Yesterday brought confirmation from JR Tokai that they would be proceeding with plans to build the first long distance maglev train between Tokyo and Nagoya, despite the lack of government support. The line is expected to be in operation by 2025.

Tokai originally announced the plans for the line in April 2007. “The reason why the plan has not moved even a bit is because the government isn’t able to bankroll it,” railway president Masayuki Matsumoto told the Nikkei business daily.

The new line will run in parallel with the Shinkansen bullet train, a conventional high-speed rail line which will need replacement in the coming decades.

Japan’s maglev technology set the international speed record of 581km/h in 2003. This new maglev should run at about 500 km/h, according to Tokai. The Chinese maglev, using the German Transrapid system, runs at about 430 kph over a 30.5-km route.

Tokai believes that the new line will be profitable enough to pay off the debt necessary to finance the project within 10 years of the service starting.

In the meantime, the USA continues to demonstrate that it would rather plough billions of dollars into destroying itself and other nation states, than invest in modern infrastructure, as Congress axed its rather pathetic $149 million contribution to the international fusion reactor project, ITER.

This is the second time that the US has removed itself from the project, the last time between 1999 and 2003.

While I hope that the US will come to its senses and invest in modern, high energy density technologies again in the near future, I fear the pressure to invest in windmills instead will be too great.

Business Secretary John Hutton announced on today’s BBC Politics Show that the UK would be solving its CO2 problems by building off shore wind farms all round the coastline of the UK. Now, anyone who has either been to the UK coast, or has seen the Open University’s series Coast, will know that the UK has some of the most beautiful coastline anywhere. To plaster these travesties of taste around the place may impress a bunch of green nuts, but I doubt the tourism or fishing industries will be jumping for joy.

Apparently the government’s plan is to have all UK homes powered by these things by 2020. I’d imagine that in order to guarantee suitable airflow to keep them turning all year round, they are going to move the Houses of Parliament offshore as well.

This is the wrong strategy.

Repairs at the facility in Chalk River, Ontario, have choked off the global supply of radioactive isotopes used for diagnosing and treating thousands of patients with cancer and other diseases. On the 18th Nov., the reactor was taken offline to repair the electrical system; it was supposed to restart on the 23rd Nov., but is still shut down.

“There is only one reactor on the North American continent that actually supplies most of these agents,” Dr. Christopher O’Brien, president of the Ontario Association of Nuclear Medicine, told the Toronto Star. “Last week, I guess you could describe it as struggling. This week it’s devastating, and next week potentially catastrophic,”

The problem is, these radioactive agents have a shelf life from two weeks to only six hours. “You can’t stockpile it,” said O’Brien. “Basically what we are doing now in Ontario is rationalising services or not offering them.”

Dr. Sandy McEwan, chair of Edmonton’s Cross Cancer Institute and president of the U.S.-based Society of Nuclear Medicine, says that Canada supplies more than two-thirds of the global market for radioactive isotopes.

China clearly understands that the key to the success of a modern nation state lies in top class basic economic infrastructure. They plan to lay 4000km of new track and electrify 3000lm of existing track every year until 2010, as part of a plan to build 19,800km of new railway lines, modernise 15,000km of existing railway lines, boost passenger train speed and increase the load of freight trains.

To finance this part of the plan, they have raised more than Rmb45bn ($6.1bn) in their biggest ever bond deal. The domestic bond issuance, which comprises fixed rate seven-year, 10-year and 15-year bonds, was increased by Rmb10bn on the back of strong demand from investors.

With its economy growing at 11 per cent and its debt market growing faster than any other country in the region, China also appears to be largely unaffected by the credit squeeze that has seen a sharp reduction of bond and loan issuance in Europe and the US.

I wonder why that is, eh?

Could it be because the money they are borrowing is backed by real physical infrastructure, rather than worthless pieces of paper based on hyperinflated mortgage and derivatives markets?

China is one of only a few countries working to develop Maglev technology, although the penny does seem to be dropping elsewhere.

The conclusion of scientists at the recent Symposium of Desalination and Water Re-use in Trombay, India, was that nuclear power is the only technology presently available which can provide the freshwater that a growing world population will need, without depleting fossil energy resources, according to the International Journal of Nuclear Desalination.

B.M. Misra, the co-editor of the Journal, notes that 3.5 billion people are predicted to face severe water shortages by the year 2025 because the supposedly cost-effective solar, wind, and wave power approaches to desalination “are not viable” for large-scale freshwater production.

In his preface to the issue, P.K. Terawi from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) wrote that “Water-borne diseases cost the Indian economy 73 million working days a year,” and “many of these diseases can be prevented by safe drinking water.” He also noted that two million children now die a year from water-borne diseases, and that more than half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients with these diseases.

S.S. Verma, of the Department of Physics at SLIET in Punjab, reported that small floating nuclear plants could be sited off-shore near densely populated coastal areas, to provide cheap electricity while powering a desalination plant with their excess heat. “Companies are already in the process of developing a special desalination platform for attachment to Floating Nuclear Power Plants,” he said.

Another new approach reported by A. Raha and colleagues at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre is to use Low-Temperature Evaporation for desalination, which could make use of low-pressure steam or low-quality waste heat from a nuclear power plant. Safety, reliability, and viable economics have already been demonstrated, Raha said, and BARC recently commissioned a low-temperature desalination plant to produce 50 tons per day of freshwater.

Now, I’m no fan of Ken Livingstone. But he has announced that the Greater London Authority has placed an order for 10 hydrogen powered buses from US manufacturer ISE Corp.

Ken’s goal is to have 5% of London’s buses running on hydrogen by 2015, which seems like a slow start, but at least its a start.

The buses are expensive at £1m each, but if other European cities could be encouraged to move in the same direction, that cost will come down.

In the meantime, the rest of London’s buses will continue to be fueled via Hugo Chavez.

In a surprise move, two members of the Bavarian state parliament have gone to the press with a call for the maglev project in Munich being extended to Regensburg and from there, to Prague and beyond. The two parliamentarians, both from the governing Christian Social Union (CSU), have also made the crucial point that their proposal is not just meant to bring passengers quickly from one city to another, but rather to create the infrastructure required to make industrial investments attractive in the northern Bavarian regions.

Maglev questions were also discussed at a special event on Thursday evening at the Bavarian State’s representation in Berlin. CSU members of the municipal council of Munich also voted in favor of the maglev city-airport project there, but were narrowly defeated by an unholy alliance of Social Democrats, Greens and Linkspartei. That vote, however, will not be the last word on the matter, according to sources.

In what could turn out to be a major boost to the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) — arguably the safest and most versatile of the nuclear reactors in operation presently — U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Company, a group company of Toshiba Corporation, has bought the South African firm IST Nuclear. IST Nuclear is a leading provider of services and systems for South Africa’s unique Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project.

Westinghouse, who opened its newly-acquired South African operation on Nov. 5, “has long been a proponent of the PBMR, and this acquisition will allow us to become even more involved as PBMR moves toward commercialisation,” Nick Liparulo, Vice-President of engineering services for Westinghouse, said in a statement. At this point in time, however, Westinghouse is in the bidding for building 2-AP1000 pressurized water reactors in South Africa.

IST Nuclear was instrumental in the early development of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, working with South Africa’s state-owned power supplier Eskom and US-based investors including Westinghouse. More recently, IST Nuclear supplied a helium test facility for the PBMR. The company is also under contract to design key systems for a PBMR demonstration unit to be built at Koeberg, South Africa’s only nuclear plant, by 2011.

During a visit to Brazil in the last week of October, European Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potocnik, suggested that Brazil join the seven-member International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, program. ITER, originally proposed by Russian Academician E.P. Velikhov in 1985, will be a tokamak fusion reactor, designed to produce net energy, as a critical demonstration for a commercial fusion reactor.

“Nuclear fusion is certainly one area where Brazil and the ITER members can cooperate more intensively,” a spokesman for the Commissioner said on Oct. 29 from Brussels. Initially, this might take the form of a bilateral agreement with the EU, but Brazil could later join as a full member.

ITER started out as a joint project of the United States, Soviet Union, Europe, and Japan. Currently, South Korea, India, and China are also members. Each participant pays 10% of the cost. The experimental reactor is being built in Cadarache, France.

Nicolas Sarkozy, Al Gore and European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, jointly announced their policy (their policy?!) for France at a ceremony last week which involved practically all French ministers, environmental associations, leaders of trades unions and business leaders.

The main thrust of the policy statement is the creation of a nonsense green economic driver, complete with its very own financial bubble.

Among the nonsense: special labels for “carbon-free” products, a “carbon tax” on all “carbon-heavy” products (does this mean inflation on pencils?), and a possible complete rewriting of the French tax code. In the future, all public projects will be adopted on their basis of their “carbon compatibility.” Good God.

Obviously on drugs, Sarkozy committed France to the building of no new nuclear power stations, instead opting for a guarantee that every euro spent on nuclear energy in the future, another euro would be spent on “renewable energies.”

It wasn’t all bad news, though. The French intend to replace 3 million lorries on their roads between 2012 and 2020 by the creation of 2000km of new TGV railway lines, with the old lines being held over for goods transport. They also intend to create an integrated network of rivers to be used for cargo transport, and coupled with the development of their sea ports, the intention is to have goods entering France via its ports and not across land.

While the western world wades through tons of Gore, the so-called developing world, it seems, know what its is about. In its annual report last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency predicts nuclear based power generation will grow from its current estimate of 370 gigawatts to 447 gigawatts by 2030. 15 of the 29 nuclear plants currently under construction are in Asia.

India plans an 8-fold increase in its nuclear generation capacity by 2022, and a 75-fold increase by 2052. India also plans to augment its nuclear fuel reprocessing capability as quickly as possible.

And Egypt has now entered the fray, with President Mubarak announcing plans for several new nuclear power stations. We believe that energy security is a major part of building the future for this country and an integral part of Egypt’s national security system,” he said.

So while we devolve, and I don’t mean in the political sense, some people on this planet less under the influence of empire building oligarchs, are getting the opportunity to evolve. Would it not be better to kick out our political “leaders” and join them?

The Times reported yesterday that “Speed cameras are to be installed on large sections of the motorway network under a government plan to reduce congestion and vehicle emissions by cutting and strictly enforcing the speed limit at peak times.

The plan was announced as the Department for Transport published forecasts that congestion will rise by at least 28 per cent by 2025. It believes that “active traffic management” — in which the speed limit varies according to the conditions — will be a cheaper way of accommodating rising traffic levels than widening motorways.”

This is nuts! The last time I drove from Berkhamsted to central London, it took 2 hours - a distance of 25 miles or so. How is a 40mph speed limit going to help? Come on, get on to your MP and bully the hell out of them. Lets build some basic economic infrastructure - Maglev, CargoCap, High Temperature Gas Cooled nuclear reactors. Anthropomorphic global warming is a load of bollocks, but that’s no reason not to get rid of dirty, smelly trucks, vans and taxis, and get the country moving again.

Contrary to the BBC news reports yesterday that the California wildfires have been brought under control, only Malibu, the area inhabited by the Hollywood “greats,” is actually being contained. In the meantime, the majority of fires which have so far consumed  650 square miles, 1600 homes and 6 lives, continue to rage.

Yesterday, Arnie held a press conference to slap the backs of the firefighters for doing a great job. I’m certain they are doing the best they can, with the limited resources they have left, after the looting of California’s fire fighting and prevention infrastructure by Arnie on the advice of his puppetmaster, George Schultz. That darned budget deficit.

On the 12th of October, a few days before the fires were started, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, laid-off all of their 1,400 seasonal firefighters. The layoffs were ordered because the State of California had declared the official end to the fire season. After the firestorms began, the State rescinded the fire season declaration, allowing CalFire to hire back the seasonal firefighters. Patti Roberts, spokeswoman for the Governor’s office of Emergency Services, told MSNBC on Tuesday afternoon, “I can’t say that they have all been rehired, but they can be rehired.”

The Governator obviously enjoys watching the fires. Maybe he’s invited his friends round for a barbecue.

Speaking to Jewish group in London on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert revealed that at his meeting last week in Moscow with the Russian president, he learned that “Russia has decided not to supply nuclear fuel to Iran,” according to Haaretz yesterday.

Mr Putin seems to have forgotten that conversation already, though. According to the Itar-Tass news agency, “Russia has confirmed all commitments under the Bushehr nuclear power plant construction contract with Iran and is determined to comply with them, Russian presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko told Itar-Tass, when asked for a comment on the recent publication in Israel’s daily Haaretz.”

Must have been the vodka …