nuclear-news

Nuclear reactor owners rush to extend licenses  November 29, 2008By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteIt took just 20 minutes at a motel in Moon this month for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to report approvingly on FirstEnergy Corp.’s plans to manage its two aging nuclear power reactors in Shippingport, Beaver County, and clear the way for the facility’s 20-year license renewals……………………no relicensing requests have been denied.

The two Beaver Valley reactors are part of a big wave of aging atomic reactors hurrying to grab license renewals from the NRC many years before the end of their original 40-year licenses………………….citizen groups and industry watchdogs have criticized the process as perfunctory and inadequate to ensure safe operation and public health as the plants age……………”The industry has made a great deal of nuclear renaissance noise, but it hasn’t added a single watt of electricity from new power plants,” said Ray Shadis, a nuclear safety advocate……………………

The relicensing process also has come under sharp criticism by the NRC’s own Office of Inspector General in a September 2007 audit report that found some safety evaluations lacked necessary documentation and provided little evidence that inspectors had confirmed the integrity of aging safety systems they approved.

Similar concerns have been expressed by state officials in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania.

Dry Utah isn’t the place for nuclear power Standard.net Candace Jacobson November 30, 2008 State lawmakers Mike Noel and Aaron Tilton are moving forward with their plans for a nuclear power plant in the desert of Eastern Utah, believing that only “extreme environmental groups” and those with “a no-growth agenda” object to nuclear power in Utah………………………..

Utah does not need a nuclear power plant. It wouldn’t be good for the state, it’s not healthy for people, the waste is eternally toxic, none of the resulting power would stay in Utah, and it’s a terrible use of our water resources.

We live in a desert. On so many levels, nuclear power is not a feasible option for Utah. If it’s necessary to sell nuclear power to Nevada and California, then build the power plants in their states and let them worry about the spent fuel rods.

The fact that these men advocate for legislation that makes it easier for nuclear power plants to be built in Utah is further proof of the need for ethics reform in our state Legislature. Our Legislature has become nothing more than a forum for business people to eliminate roadblocks to their plans to line their own pockets.

As a state, let’s all say no to nukes.

Coalminers call for no more coal, renewables now! Green Left Simon Cunich, Newcastle28 November 2008 – “………………………New mines and extensions approved by the NSW government for the Hunter region alone in the last 18 months include the $240 million Anvil Hill (now Mangoola) open-cut coalmine project, the Abel underground coalmine and major expansions at the Liddell coalmine, Bulga underground mine and Bengalla coalmine near Muswellbrook. These, and the other pending proposals, would add another 60 million tonnes a year to the 110 million tonnes of coal produced by Hunter Valley mines, according to the Anvil Hill Alliance. ……………………….Brown argues that the coal industry should begin to be phased out immediately and an expansion of renewable energy embarked upon. He explains to people “who want coal to go on forever” that the coal companies themselves will shut down mines as they begin to run out of coal: the coalmining industry provides no employment guarantee……………………..“If we’re going to get serious about global warming”, Brown continued, “it needs to happen straight away. It can happen virtually straight away. We have figures from researchers that say every power station on the East coast of Australia can be retrofitted with solar thermal over an eight-year period and that would tie in with our phasing out of the coal industry. There’d be an increase of jobs.”………………….A 2008 study conducted by the Centre of Full Employment and Equity in Newcastle found that a shift to a renewable energy economy in the Hunter/Wyong region would result in a net gain of between 3,900 and 10,700 jobs.

“I know from my time in the industry that the attitude of people is give them another job that isn’t in a coalmine and they’ll take it”, Graham Brown said.

Climate change gathers steam, say scientists 1 Dec 08  PARIS (AFP) — Earth’s climate appears to be changing more quickly and deeply than a benchmark UN report for policymakers predicted, top scientists said ahead of international climate talks starting Monday in Poland………………..

Even without additional drivers, the IPCC has warned that current rates of greenhouse gas emissions, if unchecked, would unleash devastating droughts, floods and huge increases in human misery by century’s end.

But the new studies, they say, indicate that human activity may be triggering powerful natural forces that would be nearly impossible to reverse and that could push temperatures up even further.

At the top of the list for virtually all of the scientists canvassed was the rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap.

“In the last couple of years, Arctic Sea ice is at an all-time low in summer, which has got a lot of people very, very concerned,” commented Robert Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor for Britain’s department for environmental affairs and chairman of the IPCC’s previous assessment in 2001.

“This has implication’s for Earth’s climate because it can clearly lead to a positive feedback effect,” he said in an interview………………………..The present concentration [of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere] is the highest during the last 650,000 years and probably during the last 20 million years,” said the Global Carbon Project’s Pep Canadell, a researcher at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation……………….

The December 1-12 forum of 192-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) comes midway through a two-year process launched in Bali for braking the juggernaut of global warming.

Scheduled to run until December 12, the talks are a stepping stone towards a new pact — due to be sealed in Copenhagen in December 2009 — for reducing emissions and boosting adaptation funds beyond 2012, when the current provisions of the UN’s Kyoto Protocol expire.

Hard times: directors feel the pinch
THE AUSTRALIAN Business Robin Bromby | December 01, 2008 TOUGH times mean tough decisions, and in the next few months we will see which companies are prepared to make them………………..At uranium explorer Monaro Mining (MRO), ambitious projects in Bulgaria, Estonia and Niger have been put on hold. Spending is being slashed.