Iran Accuses Obama of Double Standards on Nuclear Power

Iran is accusing U.S. President Barack Obama of double standards for supporting the building of nuclear power plants in the United States while threatening Tehran for pursuing a similar goal. Iran's state-run IRNA news agency made the comment in response to Mr. Obama's State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday. In that speech, Mr. Obama urged lawmakers to support the construction of a new generation of safe and clean nuclear power plants. He also repeated U.S. accusations that Iran is using its nuclear program to pursue atomic weapons in violation of international agreements. Mr. Obama warned Iranian leaders that they will face "growing consequences" for continuing to "ignore" those obligations, as he put it. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday she discussed proposals for more international pressure on Iran with her Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in London.

Chile not ready for nuclear power, energy min says

is not ready for nuclear power because of legal and regulatory gaps as well as public resistance, but could be ready within 15 years, Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman said on Thursday. "At the moment the country is not in a position to implement a nuclear program with the proper security standards," Tokman told a nuclear energy conference in the Chilean capital, Santiago. "There is enough time to close the gaps required (to build a reactor) by 2024," he added. If legal and regulatory hurdles are dealt with by 2016, construction of a reactor could feasibly begin by 2018 and join Chile's power grid six years after that, he estimated. "This can't be the decision of just a government, but requires a much broader consensus," Tokman said.

West Kalimantan Mulls Nuclear Power To Generate Electricity

West Kalimantan has ample uranium reserves which can be enriched to produce electricity, Deputy Governor Drs Christiandy Sanjaya says. He said this possibility was prompted by the electricity crisis faced not only by West Kalimantan but all four provinces in the Indonesian portion of Borneo. "West Kalimantan has 12 districts with Malawai and Sintang being identified having uranium reserves to generate nuclear power. "The Indonesian government agency responsible for nuclear has conducted studies there," he told Malaysian journalists who are on a 10-day visit sponsored by Berjaya Foundation here. The deputy governor said the people still had doubts about the use of nuclear as an energy source after untoward incidents were reported in several countries but a lot of efforts had been done to ensure its safety.

Areva sees "significant" 2010 order backlog growth

Areva's (CEPFi.PA) sales rose 5.4 percent in 2009, driven by its reactors and services unit, and it forecast "significant growth" in order backlog and revenue for its nuclear and renewables operations in 2010. The world's biggest maker of nuclear reactors said revenues, excluding its transmission and distribution business, which will be sold to a French consortium, reached 8.53 billion euros, with the reactors and services unit showing growth of 12.8 percent. Areva's international sales, excluding T&D, were up 9.3 percent from 2008 at 5.26 million euros. The fourth quarter of 2009 was particularly strong, with revenue rising 12.4 percent from the previous quarter to 2.75 billion euros. The order backlog rose 1.8 percent from 2008 to 43.3 billion euros, with contracts signed to deliver enrichment services with the Czech Republic and Duke Energy (DUK.N) in the United States.

A Venus flytrap for nuclear waste

Capturing only caesium from vast amounts of liquid nuclear waste is like looking for a needle in a haystack, Kanatzidis said. The waste has a much higher concentration of sodium compared to caesium, with ratios as great as 1,000-to-1. This difficult-to-achieve selectivity is why currently there is no good solution for caesium removal. Not every object is food to a Venus flytrap. Like the carnivorous plant, a new material developed at Northwestern University permanently traps only its desired prey, the radioactive ion caesium, and not other harmless ions like sodium. It is, in fact, caesium itself that triggers a structural change in the material, causing it to snap shut its pores, or windows, and trap the caesium ions within. The material sequesters 100 per cent of the caesium ions from the solution while at the same time ignoring all the sodium ions, according to a Northwestern University press release. The synthetic material, made from layers of a gallium, sulphur and antimony compound, is very select