Energy Blast – Aug 16, 2010

Germany’s Saxony is to spend $12.75 million sending a shipment of nuclear waste to Russia this year, ‘the only country in the world accepting uranium hexafluoride in industrial quantities.‘  ‘Russia has long played a reluctant, and sometimes obstructionist, role in global negotiations over limiting climate change, perhaps in part because it expected economic benefits from the warming of its vast Siberian hinterland.‘  Rosatom has marked August 21st as the date that it will start supplying Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power reactor with fuel.  ‘This will be an irreversible step,‘ said a Rosatom spokesperson, although according to this report, it is thought that the plant ‘poses little proliferation risk‘.  Russia has approved a set of new regulations on oil safety whose scope includes foreign expertise, shipping security, and safe construction.  An oil workers’ union in Brazil is calling for the halting of operations at four Petrobras oil platforms due to safety concerns.  Revenues from Uganda’s growing oil industry that should be helping to build schools and infrastructure are disappearing thanks to corruption, says Reuters.  Vedanta Resources will buy a majority stake in Cairn India for up to $9.6 billion in cash.