Climate Linked to Earthquake, Tsunami & Nuclear

Japan’s nuclear crisis will boost interest in clean renewables such as solar and wind power but may also sharpen demand for coal, oil and gas, whose carbon pollution drives climate change, meanwhile a report says in addition to the earthquake magnitude, global climate change may also have a bearing on the occurrence of tsunamis, with experts from the China Meteorological Administration saying that the 2004 tsunami that struck Southeast Asia was partially linked to the rising sea levels.

Mar 15 2011ago

ninemsn

By Marlowe Hood and Anthony Lucas (AFP) – 12 hours ago

PARIS — Japan’s nuclear crisis will boost interest in clean renewables such as solar and wind power but may also sharpen demand for coal, oil and gas, whose carbon pollution drives climate change, experts said Monday.

Nuclear energy provides around 14 percent of the world’s electricity mix, although this is overwhelmingly concentrated in six countries, and is not going to disappear off the map any time soon, they said.

“The accident in Japan is not a death sentence for nuclear power,” stressed Jean-Marie Chevalier, an economist and energy expert at the Universite Paris Dauphine, pointing to the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in existing reactors and plants under construction.

But the scare surrounding the crippled reactors at the earthquake-struck Fukushima plant means nuclear’s renaissance after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster will be crimped, at least in the short term.

Governments in India, the United States and Europe are under pressure to review safety standards or slap a moratorium on new projects, and Germany and Switzerland have already said they will be on hold plans to extend the operational life of existing plants, pending safety reviews.

“At the very least, we would expect significant investments in nuclear to be delayed, or deferred, for a period of one to two years,” said Rupesh Madlani, renewables analysts at Barclays Capital in London.

In the short run, any energy shortfall in Japan, and elsewhere, will be filled by fossil fuels, said other experts.

“Disruption to the Japanese nuclear industry means that they are going to be relying increasingly on oil and gas for power generation,” said Julian Lee, an analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies, a London think tank backed by the oil industry.

Jacques Percebois, head of the Centre for Research on Energy Economy and Law at Monpellier University, agreed the fossil fuel industry would be early beneficiaries as it could provide gigawatts of quick power.

“Those who declare a moratorium on new nuclear energy should understand that the available solution for meeting large-scale energy demands today is not solar panels, it’s gas,” he told AFP.

Burning natural gas contributes to global warming, but less so than oil, and far less than coal.

“The major risk is that, facing an energy shortage, coal-fired reactors with coal imported from Australia are built,” said Cedric Philibert, an analyst in the renewable energy division of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris.

“Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions would skyrocket.”

At the same time, though, a slowdown in nuclear investment would also steer money into renewable energies, which since the 2008 financial crisis have been struggling to expand their share of the world’s power market, several experts said.

“This should lead to an incremental upside in terms of demand for wind and solar projects,” said Madlani of Barclays.

“It could mean 10 percent more wind and solar being demanded each year for the next couple of years,” he told AFP.

Madlani also pointed to current high oil prices and the increasing cost of oil extraction, especially after the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

For Christiana Figueres, the United Nations’ top climate change official, the meltdown will probably push up the costs of nuclear energy, making renewables more competitive.

“Japan will change mid-term world energy scenarios,” she said in a Twitter message on Sunday from a meeting of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in Berlin.

Source: www.news.ninemsn.com.au and http://www.google.com

From Agencies

Backgrounder: Relationship between earthquakes, tsunamis

Xinhua

Updated: 2011-03-11 21:15:00

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BEIJING, March 11 (Xinhua) — An 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck northeastern Japan on Friday afternoon, the largest temblor ever recorded by the Japanese Meteorological Agency. The earthquake triggered a tsunami that swamped hundreds of kilometers around the epicenter.

The following is a brief introduction of the relationship between earthquakes and tsunamis.

A tsunami is a series of destructive waves, sometimes tens of meters high, caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, usually an ocean. With gigantic energy and fast movement, the waves are catastrophic to the affected coastal areas.

Tsunamis are usually triggered by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions, landslides and other mass movements. Underseas earthquakes have generated nearly all the major tsunamis in history.

Tsunamis can be generated when the sea floor abruptly deforms and vertically displaces the overlying water. Tectonic earthquakes are a particular kind of temblor associated with the earth’s crustal deformation.

When these earthquakes occur beneath the sea, the water above the deformed area is displaced from its equilibrium position.

However, undersea earthquakes do not necessarily lead to tsunamis.

Statistics from the China Earthquake Administration show that of the past 15,000 undersea tectonic earthquakes, only about 100 generated tsunamis. Some experts hold that only earthquakes of above 6.5 magnitude and with a focal depth of less than 25 km underground can cause tsunamis.

Sometimes even strong earthquakes, such as the 8.5-magnitude qukae that occurred near Sumatra in 2005, do not trigger tsunamis because the quake intensity can be largely compromised by the great focal depth, experts say.

In addition to the earthquake magnitude, global climate change may also have a bearing on the occurrence of tsunamis.

According to experts from the China Meteorological Administration, the 2004 tsunami that struck Southeast Asia was partially linked to the rising sea level caused by global climate change.

Source: www.chinadaily.com.cn