India-US nuke deal signed without ground work: Ex-US Senator PTI|Oct 26, 2017, WASHINGTON: The landmark India-US civil nuclear deal was “dead at the very beginning” as it was signed without ground work, a former top Republican Senator has alleged, describing the agreement as more of an “arms deal” for American defence manufacturing companies.
Former Senator Larry Pressler, who has served as chairman of the US Senate’s Arms Control Subcommittee, told a Washington audience that the deal was much-praised “but there is no chance of it being implemented as the liability issues have not been addressed and it has not been worked through.”
He said that the India-US civil nuclear deal “was dead at the very beginning.
Pressler said that there was “no groundwork done” in India or the US on the civil nuclear deal.
The India-US nuclear cooperation agreement was signed in October 2008, ending India’s isolation by the West in the nuclear and space arena. The deal has given a significant boost to India’s nuclear energy production.
Pressler was speaking at an event organised by The Hudson Institute, a top American think-tank, to discuss his latest book ‘Neighbours in Arms: An American Senator s Quest for Disarmament in a Nuclear Subcontinent’.
“…There was nothing to it really. If you look into it, it is more of an arms sale agreement,” he alleged.
Pressler claimed the then US president Barack Obama’s visit to New Delhi was “largely an arms sale trip”.
How a State Department Study Prevented Nuclear War With China, The U.S. considered preemptive strikes to prevent Mao from attaining nuclear weapons.The Diplomat By Franz-Stefan Gady, October 25, 2017, The People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Mao Zedong was the nuclear “rogue state” of the 1960s in the eyes of the United States. The PRC was viewed by officials in two consecutive U.S. administrations — John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson — as both extremist and irrational, a country where the prevailing U.S. Cold War strategies of containment and deterrence would not apply. President Kennedy reportedly saw a nuclear China as “the great menace in the future to humanity, the free world, and freedom on earth.” Lyndon B. Johnson told a reporter in 1964 during the ongoing presidential campaign that “we can’t let [Barry] Goldwater [Johnson’s opponent] and Red China both get the bomb at the same time. Then the shit would really hit the fan.”
Given the possible disastrous consequences of a nuclear-armed PRC for the United States, both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations discussed the option of launching preventive strikes on Chinese nuclear weapon facilities. Amid these deliberations, a member of the U.S. Department of State’s Policy Planning Council, Robert H. Johnson, compiled two studies arguing that a nuclear China will not significantly alter the military balance of power in Asia and that, as a corollary, the United States would not need to take radical steps, including military action, in the foreseeable future. Johnson’s papers helped to broaden the discussion about possible policy options vis-à-vis China and may have contributed to the United States not launching a preventive attack on Chinese nuclear facilities in the early 1960s.
China: The Rogue State of the 1960s……..
The State Department Responds While Kennedy was considering preventive war against China’s nuclear weapons capability, several U.S. State Department officials grew skeptical about the White House’s alarmism and militancy. The then-head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Council (PPC), Walt Rostow, noted in July 1963 that even if Beijing developed nuclear weapons, its “desire to preserve its nuclear force as a credible deterrent might tend to make China even more cautious than it is today in its encounters with American power.” Rostow’s opinion was influenced by the first draft of a study titled “A Chinese Communist Nuclear Detonation and Nuclear Capability,” compiled by PPC staffer Robert H. Johnson in close cooperation with officials from the Pentagon, the CIA, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the U.S. Information Agency.
A 100-page version of the paper was distributed in October 1963 to select officials. It is unclear, however, whether Kennedy ever saw it. Its conclusion was distinctly non-alarmist. Most importantly, the report concluded that “apart from serving as an additional inhibition on some levels of U.S. attack upon the mainland, a Chinese nuclear capability need impose no new military restrictions on the U.S. response to aggression in Asia (…)” Even intercontinental ballistic missiles would not “eliminate this basic asymmetry.” Furthermore: “The basic military problems we will face are likely to be much like those we face now: military probing operations (…) relatively low-level border wars” and “‘revolutionary wars’ supported by the ChiComs [Chinese Communists].”
In short, the study suggested that the United States pursue status-quo policies vis-à-vis China (“present policies require no change”) anchored on nuclear deterrence.
The Impact
According to the scholars William Burr and Jeffrey T. Richelson, the study had an immediate impact……..
Robert H. Johnson’s reports helped accentuate the reasons against preventive war. They offered U.S. policymakers alternatives to more hawkish views on how to deal with a nuclear China. ……..
Considering the current U.S. administration’s disjointed responses to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and the repeated talk of the possible necessity of military action, getting the government to “sing from the same sheet” on a very complex issue is no minor achievement. Indeed, our best hope may be that somewhere in the D.C. bureaucracy a 21st century incarnation of Johnson can get the ear of a senior administration official with access to U.S. President Donald Trump and offer a nuanced perspective on the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula.
How Steve Bannon and Sean Hannity ginned up the Hillary Clinton uranium story, Pro-Trump conservatives want to talk about their own Russia narrative. The only problem is that it’s nonsense, Salon.com, MATT GERTZ, MEDIA MATTERS, 10.26.2017 This article originally appeared on Media Matters.
President Donald Trump has spent much of his presidency engulfed by congressional and criminal investigations into Russian efforts to help him win the 2016 presidential election. But today, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, announced he was joining a new congressional probe — one that appears to revolve around the purported Russian ties of Trump’s opponent in that race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
This is no accident. Like the work of the House Select Committee on Benghazi before it, this is a partisan investigation with a political purpose, with its roots in the conspiratorial muck of the right-wing media. But while the Benghazi probe — as Republican leaders eventually acknowledged — was an offensive push to damage Clinton’s political standing in the lead-up to the 2016 election, the new one is a defensive move aimed at protecting Trump by diverting attention to his former opponent. The effort’s loudest champion is Sean Hannity, the Trump propagandist and sometime adviser who has claimed for months that the “real collusion” with Russia revolves around a bogus conspiracy theory linking Clinton to the 2010 sale of the uranium mining company Uranium One to the Russian government.
The story begins with Breitbart.com head Stephen Bannon. In 2012, long before he became the Trump campaign’s chief executive and joined Trump’s White House as chief strategist, Bannon launched the Government Accountability Institute, a nonprofit conservative investigative research organization. Three years later, GAI’s president, the discredited author Peter Schweizer, authored the bestselling book “Clinton Cash.” The book, built on GAI’s research, alleged that Bill and Hillary Clinton “typically blur the lines between politics, philanthropy, and business.” It was a trainwreck of sloppy research and shoddy reporting but was heavily promoted by mainstream outlets thanks to a cunning media strategy overseen by Bannon and taken up by Trump during the campaign.
One of the book’s bogus allegations was Schweizer’s claim that Hillary Clinton played a “central role” in approving the purchase of Uranium One by the Russian State Atomic Nuclear Agency. Schweizer speculated that she did so because of the money given to the Clinton Foundation and her husband by Russians and people linked to the deal. But this made no sense, and several reporters assessing Schweizer’s claims rejected them. The State Department had one of nine votes on the committee that approved the deal; the State Department rep said Clinton never intervened on the issue; there were critical questions about the timing of the donations Schweizer referenced; and even Schweizer said he had no direct evidence Clinton had intervened.
The false allegations might have been forgotten in the wake of the election. But in January, the U.S. intelligence community announced that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the aim of harming Clinton’s campaign because “Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.” Reporting from a host of news outlets ever since has suggested that Trump’s campaign aides and associates had a series of troubling interactions with Russians, triggering congressional investigations and eventually a criminal probe by special counsel Robert Mueller. With Trump’s presidency hanging in the balance, his allies have searched for a way to rebut the charges.
Hannity eventually settled on the old “Clinton Cash”allegations. Claiming that there is no evidence to support what he terms “black-helicopter, tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories about so-called Trump-Russia collusion,” the Fox host declared that the “real collusion” is between Clinton and Russia, as demonstrated by the Uranium One tale. He pushed that argument over and over again to his audience of 3 million, making it in more than two dozen monologues over the summer.
Then a week ago, Hannity tweeted this: “FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot…”
Hannity was promoting a report by John Solomon, the executive vice president of The Hill, which purported to advance the Uranium One story. According to Solomon’s anonymous sources, “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow.” Solomon provides no evidence that the Clintons were aware this was happening, and of course the underlying conspiracy theory that Clinton pushed the Uranium One deal through still makes no sense. But it’s something the right-wing press can use to try to shift attention away from Trump……
Feeding into the right-wing narratives about efforts by nefarious deep-state actors to tear down the president, Circa’s reporting received glowing reviews from Trump’s most conspiratorial supporters.
But Circa’s biggest fan is Hannity……..
Hannity heavily promoted Solomon’s story on his Fox show, devoting extensive segments to the “explosive” “bombshell” on the night it broke and the next twonights. He’s hosted Solomon, Carter, and Schweizer, harangued the rest of the press for not covering the story and declared Uranium One “one of the biggest scandals this country has ever seen.” And on the night the story broke, he made clear what he thought should happen next:
Hannity heavily promoted Solomon’s story on his Fox show, devoting extensive segments to the “explosive” “bombshell” on the night it broke and the next twonights. He’s hosted Solomon, Carter, and Schweizer, harangued the rest of the press for not covering the story and declared Uranium One “one of the biggest scandals this country has ever seen.” And on the night the story broke, he made clear what he thought should happen next:
And now Nunes — who had to recuse himself from Russia-related investigations earlier this year due to ethics charges that resulted from his effort to do the White House’s bidding and scuttle the Trump-Russia investigations — is taking a hand. At a press conference today, he announced that he would be launching an investigation into the Uranium One allegations. He will be working alongside the House Oversight Committee, helped by the former chairman of the Benghazi Committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.
When there’s a congressional investigation into a Clinton, Fox knows how to respond:
“Fox programming is now basically 24/7 about Hillary Clinton and Uranium.”
The New York Times yesterday detailed how Republican congressmen, including Nunes and Gowdy, are trying to “wrap up the investigations” into Trump’s Russia ties as quickly as possible. “Congressional investigations unfortunately are usually overtly political investigations, where it is to one side’s advantage to drag things out,” Gowdy told the Times. He knows that from experience. A year into Trump’s presidency, egged on by sycophantic media allies like Hannity, the first congressional investigation into a Clinton has begun. It won’t end anytime soon. https://www.salon.com/2017/10/25/how-steve-bannon-and-sean-hannity-ginned-up-the-hillary-clinton-uranium-story/
Regulators absolve Duke Energy customers of lingering Levy costs, By Malena Carollo, Times Staff Writer, October 25, 2017 TALLAHASSEE— For Duke Energy Florida customers, the never-built Levy Nuclear Project is finally,officially behind them. Per a unanimous decision by regulators Wednesday, Duke customers, who have doled out nearly $1 billion for Levy costs from 2009 to 2015, will not have to pay any more.
“I think that this settlement as a whole benefits consumers and is ultimately in the public interest,” said Ronald Brisé, commissioner with the Florida Public Service Commission, at Wednesday’s hearing
“We feel like the cost of Levy being written off is a small price to pay for moving forward,” Harry Sideris, president of Duke’s Florida operations, said in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times in late August.
The nuclear elephant-in-the-room resulted from Progress Energy, Duke’s predecessor, asking ratepayers for money up front for a future nuclear facility in Levy County. It was intended to reduce energy costs going forward, and paying ahead of time would speed the process along.
Though ratepayers were charged the upfront costs, Duke pulled the plug on the project in 2013.
According to Duke representatives at the Wednesday PSC hearing, customers will also not be charged for the cost of the land that the facility was meant to be built on. It will be considered for potential solar or natural gas facilities.
The agreement also signals a significant shift toward use of solar power. Over the next four years, Duke will add 700 megawatts of solar power, about 75 megawatts of which will come online by early 2019.
Struggling Puerto Rico children’s hospital gets solar power from Tesla, http://abcnews.go.com/US/struggling-puerto-rico-childrens-hospital-solar-power-tesla/story?id=50721869By J.J. GALLAGHER Oct 25, 2017,A children’s hospital in Puerto Rico that was forced to run off generators and ration diesel fuel in the wake of Hurricane Maria now has a solar power system that will supply all of its electricity needs. Tesla and Puerto Rico’s governor touted the project yesterday, sending out multiple official tweets and Facebook posts, and officials said today that the system is already providing solar-generated electricity to the hospital.
The Hospital del Nino is located in the capital San Juan and serves about 3,000 children across the island. The hospital also houses some 30 children with serious medical needs that require round-the-clock care.
A hospital spokesperson told Primera Hora last month that they were forced to ration diesel fuel and take other measures to ensure a constant flow of electricity.
Hurricane Maria also knocked down all of the trees surrounding the hospital, resulting in heat from the withering tropical sun beating down on the building and its surroundings.
Tesla’s system works with solar panels that generate electricity during the day and batteries that store the power and distribute it when the sun isn’t shining. Earlier this month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that his company could bring solar power to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello replied “let’s talk” and later said the two had a “great initial conversation.”
Less than three weeks later, officials say the hospital is up and running with a solar system that supplies all of its electricity needs.
“I’ve never seen a team arrive so fast and work so fast. They built this in a week,” Rafael Pagán, the hospital’s chairman of the board, told Telemundo.
Just 25 percent of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents have electricity, according to the latest figures, and some 3,758 people are still in shelters nearly two months after Maria ravaged the island, causing widespread damages and killing 51 people.
Rossello has promised to fully restore electricity to the island by Christmas, a goal that analysts have cast doubt upon.
Repairing Puerto Rico’s badly damaged electrical grid could take months and cost billions of dollars. Musk has put forth his so-called solar microgrids, that produce energy locally through solar energy, as an alternative.
ABC News’ Joshua Hoyos contributed to this report.
Authors, Joanna Burger, K. F. Gaines, J. D. Peles, W. L. Stephens Jr., C. Shane Boring, I. L. Brisbin Jr., J. Snodgrass, A. L. Bryan, Jr., M. H. Smith, M. Gochfeld First published: June 2001
Abstract
This study examined radiocesium (137Cs) levels in fish from the vicinity of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS), a former nuclear weapons production facility in South Carolina. Fish from the Savannah River were sampled above (upstream), along, and below (downstream) the SRS, and from Steel Creek, a tributary that runs through the SRS. There was some off-site contamination of 137Cs in the Savannah River watershed due to low-level releases from past nuclear production on the SRS. The null hypotheses tested were that there would be no differences in 137Cs levels as a function of location along the river, and between species collected from the river and from Steel Creek on the SRS. For six of eight species of fish collected from the Savannah River, there were no differences in 137Cs levels in muscle from fish collected above, along, or below the SRS; exceptions were bowfin and shellcracker. Fish collected from Steel Creek had significantly higher levels (by about an order of magnitude) of 137Cs in muscle tissue than fish collected in the Savannah River. However, no fish from either Steel Creek or the Savannah River had 137Cs levels above the European Economic Community limit for fresh meat of 0.6 Bq/g. Lifetime cancer risk was calculated using the cancer slope factor of 3.2 × 10−11/pCi, and various fish consumption scenarios reflecting actual data from Savannah River fishermen. Using mean 137Cs concentrations and median fish consumption for 70 years for Black males—the group with the highest consumption—the excess lifetime risk associated with the eight species of fish in the Savannah River ranged from 9.0 × 10−7 to 1.0 × 10−5. The same calculation for fish from Steel Creek gave risk estimates from 1.4 to 8.0 × 10−5. The 95% level for consumption by Blacks, however, was about 70 kg/year. Black fishermen consuming that amount of bass from Steel Creek would sustain a lifetime risk of 3.1 × 10−4, whereas the same consumption of Savannah River bass would yield a risk estimate of 1.5 × 10−5.
US Preparing to Put Nuclear Bombers Back on 24-Hour Alert, Defense One, BY MARCUS WEISGERBER OCTOBER 22, 2017 BARKSDALEAIRFORCEBASE, LA. — THE U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991.
That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of this base’s 11,000-foot runway — dubbed the “Christmas tree” for their angular markings — could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’s notice…….
Goldfein and other senior defense officials stressed that the alert order had not been given, but that preparations were under way in anticipation that it might come. That decision would be made by Gen. John Hyten, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, or Gen. Lori Robinson, the head of U.S. Northern Command. STRATCOM is in charge of the military’s nuclear forces and NORTHCOM is in charge of defending North America……http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2017/10/exclusive-us-preparing-put-nuclear-bombers-back-24-hour-alert/141957/
National Day of Remembrance commemorating atomic energy workers RIVER BENDER.com October 24 2017 ST. PETERS, MO – Each year on Oct. 30th atomic energy workers across the nation are commemorated for the National Day of Remembrance. “……Many atomic energy workers unknowingly worked with hazardous chemicals and radiation without consent or proper protective gear during this construction. As a result, countless numbers of individuals are now sick or deceased because of occupational induced illnesses……… Today, the sacrificial work displayed by nuclear weapons workers for their nation and families is remembered……..
Atomic Resource Coalition (ARC) extends a thank you to all those who have served. The price that has been paid does not go a day unnoticed.
ARC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that assists and educates current and former atomic energy workers, as well as their family members, about the benefits which may be available to them under the Department of Labor’s Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. Workers and survivors of workers that have been effected by an occupational illness at a nuclear weapons plant are encouraged to contact ARC to see if they qualify for medical benefits and/or monetary compensation. https://www.riverbender.com/articles/details/national-day-of-remembrance-commemorating-atomic-energy-workers-24387.cfm
“NO BAILOUT!” BACKLASH BUILDS: 10,000+ COMMENTS AGAINST NUCLEAR, COAL HANDOUTS TO BE DELIVERED TO FERC https://www.nirs.org/press/no-bailout-backlash-builds-10000-comments-nuclear-coal-handouts-delivered-ferc/Signers Oppose Crowding Out Renewables With “Old, Unsafe and Dying” Energy WASHINGTON, D.C.///October 11, 2017///More than 10,000 comments were submitted today for the record at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in opposition to Trump Administration plans for the Commission to enact massive bailouts of the coal and nuclear industry at the expense of renewable energy and with the added downside of higher bills for consumers. The comments were delivered at 9 a.m. shortly after an 8:45 a.m. protest organized by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) outside the main entrance of FERC at 888 First St NE, Washington, D.C.
NIRS noted that the stakes for wind, solar, and the pocketbooks of U.S. ratepayers is very high. A November 2016 report by NIRS concluded that a federal bailout for nuclear alone could add up to $280 billion by 2030. When a major nuclear reactor project in South Carolina failed this year, ratepayers were left holding the bag for $9 billion or more—even though they will never see a single electron of electricity for their steep investment.
NIRS Executive Director Tim Judson said: “Survey after survey shows that Americans want more clean and safe renewable energy and there is very little support for perpetuating the old, unsafe and dying coal and nuclear industries. To artificially prop up these dirty energy industries and then to force consumers to pay the bill to enrich these already astonishingly profitable companies would have to rank as one of the most anti-environment and anti-consumer steps of the last 50 years.”
Most of the 10,000 individuals’ public comments to FERC submitted by NIRS read as follows:
“Call off your plans to promote coal and nuclear power, and commit to a transition to 100% clean, efficient, renewable energy. Nuclear and coal are two of the dirtiest, most polluting, dangerous, and uneconomical energy sources in the world.”
“If you really want to revive our economy, create jobs, revitalize local communities, and boost small businesses—then clean energy is the only way to go. Our green energy economy can keep the lights on and create millions more jobs than dirty energy could ever provide. Solar and wind are already creating twice as many jobs as coal and nuclear combined—that is ten times as many for the amount of energy generated, and at lower cost.”
“Renewable energy is now providing more electricity than nuclear power. Wind and solar are growing by leaps and bounds, are already cheaper than coal and nuclear, and will soon be the cheapest sources of power available.”
Subsidizing coal and nuclear power plants would not be legal, says PJM, By John Funk, The Plain Dealer, CLEVELAND, Ohio— The independent company that manages competitive wholesale power markets in Ohio and 12 other states believes a federal proposal to subsidize the owners of old nuclear and coal plants is unworkable and would not even be legal.
The U.S. Department of Energy proposal “is simply unworkable,” said Andrew Ott, CEO of PJM Interconnection, in a press conference today. “We believe it is contrary to law.”
PJM intends to file formal comments later today with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regarding the proposal from the DOE.
The DOE in September, following intense lobbying from the coal industry and from FirstEnergy and other traditional utilities, proposed that FERC require PJM and other grid managers to credit the owners of the big coal and nuclear plants for providing “resiliency” to the grid because they store fuel on-site and run 24 hours a day. They also generate power at higher prices than new gas turbine plants.
In other words, the DOE wants PJM’s fiercely competitive markets to accept higher priced power from old coal and nuclear plants at whatever it cost to generate — plus a profit — the way the old plants did business before de-regulation……..
PJM’s announcement that it will oppose a direct handout to old coal and nuclear because it would distort competitive markets came just three days after the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio announced it would argue against the proposal, primarily because it could raise customer electric rates.
PUCO Chairman Asim Haque said the DOE had not done a cost analysis of the impact the plan would have on power prices before ordering the FERC to weave it into competitive market pricing. The PUCO was to file its formal arguments later today…….
The formal comments of PJM and PUCO will reach the FERC on the heels of comments from the independent developers building gas turbine plants.
Last winter, and to the delight of utility executives, a bipartisan majority in the Illinois State Legislature offered them a generous gift they had long sought: a $16.4 billion bailout to keep a pair of nuclear plants in operation.
The executives had lobbied hard for this, warning of the loss of 4,200 jobs and carbon-free electricity if the money-losing Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear plants closed. The two plants, owned by Chicago-based Exelon Corporation, were in jeopardy of closing because they were losing a combined $100 million a year due to the increasing availability of cheap natural gas and renewables.
With less than an hour remaining in the legislative session, the state legislature passed the Future Energy Jobs Act, a multi-billion-dollar bailout that provides taxpayer subsidies to keep the nuclear plants operating for at least another 10 years. The cost of power for Chicago-area ratepayers has increased 16 percent since May due to higher capacity charges coupled with the nuclear subsidies. Power rates will go up at least an additional 5 percent next May based on capacity charges that have already been set. For consumers in a typical suburban Chicago household, the increases will boost their annual electricity bill by at least $140.
The ripple effects from the bailout may well lead to future increases on top of the new surcharges. Subsidizing the two nuclear plants has the unintended consequence of potentially harming the owners of unsubsidized, competing power plants. The PJM Interconnection, an organization that sets the rules for wholesale power markets, is contemplating changes that would compensate the owners of natural gas and coal plants. Simply put, households and businesses in Illinois could be paying twice to keep the same nuclear plants open.
What has yet to be determined is how much electricity bills will rise as a result of the bailout. They’re already on the upswing due to earlier changes PJM made to reward nuclear plant operators and owners of other “base-load” plants that run most of the time for their reliability during periods of intense heat or cold.
And the same basic story applies at a broader level. Nuclear subsidies are expected to raise the electricity bills of New Yorkers by $7.6 billion over 12 years, thanks to the bailout of three nuclear plants in upstate New York. The New York State Legislature approved the bailout on a promise to save 2,600 jobs. The Exelon Corporation stands to benefit the most from the bailout. The company owns two of the plants and, since the bailout last year, purchased a third plant. Other states considering bailouts of nuclear plants are Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
Now, on top of that, Energy Secretary Rick Perry recently called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to come up with a new pricing system to reward power plants that help ensure reliability by storing months’ worth of fuel on site. This is an attempt to help financially-distressed coal and nuclear plants nationwide.
There was a time not too long ago when market competition, one of the most basic cost-control methods, was a driving force in the electricity market, and everyone benefitted from it. History clearly shows that market competition lowers costs, boosts performance, and spurs innovation. In the end, consumers get reliable power at competitive prices.
What we don’t need, and can’t afford, is another round of misguided nuclear bailouts that saddle households and businesses with higher electricity bills. If greater use were made of low-carbon natural gas and renewables, and if more failing nuclear plants were closed, the country and economy would be better off. As it is now, in a quest to shield some utilities from the marketplace, more nuclear plants will receive taxpayer subsidies, the growth of more competitive power, along with more jobs, may be slowed. And millions more will be wasted to perpetuate a cycle that not only abuses consumers but promotes what is at best a dubious energy policy.
Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.
Jimmy Carter says he is willing to go to North Korea on peace mission
Former president adopts markedly conciliatory tone about Trump
Carter: ‘We greatly overestimate China’s influence on North Korea’, Guardian, Martin Pengelly, 23 Oct 17, In an interview marked by conciliatory remarks regarding Donald Trump and his administration, Jimmy Carter said he was willing to travel to North Korea in an attempt to soften tensions between Washington and Pyongyang.
Speaking to the New York Times mostly about foreign policy, the 93-year-old former president also said Trump was not solely to blame for damage to America’s world image…….
Carter said he was “afraid” of nuclear conflict between the US and North Korea. “They want to save their regime [and have] now got advanced nuclear weaponry that can destroy the Korean peninsula and Japan, and some of our outlying territories in the Pacific, maybe even our mainland.” Carter had indicated a willingness to talk peace with North Korea last month, according to an academic at the University of Georgia…….
Climate Change Will Bring Major Flooding to New York Every 5 Years And that’s only counting the floods caused by hurricanes and tropical storms. The Atlantic ROBINSON MEYER 25 OCT 17
New York is a city on the water. For hundreds of years, its rivers and harbor have worked to its advantage, bringing it speedy transportation and pleasant temperatures.
The next couple hundred years may not be as smooth sailing. Global warming, caused by the release of carbon-dioxide pollution into the atmosphere, will cause the seas to rise and the storms to intensify around the city. A new study from an all-star list of climate scientists attempts to estimate how a few of climate change’s symptoms—higher seas, large storm surge, and more intense hurricanes—will intersect in New York over the next 300 years.
It isn’t pretty. Sea-level rise will make every tropical cyclone that hits New York more likely to release damaging floods. For instance, storm floods of nearly seven-and-a-half feet once occurred only a couple times per millennium. In today’s somewhat warmed climate, 7.5-foot floods are projected to happen every 25 years. By 2030, these floods will occur every five years.
In what has been interpreted by some as an attack on Donald Trump, actor makes remarks in a speech at the White House, Guardian, 24 Oct 17, The actor Leonardo DiCaprio has said he thinks that those who don’t believe in climate change should not hold public office.
Speaking at the White House ahead of a screening of his new documentary, Before the Flood, DiCaprio said such rejection indicated an inability to engage with the rational world.
“If you don’t believe in climate change, you don’t believe in facts, and science, and empirical truths,” he said.
“And, in my humble opinion, [you] should not be allowed to hold public office.”
The words were interpreted as a slight against presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has frequently tweeted his scepticism – despite denying he had made such claims in last week’s presidential debate……Before the Flood premiered in September at the Toronto film festival, where DiCaprio told the audience: “We cannot afford, at this critical moment in time, to have leaders in office that do not believe in the modern science of climate change.” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/04/leonardo-dicaprio-climate-change-donald-trump-before-the-flood-documentary
Reclassify waste to shift the nuclear landscape, The US Department of Energy should classify and dispose of nuclear rubbish according to risk.Nature, 24 October 2017 The United States has a single deep geological repository for nuclear waste. Since 1999, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), 655 metres down in a massive salt formation near Carlsbad, New Mexico, has received 12,000-odd shipments of what it calls transuranic waste. This is clothing, tools and other detritus from the nuclear-weapons programme that are contaminated by elements heavier than uranium. It’s more hazardous than low-level waste, which can be buried closer to the surface, but not as dangerous as high-level waste, for which a disposal site has yet to be found.
WIPP was closed for three years after radiation escaped from a ruptured drum in 2014. It was given the all-clear to reopen only in January; an enquiry determined that the drum had been packed improperly before shipment from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico. Concerns remain about safety, as well as the long-term risk of human intrusion into a facility that will remain dangerous for thousands of years after its eventual closure. But by and large, WIPP has functioned as designed, and it could do even more to help the US Department of Energy (DOE) address the fallout from the country’s nuclear-weapons programme.
Much high-level waste — produced during the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel into plutonium — is highly radioactive and dangerous. But the evidence suggests that some of the waste that is labelled ‘high level’ technically qualifies as transuranic. This material is still barred from direct disposal at WIPP, purely because of how it was produced. But labels can be changed. If wastes that meet the transuranic criteria could be shipped to WIPP, it would save considerable time and effort as the DOE continues to struggle with the country’s radioactive legacy. ………
After spending some $11 billion on the as-yet-unfinished vitrification plant over the past two decades at Hanford, some may hesitate to change course. But as former DOE secretary Steven Chu said, the worst thing you can do in a multi-decade project such as nuclear-waste clean-up is to close the door to alternatives. In this case, the solution is simple enough: nuclear waste should be managed on the basis of the risk it poses and not the process that produced it. http://www.nature.com/news/reclassify-waste-to-shift-the-nuclear-landscape-1.22880
Tell Congress: Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe in Iran
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
