Nuclear energy caucus forms in challenging times, The Times Tribune, 26 Mar 17 HARRISBURG — A group of state lawmakers formed the Nuclear Energy Caucus last week as part of an effort to keep nuclear power part of Pennsylvania’s mix of energy sources. Sen. John Yudichak, D-14, Plymouth Twp., ranking Democrat on the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, is a member of this caucus……..
Pennsylvania has five nuclear plants, making it the second largest state with nuclear capacity, the caucus said.The goal of the caucus is to develop policies that promote nuclear energy as part of Pennsylvania’s energy mix…..
Industry struggling Sen. Ryan Aument, R-36, Lancaster, points out that the nuclear industry nationwide is struggling.
Five nuclear plants have ceased production since 2013 while an additional seven plants have announced plans to close by 2019, said Aument. Given Pennsylvania’s status as a top nuclear power producer, it’s important the caucus promotes the use of nuclear energy, he added.
The caucus arrives at a time when the nuclear industry’s economic problems are an issue in neighboring New York and Ohio. Some nuclear plants have experienced problems selling their electricity on the market at a price that covers the costs of generating it. Competition from cheaper natural gas is a key factor.
New York has approved a surcharge on customers’ electric bills to provide a subsidy to help keep its nuclear plants open. Supporters say the subsidy recognizes that nuclear energy is a renewable power source and doesn’t produce carbon emissions. The subsidy is being challenged in state courts.
Ohio is considering legislation where customers would pay a surcharge to underwrite zero-carbon emissions credits given to nuclear plants.
The nuclear industry shouldn’t get a bailout from ratepayers, said activist Eric Epstein, chairman of Three Mile Island Alert.
‘Cannot compete’
“It’s become clear the nuclear industry cannot compete in the market,” he said. “It’s environmental attributes are negligible.”
The storage of high-level radioactive wastes is a major problem with nuclear plants, added Epstein.
Nuclear plant owners recouped investment costs after Pennsylvania enacted an electric deregulation law in 1999, he said.
The new caucus hasn’t discussed any legislation, let alone a subsidy or tax credits for nuclear plants, said Yudichak. http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/nuclear-energy-caucus-forms-in-challenging-times-1.2172406
March 27, 2017
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Donald Trump’s tweets a distraction from decisions being made at the White House, Sydney Morning Herald, Paul McGeough, 24 Mar 17 Washington: “……… it wasn’t till this week that The Wall Street Journal, the very conservative and very sensible, Murdoch-owned WSJ, snapped – its Wednesday editorial tears into Trump for his false and lying tweets.
Likening the teetotaller commander-in-chief to a desperate alcoholic, it thunders on Trump’s widely-debunked claim that former US president Barack Obama had ordered wire taps on Trump Tower: “The President clings to his assertion like a drunk to an empty gin bottle, rolling out his press spokesman to make more dubious claims.”
The Journal often is accused of covering Trump with kid gloves. But throwing into reverse, the editorial’s author drives over the President again – damning his “seemingly endless stream of exaggerations, evidence-free accusations, implausible denials and other falsehoods”. And then it guns the engine before making another run: “If he doesn’t show more respect for the truth, most Americans may conclude he’s a fake president.”Theories abound on Trump’s obsessive, reckless tweeting – it’s a fight to defend the legitimacy of his presidency; it’s innate – he was groomed since childhood to wage total war on any threat, real or perceived; or it’s all a distraction – creating a crisis to divert attention from other crises and/or from the dire impact of his legislative and executive decisions.
George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist at the University of California at Berkeley, sees a deliberate strategy at work. Analysing Trump’s March 4 wire-tapping tweets, Lakoff lays out four elements on his blog:
Pre-emptive framing: He frames first. He creates a new presidential scandal – Obama’s wire tapping – an accusation without evidence, and with all evidence against it.
March 25, 2017
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FirstEnergy exec calls for ‘urgent’ aid, Toledo Blade, Belcher: 
Davis-Besse’s premature closing is real, ByTom Henry | BLADE STAFF WRITER March 25, 2017 OAK HARBOR, Ohio — Calling warnings of the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant’s premature closure “real” and the need for a bailout “urgent,” FirstEnergy Corp.’s top nuclear official left little doubt Friday that Ottawa County’s largest employer is in trouble.
Sam Belcher, FirstEnergy’s chief nuclear officer, said the utility’s other nuclear plants — the Perry nuclear plant east of Cleveland and the twin-reactor Beaver Valley complex northwest of Pittsburgh — are likewise in danger of premature closing by the summer of 2018 unless a buyer emerges or the utility gets help from legislators in Ohio and Pennsylvania……
“Our plants have been losing money. We’ve continued to operate them at a loss. But, at some point, those economics don’t make sense,” Mr. Belcher told The Blade during an hourlong telephone interview from his corporate office in Akron.
He discussed reasons why FirstEnergy announced just before Christmas it was going to “exit competitive generation.”
“We no longer can be exposed to continually changing market conditions,” Mr. Belcher said.
The utility decided in December to give the situation another 18 months to play out.
Now, three months closer to that self-imposed deadline, nothing meaningful has been done to turn around the situation in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Mr. Belcher said.
“The situation is real. It’s urgent,” Mr. Belcher said. “In the absence of something happening, we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.”……
So now — barring legislation on the federal level — FirstEnergy is studying how New York passed a bill in its state legislature to save the James A. FitzPatrick and Robert Emmett Ginna nuclear plants in upstate New York from premature closings, and how Illinois followed suit with plants in the southern part of that state. It also is tracking bills being considered or expected to be submitted in Connecticut and New Jersey, Mr. Belcher said.
“We’re hopeful something like that could be in the cards in Ohio,” he said.
No bill sponsor has been identified in Ohio, said Jennifer Young, a FirstEnergy spokesman.
But according to a column written by John Funk of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, the utility began shopping around a 13-page document to lawmakers in January, outlining a proposal to increase customers’ monthly bills by at least 5 percent in order to raise an extra $300 million a year in perpetuity. The report said the Plain Dealer downloaded a copy before it was removed from the Internet.
Critics such as Dick Munson of the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund claim it is the latest bailout attempt for a corporation that has mismanaged its assets…….
FirstEnergy’s message will likely mirror that which has been promoted on Capitol Hill by the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute for Congress.
The NEI argues nuclear plants — to give the nation more diversity in fuel sources, thereby strengthening national security — should receive special consideration in energy markets for what it calls their “unique attributes.”…..
Some emissions occur within the nuclear industry on a cradle-to-grave basis, including the process of mining, milling, and packing uranium into fuel assemblies; spent fuel’s transportation and disposal, and production of vast amounts of concrete and steel used to build plants.
But an NEI analysis shows that only solar and hydroelectric power do better in terms of cradle-to-grave emissions, producing 14 and 15 tons of carbon dioxide per gigawatt hour of electricity generated, respectively, to nuclear’s 17. The footprints of natural gas and coal are exponentially greater, 622 and 1,041 tons of carbon dioxide per gigawatt hour of electricity generated, according to the NEI study. http://www.toledoblade.com/Energy/2017/03/25/FirstEnergy-exec-calls-for-urgent-aid.html
March 25, 2017
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Donald Trump’s administration to review decades-old US aim of world without nuclear weapons, The Independent, Policy review under way as US opposes proposed UN treaty on a global nuclear weapons ban Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden, 21 Mar 17
Donald Trump’s administration is to review whether the US will keep its policy of nuclear disarmament.
Christopher Ford, the National Security Council’s senior director for weapons of mass destruction and counter-proliferation, said an assessment of US policy will examine whether the aim was “realistic”.
“Like all administrations we’re reviewing policy across the board, and that necessarily includes whether or not the goal of a world without nuclear weapons is in fact a realistic objective, especially in the near to medium term, in the light of current trends in the international security environment,” he told the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference.
“It’s too early to say what the answers will be – looking at things with fresh eyes is not saying we will necessarily end up with different positions.”
Mr Ford said there was a “tension” between the goal of nuclear disarmament and the security requirements of the US and its allies.
He argued that the “headspace” for reducing nuclear arsenals had diminished in the years since the Cold War and cuts by the US and Russia seemed unlikely while other nuclear states continue development.
Mr Trump “will not accept a second place position in the nuclear weapons arena” but is open to broader engagement with Russia on the issue, Mr Ford said. He added that the current “threat environment” had changed substantially from when the review that established America’s current aims took place under Barack Obama in 2010.
The nuclear adviser said the Trump administration would continue American opposition to a “dangerous and misbegotten” proposed treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
UN member states voted overwhelmingly to start negotiations on a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination” last year.
A conference on the issue will be held in New York starting on 27 March but the treaty was opposed by nuclear powers including the US, Britain, Russia, France and Israel.
Mr Trump has not made any official policy statement on nuclear weapons but has touched on the issue repeatedly in his speeches and tweets.
Questioned about his warm statements towards Vladimir Putin at a press conference in February, the President warned that war between the US and Russia would be a “nuclear holocaust like no other”…….. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-goal-world-without-reconsider-deproliferation-treaties-white-house-a7641706.html
March 24, 2017
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U.S. Consumers May Be $3.9 Billion ‘Losers’ From Nuclear Aid, Bloomberg by Jonathan Crawford March 23, 2017,
Expanding state aid to money-losing nuclear reactors across the eastern U.S. may leave consumers on the hook for as much as $3.9 billion a year in higher power bills. Nuclear plant owners are seeking subsidies in Ohio, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey after Exelon Corp. won state aid for reactors in Illinois and New York last year. Should all 28,000 megawatts of nuclear power across northeast and mid-Atlantic states win subsidies at the same level as New York, ratepayers would face an annual $3.9 billion hike, according to a report by Bloomberg Intelligence Tuesday……
“The losers would be customers and rival plants,” Kit Konolige, a senior analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence in New York, said by phone. “I think there’s a good chance it will pass in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.”…..
New York regulators in August approved subsidies totaling about $500 million a year for the R.E. Ginna and Nine Mile Point nuclear plants owned by Exelon, and the James A. FitzPatrick plant it is purchasing from Entergy Corp. Those payouts equal about $17 a megawatt-hour, according to Bloomberg Intelligence…..
Illinois approved annual payouts of about $235 million for 10 years to keep Exelon’s Quad Cities and Clinton reactors open. The prospect of expanding subsidies has caught the eye of federal energy regulators, who plan to explore the impact of payouts on competitive markets…..
After wins in New York and Illinois, Exelon is pushing for aid for its three Pennsylvania reactors and one New Jersey plant, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. FirstEnergy Corp. needs Ohio subsidies to keep its Davis-Besse and Perry reactors open.
“It’s fair to assume that every nuclear plant is going to explore a subsidy,” Konolige said. “They’re going to say if they got in it New York, maybe I can get it in New Jersey.”
The subsidies offered by New York and Illinois are being challenged in court by opponents. A court decision on the New York dispute could come in the second quarter, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-21/consumers-would-be-3-9-billion-losers-from-nuclear-subsidies
March 24, 2017
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Local leaders join opposition to New York nuclear plant aid http://www.recordonline.com/news/20170321/local-leaders-join-opposition-to-new-york-nuclear-plant-aid, TIMES HERALD, By Associated Press ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Nearly 70 locally elected officials in New York are calling on Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo to halt a tax subsidy program that would allow three aging nuclear power plants to remain open upstate.
Legislators, town supervisors and councilmembers from more than two dozen counties signed a letter Monday to Cuomo requesting the state pause the program set to begin April 1 and publicly reassess clean energy options. Cuomo has said keeping the plants open would provide reliable energy as New York transitions half its power to renewable sources by 2030.
Some environmental advocates who oppose the program estimate its cost at up to $7.6 billion over 12 years.
The Public Service Commission says the program will cost about $1 billion in the first two years but cannot predict additional costs.
March 24, 2017
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Wallace said, “I sense that they have no plans today of walking away from this claim. This is still the president’s belief. Some folks still close to the president, but not on the White House staff said it’s a word I can’t say on family-friendly TV, but the initials are B and S. Another person who spent time with the president this weekend in Florida said it was signs of paranoia and delusion around this idea that he’s so right. Interestingly, he has sought to have people outside the government corroborate this wiretapping claim, which either suggests this observation of paranoia and delusion is in fact operation or extreme ignorance of all the powers at his disposal and all the investigative powers of the federal government.”
These are Republicans close to Trump who claimed that the President Of The United States is paranoid, delusional, and believes that Obama wiretapped him. Wallace’s comments on MSNBC were a statement that the President might be mentally ill.
Before anyone asks, the constitutional standard for the removal of a president contains no discussion of mental fitness. It would be difficult to nearly impossible to remove Trump from office due to mental illness. It would have to be demonstrated that Trump is physically unable to perform the job of president.
The Trump claim that Obama wiretapped him was not some brilliant diversion. Trump’s belief that Obama spied on him is the mark of a paranoid, and mentally ill president.
March 24, 2017
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Right Now, Trump Can Start a Nuclear War Without so much as a vote by Congress, our whole planet could be destroyed.Common Dreams, March 19, 2017 by OtherWords by Olivia Alperstein Right now, Donald Trump could start a nuclear war on a whim, and no one could stop him.
Under any circumstances, the prospect of nuclear war is terrifying, the deadly consequences irreversible. Yet with a single order, the president — any president — could effectively declare a nuclear war that would wipe out entire nations, including our own.
More worrying still, our current president has shown an alarming willingness to engage in aggression instead of diplomacy — particularly towards nations like Iran and China, as well as countries whose citizens have now been banned from traveling to the U.S. under an overbroad, dog-whistle executive order.
Trump has almost gleefully exercised his right to threaten nuclear war.
He made boastful remarks about nuclear might throughout his campaign. And just recently, he called for a new push to put America at the “top of the pack” when it comes to nuclear weapons capability (as though we weren’t already).
Going against decades of precedent, not to mention hard-won diplomatic treaties reached with countries like Russia and Iran, Trump has enthusiastically declared that we should expand, not reduce, our nuclear arsenal…………
It’s almost impossible to comprehend millions of people being obliterated from the face of the earth simultaneously, in the blink of an eye. Especially at the whim of just one American who happens to have access to a certain red button.
That’s why Representative Ted Lieu and Senator Ed Markey have introduced legislation prohibiting the sitting president from unilaterally declaring nuclear war without a prior act of Congress. They call it the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017.
“Nuclear war poses the gravest risk to human survival,” Markey warned in a joint statement introducing this legislation. Unfortunately, Trump insists on “maintaining the option of using nuclear weapons first in a conflict.”
“In a crisis with another nuclear-armed country,” the senator went on to explain, “this policy drastically increases the risk of unintended nuclear escalation.” http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/19/right-now-trump-can-start-nuclear-war
March 20, 2017
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Aside from the catastrophic impacts on public health and planetary survival, these Trump-Koch attacks on environmental protection and increased energy efficiency bode ill for a struggling U.S. economy. Germany, China and other global competitors are surging ahead with ecologically sound advanced technologies like high-speed rail, EV autos, PV cells, ultra-efficient wind turbines, solar farms, and highways guaranteed to leave America in the dust.
The “tycoon” President who promised full employment and prosperity is instead bringing an ill wind, darkened sun, and scorched planet.
Trump’s Budget Assault on the Environment Packs a Wallop, The Progressiveby Harvey Wasserman March 17, 2017Donald Trump’s first budget makes his antipathy to the environment clear—and his love for fossil fuels and nuclear power even clearer.
In addition to slashing funding to the Environmental Protection Agency, he also announced this week that he wants massive rollbacks in automotive fuel efficiency standards and billions in new investments in nuclear weapons and storage for commercial nuclear waste.
The administration’s budget cuts $2.4 billion from the EPA’s operating funds
—roughly 31 percent—taking the agency’s annual budget from $8.1 billion to $5.7 billion, the smallest since it was formed in 1970. These cuts will cripple regulation of air and water quality, strip oversight of a wide range of land management programs, and loosen restrictions on chemical emissions from industrial facilities.
Much of this money would be shifted directly over to the military, which the Trump Administration wants to bolster with an additional $54 billion over the final Obama allocations…….
llowing through on his campaign promise to reduce the EPA to “little tidbits,” Trump’s budget defunds more than 50 programs. These include infrastructure improvement on Indian reservations, major projects to clean up Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes, a wide range of renewable energy development and energy efficiency programs, numerous climate change research programs, national heritage sites, environmental justice programs, oceanographic research and preservation, and much more. Gina McCarthy, a former EPA official under Obama, described it as “a scorched earth budget that represents an all-out assault on clean air, water and land.”
Some of the immediate opposition has crossed party lines. Ohio’s recently re-elected Republican Senator Rob Portman, a close associate of former President George W. Bush, strongly opposed cuts to the $300 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Bill Becker of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies warned, “if such cuts are realized, many more people will die prematurely and get sick unnecessarily due to air, water and waste pollution.”…….
Meanwhile, Illinois and New York are moving toward massive subsidies for uncompetitive, dangerously dilapidated old nuclear reactors in a marketplace where renewables are coming in far cheaper and creating thousands more jobs. In Ohio and other states, owners of money-losing reactors are advocating for massive handouts to block cheaper, job-creating renewables and efficiency from getting into the marketplace.
Adding insult to injury, Trump wants to add $120 million to the long-dead Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. ……
Aside from the catastrophic impacts on public health and planetary survival, these Trump-Koch attacks on environmental protection and increased energy efficiency bode ill for a struggling U.S. economy. Germany, China and other global competitors are surging ahead with ecologically sound advanced technologies like high-speed rail, EV autos, PV cells, ultra-efficient wind turbines, solar farms, and highways guaranteed to leave America in the dust.
The “tycoon” President who promised full employment and prosperity is instead bringing an ill wind, darkened sun, and scorched planet. http://progressive.org/dispatches/trump%E2%80%99s-budget-assault-on-the-environment-packs-a-wallop/
March 17, 2017
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Bechtel pulls out of mini-nuclear development, Construction News, 17 MARCH, 2017 Bechtel is to pull out of small modular reactor development, the US engineering giant has confirmed. The company said it would no longer be attempting to create its own SMR reactor after it was unable to find investment for its programme, or a utility company that would provide a site.
Bechtel’s SMR aspirations were as part of mPower, a joint venture with energy giant Babcock & Wilcox…..
Bechtel will take itself out of the government’s SMR reactor design competition.
In March 2016 the government launched its £250m SMR competition which set out to identify the preferred reactor technology to be rolled out across the UK over the next 15 years. The Bechtel team was listed as one of the 33 parties to have made it past the first round of the competition, including engineering firms such as Atkins and contractors such as Costain.
Alongside firms such as Westinghouse and NuScale Power, the mPower JV was one of the companies capable of developing the technology after its reactor design was recommended for “further government investigation” by the National Nuclear Laboratory in 2014.
The competition has stalled ever since, with sources telling Construction News that they have been largely left in the dark by the government over the next steps……
March 17, 2017
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GreenLeft proves to be big winner in Dutch election Party forecast to boost its MPs from four to 14 after storming campaign by young leader Jesse Klaver, Guardian Jon Henley , 17 Mar 17, The big winner of Wednesday’s election – and now the largest party of the Dutch left for the first time – was GreenLeft, headed by 30-year-old Jesse Klaver, hailed by his enthusiastic supporters as the “Jessiah”.
With more than 95% of votes counted, the party – formed 25 years ago by a merger of communists, pacifists, evangelicals and self-styled radicals – boosted its MPs from four to 14 after a storming campaign by Klaver.
“This is a fantastic result for us, a historic victory,” said the party chairwoman, Marjolein Meijer.
The result showed there was “very fertile ground in the Netherlands for change and a positive and hopeful story”, she said. “For us this is just the beginning.”……..
The Netherlands’ youngest ever party leader, Klaver built a strong following on social media through small Meetup events after taking over GreenLeft’s leadership in May 2015.
His rallies were among the campaign’s largest, including an Amsterdam meeting that drew more than 5,000 people – plus 5,000 more following live on Facebook.
His TV debates were also widely regarded as triumphs. In one debate watched by 1.6 million viewers, Klaver told his far-right, anti-Islam rival Geert Wilders that it was rightwing populism, not Muslim immigration, that was undermining Dutch culture and traditions. ……https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/15/dutch-elections-greenleft-jesse-klaver
March 17, 2017
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We will not be a nuclear waste dump’: Vulnerable GOP senator slams Trump’s Nevada nuke waste plan https://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/we-will-not-be-a-nuclear-waste-dump-vulnerable-gop-senator-slams-trumps-nevada-nuke-waste-plan/ BRAD REED,16 MAR 2017
Dean Heller (R-NV) got a nasty surprise this week when he discovered that President Donald Trump’s proposed budget would revive the Yucca Mountain storage facility for nuclear power plant waste in his home state.
Heller, by far the most vulnerable Republican in the senate in the 2018 midterm elections, railed against Trump’s proposal in a statement released Thursday, as he insisted that his state would “not be the nation’s nuclear waste dump.”
“As has been stated in the past, Yucca is dead and this reckless proposal will not revive it,” he said. “Washington needs to understand what Nevada has been saying for years: we will not be the nation’s nuclear waste dump. This project was ill-conceived from the beginning and has already flushed billions of taxpayer dollars down the drain.”
Heller also vowed to fight any effort to revive the Yucca Mountain project tooth and nail.
The Las Vegas Review Journal notes that, while Trump would increase funding to revive the Yucca Mountain facility, his budget would also slash the Office of Science’s $5 billion budget by a whopping $900 million, which would dramatically cut the amount of research that it now funds at more than 300 universities and at 10 national labs.
March 17, 2017
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Nevada lawmakers speaking out against plan to revive Yucca Mountain, ktnv.com , Joyce Lupiani, Mar 16, 2017 The White House is proposing to revive the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste plan. The 2018 budget plan for the U.S. Department of Energy includes $120 million to restart licensing for the proposed dump.
Yucca Mountain has been studied since the 1970s as a potential repository for the nation’s radioactive waste. President Obama withdrew the license to store waste at Yucca in 2010 because of opposition by then-Senate Majority leader Harry Reid.
Some of Nevada’s lawmakers are speaking out against the idea: A partial statement from Congresswoman Jacky Rosen reads: “Worst of all, the budget requests $120 million in funds for Yucca Mountain to make our state the country’s dumping ground for nuclear waste.”
And Rep. Ruben J. Kihuen issued this statement:
“Yucca Mountain has been dead for years. Now, President Trump wants to run roughshod over the people of Nevada and throw away funding that could be better spent on infrastructure and creating jobs. Nevada is not a dumping ground for the rest of the country’s nuclear waste and our rights shouldn’t be trampled over just because President Trump wants to put an unsavory waste facility in our backyard. The Nevada delegation was united in sponsoring the Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act earlier this year, demanding that states be consulted before nuclear waste repositories can be built by the federal government. I urge President Trump and Secretary Perry to reconsider their reckless and haphazard scheme to throw away federal tax dollars, especially without thinking about the safety and well-being of the people of Nevada.”
Governor Sandoval also issued a statement:
“Regarding Yucca Mountain, let me make my position clear – for the remainder of my term I will vigorously fight the storage of high-level nuclear waste in Nevada. Any attempt to resurrect this ill-conceived project will be met with relentless opposition, and maximum resources. Continuing down a path that seeks to force this unsafe and unwanted project on Nevada is a waste of time and money and only gets the country farther away from solving its nuclear waste problem.
Nevada Attorney General Adam Paul Laxalt released this statement:
“In the coming years, I will continue to battle the poster-child for federal overreach – a battle over an unwanted nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in our beloved Nevada. ……http://www.ktnv.com/news/nevada-lawmakers-speaking-out-against-plan-to-revive-yucca-mountain
March 17, 2017
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Trump’s budget is everything scientists have been fearing
The outline cuts at least $7 billion for research on climate change, diseases, and energy, VOX by Brian Resnick@B_resnickbrian@vox.com Mar 16, 2017, The top-line numbers of President Donald Trump’s budget proposal should give the nation’s scientists shivers. The administration doesn’t seem to think science should be a priority at all.
The blueprint released today is preliminary. The administration still needs to draft a full budget, which we won’t see until May. And ultimately, it’s up to Congress to decide who gets what.
But what’s important about this budget proposal is that it tells the public and Congress where the president’s concerns lie. And they don’t appear to be issues like climate change, disease treatment and prevention, or basic research funding for universities.
In all, we count up least $7 billion in reductions to science programs, including:
- A $5.8 billion reduction in funding to the National Institutes of Health (18 percent of its total budget.) Most of the NIH’s budget goes to funding research in health care in universities across the country.
- A $102 million cut to NASA’s Earth science programs, eliminating four NASA Earth science missions completely:
- PACE — a program for measuring changes to ocean ecosystems by tracking concentrations of chlorophyll (what makes algae green) from space.
- OCO-3 — a yet-to-be-launched space station module to track atmospheric carbon dioxide.
- DSCOVR — the “deep space climate observatory,” which is partially run by NOAA. (The budget doesn’t mention if NOAA will retain this program.) DSCOVR is an early warning system for solar storms, and has capabilities to detect changes in levels of ozone and other pollutants in the atmosphere.
- CLARREO Pathfinder — the “Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory.” It’s set to be launched in 2020 to amass highly accurate records of climate change on Earth so scientists can make more precise predictions about the future.
- A $900 million reduction in the Energy Department’s basic science research. The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy — a $300 million program that provides grants for energy research — is wholly eliminated because “the private sector is better positioned to finance disruptive energy research.”
- A $250 million cut in NOAA grants “and programs supporting coastal and marine management, research, and education including Sea Grant.”
- And not to mention the many changes coming for the EPA and how the country combats climate change. Vox’s Brad Plumer has more on that here.……….http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/16/14940444/2018-budget-trump-science-nih
March 17, 2017
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Toshiba delay causes further Moorside uncertainty, ITV, 14 Mar 17, Toshiba has delayed reporting its third quarter earnings for the second time, leading to further uncertainty over the future of a major nuclear development in Cumbria.
The Japanese company owns a 60 percent stake in NuGen, the company behind the proposed Moorside nuclear project in west Cumbria.
However, Toshiba is expected to announce huge losses for 2016, and that it will pull out of nuclear projects outside Japan.
This is to do with its US nuclear unit Westinghouse, which is reported to have overpaid for another nuclear company by billions of dollars.
Westinghouse would supply three nuclear reactors to the Moorside nuclear plant in Cumbria. Toshiba first delayed announcing its third quarter financial results in February, after which the company’s chairman stepped down, and the further postponement was revealed this morning……..http://www.itv.com/news/border/2017-03-14/toshiba-delay-causes-further-moorside-uncertainty/
March 15, 2017
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nuclear-news 