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Having embarked on an ambitious expansion of its atomic energy programme, India will build an underground repository about 1km below land surface for storing nuclear waste and is setting up a laboratory to develop the required technology.

The research laboratory will also be underground, operating in an abandoned mining site, where shafts and chambers provide the setting for a complex analysis of factors that affect storage of nuclear waste generated by atomic power plants.

At present, India has the capacity to store nuclear waste for 30 years by which time it will lose some radioactivity, but underground disposal is needed in view of plans to add 5,330mw in the 12th Plan and for atomic power to contribute 25% of power production by 2050.

Nuclear power production has picked up with the generation target of 32,000 million units being met in March - the first time in the last five years.

"The proposed laboratory will be of a generic nature. Such laboratories are used for development of methodology and technology related to emplacement of solidified waste in the repository. Experiments will form the basis of the underground geological repository for storing high level nuclear waste," the department of atomic energy said replying to a Parliament question.

A Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) source said the laboratory will research parameters for conductivity, fissures and permeability that impact containment of radiation. "There are tests for thermal systems, rock mechanics, hydrological and chemical systems," the source said.

The department told three MPs, who raised queries, that currently the inventory of waste is small and the interim storage facility adequate. "Presently, work related to host rock characterization to develop comprehensive data bases is in progress," DAE said.

The department adopts a three-stage process to manage nuclear waste which is first converted into an inert solid material in the form of sodium borosilicate. Then, the solidified waste is stored under surveillance in an air-cooled facility for 25-30 years, and finally this will be disposed in the underground repository that is being planned.

The waste will be disposed "at a depth of 800-1,000 meters to isolate radioactivity from the environment," the government has said.

Japanese utility Hokkaido Electric Power began shutting the country's last active nuclear reactor on Saturday, leaving the world's third-biggest user of atomic energy with no nuclear-derived electricity for the first time since 1970.

A crisis at Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where an earthquake and tsunami in March last year triggered radiation leaks, has hammered public faith in nuclear power and prevented the restart of reactors shut down for regular maintenance checks.

Hokkaido Electric said it started lowering output from the 912-megawatt No.3 unit at Tomari nuclear plant in northern Japan at 5 p.m. (2 a.m. New York time).

The maintenance on the unit is set to begin at around 11 p.m. (9 a.m. New York time) when power generation falls to zero, with the unit to be shut down completely by the early hours of Sunday.

The shutdown means all of Japan's 50 reactors have been taken off line, marking the country's first nuclear power-free day since May 1970.

Trade Minister Yukio Edano and three other ministers have been trying to win the support of communities to reactivate two idled reactors at Kansai Electric Power's Ohi nuclear plant to help ease expected power shortages of nearly 20 percent in coming hot-weather months.

The two Ohi reactors are the first to be considered for reactivation by the central government, but it faces an uphill battle of winning public support.

Kansai Electric's expected deficit for this summer was the highest among four Japanese nuclear plant operators that forecast shortfalls when demand peaks in the summer.

Costly Option

The last time Japan went without nuclear power was in May 1970, when the country's only two reactors operating at that time were shut for maintenance, the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan says. 

Nuclear power provided almost 30 percent of the electricity to keep the $5 trillion economy going before the March 11, 2011 disaster that killed almost 16,000 people and left more than 3,000 missing. 

A year on, the level of public concern about the safety of the industry is such that the government is still struggling to come up with a long-term energy policy, a delay having a profound impact on the economy and underlining just how costly it will be to contemplate a nuclear-power-free future. 

Having boomed in recent decades on the exports prowess of big brands like and Canon, the economy suffered its first trade deficit in more than three decades in 2011 as power producers spent billions of dollars on oil-and-gas imports to fuel extra generation capacity. 

At the time of the Fukushima crisis, then Prime Minister Naoto Kan called on Japan to wean itself off of nuclear power. Up to that point, Japan had been planning to lift the share of nuclear generation to over 50 percent by 2030 from about 30 percent.

The government of current Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has softened Kan's call. Noda says Japan can not afford to be nuclear free, although he still holds that as an ideal.

But the government has no clear timetable for getting nuclear power back up and running as it tries to navigate the public opposition—rare in Japan—and the demands of business that wants a stable supply of power.

Cabinet ministers last month rushed to try to win over the public to allow the restart of two nuclear power reactors at Kansai Electric Power's Ohi plant in western Japan, in what experts said was a recognition of the implications of a nuclear-free summer.

The public remained unconvinced. A poll by Kyodo news agency last weekend showed about 60 percent of the public opposed to restarting the two reactors.

Most mayors and governors whose communities host nuclear plants want safety assurances beyond government-imposed stress tests before agreeing to restarts, a Reuters poll showed in March.

To overcome the opposition, some politicians have been more forceful. Yoshito Sengoku, the acting president of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, on April 16 called an abandonment of nuclear energy the equivalent of "mass suicide," Kyodo news reported. His comment was criticised by Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura, indicating internal divisions over how to handle the issue. 

Global Shift

Ultimately, some argue Japan's economy, already weakened by years of deflation, would suffer if reactors are not restarted. 

"It's not an option Japan should take. There will be less employment and the economy will be on a shrinking trend," said Takeo Kikkawa, a professor at Hitotsubashi University.

Japan's liquefied natural gas imports climbed 18 percent in volume and 52 percent in value to 5.4 trillion yen ($67 billion) in the year through March. 

Renewable energy, although given emphasis in energy policies being formulated, is not expected to be much of an immediate salve. Energy from renewable sources account for about 10 percent of Japan's power generation, most of that from hydroelectric dams. Wind and solar together contribute about 1 percent.

Worldwide, there has been a shift with Germany, Italy and Switzerland moving away from atomic energy, prompting the International Atomic Energy Agency to revise down its forecast for growth in the industry.

The United States, China and India are still planning to increase the number of reactors.

In Japan, a delay in setting up a new, more independent Nuclear Regulatory Agency due to deadlock in a divided parliament is further clouding the outlook.

Some analysts say the government is not going to turn public opinion unless it admits that nuclear power is never going to be absolutely safe. 

"The debate needs to be recast," said Bob Geller, a professor of geophysics at Tokyo University. "They have to come clean, and say, in effect - look we know they're not perfectly safe but we've made a careful evaluation of the risks, which we'll make public."

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The U.S. Treasury Department said on Friday it plans a third sale of the common stock of American International Group that it acquired as part of the government bailout of the insurer in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. Whether it is the right time to public offering as markets are still struggling with anemic recovery and Europe is already in a painful recession time? Is the demand for risky assets are still healthy?

Organic is great, but in many parts of the world, farmers can’t sit around while pests eat their crops. Like it or not, insecticides are an important part of global agriculture. But what if we could at least use a lot less of it?

When you see farmers dousing their fields in insecticides, you might think that there are bugs in every corner of the field. But, according to Eamonn Keogh, a professor at UC Riverside, that’s often not the case. Unwanted insects sit in clusters, he says. And if you know where they are, you can target them, without spraying so indiscriminately. That means less pesticides for the rest of us.

That’s the idea of a project being developed by Keogh and his colleagues, which aims to give farmers more detailed information of where exactly insects are, and consequently where to deploy pesticides. He hopes the project will help cut pollution, reduce costs for farmers, and possibly alleviate the problem of insects becoming resistant to certain chemicals.

The idea is to put multiple sensors all over a farm, gathering information on insect locations hour-to-hour. By feeding that data into a central server, and combining it with information like weather forecasting, the system can then generate "heat-maps" for the farmer showing what areas need to be sprayed, and which areas can be left alone.

"I realized that if you knew, magically, where all the insects were, you could do very magical things," says Keogh. "Right now, if you want use pesticide on a citrus or avocado field, you typically have to go up in a plane or helicopter and spray the entire field. [With our device], you could spray a tiny bit in a localized spaces, and get the same effect."

Keogh compares spraying a whole field to a doctor treating a burnt fingertip with an all-over-body cream--overkill, in other words (though he does concede that some infestations require more drastic responses).

The device contains a laser pointed at a light-sensitive diode, or switch. When a bug crosses the beam, it generates a signal, which can be amplified, and analyzed, to suggest which animals are where.

Currently, farmers often use a sticky trap, which means they have to visit fields in person--a time-waster--and become semi-expert entomologists. Keogh says farmers find it hard to tell the difference between bugs that are going to do harm, and those that are actually beneficial, for example for pollination.

The project, which UC Riverside researchers are developing with a private company, has just won a prize from the Vodafone Americas Foundation. The sensors will probably be linked via a cell-phone network, though the exact details are still being worked out. The device is yet to be tested in field conditions. And the researchers cannot yet to distinguish between all insect species--some bugs are good to have around.

Keogh says he would like to sell the device to farmers in the developed world, as a way of subsidizing deployment in poorer countries. "We’re going to sell this to American producers, who’ll pay a premium to get beautiful, spotless apples, and then use the profit to help the developing world," he says.

The cost of the sensor has already fallen from $400 to about $25. But Keogh thinks a mass-market manufacturer, like Sony, could make them at about $2. The important thing, he says, is that the sensors are affordable and not worth stealing for parts.

The bug sensor is just an idea Keogh is pursuing as part of his plan to bring computer know-how to insect-related problem. He thinks "computational entomology" could also help with malaria research, and other agricultural pests.

At 1 am on May 6, the full moon will be at 3,56,954 km from the centre of the earth. This will be the closest full moon to earth since January 1912. The moon will appear larger in the sky than at any time. This event is also referred to as ‘Supermoon’.

Early Sunday will see the moon’s closest encounter with earth since March 19, 2011, when the moon was a scant 380 kilometers closer to earth. The next time a similar occurrence will take place is not until August 10, 2014. Astronomers are estimating that the supermoon will be around 14 per cent brighter and 30 per cent bigger than the average full moon.

Previous supermoons were sighted in 1955, 1974, 1992, 2005 and 2011, all of which had their share of extreme weather and natural disasters. From extreme coastal tides to severe storms, powerful earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the entire natural world surges under the sway of the supermoon alignment.

Earnings

Dolby yesterday reported earnings excluding certain items of 91 cents a share for the second quarter, ended March 30. That topped the average estimate of 81 cents a share from analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Revenue increased 4 percent to $260.3 million. Analysts had predicted $253.1 million.