a few political points given the immediacy of electoral politics.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the success of the Agni-III missile is an ?impressive illustration? of India mastering the strategic high technologies to uphold national security.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Published in: Asia Times Related: • India • has • China • in • its • range 80. India Spreads Nuclear Wings ... Agni-3 has been designed to build a nuclear deterrent against China. For its traditional rival ... fuel and technology from the international market. Canada, France and the United Kingdom support the ... while Russia has already spelled out its nuclear-power engagement with India. New Delhi is actively Related: • India • Spreads • Nuclear • Wings 81. 30 years later, Clamshell Alliance still doesn't see nukes as the answer Thirty years after a huge anti-Seabrook demonstration, David Tirrell-Wysoki of the Associated Press bureau in Concord demonstrates why it's good to have reporters cover one place for a long time: They bring perspective. In this case, the dormant anti-nuclear-power crowd is being revitalized along with the nuclear-power industry, as nukes are cited as a way to fight global warming. Related: • 30 • years • later • Clamshell • Alliance • still • doesnt • see • nukes • as • the • answer 82. India has China in its range
written by: Siddharth Srivastava, 13-Apr-07
NEW DELHI - Even as India celebrates the successful test-firing on Thursday of its home-grown Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missile - capable of delivering a 1.5-tonne nuclear or conventional payload over much of Asia - officials admit that the test had the tacit approval of the United States.
The US is striving to build India as a strategic counterweight to China, along with Japan and Australia.
Last May, during a period of frenzied negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal with Washington, New Delhi postponed testing of the Agni-III so as not to invite the ire of nuclear hawks in the US Congress, which was deliberating the nuclear pact that now stands approved.
According to reports last year, Washington put pressure on New Delhi to agree to a future moratorium on testing of dual-use missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload and testing another atomic bomb as a quid pro quo for the civilian nuclear deal.
India, however, rejected such a commitment as a back-door entry to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has not signed the CTBT as it feels that the treaty came into existence after those who possessed nuclear weapons had developed the know-how.
Strategic equations have obviously changed now, with a combination of business interests, India?s record as a responsible democratic nation, and the China factor coming into play.
Agni-III, given its range of 3,000 kilometers, has been specifically designed to build a minimum nuclear deterrence against China, with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai very much in the radar. Agni-III is said to possess a high degree of accuracy with a medium-to-large nuclear payload.
Beijing reacted immediately to the Indian firing, saying it hoped that India, ?as a country with an important influence in this region, can work to maintain and promote peace and stability in the region?. Indian officials have said Agni-III is not China-centric, but an effort to build overall security.
India, of course, has traditional rival Pakistan already covered via its Agni-I (700-800km range) and Agni-II (2,000km-plus range) missiles that are now being inducted into the armed forces. As per the agreed norms, New Delhi informed Islamabad about Agni-III prior to the test.
Not to be undone, Pakistan, with help from China and North Korea, is in the process of inducting the nuclear-capable Shaheen-II missile, tested for the first time in March 2004, which can strike Indian targets over a range of 2,000km.
Apart from gaining more security muscle in the region, the success of Agni-III is significant on other counts. The maiden test of Agni-III failed last July 9, so Indian scientists had to work on the technical glitches.
The Agni is one of five missiles that have been developed by India. The others are the short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi, the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), the multi-purpose Akash (Sky) and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra) missile.
Other benefits It would seem that India is also now reasonably sure of its acceptance as a nuclear exception among the global community that will allow it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the international market. Indian efforts have now moved to turning around nations that form part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with success on this count. India needs approval from the NSG so that it can implement its nuclear agreement with the US.
Heavyweights France, the United Kingdom and Canada have already backed the deal. The business potential and diplomatic efforts have had important countries such as China and Australia rethink their approach. Those two countries have hinted that they will not be averse to doing nuclear business with India. Russia has already chalked out its nuclear-power engagement with India.
South Africa and Brazil have been co-opted by promises of New Delhi?s support in securing business deals and expertise in software and information technology.
Japan has been difficult, but Indian officials are sure that given the massive business opportunities, especially in software to upgrade Japanese companies, and extensive diplomatic efforts, Japan will come around and has already considerably softened its stand. Tokyo is pretty much clued into a US-India-Japan ?axis of democracy? to counter the might of China.
Thus the timing of the Agni-III test seems to be right. Politically, the Congress-led New Delhi government has been criticized for being feeble to India?s internal and external security threats, because of repeated terrorist attacks and the need to tread carefully in dealing with Beijing.
Given the ongoing detailed negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the nuclear pact with the US as well the benefits of nuclear power that will flow in times to come, it was only prudent for New Delhi to gain a few political points given the immediacy of electoral politics.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the success of the Agni-III missile is an ?impressive illustration? of India mastering the strategic high technologies to uphold national security.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Published in: Asia Times Related: • India • has • China • in • its • range 83. Dixy?s energy plan could have saved nation considerable grief
The newspaper headline read: ?Summer bummer: $4 a gallon?? If she were alive today, my old friend, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, would undoubtedly be playing the familiar game of ?I told you so.? She was never given to bragging, but she could have pointed directly to an extremely important report she once submitted to the President of the United States. I have recounted her experience in detail in my newly published book, ?She Should Have Been President; The Wisdom of Dixy Lee Ray,? and I will offer a brief repeat here because it is perfectly in line with the ?I told you so? game she might have played with regard to the outrageously increasing cost of gasoline to American motorists. Back in 1973, President Richard Nixon called Dixy to a meeting in the Oval Office. It was the time of a national energy crisis brought on by the shortage of gasoline. Dixy was the chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which was staffed by many of the brightest scientific minds in the nation. Nixon asked Dixy, a world-renowned marine biologist, to come up with a plan to make America self-sufficient in energy of all kinds. Dixy put her A.E.C. scientists to work on the project and also summoned other highly reputed scientists from industry and the colleges and universities to help with the project. Six months later, Dixy returned to the Oval Office and handed Nixon the finished project, a brilliant proposal for a new U.S. strategy on all forms of energy. She told Nixon that ?total self-sufficiency? was not a wise idea but that a plan to end our dependency upon foreign oil and other products was doable. The plan would have authorized Congress to forge ahead with an end to the unfortunate ban on oil refineries, a resumption of the stalled program for more nuclear power plants, and renewed efforts to explore other energy sources " such as solar power, wind power, and all other potential producers of energy. Nixon thanked Dixy for her extraordinary effort, but she saw that he seemed listless and no longer interested in the energy shortage. Little wonder. The Watergate scandal had already broken, and Nixon knew then, late in 1973, that his days as President of the U.S. were near an end. In fact, he never submitted Dixy?s plan to Congress, and it is probably still sitting there on a shelf of the Oval Office. Had her plan for ending the energy shortage been adopted by Congress, we would no longer be dependent upon countries in the Middle East, South America, and elsewhere for a supply of oil. Also, we would not now be embroiled in Iraq or any other nation in the Middle East, Asia, or South America. At the same time, many more refineries would have been built, and gasoline would now be substantially lower in price than the coming $4-a-gallon envisaged by the newspaper headline. And, with more nuclear-power plants on line, energy would be plentiful and much lower in cost than at present. Yes, the Watergate scandal cost a President his job, but it did much more damage than that. It reminds us that an enterprising member of Congress could do his nation a great favor by finding Dixy?s report and getting it passed into law by Congress. I have tried to get the ball rolling with letters to members of the Washington State delegation, but, thus far, there has been no response. Dixy would have said: ?I told you so.? What a tragedy! Related: • Dixys • energy • plan • could • have • saved • nation • considerable • grief 84. China moves to shrink its carbon footprint
Within a year, China is expected to outpace the US in carbon dioxide emissions.By Peter Fordhttp://www.csmonitor.comWith China?s carbon footprint expected to outsize America?s within a year, officials in Beijing appear to be backing away from their view that global warming is a Western problem that developed countries must solve.
While still insisting on their right to industrialize hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, Chinese leaders are showing the first tentative signs of readiness to accept mandatory emissions-reductions targets. And they are setting themselves all kinds of green goals.As the world?s No. 2 greenhouse-gas culprit " closing in on the 6 billion tons of CO2 produced by the US annually " China is under pressure both from other nations and from its own scientists? predictions of a potentially catastrophic future if global warming is not curbed.
?Climate change has become a huge challenge to China?s social and economic sustained development,? Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Meteorological Administration, said Monday. ?China is determined to mitigate and respond to climate change as a responsible nation.?
The signals of how it will do so are mixed. On the one hand, Premier Wen Jiabao announced earlier this month, on a visit to Japan, that his country would ?proactively participate in building an effective framework from 2013? to replace the Kyoto Protocol?s binding targets for greenhouse-gas reductions.
That regime, which will emerge from several years of global negotiations, seems certain to impose binding targets on every nation: At the moment, China is not obliged to meet any Kyoto standards because it is a developing country.
At the same time, China?s first Climate Change Assessment Report, dated September 2006 but broadly distributed last weekend, rejects obligatory ceilings.
?If we prematurely assume responsibilities for mandatory greenhouse-gas emissions reductions, the direct consequence will be to constrain China?s current energy and manufacturing industries and weaken the competitiveness of Chinese products,? the report warns, adding that, ?For a considerable time to come, developing the economy and improving people?s lives remains the country?s primary task.?
Four months ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris predicted that China would not be emitting more heat-trapping CO2 than the US until 2010. But with Chinese growth steaming ahead at an annual 11.1 percent so far this year, and with energy-intensive industries such as aluminum expanding by 43 percent, the energy watchdog has brought its estimate forward by two years.
Grim outlook if China doesn?t act
If nothing were done, within 25 years China?s emissions would be double the combined output of all industrialized nations, said Fatih Birol, the IEA?s chief economist. That is largely because China is fueling its growth with coal, a noxious source of CO2 and other pollutants. As the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world, China uses the fossil fuel to generate 69 percent of its primary energy, according to official figures.
The effects are visible and getting worse, Chinese scientists are warning.
On the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, ?one quarter of the glaciers that existed 350 years ago have disappeared,? Qin Dahe, a former Chinese climate-change negotiator, said Monday. At current melt rates, ?another quarter will disappear by 2050.?
Those glaciers, he said, ?are vital to people?s economy and livelihood? in most of China and South Asia. ?The water from these glaciers supports life for half the world?s population.?
?Climatic warming may have serious consequences for our survival environment, as China?s economic sectors such as agriculture and coastal regions suffer grave negative effects,? the Climate Change Assessment Report predicts.
Water shortages and high temperatures could reduce harvests by 10 percent by 2030; wheat, rice, and corn output could collapse by as much as 37 percent after 2050, the report says. ?If we do not take any action, climate change will seriously damage China?s long-term grain security.?
Such grim prospects have prompted the government to set its own emissions goals. Most ambitiously, the new assessment pledges to reduce CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 80 percent by 2050.
En route, the authorities are aiming for a 20 percent drop in energy use per GDP unit by 2010 " slightly more ambitious than President Bush?s hope that US industry will voluntarily cut its emissions intensity by 18 percent by 2012.
Even if China reached half its goal, the resulting reductions in emissions growth would still be larger than the EU-15?s Kyoto CO2 goal of cutting 682 million tons annually by 2012, according to the Center for Clean Air Policy in Washington.
China?s goal is nearly in line with a target set by Greenpeace, which just released a report urging more use of renewable energy. ?China has to get rid of its dependency on coal,? said Yang Ailun, Greenpeace China?s climate expert. ?With enforcement of energy-efficiency targets and also the decision to close down 50 gigawatts of [China?s] least-efficient coal-fired plants, the trend of massive coal-fired plant installment will be slowed from 2008.?
The government has also set itself the target of producing 16 percent of energy needs from renewable resources by 2020, much of which would come from hydro if the authorities meet another 2020 target: to harness 70 percent of hydro potential.
A push for nuclear energy
At the same time, China is finalizing a deal with Westinghouse Electric to buy four third-generation nuclear-power plants, along with the technological know-how to build its plants in the future.
By 2020, China plans to have multiplied installed nuclear-generating capacity fivefold from 2000 figures, to 40 gigawatts.
The government cannot guarantee meeting these targets, however: Last year, officials say, energy use per unit of GDP fell by only 1.2 percent, instead of 4 percent. This was partly because regional governments " that know they are judged on economic growth rather than on their green credentials " simply ignored Beijing?s environmental edicts. Even if China does reduce its energy use per GDP unit by 4 percent a year until 2010, its growth rate is so high that by current trends it will still be emitting 30 percent more greenhouse gases in 2010 than it did in 2005.
? Staff writer Mark Clayton contributed to this report.
Green challenges for China
Planned carbon cuts: China hopes to reduce its emissions-to-GDP ratio by 20 percent by 2010, 80 percent by 2050; the White House?s goal is 18 percent by 2012. Renewable resources should supply 16 percent of energy by 2020.
Risks, challenges: If emissions rates don?t change, water shortages and high temperatures could cut harvests by 10 percent by 2030. China?s ratio of energy-to-GDP fell 1.2 percent in 2006; its goal was 4 percent. China is the world?s top producer and user of coal.see original Related: • China • moves • to • shrink • its • carbon • footprint 85. Evan Bayh April 27, 2007 4:17 am
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US $9.99 (0 Bid)End Date: Tuesday May-01-2007 5:29:05 PDTBuy It Now for only: US $13.99Bid now Buy it now Add to watch listRelated: • Evan • Bayh • April • 27 • 2007 • 417 • am 86. Nymex Plans Uranium Futures Contracts Starting in May (Update4) Nymex Plans Uranium Futures Contracts Starting in May (Update4)
By Jim Polson and Christopher Donville
April 16 (Bloomberg) " The New York Mercantile Exchange,the world's largest energy market, plans futures contracts inuranium, the raw material for fueling nuclear-power reactors, tocapitalize on increasing demand for the commodity.
Contracts, beginning May 6 for trades May 7, will beprovided under a 10-year agreement with Ux Consulting Co., whichpublishes price indexes for the radioactive metal, Nymex said ina statement today. Off-exchange futures also will be offered,NYMEX said.
Uranium, used to generate about 16 percent of the world'selectricity, has surged in price, closing at a record $113 apound in the spot market last week. Prices have gained in thepast year on rising demand for the metal from power plantoperators and speculators amid concern for potential shortages.Nymex said it expects to create a benchmark contract.
?The uranium market would benefit from additional pricetransparency,'' Ux Consulting President Jeff Combs said in thestatement.
The new contract will be for U308, concentrated uraniumdioxide known as yellowcake, the exchange said in a subsequentstatement today. The contract will be for 250 pounds and will belisted for 36 consecutive months, and will settle for cash at thespot month-end price published by Ux Consulting.
Utilities in Asia, Europe and the U.S. are preparing tobuild new plants on concern over rising levels of carbon-dioxideproduced by plants that burn coal, an alternative fuel. A robustfutures market will assist ?budget and investment decisions inthis critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power,'' Combssaid.
Bilateral Contracts
Utilities now purchase most of their uranium under bilateralcontracts of 10 years or more.
?Our interest for a long time has been increasingcompetition in the market,'' said Craig Nesbit, a spokesman forChicago-based Exelon Corp., operator of the largest group of U.S.nuclear power plants. Nesbit said he didn't know if the companywould participate in the new Nymex market.
Lyle Krahn, a spokesman for Cameco Corp., the world'slargest uranium producer, did not immediately return a call forcomment on the Nymex announcement.
The price of uranium has more than doubled since Oct. 23when Cameco said construction of its Cigar Lake mine inSaskatchewan, the world's largest undeveloped high-grade uraniumdeposit, would be delayed because of an underground flood. Thecompany is working to plug the flow of water before draining themine and resuming construction.
Reactor In Finland
Paris-based Areva SA is building a nuclear reactor inFinland, Europe's first since a 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl,Ukraine. China ordered four reactors from Toshiba Corp.'sWestinghouse unit for a record $5.3 billion in December.
About $200 billion will be spent worldwide on nuclear powerby 2030, according to the Paris-based International EnergyAgency. A surge in prices for competing power plant fuel andconcern that carbon dioxide from coal and natural-gas burningplants accelerate global warming are driving the revival, itsaid.
Shares of Nymex Holdings Inc., parent of the exchange, fell18 cents to $131.27 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
To contact the reporter on this story:Jim Polson in New York at jpolson@bloomberg.net
Related: • Nymex • Plans • Uranium • Futures • Contracts • Starting • in • May • Update4 87. The Delusion of Expertise: I learned something ?
The Delusion of Expertise:
I learned something this weekend about the high cost of the subtledelusion that creative technical problem-solving is the preserve ofa priesthood of experts, using powers and perceptions beyond the ken ofordinary human beings.
Terry Pratchett is the author of the Discworld seriesof satirical fantasies. He is " and I don?t say this lightly, orwithout having given the matter thought and study " quiteprobably the most consistently excellent writer of intelligent humorin the last century in English. One has to go back as far as P.G.Wodehouse or Mark Twain to find an obvious equal in consistentquality, volume, and sly wisdom.
I?ve been a fan of Terry?s since before his first Discworld novel;I?m one of the few people who remembers Strata, his 1981 firstexperiment with the disc-world concept. The man has been somethinglike a long-term acquaintance of mine for ten years " one ofthose people you?d like to call a friend, and who you think would liketo call you a friend, if the two of you everarranged enough concentrated hang time to get that close. But we?reboth damn busy people, and live five thousand miles apart.
This weekend, Terry and I were both guests of honor at a hybridSF convention and Linux conference called Penguicon held in Warren,Michigan. We finally got our hang time. Among other things, Itaught Terry how to shoot pistols. He loves shooter games, but asa British resident his opportunities to play with real firearms arestrictly limited. (I can report that Terry handled my .45 semi withremarkable competence and steadiness for a first-timer. I can alsoreport that this surprised me not at all.)
During Terry?s Guest-of-Honor speech, he revealed his past as(he thought) a failed hacker. It turns out that back in the 1970sTerry used to wire up elaborate computerized gadgets from TimexSinclair computers. One of his projects used a primitive memorychip that had light-sensitive gates to build a sort of perceptronthat could actually see the difference between a circle and a cross.His magnum opus was a weather station that would log readings oftemperature and barometric pressure overnight and deliver weatherreports through a voice synthesizer.
But the most astonishing part of the speech was the followup inwhich Terry told us that despite his keen interest and elaboratehomebrewing, he didn?t become a programmer or a hardware tech becausehe thought techies had to know mathematics, which he thought he had notalent for. He then revealed that he thought of his projects as asort of bad imitation of programming, because his hardware andsoftware designs were total lash-ups and he never really knew what hewas doing.
I couldn?t stand it. ?And you think it was any different forus?? I called out. The audience laughed and Terry passed offthe remark with a quip. But I was just boggled. Because I know thatalmost all really bright techies start out that way, ascompulsive tinkerers who blundered around learning by experience beforethey acquired systematic knowledge. ?Oh ye gods and little fishes?, Ithought to myself, ?Terry is a hacker!?
Yes, I thought ?is? " even if Terry hasn?t actually tinkeredany computer software or hardware in a quarter-century. Being ahacker is expressed through skills and projects, but it?s really akind of attitude or mental stance that, once acquired, is never reallylost. It?s a kind of intense, omnivorous playfulness that tends tocolor everything a person does.
It burst upon me that Terry Pratchett has the hacker nature.Which, actually, explains something that has mildly puzzled me foryears. Terry has a huge following in the hacker community "knowing his books is something close to basic cultural literacy forInternet geeks. One is actually hard-put to think of any other writerfor whom this is as true. The question this has aways raised for meis: why Terry, rather than some hard-SF writer whose work explicitlycelebrates the technologies we play with?
The answer now seems clear. Terry?s hackerness has leaked into hiswriting somehow, modulating the quality of the humor. Behind thedrollery, I and my peers worldwide have accurately scented a mind likeour own.
I said some of this the following day, when I ran into Terrysurrounded by about fifty eager fans in a hallway. The natureof the conference was such that about three-quarters of them werehackers, many faces I recognized. I brought up the topic again,emphasizing that the sort of playful improvisation he?d beendescribing was very normal for us, and that I thought it waskind of sad he?d been blocked by the belief that hackers needto know mathematics, because about all we ever use is some piecesof set theory, graph theory, combinatorics, and Boolean algebra.No calculus at all.
Terry then admitted that he had at one point independentlyre-invented Boolean algebra. I didn?t find this surprising " Idid that myself when I was about fifteen; I didn?t mention this,though, because the moment was about Terry?s mind and not mine. Ithink reinventing Boolean algebra is probably something a lot ofbright proto-hackers do.
?Terry,? I said, fully conscious of the peculiar authority Iwield on this point as the custodian of the Jargon File, the how-to onHow To BecomeA Hacker and several other related documents, ?you are ahacker!?
The crowd agreed enthusiastically. Somebody handed Terry one ofthe ?Geek? badge ribbons the convention had made for attendees whowanted to identify themselves as coming from the Linux/programmingside. Much laughter ensued when it was discovered that the stickumon the ribbon had lost its virtue, and a nearby hacker had to ceremoniallyaffix the thing to Terry?s badge holder with a piece of duct tape.
Terry actually choked up a little while this was going on, and Idon?t think there was anyone there who didn?t understand why. To thekind of teenager and young man he must have been " bright,curious, creative, proud of his own ability " it must have beenvery painful to conclude that he would never cut it as the techie heso obviously wanted to be. He ended up doing public-relations workfor the British nuclear-power industry instead.
The whole sequence of events left me feeling delighted that I andmy friends could deliver the affirmation Terry had deserved so longago. But also " and here we come to the real point of thisessay " I felt very angry at the system that had fed the youngTerry such a huge load of cobblers about the nature of whatprogrammers and hardware designers do.
I?m not referring to the obvious garbage about needing abrain-bending amount of mathematics. No; they fed Terry something muchsubtler and more crippling, a belief that real techies actually know whatthey?re doing. The delusion of expertise.
The truth is that programmers only know what they?re doing when thejob is not very interesting. When you?re breaking new ground in anytechnical field, exploration and improvisation is the nature of thegame. Your designs are going to be lash-ups because you don?t yetknow any better and neither does anyone else.Systematization comes later, with the second system, during there-write and the re-think. Einstein had it right; imagination ismore valuable than knowledge, and people like Terry with ademonstrated ability to creatively wing it make far better hackersthan analytically smart but unimaginative people who can onlyfollow procedures.
The thought that Terry may have spent thirty years of working daysgrinding out press releases for the Central Electricity GeneratingBoard because he didn?t know this, rather than following his dreamsinto astronomy or programming or hardware design, bothers the crap outof me. If Terry was bright enough to invent Boolean algebra, he wasbright enough to cut it in any of these fields. The educationalsystem failed him by putting artificial requirements in his way andmaking him believe they were natural ones. It failed him even morefundamentally by teaching him a falsehood about the nature ofexpertise.
In doing this, it failed all of us. How many bright kids withfirst-class minds, I wonder, end up under-employed because of craplike this? How much creative potential are we losing?
OK, some might answer, so we got the Discworld fantasiesinstead?that ain?t exactly chopped liver. The thing is, I?m notsure that was actually a trade-off. I?m enough of a writer myselfto believe that you can?t block a writing talent like Terry?s merely bydropping him into a more demanding day job. It will come out.
On the other hand, one thing I am sure of is that youdon?t need intelligence or talents like Terry?s just to do PR. Oneway or another, this man was going to do something with more lastingeffects than soothing British farmers about radiation leaks. Inventingone of the funniest alternate worlds of the last hundred years duringyour free time is nice, and I devoutly hope he will get to keep doingit for decades to come " but in a society that valued and nurturedgenius properly, I think Terry might have helped re-imagine the realworld just as radically during his day job.
But he didn?t. Tot it up to the cost of taking creativity tooseriously, of undervaluing improvisation and play and imagination.And wonder how much else that error has cost us.Related: • The • Delusion • of • Expertise • I • learned • something • 88. Another Look at Nuclear Energy
The site of what is arguably the world?s leading research program in nuclear energy lies just a short drive from the city of Marseille through the picturesque and romantic countryside of southern France. At Cadarache, the Commissariat à l?énergie atomique, the French atomic energy agency, operates a complex of research facilities that is soon to be the home of ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which will be the most advanced and powerful Tokamak fusion reactor ever built. This reactor is being funded by the EU, China, Russia, the United States, and others.
Though famous as the future site of ITER, Cadarache is also soon to be home to one of the world?s most advanced fission reactors. On March 21, engineers began building the advanced Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR), to be used to test and evaluate advanced technologies. It is expected to operate for 50 years.
Work on the JHR is just one more sign of French dominance in the nuclear energy industry. In the United States, where nuclear energy technology was invented, only 19.4 percent of electricity is supplied by nuclear power plants. In France, by comparison, 78.5 percent of electricity is generated by nuclear power. The situation is much the same in other European nations. Lithuania, Slovakia, and Belgium all generate more than half of their electricity using nuclear power. Other nations producing more than 40 percent of their electricity using nuclear power include Ukraine, Sweden, Bulgaria, Armenia, and Slovenia. Meanwhile, a growing list of nations, including Russia, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and India, have nuclear power plants under construction.
Notably absent from that list is the United States. Hamstrung by irrational fears, miles of red tape, and onerous bureaucratic regulatory obstacles, no new domestic nuclear power plants have been ordered and built in America for over 30 years, even though the United States has the largest per capita demand for energy. The resulting lack of new nuclear capacity in the face of rising energy demand brings on short-term and long-term consequences. Short-term problems caused by a lack of electrical capacity include rolling blackouts, disruptions in daily life like stopped elevators, non-working traffic signals, loss of refrigerated products, etc. Among long-term problems we face rising electrical costs, termination of marginal industries, and no industrial expansion, among many, many others. Those consequences are entirely unnecessary because nuclear power provides an economical and safe method of producing abundant electricity.
Energy Options
Though alternative energy options like solar and wind power continue to get favorable press, their large drawbacks limit their practicality. Both are inefficient and subject to environmental disruptions. Cloudy days substantially reduce output from solar ?farms,? and wind power is subject to the vagaries of the weather. Moreover, vast swaths of territory must be covered with solar panels and parabolic mirrors or windmills in order to generate large amounts of power. In southern California, for instance, Stirling Energy Systems is building a 500-megawatt solar installation that, according to Wired magazine, is expected to cover 4,500 acres of land with 20,000 large, dish-shaped mirrors.
The only really viable alternatives for future large-scale generation lie with the four technologies that already provide the bulk of the nation?s power: hydropower, natural gas, nuclear, and coal. Of those, hydropower, providing 6.5 percent of U.S. electricity, has already peaked, and is likely to undergo a slow decline in usage in the future as smaller dams are dismantled to restore the natural course of some rivers. That leaves natural gas, coal, and nuclear power as options.
While natural gas has been highly touted as an energy source because it is considered a relatively clean fuel and because gas plants are relatively inexpensive to build, gas is an unlikely candidate for future large-scale power generation. During the 1990s, construction of gas-fired plants, which now provide 18.7 percent of U.S. electricity, increased because of relatively low fuel prices. In recent years, however, natural gas prices have increased substantially.
Moreover, domestic gas supplies are likely to be insufficient to support long-term expansions in gas-fired generation, even if domestic gas production increases. A recent study by Canada?s National Energy Board concluded: ?Production increases alone are not sufficient to meet the projected future requirements for natural-gas demand, including power generation. Consequently, any increases in demand for gas-fired generation would necessitate a reduction in gas consumption by other consumers and the development of further sources of gas supply.? Those other sources of supply would be foreign, most likely Russian, sources. Already Europe is dependent on Russian gas and in each of the last two years faced supply disruptions at the hands of the Kremlin.
Gas isn?t going away any time soon, but it is clearly not the best solution to the nation?s long term need for energy. Coal, which already provides almost 50 percent of U.S. electricity, is a better option because the United States holds the world?s largest reserves of the fuel. But even coal " though it will remain a useful fuel far into the future " fares poorly in comparison to nuclear energy.
Not far from my home, one nearby road crosses a rail line that leads to a coal-fired plant. As with most rail lines, trains here seem to be synchronized to run at times of maximum inconvenience. Most of these trains on this line are known as ?unit trains,? consisting of an engine or two plus one hundred 90-ton coal cars. It takes all the coal hauled by one of these trains to fuel a typical 1,000-megawatt generating plant for a single day! And even though the coal itself is cheap at the mouth of the mine, transportation costs mount substantially by the time the unit train reaches a power plant. According to the University of Wyoming, ?Coal at the mine mouth is about $5 per ton. By the time it gets to Illinois, the cost is $30 per ton. A train load of coal is worth $50,000 when it leaves the mine. When it pulls into the power plant in Chicago it is worth $300,000! For the user, up to 80% of the cost of the coal is in the transportation.?
The Nuclear Option
Even though coal remains an attractive option, nuclear energy is far superior. For one thing, despite the bad press it gets, nuclear is safer. No one in the United States has died as a result of nuclear-power generation. That can?t be said for coal. Historically, more than 100 lives have been lost annually at train crossings owing to coal-hauling unit trains.
Those tragic accidents are examples of the numerous accidents related to fossil-fuel energy generation that claim many lives each year. According to scientist and acclaimed science-fiction author Ben Bova, ?If you count up the number of people killed in coal mine disasters or oil well accidents and the wars being fought over oil, nuclear power looks positively benign. Then there are the natural gas and propane explosions that kill hundreds each year and destroy millions of dollars? worth of property.?
Finally, and far worse still if we are to believe the Environmental Protection Agency (a practice to be carefully considered), coal-fired plants in the United States annually cause 24,000 early deaths " including 2,800 from lung cancer. According to the EPA, emissions of fine particle pollution (or soot) resulted in an average loss of 14 years of life for the victims, along with 38,200 non-fatal heart attacks and 534,000 asthma attacks each year. (For more on concerns about radiation and the safety of nuclear energy, see article "Myths About Nuclear Energy.")
All things being equal, the economics of energy production also favor nuclear energy over coal. Instead of the 100 or so train cars of coal it takes to run the average coal plant each day, nuclear energy uses a comparatively tiny amount of uranium for fuel, making nuclear energy very efficient by comparison. The relatively tiny fuel requirements of nuclear power plants result in operational cost savings, and new technology developed by a private team of scientists in Australia and leased to General Electric promises to reduce costs even more.
Presently, nuclear fuel is commonly enriched by a clumsy process using centrifuge technology, but the Australian team has found a way to enrich uranium much more efficiently using lasers. ?The technology, said Michael Goldsworthy, a nuclear scientist and leader of the project, may halve enrichment costs, which he estimated accounted for 30 percent of the price of nuclear fuel,? the Sydney Morning Herald reported on May 27, 2006.
The power stored in uranium fuel boggles the mind. Suppose you have in your hand a penny-sized piece of the uranium isotope U235. It would seem strangely heavy because its density is more than 2.5 times that of the metal in a modern penny. An enormous amount of energy is pent up in the disc, but it is not hot " either thermally or radioactively. With a half-life of over 700 million years it gives up its radioactivity gradually, (A half-life is the amount of time it takes for a radioactive substance to give up half of its radiation.) and being an ?alpha emitter,? its radiation is too weak to penetrate your skin. You could wear it as a necklace your entire life without any danger.
Let?s further suppose you are Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average living in the Midwest. The average amount of heat energy necessary to heat your house through the snowy days and clear, still, cold Iowa nights from October to March is 80 million BTUs " the BTU being a measure of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. Not only would the energy stored in that penny-sized bit of uranium be enough to heat your house for one heating season, it would be enough to heat the average house for more than six years! In fact, a single pickup load of U235 has the equivalent energy of the coal carried in 36,500 large coal cars.
Today, most existing nuclear power plants require uranium fuel that is comprised of about 3 percent U235, with the balance being the more abundant U238 isotope. All told, it takes just six truckloads of uranium to power a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor for a year.
Breeder Reactors
Clearly, uranium is a much more efficient source of energy than coal. More advanced technologies that are available now compound that efficiency. According to the Hyperphysics archive developed by Georgia State University physics professor Carl R. Nave, ?Under appropriate operating conditions, the neutrons given off by fission reactions can ?breed? more fuel from otherwise non-fissionable isotopes.? The right type of reactor can take advantage of this phenomenon in order to generate more fuel while it is operating.
According to Professor Nave, a so-called fast-breeder reactor ?can produce about 20% more fuel than it consumes by the breeding reaction. Enough excess fuel is produced over about 20 years to fuel another such reactor. Optimum breeding allows about 75% of the energy of the natural uranium to be used compared to 1% in the standard light water reactor.? That is, the same amount of raw fuel could yield 75 times as much energy as it does now!
Split More Atoms
Because nuclear fuel contains such a tremendous amount of energy, incurs relatively little in the way of transportation and fuel costs, and currently is used in reactors built decades ago, electricity generated from that fuel in existing reactors is incredibly cheap. In measurements of economic efficiency that take into account production costs, current U.S. nuclear plants come out on top when compared to coal, natural gas, and petroleum. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, ?In 2005, nuclear power had the lowest production cost of the major sources of electricity, with production cost of 1.72 cents/kWh. Coal had a cost of 2.21 cents/kWh, natural gas 7.51 cents/kWh, and petroleum 8.09 cents/kWh.?
The low cost comes from the fact that the initial costs of construction for most existing reactors have long since been recovered. Moreover, new nuclear-power plants carry an initial price tag that is competitive with the cost of new coal-fired plants. The Associated Press reported on March 21 that Duke Energy Corp. ?estimated it would cost $1.53 billion to build a single coal-fired power unit at its Cliffside power plant in western North Carolina.? That plant would generate 800 megawatts. By comparison, in 1996 General Electric signed a $1.8 billion contract to build an advanced boiling-water nuclear reactor in Taiwan. Under the terms of that contract, GE even agreed to supply the fuel for the 1,350 megawatt facility. Today, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a similar plant of 1,450 megawatts ?could be built in the U.S. for $1,445 per kilowatt.? That works out to approximately $2.1 billion in construction costs. Figured on a per kilowatt basis, Duke Energy?s proposed coal facility will cost $1,912 per kilowatt to build. In other words, at present a reactor can be built in the United States for less money than it takes to build a coal-fired plant.
And imagine how much less expensive reactor construction would be if more than a decade?s worth of regulatory obstacles were removed from the path of future nuclear construction. Construction of the Watt Bar 1 nuclear plant in Tennessee was started in 1973 and the plant went on-line in February 1996. Nearly 23 years. (This plant, incidentally, set the record of 512 days of continuous operation without refueling or any maintenance downtime.) Meanwhile in China, according to World Nuclear News, Westinghouse is building four ?AP1000 third-generation nuclear power reactors.? From start to finish, construction of those plants is expected to take only four years.
As good as existing designs have been, the new ones are even better. The major U.S. players have new passive reactor designs that take advantage of natural convection and gravity to provide cooling without the necessity of pumps. The Westinghouse AP1000 reactors that are to be built in China are expected to cost only $1,200 per kilowatt installed and have robust safety features. General Electric has developed their ESBWR (the Economic & Simplified Boiling Water Reactor) with similar safety features and economic advantages. European, Asian, and South African developers have offerings that may advance their technologies over those of the United States.
One of the more noteworthy is Toshiba?s 4S (Super Safe, Small and Simple) reactor that is buried in the ground, requires no operator, and provides 10 megawatts of electricity for 30 years without refueling. After 15 years, the neutron reflectors will have to be rotated; otherwise no maintenance is necessary. Toshiba has offered a 4S reactor to the town of Galena, Alaska, at no charge except for the fuel, which would cost less than one-third what the town now pays for diesel fuel. It?s a great deal that, like most nuclear plants, is hamstrung by the cost of paperwork. The next step for this village of 675 souls is to come up with $20,000,000 to pay for an environmental impact statement.
The future is bright for nuclear power. The big question is: will the future be bright for an America that abandons nuclear power? Low-cost energy is essential for the future of all Americans. Climbing energy costs weaken the competitiveness of American industry on the world market. Traditionally, Americans have enjoyed cheap, plentiful power, and that has helped give American industry a competitive edge and led to higher standards of living. Nuclear energy, an American invention, can help keep it that way for decades to come.
It is not too late for U.S. utilities to switch from coal and gas to nuclear power. They did it in France, according to PBS Frontline, when the thought of dependence on foreign fuel sources proved intolerable. ?A popular French riposte to the question of why they have so much nuclear energy is ?no oil, no gas, no coal, no choice,?? Frontline reported. And it worked. According to Frontline, ?Today, nuclear energy is an everyday thing in France.? In matters of nuclear power at least, it?s about time for America to follow the French example.
Ed Hiserodt is the author of Under-Exposed: What If Radiation Is Really Good for You?
An Achilles? Heel for Nuclear Energy?
By Dennis Behreandt
It doesn?t take very much fuel to run a nuclear reactor. And that is a very good thing these days because after decades of neglect, the nuclear-energy industry may be facing a fuel shortage. According to some analysts, because no new reactors have been ordered in the United States for over 30 years, there was less perceived need for the development of new sources of uranium ore. Instead of developing new sources, plants relied on supplies in existing commercial and government inventories. As a result, just as the world is considering moving back to nuclear energy in a big way, the industry may be facing a fuel shortage.
Fortunately, rising prices have spurred interest in uranium mining, and mines that once were closed when uranium was selling at $9 per pound in 2001 are being brought back into operation now that uranium prices are expected to hit $110 per pound. In addition, with possibly millions of dollars to be had, there is a rush to find new sources. ?There?s a lot of staking going on,? prospector Mike Shumway told the International Herald Tribune on March 28. ?It?s like the gold rush.?
U.S. reserves are not limitless, but there is uranium to be had. According to Australia?s Uranium Information Centre, world reserves stand at 4.7 million tons. According to the UIC, that?s ?enough to last for some 70 years.? That doesn?t seem like much fuel, but existing technologies can extend that supply almost indefinitely. The answer, according to physicist Bernard Cohen, is the breeder reactor. In his 1990 book The Nuclear Energy Option, Cohen pointed out: ?A breeder reactor not only generates electricity, but it produces its own plutonium fuel with extra to spare.? The result, says Cohen, is a fuel supply that ?will last for thousands of years.? Additionally, thorium, which is more abundant than uranium, can be bred into fissile U233 and should take care of things till the sun goes out. Sleep well.Related: • Another • Look • at • Nuclear • Energy 89. Geothermal Resources Council (Geothermal Heat Pump) Encourages worldwide research and development on geothermal energy resources and utilization. Calendar of events, workshops, membership information, publications, related links and other information.A&A Companies offers Geothermal heating and air conditioning solutions in Delaware and Maryland. Companies (Click buttons below) More Information A&A Geothermal, Inc. Heating and CoolingInformation on renewable energy, including wind and solar power; nuclear-power safety issues and Introduction. Heat from the earth can be used as an energy source in many ways, from large and Most people do not realize that with new construction, geothermal heating, cooling & hot water can be installed for less money than a conventional system when you consider the monthly costs associated Geothermal energy is a form of renewable energy derived from heat deep in the earth s crust.Geothermal Heat Pumps. Word is getting out, and TVA s Large Commercial Marketing Manager, Bill Stalker, is a busy man these days. As soon as a system is installed at a school Geothermal Energy. Have you ever seen pictures of a volcano or a geyser? If so, then you ve seen geothermal energy in action! Related: • Geothermal • Resources • Council • Geothermal • Heat • Pump 90. How Wind Energy Works (Wind guage) Information on renewable energy, including wind and solar power; nuclear-power safety issues and Harnessing the wind is one of the cleanest, most sustainable ways to generate electricity.Wind Market . Executives . News . Links . Employment . Contact . Investor 6305 Carpinteria Ave., Suite 300, Carpinteria, CA 93013 Tel: 805-899-9199 Fax: 805-899-1115 Roof Wind Designer is intended to provide users with an easy-to-use means for accurately determining roof systems design wind loads for many commonly encountered building types that are subject NASA, Intelligent Systems Division at Ames Research Center 05.12.2006 - World Wind 1.3.5 The World Wind Team is pleased to announce the release of World Wind 1 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for GameCube - GameSpot offers reviews, previews cheats and more The Wind Waker is a strong achievement in every way, from its stunning graphical presentation Income Statement: Quarterly (Jan '07) Annual (2007) Annual (2006) Total Revenue: 76.07 285.30 266.32 Gross Profit: 59.05 220.44 208.93 Operating Income -1.66 -5.04 23.89Manufacturer of the Jacobs wind turbines. They are an upwind, horizontal axis. There are five models available: 10 kw to 20 kw. Renewable Energy, Solar and Wind Home Power Systems, Energy Efficiency Equipment, Appliances, Direct Wind Power has a versatility of uses. The wind turbines below are used worldwide for battery Serving the communities of Dubois, Hudson, Lander, Riverton and Shoshoni. Related: • How • Wind • Energy • Works • Wind • guage 91. Laughing all the (Bond prices) way to the tank Times Online - The AA predicts that petrol prices will hit a record high of 1 a litre this summer bad news for motorists already reeling from Budget increases to fuel duty and road tax. With the Chancellor determined to squeeze polluters , savvy Seattle Post Intelligencer - PHOENIX -- Faded copper boomtowns in the Pinal Mountains, 85 miles east of Phoenix, are about to boom again. Soaring copper prices have companies scrambling to open new mines in the mineral-rich Globe-Miami Mining District or restart older operations Boston Globe - LOS ANGELES -- Thomas Properties Group Inc., which develops and manages multifamily, office and retail real estate, said Friday it priced its public offering of 8 million shares at $16 each. Originally, seven million shares were to be sold. The USA Today - Her electric bill, which used to be about $800 a month, has jumped to $1,800. She's shut down a large freezer of frozen treats and now closes the store an hour early to cut costs but fears she still may have to raise prices and lay off some workers Street.Com - The futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the Forbes - SINGAPORE (XFN-ASIA) - Oil prices were mixed in Asian trading hours in a market driven by healthy fundamentals and a focus on US refineries' return to production, traders said. At 11.36 am here (0336 GMT), the New York Mercantile Exchange's main oil CNN Money - LONDON (Reuters) -- U.S. crude prices fell nearly a dollar Thursday, but benchmark Brent crude rose for a second day on renewed concern over Iran's nuclear program. Benchmark U.S. declined 91 cents to $62.22, pushed lower by news that Enbridge had Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - The launch of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in platinum is set to upset a fragile market balance and prices, already supported by strong industrial demand, are bound to hit new record highs, analysts say. Prices jumped this week USA Today - BAGHDAD At the al-Hurriya gas station in Baghdad recently, the line was advancing so slowly that some drivers just pushed their cars along instead of running the engine and wasting fuel. Taxi driver Mohammed Khlaif Auwaid, 32, said he had been in San Diego Union-Tribune - CHARLOTTE, N.C. Steelmaker and scrap metal recycler Nucor Corp. said Thursday that its first quarter earnings increased 4 percent as strong metal prices offset lower production. While steel production fell 4 percent from the year-ago period, the Related: • Laughing • all • the • Bond • prices • way • to • the • tank 92. The New American Magazine: Another Look at Nuclear Energy
The site of what is arguably the world?s leading research program in nuclear energy lies just a short drive from the city of Marseille through the picturesque and romantic countryside of southern France. At Cadarache, the Commissariat à l?énergie atomique, the French atomic energy agency, operates a complex of research facilities that is soon to be the home of ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which will be the most advanced and powerful Tokamak fusion reactor ever built. This reactor is being funded by the EU, China, Russia, the United States, and others.
Though famous as the future site of ITER, Cadarache is also soon to be home to one of the world?s most advanced fission reactors. On March 21, engineers began building the advanced Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR), to be used to test and evaluate advanced technologies. It is expected to operate for 50 years.
Work on the JHR is just one more sign of French dominance in the nuclear energy industry. In the United States, where nuclear energy technology was invented, only 19.4 percent of electricity is supplied by nuclear power plants. In France, by comparison, 78.5 percent of electricity is generated by nuclear power. The situation is much the same in other European nations. Lithuania, Slovakia, and Belgium all generate more than half of their electricity using nuclear power. Other nations producing more than 40 percent of their electricity using nuclear power include Ukraine, Sweden, Bulgaria, Armenia, and Slovenia. Meanwhile, a growing list of nations, including Russia, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and India, have nuclear power plants under construction.
Notably absent from that list is the United States. Hamstrung by irrational fears, miles of red tape, and onerous bureaucratic regulatory obstacles, no new domestic nuclear power plants have been ordered and built in America for over 30 years, even though the United States has the largest per capita demand for energy. The resulting lack of new nuclear capacity in the face of rising energy demand brings on short-term and long-term consequences. Short-term problems caused by a lack of electrical capacity include rolling blackouts, disruptions in daily life like stopped elevators, non-working traffic signals, loss of refrigerated products, etc. Among long-term problems we face rising electrical costs, termination of marginal industries, and no industrial expansion, among many, many others. Those consequences are entirely unnecessary because nuclear power provides an economical and safe method of producing abundant electricity.
Energy Options
Though alternative energy options like solar and wind power continue to get favorable press, their large drawbacks limit their practicality. Both are inefficient and subject to environmental disruptions. Cloudy days substantially reduce output from solar ?farms,? and wind power is subject to the vagaries of the weather. Moreover, vast swaths of territory must be covered with solar panels and parabolic mirrors or windmills in order to generate large amounts of power. In southern California, for instance, Stirling Energy Systems is building a 500-megawatt solar installation that, according to Wired magazine, is expected to cover 4,500 acres of land with 20,000 large, dish-shaped mirrors.
The only really viable alternatives for future large-scale generation lie with the four technologies that already provide the bulk of the nation?s power: hydropower, natural gas, nuclear, and coal. Of those, hydropower, providing 6.5 percent of U.S. electricity, has already peaked, and is likely to undergo a slow decline in usage in the future as smaller dams are dismantled to restore the natural course of some rivers. That leaves natural gas, coal, and nuclear power as options.
While natural gas has been highly touted as an energy source because it is considered a relatively clean fuel and because gas plants are relatively inexpensive to build, gas is an unlikely candidate for future large-scale power generation. During the 1990s, construction of gas-fired plants, which now provide 18.7 percent of U.S. electricity, increased because of relatively low fuel prices. In recent years, however, natural gas prices have increased substantially.
Moreover, domestic gas supplies are likely to be insufficient to support long-term expansions in gas-fired generation, even if domestic gas production increases. A recent study by Canada?s National Energy Board concluded: ?Production increases alone are not sufficient to meet the projected future requirements for natural-gas demand, including power generation. Consequently, any increases in demand for gas-fired generation would necessitate a reduction in gas consumption by other consumers and the development of further sources of gas supply.? Those other sources of supply would be foreign, most likely Russian, sources. Already Europe is dependent on Russian gas and in each of the last two years faced supply disruptions at the hands of the Kremlin.
Gas isn?t going away any time soon, but it is clearly not the best solution to the nation?s long term need for energy. Coal, which already provides almost 50 percent of U.S. electricity, is a better option because the United States holds the world?s largest reserves of the fuel. But even coal " though it will remain a useful fuel far into the future " fares poorly in comparison to nuclear energy.
Not far from my home, one nearby road crosses a rail line that leads to a coal-fired plant. As with most rail lines, trains here seem to be synchronized to run at times of maximum inconvenience. Most of these trains on this line are known as ?unit trains,? consisting of an engine or two plus one hundred 90-ton coal cars. It takes all the coal hauled by one of these trains to fuel a typical 1,000-megawatt generating plant for a single day! And even though the coal itself is cheap at the mouth of the mine, transportation costs mount substantially by the time the unit train reaches a power plant. According to the University of Wyoming, ?Coal at the mine mouth is about $5 per ton. By the time it gets to Illinois, the cost is $30 per ton. A train load of coal is worth $50,000 when it leaves the mine. When it pulls into the power plant in Chicago it is worth $300,000! For the user, up to 80% of the cost of the coal is in the transportation.?
The Nuclear Option
Even though coal remains an attractive option, nuclear energy is far superior. For one thing, despite the bad press it gets, nuclear is safer. No one in the United States has died as a result of nuclear-power generation. That can?t be said for coal. Historically, more than 100 lives have been lost annually at train crossings owing to coal-hauling unit trains.
Those tragic accidents are examples of the numerous accidents related to fossil-fuel energy generation that claim many lives each year. According to scientist and acclaimed science-fiction author Ben Bova, ?If you count up the number of people killed in coal mine disasters or oil well accidents and the wars being fought over oil, nuclear power looks positively benign. Then there are the natural gas and propane explosions that kill hundreds each year and destroy millions of dollars? worth of property.?
Finally, and far worse still if we are to believe the Environmental Protection Agency (a practice to be carefully considered), coal-fired plants in the United States annually cause 24,000 early deaths " including 2,800 from lung cancer. According to the EPA, emissions of fine particle pollution (or soot) resulted in an average loss of 14 years of life for the victims, along with 38,200 non-fatal heart attacks and 534,000 asthma attacks each year. (For more on concerns about radiation and the safety of nuclear energy, see article "Myths About Nuclear Energy.")
All things being equal, the economics of energy production also favor nuclear energy over coal. Instead of the 100 or so train cars of coal it takes to run the average coal plant each day, nuclear energy uses a comparatively tiny amount of uranium for fuel, making nuclear energy very efficient by comparison. The relatively tiny fuel requirements of nuclear power plants result in operational cost savings, and new technology developed by a private team of scientists in Australia and leased to General Electric promises to reduce costs even more.
Presently, nuclear fuel is commonly enriched by a clumsy process using centrifuge technology, but the Australian team has found a way to enrich uranium much more efficiently using lasers. ?The technology, said Michael Goldsworthy, a nuclear scientist and leader of the project, may halve enrichment costs, which he estimated accounted for 30 percent of the price of nuclear fuel,? the Sydney Morning Herald reported on May 27, 2006.
The power stored in uranium fuel boggles the mind. Suppose you have in your hand a penny-sized piece of the uranium isotope U235. It would seem strangely heavy because its density is more than 2.5 times that of the metal in a modern penny. An enormous amount of energy is pent up in the disc, but it is not hot " either thermally or radioactively. With a half-life of over 700 million years it gives up its radioactivity gradually, (A half-life is the amount of time it takes for a radioactive substance to give up half of its radiation.) and being an ?alpha emitter,? its radiation is too weak to penetrate your skin. You could wear it as a necklace your entire life without any danger.
Let?s further suppose you are Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average living in the Midwest. The average amount of heat energy necessary to heat your house through the snowy days and clear, still, cold Iowa nights from October to March is 80 million BTUs " the BTU being a measure of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. Not only would the energy stored in that penny-sized bit of uranium be enough to heat your house for one heating season, it would be enough to heat the average house for more than six years! In fact, a single pickup load of U235 has the equivalent energy of the coal carried in 36,500 large coal cars.
Today, most existing nuclear power plants require uranium fuel that is comprised of about 3 percent U235, with the balance being the more abundant U238 isotope. All told, it takes just six truckloads of uranium to power a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor for a year.
Breeder Reactors
Clearly, uranium is a much more efficient source of energy than coal. More advanced technologies that are available now compound that efficiency. According to the Hyperphysics archive developed by Georgia State University physics professor Carl R. Nave, ?Under appropriate operating conditions, the neutrons given off by fission reactions can ?breed? more fuel from otherwise non-fissionable isotopes.? The right type of reactor can take advantage of this phenomenon in order to generate more fuel while it is operating.
According to Professor Nave, a so-called fast-breeder reactor ?can produce about 20% more fuel than it consumes by the breeding reaction. Enough excess fuel is produced over about 20 years to fuel another such reactor. Optimum breeding allows about 75% of the energy of the natural uranium to be used compared to 1% in the standard light water reactor.? That is, the same amount of raw fuel could yield 75 times as much energy as it does now!
Split More Atoms
Because nuclear fuel contains such a tremendous amount of energy, incurs relatively little in the way of transportation and fuel costs, and currently is used in reactors built decades ago, electricity generated from that fuel in existing reactors is incredibly cheap. In measurements of economic efficiency that take into account production costs, current U.S. nuclear plants come out on top when compared to coal, natural gas, and petroleum. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, ?In 2005, nuclear power had the lowest production cost of the major sources of electricity, with production cost of 1.72 cents/kWh. Coal had a cost of 2.21 cents/kWh, natural gas 7.51 cents/kWh, and petroleum 8.09 cents/kWh.?
The low cost comes from the fact that the initial costs of construction for most existing reactors have long since been recovered. Moreover, new nuclear-power plants carry an initial price tag that is competitive with the cost of new coal-fired plants. The Associated Press reported on March 21 that Duke Energy Corp. ?estimated it would cost $1.53 billion to build a single coal-fired power unit at its Cliffside power plant in western North Carolina.? That plant would generate 800 megawatts. By comparison, in 1996 General Electric signed a $1.8 billion contract to build an advanced boiling-water nuclear reactor in Taiwan. Under the terms of that contract, GE even agreed to supply the fuel for the 1,350 megawatt facility. Today, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a similar plant of 1,450 megawatts ?could be built in the U.S. for $1,445 per kilowatt.? That works out to approximately $2.1 billion in construction costs. Figured on a per kilowatt basis, Duke Energy?s proposed coal facility will cost $1,912 per kilowatt to build. In other words, at present a reactor can be built in the United States for less money than it takes to build a coal-fired plant.
And imagine how much less expensive reactor construction would be if more than a decade?s worth of regulatory obstacles were removed from the path of future nuclear construction. Construction of the Watt Bar 1 nuclear plant in Tennessee was started in 1973 and the plant went on-line in February 1996. Nearly 23 years. (This plant, incidentally, set the record of 512 days of continuous operation without refueling or any maintenance downtime.) Meanwhile in China, according to World Nuclear News, Westinghouse is building four ?AP1000 third-generation nuclear power reactors.? From start to finish, construction of those plants is expected to take only four years.
As good as existing designs have been, the new ones are even better. The major U.S. players have new passive reactor designs that take advantage of natural convection and gravity to provide cooling without the necessity of pumps. The Westinghouse AP1000 reactors that are to be built in China are expected to cost only $1,200 per kilowatt installed and have robust safety features. General Electric has developed their ESBWR (the Economic & Simplified Boiling Water Reactor) with similar safety features and economic advantages. European, Asian, and South African developers have offerings that may advance their technologies over those of the United States.
One of the more noteworthy is Toshiba?s 4S (Super Safe, Small and Simple) reactor that is buried in the ground, requires no operator, and provides 10 megawatts of electricity for 30 years without refueling. After 15 years, the neutron reflectors will have to be rotated; otherwise no maintenance is necessary. Toshiba has offered a 4S reactor to the town of Galena, Alaska, at no charge except for the fuel, which would cost less than one-third what the town now pays for diesel fuel. It?s a great deal that, like most nuclear plants, is hamstrung by the cost of paperwork. The next step for this village of 675 souls is to come up with $20,000,000 to pay for an environmental impact statement.
The future is bright for nuclear power. The big question is: will the future be bright for an America that abandons nuclear power? Low-cost energy is essential for the future of all Americans. Climbing energy costs weaken the competitiveness of American industry on the world market. Traditionally, Americans have enjoyed cheap, plentiful power, and that has helped give American industry a competitive edge and led to higher standards of living. Nuclear energy, an American invention, can help keep it that way for decades to come.
It is not too late for U.S. utilities to switch from coal and gas to nuclear power. They did it in France, according to PBS Frontline, when the thought of dependence on foreign fuel sources proved intolerable. ?A popular French riposte to the question of why they have so much nuclear energy is ?no oil, no gas, no coal, no choice,?? Frontline reported. And it worked. According to Frontline, ?Today, nuclear energy is an everyday thing in France.? In matters of nuclear power at least, it?s about time for America to follow the French example.
Ed Hiserodt is the author of Under-Exposed: What If Radiation Is Really Good for You?
An Achilles? Heel for Nuclear Energy?
By Dennis Behreandt
It doesn?t take very much fuel to run a nuclear reactor. And that is a very good thing these days because after decades of neglect, the nuclear-energy industry may be facing a fuel shortage. According to some analysts, because no new reactors have been ordered in the United States for over 30 years, there was less perceived need for the development of new sources of uranium ore. Instead of developing new sources, plants relied on supplies in existing commercial and government inventories. As a result, just as the world is considering moving back to nuclear energy in a big way, the industry may be facing a fuel shortage.
Fortunately, rising prices have spurred interest in uranium mining, and mines that once were closed when uranium was selling at $9 per pound in 2001 are being brought back into operation now that uranium prices are expected to hit $110 per pound. In addition, with possibly millions of dollars to be had, there is a rush to find new sources. ?There?s a lot of staking going on,? prospector Mike Shumway told the International Herald Tribune on March 28. ?It?s like the gold rush.?
U.S. reserves are not limitless, but there is uranium to be had. According to Australia?s Uranium Information Centre, world reserves stand at 4.7 million tons. According to the UIC, that?s ?enough to last for some 70 years.? That doesn?t seem like much fuel, but existing technologies can extend that supply almost indefinitely. The answer, according to physicist Bernard Cohen, is the breeder reactor. In his 1990 book The Nuclear Energy Option, Cohen pointed out: ?A breeder reactor not only generates electricity, but it produces its own plutonium fuel with extra to spare.? The result, says Cohen, is a fuel supply that ?will last for thousands of years.? Additionally, thorium, which is more abundant than uranium, can be bred into fissile U233 and should take care of things till the sun goes out. Sleep well.Related: • The • New • American • Magazine • Another • Look • at • Nuclear • Energy 93. That was the crux of it
That was the crux of it. The plutonium bomb, from a militarystandpoint, was as obsolete as the flintlock musket had been at thetime of the Second World War. He reviewed, quickly, the history ofweapons-development since the beginning of the Atomic Era. Theemphasis, since the end of the Second World War, had all been onnuclear weapons and rocket-missiles. There had been the H-bomb, itselfobsolescent, and the Bethe-cyle bomb, and the subneutron bomb, and theomega-ray bomb, and the nega-matter bomb, and then the end ofcivilization in the Northern Hemisphere and the rise of the newcivilization in South America and South Africa and Australia. Today,the small-arms and artillery his troops were using were merely slightrefinements on the weapons of the First Century, and all the modernnuclear weapons used by the Terran Federation were produced at theSpace Navy base on Mars, by a small force of experts whose skills werealmost as closed to the general scientific and technical world as thesecrets of a medieval guild. The old A-bomb was an historicalcuriosity, and there was nobody on Uller who had more than a layman?sknowledge of the intricate technology of modern nuclear weapons. Therewere plenty of good nuclear-power engineers on Gongonk Island, but howlong would it take them to design and build a plutonium bomb?Related: • That • was • the • crux • of • it 94. India has China in its range
written by: Siddharth Srivastava, 13-Apr-07
NEW DELHI - Even as India celebrates the successful test-firing on Thursday of its home-grown Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missile - capable of delivering a 1.5-tonne nuclear or conventional payload over much of Asia - officials admit that the test had the tacit approval of the United States.
The US is striving to build India as a strategic counterweight to China, along with Japan and Australia.
Last May, during a period of frenzied negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal with Washington, New Delhi postponed testing of the Agni-III so as not to invite the ire of nuclear hawks in the US Congress, which was deliberating the nuclear pact that now stands approved.
According to reports last year, Washington put pressure on New Delhi to agree to a future moratorium on testing of dual-use missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload and testing another atomic bomb as a quid pro quo for the civilian nuclear deal.
India, however, rejected such a commitment as a back-door entry to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has not signed the CTBT as it feels that the treaty came into existence after those who possessed nuclear weapons had developed the know-how.
Strategic equations have obviously changed now, with a combination of business interests, India?s record as a responsible democratic nation, and the China factor coming into play.
Agni-III, given its range of 3,000 kilometers, has been specifically designed to build a minimum nuclear deterrence against China, with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai very much in the radar. Agni-III is said to possess a high degree of accuracy with a medium-to-large nuclear payload.
Beijing reacted immediately to the Indian firing, saying it hoped that India, ?as a country with an important influence in this region, can work to maintain and promote peace and stability in the region?. Indian officials have said Agni-III is not China-centric, but an effort to build overall security.
India, of course, has traditional rival Pakistan already covered via its Agni-I (700-800km range) and Agni-II (2,000km-plus range) missiles that are now being inducted into the armed forces. As per the agreed norms, New Delhi informed Islamabad about Agni-III prior to the test.
Not to be undone, Pakistan, with help from China and North Korea, is in the process of inducting the nuclear-capable Shaheen-II missile, tested for the first time in March 2004, which can strike Indian targets over a range of 2,000km.
Apart from gaining more security muscle in the region, the success of Agni-III is significant on other counts. The maiden test of Agni-III failed last July 9, so Indian scientists had to work on the technical glitches.
The Agni is one of five missiles that have been developed by India. The others are the short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi, the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), the multi-purpose Akash (Sky) and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra) missile.
Other benefits It would seem that India is also now reasonably sure of its acceptance as a nuclear exception among the global community that will allow it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the international market. Indian efforts have now moved to turning around nations that form part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with success on this count. India needs approval from the NSG so that it can implement its nuclear agreement with the US.
Heavyweights France, the United Kingdom and Canada have already backed the deal. The business potential and diplomatic efforts have had important countries such as China and Australia rethink their approach. Those two countries have hinted that they will not be averse to doing nuclear business with India. Russia has already chalked out its nuclear-power engagement with India.
South Africa and Brazil have been co-opted by promises of New Delhi?s support in securing business deals and expertise in software and information technology.
Japan has been difficult, but Indian officials are sure that given the massive business opportunities, especially in software to upgrade Japanese companies, and extensive diplomatic efforts, Japan will come around and has already considerably softened its stand. Tokyo is pretty much clued into a US-India-Japan ?axis of democracy? to counter the might of China.
Thus the timing of the Agni-III test seems to be right. Politically, the Congress-led New Delhi government has been criticized for being feeble to India?s internal and external security threats, because of repeated terrorist attacks and the need to tread carefully in dealing with Beijing.
Given the ongoing detailed negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the nuclear pact with the US as well the benefits of nuclear power that will flow in times to come, it was only prudent for New Delhi to gain a few political points given the immediacy of electoral politics.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the success of the Agni-III missile is an ?impressive illustration? of India mastering the strategic high technologies to uphold national security.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Published in: Asia Times Related: • India • has • China • in • its • range 95. FAIR Says Nukes Piece Not Last Sunday, "60 Minutes" ran a piece "On How France Is Becoming The Model For Nuclear Energy Generation." Media watchdog group FAIR has objected to the piece on the grounds that it amounted to nuclear-power boosterism. The thrust of the objection was that "60 Minutes" did not provide a balanced argument - that "the program spoke only to nuclear power supporters (in France and elsewhere), thereby allowing their rhetoric to go unchallenged." I asked "60 Minutes" Producer Frank Devine, who produced the piece, to respond to FAIR's complaint. "We were not debating nuclear power in this piece," said Devine. "This was a piece on the French approach. It was not to look at nuclear power, pro or con. God knows we're aware of the shortcomings in nuclear power. [Correspondent] Steve [Kroft] has done two pieces from inside Chernobyl. I worked with him on a piece on security problems at U.S. power plants after Sept. 11." "You really have to look at '60' over the course of 30 whatever years it is," he continued. "We've covered nuclear power from all sides. You have to take this in context." Devine said the piece wasn't initially envisioned as one focused on nuclear power. "We set out to do a piece, years ago, on how the French approach differs from ours," he said. "It developed into a piece on how the French are influencing the U.S. government." As to the argument that CBS News is pushing nuclear power, Devine said "60 Minutes" wasn't pushing anything - just letting "the deputy secretary of energy have his say and asking 'how has the U.S. been influenced by the French nuclear program?'" Related: • FAIR • Says • Nukes • Piece • Not 96. LinkFest 4.22.07
More Power!
That was Friday's exclamation mark on a week that was all upside. This was the 3rd consecutive week of gains for the Dow, with 15 of the past 16 sessions in the green. The Industrials tacked on 2.8%, as ; Caterpillar (CAT) and Honeywell (HON) showed the upside of a weak dollar. The S&P500 added 2.2%. Its less than 3% from its all-time highs of March 2000. The laggards? Technology (Nasdaq gained 1.4%) and small caps (Russell 2000 rose 1.2%). ;
A combination of more M&A activity, better earnings then (lowered) expectations, and perceived modest inflation data were the key reasons given.
Barron's Trader column noted that "why the market climbed isn't nearly as telling as how it climbed. The market's breadth wasn't always convincing, with fewer stocks contributing to this advance than during the February rise. Stocks look stretched in the short term, with the S&P 500 running more than 3.5% ahead of its 30-day moving average." But, they noted, momentum remains to the upside.
The coming week will focus on earnings, and the prelim look at Q1 GDP out on Friday. ;
Given all that, we have lots of good stuff to cover this week. With no further adieu, linkfest:
INVESTING & TRADING
? ; S&P500 is Back in Black for the first time since April 2000
? A profit gusher of epic proportions: ; The grand total: $785 billion, a 29% increase over 2005. Those returns obliterated the previous cyclical peak, $444 billion, achieved in 2000 at the height of the tech explosion. Put simply, American companies are enjoying the most sumptuously profitable period in the 500's 53-year history. Last year post-tax profit margins hit 7.9%. That's 27% higher than the 6.2% posted in 2000, then lauded as exceptional. (Fortune) See also 20 most profitable companies.
? Short Interest Precludes Correction: The record number of short bets has created a floor under the markets. Consider that if you think you are not investing with the herd . . .
? Is the Dow's Recovery a Mere Illusion? The dollar's decline makes the performance of U.S. equities rather less impressive to global investors, especially Europeans, as Barron's Roundtable member Marc Faber has emphasized repeatedly. While the Standard & Poor's 500 was up 15.8% in dollars last year, it gained only about 1.6% when measured in euros. And the S&P 500's 1.6% nominal gain for the first quarter was nil in euro terms. (Barron's)
? 1987 versus 2007?: I keep saying I am not a fan of this parallel, but that doesn't stop Street.com readers from sending me all sorts of charts . . .
? Uranium Contract To Debut on Nymex ; The futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal (Wall Street Journal)
? An Actively Managed ETF?
? Great minds don't think alike about index funds: When John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, introduced the first retail index fund in 1976, he sparked a revolution in investing: Throw out the fund manager, keep costs low, and weight the stocks in the portfolio by their current market value. Today, $3 trillion in pensions and mutual funds are indexed. Now Jeremy Siegel, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and author of Stocks for the Long Run, has reinvented indexing. Since June, his company, WisdomTree, has rolled out more than two dozen funds that are indexed according to a company's earnings or dividends, rather than market capitalization. (USA Today)
? Goldfinger Brown?s £2 billion blunder in the gold bullion market
? Stocks vs. Real Estate: Both real estate and stocks have had their day, but the question you need answered is this: Which contender is the superior long-term bet today? (CNN Money)
? Why Hot Funds Are Tripping Up Some Investors: In recent months, however, some ETFs have begun diverging widely from the performance of the benchmarks they are supposed to follow. At the same time, several newer ETFs with short track records are failing to match the hypothetical rates of return they would have achieved in previous years if they had existed then. (free Wall Street Journal)
? U.S. Dollar Index Breaks Down ; ;
? Mutual fund tax bite at record $24 billion: ; Mutual fund investors got slammed by Uncle Sam in 2006. A report by Lipper, a fund research company, found that shareholders in taxable fund accounts paid at least $23.8 billion in taxes. That figure reflects the impact on investors who simply held their funds and reinvested their distributions - those who sold fund shares during the year would have paid even higher taxes. (CNN Money)
;? Uh-oh -- I don't like the sound of this Tax the Middle-Aged! (Slate) ;
? Fascinating reading: ; All the reporting the WSJ did on the options-backdating scandal ended up winning them a Pulitzer Prize for public service reporting; The Journal moved ALL of their related articles out from behind the sub-only firewall: Pulitzer for Perfect Payday
INTERNATIONAL
? Global Markets Driving the Dow: The rest of the world is carrying the U.S. stock market. Fast-galloping overseas economies, flush world capital markets and a sagging dollar fatten multinationals' earnings and furnish the fuel for commodity-related stocks to surge. (Barron's) If no Barron's, go here.
? China Selloff II: The Attack of the Giant Jitters: For the second time in less than two months, a drop inChinese stock prices rattled markets across Asia and was felt modestly in Europe and the U.S. Investors said Chinese stocks are becoming a measure of their tolerance for risk everywhere. The main factor triggering the fall in the Shanghai Composite Index -- it was down 7% at one point Thursday before finishing with a 4.5% loss -- was concern among Chinese investors that Beijing might move to brake growth in the world's fourth-biggest economy with an interest-rate increase. (free Wall Street Journal)
? Japan's Savers May Be Ready to Spend, Fueling Growth: Japan's penny-pinching savers and earnest salarymen may at last be ready to loosen their purse strings as bank deposits earn more and millions of workers collect retirement windfalls. Economists forecast consumer spending will accelerate this year as demand awakens in the world's second-largest economy after a decade of deflation and stagnant wages. (Bloomberg)
? Overseas investors look at the Shanghai Stock Exchange as a way to gauge the health of the Chinese economy. They really shouldn't. Investor Beware (Portfolio)
? Many Savers, Few Spenders Leave South China Mall Almost Empty: South China Mall stands as a symbol of China's failure to stimulate more spending by its 1.3 billion people and to curb runaway investment in real-estate projects. The results: A record $232.5 billion trade gap with the U.S. and increasing concern about unsustainable growth at home. (Bloomberg) ;
ECONOMY
No Wall. No Worry. No build:
? Why This Isn't Stagflation: For some reason, the word stagflation keeps creeping back into the lexicon. It really shouldn't be. As we have noted for quite some time, we are experiencing a form of "demi-stagflation." ; Growth is below the long term trend, inflation is above. Call it stagflation lite or blahflation, ; but it is not the 10% inflation, 1% growth of the 1970s. So why are so many concerned about stagflation?
? Inflation Confined to Rest-of-the-World, Avoiding U.S.
? The New York Fed hosted a conference on the Euro and the Dollar this week -- most of the presentations will soon be online for your econo-geek viewing pleasure
? March tax receipts in California came up 7.4% short
HOUSING
? Big Drop in LI Luxury Real Estate Prices: Some local regions have already shown drops of 8-12%, according to Zillow.com ; ;
? ; Real estate cheerleader concedes price drop: Satan must be shoveling snow out of his driveway, because the underworld has frozen over. By that I mean that the National Association of Realtors has finally conceded that home prices are falling nationwide. (San Diego Union Tribune)
? Industrial Real Estate is Booming
? How did a strawberry picker earning $15,000 a year qualify for a loan of $720,000?? (San Francisco Gate)
? Still Renting: Based on the current outlook for housing, I will likely be renting for one to two more years. While many factors that influence housing prices have turned negative, I suspect we have not yet hit bottom. In fact, housing prices should head lower throughout the rest of this year and next year as well (PIMCO)
? How to Sell Your House (CNN Money);
SENTIMENT/PSYCHOLOGY
? ; Genuinely contrarian: How to tell when "good" news really isn't " and act accordingly. (Marketwatch)
? The hardest trade to make right now? Shorting: Cody Willard had an intriguing post on shorting into strength Friday: (If no RM, then see The Hardest Trade to Make?)
? ; Stock Market Psychology: Perspectives
? As Dow finds new peak, the doubters are only digging in (Marketwatch);
WAR/MEDIA/POLITICS/ENERGY
? Daniel Gross' satirical Slate column this week compares the various presidential candidates to stocks, complete with Buy Sell and Hold recommendations. Hilarious: Obama Is Google. McCain Is GM
? Wall Street Antes Up for 2008: Wall Street ranked as the top source of large campaign donations for presidential candidates in the early part of the 2008 campaign, aided by traditional contributors and new donations from the private-money industry, according to newly released campaign-finance reports. (free WSJ) ; see also Pickens's New Commodity: Giuliani
? America?s ?Seinfeld? strategy in Iraq: (How did I ever miss this one? ; In ?The Opposite,? George breaches the most fundamental laws in his universe " for example, the age-old principle that ?bald men with no jobs and no money, who live with their parents, don?t approach strange women.? Similarly, in its geopolitical incarnation, adherents to the Costanza doctrine cast aside many of the fundamental tenets they learnt at staff college or graduate school. Let me name a few . . . (Financial Times) ? Behind high gas prices: The refinery crunch: Each spring, just before the summer driving season, gasoline prices skyrocket. And every year, these four words appear in news reports nationwide as a big reason for the runup: "lack of refining capacity." (CNN Money)
? A Media Fourfer:
-In a Troubled Time, a New Business Magazine: S. I. Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast, said in an interview that he had no patience with Portfolio skeptics. ?Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead,? he said. ?I don?t think we?re going to trample on Forbes or Fortune. I think we?re going to help the whole field. We?re going to bring excitement to it, and we?re going to bring luxury and fashion advertisers into it.?
-Best-Informed Also View Fake News, Study Says: survey respondents who seemed to know the most about what?s going on " who were able to identify major public figures, for example " were likely to be viewers of fake news programs like Jon Stewart?s ?The Daily Show? and ?The Colbert Report?; those who knew the least watched network morning news programs, Fox News or local television news.
-Newspapers Lose Readers, Advertisers, Now Analysts: Readers were the first to abandon U.S. newspapers. Then advertisers and investors. Now analysts are joining the exodus
- In case you were wondering who?s to blame for the Virginia Tech massacre, here's a list of over 50, with the appropriate media attribution ; ; ;
TECHNOLOGY & SCIENCE
? At last, music is the winner: In truth, its radical new online strategy looks more like an act of desperation than a progressive rethink of DRM. It's perhaps best understood as a gallant attempt to kick-start the shiny new vehicle (online retail) before the wheels fall off the terminally ill one (CD retail) while hopefully closing the gap on its rivals in the same cavalier manoeuvre. (The Age) see also: Apple holds upper hand in music negotiations
? The Next People's Car: The $2500 auto from Tata (Forbes)
? Microsoft, Adobe Set A Collision Course on Web: Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Inc. are on a collision course as they seek to dominate a new kind of software that will change how personal computers and the Web work together.The companies have been partners in the past, and Adobe is one of the largest makers of software for computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system. The companies have also tussled before, but they have generally stayed in their corners of the tech arena. (free Wall Street Journal)
? What Time is Dinner? The evolution of mealtimes.
? ; Big Box Watch tracks new retail construction of several national retailers within the United States. The retailers tracked here all have major expansion plans within the United States, or the opening of a new location will have a significant economic or political impact on the locale community. (Google Maps Mashup via kottke) ; ;
? Circuit City, Napster to offer music service (Reuters)
? The Technology, Entertainment, Design conference (TED) has posted all of its presenters speeches online.
? Dell brings back XP on home systems: ; Amid significant customer demand, the computer maker said on Thursday that it has returned to offering the older Windows version as an option on some of its consumer PCs. Like most computer makers, Dell switched nearly entirely to Vista-based systems following Microsoft's mainstream launch of the operating system in January. However, the company said its customers have been asking for XP as part of its IdeaStorm project, which asks customers to help the company come up with product ideas. (C/Net) ; See also: PC Market Sends Conflicting Signals (free Wall Street Journal)
? Humans are the planet's best long distance runners: hot, sweaty, natural-born runners.
? Pollock's Fractals: A retrospective of his work several years ago at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City drew lines around the block, and an award-winning film of his life and art was released at the end of 2000. Apparently "Jack the Dripper" captured some aesthetic dimension"some abiding logic in human perception"beyond the scope of his critics. That logic, says physicist and art historian Richard Taylor, lies not in art but in mathematics " specifically, in chaos theory and its offspring, fractal geometry. See also Whatever Happened to... Chaos Theory? ; and Random Fractals and the Stock Market
? The End of a 1,400-Year-Old Business: What entrepreneurs starting family businesses can learn from the demise of Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi
? Are you tired of talking to computer phone prompts? Do you want to talk to a human? Try Dial-a-Human!
MUSIC BOOKS MOVIES TV FUN!
? I just added three new books got to my summer reading list this week: Dan Gross' Pop!: Why Bubbles Are Great For The Economy sounds like just the sort of counterintuitive analysis that makes economics and investing so intriguingly fascinating.
Next up: Todd Buchholz' New Ideas from Dead CEOs: Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office: I enjoyed Buchholz' New Ideas from Dead Economists so much that this new book went right on my list.
Given the current state of the greenback, this book couldn't be any more timely: H. W. Brands' The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War over the American Dollar. The money men are the 5 key players in American financial history: Alexander Hamilton, Nicholas Biddle, Jay Cooke, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan. The book is as much about history and biography as it is finance.
? How NOT To Write A Personal Finance Book
? Music for the Jazz Damaged: A lovely podcast of songs programmed to engage those who are jazz damaged. Forget interminably long solos or boring improv -- these jazz greats feature beautiful melody and gorgeous musicality.
? Neil Young Live at Massey Hall: ; I haven't heard this new CD/DVD yet, but the reviews are great, and the live version of Needle and the Damage Done is outstanding.
? A Pardon for Jim Morrison? Gov. Charlie Crist is being asked to pardon the late Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, 38 years after he was convicted of exposing himself during a Miami concert. Dave Diamond, a cable TV producer from Dayton, Ohio, wrote to Crist last month asking for the pardon. Diamond said the goal is to remember the Melbourne, Fla., native as an artist, not a rock 'n' roll bad boy with a rap sheet.
? Fortune's Sue Callaway test drives the new $1.4 million-dollar Bugatti Veyron (see the video, also)
? Suicide Food Reminds me of cow/waiter/steak in Douglas Adams' ; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where the food literally speaks for itself.
Is that " might it be -- yes, I think it is " its. . . ; its . . . ; actually sunny out! Wow -- what a welcome change. Break out the cigars and gardening tools, Spring is here !Related: • LinkFest • 42207 97. An Iranian Agent In Phoenix Nuclear Reactor?
American authorities have arrested a Phoenix man on suspicion of violating the trade embargo with Iran -- by supplying the mullahs with details of an American nuclear reactor. Mohammed Alavi stepped off a flight from Iran to LAX and into the arms of FBI agents on April 9th:A former engineer at the nation's largest nuclear power plant has been charged with taking computer access codes and software to Iran and using it to download details of plant control rooms and reactors, authorities said. ...
Mohammad Alavi, who worked at the triple-reactor Palo Verde power plant west of Phoenix, was arrested April 9 at Los Angeles International Airport when he arrived on a flight from Iran, authorities said. ...
He is charged with a single count of violating a trade embargo that prohibits Americans from exporting goods and services to Iran. If convicted, he would face up to 21 months in prison.
According to court records, the software is used only for training plant employees, but allowed users access to details on the Palo Verde control rooms and the plant layout. In October, authorities alleged, the software was used to download training materials from Tehran, using a Palo Verde user identification.
The FBI said there was no evidence to suggest the software access was linked to the Iranian government, which has clashed with the West over attempts to develop its own nuclear program.
This story sounds a little odd. While Teheran would like as much information on nuclear plants as they can get, Phoenix has hardly demonstrated the most reliability of American plants. The kinds of material downloaded do not appear to have a great deal of value for the Iranians. A training manual would assist in operating facilities in a general sense, but the Russians would have to train them on the specifics for the Bushehr plant.
One could consider that layouts and operational specifics of the plant would assist terrorists interested in it for a potential target. The FBI says that this has no connection to any terror investigation, though, and in the event, the Iranians would have been better off leaving Alavi in place. Alavi left that job eight months ago, which means his use in determining the best plan for a terrorist attack would have been significantly diminished. The software that Alavi used doesn't have anything to do with the operation of the reactor either, accoring to the plant's owners.
It does demonstrate that the Iranians are working all angles in attempting to penetrate the nuclear-power industry, if the allegations are true. Someone in Teheran wants that information badly. We need to understand why.Related: • An • Iranian • Agent • In • Phoenix • Nuclear • Reactor 98. The Delusion of Expertise: I learned something ?
The Delusion of Expertise:
I learned something this weekend about the high cost of the subtledelusion that creative technical problem-solving is the preserve ofa priesthood of experts, using powers and perceptions beyond the ken ofordinary human beings.
Terry Pratchett is the author of the Discworld seriesof satirical fantasies. He is " and I don?t say this lightly, orwithout having given the matter thought and study " quiteprobably the most consistently excellent writer of intelligent humorin the last century in English. One has to go back as far as P.G.Wodehouse or Mark Twain to find an obvious equal in consistentquality, volume, and sly wisdom.
I?ve been a fan of Terry?s since before his first Discworld novel;I?m one of the few people who remembers Strata, his 1981 firstexperiment with the disc-world concept. The man has been somethinglike a long-term acquaintance of mine for ten years " one ofthose people you?d like to call a friend, and who you think would liketo call you a friend, if the two of you everarranged enough concentrated hang time to get that close. But we?reboth damn busy people, and live five thousand miles apart.
This weekend, Terry and I were both guests of honor at a hybridSF convention and Linux conference called Penguicon held in Warren,Michigan. We finally got our hang time. Among other things, Itaught Terry how to shoot pistols. He loves shooter games, but asa British resident his opportunities to play with real firearms arestrictly limited. (I can report that Terry handled my .45 semi withremarkable competence and steadiness for a first-timer. I can alsoreport that this surprised me not at all.)
During Terry?s Guest-of-Honor speech, he revealed his past as(he thought) a failed hacker. It turns out that back in the 1970sTerry used to wire up elaborate computerized gadgets from TimexSinclair computers. One of his projects used a primitive memorychip that had light-sensitive gates to build a sort of perceptronthat could actually see the difference between a circle and a cross.His magnum opus was a weather station that would log readings oftemperature and barometric pressure overnight and deliver weatherreports through a voice synthesizer.
But the most astonishing part of the speech was the followup inwhich Terry told us that despite his keen interest and elaboratehomebrewing, he didn?t become a programmer or a hardware tech becausehe thought techies had to know mathematics, which he thought he had notalent for. He then revealed that he thought of his projects as asort of bad imitation of programming, because his hardware andsoftware designs were total lash-ups and he never really knew what hewas doing.
I couldn?t stand it. ?And you think it was any different forus?? I called out. The audience laughed and Terry passed offthe remark with a quip. But I was just boggled. Because I know thatalmost all really bright techies start out that way, ascompulsive tinkerers who blundered around learning by experience beforethey acquired systematic knowledge. ?Oh ye gods and little fishes?, Ithought to myself, ?Terry is a hacker!?
Yes, I thought ?is? " even if Terry hasn?t actually tinkeredany computer software or hardware in a quarter-century. Being ahacker is expressed through skills and projects, but it?s really akind of attitude or mental stance that, once acquired, is never reallylost. It?s a kind of intense, omnivorous playfulness that tends tocolor everything a person does.
It burst upon me that Terry Pratchett has the hacker nature.Which, actually, explains something that has mildly puzzled me foryears. Terry has a huge following in the hacker community "knowing his books is something close to basic cultural literacy forInternet geeks. One is actually hard-put to think of any other writerfor whom this is as true. The question this has aways raised for meis: why Terry, rather than some hard-SF writer whose work explicitlycelebrates the technologies we play with?
The answer now seems clear. Terry?s hackerness has leaked into hiswriting somehow, modulating the quality of the humor. Behind thedrollery, I and my peers worldwide have accurately scented a mind likeour own.
I said some of this the following day, when I ran into Terrysurrounded by about fifty eager fans in a hallway. The natureof the conference was such that about three-quarters of them werehackers, many faces I recognized. I brought up the topic again,emphasizing that the sort of playful improvisation he?d beendescribing was very normal for us, and that I thought it waskind of sad he?d been blocked by the belief that hackers needto know mathematics, because about all we ever use is some piecesof set theory, graph theory, combinatorics, and Boolean algebra.No calculus at all.
Terry then admitted that he had at one point independentlyre-invented Boolean algebra. I didn?t find this surprising " Idid that myself when I was about fifteen; I didn?t mention this,though, because the moment was about Terry?s mind and not mine. Ithink reinventing Boolean algebra is probably something a lot ofbright proto-hackers do.
?Terry,? I said, fully conscious of the peculiar authority Iwield on this point as the custodian of the Jargon File, the how-to onHow To BecomeA Hacker and several other related documents, ?you are ahacker!?
The crowd agreed enthusiastically. Somebody handed Terry one ofthe ?Geek? badge ribbons the convention had made for attendees whowanted to identify themselves as coming from the Linux/programmingside. Much laughter ensued when it was discovered that the stickumon the ribbon had lost its virtue, and a nearby hacker had to ceremoniallyaffix the thing to Terry?s badge holder with a piece of duct tape.
Terry actually choked up a little while this was going on, and Idon?t think there was anyone there who didn?t understand why. To thekind of teenager and young man he must have been " bright,curious, creative, proud of his own ability " it must have beenvery painful to conclude that he would never cut it as the techie heso obviously wanted to be. He ended up doing public-relations workfor the British nuclear-power industry instead.
The whole sequence of events left me feeling delighted that I andmy friends could deliver the affirmation Terry had deserved so longago. But also " and here we come to the real point of thisessay " I felt very angry at the system that had fed the youngTerry such a huge load of cobblers about the nature of whatprogrammers and hardware designers do.
I?m not referring to the obvious garbage about needing abrain-bending amount of mathematics. No; they fed Terry something muchsubtler and more crippling, a belief that real techies actually know whatthey?re doing. The delusion of expertise.
The truth is that programmers only know what they?re doing when thejob is not very interesting. When you?re breaking new ground in anytechnical field, exploration and improvisation is the nature of thegame. Your designs are going to be lash-ups because you don?t yetknow any better and neither does anyone else.Systematization comes later, with the second system, during there-write and the re-think. Einstein had it right; imagination ismore valuable than knowledge, and people like Terry with ademonstrated ability to creatively wing it make far better hackersthan analytically smart but unimaginative people who can onlyfollow procedures.
The thought that Terry may have spent thirty years of working daysgrinding out press releases for the Central Electricity GeneratingBoard because he didn?t know this, rather than following his dreamsinto astronomy or programming or hardware design, bothers the crap outof me. If Terry was bright enough to invent Boolean algebra, he wasbright enough to cut it in any of these fields. The educationalsystem failed him by putting artificial requirements in his way andmaking him believe they were natural ones. It failed him even morefundamentally by teaching him a falsehood about the nature ofexpertise.
In doing this, it failed all of us. How many bright kids withfirst-class minds, I wonder, end up under-employed because of craplike this? How much creative potential are we losing?
OK, some might answer, so we got the Discworld fantasiesinstead?that ain?t exactly chopped liver. The thing is, I?m notsure that was actually a trade-off. I?m enough of a writer myselfto believe that you can?t block a writing talent like Terry?s merely bydropping him into a more demanding day job. It will come out.
On the other hand, one thing I am sure of is that youdon?t need intelligence or talents like Terry?s just to do PR. Oneway or another, this man was going to do something with more lastingeffects than soothing British farmers about radiation leaks. Inventingone of the funniest alternate worlds of the last hundred years duringyour free time is nice, and I devoutly hope he will get to keep doingit for decades to come " but in a society that valued and nurturedgenius properly, I think Terry might have helped re-imagine the realworld just as radically during his day job.
But he didn?t. Tot it up to the cost of taking creativity tooseriously, of undervaluing improvisation and play and imagination.And wonder how much else that error has cost us.Related: • The • Delusion • of • Expertise • I • learned • something • 99. The Delusion of Expertise: I learned something ?
The Delusion of Expertise:
I learned something this weekend about the high cost of the subtledelusion that creative technical problem-solving is the preserve ofa priesthood of experts, using powers and perceptions beyond the ken ofordinary human beings.
Terry Pratchett is the author of the Discworld seriesof satirical fantasies. He is " and I don?t say this lightly, orwithout having given the matter thought and study " quiteprobably the most consistently excellent writer of intelligent humorin the last century in English. One has to go back as far as P.G.Wodehouse or Mark Twain to find an obvious equal in consistentquality, volume, and sly wisdom.
I?ve been a fan of Terry?s since before his first Discworld novel;I?m one of the few people who remembers Strata, his 1981 firstexperiment with the disc-world concept. The man has been somethinglike a long-term acquaintance of mine for ten years " one ofthose people you?d like to call a friend, and who you think would liketo call you a friend, if the two of you everarranged enough concentrated hang time to get that close. But we?reboth damn busy people, and live five thousand miles apart.
This weekend, Terry and I were both guests of honor at a hybridSF convention and Linux conference called Penguicon held in Warren,Michigan. We finally got our hang time. Among other things, Itaught Terry how to shoot pistols. He loves shooter games, but asa British resident his opportunities to play with real firearms arestrictly limited. (I can report that Terry handled my .45 semi withremarkable competence and steadiness for a first-timer. I can alsoreport that this surprised me not at all.)
During Terry?s Guest-of-Honor speech, he revealed his past as(he thought) a failed hacker. It turns out that back in the 1970sTerry used to wire up elaborate computerized gadgets from TimexSinclair computers. One of his projects used a primitive memorychip that had light-sensitive gates to build a sort of perceptronthat could actually see the difference between a circle and a cross.His magnum opus was a weather station that would log readings oftemperature and barometric pressure overnight and deliver weatherreports through a voice synthesizer.
But the most astonishing part of the speech was the followup inwhich Terry told us that despite his keen interest and elaboratehomebrewing, he didn?t become a programmer or a hardware tech becausehe thought techies had to know mathematics, which he thought he had notalent for. He then revealed that he thought of his projects as asort of bad imitation of programming, because his hardware andsoftware designs were total lash-ups and he never really knew what hewas doing.
I couldn?t stand it. ?And you think it was any different forus?? I called out. The audience laughed and Terry passed offthe remark with a quip. But I was just boggled. Because I know thatalmost all really bright techies start out that way, ascompulsive tinkerers who blundered around learning by experience beforethey acquired systematic knowledge. ?Oh ye gods and little fishes?, Ithought to myself, ?Terry is a hacker!?
Yes, I thought ?is? " even if Terry hasn?t actually tinkeredany computer software or hardware in a quarter-century. Being ahacker is expressed through skills and projects, but it?s really akind of attitude or mental stance that, once acquired, is never reallylost. It?s a kind of intense, omnivorous playfulness that tends tocolor everything a person does.
It burst upon me that Terry Pratchett has the hacker nature.Which, actually, explains something that has mildly puzzled me foryears. Terry has a huge following in the hacker community "knowing his books is something close to basic cultural literacy forInternet geeks. One is actually hard-put to think of any other writerfor whom this is as true. The question this has aways raised for meis: why Terry, rather than some hard-SF writer whose work explicitlycelebrates the technologies we play with?
The answer now seems clear. Terry?s hackerness has leaked into hiswriting somehow, modulating the quality of the humor. Behind thedrollery, I and my peers worldwide have accurately scented a mind likeour own.
I said some of this the following day, when I ran into Terrysurrounded by about fifty eager fans in a hallway. The natureof the conference was such that about three-quarters of them werehackers, many faces I recognized. I brought up the topic again,emphasizing that the sort of playful improvisation he?d beendescribing was very normal for us, and that I thought it waskind of sad he?d been blocked by the belief that hackers needto know mathematics, because about all we ever use is some piecesof set theory, graph theory, combinatorics, and Boolean algebra.No calculus at all.
Terry then admitted that he had at one point independentlyre-invented Boolean algebra. I didn?t find this surprising " Idid that myself when I was about fifteen; I didn?t mention this,though, because the moment was about Terry?s mind and not mine. Ithink reinventing Boolean algebra is probably something a lot ofbright proto-hackers do.
?Terry,? I said, fully conscious of the peculiar authority Iwield on this point as the custodian of the Jargon File, the how-to onHow To BecomeA Hacker and several other related documents, ?you are ahacker!?
The crowd agreed enthusiastically. Somebody handed Terry one ofthe ?Geek? badge ribbons the convention had made for attendees whowanted to identify themselves as coming from the Linux/programmingside. Much laughter ensued when it was discovered that the stickumon the ribbon had lost its virtue, and a nearby hacker had to ceremoniallyaffix the thing to Terry?s badge holder with a piece of duct tape.
Terry actually choked up a little while this was going on, and Idon?t think there was anyone there who didn?t understand why. To thekind of teenager and young man he must have been " bright,curious, creative, proud of his own ability " it must have beenvery painful to conclude that he would never cut it as the techie heso obviously wanted to be. He ended up doing public-relations workfor the British nuclear-power industry instead.
The whole sequence of events left me feeling delighted that I andmy friends could deliver the affirmation Terry had deserved so longago. But also " and here we come to the real point of thisessay " I felt very angry at the system that had fed the youngTerry such a huge load of cobblers about the nature of whatprogrammers and hardware designers do.
I?m not referring to the obvious garbage about needing abrain-bending amount of mathematics. No; they fed Terry something muchsubtler and more crippling, a belief that real techies actually know whatthey?re doing. The delusion of expertise.
The truth is that programmers only know what they?re doing when thejob is not very interesting. When you?re breaking new ground in anytechnical field, exploration and improvisation is the nature of thegame. Your designs are going to be lash-ups because you don?t yetknow any better and neither does anyone else.Systematization comes later, with the second system, during there-write and the re-think. Einstein had it right; imagination ismore valuable than knowledge, and people like Terry with ademonstrated ability to creatively wing it make far better hackersthan analytically smart but unimaginative people who can onlyfollow procedures.
The thought that Terry may have spent thirty years of working daysgrinding out press releases for the Central Electricity GeneratingBoard because he didn?t know this, rather than following his dreamsinto astronomy or programming or hardware design, bothers the crap outof me. If Terry was bright enough to invent Boolean algebra, he wasbright enough to cut it in any of these fields. The educationalsystem failed him by putting artificial requirements in his way andmaking him believe they were natural ones. It failed him even morefundamentally by teaching him a falsehood about the nature ofexpertise.
In doing this, it failed all of us. How many bright kids withfirst-class minds, I wonder, end up under-employed because of craplike this? How much creative potential are we losing?
OK, some might answer, so we got the Discworld fantasiesinstead?that ain?t exactly chopped liver. The thing is, I?m notsure that was actually a trade-off. I?m enough of a writer myselfto believe that you can?t block a writing talent like Terry?s merely bydropping him into a more demanding day job. It will come out.
On the other hand, one thing I am sure of is that youdon?t need intelligence or talents like Terry?s just to do PR. Oneway or another, this man was going to do something with more lastingeffects than soothing British farmers about radiation leaks. Inventingone of the funniest alternate worlds of the last hundred years duringyour free time is nice, and I devoutly hope he will get to keep doingit for decades to come " but in a society that valued and nurturedgenius properly, I think Terry might have helped re-imagine the realworld just as radically during his day job.
But he didn?t. Tot it up to the cost of taking creativity tooseriously, of undervaluing improvisation and play and imagination.And wonder how much else that error has cost us.Related: • The • Delusion • of • Expertise • I • learned • something • 100. Alabama April 19, 2007 7:30 pm
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Home of Jefferson Davis (White House of the Confederacy) Located in Montgomery, Alabama: April 13, 2007
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South Alabama hires the man it once firedSunHerald.com, MS - Apr 18, 2007Ronnie Arrow was named coach at South Alabama on Tuesday, returning to the school that fired him in 1994. The former Texas A&M-Corpus Christi coach replaces ?Arrow leaves A&M- Corpus Christi for head position at South Alabama SHSU Houstonian Online (subscription)Reports: South Alabama set to introduce Arrow Team 4 Newsall 34 news articles
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Related: • Alabama • April • 19 • 2007 • 730 • pm 101. Owner operator contracts Guidelines for CarrierOwner-Operator Contracts Introduction Good business practices dictate that business relationships between parties should be governed by a written contract. Like any agreement, the contract should clearly define each party's. ontruck.org Restaurant Doctor Management Resources-Restaurant Management Agreement The owner contracts with the operator to run the restaurant business with the expectation the operator can generate sufficient income from the restaurant to pay the costs of operation, cover the owner. restaurantdoctor.com In the papers 19 April NTL abandons direct debit surcharge MySpace to launch news aggregation service owner operator contracts. enn.ie Blackhawk Transport: Why Join Blackhawk as an Owner Operator We offer one of best Owner Operator compensation contracts in the industry. Owner operators pulling their own trailers earn 80% line haul revenue or 72% line haul revenue with a Blackhawk. blackhawktransport.com PST Registration Database - Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Contracts, Funding & Fees. Owner - address, type, contact and amendment In addition if Owner. Operator - address and contact; Facility self-certification and UST. tceq.state.tx.us Obac Contract Guidelines Operator Contracts I. Format AND Provisions. 1. Written Contract(a) All contracts should be in written format.(b) Contracts should be written, to the greatest extent. obac.ca Commodities Corner: Nuclear Plants Face Steep Costs Supply disruptions and dwindling inventories have created a perfect storm in the uranium market -- and electric utilities hope they can wait out the bad weather. The price of uranium, which fuels nuclear-power plants, has soared to $113 a pound, from less than $20 three years ago. cattlenetwork.com Knox Mill loses one restaurant, gains two Camden(April 13): Abby Alden may be relocating her Natalie's at the Mill restaurant to the Camden Harbor Inn on Camden's tony Bay View Street, but taking its place will be not one but two new eateries. rockland.villagesoup.com City of Bethlehem - Ordinances - Article 538 538.03 Garage Owner Insurance Requirement. Every Tow Operator which contracts with the City of Bethlehem as provided above, shall maintain at its own expense during. bethlehem-pa.gov Columbia Helicopters celebrates its 50th Anniversary The company wasn’t much to look at in 1957. A single, small helicopter flown by an owner who sold rides on the weekend while continuing to drive trucks or work as a longshoreman during the week. The owner’s “staff†included his wife and brothers, who would help out with various tasks. shephard.co.uk Motor Vehicle Tax Manual Operator contracts will be a little easier to spot, because of the recurring name; and there usually will be some sort of contract document. Nevertheless, examinations of these types of. window.state.tx.us P B Transportation: Owner-Operators Express, contracts with an experienced, dedicated team of professional owner-operators.. Owner Operator Commitment. 2,500 miles/week; 10,000 miles/month; 120,000. pbtransportation.com Obac Guidelines for Improving CarrierOwner-Operator Contracts IntroductionGood business practice dictates that any business-to-business relationship should be gov. O-O Resources January 2, 2003 Guidelines for Improving Carrier/Owner-Operator Contracts. obac.ca Single OwnerOperator Certification Coverage or payments for GL claims. Multi-Unit Operator(M2) Certification_____ A multi-unit operator employs or sub-contracts DJs who perform shows that are booked 7 or more at a time. M2 owner. djnet.com Station access contracts - Station access contracts: Office of Rail Passenger Station Access Agreement(single station) for contracts between a station facility owner and the operator of regular scheduled passenger train services. rail-reg.gov.uk Blackhawk Transports Formula for Success: Create a Company Culture We not only offer one of the best Owner Operator compensation contracts in the industry, we have a commitment to safety and provide a stable lifestyle through a steady base of non-seasonal business that. blackhawktransport.com Related: • Owner • operator • contracts 102. IRAN MAKING 'NUKE BOMB' FUEL
April 19, 2007 -- VIENNA, Austria - Iran has begun producing nuclear fuel in its underground uranium-enrichment plant, according to a confidential document from the U.N. atomic watchdog.
The document, obtained yesterday by news services, said Tehran had started up 1,312 centrifuge machines, divided into eight cascades, or networks, in the Natanz complex, in an accelerating campaign to lay a basis for "industrial scale" enrichment.
Both moves flew in the face of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government stop enriching uranium over fears that its professed civilian nuclear-power program is a cover for mastering the means to build atomic bombs. Related: • IRAN • MAKING • NUKE • BOMB • FUEL 103. IRAN MAKING 'NUKE BOMB' FUEL
April 19, 2007 -- VIENNA, Austria - Iran has begun producing nuclear fuel in its underground uranium-enrichment plant, according to a confidential document from the U.N. atomic watchdog.
The document, obtained yesterday by news services, said Tehran had started up 1,312 centrifuge machines, divided into eight cascades, or networks, in the Natanz complex, in an accelerating campaign to lay a basis for "industrial scale" enrichment.
Both moves flew in the face of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government stop enriching uranium over fears that its professed civilian nuclear-power program is a cover for mastering the means to build atomic bombs. Related: • IRAN • MAKING • NUKE • BOMB • FUEL 104. Renewable energy boom drives up share prices
A boom in renewable energy shows no sign of petering out, with investors greedy for shares in wind-generator companies which are booking huge new sales.
Two sales announcements in Germany this week illustrated why a giddy bidding war has developed between Indian and French interests for one of the main German builders of rotor-turbines, Repower.
Nordex, a company based in the German port-city of Rostock, said Friday it had just landed an order for 120 turbines with an option for 100 more, the biggest order since the company was founded in 1985.
Customer Babcock and Brown was initially purchasing 289 megawatts of generating capacity for wind parks in Portugal and France, said Nordex, which is also to supply foundations, transformers and electrical systems.
If all options were exercised, the contract would be worth more than 700 million euros ($950 million). The contract fitted Nordex?s aim of raising sales by 50 percent yearly, an executive, Thomas Richterich, said.
Hamburg-based Repower said it had won a Californian order for 75 wind generators with a total capacity of 150 megawatts for Enxco, a US unit of French power company EDF Energies Nouvelles.
Each of the huge generators has a rotor diameter of 92 metres.
Analysts say the worldwide orders are driven by legislative pressure on power companies to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and generate at least some of their electricity using wind or the sun.
Investors see no sign the trend will end soon.
Nordex shares shot up 8 percent Friday morning to 27.45 euros on German markets before settling to 25.40.
Repower Systems shares were steady at 156.95 euros, well ahead of the current offers of 150 euros per share from Suzlon of India and 140 euros from Areva, the French nuclear-power group.
Earlier this week, Repower raised new equity with institutional investors happy to pay 151.50 euros per share, a clear hint that investment professionals expect a counter-bid from Areva.
A Repower spokeswoman said Friday the Hamburg-based company?s board would comment next week on the Suzlon bid. Previously Repower said both bidders would make good parents.
Shares in Nordex, and another company, Vestas Wind Systems, have been driven higher by takeover speculation.
German manufacturers of solar-power equipment have also been boosted by the renewable trend.
Solar World, which opened a new wafer-production plant at Freiberg in Germany?s Saxony state Friday, said it would continue to add wafer capacity at the site, doubling output by 2009 compared to today.
The company said it was even contemplating quadrupling output, which is measured by the power-generation capacity of the photovoltaic cells it makes: 1,000 megawatts per year was conceivable.
Solar World mainly sells its modules to owners of homes and other buildings seeking energy self-sufficiency.
Germany?s pre-2005 government of Social Democrats and Greens chose renewable energy as a technology where Germans could lead the world.
That bet has turned out a good one, but an electrical industry group, VDE, is cautioning that Germany actually spends too little on research into better energy technology.
?Japan is spending 30 dollars per capita on energy research, and even the United States spends 10 dollars a head. Here in Germany it is only 6.20 dollars,? said VDE spokesman Wolfgang Schroeppel.
He said annual federal grants of 400 million euros for energy research in Germany were just not enough to sustain the lead. He demanded Berlin hike the budget to one billion euros annually.
Schroeppel warned that only 8 percent of all research and development spending in Germany was devoted to energy topics, and in the European Union the rate was even worse, 3 percent. Related: • Renewable • energy • boom • drives • up • share • prices 105. uranium futures NYMEX and UxC are going to create uranium futures, also covered in the Wall Street Journal ($$paid subscription required).This UxC article has a lot of info and background.In June of 2003, we were alarmed (we said ?fascinated? at the time) by the fact that uncovered requirements on the part of U.S. utilities were so large in 2006, just three years away at the time. There seemed to be an impasse or perhaps a disinterest in contracting, which translated into this large uncovered position. Because of the large amount of contracting yet to take place in an environment where production was not expanding, it appeared to us that there was no way the market could clear at anywhere near the then spot price of $10.90 when 2006 came around. Because of this, we wondered if the market had failed. (see ?A Case of Market Failure?? The Ux Weekly, June 9, 2003, p. 1-2).UxC then did a survey of market buyers and sellers what they would bid/offer for 250K pounds of U3O8 for July 2006 delivery. The bids were in the $12 range. The asks were a bit higher. But matching up bids and asks showed that a fluid market would have produced higher prices.In hindsight, a futures market existing in 2003 would have served the market well, as it would have given more advanced notice of the tight future supply situation that existed. Prices would have been bid up sooner, prompting a quicker response in production and exploration. Utilities certainly would not have liked seeing higher prices, but if they had known what the alternative was (which is what actually happened), they would have been more accepting.Of course, the longer the delay, the better for those producers who saw it early and started acting. Strathmore Minerals clearly saw it; that was their business plan going back before 2003.And my guess is that a futures market now is going to expose a massive imbalance in the future with even higher prices. But we'll just have to wait for it all to play out....some futures trades have already taken place in uranium and Tullett Prebon has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk (see the Ux Weekly, April 2, 2007, p. 3).andTo many, it may seem like the uranium market has changed more in the past two weeks than it has in the previous 40 years with price soaring to new heights and the introduction of a futures market, while they are still getting used to the presence of hedge and investment funds.Yeah, things are happening fast.The futures are both on and off exchange. Cash settled, meaning there's no taking delivery of actual uranium, it's just a bet on future prices. UxC will be determining the actual spot price over time as it's done for more than 20 years. The Financial Times has an article on this thing, too.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, "We are excited to introduce uranium futures contracts and to provide the industry with a transparent price discovery mechanism. We expect to create a benchmark contract for this important and underserved global market. NYMEX is gratified to launch innovative products, and uranium is uniquely positioned to act as a complement to both our energy and metals product offerings. We are proud to partner with Ux Consulting, the recognized market leader."
UxC President Jeff Combs said "The experience this decade has clearly indicated that the uranium market would benefit from additional price transparency, especially in terms of forward prices, as market participants formulate budget and investment decisions in this critical period of a renaissance in nuclear power. We are pleased to partner with NYMEX, the global leader in commodities"based futures trading, in the introduction of uranium futures products, and applaud NYMEX for investing the time and resources necessary to make uranium futures a reality."
When the market is allowed to create a pricing structure for uranium way out into the future, we'll all get to see what it looks like. Real Wisdom of Crowds stuff.The Wall Street Journal saysThe futures contract would be designed to offer the operators of nuclear-power plants a vehicle to hedge against rising prices. It would also provide a forum to bet directly on gains and falls in the price of uranium, rather than speculating on the fortunes of companies that mine the metal.I'd rather rely on my investment in Strathmore Minerals as I believe it is significantly undervalued relative to the current and expected future price of uranium. Perhaps I might bet against uranium in the futures market to partially hedge my Strathmore investment. Probably not.
"Anything that will add transparency to the uranium market is a good thing," Jim Malone, vice president of nuclear-fuel management at Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based nuclear operator, said in a statement. Mr. Malone didn't say whether Exelon would be interested in trading the new contract.
"The only people who it is going to get traction with are the investing players," said a uranium broker, adding that power producers are more likely to stick to the long-term contracts they use now.My guess is that the market sees this as something which will siphon money away from mining companies. This would explain the price drop in uranium mining stocks. I believe that in the long run the market is much more efficient than that. If something is clearly worth more than it's selling for, the price will eventually go up to something close to its value Related: • uranium • futures 106. Can the U.S. Make Iran Budge?
Mahmoud AhmadinejadHere are some possible ways for the U.S. to influence Iran: Get tough, get tougher or stay away. Writing in the current issue of the New Republic, several prominent thinkers in foreign policy suggest approaches to one of the U.S.'s big diplomatic hurdles, in a range of proposals that underscore the complexity of the task (subscription required). In the get-tough camp, veteran U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross makes the case for increasing the financial pressure on Tehran to make it too costly for the government to pursue nuclear weapons.
"Penalties, more than inducements, are the key to altering the Iranian position," says Mr. Ross, who has been a leading Middle East adviser to both Democratic and Republican administrations. "If the cost is international isolation and economic deprivation, the picture changes for a significant part of the Iranian elite." Among other steps, he wants to see Europeans remove $18 billion in loan guarantees for companies doing business in Iran. He is open to offering up a carrot, too, saying promises to allow Iran's civil nuclear-power program should be part of the package.
Meanwhile, neoconservative author Robert Kagan says the U.S. needs to ratchet up a credible military threat to Tehran to clear the way for more flexible diplomacy. Without a viable U.S. military option, Tehran isn't likely to respond to international pressure, he says. He points to the recent detention of British sailors as evidence of Tehran's resistance to tamer diplomacy.
But to promote democratic culture in Iran, any direct U.S. involvement can be counterproductive, says Laura Secor, an editor of the op-ed page at the New York Times. In particular, U.S. support for opposition movements in Iran only undermines those voices, by tainting them as pawns of the U.S. government. "Getting involved with the Iranian opposition might make us feel good, but it will only hurt the people we seek to help," she says. " Jim Winston
Related: • Can • the • US • Make • Iran • Budge 107. India has China in its range
written by: Siddharth Srivastava, 13-Apr-07
NEW DELHI - Even as India celebrates the successful test-firing on Thursday of its home-grown Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missile - capable of delivering a 1.5-tonne nuclear or conventional payload over much of Asia - officials admit that the test had the tacit approval of the United States.
The US is striving to build India as a strategic counterweight to China, along with Japan and Australia.
Last May, during a period of frenzied negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal with Washington, New Delhi postponed testing of the Agni-III so as not to invite the ire of nuclear hawks in the US Congress, which was deliberating the nuclear pact that now stands approved.
According to reports last year, Washington put pressure on New Delhi to agree to a future moratorium on testing of dual-use missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload and testing another atomic bomb as a quid pro quo for the civilian nuclear deal.
India, however, rejected such a commitment as a back-door entry to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has not signed the CTBT as it feels that the treaty came into existence after those who possessed nuclear weapons had developed the know-how.
Strategic equations have obviously changed now, with a combination of business interests, India?s record as a responsible democratic nation, and the China factor coming into play.
Agni-III, given its range of 3,000 kilometers, has been specifically designed to build a minimum nuclear deterrence against China, with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai very much in the radar. Agni-III is said to possess a high degree of accuracy with a medium-to-large nuclear payload.
Beijing reacted immediately to the Indian firing, saying it hoped that India, ?as a country with an important influence in this region, can work to maintain and promote peace and stability in the region?. Indian officials have said Agni-III is not China-centric, but an effort to build overall security.
India, of course, has traditional rival Pakistan already covered via its Agni-I (700-800km range) and Agni-II (2,000km-plus range) missiles that are now being inducted into the armed forces. As per the agreed norms, New Delhi informed Islamabad about Agni-III prior to the test.
Not to be undone, Pakistan, with help from China and North Korea, is in the process of inducting the nuclear-capable Shaheen-II missile, tested for the first time in March 2004, which can strike Indian targets over a range of 2,000km.
Apart from gaining more security muscle in the region, the success of Agni-III is significant on other counts. The maiden test of Agni-III failed last July 9, so Indian scientists had to work on the technical glitches.
The Agni is one of five missiles that have been developed by India. The others are the short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi, the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), the multi-purpose Akash (Sky) and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra) missile.
Other benefits It would seem that India is also now reasonably sure of its acceptance as a nuclear exception among the global community that will allow it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the international market. Indian efforts have now moved to turning around nations that form part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with success on this count. India needs approval from the NSG so that it can implement its nuclear agreement with the US.
Heavyweights France, the United Kingdom and Canada have already backed the deal. The business potential and diplomatic efforts have had important countries such as China and Australia rethink their approach. Those two countries have hinted that they will not be averse to doing nuclear business with India. Russia has already chalked out its nuclear-power engagement with India.
South Africa and Brazil have been co-opted by promises of New Delhi?s support in securing business deals and expertise in software and information technology.
Japan has been difficult, but Indian officials are sure that given the massive business opportunities, especially in software to upgrade Japanese companies, and extensive diplomatic efforts, Japan will come around and has already considerably softened its stand. Tokyo is pretty much clued into a US-India-Japan ?axis of democracy? to counter the might of China.
Thus the timing of the Agni-III test seems to be right. Politically, the Congress-led New Delhi government has been criticized for being feeble to India?s internal and external security threats, because of repeated terrorist attacks and the need to tread carefully in dealing with Beijing.
Given the ongoing detailed negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the nuclear pact with the US as well the benefits of nuclear power that will flow in times to come, it was only prudent for New Delhi to gain a few political points given the immediacy of electoral politics.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the success of the Agni-III missile is an ?impressive illustration? of India mastering the strategic high technologies to uphold national security.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Published in: Asia Times Related: • India • has • China • in • its • range 108. French bidders drop demand for majority of Repower Hamburg - French nuclear-power giant Areva dropped Tuesday its insistence on majority control of Repower, a builder of wind generators, in a move that Related: • French • bidders • drop • demand • for • majority • of • Repower 109. French bidders drop demand for majority of Repower Hamburg - French nuclear-power giant Areva dropped Tuesday its insistence on majority control of Repower, a builder of wind generators, in a move that Related: • French • bidders • drop • demand • for • majority • of • Repower 110. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Russia is starting work on a seagoing nuclear-power plant, ignoring the protests of environmentalists, who have it in their heads that a floating Russian nuclear-power plant is somehow a bad thing. ?They point to a history of naval and nuclear accidents in Russia and the former Soviet Union, most notoriously at Chernobyl in 1986,? the Associated Press writes.
The Russians counter that the 2000 sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk " seemingly Exhibit A in the argument that this is a bad idea " is actually evidence that the floating nuclear station, designed to bring power to remote areas, will be perfectly safe. ?The floating power plants will house reactors similar to those used in the Russian submarine fleet,? the AP writes. ??The most reliable test of such a reactor was the Kursk tragedy. After the boat was raised, specialists proved that the reactor could be put into service at that very moment,? [Sergei] Kiriyenko, [head of the Russian atomic energy agency,] said.?
" Mark Gongloff
Related: • What • Could • Possibly • Go • Wrong 111. India has China in its range
written by: Siddharth Srivastava, 13-Apr-07
NEW DELHI - Even as India celebrates the successful test-firing on Thursday of its home-grown Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missile - capable of delivering a 1.5-tonne nuclear or conventional payload over much of Asia - officials admit that the test had the tacit approval of the United States.
The US is striving to build India as a strategic counterweight to China, along with Japan and Australia.
Last May, during a period of frenzied negotiations on a civilian nuclear deal with Washington, New Delhi postponed testing of the Agni-III so as not to invite the ire of nuclear hawks in the US Congress, which was deliberating the nuclear pact that now stands approved.
According to reports last year, Washington put pressure on New Delhi to agree to a future moratorium on testing of dual-use missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload and testing another atomic bomb as a quid pro quo for the civilian nuclear deal.
India, however, rejected such a commitment as a back-door entry to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has not signed the CTBT as it feels that the treaty came into existence after those who possessed nuclear weapons had developed the know-how.
Strategic equations have obviously changed now, with a combination of business interests, India?s record as a responsible democratic nation, and the China factor coming into play.
Agni-III, given its range of 3,000 kilometers, has been specifically designed to build a minimum nuclear deterrence against China, with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai very much in the radar. Agni-III is said to possess a high degree of accuracy with a medium-to-large nuclear payload.
Beijing reacted immediately to the Indian firing, saying it hoped that India, ?as a country with an important influence in this region, can work to maintain and promote peace and stability in the region?. Indian officials have said Agni-III is not China-centric, but an effort to build overall security.
India, of course, has traditional rival Pakistan already covered via its Agni-I (700-800km range) and Agni-II (2,000km-plus range) missiles that are now being inducted into the armed forces. As per the agreed norms, New Delhi informed Islamabad about Agni-III prior to the test.
Not to be undone, Pakistan, with help from China and North Korea, is in the process of inducting the nuclear-capable Shaheen-II missile, tested for the first time in March 2004, which can strike Indian targets over a range of 2,000km.
Apart from gaining more security muscle in the region, the success of Agni-III is significant on other counts. The maiden test of Agni-III failed last July 9, so Indian scientists had to work on the technical glitches.
The Agni is one of five missiles that have been developed by India. The others are the short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi, the surface-to-air Trishul (Trident), the multi-purpose Akash (Sky) and the anti-tank Nag (Cobra) missile.
Other benefits It would seem that India is also now reasonably sure of its acceptance as a nuclear exception among the global community that will allow it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the international market. Indian efforts have now moved to turning around nations that form part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with success on this count. India needs approval from the NSG so that it can implement its nuclear agreement with the US.
Heavyweights France, the United Kingdom and Canada have already backed the deal. The business potential and diplomatic efforts have had important countries such as China and Australia rethink their approach. Those two countries have hinted that they will not be averse to doing nuclear business with India. Russia has already chalked out its nuclear-power engagement with India.
South Africa and Brazil have been co-opted by promises of New Delhi?s support in securing business deals and expertise in software and information technology.
Japan has been difficult, but Indian officials are sure that given the massive business opportunities, especially in software to upgrade Japanese companies, and extensive diplomatic efforts, Japan will come around and has already considerably softened its stand. Tokyo is pretty much clued into a US-India-Japan ?axis of democracy? to counter the might of China.
Thus the timing of the Agni-III test seems to be right. Politically, the Congress-led New Delhi government has been criticized for being feeble to India?s internal and external security threats, because of repeated terrorist attacks and the need to tread carefully in dealing with Beijing.
Given the ongoing detailed negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the nuclear pact with the US as well the benefits of nuclear power that will flow in times to come, it was only prudent for New Delhi to gain a few political points given the immediacy of electoral politics.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the success of the Agni-III missile is an ?impressive illustration? of India mastering the strategic high technologies to uphold national security.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
Published in: Asia Times Related: • India • has • China • in • its • range 112. pitufa
2002; Storper and Venables, 2002). Accordingly, the theory that we shall seek to
elaborate here puts considerable emphasis on the role of the region as a source of critical
developmental assets in the form of increasing returns effects and positive externalities.
In addition, we aver that because agglomeration is a principal source of these
productivity-enhancing outcomes, urbanization is less to be regarded as a problem to be
reversed than as an essential condition of durable development.
II. Regions in Today's World Economy
These questions about the geographic foundations of development and growth are
made yet more urgent by the current empirical realities of globalization. It is
fundamentally mistaken to equate globalization with the notion that development today
involves a simple spreading out of economy activity, or the transformation of the
economic order into a liquefied space of flows. On the contrary, globalization has been
accompanied by the assertion and reassertion of agglomerative tendencies in many
different areas of the world, in part because of the very openness and competitiveness
that it ushers in (Puga and Venables, 1999; Scott, 1998). Thus, for example, 40% of US
employment is currently located in counties constituting just 1.5% of its land area;
equally, the geographical density of employment in many sectors has been increasing in
recent years (Kim, 2002).
Dense regional agglomerations of economic activity are major sources of growth in
economies at virtually every stage of development today, as suggested by the worldwide
expansion and spread of industrial clusters. It has been suggested, for example, that 380
separate clusters of firms in the United States employ 57% of the total workforce and
8
8
generate 61% of the nation's output and fully 78% of its exports (Rosenfeld, 1995;
OECD, 1998). Other researchers, using more conservative measures, still find that 30%
of the US workforce is accounted for by globally-oriented local employment clusters
(Porter, 2001). The OECD, for its part, concludes that local industrial districts account
for 30% of total employment in Italy (and 43% of that country's exports) and 30% of total
employment in Holland.
The most striking forms of agglomeration in evidence today are the superagglomerations
or city-regions that have come into being all over the world in the last
few decades, with their complex internal structures compris ing multiple urban cores,
extended suburban appendages, and widely-ranging hinterland areas, themselves often
sites of scattered urban settlements (Hall, 2001; Scott et al., 2001). These city-regions are
locomotives of the national economies within which they are situated, in that they are the
sites of dense masses of interrelated economic activities that also typically have high
levels of productivity by reason of their jointly-generated agglomeration economies and
their innovative potentials. In many adva nced countries, evidence shows that major
metropolitan areas are growing faster than other areas of the national territory, even in
those countries where, for a time in the 1970s, there appeared to be a turn toward a
dominant pattern of non- metropolitan growth (Summer et al., 1993; Frey and Speare,
1988; Forstall, 1993). In less-developed countries, too, such as Brazil, China, India and
South Korea, the effects of agglomeration on productivity are strongly apparent, and
economic growth typically proceeds at an especially rapid rate in the large metropolitan
regions of those countries. The same metropolitan regions are at once the most important
9
9
foci of national growth and the places where export-oriented industrialization is most apt
to occur (Scott, 1998; 2002).
These findings fit well with the observation that previous rounds of market opening
and technological progress have tended to reinforce urbanization, not weaken it (Eaton
and Eckstein, 1997; Black and Henderson, 1998; Kim, 1995; Glaeser, 1998; Puga and
Venables, 1998). Recent accounts of the formation of an Atlantic economy in the late
Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries argue that it emerged on the basis of strong
agglomeration processes in Europe and America, with the main centers of production
maintaining their dominant positions through strong increasing returns to scale (Crafts
and Venables, 2001; Williamson, 1998). Today's wave of globalization appears to be
similarly anchored in (and is also partially responsible for) an expanding intercontinental
patchwork of urban and regional economic systems. In sum, large-scale agglomeration --
and its counterpart, regional economic specialization -- is a worldwide and historically
persistent phenomenon that is intensifying greatly at the present time by the forces
unleashed by globalization. This leads us to claim that national economic development
today is likely not to be less but rather more tied up with processes of geographical
concentration compared with the past.
Moreover, as globalization and international economic integration have moved
forward, older conceptions of the broad structure of world economic geography as
comprising separate blocs (First, Second and Third Worlds), each with its own
developmental dynamic, appear to be giving way to another vision. This alternative
vision seeks to build a common theoretical language about the development of regions
and countries in all parts of the world, as well as about the broad architecture of the
10
10
emerging world system of production and exchange. At the same time, it recognizes that
territories are arrayed at different points along a vast spectrum of developmental
characteristics.
These are strong claims, and they call for extended justification, which we proceed to
elaborate in the next section. Meanwhile, it is worth pointing out that a long tradition of
econometric analysis dating back to Carlino (1979), Kawashima (1975), and Sveikauskas
(1975) provides prima facie evidence in favor of these assertions. This line of work has
demonstrated time and again that in the more economically-advanced countries, urban
centers persistently exhibit signs of significant and positive productivity effects as a
function of their size. A branch of this literature has more recently focussed on less
developed parts of the world, and draws broadly similar conclusions (cf. Chen, 1996;
Henderson, 1988; Lee and Zang, 1998; Mitra 2000; Shukla, 1996; Sueyoshi, 1992). This
literature as a whole tends to adopt traditional conceptualizations of the problem in terms
of so-called urbanization and localization economies, but we consider these concepts to
be internally chaotic, and instead we shall seek in the following to replace them with
more analytically sustainable categories. There is probably also a tendency in this
literature to understate the impacts of urbanization on productivity because the
parameters of the econometric models on which it is based are never calibrated over
counterfactual cases of economic systems in which dense agglomerations of capital and
labor are absent.
We now consider how the empirical realities we have alluded to can be accounted for
by contemporary concepts of agglomeration, which we employ in turn as essential
components of an updated development theory. This theory seeks to accommodate the
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11
cases of both poor and rich countries, and to shed some new light on the phenomenon of
uneven spatial and economic development on a world scale.
III. The Fundamentals of Agglomeration
The analytical decomposition of agglomeration processes. Cities always appear as
privileged sites for economic growth because they economize on capital-intensive
infrastructure (which is particularly scarce in developing areas), thus permitting
significant economies of scale to be reaped at selected locations. But to this obvious basic
factor underlying agglomeration, we must add three further sets of phenomena that
complement and intensify its effects, namely (a) the dynamics of backward and forward
inter- linkage of firms in industrial systems, (b) the formation of dense local labor markets
around multiple workplaces, and (c) the emergence of localized relational assets
promoting learning and innovation effects. Some brief commentary on these points is
now in order.
Even though transport and communications costs tend to decline over time, the
friction of distance in general continues to have powerful effects on locational outcomes.
Improvements in transport and communications processes (e.g. the development of canal
systems, railroads, the interstate highway network, the postal service, or the telegraph and
the telephone) have rarely if ever slowed down the urbanizing tendencies of modern
capitalism, even as they have encouraged its spatial extension. Rather, improvements of
these sorts have almost always tended to reinforce the clustering of economic activity
both by widening the market range of any given center and by helping to spark off new
rounds of specialization in established urban areas. This state of affairs also seems to be
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12
true in the present period in which internet-based broad-band communications
technologies have made possible instantaneous transmission of complex messages across
the globe at extremely low cost. More accurately, we should say that many inter-firm
transactions can be executed cheaply over long distances, while others resist being
stretched out by reason of the high linkage costs that they involve, even in a world of
rapidly improving transport and communications technologies. Small- scale, non-routine
flows with ambiguous information content are notably averse to extension over long
distances. This resistance is intensified where firms compete with one another by means
of product differentiation, and where markets are characterized by much uncertainty. In
circumstances like these, firms find it difficult to stabilize their output profiles, thus
necessitating external transactional relations that are constantly shifting in size, form, and
origin or destination, and that are therefore expensive per unit of distance and time.
Dense agglomerations containing large numbers of firms allow both suppliers and buyers
to compensate for variability and uncertainty by providing ready access to needed
resources on short notice. Considerable gains in productivity typically flow to firms from
this localized concentration of many different suppliers and buyers. Among the more
important of these gains are the ability to maintain low overheads while achieving high
flexibility in both internal and external operations. One especially powerful phenomenon
is the continuing importance of face-to-face contacts for the transmission of complex and
uncertain messages (Leamer and Storper, 2001) and for the establishment of mutual
confidence and accurate evaluation of potential partners in constantly changing business
relationships (Storper and Venables, 2002).
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13
Comparable dynamics of matching highly differentiated demands and supplies
apply to labor markets. When firms need specialized workers, but are subject to rapid
shifts in their product and process designs (as in the case of fashion-oriented or
technologically- innovative industries), they usually strive as far as possible to achieve
flexibility in their use of labor. At the same time, they seek to avoid the risk of costly
delays in finding the various skills on which they depend. To overcome this problem,
they need direct access to large and variegated pools of specialized talent. Equally, if
workers are to invest in building up their competencies, but are unable to secure longterm
employment contracts, they will prefer to locate where there are many potential
employers. In turn, rapid search and rehire processes will compensate them for high
turnover. In all of these circumstances, geographical concentration has major
productivity-raising effects for firms, and income-raising effects for workers. Firms
benefit from the possibility of adjusting their capacity levels as needed, while minimizing
the risks of not finding the workers they require for expansion and change. Workers gain
by having strong incentives to invest in their own talents and becoming more specialized,
but are able to offset the associated risks by being in a place where the existence of
multiple employment opportunities raises their chances of finding a job (Jayet, 1983).
These search-and-matching processes in the local environment are carried out by means
of relatively complex transactions, often operating through dense social networks
(Granovetter, 1986). Geographical concentration lowers the costs of these transactions
and raises the probability of successful matching for all parties.
Regional concentrations of economic activity have another advantage, which is
purely dynamic in nature. There is mounting evidence that creativity and learning have a
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distinctive geography, with regions playing active roles as sites of continuous and
informal but cumulatively significant improvements in industrial products and processes
(Dunning, 1998; Feldman, 2000; Jaffe et al, 1993; Russo, 1985; Saxenian, 1994; Scott,
1999). Silicon Valley, of course, is the classic reference here, though the phenomenon of
localized innovation has been observed in many other industrial clusters. The spatial
proximity of large numbers of firms locked into dense networks of interaction provides
the essential conditions for many-sided exchanges of information to occur, and out of
which new understandings about process and product possibilities are constantly being
generated. Specialized regional economies are the locus of intense knowledge spillovers,
thereby helping to raise the rate of innovation, and to promote long-term growth
(Antonelli, 1994; Audretsch and Feldman, 1996; Jaffe et al., 1993; Noteboom, 1999).
Each of these factors underlying geographic concentration has the effect of
creating positive externalities for both firms and workers. Our account thus far actually
understates the power of agglomeration in certain ways, for geographical concentrations
of the sort we are describing also constitute living human communities with many
additional effects on economic performance (Temple and Johnson, 1998; Storper, 1997;
Woolcock, 1998). Oftentimes, clusters of firms operate as powerful socialization
mechanisms, becoming veritable engines for turning out new talent through workers? onthe-
job experiences and participation in work-related netwo rks (Grabher, 1993). Firms
come together, too, in both formal and informal organizations that help to streamline their
interactions, to accelerate information transfers, to build trust and reputation effects, and
to promote their joint interests (Asheim, 2000; Becattini, 1990). Relationships like these
contribute to the stock of collective assets in any given agglomeration. Their effects are
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15
thus frequently positive, though they may also on occasions be negative when local
conditions and institutional environments induce problems such as rent-seeking behavior
or inter-organizational rivalries.
The agglomeration-development nexus. Cities are a necessary corollary of
industrialization because they allow for complex agglomerations of specialized activities
to emerge while economizing on infrastructure under conditions of national scarcity. In
many developing countries, urban growth is pushed further forward by modernization of
the agricultural sector, displacing labor, and generating large-scale migration from
countryside to city (Alonso, 1980; Kelley and Williamson, 1984; Todaro, 1969).
This, however, is at best a partial view of the dynamic properties of the
relationship between urbanization and economic development. To begin with, the
emphasis on infrastructure (a common theme in many discussions of development) is
only one among many reasons for agglomeration. As we saw above, actual
agglomerations are characterized by many additional sources of productivity gain through
their transactional structures, local labor markets, learning effects, and so on. These
phenomena can sustain the advantages of agglomeration even in the face of rapidly rising
costs of urban concentration due to congestion, pollution, escalating land prices, crime,
family breakdown, etc. Such costs are especially high in developing countries, but still
they fail to arrest urban growth (Storper, 1991; Azzoni, 1986). Another way in which
many older arguments underestimate the force of geographical concentration is that they
often take large-scale, capital- intensive manufacturing industries to be the privileged
motors of development and growth in developing countries. As activities like these
relocate outward to other regions, so -- it is held --geographical polarization reversal will
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16
occur (Townroe and Keen, 1984). We now know, however, that developing countries
also move ahead on the basis of many different kinds of sectors, some of which generate
strong systems of externalities, and tend to be marked by forceful agglomeration and
urbanization tendencies wherever they appear on the landscape. These sectors include
small-scale indigenous manufacturing, low-technology industries, craft-based industries,
and a wide array of services (Nadvi and Schmitz, 1994; Scott, 2002). Polarization
reversal is far from being a universal characteristic of the development process.
The particular patterns of agglomeration that make their appearance in any given
instance vary widely depending on local circumstances and the local mix of sectors, and
this diversity is further augmented by the role that historical path dependencies play in
the evolution of regional economies (Fujita et al., 1999). This is an important reason why,
in fact, there are many variations in the character of urban systems in both the developing
and developed countries as a whole, rather than convergence toward any single type.
What is common to all is the underlying functional link between agglomeration,
urbanization, and development.
This link, moreover, is susceptible to self-reinforcement over time by the
locational dynamics of expanding industrial systems. When a sector first comes into
being in a given part of the world (a country, a continent), the firms involved in it are
often located in a wide variety of places. This is because young, or emerging, or
recently- implanted industries tend to be relatively independent of (or have no opportunity
to tap into) pre-existing place-dependent positive externalities, especially where these
have developed in relation to older sectors and hence have little specific utility for new
industries. However, this first stage of development, characterized as it is by an open
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17
"window of locational opportunity," is almost always followed by a second where the
large initial number of locations is whittled down as the industry's local external
environment responds to growing demands for inputs of materials, services, labor, and so
on, and as geographically- focused increasing returns effects come into being at selected
locations (Scott and Storper, 1987). Thus, a few places begin to move ahead as their selfreinforcing
concentrations of capital and labor make them progressively more efficient, in
both static and dynamic terms. Success breeds success (up to some point of diminishing
returns, at least), and the advantages of these places then become locked in, marginalizing
competitor locations and effectively crowding them out of the field (Krugman and
Obstfeld, 1991). In this manner, what begins initially as a relatively open window of
locational opportunity for an industry eventually closes around a small number of core
agglomerations.
The frequency and scope of windows of locational opportunity are controlled by
many factors, of which internal economies of scale (in production, R&D, transacting, and
so on) are especially important. In industries where this feature results in oligopolistic
supply structures (e.g. sectors producing commercial aircraft or nuclear-power
generators) only a few regions will be able to attract relevant investments and to acquire
production capacity. Major shifts in the core locations of these industries can generally
occur only when there are important technological changes in products and processes,
thereby undermining the advantages of existing producers and, by extension, the regions
in which they are concentrated. By contrast, in sectors where optimal scale is achieved at
low rates of output (e.g. clothing, shoes, jewelry, and many kinds of business services or
electronics industries) there are relatively many potential windows of locational
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opportunity. Sectors of this sort are able to engage in significant forms of product
differentiation from one place to another, thus making it possible for latecomers to enter
the market and to create distinctive niches for themselves. This point is exemplified by
the recent history of the global shoe industry (Gereffi, 1995; Schmitz, 2001). Once
agglomeration occurs, (and depending on the nature of further major technological
shifts), the locational pattern of these sectors becomes locked in, and local developmental
effects intensify.
We have argued that urbanization is one of the major drivers of the process of
development in the contemporary world. This argument, to be sure, is by no means novel.
However, we have sought to re-express the older Hirschman-Myrdal-Perroux approach in
terms of recent advances in the theory of agglomeration and economic geography, and on
this basis to redress some of the imbalance that currently appears to exist between macroeconomic
approaches to the development question and what we earlier alluded to as
development ?on the ground?. This attempt to achieve a more balanced perspective is not
only significant in conceptual terms but also as a practical matter, for it reveals important
instruments (as we shall indicate) by means of which policy-makers can approach critical
tasks of economic development from a bottom- up and hence locally nuanced perspective.
One important corollary of our argument is that increasingly uneven densities of spatial
development can actually enha nce overall rates of economic growth and are hence not
necessarily or always undesirable, though we shall argue that this also sometimes gives
rise to an increasingly uneven spatial distribution of income, and hence to social and
political predicaments tha t can undermine developmental programs that fail to pay
adequate attention to this circumstance. We have further suggested that the complex
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nexus of relationships linking urbanization and development operates in countries at
every level of GDP per capita and that economic development can be achieved on the
basis of a wide variety of manufacturing and service sectors. These sectors include even
simple craft- or small firm-based industries, which were once thought of as the very
antithesis of any kind of durable development (Piore and Sabel, 1984; Wade, 1990). It is
especially urgent to refocus attention on the developmental potential of cities and regions
in the context of globalization, because they are the loci of intense positive externalities
in the increasingly borderless global system of economic relationships. In less-developed
countries, in particular, agglomeration is critical to development not only because it is a
source of enhanced economic productivity, but also because it is a basic condition of
specialization within the global division of labor and an essential foundation of exportoriented
growth.
IV. Developmental Disparities in the Contemporary World System
Regional divergence or convergence? The increasing liberalization of economic
exchange as globalization has proceeded, combined with steady improvements in
technologies of transportation and communication has encouraged the world-wide spread
of dense productive agglomerations (cf. Krugman and Venables, 1993). This effect is
complemented by two others. First, agglomerations in different parts of the world find
themselves increasingly caught up in relations of competition and complementarity with
one another. Inter-agglomeration competition occurs when producers in different places
are operating on the same markets; complementarity is present when differentially
specialized agglomerations are linked together via long-distance commodity chains
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(Feenstra and Hanson, 1996). Second, agglomerations are also often deeply connected to
more peripheral, less-densely-developed areas, especially where certain types of
production units within wider commodity chains find it advantageous to locate at
decentralized sites. This phenomenon is especially characteristic of branch plant
operations with relatively standardized production activities and hence with low-cost
procurement and distribution structures. The net result of the two tendencies noted here is
the proliferation of complex trade flows, between different agglomerations and between
agglomerations and peripheral areas, at national and international scales, and these flows
are expanding with globalization.
Neoclassical theories of development hold that the spatial integration of economic
activity in these ways tends progressively to eliminate inter-regional differences in living
standards, by promoting some combination of structural and compositional convergence
among participating economies. In fact, the actual record is quite wayward, with
convergence occurring in some places at some times, and divergence occurring on other
occasions. At the present moment, the play of regional and global economic forces
involves many complex cross-currents in which some parts of the world (East Asia and a
few metropolitan regions of Latin America) are doing relative ly well, while other parts
(Africa between the tropics, much of the former Soviet Union, and certain peripheral
regions in more developed countries) are falling steadily behind.
The predicaments of uneven spatial development are most dramatically expressed
in the observation that 50% of global GDP today is produced by only 15% of the world?s
people, most of them concentrated in the Triad nations of the North. Conversely, the
poorer half of the world?s population produces just 14% of global GDP. Moreover,
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world trade has become more concentrated among the Triad nations, to the relative
detriment of North-South commercial relations. Most of the developing world has been a
relative loser in this process, again with the exception of East Asia. At the same time,
much of the world?s most important trading activities (increasingly in the form of intrafirm
trade) occur between a relatively limited number of subnational regions or
agglomerations (US Department of Commerce, 1998; Fujita, Krugman and Venables,
1999; Barnes and Ledebur, 1998; Andersson and Andersson, 2000; Beaverstock, Smith
and Taylor, 2000) . This process, in turn, accentuates the growth of selected regions, and
helps to generate the contemporary phenomenon of large city-regions (as previously
defined) scattered across the continents in an integrated world-wide mosaic. Many
different parts of the developing world are deeply involved in this process, as exemplified
by city-regions like Mexico, São Paulo, Cairo, Bombay, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and so
on. One consequence of this trend, however, is that interregional income inequalities
within many developing countries are increasing. Indeed, even in many developed
countries, the recent period of intensive globalization has been accompanied by widening
gaps in per capita incomes between sub- national regions. The phenomenon is further
accentuated where labor mobility is relatively low (as it is in the UK and most of
continental Europe compared to the US) (Duranton and Monastiriotis, 2002).
Per capita income differences between countries diverged over much of the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, but showed signs of convergence from the 1960s to
the 1980s. Over the last decade or so, this tendency toward income convergence between
countries2 has been reversed, notwithstanding the dramatic improvements in technologies
2 Even though some analyses contend that this claim that spatial income differences are increasing is less
tenable if population-weighted measures are used for countries (Sala-I-Martin, 2002), they agree that when
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of spatial interaction that have been occurring (Dowrick and De Long, 2001; Clark and
Feenstra, 2001). Similarly, as Pomerantz (2000) points out, the ?great divergence? of
income levels in the Nineteenth Century occurred even though communications and
transportation costs were declining rapidly.
The dynamics of differential regional development. Considerable further light can
be shed on these issues by further analysis of the ways that regional development
processes may contribute to durable structural and compositional differences between
economies, but also about the potential to enhance the abilities of less developed regions
to overcome these barriers. In particular, why do some regions succeed in establishing
high-performing economic systems while others remain stillborn, stagnate, or decline
even as spatial interaction costs fall? We have already shown in our earlier discussion of
windows of locational opportunity how increasing returns effects reinforce growth
opportunities for regions that begin (even accidentally) to move ahead as production foci
in any given sector, while progressively closing off opportunities for others. Certain
endogenous features of agglomerations also have great impacts on local developmental
prospects. Economic historians have shown, for example, that even in industries where
best practices diffuse rapidly from country to country (as in the case of cotton mills and
railroads in the Nineteenth Century), factor productivity is often quite uneven over space
(Clark, 1987; Clark and Feenstra, 2001). What is additionally puzzling is that such
differences emerge not only in cases where technologies and managerial practices are
similar, but also in industries that tend uniformly to locate in large urban centers (as with
much of the electronics industry today). All this implies that there are significant
countries are used as units of measure, post-war trends toward greater convergence have been decisively
reversed in recent years.
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endogenous -- local and national -- determinants of how well agglomerations function,
and hence how they contribute to economic development in their local and national
contexts. By the same token, increasing trade, foreign investment, and the international
diffusion of technology do not automatically bring about convergence in productivity and
development levels (Clark and Feenstra, 2001; Landes, 1998; Mokyr, 1985; Wade, 1990;
North and Thomas, 1973).
Many of the endogenous conditions underlying local economic development and
facilitating entry into the world economy are cultural or institutional, in the specific sense
that they entail the formation of routines of economic behavior that potentiate and shape
activities such as production, entrepreneurship, and innovation (Haggard, 1990; Rodrik,
1999). These routines are, in effect, untraded forms of interdependency between
economic agents, and hence they collectively constitute the relational assets of the
regional economy (Storper, 1997). Standard theories of economic development do not
probe adequately into these processes (Putnam, 2000; Uzzi, 1996). Neoclassical theories,
including newer augmented versions, assume that successful behavior will emerge more
or less spontaneously out of the wider economic or social context (Mankiw et al., 1992).
Others, like the new growth theory, put their faith in the accumulation of stocks of
knowledge leading to generalized positive externality effects throughout the economy
(Romer, 1990; Lucas, 1988). The latter idea, though it may be useful as a starting point,
says little about the concrete habits and relationships through which knowledge and
savoir- faire are created and deployed in economic action (Johnson and Lundvall, 1992;
Rosenberg, 1982; Stiglitz, 1987; Nelson, 1992). Such relational assets resemble non-rival
goods, in the sense that they are not freely reproducible from one place to another, nor are
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substitutes available. Moreover, there are certain barriers to gaining access them, since
access is determined through complex processes of belonging to networks and
successfully passing screening tests given by existing members (Storper and Venables,
2002). This is why untraded interdependencies tend to have a strongly place-bound and
culturally-rooted character and often cannot be transferred easily " if at all -- from
successful to less successful regions (Becattini, 1990; Putnam et al., 1993). It follows
that because such assets are therefore --- at least partially " excludable in character, they
behave much like scale effects in enhancing the advantages of their home regions (as well
as their business enterprises and network members) and placing them into imperfect
competition with other regions.
These observations indicate that regional economic development involves a
mixture of exogenous constraints, the reorganization and build-up of local asset systems,
and political mobilization focused on institutions, socialization, and social capital. More
generally, the extent to which any region succeeds in creating localized increasing returns
effects -- which depend importantly on these cultural and institutional foundations -- is
critical to the entire development process. A direct extension of this point is the claim
that the success of national economies (as indicated above all by accession to
membership in the global high- income convergence club) is, in significant ways, related
to the rise of dynamic and creative agglomerations, as has recently been the case with the
high-performance Asian economies. If this claim is correct, it follows that for countries to
join the high- income convergence club in today?s world, they will have to sustain
successful agglomerated development processes, (though this remark in no way implies
that balanced and sustainable rural development is not also an essential ingredient of any
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pathway to national development). Agglomeration is a central concern that can neither be
equated to urbanization as a simple demographic phenomenon, nor dissolved away into
the realm of macro-economics.
V. The regional dimensions of development policy
In view of these remarks, one of the important tasks of any viable development
policy must be to cultivate those multiple and important benefits that flow from
regionalized production systems as they encounter the complex intra- and inter-regional
conditions that govern the logic of agglomeration. A number of negative aspects of interregional
competition must also be brought under control if development is to proceed
with any degree of smoothness.
Over the last half century, regional development policy has in practice tended to
assume the guise of stimulus packages applied to given localities in the attempt to initiate
take-off or to counter stagnation. The types of packages selected for these purposes vary
greatly from country to country, but they generally comprise programs such as subsidies
to industry, tax breaks, infrastructure provision, governmental schemes to direct new
capital investments to lagging areas, labor retraining programs, and so on (Donahue,
1997; Harrison et al., 1996). Approaches like these are not necessarily always devoid of
positive effects, but in the light of our earlier discussion, they are certainly problematical
when they occur in a vacuum, by which we mean a failure to attend to the critical
organizational and institutional foundations of regional growth and competitiveness, as
discussed above.
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Since the 1980s, a burgeoning body of literature and practical experiments has
accumulated in which these foundations have indeed been shown to be essential bulwarks
of the regional development process (cf. Bianchi, 1992; Scott, 2001; Schmitz, 2001).
More specifically, as we have noted, regional economies are internally tied together
through human and organizational interdependencies -- often untraded -- that have a
strong public-goods or quasi-public goods character, meaning that they are the source of
positive externalities that are freely available to all (or at least significant numbers of)
firms but the property of none. Such positive externalities are observable in diverse
domains of regional economic activity, including dense information flows, learning
processes, the emergence of craft or design traditions, business network formation, and so
on (Scott, 2002; Storper, 1997). In this regard, we can refer to a ?regional economic
commons? representing the elements of economic advantage that emerge out of the
collective order of agglomeration, but that by their nature cannot be reduced to individual
ownership and control. These elements are crucial for overall regional success, especially
in a globalizing economy.
Concomitantly, new kinds of policy interventions based on the concept of regional
economies as aggregates of physical and relational assets need to be identified and
refined. This is because their development-enhancing synergies are subject to two main
problems. First, the supporting conditions for maximizing such positive externalities tend
to be undersupplied where market relations alone prevail (Bator, 1958; Mishan, 1981).
They include skills training, labor market information, technological research, and so on
(Johanssen et al., 2001; Braczyk et al., 1998; Maskell, 1998). They would be
undersupplied because, insofar as they are mobile and freely available, there is a strong
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temptation for potential producers to try and free ride on other producers? investments in
them, by poaching these resources from the regional resource pool. It is hence essential
to build forms of policy intervention in order to rectify this problem. Second, even in the
vital center of a regional economy functioning on the basis of untraded
interdependencies, there are significant moral hazards which can generate severe negative
externalities if left on their own. These include the emergence of low trust relations
between manufacturers and subcontractors, or threats to the reputation of regional
product quality due to free rider behavior. It is also possible for a regional economy to go
down the wrong pathway, as for example when some producers choose short-term
behaviors in product and labor markets which oblige their competitors to imitate them,
but where the aggregate result is an adverse selection dynamic for the regional system as
a whole, and this in turn locks the economy into an undesirable low-level equilibrium.
The many-sided regional economic commons that develops alongside dense
industrial agglomerations, then, represent a critical domain of beneficial policy
intervention. There are different frameworks within which such intervention can be
undertaken. These include governmental agencies, civic associations, private-public
partnerships, or a host of other possible institutional arrangements, depending on local
traditions and political sensibilities. Although the need for such action exists in regions
at every degree of poverty or prosperity, it is probably most difficult to achieve in
localities that have high deficits of basic physical and relational assets to begin with. This
sort of intervention, in any of its institutional guises, has little resemblance to traditional
urban policy, with its emphasis on infrastructure, housing, transportation, and urban
public finance; it is instead oriented toward the problem of coordination of urban
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production systems. Moreover, since it depends so greatly on the active consent of many
different individuals and groups, such intervention calls for a high degree of social and
political engagement, in which firms, workers, and other stakeholders in the local
economy are brought into meaningful public debate about what is at issue and about the
preferred shape of collective outcomes. There is indeed a role for collective action in
promoting regional increasing- returns effects and raising the long-term rate of economic
growth, and this claim is entirely consistent with the same point made for the economy as
a whole by the new growth theory (Romer, 1990; Lucas, 1988), as well as by the large
theoretical and empirical literatures on the social and institutional foundations of
successful markets.
A confirmed anti-dirigiste such as Lal (1983) would certainly raise objections at this
point to the effect that it is always better to live with market failures than with the
?inevitable? gaffes of public agencies and their encouragement of rent-seeking behavior.
No matter how salutary this warning may be, it is tempered to the extent that the notion
of a regional economic commons " offering compensating returns to coordination -- can
be enhanced and sustained by such interventions and that lack thereof can destroy the
commons, with aggregate outcomes that drag down overall economic performance.
Moreover, the recent body of theory and scholarship on agglomeration effects to which
we refer here allows increasingly rigorous empirical and theoretical tests to be be applied
to interventions in regional economic performance.
Rising levels of local activism in the matter of regional economic development,
however, do create some additional risks. These take many different forms ranging from
irrational development races, through fiscal wars over subsidies and investments, to the
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poaching of one region?s talent and resources by another, to locational tournaments for
large inward investments (Donahue, 1997a; Bartik, 1991). Interregional competition in
pursuit of first-mover advantages is a striking instance of this problem. It is perhaps most
clearly evident where several different regions are all striving to become incubators of
some critical infant industry, and hence to emerge eventually as the leading centers of
that industry as it matures. But in the presence of agglomeration economies, only one or a
few champion regions are likely to be successful in any given production niche over the
long run, implying that in the absence of informed coordination from the beginning,
considerable misallocation of resources will in all likelihood have occurred. In general,
securing positive-sum returns to development at the interregional scale " and in a world
where many individual regions are actively striving to build internal developmental
competencies " appears to demand some additional layer of regulatory oversight. Certain
European Union injunctions against ?social dumping? are attempts to establish interregional
coordination of this type, though they remain insufficiently specific to be fully
operational.
At the same time, the formerly widespread policies of central governments to
promote regional income equalization have been considerably diluted in recent years in
both developed and developing countries,3 thereby helping to accentuate the processes of
interregional income divergence already noted. Globalization as it is being molded by
the ideology of the Washington Consensus, may encourage further watering down of
these policies, especially where this is accompanied by the enforcement of contractionary
monetary policies and fiscal austerity programs in developing countries (Stiglitz, 2002).
3 As Davezies (2000) notes, this dilution concerns mostly wage-based income equalization policies in the
European countries. Certain kinds of transfer payments compensate in part for this dilution.
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As a corollary, many countries are also concentrating their public expenditures on their
most dynamic, globally- linked agglomerations at the expense of basic equity issues both
within these agglomerations and between them and other areas of the national territory
(Acs, 2000; Phillips, 2002). The concomitant tensions built into the contemporary
development process -- at all geographical scales, whether intrametropolitan,
interregional or international -- can lead to political backlash in which even the
potentially positive aspects of development and globalization may not be recognized
because of a failure to deal with their more egregiously negative effects, including the
exacerbation of social and interregional inequalities. Such backlashes occurred in the
1920s, when virtually all of the main immigrant-receiving American countries shut the
door to further immigration, contributing to the end of progress in construction of the
North Atlantic global economy and with it, the many decades long slowdown in world
economic growth (Williamson, 1998).
All of this suggests that the regional components of economic development policy
under contemporary conditions pose a knife-edge dilemma. On the one hand, policy
needs to be designed in ways that strengthen agglomeration economies in various ways.
On the other hand, isolated attempts to strengthen agglomeration economies may
intensify disparities in per capita incomes along many different lines of cleavage
(Wagner, 2001a, 2001b). These two aspects of the question are in constant tension with
one another in today?s world, as exemplified by current debates in which some analysts
hold that development policy is best focused on productivity improvements in dynamic
agglomerations, (thereby maximizing national growth rates, but increasing social
tensions), while other analysts suggest that limiting inequality through appropriate forms
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of income redistribution (social and/or inter-regional) can lead to more viable long-run
development programs (Aghion, 1998; Amsden, 1989). In any case, for virtually every
country, there is today a serious and much neglected policy issue involving the
achievement of more effective forms of central/regional coordination and a more
appropriate spatial distributions of political power (Bolton et al., 1996; Cheshire and
Gordon, 1998; Donahue, 1997b; Inman and Rubinfeld, 1997; Wagner, 2001b)
Analogous tensions over development disparities recur at every level of geographic
scale in the world economy (Held et al., 1999), and especially at the global scale itself. In
the current regime of intensified globalization in which market imperatives consistently
outrun existing institutional capacities for effective regulation, the balance appears to be
strongly in favor of increasing inequalities. The discussion laid out here presents the case
for an explicit consideration of the economic geography of globalization in relation to its
regional foundations, and this issue needs henceforth to figure prominently in any
reorganization of the institutions comprising a new multi- scalar system of governance.
The competing claims of growth and equity remain firmly on the agenda, even if the
current pressures of spatial economic reorganization make it necessary to re-think the
ways in which we can best achieve balanced responses to them.
VI. Conclusion: development theory through the lens of economic geography
Conventional economic theories of development and trade have by and large
ignored questions of economic geography. Today some of this neglect is being rectified
by economists with an interest in agglomeration economies and regional dynamics (see,
for example, Fujita et al., 1999). In our view, however, this perspective can be taken
further. The existence of pervasive agglomeration economies based on externalities and
increasing returns effects calls for a full recognition of the region as an organic unit of
economic reality. This is because agglomeration economies represent a potent,
immobile, and -- given their status as public and quasi-public goods -- a highlyproblematic
al element of the entire development process. As such, regions exist as
keystones of economic organization just as firms, sectors, and nations do. Development
theory needs now to recognize this point and take it into account.
As we indicated at the beginning of this paper, economists have tended to
privilege macro-economic variables as the best possible line of attack on the problem of
development. But this level of observation, though obviously important, is no longer (if
it ever was) the uniquely privileged point of entry to an understanding of development,
and all the more so today given that the barriers between national economies are in
certain respects breaking down, thus enhancing tendencies to agglomeration at selected
locations all over the world. Moreover, while development theories directed at poorer
countries have at times recognized the fundamental two-way connection between
industrialization and urbanization, they have tended to focus on the problem of
hyperurbanization and its negative social repercussions, rather than on the region as a
locus of high-productivity outcomes. Our point is that one of the most fundamental issues
for developing countries today is how to create and sustain the kinds of agglomerations
without which they can never hope for entry into the highest ranks of the global
economy, while ensuring that income disparities remain well within the limits of the
socially just and politically tolerable.
This state of affairs poses many new questions for development theory and policy
at the regional, national and international scales. We have sought in the present paper to
move beyond elements of development theory that impede a fuller recognition of the
geographical realities of the globalization process and to sketch out the beginnings of
some broad responses to the questions raised by this exercise.
Related: • pitufa 113. Exporter China is paying big for U.S. expertise
The instruments, designed to help researchers study possible sources of hydrogen fuel for hybrid vehicles, carry a hefty price tag - about $100,000 each. Advanced Materials Corp. has sold units to customers in Italy, Singapore, Taiwan, India and other countries.
But one nation has bought more than any other: China.
The country better known for flooding the U.S. market with cheap toys and other items is injecting billions of dollars into the bottom lines of U.S. manufacturers of certain big-ticket, highly engineered products - including locomotives, nuclear-power plants, and aircraft. But analysts warn that demand will likely wane as China's manufacturing capabilities improve.Related: • Exporter • China • is • paying • big • for • US • expertise 114. Nuclear Plants Face Steep Costs COMMODITIES CORNERMONDAY, APRIL 16, 2007By MATTHEW DALTONSUPPLY DISRUPTIONS AND DWINDLING INVENTORIES have created a perfect storm in the uranium market -- and electric utilities hope they can wait out the bad weather. The price of uranium, which fuels nuclear-power plants, has soared to $113 a pound, from less than $20 three years ago. And market participants expect uranium to become even more expensive, at least in the short term.The price of fuel, which includes the uranium and enrichment costs, is only about 28% of the total cost of operating a nuclear plant. That's a much lower impact than fuel costs have at coal- or natural gas-burning plants. But if prices don't moderate, nuclear plants will be somewhat less profitable -- particularly if the enrichment process grows more expensive, as predicted by the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade organization. Related: • Nuclear • Plants • Face • Steep • Costs 115. Natural energy - Energy heads into sensitive areas
Energy heads into sensitive areasBillings Gazette - As the methane, or natural gas, is tapped out beneath the flat rangeland of eastern Wyoming, energy companies are migrating west and into richer habitat along the Powder River, where protected birds such as the sage grouse live. Federal rules mandate Source: www.billingsgazette.net
Focus Energy Trust continues distributions of $0.14 per unitForbes - Focus Energy Trust is a natural gas weighted energy trust. Focus is committed to maintaining its emphasis on operating high-quality oil and gas properties, delivering consistent distributions to unitholders, and ensuring financial strength and Source: www.forbes.com
What?s behind ?Mideast nuclear-power club? Xinhua News Agency - After a meeting with GCC chief Abdulrahman al-Attiyah in Riyadhon Thursday, ElBaradei told a press conference that ?it is a natural right for the GCC countries to possess nuclear energy in order to use it for peaceful purposes.? ?Nothing Source: news.xinhuanet.com
Baradei begins Jordan visitMENAFN - This will help us fulfill our energy needs,? he said, adding that he will discuss the issue with Baradei. According to Maher Hijazin, director of the Natural Resources Authority, the country has ?tens of thousands of tonnes? of uranium reserves. Source: www.menafn.com
Energy Minister G ler: Suspension of the Nabucco Project is out of Turkish Weekly - Energy and Natural Resources Minister Hilmi G ler said on Wednesday that the suspension of the Nabucco project which will enable the ?transportation of the Azerbaijani natural gas to Europe via Turkey? was out of question. Minister G ler answered Source: www.turkishweekly.net
Is Arnold having second thoughts on LNG?San Francisco Gate - A day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger?s office issued a statement saying liquefied natural gas ?should be part of California?s energy portfolio,? the Republican governor seemed to be having second thoughts about shipping the fuel from afar to meet Source: www.sfgate.com
Illinois EPA Issues Air Permit for the Construction of the Secure PR Newswire - The Secure Energy Decatur Gasification Plant is a coal to pipeline quality synthetic natural gas conversion facility planned for an existing industrial site in Decatur, Illinois. The plant will convert up to 1.4 million tons per year of high-sulfur Source: sev.prnewswire.com Related: • Natural • energy • Energy • heads • into • sensitive • areas 116. Led Bib, at the Vortex 10/4/07
A totally incendiary (two) sets from Led Bib at the Vortex, this Tuesday. Another of The Babel label?s great young progressive jazz acts? they were there promoting their new album Sizewell Tea (apparently released April 23rd, but available some places already).
Going in to see this was a fairly on-the-whim sort of thing, based pretty much on hearing their track on this month?s Jazzwise cover-mounted Babel sampler CD (pretty decent, plus you get a free magazine with it, too). I guess they?re a sort of punk-funk-jazz quintet; more ?jazzy? than Babel-mates Acoustic Ladyland or Polar Bear, but sharing that hot contemporary-London-jazz feel; a bunch of music-school graduates coming through from a background of growing up listening to rock music?
Led Bib is: Liran Donin (bass), Toby McLaren (keyboards), Chris Williams (alto sax, left in picture above), Pete Grogan (also alto sax), and Mark Holub, the group leader (on drums). The gig itself was a bit of a slow start; the band making it onto the Vortex stage almost an hour after the scheduled start, and with the first set seemingly thrown off-kilter by PA issues; the second set was a lot more cooking? The twin sax line up is cool; in a band like Polar Bear, for example, the saxes (Pete Wareham and Mark Lockheart, in that case) tend to stick quite close together, weaving around a single line. With Led Bib, Grogan and Williams play the heads tight together in free swirls, but then separate with very much their own distinctive voices; Grogan plays a more considered, traditional line, with occasional Coltrane-tinges, while Williams is more stream-of-consciousness: every now and then moving into great bursts of bebop-Marshall-Allen. Liran Donin is a great bassist, contributing a couple of brilliantly melodic solos. Toby McLaren was laying the groove well-down with some tight Fender Rhodes, perfectly meshed with Holub?s restrained but inspired drumming. Holub is a New Jersey ex-pat, and you can hear a strong New York-downtown vibe in their music; free-jazz but with the awareness that ?people are listening?. Really fantastic group; the nuclear-power reference from their Sizewell Tea is probably pretty apt, just a great fun uplifting band? Sample sounds are available on their myspace and Babel pages?Related: • Led • Bib • at • the • Vortex • 10407 117. Whole house fans - Pour some dry, bite-size cereal...
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