Toshiba casts doubt on ability to stay in business after nuclear power push falters, Tampa Bay Times, New York Times, April 11, 2017 Toshiba, a pillar of the modern Japanese economy whose roots stretch back to the country’s industrial stirrings in the 19th century, warned on Tuesday that a disastrous foray into nuclear power may have crippled its business beyond repair.
In a stock-market filing in Japan, Toshiba said losses associated with Westinghouse Electric, its troubled U.S. nuclear power subsidiary, had created “substantial uncertainty” over its ability to continue as a going concern. The declaration lifts the stakes as Toshiba seeks outside investors for its coveted microchip business, a portion of which it is selling off to raise cash and stave off disaster.
Westinghouse’s woes have a strong tie to Florida.
Plans for two reactors that were supposed to be built by Westinghouse in Levy County, north of the Tampa Bay market, were shelved in 2014 by owner Duke Energy after early construction delays and massive run-ups in the anticipated price tag that approached $25 billion to complete the nuclear power plants.
As approved by state legislators and regulators, Duke Energy is able to charge its Florida ratepayers for about $1.5 billion in early construction costs for the Levy plant even though it will probably never be built. Duke Energy spent just enough on the plant site to receive a federal license last fall to proceed with the Levy facility, though the odds of restarting its construction appear slim and will further fade in time.
Florida Power & Light, a giant utility which serves most of southern Florida, has also delayed its planned Westinghouse nuclear expansion at its Turkey Point site near Miami…
“We will do what we can to avoid being delisted from the stock exchange,” Satoshi Tsunakawa, Toshiba’s chief executive, said at a news conference after apologizing to shareholders for Toshiba’s latest worrying turn.
The company reported financial details for the quarter that ended in December after multiple delays and disputes with its auditors.
The financial problems are mounting.
The auditors have refused to certify Toshiba’s accounts — a highly unusual signal of doubt about the company’s ability to recover its financial health.http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/toshiba-casts-doubt-on-ability-to-stay-in-business-after-nuclear-power/2319917
April 12, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, USA |
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Generators, business groups line up against Ohio nuclear bill http://www.utilitydive.com/news/generators-business-groups-line-up-against-ohio-nuclear-bill/440178/ Peter Maloney@TopFloorPower
Dive Brief:
- Backers and opponents are squaring off over a bill in Ohio that aims to provide financial support for FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants.
- Opponents include AARP, the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, the Ohio branch of the American Petroleum Institute, the Alliance for Energy Choice, and the Electric Power Supply Association, a generator trade group. They say the subsidies would only serve to prop up FirstEnergy’s bottom line and oppose undue costs on consumers.
- Backers include the International Brotherhood of Electrical Worker Local 245 and FirstEnergy, who argue the plants are essential for the state’s economy and local tax bases.
- Dive Insight:
Measures to shore up nuclear power plants have been put in place in New York and Illinois and are under consideration in legislatures in Connecticut, Ohio and New Jersey.
And in all instances they have encountered resistance.
Non-nuclear generators say the measures in Illinois and New York will distort the economics of wholesale power markets. PJM Interconnection has also weighed in. In a March filling in federal court, PJM’s independent market monitor said Illinois zero emission credit (ZEC) would violate federal law.
A bill in Ohio, called a zero emission nuclear resource (ZEN) program, would provide emissions credits for FirstEnergy’s three nuclear plants.
- Sen. John Eklund (R), the bill’s sponsor, says the continued operation of those nuclear assets is “critical to the economic health of Ohio, and especially to the communities in which they are located.”
The IBEW takes a similar view, focusing on the livelihood of the 517 union workers at the plants, as well as the “thousands” of union contractors who depend on the plants.
But independent generators groups, such as EPSA, argue that bill would first and foremost improve the bottom line of FirstEnergy and distort price formation in organized markets.
The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association takes a similar line, arguing that the bill would allow FirstEnergy to prop up its business on the backs of Ohio consumers.” The group says it supports nuclear power as part of an all-of-the-above approach but calls the bill, SB 128, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
AARP cites the opposition similar measures have attracted and calls them “scams” because they interfere with the working of wholesale energy markets.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is due to address that market question in a technical conference at the beginning of next month focused on state generation subsidies.
April 12, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA |
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Nuclear boondoggle http://www.connectsavannah.com/savannah/nuclear-boondoggle/Content?oid=4465661 Westinghouse bankrupty adds yet another setback to the already-problematic Plant Vogtle expansionBy Jim Morekisjim@connectsavannah.com
Instead, the project is still less than 40 percent complete.
Originally budgeted at about $14 billion, the expansion at Plant Vogtle is now by some estimations least $6 billion over budget and counting, with no real end in sight.
That much we already knew. But the big news last month was that the manufacturer of the reactor units themselves, Toshiba-owned Westinghouse, has put its North American operations into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
That’s right — the company making nuclear reactors upstream of us is going bankrupt. Sweet dreams!
None of this stopped the chief executive of Georgia Power’s parent firm, Southern Company, from getting a 34 percent pay raise last week. Thomas A. Fanning is now up to $15.8 million a year.
In the meantime, since 2011 almost ten percent of your monthly power bill goes not just to pay for the Vogtle expansion, but to pay for the financing costs. That’s thanks to special legislation, the Nuclear Financing Act, passed by the state legislature and then-Gov. Sonny Perdue in 2009.
See the line on your bill that says, “Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery?” That’s what you’ve been paying to finance the Vogtle expansion in advance.
(It comes to 9.7 percent of your billed kilowatt usage, not your whole monthly charge. In South Carolina they’ve got it even worse — a planned expansion of the V.C. Summer plant north of Columbia is costing each SCE&G customer more than double what we pay each month, and they don’t even get an itemized bill.)
The Nuclear Financing Act essentially stripped rate increase oversight of this project from elected regulators at the Public Service Commission (PSC). And customers are relieving Georgia Power of virtually all financial risk of its $6.1 billion share of the project cost, including interest on borrowed funds.
It’s quite a sweetheart deal for the subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co., the nation’s second-largest utility.
It gets sweeter: As we reported back in 2010, the legislation has no cap for cost overruns, and doesn’t even have a way to refund customers if the project doesn’t even get completed at all.
What the hell is going on? Sadly, not much that wasn’t predicted over ten years ago when all this began.
“Most all the concerns previously brought to the Public Service Commission are now playing out in real time,” says Stephen Smith, executive director of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE). “The utilities have totally lost credibility and now we need regulators to do their jobs.”
In 2006, Southern Co. began seeking approval to double the number of reactors at Plant Vogtle. (The first duo, Units 1 and 2, was online by the late ‘80s.)
It was to be the first expansion of nuclear energy since the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in 1979.
By 2009 the expansion plan had received approval from the PSC. If completed, the Vogtle expansion would make it the largest nuclear plant in the United States.
In 2012 — just a year after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan — the federal Nuclear Regulatory Council approved the planned use of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, a design the parent company says has greater safety parameters than the General Electric reactors at Fukushima.
As of this writing, not a single AP1000 has gone online yet; the first is set to go live at a Chinese plant later this year.
Project and reactor construction delays, and Westinghouse’s financial woes, are slowing new projects in China as well.
Since the Vogtle expansion was approved, the project has experienced one setback after another, all of them underwritten by Georgia Power customers, and almost all of them predicted by environmental watchdogs and media outlets such as this one.
In a grimly symbolic incident, in 2012 a reactor vessel set to contain one of the AP1000s literally fell off a train on the way to Burke County.
News of the accident, which involved no radioactive materials, didn’t reach the public until about a month later.
“Once again PSC staff time after time predicted delays well in advance of Southern Company admitting to them,” says Sara Barczak, High Risk Energy Choices Program Director for SACE.
“Once again there are revised commercial operation dates that represent another delay in the project.”
Originally, Unit 3 was supposed to be online April 2016. Then it was moved to July 2019. Completion for Unit 3 is now estimated to be Dec. 2019. Unit 4 was supposed to be online April 1, 2017. Then it was moved to July 2019. Completion for Unit 4 is now estimated to be to Dec. 2019.
The extreme delay, combined with a complicated pending litigation issue, prompted a new settlement agreement in the closing days of 2016, to reflect the new economic reality of the ballooning financing cost to ratepayers.
“There’s been a slight change in the financing situation because of the settlement reached at the end of the year,” explains Barczak.
“Interest is still going to be collected. But once the certified capital cost is reached, instead of being collected in advance it will go into a different type of accounting process,” she says.
“But customers will still be paying for financing costs far longer than expected, and ultimately will pay far more.”
Because of the huge delay, “Financing costs ended up representing the largest cost increases,” says Barczak.
“It’s like the longer you have a credit card not paid off, the higher the interest is. The interest ends up being what kills you.”
That’s why Barczak and other environmental watchdogs are frustrated with the settlement.
“Ratepayers are just going to pay for financing longer,” she says. “Because by 2017 both reactors were supposed to be operating by now, that advance payment will not be collected. There are no capital costs in the legislation.”
The 2016 settlement now targets a completed project date of Dec. 31 2020, but few observers have much trust in that target.
“This represents a 45-month delay. PSC public interest advocacy staff testified that even using a 45 month delay date, it was unlikely the new completion date can be achieved. It would require a threefold increase in productivity,” Barczak says.
“This forces customers to continue to pay for a facility where the utility cannot accurately predict the cost, and when or even if the facility will be completed, adds Stephen Smith of SACE.
Georgia Power originally said the financing plan would save customers over $300 million in the long run. But that was based on the original, now-obsolete timeline. Any savings realized are now more than outweighed by the cost overrun.
The Westinghouse bankruptcy adds yet another, and potentially very serious, layer of uncertainty to an already very uncertain project.
“Toshiba purchased Westinghouse in 2005-2006. They had developed a reactor design that most facilities across the country decided to go with,” Barczak explains.
“What panned out just recently is that Toshiba started losing big on these projects. They lost $6.3 billion on two projects combined,” she says.
“This bankruptcy has created a worst case scenario for electric power customers in Georgia and South Carolina. There are more questions than answers at this point,” says Smith.
“We see no path forward without some additional financial pain for customers.”
The bankruptcy is particularly tricky, says Tom Clements, executive director of SRS Watch.
“The loan guarantees for the Vogtle expansion run through Southern Co., not Westinghouse. Southern is not directly related to the bankruptcy,” says Clements.
“Once the bankruptcy court starts shifting costs around, you can’t predict what will happen,” he says.
Adding a twist is the fact that most of Westinghouse’s overseas operations aren’t included in the bankruptcy proceeding — raising suspicions that they are looking for a way to back out of the Vogtle deal.
“It’s pretty clear from their filings that they’re looking to us to take over this project,” said SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh, whose company is also contracting with Westinghouse for AP1000 reactors.
All of this is a far cry from the so-called “Nuclear Renaissance” at the turn of the 21st Century, when advances in technology were supposed to relieve the world of what at the time were high fossil fuel costs and an assumption of severe future scarcity.
With the Energy Policy Act of 2005 — a Bush-era initiative enthusiastically endorsed and enhanced during the Obama administration through generous loan guarantees — the future of U.S. energy looked to be a heavily nuclear one.
“After the Energy Policy Act of 2005 passed, over 30 new reactors were proposed, more than half in the Southeast,” Barczak says.
Then came the great recession of 2008, followed by a little thing called fracking.
Seemingly all of a sudden, the fossil fuel industry experienced a huge boom, both financially and in projected availability.
“We’ve seen the demise of the so-called nuclear renaissance,” says Barczak. “A lot of license applications for new nuclear plants were withdrawn.”
But not at Plant Vogtle.
At the time, the Congressional Budget Office was prophetic in its assessment of the state of the nuclear industry.
“If construction costs for new nuclear power plants proved to be as high as the average cost of nuclear plants built in the 1970s and 1980s or if natural gas prices fell back to the levels seen in the 1990s, then new nuclear capacity would not be competitive, regardless of the incentives provided by Energy Policy Act,” said a CBO report from 2008.
“Every single thing we said might happen did happen,” says Barczak. “Then Fukushima happened.”
The tsunami-induced failure of a reactor at the Fukushima Daichi plant, a disaster of such scope that its impacts aren’t fully measured six years later, wasn’t even a speed bump for the Vogtle expansion.
“We are committed to the project and completing the units on schedule and on budget,” said Southern Nuclear Co. spokesperson Beth Thomas at the time. “We’re certainly monitoring the events in Japan and our thoughts and prayers are with the people there.”
A lot of this momentum, Barczak says, it due to the unique situation of a utility building nuclear power plants with all the regulatory burden on the government, and most of the financial risk on ratepayers.
The Southeast, she says, “is in a weird situation in that we’re a regulated market but very weak on consumer protections. States like Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina all had legislators passing legislation to put extra burdens on consumers.”
The nuclear power industry, Barczak says, “isn’t exactly what you’d call a nimble industry. It can’t react to changes that sometimes happen very quickly. It’s based on the old model of, ‘OK you’re gonna have more people, so build a bigger power plant,’” she says.
“For the Southeast, if the coal paradigm seems to be going by the wayside, then we’re still in the nuclear paradigm.”
Noboby knows what happens next, though all eyes are on the bankruptcy court. With the precedent set for ratepayers to stay on the hook regardless of how much sunk cost is going into the Vogtle expansion, there is vanishing hope of a win/win solution for ratepayers.
April 12, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, USA |
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30-year veteran compares EPA chief’s climate denial to lies tobacco executives told Congress Mike Cox retired after three decades at the Environmental Protection Agency on March 31 with a scathing letter for EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.
Team Trump is apparently an open joke to their staff — something even the Reagan and Bush administrations never experienced. Morale has collapsed, Cox notes.
“I have worked under six administrations with political appointees leading EPA from both parties,” Cox wrote on his last day on the job. “This is the first time I remember staff openly dismissing and mocking the environmental policies of an administration and by extension you.”
The 60-year-old Cox, who worked on climate change for EPA’s Region 10, which covers Alaska and the northwest, was especially harsh on Pruitt’s science denial.
Cox called Pruitt’s claim on national TV that CO2 is not a primary contributor to recent global warming “shocking” — and directly compared it to the congressional hearing with the CEOs of the major tobacco companies where “all of the CEOs categorically denied that smoking causes lung cancer.”
What’s the result of this denial? “You will continue to undermine your credibility and integrity with EPA staff, and the majority of the public,” Cox wrote, “if you continue to question this basic science of climate change.”
In the five-page letter, Cox slams the president for the “false and misleading” claim that killing EPA carbon pollution standards will bring back coal jobs.
In a section on “indefensible budget cuts,” Cox slams Pruitt for standing by while the White House gutted the overall EPA budget. These cuts have real consequences for real people, he says.
Cox directly asks Pruitt:
- Why resources for Alaska Native Villages are being reduced when they are presented with some of the most difficult conditions in the country;
- why you would eliminate funds for the protection and restoration of the Puget Sound ecosystem which provides thousands of jobs and revenue for Washington State; and
- why you would reduce funds for a program that retrofits school buses to reduce diesel emission exhaust inhaled by our most vulnerable population — children.
The entire letter from Cox is a must read for anyone who cares about clean air, clean water, and our children’s future.
April 12, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA |
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China’s Xi Outshines Trump as the World’s Future Energy Leader, Failure by the two presidents to discuss climate change leaves China ahead, based on actions if not words, Scientific American By David Biello on April 11, 2017 “……Trump and China’s Pres. Xi Jinping apparently ignored climate change at their inaugural meeting last week. Although the two leaders apparently found time to discuss everything from North Korea’s nuclear capability to a potential reset of trade relations, climate change was never mentioned, even though Trump might have wanted to take the opportunity to directly fact check his Tweet from last year that China invented climate change to cripple U.S. manufacturing.
The silence was not a surprise, however, even if the focus of the summit was meant to be “global challenges around the world.” As Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the U.S. State Department, predicted, “I don’t think that [climate change is] going to be a major part of the discussion in Florida.”
That’s too bad, because China and the U.S. remain the two biggest polluters when it comes to greenhouse gases. Cooperation on climate change provided a rare area of agreement between China and the U.S. during the Obama administration. And it was in large part due to the efforts of China and the U.S. that the nations of the world agreed to combat climate change in Paris in 2015.
It is also too bad for the U.S.—because, ironically, the silence leaves China as the world’s future energy leader. As many see the Trump regime abandoning U.S. leadership in the fight to restrain global warming, China seems willing to step up, at least in rhetoric. “What should concern us is refusing to face up to problems and not knowing what to do about them,” Xi said in a speech to the World Economic Forum in January. “The Paris Agreement is a hard-won achievement which is in keeping with the underlying trend of global development. All signatories should stick to it instead of walking away from it, as this is a responsibility we must assume for future generations.”
At the same time, the Chinese have taken the lead in producing clean energy—from topping the world in the production and installation of solar power to building an entire new series of nuclear power plants, making use of the latest technology. Trump’s avoidance of the climate change problem could leave U.S. industry at a competitive disadvantage……..
Trump has already signed an executive order forcing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw the Clean Power Plan, which would have cut pollution from power plants. He is rolling back other federal efforts to combat climate change, such as reducing methane pollution from oil and gas pipelines as well as promoting a budget that could eliminate funding for clean energy research. All of which undercuts any serious effort to meet the U.S. commitment under the Paris agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
Xi’s China, by contrast, plans to implement a national cap-and-trade system to reduce CO2 pollution this year. And there are already signs that decades-long growth in China’s coal burning has slowed or even stopped, potentially fulfilling the country’s Paris pledge to reach a peak in its pollution by 2030. This change of course is not just aimed at fending off climate change but also at reducing unhealthy air pollution that even government leaders in Beijing cannot avoid breathing…….
Nowhere remains safe from climate change. The U.S. is already feeling the effects, such as weird weather upsetting the plans of American farmers. Those effects will only get worse if nothing is done to stop dumping CO2 into the sky, much less to begin to reduce concentrations that have now reached more than 400 parts per million in the air—higher than that breathed by any members of our fellow Homo sapiens in the last 200,000 years. The global warming challenge is also intimately connected to the global challenges of feeding more than seven billion people, providing drinkable water as supplies dwindle and supplying electricity to billions of people who still do not have it. None of these challenges can be solved in isolation but rather require solutions like clean energy supergrids and microgrids that address energy poverty and reduce climate change pollution at the same time.
This also holds true even for the items that were on the U.S.–China agenda at Mar-a-Lago, such as the future of war-torn Syria after Trump ordered a cruise missile strike in response to that nation’s use of chemical weapons in its civil war. A shortage of water and food in Syria helped start the horrendous conflict there, forcing refugees to flee the war and the nation—in other words, a deadly fight and flight exacerbated by climate change. The conflict in Syria may serve as a warning from a future in which Trump continues to deny the facts about global warming. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinas-xi-outshines-trump-as-the-worlds-future-energy-leader/
April 12, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
China, climate change, politics international, USA |
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The Moapa went from suffering at the hands of coal to benefiting from the profits of renewables
Color Lines, Yessenia Funes APR 10, 2017 Tucked between scattered red desert rocks, the Moapa Band of Paiutes dwells on a little over 70,000 acres in southeastern Nevada. It’s a small tribe with a population of no more than 311, but those numbers
haven’t stopped its members from shutting down a giant coal generating station to protect their health and land.
While President Donald Trump is attempting to revive the coal industry, the Moapa Band has proven how dangerous that industry can be to health. Tribal members suffer from high rates of asthma and heart disease, though the tribe’s small size makes it difficult to accurately quantify. The coal-fired Reid Gardner Generating Station sits outside the Moapa River Indian Reservation, just beyond a fence for some tribal members who have had to deal with the repercussions of its air pollution and toxic coal ash waste for 52 years.
“The whole tribe was suffering from it,” says Vernon Lee, a tribal member and former council member who worked at the plant 15 years ago. “It’s just bad stuff. We all knew that.”
Coincidentally, the day after the station last stopped operating (on March 17), the Moapa Band of Paiutes launched the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project, the first-ever solar project built on tribal land, in partnership with large-scale solar operator First Solar. Companies started approaching the tribe about leasing its land around the same time their organizing took off, and things essentially fell into place.
Despite all this—and the impending closure of the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station in Arizona, also run by NV Energy and impacting Navajo Nation members who work there or live nearby—President Trump is pushing forth with a coal-first energy agenda……..
the tribe’s prevalence of cardiovascular and respiratory issues are consistent with what is generally caused by air pollution, says C. Arden Pope III, an environmental epidemiologist who currently teaches economics at Brigham Young University but has served on the EPA Science Advisory Board and chairs the EPA Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis.
Coal releases heavy carbon dioxide emissions, but it also emits a cocktail of pollutants dangerous to health: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, particulates and fly ash that is then placed into nearby ponds. Lee calls them “chemical soup ponds.” These pollutants can lead to respiratory issues, heart problems, as well as neurological and developmental damage.
Pope has examined the health of the Moapa Band. Back in 2012, he attempted to conduct a study on the tribe but was unable to establish conclusive findings because the tribe’s numbers are so small. Then, there was the issue of no valid control group because, as Pope put it, “they all lived so very close to the power plant that…they were all being exposed.”
Still, Pope did collect a lot of data, and the health impacts were enough for him to have a strong opinion about how the generating station was impacting their health: “Do I think that the exposure to air pollution likely had adverse impacts on their health? The answer to that is yes.”
And he says that their high rates of respiratory and cardiovascular issues are in line with greater empirical research on air pollution. Without a conclusive study, however, it was difficult for government officials to take tribal members seriously.
“But we wouldn’t care,” chairwoman Simmons says. “We smelled it and felt it.”
Then, in 2010, they met Vinny Spotleson, who was working with the Sierra Club at that time. That changed everything.
It all started with letters. That’s how tribal members first thought they’d give the EPA and state agencies like the state’s Division of Environmental Protection a piece of their mind. “People wrote [many] letters,” Simmons tells me, adding that they never got a response.
When they met Spotleson in 2010, Simmons realized that they finally had the support needed to be taken seriously by officials. Before then, Simmons says government agencies would shoot back with numbers from air quality reports she and other Moapa people didn’t fully understand. But Spotleson introduced them to lawyers and scientists. From there, all the Moapa had to do was tell their stories. Simmons remembers Spotleson telling her, “Just say how you feel, and they’ll never be able to prove you wrong.”……
with the help of the Sierra Club, the Moapa Band of Paiutes entered into a legal battle against the Bureau of Land Management for approving the expansion project in Moapa Band of Paiutes, et al v. BLM, et al. Part of their campaign involved growing public awareness. The residents in Las Vegas whose homes were powered by the plant had no idea where it was or that it even existed—much less what it was doing to the Moapa.
“We did see a lot of people in the community, in Las Vegas, in southern Nevada, really engaging and making this campaign their own,” says Elspeth DiMarzio, another Sierra Club campaign organizer who worked with the Moapa. “Once they were aware of the issue, they could see that their neighbors in Moapa were suffering because of an energy that they were receiving.”……
the tribe ultimately lost that case in 2013—but they didn’t lose everything.
Legislators introduced Senate Bill 123 in February 2013, which would require certain utilities (like NV Energy, the one behind Reid Gardner) to reduce their coal-based greenhouse gas emissions by eliminating at least 800 megawatts of electricity by 2019 and replacing part of that lost energy with 350 megawatts of renewable energy like solar or wind. This came after these three years of organizing by the Moapa and its allies.
By April, NV Energy gave its support for SB 123. In June 2013, the bill became law—with a stamp of approval from NV Energy and the Moapa.
The plant shuttered for good March 2017…….
The tribe now leases its land to Capital Dyanmics, which owns the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project. The plant provided 115 construction jobs for tribal members and employs two permanently as field technicians.
The power goes to Los Angeles, and the tribe receives revenue from leasing their land. But they’ve been discussing and attempting to find bidders for two other solar projects with the thought of launching one that would bring that power into their homes.
They have a new revenue stream and are still deciding on the best way to use it. “We’ve never been in this position before or had these [solar] projects before,” Simmons says. “It’s hard to take off and start spending everything we do have because we want to plan and spend accordingly.”
The Moapa went from suffering at the hands of coal to benefiting from the profits of renewables……http://www.colorlines.com/articles/how-one-small-tribe-beat-coal-and-built-solar-plant
April 12, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
indigenous issues, renewable, USA |
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Why you’ll hear nuclear emergency sirens sounding in N.J., Del. http://www.nj.com/salem/index.ssf/2017/04/why_youll_hear_nuclear_emergency_sirens_sounding_i.html By Bill Gallo Jr. | For NJ.com April 11, 2017 LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK TWP. — The 70-plus emergency sirens around the Artificial Island nuclear generating complex will be tested Tuesday night, officials say.
The sirens located within the 10-mile radius of the three reactors operated by PSEG Nuclear, are scheduled to sound at 7:20 p.m., according to company spokesman Joe Delmar.
The sirens — 34 in New Jersey and 37 in Delaware –will sound for three minutes. They are part of the alert system that would inform those living near the Artificial Island complex in case of an emergency at one of the nuclear plants.
Parts of Salem and Cumberland counties in New Jersey and in New Castle and Kent counties in Delaware all fall within the 10-mile radius of the plants.
During the siren tests residents are not required to do anything. n an emergency, such as the accidental release of a large amount of radiation, the sirens would alert those living near the generating complex to tune to radio stations WENJ-FM 97.3 or Marine Channel 16 in New Jersey for official information on what steps they should take.
The stations in Delaware include WKNZ-FM 88.7, WDEL-AM 1150, WDDE-FM 91.1, WSUX-AM 1280, WDSD-FM 94.7, WWTX-AM 1290, WSTW-FM 93.7, WDOV-AM 1410, WRDX-FM 92.9, WILM-AM 1450, WJBR-FM 99.5 and Marine Channel 16.
These radio stations are part of the Emergency Alert System.
Depending on the emergency, residents in the 10-mile zone could be directed to shelter in place or evacuate.
Information about what to do in an emergency is also available online. he three reactors operated by PSEG Nuclear at Artificial Island make up the second-largest commercial nuclear complex in the U.S. in terms of power output. Only the Palo Verde complex in Arizona produces more electricity.
Bill Gallo Jr. may be reached at bgallo@njadvancemedia.com.
April 12, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
safety, USA |
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Almost Everyone Agrees that the U.S. Strikes Against Syria are Illegal, Except for Most Governments, Opinio Juris, 9 Apr 17, by Julian Ku The blogosphere is now so fast that we can get an enormous sampling of expert opinion in a very short time. So within 24 hours of President Trump’s military strikes on Syria, we have already heard from former Bush State Department Legal Advisor John Bellinger, former Obama State Department Legal Advisors Harold Koh and Brian Egan, former DOJ officials and law profs Jack Goldsmith and Ryan Goodman, as well as numerous law profs and other experts including our very own Deborah Pearlstein and Edward Swaine. The bottom line: Almost everyone (except for Harold Koh) thinks the strikes violate the U.N. Charter and many think it also violates the U.S. Constitution.
Most of what I have to say I said in 2012-13 on this issue, but I am struck by one group of important actors who seem relatively untroubled by the “illegality” of the U.S. strikes under the UN Charter: states. With the notable exception of the Russian government, very few states have come out to criticize the U.S. strikes as a violation of international law. No one is saying it is illegal, but it is striking how few are willing to say it is illegal. I’ve gathered a few statements and links below.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs:……….
France and Germany (President and Chancellor):…….
United Kingdom Defence Minister:…….
European Union, President of European Council:….
Turkey, Deputy Foreign Minister:……
Japan, Prime Minister……
This survey is not comprehensive and some large players, like India, have yet to weigh in. But it seems only Russia and Iran have condemned the strikes vigorously. The general support for the attacks in Europe, the Middle East, along withChina’s acquiescence, seems to show that many states are not very troubled by the violation of Article 2(4) most scholars think has occurred here. Is this because it is a one-off attack? Or does it suggest Article 2(4) has very little pull with many foreign governments these days?
On the domestic US law front, FiveThirtyEight has counted 69 senators have already issued statements supporting the Syria Strikes and while there are critics on constitutional grounds, it doesn’t seem like close to a majority in Congress.
Of course, none of this means that the experts are wrong on the law. But it is at least worth noting the limited impact of the law so far on governmental actors, as the debate on the legality of the Syria Strikes continues. http://opiniojuris.org/2017/04/07/almost-everyone-agrees-that-the-u-s-strikes-against-syria-are-illegal-under-international-law-except-for-most-governments/
April 10, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Legal, USA |
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As noted by the Palmer Report, Trump owns stock in Raytheon, which was reported by Business Insider in 2015.
According to Trump’s financial disclosure reports filed with the FEC in 2015, his stock portfolio includes investments in technology firms, financial institutions and defense firms, including Raytheon.
On Thursday, Trump launched an attack on the al-Shayrat military airfield, used by both Syrian and Russian military forces, hitting it with 59 Tomahawk missiles manufactured by Raytheon. Trump’s attack on Syria was reportedly in response to a deadly gas attack launched by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against his own people earlier in the week.
While the Tomahawk attack did little damage to the airfield — with the Syrian air force continuing to launch assaults from the same base on Friday — investors, sensing an increasing escalation in tensions between two countries and the possibility of war , pushed Raytheon stock up.
Since taking office, Trump has refused to divulge all of his financial information — including his income taxes — and refused to place his business and financial holdings in a blind trust allowing Trump and his family to move money and investments around as they see fit.
April 10, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA |
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Trump’s Options for North Korea Include Placing Nukes in South Korea, NBC News 7 Apr 17 by WILLIAM M. ARKIN, CYNTHIA MCFADDEN, KEVIN MONAHAN and ROBERT WINDREM The National Security Council has presented President Donald Trump with options to respond to
North Korea’s nuclear program — including putting American nukes in South Korea or killing dictator Kim Jong-un, multiple top-ranking intelligence and military officials told NBC News.
Both scenarios are part of an accelerated review of North Korea policy prepared in advance of Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.
The White House hopes the Chinese will do more to influence Pyongyang through diplomacy and enhanced sanctions. But if that fails, and North Korea continues its development of nuclear weapons, there are other options on the table that would significantly alter U.S. policy.
The first and most controversial course of action under consideration is placing U.S. nuclear weapons in South Korea. The U.S. withdrew all nuclear weapons from South Korea 25 years ago. Bringing back bombs — likely to Osan Air Base, less than 50 miles south of the capital of Seoul — would mark the first overseas nuclear deployment since the end of the Cold War, an unquestionably provocative move.
“We have 20 years of diplomacy and sanctions under our belt that has failed to stop the North Korean program,” one senior intelligence official involved in the review told NBC News. “I’m not advocating pre-emptive war, nor do I think that the deployment of nuclear weapons buys more for us than it costs,” but he stressed that the U.S. was dealing with a “war today” situation. He doubted that Chinese and American interests coincided closely enough to find a diplomatic solution………http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-options-north-korea-include-placing-nukes-south-korea-n743571
April 10, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics international, South Korea, USA, weapons and war |
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Donald Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes on a Syrian airfield was hailed by many corporate media and foreign policy establishment types, but in addition to the myriad questions surrounding the motivation and constitutionality of Trump’s unilateral action, the ineffectiveness of the strike is becoming the story. According to multiple reports, flights from the airbase resumed on Friday, a day after the strikes.
Trump, true to form, wore that insecurity on his sleeve, and his Twitter feed:….
Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) pointed out that the strikes did “basically nothing” to prevent Assad from launching attacks on civilians. Lieu is part of a growing number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who are questioning the efficacy of the Syria strikes, including one of the most vocal boosters of Trump’s decision, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
The criticism sparked an absurd response from current Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, who was pressed by Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace over the fact that the airbase resumed operations so quickly:……..
Trump has definitely sent a lot of messages with this strike, including to the Russians prior to the strike, to Congress by not seeking their authorization, and to the corporate media by getting them to look away from the Russia collusion investigation. The faintest of these was to Assad, who scarcely has any more incentive to cease his brutality than he did last week. http://shareblue.com/trump-team-on-the-defensive-amid-dem-criticism-of-syria-strikes/
April 10, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA |
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Nuclear plant owners expand search for financial rescue, http://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/04/nuclear_plant_owners_expand_se.html By Marc Levy | The Associated Press April 09, 2017 HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The natural gas boom that has hammered coal mines and driven down utility bills is hitting nuclear power plants, sending multi-billion-dollar energy companies in search of a financial rescue in states where competitive electricity markets have compounded the effect.
Fresh off victories in Illinois and New York, the nuclear power industry is now pressing lawmakers in Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania for action. Lobbying efforts are bubbling up into proposals, even as court battles in Illinois and New York crank up over the billions of dollars that ratepayers will otherwise foot in the coming decade to keep nuclear plants open longer.
Perhaps nuclear power’s biggest nemesis is the cheap natural gas flooding the market from the northeast’s Marcellus Shale reservoir, the nation’s most prolific gas field. Meanwhile, electricity consumption hit a wall after the recession, while states have emphasized renewable energies and efficiency.
“You put all of this together and it’s a perfect storm,” said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group.
Opposition to a so-called nuclear bailout is uniting rivals and the natural gas exploration industry. The potential for a hit to utility bills is drawing pushback from the AARP and manufacturers.
Subsidizing nuclear power could chill investment in lower-cost energy sources and erode competitive markets, critics say, and, with natural gas prices expected to stay low for some time, shutting down nuclear plants may have no impact on electricity bills.
For steel companies, paper companies, food processors and pharmaceutical makers whose electric bill might be their biggest expense, “a mil of an increase in a kilowatt hour turns into a lot of money,” said David Kleppinger of the Industrial Energy Consumers of Pennsylvania.
In Pennsylvania, the nation’s No. 2 nuclear power state after Illinois, it could mean propping up five nuclear plants to help feed the sprawling mid-Atlantic power grid that stretches from New Jersey to Illinois.
The owners of the 11 nuclear plants in Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania are no small potatoes: Exelon, PSEG, FirstEnergy and Dominion, among them.
The plant owners’ strategy is similar to that in Illinois and New York: give nuclear power megawatts the kind of preferential treatment and premium payments that are given to renewable energies, such as wind and solar.
The industry’s pitch is part economic, part environmental. A plant shutting down would devastate a local economy, they say. And, nuclear waste and water consumption issues aside, zero-carbon nuclear plants are better suited than natural gas or coal to fight climate change, they say.
The claim to environmental credentials has drawn jeers from nuclear power’s traditional critics.
“When did highly carcinogenic toxic waste become green?” said Eric Epstein, a longtime nuclear power watchdog in Pennsylvania.
The most vulnerable nuclear plants are those with just one unit — such as Exelon’s Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, where a second unit was destroyed in a partial meltdown in 1979 — or those in need of expensive upgrades, analysts say.
FirstEnergy says it could decide next year to sell or close its three nuclear plants — Davis-Besse and Perry in Ohio and Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania — unless states make them more competitive.
Exelon is warning that it could close Three Mile Island and PSEG says it won’t operate nuclear plants — it owns all or parts of all three in New Jersey and part of Peach Bottom station in Pennsylvania — that are long-term money losers.
Should nuclear power disappear, it can be replaced.
“The question is, at what cost and whether or not you can find other resources that have the same emission characteristics,” said Joe Dominguez, an Exelon executive vice president.
In the mid-Atlantic grid, it likely would be natural gas. Some 190 natural gas power projects comprising roughly 59,000 megawatts are being studied or built, according to PJM Interconnection, the grid operator. That dwarfs the grid’s nuclear capacity.
April 10, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, politics, USA |
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TRUMP’S CONFUSING STRIKE ON SYRIA, If President Trump broadens his aims against Assad, he will enter the very morass that Candidate Trump warned against.New Yorker, By Steve Coll APRIL 17, 2017, “……. despite having previously seen similarly horrifying pictures, Trump had been skeptical of military action in Syria. In 2013, Assad’s forces attacked civilians and rebels near Damascus with sarin, a banned nerve agent, killing more than a thousand people. Trump advised President Obama, via Twitter, “Do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside.” (Obama had called Assad’s use of chemical arms crossing a “red line,” which might lead the U.S. to take military action, but he did not strike. Instead, Russia helped broker an agreement by which Assad gave up many—but evidently not all—of his chemical arms.)]
Trump has said, “I’m very capable of changing to anything I want to change to.” In the case of Syria, however, he seems to have acted without a clear plan in place. During the campaign, he promised to “bomb the shit out of” isis, which holds territory in Syria, but he also said that it was foolish to become mired in the civil war, or to target Assad, who has opposed isis—at least, rhetorically.
As recently as March 30th, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Assad’s future would be “decided by the Syrian people,” words that signalled a sharp departure from Obama’s insistence that Assad must leave office. Then, last Thursday, Tillerson seemed to shift direction, saying that “it would seem there would be no role” for Assad in Syria’s political future. But he later said, “I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today.”……..
If President Trump broadens his aims against Assad, to establish civilian safe havens, for example, or to ground Syria’s Air Force, or to bomb Assad to the negotiating table, he will enter the very morass that Candidate Trump warned against. He would have to manage risks—military confrontation with Russia, an intensified refugee crisis, a loss of momentum against isis—that Obama studied at great length and concluded to be unmanageable, at least at a cost consistent with American interests……..
once started, even limited wars upend initial plans and assumptions, violence produces unintended consequences, and conflicts are much easier to begin or escalate than to end.
Canadian, European, and Middle Eastern allies, as well as some sections of the Washington foreign-policy establishment, applauded Trump for his strike, pointing out its narrow scope, and noting that Assad had brought it on himself. Unfortunately, Donald Trump’s continual search for approval seems to contribute to his unpredictability. Perhaps he will soon rediscover his inclination to proceed cautiously in Middle Eastern wars. Given his bombast, his inconsistency, and his preference for gut instinct over policy knowledge, he always seemed likely to be a dangerous wartime President. The worry now is that he will also be an ambitious one. ♦http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/trumps-confusing-strike-on-syria?mbid=nl_TNY%20Template%20-%20With%20Photo%20(155)&CNDID=46508601&spMailingID=10785187&spUserID=MTcxNTIwODYzMTU2S0&spJobID=1140615112&spReportId=MTE0MDYxNTExMgS2
April 10, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics international, USA, weapons and war |
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Ohio lawmakers weigh bailout for FirstEnergy nuclear plants, by Associated Press April 9, 2017 TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) – A bailout proposed for Ohio’s two nuclear plants would keep alive a big source of jobs and tax money but end up increasing electricity rates for FirstEnergy Corp.’s customers in the state.
It will be up to the legislature and Republican Gov. John Kasich whether to approve what would amount to a huge subsidy for the plants.
While it’s not known how much FirstEnergy’s rates could go up, the increases would be capped at 5 percent.
Exactly how much the plan would generate for the nuclear plants isn’t clear yet because it’s based on a complex formula that involves plant emissions.
Both New York and Illinois recently approved multibillion-dollar subsidies to stop unprofitable nuclear plants from closing prematurely.
Akron-based FirstEnergy says the subsidies are needed to save the Davis-Besse and Perry plants that sit along Lake Erie and make 14 percent of the state’s electricity. The company has said both might be sold even if the subsidies are approved………http://nbc4i.com/2017/04/09/ohio-lawmakers-weigh-bailout-for-firstenergy-nuclear-plants/
April 10, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, politics, USA |
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US warns of more Syria attacks during UN Security Council meeting, news.com.au , APRIL 8, 2017 Sarah Blake, in New York, staff writers, wires News Corp Australia Network THE US ambassador to the United Nations has said that the US is prepared to take further action in Syria.
April 8, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics international, USA, weapons and war |
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nuclear-news 