Say no to Nuclear Power Plants in India.

The Prime Minister has promised a full safety audit of the existing reactors. However, if we look at what the senior figures within the nuclear establishment have to say, they have already prejudged the issue. They, according to news reports, have met the PM and have assured him everything is hunky dory with India's nuclear energy program. The safety audit's results are already prejudged – the Atomic Energy Commission has learnt nothing from Fukushima.

This brings us to the central question here. The issue is not that a safety audit should be done, but who does this safety audit. We have an Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) that draws its personnel from Atomic Energy Commission, report to the Atomic Energy Commission and is even located in the Anushakti Bhavan, the headquarters of the Atomic Energy Commission. Therefore the AERB has very little option but to agree with the Atomic Energy Commission’s preconceived conclusions.

In no country with a large nuclear energy program, is the nuclear regulator a part of the body it is supposed to regulate. A former Chairman of AERB (Mail Today, March 15, 2011, Nuclear Regulation in Shambles, Dr. A.Gopalakrishnan) has stated that AERB has no serious disaster management oversight and does not have the ability to address serious design and safety issues. If India is indeed serious about a nuclear energy program, it needs to create a proper safety organisation instead of the current AERB, which has become a virtual rubber stamp for Atomic Energy Commission. A safety audit without an independent regulatory body is of little value.

This is no way to run a critical safety regulatory function. It is also contrary to international practice as well as the treaties that India has signed on the need to separate regulatory and operational functions in nuclear energy. This remains the single biggest obstacle for a safe nuclear energy program in the country.

It is not the best kept secret in the world that Indian plants have had problems at different points. The collapse of the Kaiga dome and the fire in Narora which caused all controls to be lost are cases in point. In Narora, again workers, facing very heavy odds, managed a safe shut-down of the reactor manually. The point is with complete opacity surrounding the nuclear plants and the functioning of the Atomic Energy Commission and its attached body, the AERB, it is difficult to accept the results of the safety audit.

Interestingly, one of the points that the country's nuclear establishment has made repeatedly, is that Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) -- that are the bulk of the Indian reactors -- are much more safe than the Light Water Reactors (LWR's ). If this is indeed true, why the fascination for the LWRs that, according to the nuclear establishment, are less safe? Why then leave the tried and tested route of PHWRs for which we have indigenous capacity, for imported reactors which by their own admission are less safe?

It is in this context we have to look at the controversial Jaitapur project. The Government is keen to put 6 units of 1650 MW EPR reactors of Areva, France make. Though Atomic Energy Commission chairman, Srikumar Bannerjee claims that this design is tested, as it has worthy predecessors, the fact remains that there is not one plant of this design that has yet been commissioned. That a Fukushima type of accident of earthquake-cum-tsunami will not affect Jaitapur is no consolation as no two serious nuclear accidents have ever been alike. Question of how safe this plant is cannot be answered by saying a Fukushima type accident will not occur here.

Jaitapur plant proposes to have 5% enriched uranium as fuel against the normal enrichment of 3.5% for LWRs and natural uranium for PHWR's. It also has a higher burn rate than the current LWRs. Dr. Gopalkrishnan, former Chairman, AERB has asked in his article, (DNA, February 9, 2011, Jaitapur Deficit of Public Trust) “How much understanding, based on relevant data, do Areva and NPCIL together have on the radiological and physical behavior of high-‘burn up’ spent-fuel from these EPRs and the consequent serious safety issues related to its long-term storage, cooling, transport and reprocessing?” These questions are not going to be answered based on the belief of a few scientists.

It is interesting also to note that Areva, while claiming its technology is completely safe, has also been very unhappy with the prospect of liability that the current Indian law prescribes, even though the upper limit for such liability is only Rs. 1,500 crore. This, in itself, shows how much confidence they have for their technology.

There is little doubt that Fukushima will cast a radioactive cloud over the nuclear renaissance touted by the nuclear industry. Nuclear technology still remains one of the most complex technologies that we know. Rushing in with ever larger sizes and complex designs have been the bane of this technology from the beginning. In their hurry to invite foreign suppliers for the Indian market, the Manmohan Singh Government never took this into account. All the reactors being pushed by foreign suppliers – Areva, GE and Westinghouse -- have the same problems regarding being proven to be reliable in terms of technology and complexity of design.

DAE has been pushing the case for import of 40,000 MW of Light Water Reactors. In this, the DAE and other agencies seemed to have become captive to the PM’s objective of a strategic tie-up with the US and pushing in imported reactors, without addressing issues of safety. What has been effectively lost sight of is that safety of nuclear plants cannot be subordinated to whatever foreign policy objective that the PM has in mind. The Fukushima disaster provides a clear warning on this.

As India is now trying to induct in a number of foreign reactors, particularly Light Water Reactors, which, by the admission of senior figures in the nuclear establishment, are less safe than the indigenous Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors, it is critical that such designs should be subjected to independent review. India should halt all import of reactors, particularly of untested and unproven designs from Areva, GE or Westinghouse and focus on creating a proper safety infrastructure for nuclear energy. Till then, there should be a moratorium on all imported reactors including Jaitapur and Kudankulam. Simultaneously immediate steps should be taken up to separate AERB from DAE and make it a truly independent body, reporting directly to the Parliament. Finally, as an immediate measure, all existing plants should be reviewed by creating a task force including independent members outside DAE to make this exercise of safety audit credible.

By- Prabir Purkayastha, Newsclick, March 17, 2011

"Today, three of six GE reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan are in danger of meltdown after a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. And 31 aging GE reactors of the same design — 23 of them with Mark I containment systems and eight of them with Mark II -- continue to operate in the U.S., raising concerns among both politicians and scientists. The Mark I containment is rectangular, the Mark II cylindrical. This NRC document explains the two in more detail.

By - Jim Morris and Aaron Mehta, May 10, 2011"

http://www.bvmengineering.ac.in/docs/published%20papers/civilstruct/Civil/101016.pdf
http://planetwaves.net/sierra_old.html
http://www.kerryr.net/pioneers/tesla.htm

Audi poised to buy Ducati

German car giant Audi has until mid-April to decide if it wants to buy Ducati as part of a exclusivity deal according to insiders.

MCN sister title CAR magazine has revealed Audi (which is part of the massive Volkswagen Group) is likely to make the decision quite quickly and its thought the firm will pay just over £700million for the iconic Italian brand but that will also include taking on all of the Ducati debt.
Here is the full the inside story from CAR magazine journalist Georg Kacher.

Why is Audi buying Ducati?
It's all part of Project Eagle, another brainchild of Volkswagen group boss Ferdinand Piech.
He has been eyeing up the opportunity of buying a prestigious motorcycle brand for some time, and considered reviving Horex, a German motorcycle firm which made bikes from 1936 to 1956 but it was felt Horex didn’t have enough brand recognition, so when Bologna-based Ducati came up for sale the VW Group paid close attention.
Especially since Mercedes-Benz recently entered into a cross-promotional deal with Ducati.
Ducati, which makes around 40,000 motorcycles a year, is on the market since its debt burden is reportedly higher than its revenues.

Who else might buy Ducati?
India's Mahindra, Daimler and Volkswagen are said to be among the leading suitors, but CAR can reveal that Audi has struck an exclusivity deal giving it first dibs on Ducati.
A small team of advisors has been formed in Ingolstadt under the Project Eagle name and they're currently doing due diligence on the Ducati deal. According to our insiders, there is no way Audi will pay telephone numbers for Ducati.
Instead, the Germans will probably put no more than €50m to €100m on the table - but absorb the new partner's substantial liabilities.
Ducati chairman Andrea Bonomi has in the past pointed out that he views 'Ducati as the two-wheel equivalent of Audi', a perception Ferdinand Piech would likely agree with.
In 2008, Piech said it was a mistake not to have bought Ducati when the company was on the brink of bankruptcy before. Four years later, Volkswagen is now closer than ever to making the chairman's vision complete.

Asetek prototypes liquid-cooled laptop.....cool

                    Gamers and overclockers will already be familiar with the performance and quiet operation benefits of liquid-cooling the internal components of desktop computer systems. Power users these days are not necessarily sitting in front of the beige base tower of old, however – other formats like the All-in-One and laptops have benefited from significant processing, memory and storage boosts in recent years. We've already seen liquid-cooling specialist Asetek squeeze its technology into a 2.28-inch thick All-in-One prototype, but now the company has developed a slim liquid cooling system for notebooks that's said to improve acoustic and thermal performance without increasing the form factor.

                     Asetek has chosen to showcase its new cooling solution in an Alienware M18x gaming laptop with the Core i7 processor overclocked to 4.4GHz and the dual GPUs ramped up to 800MHz, which would have been too much for the original heat pipes to handle. Taking advantage of the fact that the CPU and GPUs rarely fully stress at the same time during real world operation, the system interconnects all of the laptop's thermal management modules to extract heat from the CPU and GPUs as needed, effectively borrowing idle cooling capacity from each other. The slim form factor liquid cooling technology's coldplate is also said to have less thermal resistance than a heat pipe.

                    The upshot is that the Asetek system allows for higher-performance components to be used in thin devices like laptops than would be possible using air-cooled management solutions. In tests, the new technology resulted in an 18 percent performance improvement in the 3D Mark 11 benchmark score, a 16 percent improvement in PCMark Vantage scores, and Futuremark's 3D Mark Vantage score went up by 23 percent.

                     The following video features the company's Zack Fanning explaining and demonstrating the new slim form factor liquid cooling technology.

Story of "The Rover" ---- Why did BMW buy Rover?

-Why did BMW buy Rover?
-Did BMW ever really mean to keep Rover?

BMW made much of the losses that Rover "forced" upon them during their period of stewardship, but it is clear that the German Company also gained a great deal from the ill-fated partnership.

In this article written for the site by Leslie Button, it is explained that, if anything, BMW walked away from their British adventure with a new factories, a shiny new small-car brand, their own four wheel drive vehicle and a £1.8 billion payout from Ford. And one less rival...

---

Why did BMW buy Rover?

This is a very interesting question. For a company with the prestige of BMW to have purchased a car company and then dumped Rover after such a short time, questions must be raised as to why exactly did they buy the company in the first place, and did they ever really intend to keep it?

BMW had a highly developed and nurtured image. However, they also had a very limited market into which they sold cars. BMW had been described as a company that 'made only one saloon, but in three different sizes'. Although their market was expanding, global consolidation of the motor industry threatened either their independence or their ability to continue to make cars competitively, depending on how you viewed it.

BMW therefore needed to expand their market, and thus their product base. However, to do this threatened to destroy their carefully nurtured image. If they were to develop a cheaper range of cars to compete with VW, Ford, Fiat and other mass market players, surely this would devalue the BMW brand. Other companies had already seen it become increasingly difficult to have a brand stretched between the extremes of a small budget car and a large luxury car. Ford failed to achieve a quality reputation with their Scorpio when they also produced the Fiesta. Fiat's Croma was a dismal market failure, whereas their small cars like the Uno were market successes that sold extremely well. Where companies have had successes in both of these market areas, they have achieved this with multiple brands, such as the VW Group's use of Skoda at the lower end of the market, going through Seat and VW up to Audi at the premium end of the marketplace - as well as owning exclusive brands like Bentley. Ford now have multiple brands as part of their 'Premier Automotive Group' (Jaguar, Lincoln, Aston Martin, Volvo and Land Rover) and have all-but abandoned the high end of the market under the Ford badge.

The options that faced BMW were to either buy an existing brand (or brands), or to build a new brand from scratch. The latter option, the route taken by the Japanese with Toyota creating Lexus, Honda creating Acura for the American market and Nissan creating Infiniti, also for the North Americans, was initially the route that BMW appeared to be taking. Spy shots and leaked information showed that BMW were at least investigating, if not actually developing for production, front-wheel-drive technology. Front-wheel-drive is something that would never appear in a BMW-badged car, as rear-wheel-drive is a core value of the brand. However, this is not the route that BMW eventually took.

The opportunity arose to look at Rover when BMW were to supply diesel engines to the Rover Group for the new Range Rover. The Rover Group had recently had a huge upswing in sales to continental Europe when the market there was contracting, Rover being the only company to actually grow their sales at that time. Furthermore, their sales were actually on course to overtake BMW's.

When BMW looked at Rover, they were impressed. Their opinion was that in terms of quality, Rover were as good as, if not in some cases better than, BMW. Rover appeared to fit perfectly with BMW. There was very little in the way of overlap. Rover cars would be able to fit below BMW in the line-up. Land Rover did not compete with BMW at all, and yet had a luxury image that complemented BMW's perfectly, and an under-developed, 'latent' brand of Mini (Bernd Pischetsrieder, BMW's chairman was the nephew of Sir Alec Issigonis, the Mini's designer). However, best of all, there was a cupboard-full of heritage that BMW could exploit (MG, Riley, Austin-Healey, Triumph, etc) - and to an Anglophile like Pischetsrieder, this was manna from Heaven.

The deal to buy the Rover Group from British Aerospace was completed in a whirlwind 10 days. BAe were keen to dispose of Rover, as the company did not fit well with their core interests of Aerospace and defence. The high capital-consuming business of long-run, mass production of low-cost consumer products had little synergy with the low capital-consuming, build-to-order, niche production of high-value items such as Airbus wings or military jets. BAe were keen to sell, BMW wanted to buy.

Honda were the only problem. Honda, Rover's partner for over a decade, were deeply entwined with Rover's fortunes. Rover cars were not only heavily dependent on Honda for their engineering, but the company was 20% owned by Honda (the Rover Group owning the remaining 80%) and the Rover Group owned 20% of Honda's UK manufacturing facility in Swindon. Honda, however, were not interested in working with BMW. They did not want to retain their equity stake in a Rover now owned by a competitor and they wanted their 20% of Swindon back. The cross-holding was quickly unwound.

However, this background does not tell us exactly why BMW shelled out so much to purchase Rover. Did BMW buy to expand their portfolio and manufacturing base or to thwart their competitors? Although at the time, it was seen as the former, the latter objective cannot easily be dismissed as fantasy. If, as was believed at the time, Rover were on course, with their Honda-derived vehicles, to overtake BMW in terms of sales volume in Europe - and Rover were definitely trying to become "Britain's BMW" - was strangulation from inside the only way of stopping this threat? It was also the case that killing the Honda-Rover partnership would set back the European plans of Honda - another "quality competitor", as viewed by BMW.

Did BMW ever really mean to keep Rover?

Since Day One, BMW were very specific about where they spent money on investment. Those areas in which they invested were either kept after the sale of Rover (Cowley, Swindon, Hamms Hall etc) or sold for a big profit (Land Rover). The cars they were developing, but which were not launched, were retained. As was the Triumph marque. There will be massive capacity at Cowley for making these cars, as there will be at other BMW plants around the world.

The engine for the new Mini was never intended to be built by Rover. Very early on, it was decided that it would be made for BMW by Chrysler, in South America, so BMW was never going to be dependent on Rover facilities for making this vital part of the new Mini. At the time, the strange decision not to use the K-series engine was never explained or understood. In the light of later developments, a possible explanation becomes clear. It was also possible that BMW viewed Chrysler (prior to its takeover by Daimler-Benz) as a possible purchaser of the parts of Rover that it did not want to retain.

Under BMW, Rover's dealership base was drastically cut. There was very little in the way of new models coming out (The 400, 200 and MGF were already substantially developed when BMW purchased Rover. Only the Rover 75 was developed and launched under BMW, in a period of five years.) With this in mind, is it surprising that there was a sales decline - induced by BMW's management?

Rover was Honda's partner and also its foothold into the European marketplace. By killing that partnership overnight, Honda were set back in Europe by anything up to four years. Did BMW see Honda as a significant threat that had to be stopped?

It could be argued that BMW wanted a quick start in 4x4 to be able to compete with Mercedes-Benz. Once the X5 had been developed and launched (with Land Rover technology, know-how, etc for sure), BMW no longer needed Land Rover. It has been said that Land Rover was raped and pillaged by BMW and that without it BMW could not have produced the X5. It was also questionable at the time as to why BMW developed the X5 when they had the Land Rover brand in their portfolio. Looking back, it could be argued that they never intended to keep Land Rover, only to gain the knowledge that this world leader possessed.

The Rover 75 was launched - a car that competed with BMWs, remember - with the same high-tech diesel engine as the BMW 3 and 5 series. However, it was in a lower spec than that available to BMW customers. BMW launched this car and then tied one arm behind its back. They would not allow it to take sales from BMW.

When the Rover 75 was launched at the Motor Show, BMW executives stood up in front of the new car and said that they were thinking of closing down the Longbridge plant. As marketing initiatives go, this was a pretty bloody stupid one. It was no wonder that the car - What Car?'s car of the year - was a slow seller. However, despite how it might appear on the surface, BMW are not stupid. They are masters of the marketing machine. This can only have been a deliberate ploy to give BMW the ability to exit with the assets they had invested in.

So let's have a look at exactly where BMW invested, and ask the question:

Did BMW lose money on Rover?

Publicly, yes. Privately, probably not.

BMW did invest in Rover during it's ownership. However, the vast majority of that investment they either still own or sold at a fair value or a vast profit.

· They purchased the whole Group for £800,000,000, then sold Land Rover alone for £1,800,000,000. That is a £1bn increase on its own.

· The vast majority of the investment in plant went to Cowley (or Rover Oxford as BMW called it). BMW retained this plant.

· BMW invested in a new engine facility (Hamms Hall). BMW have retained this plant.

· BMW retained the Longbridge Engine & Transmissions facility, thereby forcing Rover to buy components from BMW to be able to make cars. The same goes for the Swindon panel pressing plant. BMW made money out of Rover car sales, even if Rover were making a loss. Eventually, they sold these facilities to Phoenix, but it was for a fair value, and not included in the £10.

New models developed or in development were:

· The Rover 75
· The Rover Rover 400/45 replacement - development retained by BMW
· The Rover Rover 200/25 replacement - development retained by BMW
· The Land Rover Freelander
· The new Mini - retained by BMW
· The Range Rover replacement

During BMW's ownership, it is questionable that Rover were making the huge losses that BMW claimed. Since Rover's accounts were not open to public inspection, several questions remain unanswered:

· How much was Rover charged for BMW's management time?

· How much was Rover charged for 'BMW Training' of Rover technicians in Germany, when in reality, Rover employees were put on the production lines to make BMWs.

· How much work did Rover do on BMW products, like the BMW X5 4x4, which was not cross-charged back to BMW?

If all of these factors were in BMW's favour within the BMW Group, Rover would have been a dumping ground within the BMW Group for excess costs to inflate the BMW side of the business's apparent fortunes.

When BMW sold Rover, they included the following assets...

· Most of the Longbridge plant (anything that had received investment, BMW retained to sell later on.)
· The Austin brand
· The MG brand
· A licence to use the Rover name (but not to own it)
· The stock of unsold cars
· The drastically weakened dealer network.

...plus the rights to produce:

· The Rover 75, 45 and 25.
· The old Mini for a short while
· The MG-F

But this lot is still cheaper than making everyone at Rover redundant and paying severance payments etc. Also, actually closing Rover would have been very unpopular - and the UK is BMW's second-biggest market, after all.

BMW retained the following:

· The Rover brand (this was a condition by Ford to stop Rover producing a 4x4 and branding it as a Rover, thus confusing the marketplace with regard to Land Rover)

· The Triumph brand

· The Riley brand

· The Mini brand

· All of the cash in Rover, as well as the debtors and creditors

· The Cowley facility

· Parts of Longbridge (engine & transmissions production - even though these engines and transmissions are not used by BMW). This was sold later to Phoenix.

· The Swindon pressings facility

· The Hamms Hall engine plant

BMW sold the following to Ford:

· Land Rover, including its dealer network

· The Rover Group's development facility at Gaydon

· The Heritage Motor Muesum at Gaydon (including Rover's Heritage Collection)

It could be argued that BMW purchased Rover for a bargain-basement price in order to stop it from becoming a competitor to BMW itself. They also put back Honda by four years, preventing another competitor from stepping on their toes. They invested selectively, only in the areas that they could sell on at a profit once they had acquired capability in those areas themselves. The crippled Rover that was left was 'set free' as a manufacturer with no development facilities or on-going development to use, with a largely outdated model range and, initially at least, dependent on BMW for the purchase of components (engines and panels) without which they could not build any cars. Leaving BMW with the modern facilities, the products in the pipe-line that it had wanted all along (ie: those which complemented the BMWs rather than competed with them), and a marque that they could resurrect - Triumph - and were not dependent on an outside supplier to be able make.

The overall cost of the excercise, once fully adjusted, was possibly minimal. Certainly a lot cheaper than creating a new marque from scatch. And a new marque would not have had the world-known abilities of the "MINI" brand which BMW are now actively exploiting.

This could be seen as a cynical view. However, in the cold light of day, the facts fit the theory. Personally, I am inclined towards this theory more than against it. BMW learnt a lot from Rover about what they can and cannot do in the mass market.

It is still to be seen whether BMW will launch a new product range by resurrecting 'Triumph'. There is no other reason for having the Hamms Hall engine and transmission facility built (especially if the currency issue was as bad as they tried to claim when they ditched Rover); for retaining the Triumph brand; or for retaining the new model developments and continuing to work on them as was reported after the abandonment of Rover.

It is also possible that the events that took place were an exit-strategy that BMW had planned all along. It may have been one route out of many that they considered (ie, if Rover was a success, they might have continued with it.)

Article written by Leslie Button for austin-rover.co.uk.