Environmental Capital – WSJ.com : Financial Fallout: Market Tumbles Shake Nuclear Clean-Up Funds
October 10, 2008, Financial Fallout: Market Tumbles Shake Nuclear Clean-Up Funds
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL by Keith Johnson 10 Oct 08 The Wall Street meltdown is making it tougher to build new nuclear power plants, but it’s doing more than that. It could also make it tougher to tear down the existing ones.
The stock market’s tumble is cracking the piggy bank designed to safely mothball Vermont’s Yankee nuclear power plant when the plant is evenutally shut down, notes the Boston Globe. Since the spring, the so-called “decommissioning fund” for the Entergy plant, which will pay to dismantle and safely entomb nuclear reactors when they are shut down, has lost about $40 million, or 10% of its value……………………..ll nuclear plants are required to have a fund set aside to pay for their eventual clean-up. Since nuclear plants have such a long operating life, and clean-up takes even longer, most rely on long-term investments to meet funding requirements. How much does decomissioning cost? No one really knows. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission figures it should cost between $280 million and $612 million per reactor—or a maximum pricetag of about $63 billion for America’s 104 nuclear reactors. Then again, Britain estimates the total clean-up bill for its 19 nuclear reactors at $165 billion,………………ll nuclear plants are required to have a fund set aside to pay for their eventual clean-up. Since nuclear plants have such a long operating life, and clean-up takes even longer, most rely on long-term investments to meet funding requirements. How much does decomissioning cost? No one really knows. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission figures it should cost between $280 million and $612 million per reactor—or a maximum pricetag of about $63 billion for America’s 104 nuclear reactors. Then again, Britain estimates the total clean-up bill for its 19 nuclear reactors at $165 billion,
Environmental Capital – WSJ.com : Financial Fallout: Market Tumbles Shake Nuclear Clean-Up Funds
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Eric Margolis: The White House’s Final Folly
The White House’s Final Folly
THE HUFFINGTON POST Eric Margolis October 10, 2008 After invading Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, turning the Muslim world against America, alienating our allies, authoring the fiasco in Georgia, and presiding over the meltdown of Wall Street and America’s banks, it would seem impossible the Bush administration could produce another epic disaster. But it has.In its final days in office, the White House has engineered an historic nuclear deal with India that Congress, unaware of the import, approved last week………………………………Far from a triumph, this short-sighted strategic agreement with India could very well come back to haunt America. Many Indians feel the same way: furious debate over the nuclear deal almost brought down the coalition government of India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh and barely scraped by India’s parliament.
The agreement will now allow the U.S. to sell nuclear fuel, reactors and technology to India, supposedly for `peaceful energy use.’……………….President Bush’s `foreign policy triumph’ means that U.S.-supplied nuclear fuel will now keep India’s civilian reactors running, allowing Delhi to divert precious nuclear fuel to its weapons program.
This deal negates thirty years of US efforts to prevent the spread and development of nuclear weapons…………………..The gates have also been opened to U.S. arms exporters to sell state of the art military equipment to India, and to major heavy equipment suppliers like General Electric………………………..
Selling India nuclear fuel and technology that could one day threaten US national security is dangerous and counter-productive. It’s also folly driven by short-term financial greed that blinds the deal’s proponents to the nation’s security.
The first target of India’s ICBM’s will be Washington. As Marx so rightly observed, the capitalists will sell the rope with which to hang them.
Eric Margolis: The White House’s Final Folly
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
DOE formalizes intent to build nuclear rail line – San Jose Mercury News
DOE formalizes intent to build nuclear rail line
Mercury News.com The Associated PressArticle Launched: 10/10/2008 LAS VEGAS—The federal Energy Department is formalizing its intent to ship nuclear waste along a railroad line it proposes to build across Nevada to Yucca Mountain.The publication Friday of a record of decision in the Federal Register was another step forward for the plan to entomb 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel beneath an ancient volcanic ridge in the Nevada desert.
DOE formalizes intent to build nuclear rail line – San Jose Mercury News
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Peace and Conflict Monitor, The creation of Iraq’s food insecurity 1980-2008
The creation of Iraq’s food insecurity 1980-2008
Ross Ryan Peace & Conflict Monitor October 2008 the alluvial plain was degraded during the first Gulf War, which was a response to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, and entailed a counter-invasion into Iraq by a UN force led by the US military (Tripp 2002). It was into these fertile agricultural lands, whose harvests sustain the lives of millions of people, that the UN force, chiefly the US and British contingents, dropped thousands of tons of weaponry, including explosives cased in depleted uranium (Fisk 2000). According to one source, the US military “fired more than one million rounds of munitions tipped with radioactive depleted uranium” into the alluvial plain (Arnove 2000). In addition to the immediate environmental and agricultural costs, there is a strong possibility that the use of these weapons can be related to the fourfold increase of cancer rates which have subsequently been observed in the area (UNICEF 1999).
Peace and Conflict Monitor, The creation of Iraq’s food insecurity 1980-2008
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
NRC finds fault in VY cooling tower fiasco – Boston.com
NRC finds fault in VY cooling tower fiasco nuclear,antinuclear,radioactive,uranium
boston.com By Dave Gram Associated Press Writer / October 10, 2008MONTPELIER, Vt.—The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is scolding the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant for an inadequate fix after the partial collapse of one of its cooling towers.And it said Friday it had found a new problem during inspections of sagging in the cooling towers that came nearly a year after the partial collapse of one of them.
NRC finds fault in VY cooling tower fiasco – Boston.com
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Topping the charts – Opinion news
Topping the chartsSOFIA ECHO 10 Oct 2008 – Elitsa Grancharova – ‘……………there is nuclear energy. It has always seemed funny when they say that nuclear energy will counteract climate change. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, I say. Yes, naturally, if countries replace their coal-fired thermal power plants with nuclear stations, carbon dioxide emissions will drop, but what will be left? Another unimaginably polluting industry.I recently met someone who had worked at Kozloduy nuclear power plant. He was a defender of nuclear energy and explained that the average “permitted” radiation from Kozloduy was as high as the radiation in Sofia, as Vitosha was a granite mountain. But every day, when you enter Kozloduy, they measure your body’s radiation level and, if it is higher than permitted, they don’t let you in. You will be allowed back in a few days, “during which you have take a lot of showers to decrease the radiation”. (I’ve never heard so much nonsense in my life.) So, if conditions for workers are so “special”, doesn’t that suggest something is wrong? And we have not yet even broached storing nuclear waste. Or nuclear accidents, which pose a real danger in areas of seismic activity, such as Belene, where a nuclear power plant is to be constructed.
Topping the charts – Opinion news
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Private-public partners announce solar project – Forbes.com
Private-public partners announce solar project
Forbes.com Associated Press 10 Oct 08 AURORA, Colo. –A group of public agencies and companies has announced plans to build a research center in Aurora to promote commercial solar energy technologies.
The partners say the 74-acre Solar Technology Acceleration Center, or SolarTAC, will be one of the world’s largest solar test and evaluation facilities. It will be developed over the next three years with an initial investment of $5 million.
Gov. Bill Ritter said Thursday that the center will contribute to Colorado’s efforts to become a leader in the development of clean, modern energy technology.
“This announcement marks an important milestone in our efforts to establish Colorado as the renewable energy capital of the world,” Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said.
Private-public partners announce solar project – Forbes.com
Tags: renewables
LegalNewsline | Nevada AG files suit over Yucca Mountain radiation standards
Nevada AG files suit over Yucca Mountain radiation standards
Legal Newsline.com BY CHRIS RIZO OCTOBER 10, 2008 CARSON CITY, Nev. (Legal Newsline) -Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto filed a lawsuit Friday, demanding that a federal appeals court reject radiation exposure limits set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the Yucca Mountain repository.In papers filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the attorney general said the radiation exposure limits set by the EPA last week fail to protect the environment and the public health………………………….The attorney general said the Department of Energy’s data shows that water infiltration will corrode nuclear waste packages and radioactivity will leak into Nevada’s groundwater, delivering lethal doses of radiation to the public and irreparably contaminate groundwater.
“Instead of working to protect the health and safety of Nevadans and striving to find reasonable solutions to the nation’s nuclear waste problem, EPA and DOE are ignoring science in favor of a project which presents unacceptable risks to the public and presents American taxpayers with a $90 billion dollar liability they can ill afford,” Masto Cortez said.
The controversial Yucca Mountain repository is decades behind schedule, causing nuclear waste to pile up at commercial power plants in 39 states,
LegalNewsline | Nevada AG files suit over Yucca Mountain radiation standards
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
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