Nuclear

A weekly review including:
-Oil and the Global Economy
-The EU Crisis
-Iran
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs

Apollo is a small town in western Pennsylvania, part of the old coal and steel belt that surrounds Pittsburgh. The people who grew up there have learned what harm the corporations who employed them and their relatives and friends have done and continue to do. Men, women, and children were poisoned by that uranium fuel plant and that glass plant. Yet, for the most part, they ignore this, content to contemplate instead their “warm and fuzzy” memories, as one person put it.

The prospect of weaker oil demand in the face of the Euro crisis was balanced this week by warnings from the IEA and Saudi Arabia. Sadad al-Husseini, the former head of Exploration and Production at Saudi Aramco, wrote that "$100 for Brent is quite a correction and it will be a challenge to sustain such a low price beyond the short term"...

A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The EU at a crossroads
-China slowing
-IEA's monthly report
-Quote of the week
-Briefs

Fears of a new phase in the European debt crisis, a decline in oil imports to China in April, and the prospect of a new round of international talks on Iran’s nuclear programme have seen oil prices drop back from recent highs in the past two weeks. Despite all this however, and reports from OPEC that it bolstered supply by 320,000 barrels in April, Brent oil still stands around $112/barrel.

- Thomas Homer-Dixon: Exploring the climate “mindscape” (oil supplies and energy junk)
- Government influence is negative for energy fuel policy
- The German Switch from Nuclear to Renewables
- Scientists’ Arctic drilling plan aims to demystify undersea greenhouse gases
- Ancien directeur de TOTAL: Nouvelles découvertes et gaz de schiste retarderont à peine le pic pétrolier

A mid-weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week

For nearly 25 years now, the idea that it might be possible to extract unlimited amounts of energy from the nucleus of a hydrogen atom at low temperatures has been pretty much in disrepute. When major laboratories were unable to detect nuclear reactions on their work benches back in 1989, the whole notion of what was then called "cold fusion" was debunked as junk science and for most remains so to this day. Fortunately however, a few scientists kept plugging away on just how one could get heat from the nucleus of a hydrogen atom. Now their efforts seem to be paying off.

In a week in which the Leveson inquiry shone a light on the overlap between big business and politics, news that Shell made £2m an hour in Q1 demonstrated only too well why creating the political will to move away from oil appears to be such an uphill battle.

A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week

A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-the Iranian confrontation
-the EU's debt crisis
-Argentina nationalizes YPF
-Quote of the week
-Briefs

Out of desperation for the climate, many prominent environmentalists converted to the religion of nuclear (fission) power between 2008-2011. Maybe this is a good time to rethink those deathbed conversions.

A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week

It's a policy fierce enough to cause great suffering among Iranians -- and possibly in the long run among Americans, too. It might, in the end, even deeply harm the global economy and yet, history tells us, it will fail on its own. Economic war led by Washington (and encouraged by Israel) will not take down the Iranian government or bring it to the bargaining table on its knees ready to surrender its nuclear program. It might, however, lead to actual armed conflict with incalculable consequences.

A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week