2017.05.30 South Korean President Moon Jae-in is expected to announce his roadmap to phase out from heavy reliance on nuclear energy on June 19 while attending a ceremony closing down the country’s first reactor.
During a briefing session of the presidential planning and advisory committee on Monday, Lee Kae-ho, head of the commission’s second economic team, urged nuclear related organizations including the Nuclear Security and Safety Commission (NSSC) to map out long-term outline of shifting energy policy more oriented towards renewable clean sources from fossil-fueled and nuclear reactors that carry environmental and security risks as promised by Moon during campaign.
Moon had vowed to close down aged nuclear plants and stop building new ones in an aim to push the number of 25 reactors to zero over the next 40 years. Korea started to build atomic plants in the 1970s and runs 25 that are responsible for about a third of the country’s power supply. Moon has vowed to shift the country’s energy dependency away from nuclear power to natural gas and renewable energies.
The commission, in charge of setting up public policy of the new administration for the next five years, also asked the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) to participate in the briefing sessions on nuclear power policy.
Based on the plans to be prepared by related government departments, President Moon will likely announce his zero nuclear plant roadmap during an event to be held on June 19 to permanently shut down the country’s oldest Kori-1 nuclear reactor, according to sources.
The KHNP has suspended building Shin Hanul 3 and 4 reactors scheduled to start construction this month until the new government’s plans on atomic energy come out. The Shin Kori 3, 4 and Shin Hanul 1, 2 reactors are still under construction as they are almost 90 percent completed, but industry watchers believe the construction of Shin Kori 5, 6 reactors that are just 28 percent completed would be stopped.
The Wolsung-1 reactor located in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, will also likely to be closed down as environmental groups and local residents won a court injunction on the government’s approval of extended operation for another 10 years of the reactor that had already completed its 30-year run in November 2012. The reactor has been at the heart of the safety concerns for old nuclear plants due to a series of breakdowns caused by power outages. If the plaintiff wins once again in an appeals trial scheduled on June 5, experts believe the NSSC and KHNP would announce the shutdown of the reactor.
Eskom asks Gigaba for blank cheque, news 24, Sipho Masondo
2017-05-28 Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba has been asked to approve various components of the nuclear deal and effectively give Eskom a “blank cheque”.
These requests are contained in a letter Eskom chairperson Ben Ngubane wrote to Gigaba earlier this month. In the letter, dated May 10, Ngubane also pleads with the minister to intervene in the stand-off between Treasury and Eskom regarding the Gupta family’s Tegeta Mine.
The letter was sent to Gigaba two weeks after the Western Cape High Court’s ruling that key elements of the nuclear deal were unconstitutional.
The letter appears to be an attempt by Ngubane to set a new tone for the relationship from the somewhat tense one that Eskom had with Treasury under ministers Nhlanhla Nene and Pravin Gordhan. Treasury and Eskom clashed repeatedly in recent years as the former insisted that the power utility abide by the rules and questioned its procurement practices.
In his letter, Ngubane:
. Asked for a direct line to Gigaba;
. Pleaded with Gigaba to revise the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act (PPPFA) or rush to introduce the Procurement Act to enable “radical economic transformation”;
. Requested the finance minister to relax the stringent conditions relating to the extension of the power utility’s R350 billion guarantees;
. Appealed to Gigaba to approve various programmes relating to the nuclear deal. These included exempting Eskom from the PPPFA and the approval of the Standard Infrastructure Procurement and Delivery Management; and,
. Raised concerns that Treasury had appointed another service provider to review Eskom’s coal contract with Tegeta and that the stand-off between the two parties regarding the power utility’s coal contracts with the Gupta family’s Tegeta mine had been going on for two years……..
ast month, City Press also reported Eskom was set to get the nuclear deal underway in June by issuing a request for proposals.
At that time, sources had told City Press that President Jacob Zuma had removed finance minister Gordhan and his deputy Mcebisi Jonas because they were opposed to the nuclear deal and were dragging their feet in having it implemented.
After seeing Ngubane’s letter, a source with knowledge of Treasury’s workings said: “Now you know why Gordhan and Jonas were removed. This is the completion of state capture.”
The source said Ngubane and the Eskom leadership wanted the PPPFA to be relaxed “so that they can do as they please with procurement”.
“Why would they want the conditions that come with guarantees to be relaxed? You must remember, for government to give guarantees, there must be stringent conditions. You simply cannot relax them,” he said.
Such conditions, he said, included a corporate plan that should be seen and approved by Treasury, and procurement policies that were in line with the Public Finance Management Act and the PPPFA.
A senior executive at Treasury said: “Baldwin [Ngubane’s middle name] is saying the previous minister was not a friend of Eskom. He was strict and put Eskom under watch through guarantees and other procurement conditions.
South Africans have been bombarded with revelations of how the state has been hijacked to amass wealth for a connected power elite involving President Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family. An academic research partnership has consolidated all available information into a frightening compendium on state capture, mapping the deals, the key players and the modus operandi for commandeering control of state institutions and parastatals. Their report shows why it is necessary for a judicial inquiry and criminal prosecution for corruption, fraud, money laundering, racketeering and, possibly, treason. It also shows the danger of key enablers such as Zuma, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba and Eskom CEO Brian Molefe remaining in their posts. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY.
When President Jacob Zuma executed his most overt act of betrayal of the people and party who put him in power by firing Pravin Gordhan and Mcebisi Jonas as minister and deputy of finance, he probably did not foresee that this would turn an entire society against him. Opposition parties, the ANC’s alliance partners Cosatu and the South African Communist Party, civil society, business, veterans and stalwarts, religious leaders and now academics are standing up to oppose and expose the Zuma-Gupta contagion.
Last week, the South African Council of Churches (SACC) released a report of an Unburdening Panel comprising evidence of whistle-blowers who approached church leaders about their experiences of state capture. On Thursday, the State Capacity Research Project, a team of leading academics from four universities, released a 72-page report detailing what they call a “silent coup” by an organised criminal network.
“While corruption is widespread at all levels and is undermining development, state capture is a far greater, systemic threat. It is akin to a silent coup and must, therefore, be understood as a political project that is given a cover of legitimacy by the vision of radical economic transformation. The March 2017 Cabinet reshuffle was confirmation of this silent coup; it was the first Cabinet reshuffle that took place without the full prior support of the governing party.
“This moves the symbiotic relationship between the constitutional state and the shadow state that emerged after the African National Conference (ANC) Polokwane conference in 2007 into a new phase. The reappointment of Brian Molefe as Eskom’s chief executive officer (CEO) a few weeks later in defiance of the ANC confirms this trend,” the report states.
How can civil society influence nuclear waste decisions? Nuclear Transparency WatchJohan Swahn, ENEF May 23 2017 I have worked with radioactive waste issues for many years, first at university and since 12 years for the Swedish environmental movement.
In Sweden the systems set up for access to information, consultation and public information are very favourable for dialogue. It is not always easy to interest the general public or politicians in the
complexity of radioactive waste issues, but the interactions between the industry (SKB), the regulator (SSM), the nuclear communities (Östhammar and Oskarshamn), the Swedish Council for Nuclear Waste (the Government’s scientific advisory board), academia, the environmental movement and other
actors are well developed. http://www.nuclear-transparency-watch.eu/activities/presentation-of-johan-swahn-during-the-enef-on-may-23-2017-panel-on-radioactive-waste-management.html
FoE 28th May 2017Election manifestos: the scores are in: There are lots of issues close to our hearts at this election. It’s clear that the next 5 years are going to be crucial for protecting the environment. Overall when we totted up the scores (from 0 to 3) for each policy the Greens came out top, followed quite closely (almost neck and neck) by Lib Dems and Labour, with the
Conservatives some way behind. https://www.foe.co.uk/general-election/election-manifestos-scores-are
First Minister ‘100% committed to new Wylfa nuclear plant’ Carwyn Jones made comments despite Labour’s Shadow Chancellor promising to ‘bring an end’ to nuclear power and weapons if Labour win Daily Post BY GARETH WYN-WILLIAMS, 30 May 17, The First Minister has reiterated his “100%” backing for a new nuclear plant on Anglesey, a stance shared will all but one of the candidates hoping to become the island’s next MP.
This comes despite a recent vow from Labour’s Shadow Chancellor to “bring an end” to nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the first 100 days of a Labour government…..
This backing is shared with three other of the island’s five parliamentary candidates, with only the Liberal Democrat candidate Dr Sarah Jackson saying she’d prefer to explore more renewable energy options…….
Liberal Democrat, Dr Sarah Jackson, would prefer further research into renewable sources.
“I recognise the potential benefits of Wylfa Newydd to the island’s economy, but my preference would be to look at investment into renewable sources of energy. Instead of investing in technology that is becoming obsolete, it is far better for Ynys Môn to invest in the future.
William D. Ruckelshaus was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1970 to 1973 and 1983 to 1985. Lee M. Thomas was EPA administrator from 1985 to 1989, and William K. Reilly was EPA administrator from 1989 to 1993.
More than 30 years ago, the world was faced with a serious environmental threat, one that respected no boundaries. A hole in the ozone layer was linked to potential increases in skin cancer and blindness from cataracts. The ozone layer is a thin band of gas in the stratosphere that protects the Earth and humans from dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun, and it was slowly being destroyed by chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are man-made gases used as aerosol propellants and in refrigeration and cooling.
Despite early skepticism, the risk of a thinning ozone layer was such that an international U.N. conference was convened in Vienna to address this problem. The participating countries and international bodies, including the United States, the European Union and other major producers and users of CFCs, afterward met in Montreal to negotiate an agreement setting out a specific program to reduce the production and use of CFCs.
The Environmental Protection Agency, with strong support from President Ronald Reagan, led the international effort that resulted in a treaty that contained an aggressive schedule of reductions known as the Montreal Protocol. It remains in effect today and has resulted in significant improvement in the ozone layer and greatly reduced the threat to human health. An element critical to the success of the effort was strong reliance on the shared science of the impact of CFCs and a willingness of the countries of the world to work together. They accepted that the risk of not acting was simply not acceptable.
Today, presented with the undeniable warming of the planet, we are faced with a global environmental threat whose potential harm to people and other living things exceeds any we have seen before. The Paris climate agreement is the international response to that threat.
In his April 22 Earth Day message, President Trump stated, “My administration is committed to advancing scientific research that leads to a better understanding of our environment and of environmental risks.”
Yet when confronted with broad-based evidence of planetary warming and the almost daily emerging evidence of the impacts of climate change, Trump’s March “skinny” budget and this week’s final 2018 budget plansay we should look the other way; he has chosen ignorance over knowledge. The need for extensive and accelerated scientific research about the nature of the problem and its possible policy solutions should be beyond question. Not to get more information is inexcusable.
Trump’s budget proposals have scrubbed every agency and department of expenditures that would provide us with vital information about the pace and impacts of climate change. Among those severely cut or eliminated altogether are programs in the departments of Energy, State, Interior and Homeland Security, and at the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, and EPA.
The EPA budget released this week cuts science and technology spending by more than $282 million , almost a 40 percent reduction. The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is zeroed out; air and energy research are cut by 66 percent. Programs targeted at specific areas with significant climate vulnerabilities, such as the Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes and Puget Sound, have been eliminated.
The destruction of irreplaceable research would be staggering. It would put us and the rest of the world on a dangerous path. If our president is wrong about the reality of climate change, we will have lost vital time to take steps to avoid the worst impacts of a warming planet. If those urging collective worldwide accelerated action are wrong, we will have developed alternative sources of clean energy that will enhance our green energy choices for the foreseeable future.
We can see already, in many places here and around the world, concrete evidence of what climate change means. Sea-level rise along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States has increased, and with it have come significant increases in coastal erosion and flooding. Glacier ice melt in the Antarctic and Greenland is increasing. Arctic sea ice is at its lowest level since measurements began. The past three years have been the hottest on record; the 10 hottest years all occurred since 1998. When Glacier National Park in Montana was established in 1910, it contained 150 active glaciers; today there are 26.
With no seeming clue as to what’s going on, the president seems to have cast our lot with a small coterie of climate skeptics and their industry allies rather than trying to better understand the impact of increased greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere. His policy of willful ignorance is a bet-the-house approach that is destructive of responsible government.
The consequences of the president’s being wrong are hard to imagine. All the more reason to respect science and continue the work that better defines the problem and the diminishing options for coping with it.
Nuclear industry prices itself out of power market, demands taxpayers keep it afloat, Think Progress, Joe RommFollow, Dr. Joe Romm is Founding Editor of Climate Progress, “the indispensable blog,” as NY Times columnist Tom Friedman describes it, 25 May 17
Nuclear power is so expensive even some conservatives are turning on it The nuclear industry is so uncompetitive that half of U.S. nuclear power plants are no longer profitable. And if existing nukes are uneconomic, it’s no surprise that new nuclear plants are wildly unaffordable.
New York and Illinois have already agreed to more than $700 million a year in subsidies, and if all northeast and mid-Atlantic nukes got similar subsidies, it would cost U.S. consumers $3.9 billion a year. Things are so bad for the nuclear industry that, recently, even conservatives have started to publicly oppose the subsidies the industry needs to survive.
“Ever since the completion of the first wave of nuclear reactors in 1970, and continuing with the ongoing construction of new reactors in Europe, nuclear power seems to be doomed with the curse of cost escalation,” explained one 2015 journal article, “Revisiting the Cost Escalation Curse of Nuclear Power.”
At the same time, nuclear’s main competition — natural gas, energy efficiency, and renewables — have gotten much cheaper.
The nuclear industry has essentially priced itself out of the market for new power plants, at least in market-based economies. Even the nuclear-friendly French — who get more than three fourths their power from nukes — can’t build an affordable, on-schedule next generation nuclear plant in their own country.
Last week, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on the umpteenth cost overruns in Georgia Power’s effort to built two new reactors, with the headline, “Plant Vogtle: Georgia’s nuclear ‘renaissance’ now a financial quagmire.” The Westinghouse plants, originally priced at a whopping $14 billion are “currently $3.6 billion over budget and almost four years behind the original schedule.” Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in March.
The Georgia debacle should not shock anyone. Bloomberg explained two years ago that “even as sympathetic an observer as John Rowe [former chair of the U.S.’s largest nuclear utility] warns that the new units at Vogtle will be uneconomical when — or if — they’re completed.”
As a result, the industry has started demanding new subsidies to keep their plants open — beyond the staggering $100 billion and more in subsidies the nuclear industry has received over the decades.
Yet, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that “Even the promise of state subsidies wasn’t enough to help a struggling nuclear power plant in the biggest electricity market emerge a victor in a closely watched auction” in Illinois. Exelon, however, claimed it hadn’t taken the subsidies — which have not been officially awarded — into account.
And here’s the last straw: You know the industry is in trouble when even conservatives start penning pieces dissing it. This week saw two such pieces:
The first is by Bill O’Keefe, former CEO of the conservative (and climate-science-denying) George C. Marshall Institute. He argues, “Favoring nuclear power with heavy subsidies distorts the energy market, increases costs to electricity users, and discourages the development of new energy technologies.”
The second is by William F. Shughart II, research director at the libertarian (and climate-science-denying) Independent Institute. Shughart argues, the subsidies “reward poor management and bad judgment and would cost homeowners and businesses billions.” So nuclear power is on its last legs. ….
The fact is that the rapid advances in renewables, batteries and other storage, demand response, efficiency, and electric vehicles mean that integrating low-cost renewables into the grid will almost certainly be far easier and cheaper and faster than people realize.
The bottom line is that existing nuclear plants can make a plausible case for a modest short-term subsidy. But whether or not you agree with those subsidies, the future belongs to renewables and efficiency. https://thinkprogress.org/nuclear-demands-subsidies-b8bfa9bdd8fa
The French experiment – and the shift from nuclear to renewables, REneweconomy, By Craig Morris on 26 May 2017 Energy Transition
France’s new President Emmanuel Macron has appointed his cabinet – to great acclaim. The direction of the country’s energy transition remains unclear, however. ……..
The appointment that has drawn the most attention seems to be the new Minister of Ecology and Solidarity – the new name for the old Ministry of Energy and the Environment headed by Ségolène Royal. The new focus indicates that social issues will be a priority when decisions about the energy transition are made.
The man who will direct the new ministry is Nicolas Hulot, who made a name for himself decades ago with a TV series on the environment …….
It will be interesting to see what “solidarity” means in the energy transition. For instance, concerning the closing of Fessenheim, France’s oldest nuclear plant, Hulot is quoted: “We cannot impose a transition by force. The transition has to be done in an acceptable manner.” This approach is similar to the way Germany is handling its coal phaseout: slowly in order not to detrimentally impact coal communities…..
It thus seems likely that an approach will be taken to pursue an energy transition towards renewables and away from nuclear, but possibly not at the speed that Hollande’s law specified. The slowdown would then be justified with solidarity. If so, this approach seems logical. As I have been saying for years, France has put most of its eggs in the nuclear basket and can hardly afford to shut very many reactors.
It’s not just communities with reactors that will be affected by a nuclear phaseout. Rather, last November EDF – the utility than runs all French reactors – bought up the effectively bankrupt Areva, the firm that built them. Both companies are largely state-owned. In January, the EU approved France’s plans to inject a whopping 4.5 billion euros in Areva to keep it afloat.
Sobotka and Fico: Czechs and Slovaks committed to nuclear energy, By Adéla Denková | EURACTIV.cz, May 26, 2017, The Czech Republic and Slovakia see nuclear power as key to their future energy mix. But new reactors needed in both states, however, face financing problems due to the low price of electricity.
Slovakia will always strive for the further development of nuclear energy, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said in Prague at the plenary meeting of European Nuclear Energy Forum (ENEF) on Tuesday (23 May).
“Our government will never abandon this policy and will always fight for the right to choose the way for the production of energy in the future,” he stressed.
His Czech counterpart, Bohuslav Sobotka, also said nuclear energy is the right option for the energy mix of his country and that “there is no other way”………
One new nuclear reactor is planned for the power plant in Dukovany, where the current reactors will be shut down by 2037. Sobotka said that documentation for an environmental impact assessment is being prepared, and the final statement could be published next year.
The current reactors powering both Czech nuclear plants – the aforementioned Dukovany and Temelín – are examples of Russian VVER technology, but the premier said that all available technologies are being compared when it comes to the planned construction.
In Slovakia, 55% of the electricity is produced by nuclear plants, which means that globally it is one of the countries with the highest share of nuclear in its energy mix.
Two new reactors are being finalised at the plant in Mochovce, and one new reactor is planned for construction in Jaslovské Bohunice.
According to Slovak Minister of Energy Peter Žiga, the project is technically prepared, but current economic conditions are not favourable. “We are waiting for better times, when the prices of electricity at the wholesale market will be a bit higher,” he said.
Nuclear energy struggles with the economy all over Europe, Martin Sedlák, the director of Czech Alliance for energy self-sufficiency said in a debate organized by EURACTIV Czech Republic and its media partner, Aktuálně.cz.
“The assumption of nuclear renaissance connected with the reactors of III+ generation has not materialized. Nuclear companies promised that the investment costs of nuclear reactors will fall rapidly. But if we look to Finland, France or the US, we can see that the construction becomes complicated. This has also consequences for new projects like Hinkley Point C in the United Kingdom which requires high subsidies,” Sedlák said.
Corbyn declines to back Trident but says he ‘respects’ Labour’s commitment to nuclear deterrent, CHRIS BAYNES , 26 May 17,
Britain’s nuclear weapons will form part of the defence review Labour has promised if it wins power in the June 8 General Election, Jeremy Corbyn has said.The Labour leader declined seven times in a BBC interview with Andrew Neil to say he personally supported the renewal of the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent, replying only that it was party policy.
In the half-hour grilling, Mr Corbyn also defended a speech earlier on Friday in which he linked Britain’s involvement in military engagements in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria with terrorism in the UK.
And promised to be a “committed” member of Nato as prime minister and said he would not talk to the Islamic State terror group.
Mr Corbyn last year voted against the renewal of Trident, despite Labour’s official policy to maintain the weapon system.
Asked repeatedly whether he supported keeping the nuclear deterrent, he said: “I voted against the renewal. Everybody knows that because I wanted to go in a different direction. That is the decision that’s been taken; I respect that decision going ahead.”We’re going ahead with the programme which has been agreed by Parliament and voted on by the Labour Party.”……http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/corbyn-declines-back-trident-respects-labours-commitment-nuclear-deterrent-a3550191.html
Add a new name to the list of groups coming hat-in-hand looking for financial help from Harrisburg: the nuclear power industry.
No bills have been introduced yet, but the industry seems intent on asking for tax breaks or tax credits in Pennsylvania, along the lines of the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies recently granted in New York state and Illinois.
A leader in the movement is Exelon Corp., which operates three of Pennsylvania’s five nuclear plants. In other states, the industry sought and won “zero-emission credits” arguing, that much like wind and solar power, nuclear plants produce clean, carbon-free energy.
Recently, a group of state legislators – many with nuclear plants in their districts – formed a Nuclear Energy Caucus to promote the industry’s cause in Harrisburg……
We don’t believe taxpayers should be asked to subsidize industries that can’t compete in the open market.
We realize that subsidies are part of the political landscape, especially in the energy sector. The government has given subsidies and grants to encourage growth of new industries – wind and solar got such subsidies in their early days. But the theory behind those breaks was that once those industries reached a larger scale, they could fend for themselves.
What’s different now is that we have mature industries that are big businesses – and we include coal on this list – that want government to intervene to artificially protect their market share. Even with actions taken by the Trump administration to help the coal industry, most economists believe use of coal will continue to decline because it remains both “dirty” and expensive.
Is the situation in the nuclear industry different? No one is predicting a sudden or even long-term demand for nuclear power in this country. Utilities aren’t building new plants, in the same way they are not building new coal-fired plants. Demand for electricity generally has been flat since the Great Recession.
DONALD TRUMP’S PICK FOR EPA ENFORCEMENT OFFICE WAS A LOBBYIST FOR SUPERFUND POLLUTERS https://theintercept.com/2017/05/24/donald-trumps-pick-for-epa-enforcement-office-was-a-lobbyist-for-superfund-polluters/Sharon LernerMay 24 2017,RESIDENTS OF HOOSICK FALLS, New York, recently took comfort in EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s announcements that the agency will be prioritizing the Superfund program. This small village northeast of Albany is one of eight sites the EPA last year proposed adding to the National Priorities List, as the list of polluted sites covered by the Superfund is known, because the community’s drinking water had elevated levels of PFOA, which has been associated with kidney cancer, testicular cancer, and thyroid disease, among other health problems.
Since the contamination was discovered in 2014, “there’s been a lot of fear,” said Rob Allen, the mayor of Hoosick Falls. Testing has shown many people in Hoosick Falls, including Allen’s four children, have elevated levels of PFOA in their blood. Allen and others in the town are still awaiting the official Superfund designation, which they hope will help speed the process of cleaning up the pollution and securing a new water source. “We need all the help we can get,” he explained.
Since 1980, Superfund has been the federal government’s answer to the worst cases of toxic pollution. The program assesses giant environmental messes, ranks them according to the hazard they pose to the environment or human health, and if they’re dangerous enough, adds them to the list and arranges to clean them up. At its best, Superfund removes environmental pollution so sites can be used again and measurably alleviates health dangers. According to one 2011 study published in the American Economic Review, babies living near Superfund sites that had yet to be remediated had a 20 to 25 percent increased rate of birth defects. After the cleanups, the rates of birth defects dropped.
But Superfund’s progress has slowed to a near halt in recent years, in part due to a lack of funding. A tax on polluting industries originally paid into a fund for the cleanups (hence the name Superfund) expired in 1995, leaving regular taxpayers to pick up the tab when the government can’t identify a polluter — or when a polluter doesn’t have enough money to pay.
Since then, as fewer cleanups have been completed, the number of people exposed to dangerous pollution has climbed. In 2010, there were 75 Superfund sites where the government had yet to bring toxic exposure to humans under control. By last year, that number was up to 121, according to the most recent EPA data.
Pruitt announced his plans to emphasize Superfund on a visit to a lead-contaminated public housing site in Indiana in April. On May 22, he reiterated his commitment to the program by announcing a new Superfund Task Force, which will “provide recommendations on how the EPA can streamline and improve the Superfund program.” In an accompanying memo, the EPA administrator once again promised to restore Superfund and the EPA’s land and water cleanup efforts “to their rightful place at the center of the agency’s core mission.”
But Pruitt’s pledges to protect human health and the environment by focusing on Superfund are belied by his own priorities and personnel choices for the program…..Albert Kelly, whom Pruitt announced May 22 as his choice to chair the Superfund Task Force, is an Oklahoma banker who has no prior experience with the program or with environmental issues at all, according to his résumé. Kelly, who has donated twice to Pruitt’s campaigns in Oklahoma, has spent the past 33 years working at Spiritbank, which is headquartered in Tulsa, and most recently served as its chairman. The “core competencies” listed on his résumé, which The Intercept obtained by FOIA, include motivational speaking, business development, and “political activity.”
Meanwhile, Susan Bodine, whom Trump nominated on May 12 to be assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, does have plenty of experience with environmental issues — though most of it representing polluting industries. According to her LinkedIn account, from 2009 until 2015, Bodine was a partner at Barnes & Thornburg LLP, the same firm that is representing FRRC, the group of industries directly affected by EPA cleanup rules. While at Barnes & Thornburg, Bodine represented the American Forest and Paper Association from 2011 to 2014. Member companies in that industry group have hundreds of EPA enforcement actions against them, including violations of the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act.
Bodine’s close ties to these companies make her a poor choice to lead the enforcement office, according to Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. “She is the classic revolving door appointment,” said O’Donnell.“The office of enforcement is responsible for everything — clean air, clean water, toxic waste — the core of our environmental protections. Companies will cut corners if they think they won’t get caught.” Bodine’s nomination comes while the Trump administration is blocking efforts to disclose waivers granted to former lobbyists working in federal agencies and the White House.
Because the enforcement office handles negotiations between the companies responsible for the pollution and the EPA, Bodine would be in a position to decide how extensive some cleanups are — and how much polluters have to spend cleaning them.
Bodine’s past lobbying could also compromise her role with the Superfund program. Seven of the companies that belong to the American Forest and Paper Association are named as responsible parties in dozens of Superfund sites, according to the EPA website. International Paper, one member of the group Bodine represented — whose CEO met with Pruitt last week to discuss jobs, according to a tweet from Pruitt — is a responsible party in 12 Superfund sites
Hanford Nuclear Cleanup Budget Slashed in Energy Proposal, Bloomberg Business, By Chuck McCutcheon, 25 May 17Washington state’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation, scene of a recent collapse of a tunnel containing nuclear waste, would see its funding slashed under President Donald Trump’s new budget proposal…..
Trump’s budget blueprint calls for reducing cleanup at Hanford from $921 million to $716 million, a 22 percent reduction. That comes as the budget proposes to boost overall departmental defense-related environmental cleanup of materials from $5.28 billion to $5.54 billion.
Hanford Cleanup Needed
Washington state’s congressional delegation, including Democratic Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, long have pressed various administrations to commit to cleaning up Hanford. The site in eastern Washington has milllons of gallons of highly radioactive wastes stored in 177 aging underground tanks, some of which have leaked.
“Previous administrations and Congress have repeatedly supported the legal and moral obligation of the federal government to clean up the Hanford site, and we urge you to continue this important work to protect health and safety,” the two senators and Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said in a May 19 letter to Perry.
The Hanford tunnel, containing radioactive wastes that were byproducts of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, partially collapsed on May 9, prompting nearby workers to evacuate. A worker’s clothing also was exposed to radioactive contamination in what Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) called an “alarming incident.”…. https://www.bna.com/hanford-nuclear-cleanup-n73014451452/
As Politico reported, Trump’s deputy national security adviser, KT McFarland, gave him a fake 1970s Time magazine cover warning of a coming ice age. The Photoshopped magazine cover circulated around the internet several years ago, but was debunked in 2013. Four years later, McFarland put the fake document in Trump’s hands, and he reportedly “quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy … Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it”.
Second, there were some climate scientists whose research suggested that we could trigger an ice age – if human sulfur pollution were to quadruple. But that didn’t happen. In addition to blocking sunlight (and hence having a cooling effect), sulfur pollution causes other problems like acid rain. So various governments (including America’s) enacted Clean Air Acts to regulate that pollution (quite like the way we should be responding to carbon pollution’s dangerous impacts). Since then, human sulfur pollution has gone down, while carbon pollution has gone way up. The climate scientists weren’t wrong – the scenario they warned could have triggered an ice age didn’t happen because we took action to prevent it.
Third, although we’ve established climate scientists weren’t wrong in the 1970s, even if they had been, so what? Science advances, and we understand how the climate works today much better than we did 40 years ago, as illustrated in this funny video by Adam Levy:
To be blunt, this is a really dumb myth, and it says a lot that about the state of America’s government that the president was suckered into believing it.
KT McFarland is one of Trump’s many unqualified staffers
McFarland, who spouted numerous misleading and bizarre comments during her time at Fox, is so unsuited for her deputy national security adviser position that retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward, an accomplished and decorated Navy vet, refused Trump’s offer to serve as national security adviser because he didn’t want her on his team. McFarland is now slated to be ousted from the National Security Council and nominated as ambassador to Singapore; she has already been “largely sidelined” at the agency
Ironically, Fox News’ Jon Scott interviewed Politico’s Shane Goldmacher about the fake magazine cover story, and noted “The president getting some fake news every once in a while, apparently, from his own staffers.” That fake news of course came from a former Fox News analyst and concerned one of Fox News’ favorite climate myths. In fact, a 2013 study found that Fox News is a major driving force behind climate denial.
Seven Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology wrote Trump a letter expressing concern that he is frequently being fooled by this sort of fake news. The committee members suggested:
nuclear-news 