Protesters near the Kudankulam nuclear plant
Reuters
Special: Nuclear power wanes as solar rises worldwide
India drastically lowers nuclear energy target
Deccan Herald
With little progress on ground since the 2008 Indo-US nuclear agreement, the government has drastically cut the nuclear energy target from 63,000 Mwe by 2032 to just about 14,500 Mwe by 2024.
Quiet Burial For India-US Nuclear Deal?
Amit Bhandari, Gateway House
Solar power developers have offered to sell electricity in India at less than Rs 5/unit. This makes solar competitive with traditional forms of energy, and makes new nuclear power plants financially unviable. India must register the changed reality, and discard the idea of expensive Western reactors. Time to scrap the India-U.S. nuclear deal?
International appeal against Indo-Japanse nuclear deal
No Nuke Asia Forum
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to visit India around the end of this year to sign an atomic energy agreement with counterpart Narendra Modi, laying the groundwork for exports by Japanese corporations in that field. This petition, which opposes agreement, has been endorsed by 327 organizations from 23 countries.
Germany’s planned nuclear switch-off drives energy innovation
The Guardian UK
Hinkley Point will be the first nuclear power plant to be built in Europe since the meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima reactor in 2011. But while the British government sees nuclear energy as a safe and reliable source of power, Germany is going in a different direction. As a result of the Fukushima, Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to switch off all nuclear power by 2022 and fill the gap with renewables – a process known as the energiewende (energy transition).
Solar energy costs continue to plunge across the world
Renew Economy
Two stunning auction results in India and Chile in the last week have underscored the extraordinary gains that large-scale solar has made against its fossil fuel competitors. In both countries, solar is now clearly the cheapest option compared to new coal-fired power stations. In Chile, where the auction was open to all technologies, fossil fuel projects did not win a single megawatt of capacity. And the auction produced the lowest ever price for unsubsidised solar – US6.5c/kWh.
Odisha Plans 1 GW Solar Power Park
Solar Love
Odisha has announced an ambitious plan to set up a 1000MW solar park. The park will be built through public-private partnership and is already approved by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). The solar power park would be built in clusters for which 5,000 acres of land would be required. The land identification process is currently in progress. The overall investment for developing this park would be approximately Rs 6,500 crores (USD 1.1 billion).