A French nuclear expert says that the Philippines should not use the French experience to justify the reactivation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. Yves Marignac, a consultant on nuclear and energy issues and Executive Director of the energy-information agency, WISE-Paris. wrote his remarks in a July opinion piece for Cleantech Asia Online, an opinion site for cleantech in Asia.

In his oped, Marignac said that the French experience is a pretend success story. “While there is no clear benefit from rehabilitating the Philippine Bataan plant, the risks of doing so are real,” said Marignac.

Marignac said that as early as 1995, the French nuclear safety authority said that none of their existing 58 French reactors could be licensed to current standards, most especially the old ones, built at the same time as the Bataan plant and using a similar Westinghouse design, even if safety upgrades following the Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986) accidents were taken into account. He added that thirty years of ageing of all the reactor’s components make the upgrading effectiveness highly uncertain. Marignac says “it will be impossible to check all possible defects in concrete walls, metallic containments, electric wires, etc.”

He also cited concerns with nuclear waste disposal. Marignac said that waste fuel reprocessing results in a complex set of radioactive waste and nuclear materials like uranium and plutonium. “Should the Bataan spent fuel be reprocessed in France, the highly radioactive part, at least, of the waste would come back, needing the same kind of management scheme that is needed for spent fuel in the first place,” he said. According to Marignac, no country, including France, has yet implemented a final geological disposal for these highly active and long-lived materials.

“Moreover, it is unlikely that the recovered plutonium could be reused in the old-designed Bataan reactor, leaving the operator with the only option of paying another company to take it, like the Dutch company EPZ is doing in the same situation,” he said. He also cited concerns with cost escalation from original estimates. “The new French reactor
being built in Flamanville, for instance, was decided four years ago on the basis of a complete cost calculation by the Ministry of Industry of 28.4 €/MWh, giving it a narrow competitive margin. The operator, EDF, recently raised its estimate to 55 €/MWh, an increase of around 92% from the original estimate,” Marignac said.

Marignac has a wealth of experience in nuclear issues. He worked at the Paris-XI University, the French Energy Commission (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique) and the nuclear company Société des Techniques en Milieu Ionisant (STMI). Marignac has authored many publications on energy, nuclear and global environmental issues, and has acted as an expert for France’s Prime Minister’s services and the European Parliament. He is currently a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IFPM).

By Dennis Posadas

This week let us discuss the basics of funding for technology startups.

The first thing one has to realize is that unlike a lot of businesses that have physical collateral (e.g. a building, manufacturing equipment, etc.), technology based businesses often have an additional type of collateral–namely intellectual property.

Now the problem oftentimes is that bankers in most parts of the world, including the Philippines, do not know how to value intellectual property. You can’t blame them; specialized consulting firms have sprouted up that can do these valuations, unfortunately not many of them are based in the country.

In addition, there is also the matter of how much sophistication there is in the product. If at first glance, the observer can figure out how the product or service works, then there isn’t too much of an intellectual barrier to start with.

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By Dennis Posadas

Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared officially that six greenhouse gases namely carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride, are a threat to public health and welfare.

Based on scientific evidence, particularly that summarized in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2007, these greenhouse gases produce global warming which is responsible for stronger storms, changes in weather patterns, higher sea levels that inundate formerly habitable coastal areas, and other effects.

This declaration by the EPA will hopefully be a precursor to how the United States will act in the Copenhagen summit this year. Copenhagen is where the world’s leaders will gather this year to find a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol which the Bush administration refused to ratify.

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By Marlowe Hood
Agence France-Presse

PARIS–Manmade climate change is set to hasten the disintegration of a massive ice sheet in Antarctica by 100,000 years, boosting sea levels some five metres (16 feet), according to a pair of studies published Thursday.

The research, which matches new ice core data with a simulation of past and future changes in the West Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS), reveals for the first time regular cycles of “catastrophic collapse” and reformation reaching back five million years.

Cycles lasted 40,000 years during the first three-fifths of this period, but have since more than doubled in length, explained David Pollard, a scientist at Pennsylvania State University and lead author of one of the studies.

“But with global warming we are cutting short a natural cycle,” he told AFP by phone.

“The two studies combined show it is really likely that the WAIS will collapse in the next few thousand years. In the absence of human influence, it would probably happen only 100,000 years from now,” he said.

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By Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines—The Congressional Commission on Science & Technology and Engineering (Comste) is looking at filing a bill to mandate a national telehealth or telemedicine system in the country.

Representative Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya who is also co-chair of Comste is set to file the National Telehealth Service Act of 2009 to push the use of information and communication technologies in the delivery of medical care.

The proposed measure aims to benefit patients and medical professionals who can now use Internet technology to tap medical expertise. This could be done through remote medical procedures via teleconferencing.

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