Florida consumers still being slugged unfairly for Turkey Point delayed nuclear expansion
Consumers deserve ‘pause’ in FPL’s nuclear plant recovery costs, Miami Herald, 29 May 16
FPL’s plans to expand its nuclear energy plant at Turkey Point are on hold for four years
However, the utility’s plan to still charge customers for “recovery costs” has caused a stir
FPL should also pause charging its Florida customers — it’s only fair
Given a string of setbacks regarding FPL’s plans to expand the nuclear energy plant at Turkey Point, the recent disclosure that it plans to delay construction for up to four years is a victory for common sense and for critics who worry about the project’s impact on safety and the environment.
What doesn’t make sense is the utility’s desire to charge consumers for costs related to the project, particularly when the delay raises the prospect that it may not go forward at all.
FPL says the recovery costs will decrease during the delay, but remain necessary as part of the licensing procedure and the need to learn from other nuclear energy projects around the country that have also experienced unforeseen delays.
The company wants to charge customers $22 million in 2017 — on top of $281 million it has already recovered for planning and licensing costs — even though the utility said in anApril 27 filing with the state’s Public Service Commission that it wants to maintain its “current state” without going forward on the construction phase until 2020.
On top of that, the utility also wants the PSC to waive the requirement that it file a feasibility report that essentially states that the project it applied for nearly a decade ago is still viable.
That drew a volley of challenges from consumers groups, the Office of Public Counsel (which represents the public in rate cases) and others. A brief filed by the city of Miami said feasibility studies are required to assure the public that such projects are prudent. “If a project is no longer feasible or practical, then the costs incurred are not prudent,” wrote city of Miami attorney Victoria Mendez.
FPL’s decision followed several developments that cast doubt on the wisdom of the proposed expansion. Among them:
▪ Reports dating back to 2014 that water in the canals designed to cool reactors were running too high, requiring waivers from nuclear regulators to operate the canals at higher-than-normal temperatures. If the existing nuclear plant is causing problems, wouldn’t an expansion make matters worse?
▪ In February, A Tallahassee judge ordered state environmental regulators and FPL to clean up the utility’s cooling canals at Turkey Point after blaming the system for polluting South Florida’s groundwater.
▪ In March, this newspaper reported that a study released by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez found that a tracer element of nuclear power plant spillages had been detected in Biscayne Bay at levels up to 215 times higher than normal in ocean water……..http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article80438112.html
Consumers keep footing the bill for nuclear project
Post and Courier, BY TERESA ARNOLD May 29 2016 Did you know that South Carolina law allows utility companies to charge consumers more for cost overruns on big projects like building a nuclear power plant?
It sounds shocking, but the Office of Regulatory Staff (ORS) just published a report showing that SCE&G’s V.C. Summer project has cost $1.5 billion more than originally estimated.
And guess who is footing the bill? South Carolina consumers, many of whom live on modest incomes and cannot afford these additional costs.
AARP South Carolina continues to raise concerns about the cost overruns that have resulted during the current SCE&G capital improvement projects. The most serious questions we raised about the state regulations that allow SCE&G to charge consumers for cost overruns remain unanswered.
AARP South Carolina asked the Office of Regulatory Services to answer the following questions:
1) Is there less incentive for a utility like SCE&G, operating under current state law, to prevent “risk shifting,” since the monetary risk or cost overruns are being borne by consumers, rather than the traditional method that expects the utility to bear that risk? The analysis ORS commissioned does not answer this question.
2) ORS has acknowledged that the current state law governing utility capital improvements, in this case — V.C. Summer nuclear plants — prevents refunds or rebates to the consumer, if a project goes bad. But are there any actions that ORS could take under the law to ensure that cost overruns are not borne by captive consumers? Or does state law prevent ORS from taking action to protect consumers from cost overruns?
3) Is there any other provision in current law that would allow SCE&G to provide voluntary rebates or future rate increase offsets to consumers?……….http://www.postandcourier.com/20160529/160529294/consumers-keep-footing-the-bill-for-nuclear-project
Special Report on Nuclear America
Nuclear America: RT special report on state of US nuclear facilities 27 May, 2016 Over the past 18 months, a number of nuclear facilities across the country have experienced problems. From the Hanford Site in Washington state to Indian Point in New York, RT America takes a close look at the disastrous conditions at US nuclear sites.
Nuclear America: Special Report
Taking a look at the past, present and future of nuclear facilities in the US, Friday’s special report seeks to fill in the gap about America’s crumbling radioactive infrastructure that the mainstream media has ignored….https://www.rt.com/usa/344636-nuclear-america-special-report/
Change “renewable” to “clean” – Exelon’s plan to get taxpayer money for nuclear power
With hard times setting in for some nuclear power plants, Illinois state legislators are trying to decide whether they should put nuclear facilities on life support, or lay them to rest early…….
Despite Obama’s calls for nuclear disarmament, U.S. disarmament is slowest since 1980
Obama calls for end to nuclear weapons, but U.S. disarmament is slowest since 1980 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/27/obama-calls-for-end-to-nuclear-weapons-but-u-s-disarmament-is-slowest-since-1980/ By Philip Bump Speaking from Hiroshima, the site of the first war-time atomic weapon detonation, President Obama on Friday called for the pursuit of “a world without nuclear weapons.”
Only a few days prior, his Department of Defense published new data revealing that the government Obama oversees — a government which manages the second-largest nuclear stockpile in the world — had dismantled fewer of its nuclear devices than in any year since at least 1980.
Every year, the Department of Defense declassifies data on the size of the country’s nuclear stockpile and the number of warheads dismantled. Its most recent data, released this week, shows that the U.S. stockpile numbered 4,571 at the end of 2015, about 15 percent of its size at its peak during the Cold War in 1967. The number of weapons dismantled was 109, the lowest figure since at least 1980.
n 1945, the size of the stockpile matched the number of weapons deployed — two. The biggest reductions came in the early 1990s during the administration of George H.W. Bush and, a decade later, during his son’s. At the end of 2008, the stockpile numbered 5,273; over the course of Obama’s two terms, it has dropped to 4,571.
It is, of course, easier to reduce the size of a stockpile when it is much larger. As a fraction of the total weapon count, Obama has sliced the total by a bit more than one-tenth — 13 percent. But the Federation of American Scientists is still critical of Obama’s progress in this regard. That 13 percent is “the smallest reduction of the stockpile achieved by any previous post-Cold War administration;” the 109 dismantlings last year continues “a trendline of fewer and fewer warheads dismantled” under Obama. The FAS notes that there are reasons outside of the administration’s control for the lower number last year — but also that political pressure discourages a push for reduction.
Why does the size of our stockpile matter? As data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows, the United States still controls about half of the weapons controlled by recognized nuclear states.
Obama meets Hiroshima survivors, calls for a ‘Moral Revolution’ for nuclear disarmament
At Hiroshima Memorial, Obama Says Nuclear Arms Require ‘Moral Revolution’, NYT 27 May 16 HIROSHIMA, Japan — President Obama laid a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on Friday, telling an audience that included survivors of America’s atomic bombing in 1945 that technology as devastating as nuclear arms demands a “moral revolution.”
Thousands of Japanese lined the route of the presidential motorcade to the memorial in the hopes of glimpsing Mr. Obama, the first sitting American president to visit the most potent symbol of the dawning of the nuclear age. Many watched the ceremony on their cellphones.
In an emotional moment afterward, Mr. Obama embraced and shook hands with survivors of the attack, which exposed humanity to risks the president has repeatedly said the world must do far more to resolve.
……..For weeks, the White House had refused to say whether Mr. Obama, would meet survivors. It was a delicate decision. Many survivors long for an apology for an event that destroyed just about everyone and everything they knew, and there were small demonstrations near the ceremony on Friday by protesters demanding an apology. But Mr. Obama said before his trip that he would not apologize for the attack.
Still, Mr. Obama’s homage to the victims and his speech were welcomed by many Japanese. “I am simply grateful for his visit,” said Tomoko Miyoshi, 50, who lost 10 relatives in the Hiroshima attack and wept as she watched Mr. Obama on her cellphone.
In his speech, Mr. Obama, using the slow and deliberate cadence that he uses on only the most formal and consequential occasions, said that the bombing of Hiroshima demonstrated that “mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.”
In a striking example of the gap between Mr. Obama’s vision of a nuclear weapons-free world and the realities of purging them, a new Pentagon census of the American nuclear arsenal shows his administration has reduced the stockpile less than any other post-Cold War presidency.
“We must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them,” he said, although he quickly added: “We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/world/asia/obama-hiroshima-japan.html?_r=0
ExxonMobil must be made accountable for their climate change deception
Greenwashing or Progress? Exxon Shareholders Issue Calls for Climate Accountability , 27 May 2016 By Candice Bernd, Truthout | At ExxonMobil’s annual shareholder meeting in Dallas this week, activist shareholders and investors demanded the company own up to its deceptive practices regarding climate disruption and begin to implement adaptations and regulations to mitigate climate disruption’s impacts.
Shareholders nixed nearly all of the 11 measures directly or indirectly related to climate disruption during the meeting Wednesday, but 62 percent of them passed a “proxy-access” measure that would allow investors holding at least 3 percent of shares to nominate outsiders for seats on the company’s board.
To see more stories like this, visit “Planet or Profit?”
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer sponsored the measure, empowering investors holding at least 3 percent of company shares for more than three years to nominate up to a quarter of the board’s directors annually. While shareholder resolutions are non-binding, the measure could potentially allow a climate activist to become a director on the company’s board. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson said the boardwould consider enacting the proposal this July.
The proposal is the first to be passed by shareholders since 2006 and breaks a 25-year pattern in which Exxon investors have systematically rejected more than 60 climate- and good-governance-related proposals. Oil giant Chevron also held its annual meeting Wednesday in San Ramon, California, with investors rejecting every climate-related measure.
While Exxon investors still rejected the vast majority of the demands, it seems they can’t entirely tamp down this year’s calls for accountability. The heated public campaign against Exxon comes at a time when the industry is taking a hit from aplunge in oil prices. Last year, Exxon earned its smallest profit since 2002 and lost its top-ranked credit score after its debt more than tripled. Still, Exxon remains one of the most profitable companies in the world.
Perhaps the company’s most contentious meeting in decades, executives contended with one of the largest coalitions between activist shareholders and large-scale investors ever, with more than $8 trillion under their management. Groups including foundations, unions and several religious organizations brought forward resolutions this year.
Still, investors rejected nearly all of the measures, including proposals that would have forced Exxon to report to shareholders how the company would plan for the future under the Paris climate agreement, support a limit on global planetary warming to 2 degrees Celsius, insert a climate expert on its board, and provide reports on its lobbying activities and hydraulic fracturing (fracking).
This week’s meeting was Exxon’s first annual meeting since the Paris agreement was brokered, and since at least three state attorneys general launched investigations into allegations claiming the company intentionally misled the public about the risks and impacts associated with climate disruption.
A series of investigative reports published last year by InsideClimate News and theLos Angeles Times revealed that Exxon began its own internal research on climate disruption as early as the 1970s and understood early on that carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels were driving planetary warming. It then took active steps to cover up its findings.
Since the reports were published, Democratic members of Congress and presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have pressed the Department of Justice to consider bringing a civil racketeering case against Exxon. The department has since referred the requests to the FBI’s criminal division, but it could still file a civil complaint against the company.
Grandchild of Former Exxon Scientist, Flood Victim Speak Out in Dallas
Joining a group of about 80 climate justice activists outside the Exxon meeting in Dallas was Anna Kalinsky, the granddaughter of James Black, a senior Exxon scientist who warned the company about the risks and impacts associated with burning fossil fuels on the global climate system — in 1977.
“Instead of working to address climate change, [Exxon] invested in lobbyists and front groups that contradicted the very science my grandfather had warned them about,” Kalinsky told activists. “When we ignore science, and let companies and government agencies deceive us with spin about the damage that their products cause, we all lose.”
Kalinsky also addressed Exxon executives inside the shareholder meeting, going into more detail about her grandfather’s scientific findings and rebuking Exxon’s funding of groups “that spread misinformation about the science.” The company has spent tens of millions of dollars funding the climate denial networks since 1998…….http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36204-some-exxon-shareholders-issue-calls-for-climate-accountability
Nuclear energy has no place in New York State renewable energy plan
“The proposed Clean Energy mandate also includes a proposal to support emissions-free upstate nuclear power.”
The inclusion of nuclear power in the New York State renewable energy plan is drawing national attention.
“Hitting on state taxpayers to pay for steadily rising nuclear costs while wind and solar energy are less and less expensive makes no sense in a 21st Century economy,”
the inclusion of nuclear power in the state plan would take resources away from true clean, green energy.
Long Island as a Nuclear Park, CounterPunch, by KARL GROSSMAN MAY 27, 2016 “……..PSEG has had a very sorry record as THE Long Island utility.
This bad record is continuing with intensity.
Last month, for example, PSEG took a blow at solar energy on the island asking the state Public Service Commission to “minimize” and “later eliminate” benefits received by homeowners and business owners utilizing solar energy. PSEG wants to hike the charge to solar customers for being connected to the grid and reduce what they get for sending electricity into it.
“We should encourage homeowners and business owners to invest in rooftop solar systems—but PSEG wants to penalize them,” says Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island. ‘This runs counter to the idea of getting more renewable energy into the grid and of the New York State energy plan which seeks to get half of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030.”…….
And regarding nuclear power, a fundamental focus of LIPA was to lead in bringing safe, clean, renewable—and not nuclear—energy to Long Island. This was in keeping with its formation being instrumental in stopping LILCO’s plan to build many nuclear power plants on the island with Shoreham the first.
Another U.S. utility that’s been as bullish on nuclear power—and still is: PSEG.
In the 1970s, PSEG embarked on a plan to build a line of “floating” nuclear power plants in the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey with the last just south of Long Island. Millions were spent before this scheme was jettisoned………
What the state is calling a “50 by 30” plan, advanced by Andrew Cuomo, is formally titled a “Clean Energy Standard.” As the Department of Public Service explained in a statement: “Governor Cuomo directed the Public Service Commission to design and enact a new Clean Energy Standard mandating that 50 percent of all electricity consumed in New York by 2030 come from clean and renewable energy sources.” However, the next line in the statement is: “The proposed Clean Energy mandate also includes a proposal to support emissions-free upstate nuclear power.” That component of the state plan drew strong criticism at the public hearing.
“Nuclear energy is neither clean nor renewable,” testified Pauline Salotti, vice chair of the Green Party of Suffolk County. “No way should it be considered renewable.”
Raacke said New York should not seek to “prop up nuclear power” and spoke of the Shoreham “nuclear folly” that went on “for years” on Long Island and the successful struggle against it. He objected to a “revisit to that past in the plan.”…..
The boosting of “upstate nuclear power” in the state plan follows Andrew Cuomo’s support for the continued operation of nuclear power plants in upstate New York despite his opposition to the Indian Point nuclear power plants downstate, 26 miles north of New York City, which he’s been demanding be shut down. ……
The Syracuse Post Standard, in an article by Tim Knauss headlined “Cuomo’s Renewable Energy Plan Includes Boost for Upstate Nuclear Plants,” quotes Syracuse attorney Joe Heath, counsel to the Onondaga Nation, as opposing this. Said Heath: “We should…not think that nukes are the answer.”
The upstate nuclear plants that Cuomo is backing—and that his plan claims produce renewable energy—include the long-troubled Nine Mile Point and FitzPatrick nuclear plants in Scriba, although the current owner of FitzPatrick want to close it this year because, says Entergy, it is not financially viable to operate……
The inclusion of nuclear power in the New York State renewable energy plan is drawing national attention. “Cuomo is mistaken to squander his political clout on beating the dead horse that nuclear power has become in the State of New York,” says Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project for the organization Beyond Nuclear.
“Hitting on state taxpayers to pay for steadily rising nuclear costs while wind and solar energy are less and less expensive makes no sense in a 21st Century economy,” declares Gunter. “It’s time to offer retraining to the nuclear work force to install renewable energy, expand state-of-the-art energy storage systems like Tesla’s PowerWall and make energy efficiency and conservation part of every home, business and industry in the state.” Moreover, says Gunter, the inclusion of nuclear power in the state plan would take resources away from true clean, green energy.
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of New York, is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/27/long-island-as-a-nuclear-park/
Illinois Attorney General slams nuclear bailout legislation
Attorney General Rips Exelon Legislation http://www.wandtv.com/story/32061349/attorney-general-rips-exelon-legislation May 26, 2016
Madigan says the measure (Senate Bill 1585) would allow Exelon and its subsidiary ComEd to rack up billions of dollars in spending and profit paid for by consumers.
“It’s outrageous that Exelon and ComEd are again requesting a bailout when they are both profitable companies,” Madigan stated. “The legislature has more important matters to address than padding ComEd and Exelon’s profits.”
Exelon has argued it needs the legislation in order to keep operating the Clinton plant. Lawmakers like Senator Chapin Rose, (R) Mahomet, and Representative Bill Mitchell, (R) Forsyth, have said hundreds of jobs are on the line in central Illinois should the plant be closed. Schools say they will lose millions of dollars in property taxes.
Exelon has threatened to close the plant in 2017 if the legislation, which changes some regulations, is not passed by the legislature by the end of the legislative session this month.
The USA Pentagon’s budget labyrinth for a planned $1 trillion splurge
The Pentagon’s War on Accountability: Slush Funds, Smoke and Mirrors, and Funny Money Equal Weapons Systems Galore By William D. Hartung, Tom Dispatch, Reader Supported News, 24 May 16 Slush Funds Galore
“………If smokescreens and evasive maneuvers aren’t enough to hide the Pentagon’s actual priorities from the taxpaying public, there’s always secrecy. The Secrecy Project at the Federation of American Scientists recently put the size of the intelligence portion of the national security state’s “black budget“ — its secret spending on everything from spying to developing high-tech weaponry — at more than $70 billion. That figure includes a wide variety of activities carried out through the CIA, the NSA, and other members of the intelligence community, but $16.8 billion of it was requested directly by the Department of Defense. And that $70 billion is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to secret spending programs, since billions more in secret financing for the development and acquisition of new weapons systems has been squirreled away elsewhere.
The largest recent project to have its total costs shrouded in secrecy is the B-21, the Air Force’s new nuclear bomber. Air Force officials claim that they need to keep the cost secret lest potential enemies “connect the dots” and learn too much about the plane’s key characteristics. In a letter to Senator McCain, an advocate of making the cost of the plane public, Ronald Walden of the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office claimed that there was “a strong correlation between the cost of an air vehicle and its total weight.” This, he suggested, might make it “decisively easier” for potential opponents to guess its range and payload.
If such assessments sound ludicrous, it’s because they are. As the histories of other major Pentagon acquisition programs have shown, the price of a system tells you just that — its price — and nothing more. Otherwise, with its classic cost overruns, the F-35 would have a range beyond compare, possibly to Mars and back. Of course, the real rationale for keeping the full cost estimate for the B-21 secret is to avoid bad publicity. Budget analyst Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggests that it’s an attempt to avoid “sticker shock” for a program that he estimates could cost more than $100 billion to develop and purchase.
The bomber, in turn, is just part of a planned $1 trillion splurge over the next three decades on a new generation of bombers, ballistic missile submarines, and ground-based nuclear missiles, part of an updating of the vast U.S. nuclear arsenal. And keep this in mind: that trillion dollars is simply an initial estimate before the usual Pentagon cost overruns even begin to come into play. Financially, the nuclear plan is going to hit taxpayer wallets particularly hard in the mid-2020s when a number of wildly expensive non-nuclear systems like the F-35 combat aircraft will also be hitting peak production.
Under the circumstances, it doesn’t take a genius to know that there’s only one way to avoid the budgetary equivalent of a 30-car pile up: increase the Pentagon’s already ample finances yet again. Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Brian McKeon was referring to the costs of building new nuclear delivery vehicles when he said that the administration was “wondering how the heck we’re going to pay for it, and probably thanking our lucky stars we won’t be here to answer the question.” Of course, the rest of us will be stuck holding the bag when all those programs cloaked in secrecy suddenly come out of hiding and the bills come fully due.
At this point, you may not be shocked to learn that, in response to McKeon’s uncomfortable question, the Pentagon has come up with yet another budgetary gimmick. It’s known as the “National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund,” or as Taxpayers for Common Sense more accurately labels it, “the Navy’s submarine slush fund.” The idea — a longstanding darling of the submarine lobby (and yes, Virginia, there is a submarine lobby in Washington) — is to set up a separate slush fund outside the Navy’s normal shipbuilding budget. That’s where the money for the new ballistic missile submarine program, currently slated to cost $139 billion for 12 subs, would go.
Establishing such a new slush fund would, in turn, finesse any direct budgetary competition between the submarine program and the new surface ships the Navy also wants, and so avoid a political battle that might end up substantially reducing the number of vessels the Navy is hoping to buy over the next 30 years. Naturally, the money for the submarine fund will have to come from somewhere, either one of the other military services or that operations and maintenance budget so regularly raided to help pay for expensive weapons programs.
Not to be outmaneuvered, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James has now asked Congress to set up a “strategic deterrence fund” to pay for its two newest nuclear delivery vehicles, the planned bomber and a long-range nuclear-armed ballistic missile. In theory, this would take pressure off other major Air Force projects like the F-35, but as with the submarine fund, it only adds up if a future president and a future Congress can be persuaded to jack up the Pentagon budget to make room for these and other weapons systems.
In the end, however the specifics work out, any “fund” for such weaponry will be just another case of smoke and mirrors, a way of kicking the nuclear funding crisis down the road in hopes of fatter budgets to come. Why make choices now when the Pentagon and the military services can bet on blackmailing a future Trump or Clinton administration and a future Congress into ponying up the extra billions of dollars needed to make their latest ill-conceived plans add up?
If your head is spinning after this brief tour of the Pentagon’s budget labyrinth, it should be. That’s just what the Pentagon wants its painfully complicated budget practices to do: leave Congress, any administration, and the public too confused and exhausted to actually hold it accountable for how our tax dollars are being spent. So far, they’re getting away with it.
William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and a senior adviser to the Security Assistance Monitor. He is the author of, among other books, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt’s latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World. http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/37052-the-pentagons-war-on-accountability-slush-funds-smoke-and-mirrors-and-funny-money-equal-weapons-systems-galore
America’s risks of catastrophic fire in spent nuclear fuel pools
Spent fuel fire on U.S. soil could dwarf impact of Fukushima, Science, By Richard Stone May. 24, 2016 A fire from spent fuel stored at a U.S. nuclear power plant could have catastrophic consequences, according to new simulations of such an event.
A major fire “could dwarf the horrific consequences of the Fukushima accident,” says Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. “We’re talking about trillion-dollar consequences,” says Frank von Hippel, a nuclear security expert at Princeton University, who teamed with Princeton’s Michael Schoeppner on the modeling exercise.
The revelations come on the heels of a report last week from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the aftermath of the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan. The report details how a spent fuel fire at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant that was crippled by the twin disasters could have released far more radioactivity into the environment.
The nuclear fuel in three of the plant’s six reactors melted down and released radioactive plumes that contaminated land downwind. Japan declared 1100 square kilometers uninhabitable and relocated 88,000 people. (Almost as many left voluntarily.) After the meltdowns, officials feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. By a stroke of luck, that did not happen.
But the national academies’s report warns that spent fuel accumulating at U.S. nuclear plants is also vulnerable. After fuel is removed from a reactor core, the radioactive fission products continue to decay, generating heat. All nuclear power plants store the fuel onsite at the bottom of deep pools for at least 4 years while it slowly cools. To keep it safe, the academies report recommends that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and nuclear plant operators beef up systems for monitoring the pools and topping up water levels in case a facility is damaged. The panel also says plants should be ready to tighten security after a disaster.
At most U.S. nuclear plants, spent fuel is densely packed in pools, heightening the fire risk. NRC has estimated that a major fire at the spent fuel pool at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania would displace an estimated 3.46 million people from 31,000 square kilometers of contaminated land, an area larger than New Jersey. But Von Hippel and Schoeppner think that NRC has grossly underestimated the scale and societal costs of such a fire…….http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/spent-fuel-fire-us-soil-could-dwarf-impact-fukushima
Exelon and its allies rally for a bailout of nuclear power, despite its known dangers
Illinoisans Sound Off On Exelon/ComEd Bill As Report Unveils Dangers At Their Local Nuclear Sites http://www.progressillinois.com/news/content/2016/05/24/illinoisans-sound-over-exeloncomed-legislation With the end of the regular Illinois legislative session looming, supporters of an Exelon and ComEd energy proposal were at the State Capitol Tuesday to advocate for the measure.Exelon workers and their allies were among those rallying for the controversial Next Generation Energy Plan. Without the legislation, Exelon has warned that it will have to shutter its Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear power plants, which are reportedly struggling financially.
State Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet), whose district includes the Clinton nuclear plant, supports the legislation. …
Illinois AFL-CIO President Michael Carrigan added: “We cannot afford to see a nuclear plant close.”
But Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan says the legislation is essentially a bailout for Exelon and its subsidiary ComEd.
“It’s outrageous that Exelon and ComEd are again requesting a bailout when they are both profitable companies,” Madigan said in a statement about her opposition to the legislation, SB 1585. “This proposal would force consumers to pay more only to boost the companies’ profits further. The legislature has more important matters to address than padding ComEd and Exelon’s profits.”
Abraham Scarr with the Illinois Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) also weighed in on the energy legislation Tuesday. He told consumers not to believe “the hype” around the bill:
ComEd and Exelon want you to believe their ‘Next Generation Energy Plan’ will put Illinois on the path to a clean energy future. Don’t believe the hype. They claim their bill will jump start solar, but the solar industry opposes it. They claim their new rate structure helps consumers, but consumer advocates oppose it. They ask for ‘equal footing’ with wind and solar, without counting the $5.58 billion Illinois ratepayers have already poured into their nuclear fleet.
The ComEd-Exelon bill prioritizes private profits over public good. Demand charges, the nuclear bailout, the grossly overpriced micro-grid proposal and many other policies all aim to deliver more, and more consistent, revenue for ComEd and Exelon.
It is time to transition to a clean, renewable energy economy and do so in a way that is fair to consumers and to the communities most impacted by our energy system. But instead of rising to these challenges, the ComEd-Exelon bill seeks to forestall this transition and wring as much profit from ratepayers as possible while delivering little in return.
In other news, Exelon’s Illinois nuclear facilities were mentioned in a new report released Tuesday by Greenpeace.
The environmental group analyzed “near misses or accident precursors at U.S. nuclear power plants over the past decade.” The report adds that “risk analysts have determined” these events to be “precursors to a meltdown.”
The incidents were reported to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. From 2004 through 2014, NRC recored “61 events and 102 conditions at US nuclear plants that were near misses to a meltdown,” the report says.
All but three of Exelon’s 11 nuclear reactors in Illinois are reported to have had “near misses” over that decade, according to the research.
“As legislators and the governor move to decide Illinois energy future and whether to bailout three of Exelon’s aging and financially failing reactors, they should well consider the potential safety risks of staying with nuclear power, and whether or not the federal regulators are doing their job to adequately protect Illinois from enormous economic and environmental harm,” Dave Kraft, director of the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, an anti-nuclear group, said in reaction to the new Greenpeace report. SOURCES News links: Journal Gazette & Times-Courier
Illinois the perfect illustration of the plight of the nuclear and coal industries
Where Free Wind Meets Cheap Gas in U.S., Power Dynamics Changing
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Illinois could lose more than 10 percent of power capacity
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Exelon, Dynegy asking legislature to save aging plants
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For a snapshot of the woes of the U.S coal and nuclear industries, take a look at Illinois.
Following a four-year drop in electricity demand, power companies there announced the closing of coal and nuclear plants that account for more than 10 percent of generating capacity. The shutdowns come amid a fourfold increase in cheap wind from neighboring states and growing competition from generators burning low-cost natural gas.
- Exelon Corp., the operator of 11 nuclear reactors in Illinois, and Dynegy Inc., which has 10 coal-fired plants in the state, are asking lawmakers to bail out their money-losing assets to prevent further job-cutting, closures
- “You’ve got free wind power coming from the west and cheap gas coming from the east and that’s not a good place to be for coal and nuclear power plants,” said Travis Miller, a utility analyst for Morningstar Inc., an investment research firm.
- Illinois isn’t alone. The power industry upheaval is playing out in more than a dozen states that deregulated their electricity markets, opening their borders to competition, over the past two decades. In those locations, owners of aging generators are particularly vulnerable as the average wholesale power price has dropped by about half since 2008. In response, electricity providers in places like Ohio and New York are asking for millions of dollars to keep their units running.
Nowhere has the confluence of market forces produced such a profound dislocation as in Illinois. Continue reading
Weaponising the planet – the Pentagon’s secret “war budget”
The Pentagon’s War on Accountability: Slush Funds, Smoke and Mirrors, and Funny Money Equal Weapons Systems Galore By William D. Hartung, Tom Dispatch, Reader Supported News, 24 May 16 How to Arm the Planet
“……..In recent years, keeping tabs on how the Pentagon spends its money has grown even more difficult thanks to the “war budget” — known in Pentagonese as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account — which has become a nearly bottomless pit for items that have nothing to do with fighting wars. The use of the OCO as a slush fund began in earnest in the early years of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq and has continued ever since. It’s hard to put a precise number on how much money has been slipped into that budget or taken out of it to pay for pet projects of every sort in the last decade-plus, but the total is certainly more than $100 billion and counting.
The Pentagon’s routine use of the war budget as a way to fund whatever it wants has set an example for a Congress that’s seldom seen a military project it wasn’t eager to pay for. Only recently, for instance, the House Armed Services Committee chair, Texas Republican Congressman Mac Thornberry, proposed taking $18 billion from the war budget to cover items like an extra 11 F-35 combat aircraft and 14 F-18 fighter-bombers that the Pentagon hadn’t even asked for.
This was great news for Lockheed Martin, which needs a shot in the arm for its troubled F-35 program, already slated to be the most expensive weapons system in history, and for Boeing, which has been lobbying aggressively to keep its F-18 production line open in the face of declining orders from the Navy. But it’s bad news for the troops because, as the Project on Government Oversight has demonstrated, the money used to pay for the unneeded planes will come at the expense of training and maintenance funds.
This is, by the way, the height of hypocrisy at a time when the House Armed Services Committee is routinely sending out hysterical missives about the country’s supposed lack of military readiness. The money to adequately train military personnel and keep their equipment running is, in fact, there. Members of Congress like Thornberry would just have to stop raiding the operations budget to pay for big ticket weapons systems, while turning a blind eye to wasteful spending in other parts of the Pentagon budget.
Thornberry’s gambit may not carry the day, since both President Obama and Senate Armed Services Committee chair John McCain oppose it. But as long as a separate war budget exists, the temptation to stuff it with unnecessary programs will persist as well.
Of course, that war budget is just part of the problem. The Pentagon has so many budding programs tucked away in so many different lines of its budget that even its officials have a hard time keeping track of what’s actually going on. As for the rest of us, we’re essentially in the dark.
Consider, for instance, the proliferation of military aid programs. The Security Assistance Monitor, a nonprofit that tracks such programs, has identified more than two dozen of them worth about $10 billion annually. Combine them with similar programs tucked away in the State Department’s budget, and the U.S. is contributing to the arming and training of security forces in 180 countries. (To put that mind-boggling total in perspective, there are at most 196 countries on the planet.) Who could possibly keep track of such programs, no less what effect they may be having on the countries and militaries involved, or on the complex politics of, and conflicts in, various regions?
Best suggestion: don’t even think about it (which is exactly what the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex want you to do). And no need for Congress to do so either. After all, as Lora Lumpe and Jeremy Ravinsky of the Open Society Foundations noted earlier this year, the Pentagon is the only government agency providing foreign assistance that does not even have to submit to Congress an annual budget justification for what it does. As a result, they write, “the public does not know how much the DoD is spending in a given country and why……….”http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/37052-the-pentagons-war-on-accountability-slush-funds-smoke-and-mirrors-and-funny-money-equal-weapons-systems-galore
Pentagon successfully keeps extent of military spending secret from the American public
The Pentagon’s War on Accountability: Slush Funds, Smoke and Mirrors, and Funny Money Equal Weapons Systems Galore By William D. Hartung, Tom Dispatch, Reader Supported News, 24 May 16 “……..Now you see it, now you don’t. Think of it as the Department of Defense’s version of the street con game, three-card monte, or maybe simply as the Pentagon shuffle. In any case, the Pentagon’s budget is as close to a work of art as you’re likely to find in the U.S. government — if, that is, by work of art you mean scam.
The United States is on track to spend more than $600 billion on the military this year — more, that is, than was spent at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War military buildup, and more than the military budgets of at least the next seven nations in the world combined. And keep in mind that that’s just a partial total. As an analysis by the Straus Military Reform Project has shown, if we count related activities like homeland security, veterans’ affairs, nuclear warhead production at the Department of Energy, military aid to other countries, and interest on the military-related national debt, that figure reaches a cool $1 trillion.
The more that’s spent on “defense,” however, the less the Pentagon wants us to know about how those mountains of money are actually being used. As the only major federal agency that can’t pass an audit, the Department of Defense (DoD) is the poster child for irresponsible budgeting.
It’s not just that its books don’t add up, however. The DoD is taking active measures to disguise how it is spending the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars it receives every year — from using the separate “war budget” as a slush fund to pay for pet projects that have nothing to do with fighting wars to keeping the cost of its new nuclear bomber a secret. Add in dozens of other secret projects hidden in the department’s budget and the Pentagon’s poorly documented military aid programs, and it’s clear that the DoD believes it has something to hide.
Don’t for a moment imagine that the Pentagon’s growing list of secret programs and evasive budgetary maneuvers is accidental or simply a matter of sloppy bookkeeping. Much of it is remarkably purposeful. By keeping us in the dark about how it spends our money, the Pentagon has made it virtually impossible for anyone to hold it accountable for just about anything. An entrenched bureaucracy is determined not to provide information that might be used to bring its sprawling budget — and so the institution itself — under control. That’s why budgetary deception has become such a standard operating procedure at the Department of Defense.
The audit problem is a case in point. The Pentagon along with all other major federal agencies was first required to make its books auditable in the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990. More than 25 years later, there is no evidence to suggest that the Pentagon will ever be able to pass an audit. In fact, the one limited instance in which success seemed to be within reach — an audit of a portion of the books of a single service, the Marine Corps — turned out, upon closer inspection, to be a case study in bureaucratic resistance.
In April 2014, when it appeared that the Corps had come back with a clean audit, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was so elated that he held a special ceremony in the “Hall of Heroes” at the Pentagon. “It might seem a bit unusual to be in the Hall of Heroes to honor a bookkeeping accomplishment,” he acknowledged, “but damn, this is an accomplishment.”
In March 2015, however, that “accomplishment” vanished into thin air. The Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), which had overseen the work of Grant Thornton, the private firm that conducted the audit, denied that it had been successful (allegedly in response to “new information”). In fact, in late 2013, as Reuters reported, auditors at the OIG had argued for months against green-lighting Grant Thornton’s work, believing that it was full of obvious holes. They were, however, overruled by the deputy inspector general for auditing, who had what Reuters described as a “longstanding professional relationship” with the Grant Thornton executive supervising the audit.
The Pentagon and the firm deny that there was any conflict of interest, but the bottom line is clear enough: there was far more interest in promoting the idea that the Marine Corps could pass an audit than in seeing it actually do so, even if inconvenient facts had to be swept under the rug. This sort of behavior is hardly surprising once you consider all the benefits from an undisturbed status quo that accrue to Pentagon bureaucrats and cash-hungry contractors.
Without a reliable paper trail, there is no systematic way to track waste, fraud, and abuse in Pentagon contracting, or even to figure out how many contractors the Pentagon employs, though a conservative estimate puts the number at well over 600,000. The result is easy money with minimal accountability………http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/37052-the-pentagons-war-on-accountability-slush-funds-smoke-and-mirrors-and-funny-money-equal-weapons-systems-galore
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