Trump, Russia take a dangerous first step on nuclear arms control, The Hill, BY RICHARD NEPHEW AND ADAM MOUNT, 2 Feb 17 In a recent interview with the the London Times, Donald Trump suggested that he would offer to lift U.S. sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as part of a nuclear arms control agreement.
At a time when tensions between the two countries are growing, a verifiable and stabilizing new arms control agreement would be genuinely welcome. But a bad deal would only make matters worse.
The comments about sanctions relief raise real questions about whether the incoming administration is willing to pay any price to improve relations with Russia (and why).
Today, both countries are making investments to replace nuclear systems that were first fielded during the Cold War. An agreement to limit these modernization plans could save money, stabilize the nuclear balance, and be safer to maintain and operate.
Under President Obama, the United States found that it could meet its deterrence requirements after a further one-third reduction in deployed strategic warheads, beyond what was agreed in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in 2010, and offered this deal to Russia.
A new arms control agreement would be difficult to achieve today. Putin declined Obama’s one-third offer and has signaled that he is not willing to negotiate over his most dangerous systems, its vast and opaque stocks of low-yield and short-range weapons.
At the same time, Russia has violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by developing a new prohibited cruise missile and indicated no real willingness to address the concerns of the United States and other treaty participants. Arms control accords are among the most consequential and the most difficult negotiations in the world, features that will surely attract Trump — but changing Putin’s position will be a very tall order. …….http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/317403-trump-russia-take-a-dangerous-first-step-on-nuclear-arms
February 3, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
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the nuclear manufacturers—Westinghouse and General Electric—.. refuse to participate in any project unless they are guaranteed to be free of any liability for any offsite accident consequences. If they believed the NRC risk calculations, they would have no difficulty in accepting the litigation risk—but they obviously don’t. In short, the organizations most highly knowledgeable about nuclear safety don’t trust the NRC’s probabilistic calculations………
A definition of risk that placed greater emphasis on avoiding large-consequence events would be more in line with the common sense of the public whom the NRC is supposed to be protecting. If nuclear power is to have any long-term future, it will have to go beyond even that level of protection….Just as the nuclear manufacturers don’t want to bet their companies on calculations of nuclear safety, neither do people at large want to bet their cities and countrysides.
When 10,000 square miles of contamination is an acceptable risk: The NRC’s faulty concept, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 9 JANUARY 2017 Victor Gilinsky In making safety decisions, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission uses accident probability calculations that are much more optimistic than anything that nuclear manufacturers like General Electric and Westinghouse actually believe. The result is weak public protection. A good example is the NRC commissioners’ rejection in 2014 of a proposal to limit the possible severe consequences of spent fuel pool fires in nuclear power plants because the proposal’s cost, however modest, exceeded the value of the expected reduction in “risk.”
Spent fuel pools are where highly radioactive (and thus thermally hot) used reactor fuel is stored after it is removed from the reactor core. If a pool loses its water supply, the spent fuel can overheat and eventually burn, releasing large quantities of radioactivity. The spent fuel pool issue gained prominence after the 2011 Fukushima accident. For a time during the accident the dominant concern was that spent fuel in Fukushima’s damaged Unit 4 pool might catch fire. It didn’t happen, but it could have multiplied the effects of the catastrophic Fukushima accident manyfold. The NRC staff told the commissioners in 2014 that a worst-case spent fuel pool fire in a US plant like those at Fukushima—of which there are nearly three dozen—could release 25 times more long-lasting radioactivity than escaped from the Fukushima reactor vessels, and perhaps even more. Such a release could render 10,000 square miles uninhabitable and (around the Pennsylvania nuclear plant the staff chose as an example) could require the evacuation of 4 million persons.
The specific proposal before the commissioners was to limit the amount of radioactive spent fuel in a pool and thus to reduce the consequences of a fire by a factor of ten. This would be accomplished by speeding up the transfer of radioactive spent (used) fuel from the pool into “dry cask” storage. The plant owners have to do this eventually, but earlier transfers increase the cost. The commissioners saw their role as deciding whether the safety benefit—the reduction in risk—warranted this cost increase.
In fact, they weren’t deciding anything. The commissioners lent an air of official seriousness to the proceeding, but the decision making was on autopilot. It involved calculating the average risk (R) of an accident by multiplying two numbers, the accident’s probability (P) and its consequence (C). If P is sufficiently small, the average risk (or P times C) will be negligible no matter how large the consequence. And, therefore, the possible reduction in risk will hardly be worth any expenditure. That is how it worked in the 2014 case of a possible spent fuel fire, and that is how it has worked in most cases involving protection against severe accidents.
Actually, most cases don’t get this far. The commission has a threshold for the staff to investigate a safety issue posed by a hypothetical accident. If the estimated probability of “prompt” deaths offsite is below 2 in 1 million per year, the NRC staff need not investigate further. This involves a kind of Catch-22. The NRC assumes effective evacuation of the surrounding area in the event of an accident, so there aren’t people to be irradiated, and even substantial accidents don’t exceed the commission’s threshold……..
Consider the implications of NRC’s risk definition for the risk of long-term land contamination: The NRC staff’s projection of about 10,000 square miles, when multiplied by the staff-estimated accident probability, becomes an annual risk of about one-thousandth of a square mile, or less than an acre per year. Since valuable farmland runs at several thousand dollars per acre, the NRC conclusion is that any safety improvement that costs more than that isn’t worthwhile in terms of saving land. Similarly, the risk of displacing persons, becomes about half a person displaced per year, perhaps at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, and so, again, per NRC logic, it is not worth spending more than that to avoid long-term evacuations to protect against severe spent fuel pool fires. This isn’t the conclusion most people would arrive at for themselves or their home towns.
There are several things wrong with the NRC’s cost-benefit approach to nuclear safety. To begin with, neither factor in the risk formula—probability times consequence—can be calculated with any accuracy. For example, the consequences of an accident requiring the long-term, possibly permanent, evacuation of 4 million will surely not be limited to the expense of such an evacuation. It would, for example, almost certainly spell the end of nuclear power use in the United States and likely in many countries, with huge economic consequences. …….
Nor is the situation much better when it comes to estimating the accident probability. As there is little data on large accidents, the accident probability is a calculated number. The NRC staff relies increasingly on elaborate calculations that model the various failure modes of a nuclear plant. For outsiders, or for that matter the NRC commissioners themselves, the result essentially comes out of a black box. …..
Which brings us to a deep flaw in NRC’s safety methodology—its reliance on the average risk as the figure of merit. It is by no means the only possible measure of risk. We know that in many statistical situations the average is not the best choice to characterize the data. It works where there are well-established data on both probabilities and consequences as, for example, in considering measures to reduce auto accidents. It doesn’t make sense for high consequence/low probability events, for one thing, because the numbers are so poorly known. Also, using average risk doesn’t reflect what most people—the people the NRC is supposed to be protecting—want to achieve. They don’t want to risk losing a city, no matter what the calculated probabilities. That is how the nuclear manufacturers—Westinghouse and General Electric—see it, too. They refuse to participate in any project unless they are guaranteed to be free of any liability for any offsite accident consequences. If they believed the NRC risk calculations, they would have no difficulty in accepting the litigation risk—but they obviously don’t. In short, the organizations most highly knowledgeable about nuclear safety don’t trust the NRC’s probabilistic calculations………
Any change in the NRC’s approach to nuclear risk must come from the outside; the agency has too much invested in the current approach for internal reform to have a chance. When a witness at the 2014 Commission meeting on spent fuel pool fires, Clark University professor Gordon Thompson, questioned using the average risk as the figure of merit, only one commissioner took notice and that was to ridicule the notion. The commissioners should have paid more attention.
A definition of risk that placed greater emphasis on avoiding large-consequence events would be more in line with the common sense of the public whom the NRC is supposed to be protecting. If nuclear power is to have any long-term future, it will have to go beyond even that level of protection. A 2012 report of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a group heavily involved with the nuclear industry, called for a major step-up in nuclear safety and warned that severe accident impacts on people’s lives were “wholly inconsistent with an economically viable and socially acceptable use of nuclear energy.” Just as the nuclear manufacturers don’t want to bet their companies on calculations of nuclear safety, neither do people at large want to bet their cities and countrysides. http://thebulletin.org/when-10000-square-miles-contamination-acceptable-risk-nrc%E2%80%99s-faulty-concept10459
February 3, 2017
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Bannon Is Given Security Role Usually Held for Generals By GLENN THRUSH and MAGGIE HABERMANNYT, JAN. 29, 2017 WASHINGTON — The whirlwind first week of
Donald J. Trump’s presidency had all the bravura hallmarks of a Stephen K. Bannon production.
February 1, 2017
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James Knieling no high level international nuclear waste dump in south australia, 30 Jan 17
Funny thing about Radiation debris, once it drops into your house, its like the “Relatives Visiting From Hell!” I watched the biggest ever above ground Nuke go off from 75-miles away, while my dad hoisted it into position at the Mercury’s Nevada Test Site. *It was dark with only the lights of Fremont Street’s Casinos at 0530 and then the brightest light you ever did not look at went on. Then a 50mph wind struck us, and it felt like a hundred little bee stings on my bare arms,
legs, and face
Then it was gone. About 20-years later they found Nuclear Hot Particles in the attics of our street. My dad built and operated 67-above ground nuclear bomb hoists in 1956-7. He died of his exposure, never being warned that his badge had gone red hot, with Small Cell Lung & Bone Cancer.
My field was Radiation Health Technology to work at the Nevada Test Site so when I had the chance to go to Bikini Atoll and see all the on-site data and films I went. I went on the 60-yr post-blast and we took reading for a week. The coconuts were lethal, the coconut crabs were lethal, the ground was, even with 17″ of protection fill, still off gassing lethal hot particles.
We were billeted in structures built several feet off the ground with blowers underneath to vent the radiation. We were told not to walk bare foot, and not sit, or linger on the ground. We were told to “Never, Ever turn off the A/C and Never, Ever to shut the fresh air vent!” Funny thing about being safe to visit. Only a 150+ people had a problem with the “OK to Visit” notice, and they dropped dead. See the sign below from the Bikinian Cemetery? Guess who’s in it? Answer~!The Bikinians the US Govt suckered as “Its safe to come home!” Not, they started dropping like flies! https://www.facebook.com/groups/1314655315214929/
February 1, 2017
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health, PERSONAL STORIES, USA |
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Would any judge question a medical expert’s evidence in the way that this judge doubts the evidence of the world’s climate scientists? Then again – they do say that “the law is an ass”
Judge in environmental activist’s trial says climate change is matter of debate
Controversial statements angered environmentalists who insist courts have an obligation to recognize the science about manmade climate change, Guardian, Sam Levin 31 Jan 17, A Washington state judge has sparked outrage for remarks questioning the existence of climate change and the role of humans in global warming.
During the high-profile trial of Ken Ward, a climate activist facing 30 years in prison for shutting down an oil pipeline, Judge Michael E Rickert said: “I don’t know what everybody’s beliefs are on [climate change], but I know that there’s tremendous controversy over the fact whether it even exists. And even if people believe that it does or it doesn’t, the extent of what we’re doing to ourselves and our climate and our planet, there’s great controversy over that.”
The Skagit County judge made the comments on 24 January while addressing Ward’s request to present a “necessity defense” in court, meaning he would argue that the grave threat of climate change justified civil disobedience.
Rickert’s controversial statements, along with his decision to block Ward from arguing that his pipeline protest was necessary to prevent harm to the planet, angered environmentalists who insist that American courts have an obligation to recognize the science and consensus among researchers about man-made climate change.
“I thought it was shocking and deeply worrisome for my case,” said Ward, 60, of Corbett, Oregon, who temporarily shut off the safety valve of the TransMountain pipeline in Skagit County. “We are in the late stages of global collapse, and to have someone who is presumably as knowledgeable and aware as a judge should be blithely dismissing the biggest problem facing the world is chilling.”
Ward, whose trial began on Monday, is part of a group of activists that targeted oil sands pipelines in Washington, Oregon, North Dakota, Montana and Minnesota on 11 October 2016. The coordinated #ShutItDown actions – which have led to a dozen criminal cases and threats of hefty prison sentences against activists and journalists – was aimed at stopping 15% of US crude oil imports for a day.
He later added that with climate change, there’s “great controversy” with “over half of our political leaders”. (Critics have slammed the GOP as the “only major party in the advanced world” to deny climate change)……. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/31/environmental-activist-trial-judge-questions-climate-change-ken-ward
February 1, 2017
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What is the Relationship of Nuclear Energy Plants and Nuclear Weapons? Finding the Missing Link January 28, 2017 Scott Jones, Ph.D.
Setting aside the classical tenderness of the phrase, they are Mother and Child. Within the science community and the business of commercial nuclear energy this reality is a given. However, the “Atoms for Peace” commercial slogan may have introduced some ambiguity about this reality. This is quickly cleared up for the lay person by a January 1983 article published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
“An even more specific confirmation of the economic advantage
of the commercial-power route to bombs is available in a most
distressing form: the admission by the U.S. government, in late 1981,
that it is considering turning to commercial-reactor fuel as the
source of plutonium for a new round of nuclear warheads. Would
the United States even consider paying the political costs of such a
move unless the economic attractiveness were compelling?”
The family relationship is the basic and fundamental link between nuclear energy production and nuclear weapons. However, it leads to other important relationships.
Nuclear weapons are the result of willful national security political decisions. After the development and use of nuclear weapons by the Unites States, every country that followed in the club of nuclear weapon owners made that decision because of an assessment that it gave them security that they otherwise would not have. It was claimed to be a defensive move to deter all potential enemies from use of nuclear weapons against them……
What we can say with certainty is that a nuclear power plant nominates itself as a potential target. What cannot easily be predicted is who or what may be the aggressor. While progress is being made in predicting threats from nature, it will always remain to a significant degree a capricious force.
In the human realm, current and traditional enemies most certainly will be on target and threat lists. But the threat may be from a terrorist group that selects one of the world’s existing 450 operating nuclear power plants in 31 countries, or later, one the 60 new plants under construction in 16 countries. Which plant to attack may be decided because it is assessed to be the most vulnerable target for their capability to attack.
There is no shortage of targets now and the number is increasing. Success will not be measured by the amount of radiation released. That will almost be immaterial.
The global nuclear power plant network shares a nervous system that is highly tuned to every nuclear event. Deserved or not an accident or an attack will be perceived by much of the world through a memory lens of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. http://akiomatsumura.com/2017/01/what-is-the-relationship-of-nuclear-energy-plants-and-nuclear-weapons.html
February 1, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
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U.S. will change course on climate policy, says former EPA transition head Reuters, By Nina Chestney |30 JAN 17 LONDON The United States will switch course on climate change and pull out of a global pact to cut emissions, said Myron Ebell, who headed U.S. President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team until his inauguration.
Ebell is the director of global warming and international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a U.S. conservative think tank, and helped to guide the EPA’s transition after Trump was elected in November until he was sworn in on Jan. 20.
Trump, a climate skeptic, campaigned on a pledge to boost the U.S. oil and gas drilling and coal mining industries by reducing regulation.
He alarmed nations that backed the 2015 Paris agreement to cut greenhouse gases by pledging to pull the United States out of the global deal agreed by nearly 200 countries. However, Trump told the New York Times in November that he had an “open mind” on the agreement.
Trump’s administration has asked the EPA to halt all contracts, grants and interagency agreements pending a review, sources said.
“The U.S. will clearly change its course on climate policy. Trump has made it clear he will withdraw from the Paris Agreement. He could do it by executive order tomorrow or he could do it as part of a larger package,” Ebell told reporters in London on Monday.
The top energy official for the European Union, meanwhile, said he hoped that Trump would stick to the Paris deal……..http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-epa-idUSKBN15E1MM
February 1, 2017
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The battle of Indian Point http://shelterislandreporter.timesreview.com/2017/01/29/column-battle-indian-point/ by Karl Grossman “It is a huge step forward in protecting the health and safety of all New Yorkers.”
So said State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. (I-SagHarbor) on the agreement to close the Indian Point nuclear power plants, which sit 30 miles from Times Square, less than 50 miles from western Suffolk and 84 miles from Shelter Island — as the crow flies and radioactivity spreads.
These aged, problem-plagued nuclear plants have constituted a huge danger for the most densely populated area of the United States.
“This closure will put New York State on the fast track to expanding its renewable energy portfolio,” Mr. Thiele said. “By shifting our focus to green, renewable energy, we can grow our economy, create jobs and safeguard the health and safety of residents and state’s natural resources for generations to come.”
Governor Andrew Cuomo has long been calling for the plants to be shut down, and in announcing the agreement on January 9, he called the two-reactor Indian Point facility a “ticking time bomb.” Under the agreement, Indian Point 2 will close by April 2020 and Indian Point 3 by April 2021.
For decades, environmentalists and safe-energy organizations have been active in working to shut down the plants. Riverkeeper, the environmental organization, has been deeply involved. Its president, Paul Gallay, along with top New York State officials led by the governor, signed the agreement with the nuclear plants’ owner, New Orleans-based Entergy.
After the signing, Mr. Gallay described Indian Point as the “biggest existential threat to the region.” These strong words were confirmed years ago by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in an analysis of the consequences of a meltdown with breach of containment (a “China Syndrome” accident) at every nuclear power plant in the U.S.
The 1982 report, “Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences” or CRAC2 (it’s available on-line), considers “peak early fatalities,” “peak early injuries,” “peak cancer deaths” and “scaled cost billions in 1980 dollars.”
For Indian Point 2, the analysis, done at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories, projects peak early fatalities — 46,000; peak early injuries — 141,000; peak cancer deaths — 13,000; and scaled cost in billions — $274 billion, which in today’s dollars would be $1 trillion. For Indian Point 3, it calculates peak early fatalities — 50,000; peak early injuries — 167,000; peak cancer deaths — 14,000; scaled cost in billions — $314 billion. “Scaled cost” includes “lost wages, relocation expenses, decontamination costs, lost property” and a portion of the U.S. rendered uninhabitable for centuries because of radioactivity.
These aren’t just numbers, but represent people’s lives lost, injuries, those left with cancer and part of the planet ruined.
Said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., vice chairman of Riverkeeper: “The agreement marks a milestone in America’s historic transition from a dirty, dangerous energy system to clean, safe, wholesome, local and patriotic power supply.”
New York State and the environmental and safe-energy groups won the battle of Indian Point by using a similar tactic we on Long Island used to prevent the Shoreham nuclear power plant from going into commercial operation, and to prevent the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) from building seven to 11 nuclear plants here. The strategy involved getting around federal “pre-emptions” on nuclear power.
The promoters of nuclear power arranged in the 1950s for a supportive federal government to have “pre-emption” over states and localities on most nuclear plant issues. On Long Island, a strategy of grassroots activists with support of elected officials was to use the state’s power of eminent domain. The Long Island Power Act was enacted in 1985 giving the state the authority, if LILCO persisted with Shoreham and its other nuclear plant projects, to seize its assets and eliminate it. There was no federal “pre-emption” preventing that. And LILCO gave up.
On Indian Point, environmental activists and the state zeroed in on denying Entergy the State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) permit that allowed the plants to discharge 2.5 billion gallons of water a day into the Hudson. This “once-through” cooling system released radioactive poisons into the river and has been killing massive amounts of fish. There was no federal “pre-emption” preventing this SPDES strategy. Another important factor causing Entergy to give up is that competitive power systems are now less expensive than nuclear, including renewable energy with safe solar and offshore wind power playing a huge role.
There are post-agreement complaints by some about replacing the electricity Indian Point generated. That’s baloney. There are alternatives. We can easily have energy we can live with.
January 30, 2017
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New York readies for nuclear energy from aging power plants, Herald Net, Jan 29th, 2017 By David Klepper Associated Press OSWEGO, N.Y. — When the Nine Mile Point reactor first went online, Richard Nixon was president, the Beatles were still a band and Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima weren’t yet bywords for the hazards of nuclear power.
Almost 50 years later, New York state is betting big on the future of Nine Mile Point, one of the nation’s two oldest nuclear plants.
The state is putting up $7.6 billion in subsidies to ensure that the plant and two other upstate nuclear plants stay open, part of New York’s strategy to lean on nuclear energy as it ramps up renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydroelectric.
But even as Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration embraces nuclear power upstate, it’s moving to shutter the Indian Point nuclear plant some 30 miles north of New York City.
To critics, Cuomo is making a political calculation that favors jobs and energy upstate, and safety and the environment downstate.
“These things have an expiration date, and they’re really pushing it,” said Sue Matthews, who worked for contractors building Nine Mile Point’s second reactor in the 1980s. She said her opposition to the plant makes her the “most hated” woman in town. “Everyone here depends on that place — the jobs, the property taxes. They can’t afford to close it.”
Nuclear plants around the nation are at a similar crossroads, with more closures likely as owners become reluctant to spend increasingly large sums operating aging plants.
Located on the shores of Lake Ontario, Nile Mile Point is a wonder of Cold War-era engineering, with miles of colored pipes and wires snaking through long corridors to a cathedral-sized turbine room. Anyone getting close to the reactor is fitted with a small dosimeter to monitor exposure, and must step inside a phone-booth sized radiation scanner before and after.
The plant’s first reactor went online in 1969, sharing the nation’s-oldest honor with the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey.
Immediately adjacent to Nine Mile Point is a second, 42-year-old nuclear plant, FitzPatrick, which was slated to close before Cuomo’s nuclear bailout package was approved. A third, the 47-year-old Ginna nuclear power plant, is located just east of Rochester……….
Environmental groups critical of nuclear power don’t like Cuomo’s approach.
“The governor should take his own advice,” said Alex Beauchamp, of the group Food & Water Watch. “And close the other nuclear plants upstate instead of propping up a costly and unsafe industry with $7.6 billion in New Yorkers’ money.” http://www.heraldnet.com/news/new-york-readies-for-nuclear-energy-from-aging-power-plants/
January 30, 2017
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Mikhail Gorbachev: It ‘looks as if the world is preparing for war’ as nuclear threat re-emerges, Telegraph Barney Henderson, new york 27 JANUARY 2017 Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that a new arms race means “the nuclear threat once again seems real” as he stated it “looks as if the world is preparing for war”.
The former Soviet leader called on Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to work together to take steps to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenal.
“Politicians and military leaders sound increasingly belligerent and defence doctrines more dangerous. Commentators and TV personalities are joining the bellicose chorus. It all looks as if the world is preparing for war,” he wrote in an article for Timemagazine.
Mr Gorbachev said the US and Russian presidents should champion a resolution at the UN Security Council to guard against a nuclear conflict.
“I think the initiative to adopt such a resolution should come from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin – the presidents of two nations that hold over 90% of the world’s nuclear arsenals and therefore bear a special responsibility,” he wrote……
Mr Gorbachev, who detailed his own efforts at denuclearisation during the dying days of the Cold War in the 1980s, issued a stark warning of a world where weapons of mass destruction were becoming cheaper and more readily available.
“Money is easily found for sophisticated weapons whose destructive power is comparable to that of the weapons of mass destruction; for submarines whose single salvo is capable of devastating half a continent; for missile defence systems that undermine strategic stability,” he wrote.
He said his proposed UN Security Council resolution should state “nuclear war is unacceptable and must never be fought”…….http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/27/mikhail-gorbachev-looks-world-preparing-war-nuclear-threat-re/
January 28, 2017
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US report sets out policy options for nuclear preservation, World Nuclear News, 27 January 2017
A bipartisan organization supporting US state legislatures has published a new report providing an overview of state action and policy options for legislators who are interested in preserving nuclear assets in their state.
The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) report, State options to keep nuclear in the mix, provides background on the current situation of US nuclear power plants and discusses the policies, trends and market conditions that have led to the current environment……..
The report suggests a number of policy options that states who set themselves the goal of retaining the current nuclear fleet could consider to relieve some of the pressures placed on operating nuclear facilities. It aims to provide legislators with a suite of possible options such as zero-emissions credits, tax incentives, the creation of state-wide nuclear mandates, and clean energy subsidy payments.
While making case studies of recent legislation enacted to preserve nuclear capacity in Illinois and New York, the authors note that individual state needs may differ. Legislatures may therefore want to consider a variety of policies to retain their most at-risk nuclear plants.
Report authors Daniel Shea and Kristy Hartman said the report aims to raise awareness and foster dialogue. “The nation’s nuclear facilities are facing an unprecedented array of challenges as nuclear power looks to compete in a rapidly changing energy market,” they said. “State legislatures play a critical role in determining the future of US nuclear power. At least 21 states are considering measures to support the continued use of nuclear generation in recent legislative sessions. In the final months of 2016, Illinois and New York took action to prevent the premature closure of several nuclear plants, but across the country, challenges remain.”
Christine Csizmadia, director of state governmental affairs and advocacy at the US Nuclear Energy Institute, said state legislatures played a vital role in developing policies affecting the viability of existing nuclear power plants. She said the report presented state policymakers with “an array of solutions” to choose from. “Every state is unique and so will be their approach to energy planning. That is why NCSL’s report is such a comprehensive tool for state legislators”, Csizmadia said. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-US-report-sets-out-policy-options-for-nuclear-preservation-2701177.html
January 28, 2017
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Trump’s appointees don’t seem to be signing required ethics pledges and don’t plan
to http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/26/1625454/-Trump-s-appointees-don-t-seem-to-be-signing-required-ethics-pledges-and-don-t-plan-to By Walter Einenkel
A review of agreements between Trump’s top appointees and federal ethics regulators shows that none of the compacts mentions the 2009 executive order that requires incoming officials to sign a pledge to avoid participating in policies that “directly and substantially relate to [their] former employer or former clients” for the first two years of government service. Obama-era ethics agreements included standard language obligating political appointees to follow the rule.
If the ethics pledge rule is not enforced, watchdog groups say, Trump officials entering the administration from the private sector could quickly be in a position to use their government positions to enrich their former paymasters. Rather than facing a full two-year restriction as required by the Obama-era executive order, they would encounter only the one-year restriction previously enshrined in federal law.
Don’t you fear, we still may have one year before the most obvious conflict of interest gets a press op.
During their first year in government, presidential appointees face a federal law mandating a “cooling off” period that prohibits them from overseeing policy that affects their former employers. Another federal law creates a special two-year cooling off period if those former employers gave them an “extraordinary payment” upon their acceptance of a government job. While Energy Secretary designate Rick Perry and Commerce Secretary designate Wilbur Ross appear to be following that two-year restriction, Tillerson in his ethics agreement said he would avoid Exxon-related government business for only single year, despite his $180 million payout.
By this standard, Donald Trump himself may just spend the first year of his presidency, unpresidentedly creating a framework from which to insulate himself from the onslaught of transparent conflicts of interest he will embark upon in 2018. The good news is that he may have the new iPhone to tweet about it then!
January 28, 2017
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politics, Religion and ethics, USA |
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By John D. Sutter, CNN January 26, 2017 John D. Sutter is a columnist for CNN Opinion who focuses on climate change and social justice. Follow him on Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook or subscribe to his email newsletter.
January 28, 2017
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Daily KosBy Paul Bland for Public Justice Thursday Jan 26, 2017 ·”……Today, the new White House team is taking a deeply troubling step to hide the truth by shuttering the EPA’s climate change website and, by extension, deleting volumes of important scientific information. And it is part of a very troubling pattern: President Trump once famously proclaimed that climate change was an idea “created by and for the Chinese.” And, in an all-out assault on science and reality, he has nominated Scott Pruitt – a man so extreme that we broke 35 years of silence on cabinet nominees to oppose his nomination – to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
As a public interest law firm that brings a variety of cutting edge lawsuits that help fight the pollution that contributes to climate change, these issues are central to our mission.
The old saw that “the truth hurts sometimes” will prove especially true if we ignore the truth about the science on this issue. As gigantic chunks of ice larger than several states are headed towards “calving” (i.e., breaking away) from Antarctica, as temperatures at the North Pole are frequently 30 and 40 degrees above normal, the actual world is changing, and pretending it isn’t happening is a recipe for disaster.
So until today, the EPA site has been filled with useful and important information on climate change. But today, the new Administration is suppressing the truth and trying to erase three recent, and important, publications that the oil industry and polluters definitely don’t want the public to see.
The Administration can change the EPA’s website, but it can’t un-write the truth that was up there as of this morning. And we think responsible Americans who care about science and our planet can handle the truth. So here are the 3 recent, comprehensive EPA reports on climate change that the new Administration is trying to make go away:
EPA Climate Change FAQs
The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment
Climate Change Indicators in the United States: 2016, Fourth Edition
These reports contain important information on the causes and effects of climate change, along with the scientific data to back them up. We think they’re too valuable to go missing, so we’ve given them a permanent home on the Public Justice website.
Because now is the time – when some insist that big is small, cloudy is sunny and fiction is reality – to step up, speak out and RESIST.
Update: We’ve also archived a series of climate change fact sheets that are no longer on the EPA website: How Will Climate Change Affect My Health?, Climate Change and the Health of Children, Climate Change, Health and Environmental Justice, Climate Change and The Health of Indigenous Populations, Climate Change and the Health of Occupational Groups, Climate Change and the Health of Older Adults, Climate Change and the Health of People with Disabilities, Climate Change and the Health of People with Existing Medical Conditions, and Climate Change and the Health of Pregnant Women. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/25/1625065/-Trump-Wants-Alternative-Facts-on-Climate-Change-We-Saved-the-Real-Ones
January 28, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA |
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When it comes to supporting renewables, blue and red make green.
Among a dwindling number of politicians at the national level, there’s a pretend debate going on. Using all the scare tactics and rhetorical tricks they can muster, some apologists for the fossil fuel status quo would have you believe that we, as a nation, are divided about whether or not to move forward aggressively with clean, renewable energy like wind and solar.
But the simple truth is that there is no debate: The national verdict on renewables is already in. However they may have voted in the presidential election, Americans—of all political stripes, in red states and blue ones—are overwhelmingly voting yes on clean energy. Whether it’s because it’s good for the economy, the environment, consumers, or all three, citizens and their elected officials at the state level are throwing their full support behind the next energy revolution.
For evidence of clean energy’s bipartisan and cross-cultural appeal, one need look no further than the American heartland—the same part of the country that gave Donald Trump his victory—where governors, legislatures, and voters have come to see investment in renewables as something to be embraced wholeheartedly and unequivocally. In the weeks just after the election, while many of us were nervously wondering what our national energy policy would look like under a President Trump and a Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, three of these states undertook significant measures to protect, or even improve, their efficiency and renewable energy standards.
In Michigan last month, a legislative package that began its life as an attempt by some lawmakers to roll back the state’s clean energy goals ended up being transformed into a set of bills that not only preserves them, but actually makes them stronger. Just before Christmas—and after much bipartisan negotiating—Republican Governor Rick Snyder personally inserted himself into the debate and ultimately sealed the deal by putting his signature on laws that will increase Michigan’s renewable energy portfolio standard from 10 percent to 15 percent while simultaneously fostering greater efficiency.
In Illinois, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner recently signed the Future Energy Jobs Bill, passed by his state’s Democrat-controlled legislature and designed, among other things, to ensure that more than $200 million a year gets channeled into renewable energy investment. Under the new law, the state’s largest electric utility will also increase efficiency to reduce demand from customers by more than 20 percent by the year 2030. Both measures will greatly help Illinois reach its goal of getting a quarter of its energy from renewables by 2025.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, Governor John Kasich has just defied members of his own party by vetoing a bill that would have continued a deplorably cynical freeze on the state’s move toward renewable energy. In defending his veto, the Republican and 2016 presidential candidate cited the economic harm that would befall his state were it to abandon its sizable investments in the clean energy sector, which currently employs nearly 90,000 Ohioans.
Each of these happy developments represents another forceful refutation of all the shopworn clichés about clean energy: that it’s practically unfeasible, for instance, or that it’s somehow inimical to job growth, or that it’s something only tree huggers care about. More and more, these clichés are being revealed for what they are: desperate and outdated political posturing. Republicans in Washington, D.C., who stubbornly cling to them should take a lesson from their counterparts in heartland states—and not just the aforementioned ones, but also states like Texas and Iowa—and get with the program. If they don’t, they’re going to look even more out of touch with public sentiment than they already do.
January 27, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
renewable, USA |
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