Is Toxic Trade in Your Backyard? https://www.sierraclub.org/trade/mapping-isds [excellent interactive map]
Looming Trade Deals Threaten Efforts to Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground
If passed by Congress, two pending U.S. trade deals – the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – would give some of the world’s largest fossil fuel corporations broad new rights to challenge our climate protections in private tribunals. For the first time, these corporations could ask unaccountable panels of corporate lawyers to order U.S. government compensation if such protections interfered with their widespread fossil fuel projects.
This interactive map shows more than 400 of these polluting projects across 48 states, each of which would get extraordinary protections under the TPP or TTIP. This includes:
- More than 300 polluting facilities, including over 70 coal mines, 30 oil refineries, and more than 100 gas power plants;
- Tens of thousands of miles of fossil fuel pipelines and oil trains;
- More than 10.8 million acres of oil and gas drilling leases; and
- Fracking operations from California to Pennsylvania.
Click on a fossil fuel project for more information on the corporations that could use these trade deals to try to prevent, or gain compensation for, U.S. efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Using satellite view, zoom in to see pictures of the polluting projects in your backyard. For a full explanation of this new climate threat, click here for Sierra Club’s “Climate Roadblocks” report.
October 3, 2016
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, USA |
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http://www.cleanairalliance.org/lrp/ Angela Bischoff, Outreach Director September 29, 2016
Citing a surplus of power, the Wynne government pulled the plug Tuesday on its Large Renewable Procurement (LRP) process for acquiring wind and solar power at highly competitive prices.
But what the Minister of Energy didn’t mention was that the reason we have a glut of power is the government’s insistence on keeping high-cost nuclear plants running despite plenty of better options.
The Pickering Nuclear plant is an excellent case in point. Our new factsheet shows that Pickering’s power is just not needed. Almost half of the power the station produces is exported, often at a loss. The rest can easily be replaced with lower cost water power from Quebec, energy efficiency improvements, Ontario green power or some combination of all three. This is true even if one or more of the aging Darlington reactors are shut down for re-building.
Pickering’s power it is also more costly than these other options. Just last week, Ontario Power Generation was at the Ontario Energy Board seeking a 180% increase in the price it is paid for nuclear power. Water power from Quebec and energy efficiency savings are both substantially cheaper than power from Pickering today. Meanwhile, power from renewable sources just gets cheaper and cheaper, with wind power already more economical than power from Pickering (based on the last LRP round’s prices) and solar likely to be competitive in the near future.
What our factsheet makes clear is that there is no excuse for continuing to run a 45-year-old nuclear plant surrounded by two million people beyond its design lifetime. And now OPG is applying for a licence to run the station for another decade. This is not only reckless – it is economically backward because it is only going to lead to electricity bills going up and up, not down.
Please click here to sign our petition to close the Pickering Nuclear Station in 2018 when its licence expires.
October 3, 2016
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
ACTION |
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Steve Dale Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, 1 Oct 16 In Geraldine Thomas’s recent talk she showed dosimeter data from students in Japan, but she didn’t make it clear that the students were kept out of the “Restricted zone” (funny about that). But if you read the paper, it mentions that a teacher went into the zone for 2 hours (to Okuma) and had readings of 5 microSieverts per hour. Thought I would show how the graph would look with this data included. (Note: Okuma is not the “hottest” area, some areas in the restricted zone are over 20 microSieverts per hour) [relevant graph can be seen on original on Facebook] Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/
Measurement and comparison of individual external doses of high-school students living in Japan, France, Poland and Belarus—the ‘D-shuttle’ project— N Adachi1, V Adamovitch2, Y Adjovi3, K Aida4, H Akamatsu5, S Akiyama6, A Akli7, A Ando8, T Andrault9,H Antonietti3 Show full author list 27 November 2015 Journal of Radiological Protection, Volume 36, Number 1
Twelve high schools in Japan (of which six are in Fukushima Prefecture), four in France, eight in Poland and two in Belarus cooperated in the measurement and comparison of individual external doses in 2014. In total 216 high-school students and teachers participated in the study. Each participant wore an electronic personal dosimeter ‘D-shuttle’ for two weeks, and kept a journal of his/her whereabouts and activities. The distributions of annual external doses estimated for each region overlap with each other, demonstrating that the personal external individual doses in locations where residence is currently allowed in Fukushima Prefecture and in Belarus are well within the range of estimated annual doses due to the terrestrial background radiation level of other regions/countries………..
A large value of 5 μSv h−1 was recorded for one participant from Fukushima high school (figure10 top) [on orioginal]. This was when this person (teacher) visited Okuma town in the restricted zone, close to the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant (figure 1) for research purposes. For two hours, 15:00 and 16:00, high hourly doses were recorded, and this coincided with the activity journal entry of this person……..http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0952-4746/36/1/49
October 3, 2016
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA, spinbuster |
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Cherie Shore, LA Times, 25 July 16 Southern California Edison caused the radiation leak at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station by misusing the reactor, resulting in the power plant’s shutdown in 2013, according to a former Edison engineer. (“San Onofre reactor leaked radiation after being misused, report says,” July 20)
Or, according to Edison, the leak was the result of faulty generators, which Edison commissioned and accepted from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Either way, the cost of shutting down San Onofre should be borne by Edison and its shareholders, not the ratepayers. Edison either used bad judgment in selecting Mitsubishi or operated the reactor outside allowable limits. Regardless, Edison customers shouldn’t be stuck with any part of the bill. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-edison-nuclear-plant-shutdown-20160725-snap-story.html
October 3, 2016
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
general |
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By Lulu Chang — October 1, 2016 It’s not that often that we hear about major breakthroughs in nuclear research, and now such announcements, at least in the U.S., may become more infrequent. That’s because our nation’s “flagship experimental fusion reactor” is no longer working. This problem is made all the more frustrating by the fact that scientists just completed a four-year, $94 million upgrade on the machine. Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in New Jersey are now trying to determine what exactly was behind the reactor’s failure, which could turn out to be a lengthy engagement……..http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/nuclear-fusion-reactor-malfunction/k
October 3, 2016
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
general |
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nuclear-news 