The thing is, there’s actually quite a bit of disagreement on the matter. The study ‘Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America’ isn’t the only one to examine the issue.

In his paper ‘Four Nuclear Myths’, Amory B. Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute shows that…

…windpower is far less land-intensive than nuclear power; [solar] photovoltaics spread across land [is] comparable to nuclear if mounted on the ground in average U.S. sites, but much or most of that land… can be shared with lifestock or wildlife, and PVs use no land if mounted on structures, as ~90% now are.

The paper ‘Improving the ecological footprint of nuclear energy: a risk-based lifecycle assessment approach for critical infrastructure systems’ (from the International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, Vol. 1, No. 4.) estimates that nuclear’s land-use footprint is four times higher than coal…

Specifically, a lifecycle assessment of nuclear energy production is important because it captures the release of radionuclides and other toxic materials into the environment... It is concluded that, when critical infrastructure risks are taken into consideration, the actual nuclear footprint may be significantly higher than previous footprint calculations.

Would AREVA care to cite a study taking all this into account?

(And there’s one thing that hasn’t been mentioned: energy efficiency doesn’t use any land at all.)

ANALYSIS-German nuclear policy skirts a taboo
‘FRANKFURT, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Germany's nuclear power policy of keeping old reactors open longer to bridge the gap to greener energy may also leave the door open to eventually break a major electoral taboo -- new atomic power plants. Chancellor Angela Merkel's new centre-right government last week kept nuclear energy alive but stressed that would only be until renewable energies are fully viable. Popular opposition to nuclear is strong and visceral. A total of 17 reactors had faced closure in the coming decade but can now expect a new lease of life. Analysts think this leaves room for opinions to change. "There is an attempt in Germany to establish a policy comfort zone," said Lawrence Poole of IHS Global Insight. "Once they have that in place and safe and well maintained nuclear plants continue to supply power, it makes it that much easier to progress the overall debate," he said, adding, "Whether that means new plants is another question." Merkel's political opponents have been less circumspect in raising their own suspicions. "The oldest scrap metal reactors remain online despite all safety problems," said Green politician and former environment minister Juergen Trittin in a comment on the coalition deal.’

The Nature Conservancy: Nuclear Power has a Small Footprint

Now, when it comes to environmental issues, what’s the kind of footprint that springs to mind? It would be carbon footprint, wouldn’t it? A quick Google tells us that there are over four million references to ‘carbon footprint’ out there on the internet.

So reading that headline from AREVA’s blog, what kind of footprint did you first think of?

The thing is, the particular footprint AREVA are talking about here isn’t nuclear power’s carbon footprint but it’s ‘land-use footprint’. Apparently, ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint of all forms of energy generation’. We’ll confess to not being familiar with the term. A quick Google tells us that ‘land-use footprint’ has just over 20 thousand references out there on the internet. It’s not a search term used very frequently at all on Google.

So far, so misleading. It’s just one more example of the creative lengths you have to go to when you want to promote a dirty, dangerous and discredited energy source (debunking nuclear, thanks to it being so dirty, dangerous and discredited, is an altogether simpler proposition).

This isn’t to say that the issue of ‘energy sprawl’ and the amount of land we use to generate our power isn’t hugely important. We’re not downplaying it, it’s just that AREVA is coming to the issue suspiciously late and takes the line that ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint’ but stays silent on just what happens on the land that nuclear power sits on (in their blog post, they’re still calling nuclear power ‘safe, reliable, clean, CO2-free’ without any proof). It smacks of desperation.

Have the good people at AREVA read this passage of the ‘Land Use Intensity’ study from which they quote so approvingly…?

Our definition of impact varies among energy production techniques, so a less compact way of generating energy does not necessarily mean that an energy production technique is more damaging to biodiversity, but simply that it has a larger spatial area impacted to some degree. Moreover, many energy production techniques actually have multiple effects on biodiversity, which operate at different spatial and temporal scales… Further, the longevity of the impacts described here varies. For example, radioactive nuclear waste will last for millennia, some mine tailings will be toxic for centuries…

In other words, AREVA are promoting the part of the study that says ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint of all forms of energy generation’ but not the part that talks about nuclear power's devastating impact on the environment from uranium mining to land contamination around nuclear reactors to high-level nuclear waste storage. Fancy that.

French nuclear export drive tainted by safety fears
‘PARIS - Safety fears and threats of winter power cuts have taken some of the shine off France's world-beating nuclear industry, the country's main source of power and a key plank in its foreign trade strategy. France generates more than three-quarters of its electricity through nuclear power, more than any other country by proportion, and President Nicolas Sarkozy has made exporting French know-how a top priority. China and Finland are already building French-designed new generation reactors, and talks are underway to export the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) model to Britain, India, Abu Dhabi and the United States. Alarm bells rang this week, however, when French, British and Finnish regulators called on the French nuclear engineering firm Areva to review the design of the planned plants' safety and control systems. Meanwhile, French businesses and householders in some regions could face winter power cuts or rationing after labour strikes delayed the refuelling of France's older plants and left almost one third of them off line.’

The short and sensible answer? Neither.

Entergy Corp Chief Executive J. Wayne Leonard said on Tuesday that the company is unlikely to pursue construction of new nuclear plant in its Southeastern U.S. utility territory. "It's not off the table, but the economics are really not supportive and not likely to be supportive in the near future," Leonard said from the sidelines of the Edison Electric Institute financial conference.

…and…

The estimated cost of two new nuclear reactors proposed by CPS Energy has gone up as much as $4 billion, prompting the [San Antonio] City Council to postpone Thursday's vote on the project's financing until January… CPS interim General Manager Steve Bartley said the utility's main contractor on the project, Toshiba Inc., informed officials that the cost of the reactors would be “substantially greater” than CPS' estimate of $13 billion, which includes financing.

This fear of the rocketing costs of new nuclear reactors isn’t merely confined to the US. Remember Turkey and Canada unveiling similarly ridiculous figures recently?

Other countries have different approaches to nuclear economics. France and Finland decided to rush headlong into building their own new reactors before for the full financial horror hit them. In the UK, government ministers refuse to even discuss the costs of new nuclear reactors in public. One doesn’t have to be a genius to wonder why – if the costs of nuclear power were even remotely acceptable, these pro-nuclear ministers would be shouting it from the rooftops.

The thing is, you don’t have to look very far under the surface of the industry’s hype to see all this. So why does it continue with the charade in the face of the evidence?

Read more: Forget Nuclear by Amory B. Lovins, Imran Sheikh, and Alex Markevich

Australia's Future Power Sources Won't Include Nuclear - PM
‘CANBERRA -(Dow Jones)- The future sources for Australia's power needs include coal, natural gas and a range of renewables rather than nuclear, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Wednesday. Australia's challenge for power generation, as the world's biggest exporter of seaborne coal, is to invest in "clean coal" technology that captures and stores carbon and to develop the vast array of gas sources available including using liquefied natural gas onshore, he said. As well, Australia needs to invest in renewable energysources including large-scale solar and wind, to meet the government's target of sourcing 20% of its power needs from renewable sources by 2020, he said. "This is the future for Australia, other countries will reach their own decisions" about their sources of energy, Rudd said in an interview on radio 4BC when asked about developing nuclear power domestically. Australia sells uranium overseas because countries such as France don't have the same range of options for sourcing power as Australia does, he said. Rudd also argued against nuclear power on the basis of cost, the relatively modest amount of power that modelling suggests would be available from this source and the difficulty of locating a nuclear power station near water.’

This week, however, lumbering French nuclear ogre AREVA added a third question to the list: ‘What will the design look like?’…

In an unprecedented step, the UK nuclear safety regulator (HSE’s ND), the French nuclear regulator (ASN), and the Finnish nuclear regulator (STUK) released a joint statement on their respective evaluations of the design of AREVA’s shiny all-singing, all-dancing state-of-the-art third generation EPR Pressurised Water Reactor. You see, all three have discovered the same problem with the reactor’s design…

The issue is primarily around ensuring the adequacy of the safety systems (those used to maintain control of the plant if it goes outside normal conditions), and their independence from the control systems (those used to operate the plant under normal conditions).

Independence is important because, if a safety system provides protection against the failure of a control system, then they should not fail together. The EPR design, as originally proposed by the licensees and the manufacturer, AREVA, doesn’t comply with the independence principle, as there is a very high degree of complex interconnectivity between the control and safety systems.

In short: the EPR’s safety system isn’t independent from its control system. The safety system is there, in case the control system fails, to prevent catastrophic accidents. In EPR’s case, if the control system fails, the currently non-independent safety system could fail as well. And AREVA wants to sell the EPR all over the world.

Needless to say, AREVA responded with an awesome piece of denial, spin and downright fantasy…

The safety of the EPR™ reactor has not been called into question…

Really? So clearly ‘The issue is primarily around ensuring the adequacy of the safety systems’ and ‘The EPR design… doesn’t comply with the independence principle’ actually means ‘there’s nothing to worry about’. Silly us. Need we remind you that the OL3 EPR reactor in Olkiluoto, Finland has been under construction since 2004, the EPR at Flamanville, France has been under construction since 2006. And there are still questions about the ‘adequacy’ of the EPR’s safety systems.

AREVA then move straight to the fantasy…

The EPR™ reactor is currently the most powerful reactor in the world...

(No it isn’t – it hasn’t been built yet.)

AREVA guarantees the safety of its reactor…

(It could guarantee snow in Summer but that wouldn’t make it any more likely. AREVA can make as many guarantees as it likes but what will those guarantees be worth after a major accident? Can you clean up nuclear contamination with a guarantee? Figures vary as to the cost of the Chernobyl disaster but a quarter of a trillion dollars is a conservative estimate. Does AREVA have that kind of money? It will be governments and taxpayers who will be paying for any clean-up.)

So what does this mean? What it always does: more cost, more delays, more uncertainty, more spin, more fantasy, and more distraction from the fight against climate change. It means more of the same from AREVA and those who support them.

Niger Leader rewrites rules to keep power
‘The cause of democracy in Africa could have done without this latest affront. Barely six months after giving the French president an undertaking that he would leave power at the end of his second term, Niger's president, Mamadou Tandja, has rewritten the rules to give himself power for as long as he wishes. A general election was held on 20 October to renew 113 seats in parliament, which Tandja dissolved in May to overcome its opposition to his plans to change the constitution. He organised a referendum on 4 August to obtain popular approval for new rules, doing away with the two-term limit on presidential office. Tandja, who has been in power for 10 years, thus avoided the need for another presidential election - scheduled for the end of this year - and can in theory remain in power for as long as he likes. Meanwhile he has had large numbers of political opponents arrested. After pretending to support democracy for Nicolas Sarkozy's benefit in March, Tandja changed his tune at the official launch of the massive Imouraren uranium mining project, which has been contracted to Areva, the French nuclear conglomerate. He announced plans for a referendum on the new constitution at the ceremony, attended by the French secretary of state for cooperation, Alain Joyandet, and Areva's CEO, Anne Lauvergeon. Paris says its mining interests have no bearing on the president's behaviour "given that the contract has already been signed".’

As a Greenpeace report said back in 1995, the ‘interior of the atoll is effectively a vast, unregulated high-level radioactive waste dump’. Yes, this should serve as a permanent reminder of the dangers of nuclear weapons, but a source of pride?

So we got to thinking. Just what was it that happened on Mururoa that makes Sarkozy so very proud? Was it this…?

Perhaps it’s the fact that for 30 years successive French governments lied about there being ‘no radioactive fallout from French nuclear tests, or leakage of radioactivity into the lagoons at Moruroa’ that gives President Sarkozy warm, partriotic feelings.

One thing he shouldn’t be feeling proud of is his own government’s treatment of the victims of French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Many Polynesians will be excluded from the compensation programme due to strict restrictions imposed by the French senate. It’s a strange set of priorities, celebrating pride in a blasted island but not the sacrifices made by the people on the road to France’s nuclear ‘glory’.

So, we can expect things to improve now the colder winter weather is on the way? Er, not so much…

The subsidiary of EDF, which manages the network of power lines, said that France will have to import 4 000 megawatts (MW) of electricity "for several weeks from November 2009 to January 2010, according to a study released Friday. This is equivalent to the production of 4 nuclear reactors.

This strong dependence of France on other countries for its electricity needs is because of the downtime suffered by the French nuclear facilities this year. Fifteen of 58 nuclear reactors were shut down Friday for maintenance, uranium refuelling, because of various problems, according to a source familiar with the matter.

So that’s France’s nuclear: out of action when it’s hot, out of action when it’s cold. To add insult to injury, parts of France may see power cuts because the French grid isn’t designed to accept large imports of electricity. To think France is regarded as the world leader when it comes to nuclear energy technology. Somebody somewhere really didn’t think this all through.

Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico's water sources
‘Radioactive debris has been found in canyons that drain into the Rio Grande, but officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there's no health risk. Reporting from Los Alamos, N.M. - More than 60 years after scientists assembled the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lethal waste is seeping from mountain burial sites and moving toward aquifers, springs and streams that provide water to 250,000 residents of northern New Mexico. Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an ideal place to store a bomb factory's deadly debris. But the heavily fractured mountains haven't contained the waste, some of which has trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest. So far, the level of contamination in the Rio Grande has not been high enough to raise health concerns. But the monitoring of runoff in canyons that drain into the river has found unsafe concentrations of organic compounds such as perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket propellent, and various radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission. Much surface contamination, however, becomes embedded in sediment or moves down into groundwater. That subterranean migration poses the greatest long-term danger to drinking-water wells and ultimately the Rio Grande.’

After staunch opposition from the likes of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Bankwatch, Urgewald and BeleNE!, it looks like the long and ignominious history of Bulgaria’s Belene nuclear power plant might be finally drawing to a close. Citing ‘funding issues’, German utility RWE has walked away from its 49 per cent in the disaster-prone project. Those funding ‘issues’? That there isn’t any funding - it’s a bit like saying there are ‘food issues’ when you’re hungry.

If OL3 in Olkiluoto, Finland is supposed to be the nuclear industry’s poster child then Belene is the nasty and ugly younger brother nobody wants to talk about. Belene was a naughty little boy from the outset…

The construction has been stop-start since the go ahead was given in way back in 1981. Belene was abandoned once before in 1990 due to – wouldn’t you know it? - ‘funding issues’. The project was restarted in 2002 and it’s been downhill all the way since then. Like all nuclear reactors the costs quickly spiralled out of control and now stand at seven billion euros.

The financing of Belene has been suspicious to say the least. ‘For the past 18 months, we’ve been pointing out to RWE that Belene is a high-risk
project in terms of safety, economics, environment and corruption,’ says Heffa
Schücking from the German environment NGO Urgewald. The Bulgarian government found itself faced with accusations that it had given millions of euros in illegal state aid to the Belene project in violation of the EC Treaty.

On top of that the initial environmental impact assessment did not ‘contain adequate information on the seismic conditions, nor does it address beyond design basis accidents’ and its authors were forced, following legal action, to admit it was flawed. The reactor site is just 14 kilometres from where an earthquake killed over 120 people in 1977. The Austrian Institute of Ecology described the AES 92 reactor being built at Belene as ‘The Mystery Reactor’, there being no ‘reliable technical facts’ or ‘operational experience’ for it.

Reliable facts are things that have been scarce when it comes to Belene. The jobs promised by Prime Minister Stanishev were destined for Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese workers because of a lack of nuclear skills in Bulgaria. ‘I am proud of Bulgarian power engineers, who are capable of developing such a complicated design,’ he boasted when the reactor is actually of Russian design. His statements that nuclear could replace Bulgaria’s reliance on oil are revealed as nonsense (unless he has a secret plan for nuclear cars) when you consider the country relies on oil mainly for transport and hardly at all for electricity generation.

So where does Belene go from here now that RWE has woken up to reality? The Bulgarian government has said it will press on with the reactor. But with no credible investors left it’s difficult to see how the poor creature can limp on.

Exelon says $50 bln loan program would spark nukes
‘WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The chief executive of Exelon Corp (EXC.N), the largest U.S. nuclear power generator, said an additional $50 billion in government loan guarantees for nuclear power would be enough to spark the industry to build new plants. The current nuclear loan guarantee program of $18.5 billion could be expanded if utilities and lawmakers who back the industry win new incentives in U.S. climate legislation. "We think that ($50 billion) would be enough to give nuclear a real start for the next couple of decades," John Rowe, Exelon's president and chief executive, told reporters after testifying before a Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works panel. Republican senators like Lindsey Graham have said they would support climate legislation only if it includes far more incentives for nuclear, which is virtually free of greenhouse gas emissions. "It is truly staggering that an industry this big and this mature can claim to need so much government help to survive and thrive in a world in which technologies that don't emit global warming pollution will benefit," Ellen Vancko, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a release.’

Meanwhile, the public and the private came together for French president Nicholas Sarkozy this week. Nicholas is famed for his tireless globe-trotting as the nuclear industry’s most ruthless salesman (rumours that he’s about to star as Ricky Roma in a remake of Glengarry Glen Ross have been denied). He just loves seeing tons of public money being wasted on useless white elephants. We did wonder where he got the idea for his nuclear boondoggles until we read about his personal presidential shower. It cost 245,000 euros of public money and he never used it. It’s a dirty business, the nuclear industry. When will Nicholas come clean?

And so to Iraq. ‘The Iraqi government has approached the French nuclear industry about rebuilding at least one of the reactors that was bombed at the start of the first Gulf war.’ This week, in continuing violence, 150 people were killed in two suicide bombings which raised questions about the competence of the country’s security services. The government has called for international support to help it combat terrorism. The country’s politicians are divided on laws needed to conduct national elections in January next year, and so threatening the country’s constitution. A new nuclear reactor? What could possibly go wrong?

(You can read more exciting Tale of Nuclear Insanity here, here, here, here and here.)