2017 August 12 « nuclear-news

Secret for 2 months – NRC’s decision to revive Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump licensing

Beyond Nuclear 8th Aug 2017, Even though the three currently serving U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) Commissioners voted by June 9th in favor of reviving the
long-suspended Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump licensing
proceeding, they didn’t bother to tell the public till two months later!

On August 8th, the vote count documents were at long last revealed. By a 2-1
vote, the NRC Commissioners voted to fund the beginning of the resumption
of Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding. NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki, and
NRC Commissioner Stephen Burns, voted in favor of resuming the proceeding;
NRC Commissioner Jeff Baran voted against resuming the proceeding.
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/yucca-mountain/2017/8/8/nrc-planning-for-resumption-of-yucca-mountain-licensing-proc.html

August 12, 2017 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Worst time now for Trump’a climate change censorship

The Trump Administration Is Censoring the Term “Climate Change” at the Worst Possible Time, GQ, BY JACK MOORE It looks like Trump and company will bury their heads in the sand, until the sea levels rise and drown them. We’ve known about climate change for decades now, and yet, rather than fight to ensure the planet will continue to be habitable, politicians have been playing hot potato with the issue for years. During President Obama’s term, it seemed like actual progress could be made. Basically every nation on Earth came together to set some guidelines, but more importantly to set a common purpose. We must all, together, work to fight climate change. It was a hopeful moment.

And then Donald Trump was elected president and proceeded to hold up middle fingersto the world and promised to pull us out of that historic agreement, all in the name of looking good for some unemployed coal miners whose jobs are literally never coming back. Now we’re 201 days into the Trump administration, and the climate-change problem is not going away no matter how much Donald Trump and company are trying to pretend it is.

The National Climate Assessment is basically what it sounds like. It’s a congressionally mandated report that is put together every four years and updates us on where the current climate situation lies. This year’s report just leaked to The New York Times, and it’s not great for the United States. Why’s that, you ask? Is it because things will be bad soon? No. It’s not great for the U.S. because things are bad right now……

A missive from Bianca Moebius-Clune, director of soil health, lists terms that should be avoided by staff and those that should replace them. “Climate change” is in the “avoid” category, to be replaced by “weather extremes”. Instead of “climate change adaption”, staff are asked to use “resilience to weather extremes”.

So of course the scientists behind the report felt the need to leak it. How else could they ensure that the American people saw a report that hammers home how important it is to fight this growing problem? It’s not like we can expect our government to honestly protect our lives over the bottom lines of some polluting businesses, right? That would be crazy and absurd and the country we lived in until January 20 of this year. https://www.gq.com/story/climate-change-phrase-censor

August 12, 2017 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment