Global Nuclear Energy Renaissance Gathers Speed

[Source: LPAC Houston office; Interfax, 4/9/07; IHT, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, 4/10/07. Moscow.]

April 10, 2007 (EIRNS)--A density of important developments in the nuclear energy field internationally no doubt has the biofuel nuts climbing the walls. In Russia, at an April 9 cabinet meeting chaired by President Putin, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov announced that the first floating nuclear power plant would be commissioned in 2010 and supply electricity to the Arctic port of Severodvinsk. He added that there were plans for seven more such plants to be located on the northern and eastern coasts.

Lyndon LaRouche has advocated the development of floating nuclear power plants for many regions of the developing world. Particularly in Southwest Asia, along the Egyptian and Israeli Mediterranean coast, and along the Red Sea-Dead Sea and Dead Sea-Med Sea canals, they could be used to produce enough fresh water to provide the economic basis for a durable Mideast peace.

Also of note were the April 9 discussions between Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and visiting Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov, on increased civilian nuclear cooperation, including Russia's assistance in the construction of nuclear plants in India. This was a follow-up to President Putin's January visit to India, in which he agreed to build four new nuclear reactors in Tamil Nadu and more at other sites to be identified later. Russia is already helping to build two plants at Kudankulam.

Rusal, which became the world's largest aluminum company after it bought up the assets of its rival Sual and the Swiss-based Glencore International, will be participating in a joint nuclear reactor project with Russia's government-owned nuclear agency Rosatom. The reactor will be integrated with an aluminum smelter in Russia's far eastern region, and as a public-private partnership will be entitled to government-backed financing. "The program will provide a platform for an economic upturn across large areas of the country," according to Rosatom's president Sergei Kiriyenko. Rusal's CEO Alexander Bulygin told the Financial Times that "this is a pilot project for cooperation between the state nuclear agency and a private company. It is an absolutely new model."

In the U.S., very significantly, the Texas-based TXU, which in a highly-publicized buy-out deal with environmentalists and was forced to abandon plans to build 11 coal plants, has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permits to design and build five nuclear plants instead, totalling 6,000 MW, instead!