Leonardo DiCaprio highlights Israeli solar tech http://www.israel21c.org/leonardo-dicaprio-highlights-israeli-solar-tech/ Actor and environmentalist puts international spotlight on Megalim Solar Power project. By Viva Sarah Press JANUARY 22, 2017,Hollywood actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio uses his instagram account to spotlight environmental challenges facing the world and environmental breakthroughs.
As such, his 13.8 million followers were sent a photo of Megalim Solar Power’s Ashalim power station now being built in the Negev desert.
“The arid landscape of Israel’s Negev Desert will look like a futuristic movie in the near future. The country is building the tallest solar thermal tower in the world above its dusty sands,” writes DiCaprio on his post alongside the photo.
The Ashalim project will comprise 55,000 mirrors which will feed solar heat into a 240-meter-tall solar tower — believed to be the highest in the world.
“The tower should be able to produce enough power for about 5% of Israel’s population when it’s concluded,” writes DiCaprio. “The sunlight will be reflected by the mirrors to a boiler at the top of the tower. The boiler will then be able to convert them and heat water to steam to turn the turbine in a conventional power plant.”
The Ashalim power station, scheduled to be up and running by the end of the year, will combine three types of energy: solar thermal, photovoltaic and natural gas.
January 23, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Israel, renewable |
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UK government covered up ‘disastrous failure’ in nuclear missile test: report, DW 22 Jan 17 A British newspaper has alleged that an unarmed nuclear missile veered off course and headed toward the US in a 2016 test. The Trident system is the country’s only nuclear weapon system and aims to deter threats. The British government covered up a failed test of a nuclear missile system last year, just weeks before lawmakers voted to renew it, “The Sunday Times” newspaper alleged on Sunday.
The newspaper cited an anonymous senior naval source who claimed that the unarmed Trident II D5 missile failed after being launched from a British submarine off the coast of the US state of Florida in June.
The cause of the failure was top secret, but the source said the missile may have accidentally veered towards the mainland.
“There was a major panic at the highest level of government and the military after the first test of our nuclear deterrent in four years ended in disastrous failure,” the source told the paper.
“Ultimately, Downing Street decided to cover up the failed test. If the information was made public, they knew how damaging it would be to the credibility of our nuclear deterrent.”
The source said an upcoming parliamentary vote on the Trident system on July 18 had made the failure “all the more sensitive.”……http://www.dw.com/en/uk-government-covered-up-disastrous-failure-in-nuclear-missile-test-report/a-37230406
January 23, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
general |
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Another nuclear weapons contractor pays millions to settle charges of illegally diverting federal funds https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/12/21/20559/another-nuclear-weapons-contractor-pays-millions-settle-charges-illegally-diverting?utm_content=buffer6a076&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=publici-buffer
Allegations of illegally spending federal funds to lobby for new funds now encompass contractors working at six of the eight U.S. nuclear weapons sites By Patrick Maloneemail, December 21, 2016
This article has been co-published with USA Today/Gannett.
A $67.5 million payment by a major nuclear weapons contractor to settle claims that it illegally spent federal funds is the latest in a series of settlements stemming from allegations that firms making bombs and cleaning up the resulting debris are using federal money improperly to win support for continued weapons-related work.
Altogether, the three companies that have made such settlement payments since 2013 are involved in the operation of six of the eight active sites in the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program. Actions by the Energy Department’s contractors — including any misspending — have substantial impact, since contract work consumes roughly 90 percent of the department’s total budget.
The lobbying activities at the heart of the latest settlement helped one of the contractors win a $45 million award for additional cleanup work. Although work on energy generation and consumption garners more public attention and President-elect Donald Trump has nominated an oil-state politician — former Texas governor Rick Perry — to become the department’s new top manager, such nuclear weapons-related work accounts for nearly two-thirds of all the department’s activities.
The latest case emerged from a civil lawsuit that accused two companies of performing substandard work at a nuclear weapons-related waste site and said one of them had improperly spent government funds to lobby for more. The companies declared on Nov. 23 they would settle the allegations by making payments, mostly to the federal government, for a total of $125 million, a massive amount for alleged Energy Department-related malfeasance.
The settlement involves work by Bechtel National Inc. and its parent Bechtel Corp., and URS Corp. and its subsidiary URS Energy and Construction Inc., which together have been trying to clean up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington. That’s where raw uranium was enriched into fuel for nuclear bombs during the Manhattan Project and the Cold War.
The firms have denied doing anything improper. But the settlement is part of an emerging pattern.
Lockheed Martin Corp., which operates one of three U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories – Sandia, agreed in August 2015 to pay $4.7 million to settle a complaint by the Justice Department that it used federal funds to lobby for a no-bid contract extension. Last Friday, it lost that effort when the Department of Energy selected a different contractor team, led by Honeywell International, to run Sandia for up to a decade, beginning next year. Meanwhile, Fluor Corp. paid $1.1 million in April 2013 to settle accusations that it used federal funds to lobby government agencies for more business at its Hanford training facility.
January 23, 2017
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secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA |
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Spent nuclear fuel shipment to Idaho lab remains in limbo WT By – Associated Press – Sunday, January 22, 2017 IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) – The director of the Idaho National Laboratory says it’s problematic whether a small quantity of spent nuclear fuel needed for research will be allowed into Idaho this spring.
The lab renegotiated a research agreement to allow the shipment to be received later this year, Mark Peters told the Post Register (http://bit.ly/2j1eP2W).
However, the continued failure of a treatment facility to process 900,000 gallons of high-level nuclear waste stored at the 890-square-mile U.S. Department of Energy site in eastern Idaho has caused the federal agency to violate a 1995 agreement with Idaho.
Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden as a result is refusing to allow research quantities of spent nuclear fuel into
Idaho until the facility, called the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, is operating.
“We still have the need to bring in small quantities,” Peters said. “And the official position of the attorney general is, until IWTU is running hot, he will not allow that to happen. So this is problematic. Very problematic.”
A previous research shipment has instead been sent to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Peters said his lab could potentially lose the next shipment as well.
“If IWTU goes beyond (spring), then we need to continue to rethink,” Peters said.
The shipment from the Byron Nuclear Generating Station in Illinois was originally scheduled for last June.
Late last month, the Department of Energy said a small-scale version of a key component of the waste treatment facility was being sent to Colorado to better understand why the treatment facility isn’t operating as planned.
The continued failure to get the treatment facility operating is a blow to the federal agency’s desire to bring in the research shipments of spent commercial nuclear fuel to the lab in Idaho, one of 17 Department of Energy labs in the nation and the primary lab for nuclear research…..http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/22/spent-nuclear-fuel-shipment-to-idaho-lab-remains-i/
January 23, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
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The Scramble to Protect Climate Data Under Trump Fearing what might happen to the data that catalogues the details of climate change in an administration with so many climate deniers, researchers rush to save it. Inside Climate News Lisa Song and Zahra Hirji, 22 Jan 17 More than 250 people gathered at the University of Pennsylvania last week for Data Rescue Philly, one of the latest examples of a grassroots effort to save environmental and climate change data that scientists fear could vanish under the Trump administration’s many climate deniers.
Over two days, volunteers from academia, nonprofits and the tech industry were trained and then preserved data from more than 3,000 websites hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Bethany Wiggin, director of the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities (PPEH), said the idea emerged from conversations recalling how government data became less accessible during the George W. Bush administration. Wiggin said a scan of agency websites showed that some data sets were archived in multiple locations, while others were more vulnerable.
Those concerns prompted PPEH and Penn Libraries to launch DataRefuge, which approaches the problem like a libraries project, placing “multiple copies [of data] in multiple places,” Wiggin said.
“The main goal is to make sure climate change research doesn’t slow down.”
A recent move by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to remove references to climate change from its website adds urgency to scientists’ concerns. In December, researchers and software engineers held a “guerrilla archiving event” in Toronto that focused on preserving Environmental Protection Agency data, and the leader of that effort attended Data Rescue Philly to offer advice.
DataRefuge events took place this week in Chicago and Indianapolis. The project is open to anyone who wants to attend.
The Penn project was in collaboration with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), an international group of university researchers and nonprofits that formed after Donald Trump’s victory to coordinate data rescue efforts. The amount of climate-related information stored on federal websites is overwhelming, and includes vital satellite imagery, sea-ice records, pollution inventories and decades of scientific studies. Wiggin said it’s impossible to save everything, and the goal is to prioritize the data most at risk of removal.
InsideClimate News spoke to Wiggin about the motivations, challenges and hopes for the project……… https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19012017/climate-change-data-science-denial-donald-trump?platform=hootsuite
January 23, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA |
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Trump White House Distorts Wages Figure on First Day, Climate Central By John Upton 22 Jan 17 Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in as president on Friday, the White House said that eliminating power plant climate rules, a clean water rule and other environmental regulations would “greatly help American workers, increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.”
The statement, included on the White House’s website to justify Trump’s drive to eliminate environmental rules affecting the energy sector, was a distortion. And if it was true, it would represent wage gains equivalent to less than $20 per American every year. The figure was based on a paper produced by a Louisiana State University finance professor in 2015 on behalf of a fossil fuel industry nonprofit. The paper, which was not peer reviewed, investigated potential economic impacts if all protected federal lands were opened to unlimited oil, gas and coal mining.
The paper did not, however, analyze the potential impacts of other potential regulatory changes, such as eliminating Obama-era power plant climate rules, as the White House suggested.
“It seems that the White House mischaracterized the study,” said Ken Gillingham, a Yale economist who worked a year for the Obama White House. He also said the study was “problematic from start to finish.”
The paper assumed that lifting restrictions on fossil fuel extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and all other protected American lands would lead to an unfettered boom in production of coal and other fossil fuels. That assumption and others were disputed by Gillingham and other experts.
“The long-term trend in terms of our overall electricity sector is very much away from coal,” said Adele Morris, a researcher at the nonprofit Brookings Institute who reviewed the paper. “So I don’t see why opening up a bunch more land is going to necessarily generate a lot more mining activity.”
The paper examined how the economic benefits from such mining and drilling booms nationwide might spill into other industries. It estimated a $32 billion growth in wages across the American economy every year for the next seven years. The findings were also mischaracterized and cited in more detail by Trump’s campaign in August.
Not only did the new administration and the Trump campaign misrepresent the regulations that were analyzed in the paper, they also understated its findings by claiming the “more than $30 billion” in increased wages would accrue over seven years instead of every year for seven years.
Projecting the true economic impacts of eliminating America’s environmental protections would be exceedingly difficult to calculate……….
estimates by Obama’s EPA and academics have concluded that the overall economy-wide benefits from the rules, called the Clean Power Plan, or CPP, would quickly climb into the tens of billions of dollars a year.
Among other things, those analyses consider savings from reduced future impacts of rising seas, worsening droughts, intensifying storms and other effects of climate change caused by fossil fuel pollution. The past three years have broken global heat records, amplifying disasters.
“To be clear, the air pollution benefits alone justify the CPP,” said Michael Wara, a Stanford Law environment expert who co-authored a Science article in 2014 with Stavins and other academics that examined the economic costs and benefits of the rules.
Louisiana State professor Joseph Mason, the author of the paper that underpinned the White House’s claims on Friday, did not respond to emails or a voice message seeking comment. A spokesman for the Institute for Energy Research, the fossil fuel-backed nonprofit that commissioned the study, also did not respond, nor did Trump’s press team…….. http://www.climatecentral.org/news/trump-fabricates-wages-figure-on-first-day-21098
January 23, 2017
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climate change, politics, USA |
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British unarmed nuclear missile ‘veered towards US mainland’ in test firing http://www.news.com.au/world/british-unarmed-nuclear-missile-veered-towards-us-mainland-in-test-firing/news-story/1c54697418967b79ff406bc805104709 JANUARY 23, 2017 THE UK government has been accused of a cover up after failing to disclose that an unarmed nuclear missile may have been mistakenly fired at the US mainland.
January 23, 2017
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incidents, UK |
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Global warming never ‘paused’ and could soon accelerate, warns Nasa scientist
Dr Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, describes suggestions that climate change had slowed down or stopped as ‘delusional’ and ‘bunk’, The Independent, Ian Johnston Environment Correspondent 21 January 2017 The idea that global warming “paused” has been comprehensively refuted by the record warm temperatures over the last three years – and the rate of increase could soon start to accelerate, a leading Nasa scientist has warned.
Dr Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said some people had been “confused” by temperatures that were below the average rate of increase, mistaking what was simply a blip as the sign of a long-term trend.
But the last three years have each seen successive, record average global temperatures, according to Nasa’s figures, partly fuelled by the natural El Nino effect, but mostly because of human-induced climate change.
This, Dr Schmidt said, was “almost certainly” just another blip as random factors take temperatures above the average rising trend, which remains virtually the same as it has since the late 1990s.
But he also said the rising amount of energy being put into the atmosphere and oceans as a result of greenhouse gas emissions had led scientists to believe the pace of global warming would get faster over the next decades…….http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/global-warming-never-paused-acclerate-climate-change-nasa-scientist-gavin-schmidt-environment-a7538116.html
January 23, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
2 WORLD, climate change |
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Toshiba faces pressure to secure funding for UK nuclear project, Ft.com by: Andrew Ward and Jim Pickard in London, 22 Jan 17 Toshiba is facing pressure to secure investment from a South Korean energy group and the UK government to keep afloat a multibillion-pound British nuclear power project as the Japanese conglomerate struggles with mounting financial difficulties.
Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) has been in talks for months to join the NuGen consortium planning a nuclear plant at Moorside in Cumbria alongside Toshiba and Engie of France. The need for new partners has been increased by huge writedowns on Toshiba’s nuclear business in the US, which has left the group scrambling to shore up its balance sheet. As well as Korean capital, Toshiba is angling for UK government investment in the Cumbrian project after Theresa May’s administration recently signalled its willingness to put public money into new nuclear plants. This would represent a reversal of longstanding UK policy not to expose taxpayers’ money to the heavy expense and high risks involved in building nuclear reactors.
A Whitehall official said it was “premature” to talk about government involvement in financing Moorside but several other people involved in the process or briefed on the matter said the option of public investment was on the table. But these people said a more immediate step to keep the scheme on track was the proposal for Toshiba to sell part of its 60 per cent stake in NuGen to Kepco, the utility majority-owned by the South Korean government. “Talks have been moving slowly but the financial difficulties facing Toshiba will hopefully focus minds on getting a deal done,” said one person close to the talks.
It emerged last month that the UK and Japanese governments were in talks about potential joint support for a new nuclear plant planned by Hitachi, another Japanese conglomerate, at Wylfa in Anglesey. One senior nuclear industry figure said these discussions also extended to potential government financing for Moorside. Shares in Toshiba have fallen by 44 per cent since the group warned last month that it would have to make writedowns of “several billion dollars” related to the $229m acquisition last year of Stone & Webster, the US nuclear construction company, by Toshiba’s US nuclear technology unit, Westinghouse……..
Public investment in new nuclear plants would be a striking illustration of Mrs May’s determination to intervene more heavily in industrial strategy, a policy she was expected to set out in a discussion paper on Monday. The UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: “We are working closely with a number of developers on proposed new nuclear projects in the UK, as they develop their plans.”
https://www.ft.com/content/c0b01308-e0aa-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb
January 23, 2017
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business and costs, Japan, politics, UK |
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Analysis – As nuclear loss grows, Toshiba needs chip investors, soon Reuters By Makiko Yamazaki and Kentaro Hamada 22 JAN 17 TOKYO
With mounting writedowns from its nuclear business, Japan’s Toshiba Corp (6502.T) is looking to sell part of its core semiconductors business, a world No.2 in the flash memory chips used in smartphones.
But its rush to plug a hole in its U.S. nuclear business that Japanese media now estimate at as much as $6 billion may complicate any asset sale.
Toshiba, which warned last month of multi-billion dollar charges for U.S. nuclear project cost overruns, wants to boost its capital base by the end of the financial year in March.
Failure to offset the nuclear hit could wipe out already thin shareholder equity and push the company into negative net worth – jeopardising its role in public infrastructure projects and its place on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s ‘first section’, for larger companies.
Following a 2015 accounting scandal, the conglomerate is barred from raising fresh funding on equity markets. Selling assets, though, could help it win broader financial support from its main banks.
Toshiba could sell 20-30 percent of its chip business, according to media reports.
The business, worth more than $10 billion, is the world’s second largest after Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) in flash memory chips – and it’s Toshiba’s most profitable.
Operating profit is forecast at 130 billion yen (913.35 million pounds) for the year to end-March, accounting for the bulk of overall group profit, forecast at 180 billion yen. Those forecasts were made before its December warning of the U.S. nuclear charges.
People with knowledge of the matter said Toshiba has begun preparations to sell a minority stake in its chip business. One person said non-disclosure agreement forms have been sent to some private equity funds……..
As Toshiba has ruled out ceding control of the chips business, it may also seek state help, as other troubled Japanese technology companies have done in previous restructurings, the sources said.
Another person familiar with the matter said the state-run Development Bank of Japan is among several funds Toshiba may approach for possible investment in its chip business, though the bank could be put off by the size of investment needed.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki and Kentaro Hamada; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Ian Geoghegan) http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-toshiba-accounting-semiconductors-ana-idUKKBN156009
January 23, 2017
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business and costs, Japan |
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Trump supporters don’t like his climate policies, Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, 20 JANUARY 2017 Dana Nuccitelli Recent surveys jointly
conducted by Yale University and George Mason University found that a majority of Republicans (including a plurality of conservative Republicans) support US participation in international climate agreements like the Paris accords. They support regulating or taxing carbon pollution. And they want the United States to get much more of its energy from renewables, and less from fossil fuels.
Yet they also voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, who pledged to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement (though he has since waffled), and to kill the Clean Power Plan and its carbon pollution regulations. And he seems to strongly prefer coal to wind and solar energy, which he has inaccurately described as “not working on large-scale” and “very, very expensive.”………
Republican support for climate-change mitigation policies is broad but shallow. They would prefer that the government take action to curb carbon pollution, but for most, the issue won’t impact their votes.
However, the fossil fuel industry is a major Republican Party donor. Which means that for many Republican politicians, the incentives are thus quite clear—if they obstruct climate policies, they’re rewarded with campaign donations, and they’re not penalized at the ballot box by conservative voters who only mildly disapprove of their actions.
Donald Trump didn’t receive particularly substantial fossil fuel funding during his presidential campaign, which may help explain his wobbly stance on climate change. He simply doesn’t seem to have put much thought into the subject or consider it a high priority, quite like most of his supporters. But many of his nominees to powerful government positions like Scott Pruitt have benefited from oil industry donations, and Trump even nominated the chief executive officer of the world’s largest oil company to be his Secretary of State.
It’s in those key government roles where the rubber meets the road. If Trump’s nominees are approved, the fossil fuel industry will have powerful allies in his administration, and if they do enough damage to America’s efforts to curb carbon pollution, Trump and the GOP may eventually pay the electoral price…….http://thebulletin.org/trump-supporters-don%E2%80%99t-his-climate-policies10411#.WINK_ptkX2s.twitter
January 23, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, politics, USA |
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Decoding Trump’s White House Energy Plan , Climate Central, By Bobby Magill , 20 Jan 17 Just as President Donald Trump took the oath of office and the White House scrubbed its website of Obama climate change information, it posted Trump’s “America First Energy Plan,” which is replete with misinformation and specious claims about climate and energy policy.
The White House’s new energy plan repackages Trump’s campaign promises to reignite America’s declining coal industry, kill the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan and exploit all of America’s fossil fuel reserves to achieve energy independence — an idea that ignores that America’s oil and gas is part of a truly global fossil fuels market.
Throughout his campaign, Trump expressed
contempt for the Obama administration’s climate policies, which were critical to the success of the Paris Climate Agreement — the international pact aiming to stop global warming from reaching what the world’s scientists agree are dangerous levels.
Obama’s climate and energy policies encouraged the development of low-carbon renewable sources and discouraged the use of coal for electricity as a way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming.
Trump and his transition team called those policies job killers. He falsely claimed that Obama’s policies alone have forced the coal industry into decline. Coal has been on a long, steady decline since 2008 when natural gas was made cheap and abundant because of fracking. Natural gas overtook coal as America’s largest source of electricity for the first time in history in 2016.
The White House’s “America First Energy Plan” reflects those claims and Trump’s disdain for climate science and renewable energy. Here is a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the plan:
Energy is an essential part of American life and a staple of the world economy. The Trump Administration is committed to energy policies that lower costs for hardworking Americans and maximize the use of American resources, freeing us from dependence on foreign oil.
Few people question that energy is essential, but Trump’s statement that his administration is committed to low-cost energy and maximizing the use of American resources is seen by many as code for unfettered exploitation of oil, coal and natural gas in the U.S. Trump has called renewables “an expensive way of making the tree-huggers feel good about themselves,” and says a cheaper way to energy independence is through oil, gas and coal.
Fossil fuels are abundant in the U.S. thanks to fracking, which brought about the shale oil and gas boom of the past decade. But oil drilled in the U.S. isn’t necessarily staying in the U.S. and contributing to energy independence. Congress lifted a 40-year ban on oil experts a year ago, and now U.S. oil is being shipped all over the world, even as the U.S. is importing oil from Canada and the Middle East.
At the same time, the costs of renewables has been falling dramatically in recent years, and America’s largest oil refiner and carbon emitter — Texas — has become the nation’s leader in wind power production.
Trump’s skepticism of renewables contrasts starkly with Obama, who said that wind and solar power are a critical a component of energy independence. For too long, we’ve been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry. President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule. Lifting these restrictions will greatly help American workers, increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.
“Burdensome regulations” has long been Republican messaging for what they consider odious Obama-era climate policies and regulations that encourage the use of renewables and natural gas instead of fossil fuels to address climate change, or restrict the development of oil and gas on federally owned public lands and waters.
For example, one of Obama’s last-minute actions was to close off most of the Arctic Ocean off of Alaska’s North Coast for oil and gas development as a way to protect the seashore from oil spills and prevent more and more of the carbon pollution driving climate change. That followed a moratorium on coal leasing on federal lands and the closure of large swaths of the Atlantic coast to future oil drilling.
Each of those moves angered fossil fuel boosters in the Republican Party and were motivated in part by Obama’s Climate Action Plan, which involved a variety of measures to help slash America’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Trump’s claim that lifting those and other restrictions would increase workers’ wages by more $30 billion wildly mischaracterizes the potential for workers to benefit from killing U.S. climate policy. The figure seems to come from a 2015 report by Louisiana State University banking professor Joseph R. Mason, which was released by the Institute for Energy Research, an oil-industry funded organization run by Trump’s energy transition team chief,Tom Pyle.
The report claims that $32 billion in annual worker wages over seven years would be earned if all of America’s public lands were opened to oil, gas and coal development — even the lands protected by law from energy development, including wilderness areas and national parks.
That means Trump is saying that if Yellowstone, the White House lawn, Yosemite Valley, the Great Smoky Mountains and Mt. Rushmore were opened to fracking, workers would reap billions in benefits.
Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own. We will use the revenues from energy production to rebuild our roads, schools, bridges and public infrastructure. Less expensive energy will be a big boost to American agriculture, as well.
“Sound” energy policy is a play on “sound science” in an effort to lend it legitimacy.
It is true that the U.S. has vast untapped domestic energy sources — and that includes renewables. While fracking and the shale oil and gas boom led to discoveries of millions of barrels of oil that were once thought too expensive to reach, renewables are some of America’s largest untapped sources of energy.
For example, America’s offshore wind power potential is so huge that if fully developed, offshore wind farms could produce four times the electricity currently generated in the U.S. today, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. America’s first offshore wind farm was completed in December, with more expected to be built over the next five years.
Trump’s estimated $50 trillion in untapped oil and gas reserves is a huge mischaracterization of the fossil fuels that can be developed in the U.S., said Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
“The problem with numbers like this is that they do not tell the whole story,” Squillace said. “The United States certainly has vast oil and gas and coal reserves and if you just add them up and multiply by their market value you get a big number. But most of those reserves cannot be economically developed any time in the foreseeable future.”
He said the figure originates from Kathy Hartnett White, a Trump advisor affiliated with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, who told Fox Business in June that the U.S. is sitting on $50 trillion of oil and gas, “but the government is stopping us from getting it.”…….
President Trump will refocus the EPA on its essential mission of protecting our air and water………….Trump’s energy policy says nothing about climate change, which will be made drasticly worse if the U.S. develops as much oil, gas and coal as Trump suggests.
America’s air and water have been kept clean over the past 40 years because of environmental laws enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, which Trump previously said he wants to abolish. Trump has appointed one of the EPA’s most ardent foes to head the agency — Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has sued the EPA 14 times and is involved in a lawsuit aiming to kill one of Obama’s most sweeping climate policies.
During his confirmation hearing, Pruitt said he wants states to have more control over how they are regulated by the EPA, suggesting that the federal laws protecting America’s air and water would be applied unevenly from state to state. Some states are much more vigilant in enforcing environmental regulations and have more resources than others,
Trump has said nothing about how a weakened EPA would accomplish his goal of keeping America’s air and water clean.http://www.climatecentral.org/news/decoding-trumps-white-house-energy-plan-21097
January 23, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, ENERGY, politics, USA |
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UAE gets licence to transport, store nuclear fuel, Gulf News 22 Jan 17
Nuclear fuel to be shipped from South Korea to the UAE before being transported to the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant “….the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) announced on Sunday that it approved the licensing for transporting and storing nuclear fuel at the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant.
The two licences have been granted to the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) and Nawah Energy Company respectively, with the former getting the licence to transport the nuclear fuel, and the latter getting the licence to store the nuclear fuel at the Barakah site…..
Ian Grant, Deputy Director General for Operations at FANR, explained that the nuclear fuel would be shipped in transport casks from South Korea to the UAE, and then loaded onto trucks to transport the fuel to the nuclear reactor site.
“The fuel assemblies are loaded into transport casks and shipped from the Republic of Korea, [afterwards they are] trucked by road from the UAE port to the Barakah site. The transport casks are unloaded, checked and opened. [The] fuel assemblies are inspected individually and moved to the storage locations.”……http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/environment/uae-gets-licence-to-transport-store-nuclear-fuel-1.1966008
January 23, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
marketing, South Korea, United Arab Emirates |
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Safety fears over EDF bid to permit doubling of nuclear reactor cracks The Herald, 22 Jan 17 THE nuclear industry is secretly bidding to relax safety standards to allow the doubling of the number of cracks in the radioactive cores of Scotland’s ageing reactors
EDF Energy is asking for the safety rules to be rewritten so that it can keep running its nuclear power stations at Hunterston in North Ayrshire and Torness in East Lothian until they are at least 47 and 42 years old. They were originally designed to last 30 years.
Prolonged radiation bombardment causes the thousands of graphite bricks that make up reactor cores to crack, threatening a safe shutdown. But EDF is asking the UK government’s watchdog, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), to permit an increase in the proportion of cracked bricks from 10 to 20 per cent.
The revelation has sparked alarm from politicians and campaigners, who say that the industry is “gambling with public safety” and the public must be consulted. One leading expert argues that Hunterston should be immediately shut down
Hunterston started generating electricity in 1976. EDF currently plans to keep it operating until 2023, and the ONR is due to conclude a safety review of its future operation at the end of January
On January 13 EDF closed down one of Hunterston’s two reactors for planned maintenance, including inspections of cracking in the graphite core. The reactor is due to be restarted on February 10.
Torness was started up in 1988 and is currently planned to operate until 2030. The company, however, has said that it is hoping that the lives of both nuclear stations can be extended by a few more years.
EDF’s bid to relax safety standards at Hunterston and Torness is highlighted in a new report today for the Scottish Greens. It concludes that the risks from graphite cracking are serious and argues that an international convention demands that environmental risks must be assessed, alternative energy sources considered and the public consulted.
According to the report’s author, Edinburgh-based anti-nuclear campaigner and consultant, Peter Roche, Scotland doesn’t need nuclear electricity. “Despite the fact cracks are beginning in the graphite core of these reactors, increasing the risk for us all, the public has still not been asked for its opinion once,” he said……..
John Large, a consulting nuclear engineer, pointed out that the integrity of the graphite bricks was vital to nuclear safety. If they failed, they could block channels that enable control rods to be inserted to close down reactors and prevent them from overheating.
“Ageing problems like this serious cracking of the graphite bricks at the heart of each reactor are deeply worrying, so much so that these nuclear plants should now be permanently shut down,” he said.
Large accused EDF and the ONR of “false confidence” in believing they fully understood graphite cracking, which was difficult to predict. “The Hunterston B nuclear reactors now in their forty-first year of operation, should be immediately shut down,” he stated….
The company also argued that environmental impact assessments – and, by implication – public consultations were not required for life extensions at Hunterston and Torness..
ONR’s deputy chief inspector Mark Foy confirmed that EDF had asked for the proportion of graphite bricks allowed to be cracked to rise from 10 to 20 per cent. “That is provided to us in the form of a comprehensive justification, which we will assess to see whether we’re satisfied it’s safe to operate,” he said…….. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15039668.Safety_fears_over_EDF_bid_to_permit_doubling_of_nuclear_reactor_cracks/
January 23, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
France, safety |
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Time to pull the plug on Pilgrim Brookline Wicked Local Jan 21, 2017
It is time to close Pilgrim nuke plant – now, not 2019. The plant’s abysmal safety record and the decision of the plant’s owner, Entergy Corp., to abandon the nuclear power business combine to raise overwhelming doubt about the wisdom of keeping the nuclear power plant operating one day longer than is absolutely necessary. Entergy’s plan to refuel the Pilgrim plant this year makes no sense in this environment. Our position on the nuke plant in Plymouth does not mean we are turning our backs on nuclear power. While we wish for the day when safe, renewable energy sources will light our homes and power our factories, we may well find that nuclear plays some role in our future energy mix. It is time, however, to turn off the reactor at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station and begin what is likely to be a contentious, lengthy and expensive – most likely more than $1 billion – decommissioning of the plant…….
Last year was not a good year at Pilgrim. Tagged by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission as one of the three most troublesome plants in the country, it experienced a series of failures in 2016 that further eroded confidence in safety at the plant. During a routine inspection on Dec. 1, NRC employees said they found nine violations – three reported by the company and six discovered during the inspection. Specifically, the NRC said Entergy did not “maintain equipment availability, challenge unusual conditions, use prudent decision-making.”
The real hit came from another NRC inspection conducted by a team of 20 inspectors over a period of three weeks in December. After the first week, one of the leaders on that team wrote an email that was accidently sent to a leader of Cape Downwinders, a citizens group that wants the Pilgrim plant closed.
That email said the plant staff appeared “overwhelmed by just trying to run the station” and that there was a “safety culture problem” at Pilgrim. Jackson’s preliminary findings included failure by the staff to properly fix broken equipment, a lack of required expertise among plant specialist, failure of some staff to understand their roles and responsibilities and a team of employees who appear to be struggling with keeping the plant running.
At the request of Gov. Charlie Baker, Attorney General Maura Healey, the state’s congressionaL delegation and a score of state legislators and local officials, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it would hold a meeting in Plymouth to hear the concerns about Pilgrim. No date has been set for the meeting.
Entergy announced last April that is would refuel the Pilgrim reactor this spring. The common industry practice is to replace one-third of a reactor’s nuclear fuel every two years, and that usually costs roughly $40 million. There may be a more compelling way for Entergy to spend $40 million.
Decommissioning Pilgrim could take as long as 70 years. A special fund to pay for that decommissioning is robust because Boston Edison put money into it. Entergy has not done that, saying there was enough money in the fund to satisfy regulatory requirements. But Entergy is going to have to pay some portion of the cost of making the plant and its environs safe for other uses. Shut the plant down now and save that $40 million.
While we understand that Entergy may have obligations to supply electricity to the regional power grid through May 2019, but there are solutions to that, even if the company has to spend money on it. It is time for the company and public officials, particularly the NRC, to shut Pilgrim down. http://brookline.wickedlocal.com/opinion/20170121/our-opinion-time-to-pull-plug-on-pilgrim
January 23, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
general |
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