nuclear-news

The nuclear industry is well-represented inside the conference hall; anti-nuclear groups haven’t been allowed to set up information booths.

Last Saturday, December 5, two NIRS staff arrived in Paris and joined anti-nuclear colleagues from across Europe for the United Nations climate conference. Officially, this is the 21st Conference of Parties on climate, or COP 21 for short. All year, we have been working as part of the Don’t Nuke the Climate coalition, preparing to mobilize thousands to COP 21 under the nuclear-free, carbon-free banner we flew at the People’s Climate March in New York City last year. That march was, in fact, the first wave of grassroots mobilization to fight for a strong, legally binding climate treaty. Especially with the conference happening in the most nuclearized country in the world, we’ve expected a major push to turn climate action into a feeding trough for poison power. And our expectations have…

COP21:

¶ After lower-level negotiators at the Paris climate talks delivered a drafted agreement that left all crunch issues unsolved, foreign and environmental ministers stepped in. Warning that “the clock is ticking towards climate catastrophe,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told ministers the world expects more than “half-measures.” [The Weather Channel]

Demonstrator at the Global Climate March on Nov. 29, 2015 in Berlin, Germany. John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images)

¶ A group of mayors from cities around the world have published a letter calling on other mayors and cities to follow suit in divesting from fossil fuel investments. The letter was signed in conjunction with the COP21 Climate Summit for Local Leaders, which is being held in Paris alongside the United Nations climate negotiations. [CleanTechnica]

¶ A group of 44 individual states and regions took the COP21 spotlight with an announcement pledging their own carbon goals through The Compact…

With climate talks ongoing in Paris, we have another “plea” from various climate scientists for action. Most notably a claim by James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley (the gang of four as I will henceforth call them) for more nuclear power. Unfortunately, like many nuclear energy supporters they merely succeed in showing how naive and ill-informed they are regarding the topic. It does worry me when I hear such things from eminent climatologists, as it does suggest somewhat faulty logic on their part, something which we are fortunate no deniers have thought to point out.

The gang of 4 call for 61 reactors per year for the next 35 years to replace fossil fuels for electricity generation and 115 to replace all fossil fuel consumption. They don’t define what a reactor is, but let’s assume 1 GW. By contrast, something I discussed in a…

“Nuclear power plant construction” by James Douch – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons –

If you think you’ve been seeing a lot more pro-nuclear propaganda in the media than usual in the past couple of weeks, well, it’s not your imagination. The nuclear industry and its champions are out in force, publishing articles and appearing in the media wherever and whenever they can in what may be a last-ditch effort to convince the world–or at least its leaders–that nuclear power is the answer, or one answer, to our climate crisis. As one writer put it yesterday, “At the Paris Climate Summit (COP21), the global nuclear lobby is in overdrive.”

If it all smacks a bit of desperation–and a lot of the pro-nuke pieces out there right now verge on the hysterical, with blatant attacks on those of us who envision a clean energy future–well, that’s…

“Sandia is headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMC)… Between 2008 and 2012, Sandia allegedly used federal funds to support activities to lobby Congress and other federal officials to receive a non-competitive extension of the M&O Contract in violation of a federal law known as the Byrd Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for lobbying.” (US DOJ – See entire press release below)

They also appear to be lobbying to increase the non-medical radiation exposure of Americans to even more dizzyingly dangerous heights. Lockheed-Sandia employee, Mark Miller, is one of those behind the push to give all Americans cancer by upping nuclear related radiation exposure to 400 times higher than current US EPA maximum limit. Did Mark Miller do this on the taxpayer dollar too? Most likely, since he did a powerpoint presentation proposing any radiation level goes…