nuclear-news

Exelon’s Clinton reactor nearly bankrupted the small utility and rural co-ops that originally built it. Despite being bought for a few cents on the dollar by Exelon, it still isn’t economic and Exelon is “threatening” to close it. Photo by cryptome.org.

While some potential legal challenges remain, the approval of the Exelon-Pepco merger by the Washington, D.C. Public Service Commission means that Exelon is now not only the largest nuclear powered utility in the U.S., it is the largest electric utility period. And with that steady stream of regulated, and non-nuclear, Pepco money filling its coffers, you’d think that Exelon’s continuing “threats” to close up to three of its Illinois reactor sites unless it obtains more bailouts from beleaguered Illinois taxpayers and ratepayers would fall on deaf ears. Or maybe Exelon is now trying to achieve “too big to fail” status?

That Exelon’s “threats” to close these reactors are considered…

They repeat “high high” twice, so it must not be a typo and must be or have been very bad.
Browns Ferry, USNRC:
“UNUSUAL EVENT DECLARED DUE TO MAIN STEAMLINE HIGH HIGH RADIATION CONDITION
At 1545 CDT on 04/06/16 Browns Ferry Unit 3 declared and exited the declaration of an unusual event due to a main steam line high high radiation condition. Power to Unit 3 was reduced to 91 percent power. The high radiation condition alarm cleared at 1526 CDT. Browns Ferry Unit 3 reported that the high radiation conditions were due to resin intrusion from the condensate demineralizers into the reactor and hydrogen water chemistry was a potential contributor to the event. The cause is still under investigation.

The NRC Resident Inspector has been notified.

State and Local notifications were made.

Notified DHS SWO, FEMA Ops Center, NICC Watch Officer, FEMA NWC and Nuclear SSA (email)

NASA took the wraps off a new website on Monday dedicated to tracking global changes in the sea level. It’s packed full of free online resources that will..

Sourced through Scoop.it from: techcrunch.com

See on Scoop.it – GarryRogers Biosphere News

When it comes to global warming, what else don’t we know? What science does know, and what it can infer from studying archeological records, already makes anybody who thinks the long-term habitability of Earth is more important than short-term profits very worried.

One detail that may have been under-appreciated is meltwater. Melting ice sheets, especially in Greenland and Antarctica, is well understood to raise the sea level. But the effects might not be simply the additional water added to the oceans. In this scenario, the melted freshwater will additionally increase warming, thereby creating a feedback loop that will accelerate the loss of polar ice sheets, thus accelerating the rate of sea-level rise. How fast? Fast enough that the sea level could rise “several meters,” possibly six to nine meters, in 50 to 150 years.

This sobering prediction of what might happen without a drastic reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions is the…

Opinion:

¶ Wind and solar are crushing fossil fuels • Recent auctions in Mexico and Morocco ended with winning bids that show solar and wind will soon be least expensive sources, worldwide, said Michael Liebreich, chairman of the advisory board for Bloomberg New Energy Finance. [Sydney Morning Herald]

Investment in renewables is outpacing fossil fuel investment by a significant margin. Photo: Supplied

World:

¶ Since 2000, more than 20 countries have successfully curbed greenhouse gas emissions while boosting their gross domestic product, according to World Resources Institute analyst Nate Aden. No single trend has driven GDP-GHG decoupling across all countries. [CleanTechnica]

¶ After a seven-year delay, the New South Wales Government approved a wind farm project for the southern part of the state. Epuron Project’s $670 million project across the Harden and Yass Valley shires it will be around one-third of the size originally proposed in…

Photo of the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike Diorama at the National Civil Rights Museum, by Adam Jones, Ph.D., CC-By-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia

In 2009, the Swedish company Studsvik settled over a lawsuit, which said that black employees were subjected “to excessive radiation exposure, more than their white co-workers” at Studsvik’s Memphis, Tennessee, USA, facilty. This was forty one years after Martin Luther King was assassinated (April 4, 1968), while supporting the strike of Memphis sanitation workers, subsequent to the deaths of two workers crushed in the back of a garbage truck, which followed upon years of “poor treatment, discrimination, dangerous working conditions” – a strike declared illegal by Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb [1].

While the legal complaint is said, by (Swedish) Studsvik, to have predated Studsvik ownership, Studsvik is clearly comprised of wicked people: “In April 2011 Studsvik praised defeat of a bill in the…

Opinion:

¶ Hey, Bill Gates, our ‘energy miracles’ are already here • The transformation from a fossil fuel-based global economy, to one that is powered by a decentralized mix of renewables is happening far faster than anyone anticipated, according to Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. [Mashable]

Photo by Chen Yibao – Imaginechina

Science and Technology:

¶ A new study from the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and the Smith School for Enterprise and Environment, University of Oxford shows “we are uncomfortably close to the point where the world’s energy system commits the planet to exceeding 2°C.” [CleanTechnica]

World:

¶ A new alliance of renewable energy, natural gas, and energy intensive industry trade bodies published a declaration warning without reforming planned EU Internal Energy Market the bloc will struggle to deploy smart grid technologies that promise to cut costs and…

“Even in a perfect world where energy companies didn’t make mistakes, nuclear power is and always has been a dangerous idea because there is no good way to store nuclear waste,” Sanders said Monday. “That is why the United States must lead the world in transforming our energy system away from nuclear power and fossil fuels… “I am very concerned that the Indian Power nuclear power reactor is more than ever before a catastrophe waiting to happen,” Sanders said. “In my view, we cannot sit idly by and hope that the unthinkable will never happen. We must take action to shut this plant down in a safe and responsible way. It makes no sense to me to continue to operate a decaying nuclear reactor within 25 miles of New York City where nearly 10 million people live.” (Bernie Sanders, April 4, 2016, as reported by CommonDreams, after the pictures.)

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