EDF, largest nuclear company in the world, turns from nuclear to renewable power
Nuclear Power Company Turns To Renewables http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3877 7 Aug 13 The world’s biggest operator of nuclear plants is exiting the nuclear power sector in the USA; turning instead to renewable energy.
According to Reuters, French utility EDF recently struck an agreement partner Exelon with regard to EDF’s exit from their Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG) joint venture, which operates five nuclear power stations totalling 3.9 gigawatts capacity.
EDF’s US operations will now focus on developing renewables-based generation, primarily solar power and wind energy, through EDF Renewable Energy. The company currently has a portfolio of over 5 gigawatts of projects and 2.3 gigawatts of installed capacity.
In July, EDF Renewable Energy also announced it had entered into a Membership Interest Purchase Agreement with Lincoln Renewable Energy to acquire the first phase of the Hereford Wind Project in Texas.
The nuclear power industry has fallen on very tough times in the USA; primarily due to cheap gas and wind power.
Perception of nuclear energy also took a major hit after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, which worried many Americans. Approximately 18 million people live within a 30 kilometre radius of a nuclear power plant in the USA – an area the same size as the initial Fukushima evacuation zone.
The Fukushima disaster continues to generate crises on a regular basis. A new emergency has recently been declared; triggered by radioactive groundwater breaching a barrier built to contain it.
Contaminated water could rise to the surface within three weeks and if it should do so, the flow could be “extremely fast“.
TEPCO, operator of the Fukushima facility, says it has been slow to deal with the subterranean water leaks as it was focused on cooling the damaged reactors that posed greater risks.
Faith in TEPCO’s abilities to address the situation is fragile and the company’s apologies are being received coolly by the people of Japan – and more nasty surprises are certainly possible during the massively expensive cleanup.
Climate change effects are stopping nuclear reactors from functioning
Nuclear Reactors Can’t Handle Global Warming , Progressive, By Harvey Wasserman, August 5, 2013 An overheated world now threatens the ability of nuclear reactors to operate at all.
Just as the sales pitch that atomic energy could help with global warming gets its biggest hype, the reactors themselves go very wrong.
And as a “renaissance” turns into a rout, a “new generation” of reactors fades ever-deeper into the realm of expensive fantasy.
The bad news on nuclear power and global warming comes most recently from Cape Cod Bay. All commercial reactors spew huge quantities of waste heat into the rivers, lakes and oceans they use for coolant.
The worst instance (so far) is Fukushima, where hot radioactive effluent still pours into the Pacific Ocean after three explosions the industry claimed could never happen.
Reactors in Alabama, France, Germany, and elsewhere have already been forced to shut because of excess heat.
At Entergy’s Pilgrim, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a global-warmed summer has heated Cape Cod’s waters beyond the legal limit for cooling a “normal” reactor. So in mid-July Entergy was forced to take Pilgrim down to 85 percent power. Entergy may ask regulators to let it operate at full power with overheated water anyway. Such requests–still under official consideration–have been made repeatedly at Connecticut’s Millstone 2, where the Long Island Sound has soared over 75 degrees.
Meanwhile, Nebraska’s Cooper and Ft. Calhoun reactors were shut in 2011 by massive global-warmed flooding. As many as three dozen U.S. reactors are at risk from dam breaks and the flooding unleashed by climate chaos. Ft. Calhoun may never reopen.
The irony of reactors closed by the global warming they’re supposed to cure seems lost on their pushers….. http://www.progressive.org/nuclear-reactors-global-warming
Catholic Worker activists lead in action to stop nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons are toxic to manufacture. These are hazardous jobs; workers may not make it to retirement and/or they may suffer from serious, chronic health issues.
They are always saying they’re good, high-paying jobs, but they’re not! There are hundreds of thousands of sick and dying nuclear workers. The Department of Labor (DOL) administers the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program (EEOICPA). Begun in 2001, the program tends to deny, deny, and deny claims until the worker dies.
On floating lanterns – and nuclear bombs National Catholic Reporter, Thomas C. Fox | Aug. 5, 2013 Kansas city, Mo. Tōrō nagashi is the Japanese ceremony in which participants float paper lanterns. This is done based on the belief that this guides the spirits of the departed back to the other world. The ceremony is also done by many peace communities to commemorate those lost in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945.
Those US bombings were the only times nuclear weapons were ever used on human targets. Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki, with roughly half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day.
In Kansas City, peace activists gather one evening during the first week of August to float lanterns in a pond in Loose Park to commemorate those deaths.
Last night several dozen once again gathered to remember those who died under the unfathomable fire of nuclear weapons. The gathering, as it always does, reaches globally to let the human family know that in the middle of the heartland of the United States, some people remember and call out against the building, storage and use of these weapons of mass destruction. Continue reading
Florida residents to pay more for abandoned nuclear power plants
Fla. regulators OK Duke nuclear rate hike News Observer, : August 5, 2013 By GARY FINEOUT — Associated Press TALLAHASEE, FLA. — Duke Energy’s nearly 2 million customers in Florida will keep paying for the utility giant’s now-shuttered and abandoned nuclear power plants for the next several years.
And on Monday, that cost went up higher. State utility regulators voted to let Duke Energy Florida raise rates 89 cents a month for the average customer to pay for its Crystal River Plant, in Citrus County.
The charge, which would take effect in January 2014, would last up to seven years. It would be in addition to a separate charge customers have been paying to build a nuclear power plant in Levy County in north Florida.
Last week the Charlotte, N.C.-based company announced it was scuttling its plans to build the $24.7 billion plant, citing changes in the energy market and regulatory hurdles at the state and federal level.
The company announced in February that it was closing the Crystal River nuclear plant, located near the Gulf of Mexico. Workers cracked a concrete containment building during an attempt to upgrade the plant in 2009. An attempt to fix the problem in 2011 resulted in more cracks.
State Rep. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, blasted the decision to let Duke — formerly known as Progress Energy — collect even more money for the Crystal River plant.
“Every customer of Duke Progress Energy should be absolutely outraged,” Fasano said…….
Expenses normally cannot be passed on to customers until power plants go into service, but the Legislature made an exception for nuclear reactors in the 2006 law. It was designed to encourage the expansion of nuclear energy. That law was changed this past year…… http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/05/3084374/fla-regulators-ok-duke-nuclear.html
Pentagon prepares AirSea Battle (ASB) for nuclear attack on China
The general public is evidently being kept in the dark by the mainstream media that a nuclear first strike against China is being contemplated by rogue elements within the Pentagon.
America Plans Unprovoked Nuclear Attack on China, edited and abridged from various sources Darkmoon, by Lasha Darkmoon, August 3, 2013 by Montecristo If America launches a nuclear attack on China, the Chinese will strike back at American cities.
This is an edited abridgement by Lasha Darkmoon of Professor Amitai Etzioni’s ground-breaking article in the Yale Journal of International affairs, Who Authorized Preparations for War with China? It is followed by extracts from Paul Craig Roberts’ impassioned response to the same article. This important material has been condensed to roughly one-fifth of its original length.
AMITAI ETZIONI: The Pentagon has concluded that the time has come to prepare for war with China. It is a momentous conclusion, a momentous decision that so far has failed to receive a thorough review from elected officials, namely the White House and Congress. This important change in the United States’ posture toward China has largely been driven by the Pentagon.
The decision at hand stands out even more prominently because (a) the change in military posture may well lead to an arms race with China, which could culminate in a nuclear war; and (b) the economic condition of the United States requires a reduction in military spending, not a new arms race.
Have the White House and Congress properly reviewed the Pentagon’s approach—and found its threat assessment of China convincing? If not, what are the United States’ overarching short- and long-term political strategies for dealing with an economically and militarily rising China?…………. Continue reading
Economics of nuclear power rapidly getting worse
US natgas boom sucks nuclear power into downdraft , 4 Aug 2013 By: Javier E. David CNBC.com One of the biggest contributors to the ongoing decline of the U.S. nuclear industry is booming natural gas development, according to a new study.
In a study published in March, the Institute for Energy and Environment identified cost overruns, slowing demand and plunging natgas prices—which this week fell to a five month low—as key forces behind nuclear’s decline.
Cheap and abundant natural gas is eating away at nuclear energy’s traditional role in generating electricity in a way that has made the sector’s prospects increasingly precarious, according to the institute and others. Even as the U.S. renews its push for climate change policies that could give nuclear a new lease on life, some observers are doubtful much can be done to arrest the sector’s spiral……..
Hill said the long-term prospects of the nuclear industry are uncertain at best, especially in a sector operating in the shadow of Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster. “The economics and the environment are driving development and the use of shale oll and gas to provide power,” she said.
Furthermore, “the economics of nuclear plants are very difficult to maintain, and very costly to do so,” she said. Hill pointed to issues that have for years dogged Yucca Mountain’s nuclear facility in Las Vegas, Nevada, the site of vociferous environmental opposition……………. the landscape remains dotted with failing projects, with four reactors having been retired this year alone.
Just a few years ago, there were prospects for a nuclear revival, said Blank Rome’s Hill. However, the resurgence of oil and gas production is changing all that.
“Some of it is definitely safety-related, such as [Japan’s] Fukushima, but the primary driver has been the advent of shale gas in the last few years,” Hill said. “I think we’re just seeing the beginning of what’s happening with shale development.”
USA and Israel – two unaccountable nuclear weapons States
Because the American press is a corrupt government propaganda ministry, the American people have no idea that neoconized Washington is planning nuclear war. Americans are no more aware of this than they are of former President Jimmy Carter’s recent statement, reported only in Germany, that the United States no longer has a functioning democracy.
America Plans Unprovoked Nuclear Attack on China, edited and abridged from various sources by Lasha Darkmoon, Darkmoon, August 3, 2013 by Montecristo “……….PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS: Amitai Etzioni has raised an important question: “Who authorized preparations for war with China?” We are confronted with a neoconized US military out of control endangering Americans and the rest of the world.
Etzioni is correct that this is a momentous decision made by a neoconized military. If the Chinese government is realistic, it is aware that Washington is planning a pre-emptive nuclear attack against China. No other kind of war makes any sense from Washington’s standpoint. The “superpower” was never able to occupy Baghdad, and after 11 years of war has been defeated in Afghanistan by a few thousand lightly armed Taliban. It would be curtains for Washington to get into a conventional war with China.
The Pentagon’s war plan for China is called “AirSea Battle.” It is clear that if the Washington morons get a war going, the only way Washington can prevail is with nuclear weapons. The radiation, of course, will kill Americans as well……..
The Soviet collapse and China’s focus on its economy instead of its military have resulted in Washington’s advantage in nuclear weaponry, giving it first-strike capability. Neither Russia nor China would be in any position to retaliate to Washington’s first strike. To ensure Russia’s inability to retaliate, Washington is placing anti-ballistic missiles on Russia’s borders in violation of the US-USSR agreement. Continue reading
Dimming future for nuclear industry in Florida
A utility pulls plug on Florida nuclear plans — but it’s not FPL Miami Herald, BY CURTIS MORGAN, 3 Aug 13, CMORGAN@MIAMIHERALD.COM The future of the nuclear energy industry in Florida appears to be dimming.
Duke Energy Corp. on Thursday announced it had indefinitely postponed plans to build two new reactors in sparsely populated Levy County on the Gulf Coast, citing federal licensing delays and economic concerns.
Those are topped by spiraling construction costs and uncertainty over whether Florida regulators and lawmakers will continue supporting controversial “cost-recovery’’ policies allowing utilities to bill
customers in advance for plants with multibillion-dollar price tags.
The decision by the nation’s largest utility is the latest sign of cooling enthusiasm for nuclear power nationwide. Continue reading
Fight to stop Nuclear Regulatory Commission overriding the Supreme Court
Attorneys General Fight for Public Access in Nuclear Issues http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-witherspoon/san-onofre-nuclear-issues_b_3691767.html Roger Witherspoon 08/02/2013 The Attorneys General of New York and Vermont have joined the fight against California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant in an effort to stop federal regulators from erasing all record of a judicial ruling that the public has a right to intervene before major amendments are granted to an operating license.
If the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission grants the request of their staff to vacate the ruling of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board and expunge the record, it will eliminate a precedent that affects power plant operations and regulatory practices around the country. In particular, it will affect the six-year fight in New York to shut the Indian Point power plants 25 miles north of New York City; and Vermont’s ongoing effort to shut the Vermont Yankee power plant.
The cross-country battle now being waged by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell is an uphill fight against one of the most powerful professional staffs in the US government and an agency that has a unique view of its own independence.
“The Commission has stated that it is not bound by judicial practice, including that of the United States Supreme Court,” stated Schneiderman and Sorrell in a brief filed June 24 with the NRC challenging the staff request. Continue reading
Radioactive trash from Oak Ridge and NASA to be dumped in Nevada
Energy Department Plans More Nuclear Shipments to Nevada http://news.yahoo.com/energy-department-plans-more-nuclear-shipments-nevada-160203634.html A cache of aging, weapon-usable uranium is not the only atomic material the Energy Department wants to ship from Tennessee to Nevada, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Wednesday. DOE officials plan in 2015 to send additional amounts of unwanted uranium from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and plutonium power supplies from NASA are also on the docket for eventual interment at the Nevada National Security Site, Representative Dina Titus (D-Nev.) said on Tuesday.
“This is not just a couple of trucks,” Titus said. “This is a long-term project they have in mind.”
The lawmaker said a plan to ship the material under the Energy Department’s Secure Transportation Officemeans that Nevada officials will not receive any information on the timing or route of the transfers.
That “takes away any oversight, any decisions, any information out of the hands of the state,” Titus argued. “It is totally secure but they can’t tell us where it is going. That means it could come through the heart [of Las Vegas].”
Until Nevada politicians protested plans for the initial uranium transfer, the Energy Department believed the arrangement had been finalized last year.
“The delay now is costing us quite a bit of money,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said at a Senate hearing on Tuesday. He refused to specify the exact amount.
Atomic bombing of Japanese cities was wrong and unnecessary
In a Newsweek interview, Ike would add: “…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
Countdown to Hiroshima, for July 31, 1945: Top Truman Aide Opposes Use of Bomb Greg Mitchell, HUFFINGTON POST, : 07/31/2013 For the past several days here, and for more to come, I am counting down the days to the atomic bombing of Japan (August 6 and August 9, 1945), marking events from the same day in 1945. I’ve written hundreds of article and three books on the subject: Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton), Atomic Cover-Up (on the decades-long suppression of shocking film shot in the atomic cities by the U.S. military) and Hollywood Bomb (the wild story of how an MGM 1947 drama was censored by the military and Truman himself).
Here are previous daily pieces this month in this unique series.
July 31, 1945: The assembly of Little Boy is completed. It is ready for use the next day. But a typhoon approaching Japan will likely prevent launching an attack. Several days might be required for weather to clear.
- In Germany, Admiral William D. Leahy, chief of staff to Truman–and the highest-ranking U.S. military officer during the war–continues to privately express doubts about the bomb, that it may not work and is not needed, in any case. He would later write in his memoirs:
“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”…………… Continue reading
Columbia River gets radioactive wash from Hanford nuclear site
Radio: Uranium-contaminated plume covers 125 acres at U.S. nuclear site — Over 300 lbs. of uranium a year flowing into Columbia River (AUDIO) #Hanford http://enenews.com/radio-uranium-tainted-plume-of-groundwater-stretches-across-125-acres-at-u-s-nuclear-site-over-300-lbs-of-uranium-a-year-released-into-columbia-river-audio-hanford
Northwest News Network (NPR),, July 29, 2013: Cleanup Options For Hanford’s 300 Area Going Public […] Federal officials are trying to figure out what to do about radioactive materials that remain at a place near the Columbia River known as the 300 Area. […] The 300 Area was where workers milled uranium rods and tested ways to process plutonium during WWII and the Cold War. They poured about 2 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste a day into sandy ponds and trenches right next to the Columbia River. […] One of the remaining jobs is to work on a 125-acre groundwater plume contaminated with uranium.
Uranium-contaminated groundwater plume at Hanford (SOURCE: Proposed Cleanup Plan for Hanford’s 300 Area)
Tri-City Herald,, July 29, 2013: […] The 300 Area was used for fabricating uranium into fuel pieces for the Hanford reactors that produced plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program. It also was used for research, including testing processes for chemically removing plutonium from irradiated uranium fuel. […] About 330 pounds of uranium per year is released to the Columbia River from the Hanford 300 Area, according to DOE. […] The public may comment at a meeting at 6:30 p.m. today at the Richland Public Library, 955 Northgate Drive, Richland. An open house will start an hour earlier. Additional public meetings will be held Wednesday in Seattle and Aug. 8 in Hood River.
Listen to the broadcast here http://www.nwnewsnetwork.org/post/cleanup-options-hanfords-300-area-going-public
Nuclear power ambitions fade, as Duke Energy’s plans delayed
“The latest delay in Duke Energy’s bid to build a nuclear plant in South Carolina puts its embattled nuclear ambitions even further behind cost and over budget,”
Duke nuclear plans delayed Greenville Online 31 July 13 Hearing on 2 reactors on hold until 2016 Duke Energy’s plans to build a new nuclear power station in the Upstate have been delayed by federal regulators who say limited resources and changes to the construction plans require more time.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Duke in a letter that a final hearing on plans to build two reactors at the W.S. Lee site outside Gaffney would have to wait until 2016.
The original target for a final hearing had been this past March…………..
Nuclear watchdogs say the delay shows that Duke isn’t sure about the future of nuclear power and construction of a plant the company has never said for sure it will complete. Continue reading
Nuclear company switching to renewable energy in USA
EDF exits US nuclear, focuses on renewables, Climate Spectator Reuters 31 Jul, French utility EDF, the world’s biggest operator of nuclear plants, is pulling out of nuclear energy in the United States, bowing to the realities of a market that has been transformed by cheap shale gas.
Several nuclear reactors in the US have been closed or are being shuttered as utilities baulk at the big investments needed to extend their lifetimes now that nuclear power has been so decisively undercut by electricity generated from shale gas.
“The spectacular fall of the price of gas in the US, which was unimaginable a few years ago, has made this form of energy ultra competitive vis a vis all other forms of energy,” EDF Chief Executive Henri Proglio told a news conference.
EDF agreed with its partner Exelon on an exit from their Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG) joint venture, which operates five nuclear plants in the United States with a total capacity of 3.9 gigawatts………
International Energy Agency analyst Dennis Volk said CENG’s eastern US power plants were located in some of the most competitive power markets in the country, with high price competition, growing wind capacity and cheap gas.
“It is simply not easy to invest in nuclear and recover your money there,” Volk said.
Focus on renewables in US
Proglio said EDF would now focus on renewable energy in the United States. EDF employs 860 people in US solar and wind, and since 2010 its generating capacity has doubled to 2.3 gigawatts. It manages another 7 gigawatts for other companies……… http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/7/31/renewable-energy/edf-exits-us-nuclear-focuses-renewables
Punishing Bradley Manning to deter other whistleblowers
“It seems clear that the government was seeking to intimidate anyone who might consider revealing valuable information in the future,”
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange says Bradley Manning’s spy convictions are ‘national security extremism’ news.com.au 31 July 13 ” ….. From the courtroom to world capitals, people absorbed the meaning of a verdict that cleared the soldier of a charge of aiding the enemy, which would have carried a potential life sentence, but convicted him on other counts that, together, could also mean a life behind bars.
“It is a dangerous precedent and an example of national security extremism,” he told reporters at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, which is sheltering him. “This has never been a fair trial.” Continue reading
1 This Month
23-25 October – on Zoom – World BEYOND War’s annual global conferenc
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
-
Archives
- October 2026 (199)
- September 2026 (339)
- August 2026 (330)
- July 2026 (355)
- June 2026 (287)
- May 2026 (306)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (267)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
