Republican-led House Florida House keeps nuclear upfront fees
The Republican-led House modified SB 1472 to add new hurdles to the unpopular nuclear cost recovery act but voted down amendments that would have required the companies to disclose how much of the monthly bill was going into the planning costs among other amendments.
They also rejected an amendment to put the so-called “nuclear cost recovery act” to a voter referendum, an amendment that would ban any development on a nuclear plant until there is a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste, and an amendment to repeal the proposal….. Since the act took effect in 2006, Progress Energy has charged customers more than $1 billion to expand the now-crippled Crystal River nuclear power plant and to start developing a new plant in Levy County….. Rep. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, urged the House to reject the compromise language added to the House bill, saying it will allow utility companies to continue to profit from customers paying the nuclear fee even if the plant is never built.
“We weakened the bill,” he said. “Now what do utility companies have to be concerned about?”
A final vote on the bill is expected later this week. http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/florida-house-rejects-attempts-to-repeal-nuclear-fees/2118425
Corrupt, useless and weak EPA new guidelines for radiological attacks
while the new guide will be subject to a 90-day public comment period once it formally is published in the Federal Register, it has been labeled for “interim use,” meaning it is effective immediately
“a recipe for absolute mayhem in the midst of an emergency,” “And that’s because of politics.”
EPA RELAXES PUBLIC HEALTH GUIDELINES 
FOR RADIOLOGICAL ATTACKS, ACCIDENTS, Next Gov, By Douglas P. GuarinoGlobal Security Newswire April 9, 2013 After years of internal deliberation and controversy, the Obama administration has issued a document suggesting that when dealing with the aftermath of an accident or attack involving radioactive materials, public health guidelines can be made thousands of times less stringent than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would normally allow. Continue reading
Renewable energy a financial boon for utilities
Solar and wind projects offer big advantages to electric utility companies. The utilities get a premium rate for solar power, the supply of which peaks in the afternoon alongside the higher demand for air conditioning. The utilities also can make a big profit from homes and businesses that install panels, buying the excess energy at off-peak prices and selling it later for a higher price.
Even the additional storage capacity needed to tap renewable energy can become a profit center.
Renewable energy becomes a utility lifeline http://money.msn.com/technology-investment/post.aspx?post=cbde9691-2d13-4345-9718-cb7453fdbb27 30 April 13, Continue reading
Huge municipal solar energy program launched in Los Angeles
Los Angeles Celebrates Launch of Largest Municipal Solar Program in U.S.http://www.enn.com/business/article/45915 Bonnie Hulkower, Triple Pundit, April 29, 2013 Los Angeles, a city more often known for its celebrity sightings and Hollywood stars, also shines bright in the solar arena. The City of Angels has dazzled in the last decade with a strong record of sustainability. So much so that on April 19th, local and national government representatives as well as business leaders gathered to celebrate the launch of the city’s solar Feed in Tariff (FIT) program (Clean L.A. Solar Program) at the Los Angeles Business Council’s (LABC) Sustainability Summit. The program focused on how to harness sustainability programs and regulatory initiatives for job growth.Essentially, the idea of the FIT is to make solar competitive in what naturally is one of the nation’s sunniest communities. Similar to President Kennedy’s mission to the moon, L.A.’s moonshot moment is to benefit from solar energy in a region blessed with sunny weather year round. Solar energy is especially appropriate in hot climates, as air conditioning demand coincides with the period of peak solar radiation.
L.A.’s FIT program will be the largest municipal commitment to solar, but not the first. Continue reading
How the American military-industrial-political racket works
“It’s what in Washington we call an iron triangle,” ” you have an alliance between the private sector, the defence contractors, the executive branch, in this case the Pentagon, and the legislative branch.”Everyone benefits from expensive procurement projects – the Pentagon gets weapons, defence companies get to make profits, and politicians get re-elected by funding armaments that generate jobs for constituents and campaign contributions from defence companies.
The result… is a defence budget “that is packed to the gills with weapons we don’t need, with weapons that are underestimated in their future costs”.
America’s War Games How the Obama administration is redefining the US military’s strategic priorities with far-reaching consequences, Aljazeera, 27 April 13 The United States’ military expenditures today account for about 40 percent of the world total. In 2012, the US spent some $682bn on its military – an amount more than what was spent by the next 13 countries combined.
Now that the war in Iraq is over and the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan will be complete in 2014, the stage might therefore appear to be set for a decrease in US defence spending. Even in Washington DC, many have argued that the defence budget can be cut substantially and the resulting “peace dividend” could be diverted to more pressing domestic concerns, such as dealing with the nation’s continuing economic problems.However, a battle to ward off cuts to the Pentagon’s budget has begun and the way things are going, it seems likely that the US will have the smallest drawdown or reduction of the military budget after a period of conflict since World War II – in comparative terms, smaller than after Vietnam, Korea and the end of the Cold War. Continue reading
The fallacy of assuming that weapons manufacture creates jobs
America’s War Games How the Obama administration is redefining the US military’s strategic priorities with far-reaching consequences, Aljazeera, 27 April 13 “……. William Hartung, from the Center for International Policy says that Pentagon contractors have “for years used the jobs argument to revive weapons systems that have been cancelled. To push for things that even the Pentagon itself has not wanted.” For months, a study has been circulating in Washington, underwritten by the Aerospace Industries Association, a major defence industry trade group. It claims that a million jobs would be lost as a result of sequestration cuts to defence spending.
Hartung, who has analysed the study, says it exaggerates the potential job loss number by a factor of three, and that many of those jobs will be replaced. He points out that spending on education, health care, and infrastructure “can create 1.5 to 2 times as many jobs. So the economy would be much better off spending on things other than the Pentagon.”
Several recent reports examining ways to cut Pentagon spending call for changes in the US nuclear weapons posture. They claim that it would produce hundreds of billions of dollars of savings in coming decades, and the Obama administration is reportedly considering nuclear weapons cuts. But they will be difficult to achieve.
“People are still mired in Cold War thinking and they feel like the more nuclear weapons we have the better,” Hartung says. “And in addition to that the nuclear weapons industry has some of the biggest strongest companies in the military industrial complex.”
Lockheed Martin builds submarines, launches ballistic missiles, and runs the nuclear weapons laboratories; General Dynamics builds nuclear subs; and Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are all hoping to build the next nuclear bomber……http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2013/04/2013424113558268754.html
The problem of radioactive debris from fracking
Fracking debris considered too radioactive even for waste site
RT.com : April 26, 2013 A truck carrying drill cuttings from a fracking site set off a radiation alarm at a landfill in Pennsylvania. Emitting gamma radiation ten times higher than the permitted level, the waste was rejected by the landfill.
After the alarm went off, the MAX Environmental Technologies truck was immediately quarantined and sent back to the Marcellus Shale fracking site it had come from in Greene County, Va. The 159-acre Pennsylvania landfill site accepts residual and hazardous waste, but the cuttings were too radioactive for the site to safely dispose.
The Pennsylvania landfill, located in South Huntingdon, rejects waste that emits more than 10 microerm per hour of radiation. The fracking materials were found to emit 96 microerm per hour of Radium 226 – a rate that is 84 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s air-pollution standard and ten times higher than the landfill’s permitted level, Forbes reports.
Exposure to the materials taken from the fracking site can have serious health consequences, including the risk of developing cancer. The high level of radiation emitted by the materials serves as alarming news for environmentalists and residents located near hydraulic fracturing sites across the US.
“Long-term exposure to radium increases the risk of developing several diseases,” the EPA writes. “Inhaled or ingested radium increases the risk of developing such diseases as lymphoma, bone cancer and diseases that affect the formation of blood, such as leukemia and aplastic anemia… External exposure to radium’s gamma radiation increases the risk of cancer to varying degrees in all tissues and organs.”
The drill cuttings have been sent back to the well pad where they were extracted. The production company, Rice Energy, must now apply to have the waste discarded at other landfill sites that accept materials with higher levels of radiation…… http://rt.com/usa/fracking-debris-radiation-pennsylvania-461/
War with China- a prospect welcomed by USA’s military industrial complex
America’s War Games, How the Obama administration is redefining the US military’s strategic priorities with far-reaching consequences, Aljazeera, 27 April 13 ”……….. Concerns about China were reflected in the Obama administration’s announcement last year that it is re-positioning US military resources to the Asia-Pacific region after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is estimated that China spends about one-fifth to one-quarter as much on its military as the US. Spinney and others see warnings about China and the administration’s so-called Asia-Pacific “pivot” as a way to bolster defence spending in the face of pressure for cuts.”We need a threat,” Spinney Chuck Spinney, who worked as an analyst in the US secretary of defence’s office for 26 yearssays, “Al-Qaeda has sort of run out of strength and we have to have a new threat to justify continued spending.” Spinney believes that there is little chance of a peace dividend after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We are going to pivot to Asia and increase the defence budget,” he says.
There are signs he could be right.
This month, President Obama released a 2014 federal budget proposal that called for $526.6bn in funding for the department of defense. It was widely expected that the defence total would be at least $50bn less.
The White House and the Pentagon chose to ignore the statutory requirement for a $50bn reduction mandated by sequestration. They apparently hope that sequestration can be overturned, and defence budget cuts already agreed to, reversed. Instead of laying the groundwork for a peace dividend by putting the Pentagon on a glide path to smaller budgets, the administration’s proposal projects increases in America’s base defence budget over the next five years. http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2013/04/2013424113558268754.html
Water damage can crack nuclear plants, says NRC
NRC warns nuclear plants to watch for water damage The Reporter, 28 April 13, YORK — Federal authorities are warning nuclear power plants that store spent fuel in dry casks to watch for water damage, citing two incidents at central Pennsylvania plants.
The York Daily Record says the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued an information notice last week detailing how moisture can degrade structures and components associated with spent fuel storage…… Water was also blamed for cracks on concrete storage units protecting spent fuel and debris from the damaged core of Three Mile Island’s Unit 2, which is stored in Idaho. In 1999, Transnuclear installed the concrete enclosures to cover and protect the material but a year later officials started noticing insignificant cracks in the units. In 2007, officials said, seasonal freezing and thawing of water trapped near the roofs and in the cracks of the enclosures worsened the problem…… http://www.thereporteronline.com/article/20130428/NEWS03/130429512/nrc-warns-nuclear-plants-to-watch-for-water-damage
Even US conservatives supporting fair tax deal for renewable energy
Level Playing Field for Renewable Energy Design Build, By Marc Howe, 27 April 13 Conservative politicians in Washington have expressed strong support for legislation which will put renewable energy companies on a level playing field with fossil fuel providers.
The new legislation proposed by Senators Christopher Coons, D-Del., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, will expand the use of “master-limited partnerships” (MLPs), which confer major tax advantages to companies from oil, natural gas and coal mining projects to renewable energy projects as well.
MLPs are taxed only once via shareholders, as compared to listed limited liability corporations, which are taxed at both the shareholder and corporate levels.
Conservatives have come out in support of the bill, despite a recent stoush with President Barack Obama over his support for California solar power company Solyndra, which gave the impression that the GOP harboured strong reservations about renewable energy. Americans for Prosperity, a political advocacy group founded by the arch-conservative Koch brothers is a prime example. The group castigated Obama over Solyndrda and has expressed unwavering opposition to climate change legislation, yet is all for the extension of MLPs to renewable energy firms.
“There should be a level playing field and people should have access to similar tax and business structures,” says James Valvo, director of policy for Americans for Prosperity.
“I support including all energy sources, including renewables, in the definition of entities eligible for the [MLP] tax treatment,” Pompeo said. http://designbuildsource.com.au/level-playing-field-for-renewable-energy
Front Groups do the Dirty Work for Oil and Gas Industry
The Oil And Gas Industry’s Assault On Renewable Energy, Environmental Defense Fund Jim Marston April 26, 2013 “………So far, 29 states have implemented Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) programs that require increased production of energy from renewable sources such as solar, wind, geothermal and biomass. They’ve been adopted in red states and blue – from California to Texas to Maine – through democratic processes and with popular support. RPS programs have helped jumpstart an industry that is spurring economic development, creating American jobs, boosting energy independence and cutting our carbon footprint.
A Bloomberg article released Tuesday details how the oil and gas industry, through some self-described free market organizations that they fund, are trying to engineer a legislative massacre of these policies in more than a dozen states.
The groups may sound familiar: American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is currently pushing legislation around the country that would mandate the teaching of climate change denial in public school systems, and The Heartland Institute, which ran a billboard campaignlast year comparing global warming “admitters” to Osama bin Laden and Charles Manson. Both have long opposed sensible energy policies. And their funders will sound familiar, too: the oil, gas and coal industries and their owners like the Koch Brothers.
With this new campaign, though, they are not influencing legislation to fill young minds with false propaganda or attacking climate legislation. They’re attacking renewable energy. Why? Apparently, an industry that the naysayers loved to call a loser is now threatening fossil fuel profits….. http://www.edf.org/blog/2013/04/26/oil-and-gas-industry%E2%80%99s-assault-renewable-energy
Nuclear weapons industry exploits dogs, as well as humans
Security dogs overworked at nuclear site, report says http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-bomb-dogs-overworked-20130426,0,7319317.story By Julie Cart April 26, 2013 Dogs trained to search for explosives and other substances were pushed “beyond their physical capacity” while working last year at a federal facility that handles, processes and stores highly enriched uranium, according to a report released this week.
The Energy Department’s inspector general found that canine security teams at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., were overworked, citing an instance in which a handler and a dog conducted 102 vehicle searches over a two-hour period.
Workers for the private contractor providing the dogs told investigators that requests for breaks were ignored by supervisors. The highly sensitive site is patrolled by human-dog teams that search for explosives, drugs and intruders. The facility was broken into last year by antiwar activists, prompting questions into the security at Energy Department installations.
Investigators were unable to corroborate reports that some dog competence testing had been rigged, but the report did find that “half of the canine teams we observed failed explosive detection tests, many canines failed to respond to at least one of the handler’s commands, and that canines did not receive all required training.”
South Carolina Republicans vote against bill that would gut renewable energy standard!
NC Renewable Energy Standard Scores Surprise Win To the shock and horror of its backers, a bill attempting to gut North Carolina’s renewable energy standard fails in committee. GreentechSolar, PETE DANKO: APRIL 26, 2013 Maybe state renewable portfolio standards aren’t quite so fragile after all. On Wednesday in North Carolina, an RPS thought to be among the most vulnerable withstood attack.
A broad assault on these laws, which operate uniquely but in general terms require utilities to source a growing amount of renewable energy, is being waged by thoughtful free market devotees or ruthless corporate interests, one or the other. (You can decide which; just know that the American Legislative Exchange Council has been right in the middle of it all in most states, as it was in North Carolina, along with the Heartland Institute, Grover Norquist, the John Locke Foundation and others, all with fossil fuel backing, according to the Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch.)
Remarkably, the bill to gut the RPS failed even to get out of the committee chaired by its sponsor. With six Republicans voting against it, the tally in the Committee on Public Utilities and Energy was a resounding 18-13 against moving the bill forward.
The anti-RPS folks were aghast……..
Renewable energy advocates in the Tar Heel State had a slightly different take.“The vote’s outcome and the fact that it occurred in the Committee chaired by the bill’s own sponsor, Chairman Mike Hager, not only helps to secure a path forward for continued economic development in the renewable energy sector, it also showed the strength of the voices from across the state that spoke out against the misguided effort to have North Carolina turn away from a promising clean energy future,” the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association said in a statement…… http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/nc-renewable-energy-standard-scores-surprise-win
No more blank checks for USA’s nuclear weapons industry?
The nuclear weapons establishment has, for decades, woven a cloak of secrecy around nuclear weapons technology. Nuclear insiders enjoyed a serious lack of accountability on how funds are spent and programs are run. “The nuclear priesthood” is a good shorthand for this dynamic,
Days of blank checks are over for nuclear weapons establishment http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/296397-days-of-blank-checks-are-over-for-nuclear-weapons-establishment By Kevin Martin, Peace Action and Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 26 April 13, Many of America’s Cold War weapons are in the hands of one of its most obscure government agencies. It’s called the National Nuclear Security Administration, and it was the subject of a senate budget hearing this week. The agency’s obscurity to most taxpayers is exceeded only by its astonishing failure to acknowledge political and fiscal reality. Two decades after the Cold War, the U.S. is reducing the number and the role of its nuclear weapons, and is committed to providing international leadership on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. Meanwhile, the federal budget is extremely tight; cuts are being proposed in all manner of government programs, including, unwisely, Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, apparently indifferent to federal belt-tightening, thinks it needs a big raise. Stuck in the Cold War, the hey-day of nuclear spending, the agency in charge of the nation’s nuclear weapons is calling for more spending in almost every category. The nuclear weapons budget request is $7.87 billion, in real terms a 16.7 percent increase above last year’s levels, virtually unheard of in all other federal agencies given our nation’s fiscal constraints. That large increase is especially ironic given the agency’s chronic cost overruns and mismanagement in both construction projects and nuclear weapons programs. The agency also plans to increase its nuclear weapons budget to $9.29 billion by 2018, an 18 percent increase. Continue reading
Oil and gas lobbies losing their war against renewable energy?
The Oil And Gas Industry’s Assault On Renewable Energy, Environmental Defense Fund Jim Marston April 26, 2013 Renewable energy enjoyed a record year in 2012 – the U.S. wind industry surpassed 50,000 megawatts of electrical power generation capacity and solar proved once again to be the fastest growing energy source in the United States. That’s a milestone worth celebrating, since greater use of clean, homegrown energy resources creates jobs, cuts foreign oil imports, stabilizes prices, makes our system more resilient and reduces harmful pollution. The list of benefits is vast. So who could possibly be upset?
Well, some utilities that own old and often dirty fossil fuel power plants are upset that renewables are making it harder for their older, polluting units to stay in business. Then there are oil and gas industry association leaders like American Petroleum Institute (API) president Jack Gerard, who often talk about wanting a “level playing field” – implying that policies promoting renewable energy are unfair to fossil fuels.
Don’t be fooled. Renewable investments pale in comparison to the amount of money poured into fossil fuel companies since 1918 to fatten their bottom lines and crowd out competition. Fossil fuels have received around 75 times more subsidies than clean energy. Up to 2011 (adjusted for inflation), the oil and gas industry received $446.96 billion in cumulative energy subsidies from 1994 to 2009, whereas renewable energy sources received just $5.93 billion. An industry that has been enjoying federal tax subsidies for over a century has no standing to argue for a level playing field. Heavily subsidized fossil fuels may have made sense 100 years ago, when we were racing to build the energy infrastructure of the last century. But today we’re racing to build the clean energy infrastructure of the new century — and we need to support a new set of industries. And we’re making real progress.
So it is no surprise that we are seeing a well-funded, industry-backed effort to roll back the policies that have been so successful in developing and deploying renewables. Take, for example, the latest assault on a series of state laws around the country that have increased the amount of clean, renewable energy these states produce. …….. http://www.edf.org/blog/2013/04/26/oil-and-gas-industry%E2%80%99s-assault-renewable-energy
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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