The light goes on?

Germany’s solar panels produce more power than Japan’s entire Fukushima complex

Um.... letting the Israelis bomb Iran

So Saudis can get rid of an irritating neighbor while getting to point fingers of blame at Israel... a win/win situation!

Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”

Um.... what the hell is being planned right now? I thought we'd given up on WWIII after Dick and George's excellent adventure was over....

We'll be our own energy sources!

And we won't have to turn on the lights at night!!

A Quarter of U.S. Nuclear Plants Leaking
27 of 104 Plants Leak Radioactive Tritium, a Carcinogen, Raising Concerns About Nation's Aging Plants

Creating a consortium for all users of enriched uranium?

Via Pygalgia, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries make an offer to Iran:

DUBAI (Reuters) - U.S.-allied Gulf states are willing to set up a body to provide enriched uranium to Iran to defuse Tehran's stand-off with the West over its nuclear plan, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister told a newspaper on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries -- Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- share Western concerns that Iran's nuclear energy program will lead to it acquiring atomic bombs, a claim Tehran denies.

"We have proposed a solution, which is to create a consortium for all users of enriched uranium in the Middle East," foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED).

"(We will) do it in a collective manner through a consortium that will distribute according to needs, give each plant its own necessary amount, and ensure no use of this enriched uranium for atomic weapons," he said, according to MEED's Web site.

Prince Saud said Iran was considering the offer, which envisages building a plant in a neutral country.

"We believe it should be in a neutral country -- Switzerland, for instance," said Prince Saud. "Any plant in the Middle East that needs enriched uranium would get its quota. I don't think other Arab states would refuse. In fact ... other Arab countries have expressed a desire to be part of the proposal."

"They (Iran) have responded that it is an interesting idea and they will come back to us. We hope the Iranians will accept this proposal. We continue to talk to them and urge them not only to look at the issue from the perspective of the needs of Iran for energy, but also in the interests of the security of the region."

The six Gulf Arab states have announced plans to start their own nuclear energy program, raising concern over an arms race in the world's top oil exporting region.

Um... not that this isn't a good idea, but just a reminder that Saudi Arabia is no real friend of the United States. So... using Switzerland would be a really nice idea...

All energy sources pose a problem for us

And we certainly won't want the Bush administration, Halliburtons and the Exxons to be in charge.
Germany is facing the problem with nuclear waste:

...the report is sure to add fuel to an ongoing smoldering debate in Germany and across Europe about what to do with highly radioactive nuclear waste. On the one hand, activists hold up waste storage as one of the primary dangers represented by atomic power. After all, used up fuel rods and other waste remain "hot" for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. How can one be sure today, many wonder, that facilities built today won't fall apart in 300,000 years?

On the other hand, scientists claim that most of the tricky scientific questions pertaining to long-term nuclear waste storage have been answered and that safe storage is possible. Now, they say, it is up to the politicians.

"Because there isn't a final storage facility, one could come to the conclusion that the problem hasn't been solved," Dr. Thomas Fanghaenel, director of the Institute for Transuranium Elements in Karlsruhe, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "That would be the wrong conclusion.... I think the political problems are the most difficult -- the 'not in my backyard' phenomenon and other socio-political problems."

Update: Chernobyl's radiation causes birth defects. How could it even be a question?

Radiation or relocation? A study of birds around Chernobyl suggests that nuclear fallout, rather than stress and deteriorating living conditions, may be responsible for human birth defects in the region.

People living around the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine have unusually high levels of physical abnormalities and birth defects. The International Atomic Energy Agency has suggested that the abnormalities are caused by the impact of relocation and stress on the population, and Timothy Mousseau, at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, wanted to put this to the test.

Mousseau and his colleagues examined 7700 barn swallows from Chernobyl and compared them with birds from elsewhere. They found that Chernobyl's swallows were more likely to have tumours, misshapen toes and feather deformities than swallows from uncontaminated parts of Europe (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2007.0136).

"We don't fully understand the consequences of low doses of radiation," says Mousseau. "We should be more concerned about the human population."

Ethanol is bad for you:

Mark Jacobson at Stanford University in California, US, modelled emissions for cars expected to be on the road in 2020. An E85-fuelled fleet would cause 185 more pollution-related deaths per year than a petrol one across the US the model predicted - most of them in smoggy Los Angeles, California.

The findings run counter to the idea that ethanol is a cleaner-burning fuel. Cars running on gasoline emit a number of pollutants – including nitrogen dioxide and organic molecules like acetaldehyde – that react with sunlight to form ozone.

City killers

However, ethanol is an even bigger culprit. Along with many of the same pollutants as gasoline, a large amount of unburned ethanol gas escapes into the atmosphere. That vapour readily breaks down in sunlight to form acetaldehyde, which can send ozone levels soaring.

While ethanol-burning cars will emit fewer carcinogens such as benzene and butadiene, they will spew out 20 times as much acetaldehyde as those using conventional fuel, Jacobsen found.

Ozone is one of the main constituents of smog, which carries a number of health risks (see City deaths rise with ozone levels).

Out of a total fleet of over 240 million cars, trucks, and other vehicles in the US there are currently only about 6 million that can run on E85 fuel. But this is widely predicted to rise in coming years.

"There are so many people barking pretty loud about biofuels," Jacobsen says. "They've been pushing these things before the science is done. Now the question is: will people listen?"

However, the small potential increase in pollution-related deaths predicted in the study could be a risk worth taking for a renewable fuel, environmentalists may argue.

And, to the displeasure of the megacorporations, people are creating their own power sources:

Börnsen, a village in northern Germany, is spoiling energy giant E.on's business by creating its own electricity and natural gas supply. The idea could catch on elsewhere.

Bush needs Osama Bin Laden free and Iran pursuing nukes

Because if we caught Osama, we'd expect our soldiers could pack up and come home, right? Bush can't have that! He needs a boogie man to keep us afraid. The next terrorist attack will obviously let us bomb Iran.

Joe from Americablog points out Iran has been capturing al-Qaeda who travel through Iran to get to Iraq.

And Iran is offering to have talks:

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - Iran insisted on Saturday an escalating dispute with the West over its nuclear activity could be resolved by negotiation as its security chief arrived in Germany for meetings with European Union leaders.

But EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana played down chances of a breakthrough at a planned meeting on Sunday with Ali Larijani, saying at most it could rekindle efforts to settle the row caused by suspicions Iran is seeking atomic bombs.

A few European nations were weighing a compromise proposal under which Iran could run a few hundred nuclear centrifuges for research ends but without feeding uranium into them to generate fuel, while negotiating for trade incentives from Western powers to curb its nuclear program, European diplomats said.

But while Tehran would probably be open to such an idea, diplomats said the United States and Britain would demur over concern Iran would gain nuclear skills merely by vacuum-testing centrifuges, which can make fuel for power plants or bombs.

If we have talks, we can't attack. Betcha Bush will say no to talks:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who only two years ago supported renewing diplomatic relations with Tehran, has taken the administration’s recent Iran bashing to heart, saying the U.S. will beef up its presence in the Persian Gulf to make sure Ahmadinejad & Co. don’t get any ideas: “The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they’re in a position to press us in many ways.... We are simply trying to communicate to the region that we are going to be there for a long time.”

And:

TALLINN, Estonia: U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday ruled out any talks with Iran until it suspends its uranium enrichment program, and said Iran and Syria should not destabilize the fledgling democracy in neighboring Iraq.

"Iran knows how to get to the table with us," Bush told reporters during a visit to Estonia. "And that is to do that which they said they would do, which is verifiably suspend their enrichment programs."

The U.S. alleges Iran is secretly developing atomic weapons, though Tehran has repeatedly claimed its program is for peaceful purposes, including generating electricity.

"The idea of this regime having a nuclear weapon, by which they could blackmail the world, is unacceptable to free nations," Bush said.

And showing how hard they worked to bring Iran to the table, Condi's diplomacy at work:

If the confrontation with Iran can be settled, it will be managed only through some shrewd mix of economic pressure, political saber-rattling, and diplomatic maneuver. Maybe Secretary Rice will try to pursue some combination along these lines, during her trip this week to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, last week's testimony—in which she tried to promote nuclear nonproliferation and Iranian democracy but wound up damping the prospects for both—doesn't offer much hope.

They don't want to fix the problem. They want more problems. It allows them to do what they planned to do ever since the PNAC neocons got into power six years ago.

Russia and Iran BFF?

What was that about staring into Putin's eyes and seeing his soul, Georgie?

By DEREK SANDS Despite mounting U.S. and international pressure on Tehran's nuclear program, the United States holds little chance of discouraging Russia from pursuing energy cooperation with the cash-strapped but oil- and gas-rich Iran.

Russia wants Iranian oil and natural gas, and while concerns over Tehran's nuclear program may affect relations in the future, for the time being Moscow is not hesitating to invest in energy exploration and production in Iran.

LUKoil, the largest Russian oil company, agreed in January to take over development of the 26 billion-barrel Azadegan oil field. Japanese oil company INPEX had contracted for a 75 percent stake in the field, but under pressure from the United States, dropped its share to 10 percent at the end of last year.

And in December Russian media reported that Tehran and Moscow would pursue a joint venture to develop natural gas deposits in the two countries.

[snip]

Moscow has been under pressure for years from the United States regarding all its dealings with Iran, ranging from arms to nuclear technology and now possibly energy. It has tried to deal with the conflicting pulls of the desire for improved relations with the United States and maintaining Iran as a 'stable partner for a long time' (Putin's words) by responding to U.S. demands during critical moments, while at the same time safeguarding its strategic and economic interests in Iran, a country that has been an important market for Russian goods, nuclear technology and conventional armament, and a supporter of Russian policies in Central Asia and Caucasus, Farhi said. But according to Kent Moors, director of the Energy Policy Research Group at Duquesne University and an expert on Russian and Caspian energy policy, this pressure is unlikely to affect Russia's energy business with Iran.

Moscow concluded some time ago that the U.S. has limited options in preventing Russian or other foreign dealings concerning Iranian oil and gas projects, Moors said. Direct pressure on Russia also seems unlikely to change its behavior.

The U.S. at this point cannot force Russia to do anything. However, if there are substantive indications that Iran has moved into a new phase of nuclear enrichment (having stockpiled enough enriched gas, for example), Moscow will pull back. Russia does not want a nuclear armed Iran any more than we do, Moors said. Discussions between Moscow and Tehran on oil and gas development are ongoing, but these talks will be unable to ignore Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's insistence the country develop a full nuclear cycle.