Energy Department issues scathing evaluation of nuclear project WP, By Steven Mufson February 28 The Energy Department has delivered a blunt assessment of the work done by one of the world’s biggest companies in the nuclear business: “Unsatisfactory.”
For a decade, CB&I Areva MOX Services has been under contract with the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration to design, build and operate a facility near the Savannah River in Aiken, S.C.
Yet the project — designed to convert weapons-grade plutonium and uranium into a mixed oxide fuel for commercial nuclear power plants — has been running far beyond budget and way behind schedule. Estimates now put the price tag at $17 billion.
On Dec. 5, the NNSA completed a scathing evaluation that branded several of the company’s claims about the state of the project “misleading” and “inaccurate.” The agency said CB&I Areva’s claims that the project is 70 percent complete “are patently false.” A separate September 2016 Energy Department report said construction was only 28 percent complete……
CB&I Areva is a venture created as a combination of Chicago Iron & Steel and the French nuclear giant Areva. The company did not return calls for comment……
One of the project’s sharpest critics Tom Clements, director of the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch, obtained the December NNSA assessment through a Freedom of Information Act request. He called the evaluation “devastating.”
“I have never seen an asessment like that. It all but calls them liars,” he said……
the Obama administration continued to say the MOX plant at Savannah River wasn’t practical. What started as a $620 million project in 1999 with a 2006 starting date has become a $17 billion project still decades away from a start state. By some estimates, it would require a $1 billion a year appropriation, which the Obama administration said was unlikely at best…..
The assessment said that while the contractor boasted of “zero order non-compliance,” in fact the NNSA found evidence of non-compliance.
Overall, the NNSA awarded nothing from the $2.7 million available for a bonus payment to the contractors. It said, “there continued to be a lack of transparency and openness in external communications with key project stakeholders by the contractor including continued release of misleading and inaccurate project information.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/energy-department-issues-scathing-evaluation-of-nuclear-project/2017/02/28/8af4d11a-fd2c-11e6-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.html?utm_term=.4b6e8e136ee6
March 1, 2017
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politics, technology, USA |
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Advocates stress need for greater progress on advanced nuclear development https://dailyenergyinsider.com/featured/3519-advocates-stress-need-greater-progress-advanced-nuclear-development/ February 28, 2017 by Daily Energy Insider Reports Investors, philanthropists and
innovators in the nuclear industry recently discussed the need to use the power of storytelling to better communicate the importance of advanced nuclear technology at think tank Third Way’s Advanced Nuclear Summit.
Ross Koningstein, engineering director emeritus of Google Inc.’s advanced energy research and development (R&D) group, stressed the need to communicate the fact that renewables alone will not solve climate change and that nuclear must be part of the solution, especially to people who have already made up their minds to the contrary.
“We’re in the middle of an evolution in thinking, away from anti-nuclear orthodoxy,” Spencer Reeder, senior program officer for climate and energy at Seattle-based Vulcan Inc.’s, philanthropy unit, said. “Our objective is to work through the inherent tension between these narratives. Facts will get you part of the way to influence the narrative — you need storytelling.”
Jay Faison, founder and chief executive officer of ClearPath Foundation, also stressed the need to return to large-scale, industrial innovation with investments in infrastructure projects.
“The nuclear ecosystem is in crisis,” Faison said. “To fix the crisis you need innovation. To get innovation, you need better policy, and to get to better policy, you need a clear, compelling story.”
Faison warned that countries like China and Russia are overtaking the United States in nuclear technology innovation.
A group of U.S. senators also expressed their support for advanced nuclear energy and the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act, which the House advanced last month. The bill would direct the U.S. Department of Energy to develop testing centers to commercialize advanced reactor technology.
“The U.S. has long been a global leader in innovation, and the best of the world’s scientists have come to this country to discover, develop, innovate and deploy some of the most compelling technologies of the last century,” U.S. Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said. “Whether we’ll continue to lead is up to this Congress and the new administration.”
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), said he would continue supporting legislation “that increases domestic energy production to provide affordable, reliable energy and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The United States must remain a leader in the global energy sector and nuclear energy is certainly a critical component of our future.”
March 1, 2017
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spinbuster, USA |
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Green groups: Indian Point nuke can be replaced with carbon-free resources, Utility Dive, Robert Walton, 28 Feb 17
Dive Brief:
- Increased energy efficiency and transmission upgrades to bring in more renewable power can help replace a nuclear plant north of New York City, according to a new report released by two environmental groups.
- New analysis performed by Synapse Energy Economics shows that lower demand and more solar and wind energy can help the state replace the power from the Indian Point nuclear facility with clean energy options that will not raise consumer bills.
- Under an agreement between the state and plant operator Entergy, the Indian Point nuclear facility will shut down by 2021.
Dive Insight:Last month’s announcement that Entergy would shut down its Indian Point plant was a win for nuclear opponents, who for years have been wary of a plant within 30 miles of the nation’s largest metropolitan area.
The news, however, left open the question of how to continue to power the the city without turning to fossil fuels.
Now, green groups say they believe the city that never sleeps can keep the lights on — all night and every day — using only carbon.
New research from Synapse Energy, released by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Riverkeeper, finds additional solar and wind power, along with energy efficiency gains, can power the city. But that goal also depends on the construction of the Champlain Hudson Express transmission line, which would move 1,000 MW of hydropower from Quebec to the city.
“Recent transmission improvements — coupled with energy efficiency gains, cheaper renewables and lower demand estimates — show that New York is already on its way to a reliable, affordable, clean energy future,” Riverkeeper President Paul Gallay said in a statement.
He said the report shows that when Indian Point closes in 2021, “that power can be replaced entirely with clean sources as long as we take advantage of the additional renewable energy and efficiency options available to us.”
Key findings in the report show the Indian Point retirement will add less than 1% to overall wholesale electric system costs, and retail impacts will be even smaller. The state’s 50% renewables goal is expected to drive the addition of both utility-scale and distributed solar, as well as both offshore and traditional wind generation……. http://www.utilitydive.com/news/green-groups-indian-point-nuke-can-be-replaced-with-other-carbon-free-reso/436938/
March 1, 2017
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renewable, USA |
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Thousands of Scott Pruitt’s Emails Just Hit the Internet. Here Are the Wildest, Scariest Bits. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/02/new-epa-head-scott-pruitts-emails-reveal-close-ties-fossil-fuel-interests
The new EPA chief had a “very cozy” relationship with fossil fuel.
OLIVER MILMAN AND DOMINIC RUSHEFEB. 22, 2017 This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of theClimate Desk collaboration.
The close relationship between Scott Pruitt, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and fossil fuel interests including the billionaire Koch brothers has been highlighted in more than 7,500 emails and other records released by the Oklahoma attorney general’s office on Wednesday.
The documents show that Pruitt, while Oklahoma attorney general, acted in close concert with oil and gas companies to challenge environmental regulations, even putting his letterhead to a complaint filed by one firm, Devon Energy. This practice was first revealed in 2014, but it now appears that it occurred more than once.
The emails also show that American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, an oil and gas lobby group, provided Pruitt’s office with template language to oppose ozone limits and the renewable fuel standard program in 2013. AFPM encouraged Oklahoma to challenge the rules, noting: “This argument is more credible coming from a state.” Later that year, Pruitt did file opposition to both of these regulations.
The letters also show the cozy relationship between Pruitt and the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), the influential US lobbying network of Republican politicians and big businesses, and other lobby groups sponsored by the Koch brothers, the billionaire energy investors who have spent decades fighting against environmental regulation.
Alec has consistently challenged the science on climate change and fought against tougher environmental regulation. Companies including Google, Ford and Enterprise Rent-a-Car have quit Alec in protest of its climate change activities.
The emails contain correspondence between Pruitt’s executive assistant and Amy Anderson, Alec director and Oklahoma membership contact, about Pruitt’s appearance at a May 2013 Alec board meeting in Oklahoma City.
That meeting attracted more protesters than attendees, with 600 firefighters, teachers, environmentalists and church leaders carrying signs reading “ALEC is Not OK” and chanting: “Backroom deals are Alec’s game / Sweetheart deals for corporate gain.”
Pruitt addressed a workshop entitled “Embracing American Energy Opportunities: From Wellheads to Pipelines”.
The emails state that Pruitt spoke “on state primacy in oil and gas regulation and the EPA’s sue & settle modus operandi”. The lunch meeting was sponsored by Koch Industries, a major Alec sponsor.
Pruitt was congratulated for his work on pushing back against the EPA by another Koch-backed pressure group.
“Thank you to your respective bosses and all they are doing to push back against President Obama’s EPA and its axis with liberal environmental groups to increase energy costs for Oklahomans and American families across the states,” said one email sent to Pruitt and an Oklahoma congressman in August 2013 by Matt Ball, an executive at Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit group also funded in part by the Kochs. “You both work for true champions of freedom and liberty!” the note said.
Last week, an Oklahoma judge ordered that emails from a January 2015 open records request be released by Tuesday. A further batch of emails is due to be turned over next week. The Center for Media and Democracy, which has made nine separate open records requests for Pruitt’s emails, said it will attempt to obtain all of the sought-after communications without exceptions.
Pruitt was confirmed as EPA administrator on Friday. Democrats had sought to delay the Senate vote until the emails were released but were unsuccessful.
“The emails show a very cozy relationship between Pruitt’s office and particularly Devon Energy, as well as other coal, oil and gas companies,” said Nick Surgey, research director at the Center for Media and Democracy.
“Pruitt is the world’s top environmental regulator now and these emails raise serious conflict of interest concerns. He has very close ties to fossil fuel firms and has shown himself to be generally opposed to the rules the EPA has to protect the environment.”
Pruitt’s appointment as EPA chief has been vigorously opposed by environmental groups, Democrats and even some EPA staff as antithetical to the agency’s mission. More than 700 former EPA employees wrote to senators to urge them to vote against Pruitt, while some current staff in Chicago took part in protests against him. This effort did little to budge the mathematics of the Senate, with only one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, voting against Pruitt.
Following the confirmation, the EPA put out a press release listing those that “cheer” Pruitt’s appointment. They include Republican representatives and lobbyists for mining, farming and grazing, who were quoted in the EPA’s own release calling the agency “rogue” and “one of the most vilified agencies in the ‘swamp’ of overreaching government”.
The former Oklahoma attorney general, a Republican, has described himself as a “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda” and sued the regulator 14 times over pollution regulations relating to mercury, smog, methane and sulfur dioxide. Fossil fuel companies or lobbyists, a frequent source of Pruitt’s past donations, joined with him in 13 of these cases against the EPA.
A staunch opponent of what he sees as federal overreach, Pruitt said following his appointment that “citizens don’t trust the EPA is honest” with its scientific work, particularly around climate change. Pruitt has said he accepts the planet is warming but has questioned the degree of human influence over this, despite the volumes of scientific literature on the impact of greenhouse gases.
In his first speech at EPA headquarters in Washington on Tuesday, Pruitt praised career employees and promised to “listen, learn and lead”. He said regulators such as the EPA “ought to make things regular. Regulators exist to give certainty to those that they regulate.”
He added: “I believe that we as a nation can be both pro-energy and -jobs, and pro-environment. We don’t have to choose between the two.”
John O’Grady, an EPA environmental scientist and head of a union that represents 9,000 agency staff, said that Pruitt came across “very professionally and conciliatory, he didn’t come out heavy handed”.
But O’Grady said that many staff are nervously waiting for the administration’s agenda to unfold, with Donald Trump expected to sign executive orders that aim to do away with the EPA’s effort to reduce greenhouse gases and regulate America’s expanse of waterways.
“Mr Pruitt isn’t a proponent of addressing climate change or of a strong EPA, so it won’t surprise me when they start to whittle away at what we do as an agency,” O’Grady told the Guardian. “I’m wondering when the hammer is going to fall.”
March 1, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
environment, politics, USA |
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California introduces its own 100% renewable energy bill, Inhabitat, 22 Feb 17, VIEW SLIDESHOW Massachusetts recently introduced a bill to derive 100 percent of the state’s energy from renewables, and now California is following suit. A new bill introduced by state Senate leader Kevin de León would require the state to obtain 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045.
Under de León’s bill, SB 584, California would need to reach 50 percent renewable energy use by 2025, five years earlier than the state’s current target of 2030, and cease using fossil fuels completely by 2045.
Related: Massachusetts lawmakers sponsor 100% renewable energy bill
In 2016, the state obtained 27 percent of electricity via wind, solar, and other clean sources, and California’s deserts offer potential spaces for more renewable energy plants. The solar industry has created 100,000 jobs in California. Experts say the state could reach the 100 percent goal since costs for solar and wind power are falling – in many areas of the state solar is already the cheapest option, according to The Desert Sun………
Massachusetts recently introduced a similar bill, but it’s slightly more ambitious than California’s. Under the 100 Percent Renewable Energy Act, Massachusetts would transition to obtaining all their electricity from renewable energy by 2035, and would grant sectors like heating and transportation a 2050 deadline. The California bill gives its state’s electricity sector an extra ten years to reach that 100 percent target. http://inhabitat.com/california-introduces-its-own-100-renewable-energy-bill/
March 1, 2017
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renewable, USA |
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New York’s nuclear subsidies contradict economic principles Credits to keep nuclear generation online will not lower emissions, argues the R Street Institute’s Devin Hartman, Utility Dive, 28 Feb 17 In New York State’s massive zero-emission credits (ZECs) program kicks off in April, it will begin a 12-year process of unloading $7 billion in subsidies on unprofitable nuclear plants. Astoundingly, this staggering price tag will yield minimal, if any, immediate climate benefit. Indeed, after factoring in the damage ZECs will do to competitive electricity markets, the plan may actually undermine the long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The main reason ZECs are unlikely to yield incremental emissions reductions is New York’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a regional carbon dioxide emissions trading program. Imposing new policies under a binding emissions-trading program will affect the market price of allowances without changing emissions levels. Should RGGI remain binding, subsidizing nuclear will merely avoid emissions reductions elsewhere…….
The underlying market failure is that pollution is underpriced, not that clean energy is overpriced. Unsurprisingly, economists overwhelmingly prefer emissions pricing (e.g., tax) as the means to address pollution.
As a mirror image of taxes, subsidies can, in theory, provide incentives to reduce emissions, but in practice, they often encourage economically inefficient and environmentally unsound decisions. The ability of nuclear generators to displace emissions from fossil plants varies dramatically by time and location. ……
For example, nuclear generation in wind-heavy areas with transmission constraints generally reduce emissions less than in locales with high coal generation. Emissions pricing accounts for this by building pollution costs into dynamic, sub-regional supply curves. Subsidies do not, resulting in inaccurate compensation for nuclear or other low-emissions resources.
Subsidies are grossly inferior in application, as well as in design. Markets pick different, lower-cost winners than governments……….
Unlike emissions pricing, subsidies create a public financial burden and encourage poor economic behavior from recipients. Production subsidies like ZECs lower the effective costs of operating a power plant. This encourages owners to offer into electricity markets below their true cost, which can artificially suppress market-clearing prices and distort market signals for resource investment……..
Subsidies also encourage poor political behavior. They establish entrenched interests that contribute to an ongoing cycle of subsidization. An examination of bailout policy history reveals that “early bailouts set a stage that makes subsequent requests for assistance more difficult to resist.” This underscores the challenge of using nuclear subsidies as a transitional policy to efficient emissions pricing. Ignoring the political economy of subsidies obscures the complete economic picture.
The economist Frédéric Bastiat once remarked that “the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.”
Beyond the visible price tag, the foreseen effects of ZECs will severely undermine the health of competitive wholesale electricity markets administered by the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO). Investors in competitive markets make decisions based on forward price expectations. Healthy price formation requires quality market design and minimal political interference. New York’s nuclear subsidies unexpectedly retain massive blocks of electric capacity that has already disrupted forward prices. This renders once-profitable investments uneconomic overnight, upends investor confidence and deters or requires a risk premium for new investment……
If New Yorkers truly care about reducing emissions and providing a model for the world, they should remain committed to emissions pricing and embrace competitive electricity markets. http://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-yorks-nuclear-subsidies-contradict-economic-principles/436978/
March 1, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, politics, USA |
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The NRC and Nuclear Safety Culture: Do As I Say, Not As I Do, Union of Concerned Scientists
DAVE LOCHBAUM, DIRECTOR, NUCLEAR SAFETY PROJECT | FEBRUARY 27, 2017 Many times over the past 20 years the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has intervened when evidence strongly suggested a nuclear power plant had nuclear safety culture problems. The evidence used by the NRC to trigger its interventions was readily available to the plant owners, but the owners had downplayed or rationalized away the evidence until the NRC forced them to face reality.
The evidence used by the NRC to detect these nuclear safety culture problems included work force surveys indicating a sizeable portion of workers reluctant to raise safety concerns and allegations received by NRC from workers about reprisals and harassment they experienced after raising safety concerns.
Ample evidence strongly suggests that the NRC itself has nuclear safety culture problems. The NRC’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has surveyed the safety culture and climate within the NRC every three years for the past two decades. The latest survey was conducted during 2015 and released in March 2016. Figure 1 from the OIG’s 2015 survey along with data from the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys and other sources show safety culture problems as bad as—it not considerably worse—than the worst safety culture problems identified at Millstone, Davis-Besse, and yes, even the TVA reactors.
After the OIG’s 2009 survey of the NRC’s safety culture and climate, UCS submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act for all records related to the actions taken by the agency in response to the survey. We obtained many records which described very few actions. And regardless of the number of actions, the OIG’s 2015 survey showed that the NRC’s safety culture was worse than in 2009 (see the last column on the right in Figure 1 [graph on original] ).
Why would the NRC take steps to remedy safety culture problems at nuclear plants yet have taken no steps to remedy its own safety culture problems? The answer is the same as to the question of why the plant owners failed to take steps to correct safety culture problems before the NRC intervened—they did not perceive the problems to exist. Likewise, Figure 2 [on original]shows that the NRC’s senior management does not perceive safety culture within the agency to need remediation……..
Just as plant owners failed to correct the problem they could not see, NRC senior management cannot fix the agency’s “invisible” safety culture problems. The NRC intervened to enable owners to see, and then fix, their safety culture problems. Someone needs to intervene to help NRC senior management see the agency’s safety culture problems so they can take the corrective measures they have often compelled plant owners to take…….http://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/the-nrc-and-nuclear-safety-culture-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do
March 1, 2017
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safety, USA |
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Trump to Seek $54 Billion Increase in Military Spending | 27 Feb 2017 | President Trump put both political parties on notice Monday that he intends to slash spending on many of the federal government’s most politically sensitive programs – relating to education, the environment, science and poverty – to protect the economic security of retirees and to shift billions more to the armed forces.
The proposal to increase military spending by 54 billion and cut nonmilitary programs by the same amount was unveiled by White House officials as they prepared the president’s plans for next year’s federal budget. Aides to the president said final decisions about Medicare and Social Security would not be made until later in the year, when he announces his full budget. But Sean Spicer, his spokesman, cited Mr. Trump’s campaign commitments about protecting those programs and vowed that “he’s going to keep his word to the American people.”
March 1, 2017
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politics, USA |
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Did Putin help elect Trump to restore $500 billion Exxon oil deal killed by sanctions
Follow the money: Will Trump repay Putin by ending Russian sanctions and killing the Paris climate deal? Think Progess, Joe Romm , 28 Feb 17, “……. our democracy and our children have a new axis to worry about: Putin, Trump, and ExxonMobil, whose CEO Rex Tillerson — an extreme Russophile and long-time director of a US-Russian oil company — is Trump’s puzzling choice for Secretary of State.
I say “puzzling” because the long-serving Exxon employee (from age 23!) has no qualifications to be secretary of state — other than a history negotiating major oil deals with countries like Putin’s Russia, which in any sane world would actually disqualify him or at least force a recusal from all State Department dealings with Russia.
But that puzzle disappears if we follow the famous dictum from the Watergate era for uncovering a tangled web of covert campaign acts: “Follow the money.” And perhaps another puzzle is also solved: Why did Putin take such a “fearful risk,” as Frum put it, to “mount a clandestine espionage and disinformation campaign on behalf” of Trump and against Clinton, “when Putin had every reason to expect that he probably would end up facing a President Clinton,” and a tremendous backlash.
You can certainly make a plausible case, as U.S. intelligence agencies do in their bombshell new report, that Putin had plenty of motivation to interfere. He wanted to undermine the legitimacy of U.S. elections and a Clinton Presidency, he blamed Secretary Clinton for “inciting mass protests against his regime,” and he was angry with the U.S. for the Panama Papers leaks.
Those leaks showed a $2 billion trail of offshore accounts and deals that traced back to Putin and his cabal of kleptocrats, who, among other things, were getting rich “trading shares in Rosneft,” Russia’s state-owned (i.e. Putin run) oil monopoly.
But a half trillion dollars to line their pockets and prop up the Russian economy offers a much more tangible motivation for team Putin to get Trump elected. And it was Tillerson who had made the $500 billion oil dealwith Putin that got blocked by sanctions.
Blocking the deal did not just “put Exxon at risk,” as the Wall Street Journal reported in 2014. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow explained last month the biggest oil deal in history was “expected to change the historical trajectory of Russia.”
The top priority for Putin and the kleptocrats who benefit from his rule is enriching the Kremlin’s coffers and their own, which have been hurt by the sanctions. And Trump’s election already appears to have delivered $11 billion to the Kremlin through sale of a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft, “confounding expectations that the Kremlin’s standoff with the West would scare off major investors,” as Fortune has reported in a must-read piece.
Kleptocracy — and interfering with our election — pays…….
Indeed, if Trump and Tillerson instead end the sanctions that are blocking the Exxon-Rossneft deal, it is going to look suspiciously like a half trillion dollar quid pro quo for Putin’s help getting elected.
And if Trump and Tillerson work together to kill the Paris climate deal, the last best chance to save Americans from catastrophic climate change—and aridiculously good deal for the U.S.— that will look like they are putting Putin’s interests and Exxon’s profits above America’s national interest and the health and well-being of our children. It bears repeating that ExxonMobil’s future is inextricably tied to their stalled oil deal with Putin — and their future drilling plans would benefit from continued global warming and melting of polar ice…….. https://thinkprogress.org/putin-helped-trump-exxon-oil-deal-sanctions-6f169c4a4cd0#.hxgqiytyu
March 1, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, politics international, Russia, USA |
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Trump’s US nuclear stance alarms Russia http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/nthamerica/2017/02/25/trump-s-us-nuclear-stance-alarms-russia.html
Published: 10:16 am, Saturday, 25 February 2017 Russian politicians close to the Kremlin say US President Donald Trump’s declared aim of putting the US nuclear arsenal ‘at the top of the pack’ risked triggering a new Cold War-style arms race between Washington and Moscow.
In an interview with Reuters, Trump said the US had fallen behind in its nuclear weapons capacity, a situation he said he would reverse, and he said a treaty limiting Russian and US nuclear arsenals was a bad deal for Washington.
Russian officials issued no reaction, with Friday a public holiday, but pro- Kremlin politicians expressed consternation about the comments from Trump, who Moscow had hoped would usher in new, friendlier relations between the two countries.
‘Trump’s campaign slogan ‘Make America great again’, if that means nuclear supremacy, will return the world to the worst times of the arms race in the ’50s and ’60s,’ said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament.
The president’s remarks in the interview with Reuters were, Kosachev said in a post on his Facebook page, ‘arguably Trump’s most alarming statement on the subject of relations with Russia’.
Over the course of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the US realised that achieving supremacy was dangerous, and accepted the doctrine of parity as the best way to ensure peace, Kosachev wrote on his Facebook page.
‘Are we entering a new era? In my view we need an answer to that question as soon as possible.’
During the US presidential race, Trump said he would try to end the enmity that broke out between the Kremlin and Washington during Barack Obama’s presidency.
But just over a month into the Trump presidency, that prospect has receded, especially with the sacking of Michael Flynn, a leading proponent of warmer ties with Moscow, from his job as national security adviser.
Another pro-Kremlin lawmaker, Alexei Pushkov, wrote on Twitter that Trump’s comments on increasing US nuclear capacity ‘put in doubt the agreement on limiting strategic arms, returning the world to the 20th century’.
He said a Cold War arms treaty laid the foundation for nuclear stability between Moscow and Washington. ‘That needs to be preserved. And the United States cannot achieve decisive superiority.’
‘Instead of trying to achieve an illusory nuclear supremacy over Russia, the US administration should find a solution to the exceptionally complicated nuclear problem of North Korea,’ wrote Pushkov, a member of the defence and security committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament. – See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/nthamerica/2017/02/25/trump-s-us-nuclear-stance-alarms-russia.html#sthash.fwqZWCfw.dpuf
– See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/nthamerica/2017/02/25/trump-s-us-nuclear-stance-alarms-russia.html#sthash.fwqZWCfw.dpuf
– See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/nthamerica/2017/02/25/trump-s-us-nuclear-stance-alarms-russia.html#sthash.fwqZWCfw.dpuf– See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/nthamerica/2017/02/25/trump-s-us-nuclear-stance-alarms-russia.html#sthash.fwqZWCfw.dpuf
February 27, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war |
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Energy Innovation utilized the
Energy Policy Simulator (EPS) to analyze the effects of repealing the CPP. The EPS is an open-source computer model developed to estimate the economic and emissions effects of various combinations of energy and environmental policies using non-partisan, published data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. EPA, Argonne National Laboratory, U.S. Forest Service, and U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, among others. The EPS has been peer reviewed by experts at MIT, Stanford University, Argonne National Laboratory, Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. It is
freely available for public use through a user-friendly web interface or by downloading the full model and input dataset.
Our analysis compared a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario (based on existing policies as of mid-to-late 2016, not including the Clean Power Plan) to a scenario that includes a set of policies that narrowly achieve the Clean Power Plan’s mass-based emissions targets. Three important notes:
- First, the EPS works at national scale, so policies are represented as nationwide averages; that is, without individually modeling U.S. states.
- Second, a variety of different policies might be used to achieve the CPP targets. We analyzed a mixed package representative of how the EPA expects states to achieve their targets.
- Third, the EPS calculates results through 2050, but the CPP targets only extend through 2030. The policy package we use to represent the CPP includes continued policy improvement through 2050 at the same rate as in earlier years (that is, policies strengthen by the same amount each year from 2017 to 2050), rather than CPP policies becoming frozen at their 2030 levels.
We find that repealing the CPP would result in an increase of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions of more than 500 million metric tons (MMT) in 2030 and 1200 MMT in 2050, contributing to global warming and severe weather events, such as hurricanes, floods and droughts.
Nearly $600 Billion in Economy-Wide Costs
Cumulative net costs to the U.S. economy (in increased capital, fuel, and operations and maintenance (O&M) expenditures) would exceed $100 billion by 2030 and would reach nearly $600 billion by 2050.
It may seem ironic that removing regulations can result in increased costs to the economy, but regulations can help to overcome market barriers and similar problems that prevent certain economically-ideal outcomes from being achieved in a free market (for instance, under-investment in energy efficiency technologies).
120,000 New Premature Deaths
Although the CPP’s focus is on reducing carbon emissions, the same policies also reduce particulate pollution, which is responsible for thousands of heart attacks and respiratory diseases each year. Repealing the CPP would increase particulate emissions, causing more than 40,000 premature deaths in 2030 and more than 120,000 premature deaths in 2050.
Far More New Coal Capacity, Far Less New Renewables Capacity
Without the CPP, the U.S. electric grid would feature a larger capacity of coal power plants, while the capacity of wind and solar on the system would be smaller, as shown in the following table. [on original]
This finding is echoed by a new forecast from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which predicts that without CPP implementation, coal will become America’s leading source of electricity generation by 2019.
This slow-down in the transition to clean energy would cost the U.S. technological leadership in the rapidly-growing solar and wind industries and would cost the U.S. many jobs. Even today, when wind makes up 6.6 percent and solar 1.8 percent of total U.S. installed capacity, the solar industry employs 374,000 people and wind industry 101,000 workers, roughly two and a half times the 187,000 combined workers in the coal, natural gas and oil industries.
The stellar contribution of renewables to the U.S. economy was recently highlighted as
an “American success story” by a group of 20 Republican and Democratic governors who urged Trump to support renewables.
Clean Power Plan Repeal A Terrible Mistake For America
Repealing the Clean Power Plan would be a terrible mistake. A repeal would increase costs to the U.S. economy by hundreds of billions of dollars, cut years off the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and sacrifice U.S. technological leadership and job creation. For the future prosperity and strength of the country, the CPP should be preserved, and its targets should continue to strengthen through 2050 and beyond.
February 27, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, health, renewable, USA |
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Nuclear Power Is In Crisis As Cost Overruns Cripple Industry Giants, New Matilda., By Jim Green on February 26, 2017A future for nuclear power?
“……A fundamental difficulty for the nuclear industry is that the imperatives for greater safety and reduced costs push in opposite directions. Mark Cooper, from the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, recently told the New York Times: “Nuclear safety always undermines nuclear economics. Inherently, it’s a technology whose time never comes.”
Retreating from post-Fukushima efforts to strengthen safety standards inevitably increases the risk of another Chernobyl- or Fukushima-scale catastrophe. Leaving aside the disputed health effects from those disasters, the economic costs associated with both disasters was in the ball-park of US$500 billion, and both had devastating impacts on public acceptance of nuclear power.
Yet a retreat from post-Fukushima efforts to strengthen safety standards seems to be where the industry and its enthusiasts are heading in their efforts to curb nuclear power’s astonishing cost increases and overruns.
Proposals include weakening safety regulations; abandoning Generation 3/3+ reactors in favour of Generation 2 reactor types (or redefining Generation 2 reactor types as Generation 3/3+); and overturning the established scientific orthodoxy that even the smallest doses of ionizing radiation can cause morbidity and mortality.
How to convince the public to accept reduced nuclear safety standards even as 80,000 people remain displaced because of the Fukushima disaster and clean-up and compensation cost estimates double then double again? In a word: spin.
Shellenberger, for example, wants “higher social acceptance” but he also wants weakened safety regulations such as the repeal of a US Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule designed to strengthen reactors against aircraft strikes. He squares the circle with spin and sophistry, claiming (without evidence) that the NRC’s Aircraft Impact Rule “would not improve safety” and claiming (without evidence) that the NRC “caved in to demands” from anti-nuclear groups to establish the rule………. https://newmatilda.com/2017/02/26/nuclear-power-is-in-crisis-as-cost-overruns-cripple-industry-giants/
February 26, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
safety, USA |
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It’s interesting the way that, for dubious nuclear enterprises, they like to put a young woman at the top. Is this to make the nuclear image look young and trendy? Or is it so they she can cop the flak when it all goes wrong?
Below – Leslie Dewan – CEO of Transatomic Power
Nuclear Energy Startup Transatomic Backtracks on Key Promises The company, backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, revised inflated assertions about its advanced reactor design after growing concerns prompted an MIT review. MIT Technology Review by James Temple February 24, 2017 Nuclear energy startup Transatomic Power has backed away from bold claims for its advanced reactor technology after an informal review by MIT professors highlighted serious errors in the company’s calculations, MIT Technology Review has learned.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, founded in 2011 by a pair of MIT students in the Nuclear Science & Engineering department, asserted that its molten salt reactor design could run on spent nuclear fuel from conventional reactors and generate energy far more efficiently than them. In a white paper published in March 2014, the company proclaimed its reactor “can generate up to 75 times more electricity per ton of mined uranium than a light-water reactor.”
Those lofty claims helped it raise millions in venture capital, secure a series of glowing media profiles (including in this publication), and draw a rock-star lineup of technical advisors. But in a paper on its site dated November 2016, the company downgraded “75 times” to “more than twice.” In addition, it now specifies that the design “does not reduce existing stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel,” or use them as its fuel source. The promise of recycling nuclear waste, which poses tricky storage and proliferation challenges, was a key initial promise of the company that captured considerable attention.
“In early 2016, we realized there was a problem with our initial analysis and started working to correct the error,” cofounder Leslie Dewan said in an e-mail response to an inquiry from MIT Technology Review.
The dramatic revisions followed an analysis in late 2015 by Kord Smith, a nuclear science and engineering professor at MIT and an expert in the physics of nuclear reactors.
At that point, there were growing doubts in the field about the company’s claims and at least some worries that any inflated claims could tarnish the reputation of MIT’s nuclear department, which has been closely associated with the company. Transatomic also has a three-year research agreement with the department, according to earlier press releases.
In reviewing the company’s white paper, Smith noticed immediate red flags. He relayed his concerns to his department head and the company, and subsequently conducted an informal review with two other professors.
“I said this is obviously incorrect based on basic physics,” Smith says. He asked the company to run a test, which ended up confirming that “their claims were completely untrue,” Smith says.
He notes that promising to increase the reactor’s fuel efficiency by 75 times is the rough equivalent of saying that, in a single step, you’d developed a car that could get 2,500 miles per gallon.
Ultimately, the company redid its analysis, and produced and posted a new white paper………
The company has raised at least $4.5 million from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Acadia Woods Partners, and Daniel Aegerter of Armada Investment AG. Venture capital veteran Ray Rothrock serves as chairman of the company.
Founders Fund didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry……https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603731/nuclear-energy-startup-transatomic-backtracks-on-key-promises/
February 25, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Reference, spinbuster, technology, USA |
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In West Texas, spent fuel storage seeks a foothold, Edward Klump, E&E News reporter , Energywire: Friday, February 24, 2017 Waste Control Specialists LLC operates a facility licensed to dispose of low-level radioactive waste in Andrews County, Texas. The company is in the process of seeking a license for an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. …….
The fight is over the fate of spent fuel — often referred to in the WCS debate as high-level radioactive waste — from U.S. nuclear reactor sites. It’s tangled up in conversations about energy and the economy, ethnicity and income, politicians and regulators, transportation and water resources.
The debate likely won’t end soon. Leaders and influential voices in Andrews County have been lining up to support WCS. Many critics, on the other hand, want high-level waste to stay at existing sites until a better solution emerges. Continue reading →
February 25, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA, wastes |
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http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/business/article134769964.html The Associated Press TALLAHASSEE, FLA. 24 Feb 17 The Florida Supreme Court is upholding a lower court ruling that ordered a massive nuclear plant expansion to be redone to meet environmental and other concerns.
Justices in a brief-one page order on Friday rejected an appeal filed by Florida Power & Light.
Last year, the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Miami reversed a 2014 decision by Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet to approve construction of two nuclear reactors by FPL at its Turkey Point plant near Homestead. The project, costing up to $18 billion, would add about 2,200 megawatts of electric power or enough to supply 750,000 homes.
A three-judge panel ruled the governor and Cabinet failed to account for environmental regulations meant to protect the Everglades and endangered birds that make their home in the wetlands.
February 25, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Legal, USA |
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