In Renewable Energy Legislation, Nuclear Power May Find Exemptions
In Renewable Energy Legislation, Nuclear Power May Find Exemptions redOrbit 5 June 2009 In a law that would mandate utility companies to generate a certain amount of electricity from renewable sources, U.S. legislators are trying to increase incentives for the use of nuclear power and energy efficiency. Nuclear power, however, is not currently considered a renewable electricity source according to the terms laid out in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee bill. If the bill becomes law, a predetermined percentage of every U.S. utility company’s total power output would have to be dedicated to renewable energy sources.
The Senate committee recently modified the bill to include an amendment authored by Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski. Under the modified legislation, any future increase in capacity at existing nuclear power plants or new nuclear power plants would be exempt from the bill’s green energy requirements.
By not including the expansion of output at nuclear power plants, the amendment would allow these power plants to increase energy production without being subject to mandatory increases in the amount of renewable power they generate.
In Renewable Energy Legislation, Nuclear Power May Find Exemptions – Science News – redOrbit
Obama Acknowledges Iran’s Right to Nuclear Energy
Obama Acknowledges Iran’s Right to Nuclear Energy
NTI, June 3, 2009 U.S. President Barack Obama yesterday expressed support for Iran’s civilian nuclear power ambitions while calling on the Middle Eastern state to abandon activities that could contribute to nuclear weapons development, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, June 2)…………
……….. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday pledged to continue defying the international community’s attempts at coercion if he is re-elected to office June 12, Agence France-Presse reported.
“If I get elected, I will go to the U.N. and tell the nations there who dare to threaten Iran … hold your hands up,” the first-term president said.
“Due to your resistance, Iran is now a nuclear nation” with “space” capabilities, he added (see GSN, April 15).
The U.N. Security Council has imposed three sets of sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear activities. The body’s five permanent members and Germany hope to negotiate a permanent halt to Iran’s enrichment program in return for civilian nuclear energy assistance and other benefits (Siavosh Ghazi, Agence France-Presse/Google News, June 2).
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090603_5010.php
Texas has highest number of radioactive metal incidents
Texas has highest number of radioactive metal incidents
06/03/2009 By ISAAC WOLF, Scripps Howard News Service
For more than a month in the summer of 2006, a metal recycler in Longview, Texas, produced half a million pounds of radioactive material, state and federal documents show.
When LeTourneau Inc. workers melted Cesium-137 — a radioactive material commonly released in nuclear accidents — the dust containing the radioactive isotope contaminated the workers, along with sections of the facility, according to a July 2006 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission report…………………..Other radioactive meltings in the Lone Star State include a May 1992 incident when El Paso metal recycler Border Steel melted Cesium-137 into a batch of iron, according to a barebones NRC report that provided no more details. In September 1993, Chaparral Steel in Midlothian also melted Cesium-137, according to a December 2007 Texas Department of State Health Services report.
Radioactive material has also been stolen in Texas. In 1996, at a Houston storage facility, someone swiped industrial X-ray devices containing the isotopes Cobalt-60 and Iridium-192. One of the devices was dropped near a scrap yard, where its protective shield was dislodged.
Scrap workers were exposed to dangerously high levels of radioactivity when they recovered the device, according to research by radiation experts James Yusko, of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and Joel Lubenau, who formerly worked for the NRC. Through reports, articles and personal correspondences, the two have unofficially tracked radioactive melting incidents in the United States and around the world.
‘Embarrassing’ mistake puts US nuclear list online
‘Embarrassing’ mistake puts US nuclear list online
By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 47 minutes ago
Google News WASHINGTON (AP) — The government’s inadvertent and red-faced Internet posting of a 266-page list of U.S. nuclear sites provided a one-step guide for anyone wanting details about such sensitive information. Obama administration officials said Wednesday the document contained no classified material about nuclear weapons. They contended the locations and other details already were available from public sources……………
…………The information, compiled for international nuclear inspectors, is a compilation of hundreds of civilian nuclear sites, along with maps and details of the facilities. The material includes sites for uranium storage, nuclear fuel fabrication plants and nuclear research facilities http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hCsPqjzeLAVBSZ0nrjjDm7Ywu-sAD98JJTCO1
Fight against foreign nuke waste in Utah continues
Fight against foreign nuke waste in Utah continues
SALT LAKE CITY Google News (AP) 4 June 09 — An eight-state radioactive-waste-management entity plans to appeal a federal court ruling that said a company can dispose of foreign nuclear waste at its facility in the western Utah desert.
A judge last month ruled against the Northwest Compact, which includes Utah and seven other states. The compact’s executive director, Mike Garner, said officials decided Monday to take the case to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions Inc. wants to import up to 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from Italy. After processing in Tennessee, about 1,600 tons would be disposed of in Utah.
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman had used the state’s veto power on the compact to try to keep the foreign waste out.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMSdLzDAdHpYWegCkb41SXyjNZqgD98JH2880
DOE Nuclear Clean-Up Program “High-Risk Area For Fraud, Waste, Abuse, And Mismanagement”
DOE Nuclear Cleanup Program “High Risk Area for Fraud, Waste, Abuse and Mismanagement”The Huffington Post | Cara Parks 06- 2-09
The Department of Energy is not adequately reporting the environmental impact of its billion-dollar program to clean up nuclear waste, according to a government audit.
The Government Accountability Office released a report today noting that the DOE’s nuclear clean-up program has been labeled as “a high-risk area for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement” since 1990, which the GOA says is the result of “inadequate management and oversight of its projects.”
As recently as March of 2009, the report stated, the GOA testified that cost increases at some major nuclear clean up projects were estimated to require an additional $25 to $42 billion to complete. Despite the consistent problems with the projects and ballooning budgets, the DOE did not adequately report its progress or the actual environmental impact of its work, the audit states.
The rising costs on major projects are now being funded partially by the stimulus package, which, according to The Washington Post, has earmarked over $6 billion for cleaning up nuclear sites. The article goes on to report that some of the private contractors receiving stimulus money were previously cited by the GAO for serious flaws in their performance.
DOE Nuclear Clean-Up Program “High-Risk Area For Fraud, Waste, Abuse, And Mismanagement”
Environmental groups seek to overturn Oyster Creek nuclear plant license renewal
Environmental groups seek to overturn Oyster Creek nuclear plant license renewal nj.com by MaryAnn Spoto/The Star-Ledger Monday June 01, 2009,
LACEY TOWNSHIP — Two months after the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey Township won a 20-year extension of its license, a coalition of environmental and citizens groups has asked a federal court to overturn the decision.
Citing inadequate information provided to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the plant’s safety, the coalition wants a federal court to invalidate the relicensing of the 40-year-old facility
“We are appealing the decision because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not have sufficient information available to it to decide whether Oyster Creek can operate safely for the next 20 years,” said the coalition’s attorney, Richard Webster, of the Eastern Environmental Law Center.
The coalition is composed of the New Jersey Environmental Federation, the New Jersey Sierra Club, the Public Interest Research Group, the Nuclear Information Resource Service and Grandmothers, Mothers and More for Energy Safety (GRAMMES).
They contend the continued operation of the plant, which stores 650 tons of radioactive waste in an above-ground fuel pool, is an unnecessary risk for the 3.5 million people who live within a 50-mile radius of Oyster Creek — the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant. They said its safety record is the second worst of the nuclear plants throughout the country and its thermal releases into a nearby body of water create environmental problems for Barnegat Bay.
Environmental groups seek to overturn Oyster Creek nuclear plant license renewal – NJ.com
Push is on for full cleanup of NY nuclear site
Push is on for full cleanup of NY nuclear site
newsday.com By CAROLYN THOMPSON | Associated Press Writer May 29, 2009 BUFFALO, N.Y. – With a little more than a week left to be heard in the decades-old debate over how to clean up a western New York nuclear site, supporters of complete decontamination say anything less would jeopardize the health of the Great Lakes and its vital freshwater.State and federal energy officials in November recommended a two-phase plan that would have them spend $1 billion to remove contaminated buildings and soil from the West Valley site over the next several years, while deferring for up to 30 years the larger question of whether to leave some radioactive waste forever buried…………..………Environmentalists and others say removing all traces of high- and low-level waste is the only way, given the erosion-prone geology, to ensure that it will not eventually seep into nearby creeks, make its way into Lakes Erie and Ontario and contaminate drinking water supplies.
“Common sense dictates we make a decision now to protect the Great Lakes and protect the water,” Diane D’Arrigo of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service said Friday…………………….
………U.S. Reps. Brian Higgins and Eric Massa, both New York Democrats, support a full cleanup and said they would ask Energy Secretary Steven Chu for a 90-day extension of the public comment period that began in November.
Among others weighing in to support a full cleanup have been the Presbytery of Western New York, which passed a resolution citing its “Christian commitment to caring for creation,” Catholic Charities and the Western New York Council on Occupational Safety & Health.
Push is on for full cleanup of NY nuclear site — Newsday.com
New Coal and Nuclear Plants May Not Be Needed, U.S. Energy Official Says
New Coal and Nuclear PlantsMay Not Be Needed, U.S. Energy Official Says
e360 digest23 Apr 2009:
Renewable energy technologies have come far enough that the U.S. may not need to build any new coal or nuclear plants, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said. “We may not need any, ever,” Jon Wellinghoff said at a forum of the U.S. Energy Association. The development of smart grid technologies that better store capacity from wind, solar and biomass sources, he said, will eventually meet the nation’s energy demands — and make coal-fired and nuclear plants unnecessary……………………..Wellinghoff insists the existing concept of baseload capacity will be an “anachronism” as the technology develops to store power capacity, such as a system for concentrated solar plants that currently allows 15 hours of storage.
Yale Environment 360: New Coal and Nuclear Plants
May Not Be Needed, U.S. Energy Official Says
Forget reprocessing nuclear waste
Forget reprocessing nuclear waste New Times SLO Paso Robles Klaus Schumann May 27th, 2009, i “………..
………….. the Ford and Carter administrations scrapped the U.S. reprocessing program in the late ’70s precisely because of the abundance of problems associated with it. It was deemed too expensive and too polluting in terms of further radioactive co
tamination. Worst of all, reprocessing doesn’t “recycle” the waste. It creates new radioactive wastes, some which can be directly converted into nuclear weapons, increasing proliferation risks.
Meanwhile, reprocessing plants in Europe, Russia, and Japan are plagued by radiation leaks and other scandalous problems. The Union of Concerned Scientists considers reprocessing as “dangerous, dirty and expensive.” Moreover, especially since 9/11, furth
r concerns have emerged, such as nuclear terrorism or accidents during frequent shipments. Overall, reprocessing was a bad idea then and is an even worse idea now.
New Times SLO | Publishing Local News and Entertainment for over 20 years in San Luis Obispo County
Nuclear reactor malfunctions, shuts down at Indian Point
Nuclear reactor malfunctions, shuts down at Indian Point.Breakdown is second problem in two weeks
BUCHANAN – A nuclear reactor at the Indian Point power plant in Buchanan automatically shut down this morning due to a malfunction. This is the site’s third unplanned break-down in three months.
According to officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the problem occurred around 5:30 a.m., when “a high vibration condition was detected on a main feedwater pump” in reactor Unit 3. The malfunction triggered a “high-level alarm,” then a turbine trip, then the reactor trip, said the NRC, in a statement.
This is the second time in two months that Unit 3 has malfunctioned. Plant operators manually tripped the reactor on May 15 after a main feedwater regulating valve in a steam generator failed, resulting in rising coolant levels that could not be controlled………………………….
These problems are occurring at a critical time for Entergy Nuclear, the New Orleans-based company that owns and operates Indian Point. Entergy is currently applying for a 20-year operating license renewal. It’s current licenses expire by 2015.
Indian Point’s critics, who include the state of New York and environmental groups, are formally petitioning the NRC to deny the license renewal. They’ve questioned the ability of the aging plant to operate safely and efficiently for another two decades.
Nuclear reactor malfunctions, shuts down at Indian Point. | recordonline.com
Tribes press government to clean up nuclear waste
Tribes press government to clean up nuclear waste
KDBC News Associated Press – May 26, FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) – Two American Indian tribes are pressing the federal government to clean up an area where they say medical, uranium and other radioactive waste was dumped and has been contaminating the land and groundwater.
The Navajo and Hopi tribes say their pleas to have the waste materials from two sites near Tuba City, Ariz., taken off tribal land have been ignored.
The Hopi Tribe filed a notice of intent to sue the federal government last week over the cleanup.
On Tuesday, the Navajo Nation filed a motion to intervene in a 2007 lawsuit the owner of the mill brought against the federal government……………..
http://www.kdbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=10425108&nav=menu608_2_3
Unlimited funding for nuclear power in the “Clean Energy Bank”?
The nuclear-power lobby
San Antonio Current by Greg Harman 27 May 09 “………………………
……………….Although the would-be Nuclear Renaissance is a key element of more than a few lawmakers’ agendas, the federal government has failed to address the disposal of the plants’ high-level radioactive waste. The price tag on new nuclear plants has been rising by 15 percent a year — and the projects are already fantastically expensive.
Then you have upstarts like Jon Wellinghoff, head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who suggests the world doesn’t need any more nuclear power plants; that renewable energy and efficiency measures alone can provide for the future.
“There’s 500 to 700 gigawatts of developable wind throughout the Midwest,” Wellinghoff said last month, and “enough solar in the Southwest, as we all know, to power the entire country.”
It all boils down to terrible PR for the nuclear industry.
In addition to those immediate troubles, virtually all of the nation’s 104 nuclear plants are set to age themselves out of production by mid-century.
…………………..said Michael Marriott, director of the anti-nuke organization Nuclear Information Resource Service. “One hundred reactors at today’s prices is about a trillion dollars. Is that the best way to spend a trillion dollars, especially when the private sector has made it very clear they’re not going to put up the money?”
Still, nuclear has its boosters. And they’re stealthily creating the legislation now that will provide nuclear power with a raft of new federal subsidies.
………………As it turned out, the nuclear Trojan Horse was already in the bill.
It’s known as a “clean energy bank,” and it creates a new bureaucracy — the Clean Energy Deployment Administration — tasked with doling out federal energy dollars in the form of loans, loan guarantees, and letters of credit.
……………..So far, both the House and Senate Clean Energy Bank versions include nuclear power and “clean” coal — both extractive energy sources that rely on finite materials — among their list of truly renewable power sources like wind and solar. Thanks to a 30-percent cap on the amount any one of these technologies could receive, the House’s Clean Energy Bank language in ACES could allow up to 60 percent of the clean-energy spending to be made on coal and nuclear.
The Senate’s version currently doesn’t include limits on the funds any single power source could receive through the bank…………”
*Not on your irradiated life.
A first: Navajo’s recent court win over uranium miners
Imperial nuclear power
Examiner.com Ann Garrison 27 May 09 Corporations mined uranium all over the Navajo Nation’s famously scenic mountains, mesas and canyons after World War II,
as the U.S. built its nuclear power, weapons, and war machine.
In “Uranium mining and weapons poisoning, on the Navajo Nation,” I told the story of eight Navajo veterans who died of uranium weapons poisoning within two years of returning from the Gulf War, and, of the toxic legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo Reservation. These histories inspired me, over the past five years, to study the uranium mining industry, most of all in indigenous country in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Africa.
Earlier this month the Navajo Nation won a victory in a U.S. federal appeals court, which supported the Diné Natural Resources and Protection Act of 2005, a ban on uranium mining, and, the only indigenous assertion of sovereignty over natural resources of its kind.
Anyone who might be persuaded by the argument that nuclear power is a clean, green “solution” to global warming , including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and San Francisco Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom, should consider the devastating impact of uranium mining, the first step in the nuclear process, on indigenous peoples and environments all over the world.
http://www.examiner.com/x-8257-SF-Energy-Policy-Examiner~y2009m5d27-Imperial-nuclear-power?#comments
Uranium mining and weapons poisoning, on the Navajo Nation
Uranium mining and weapons poisoning, on the Navajo Nation – Examiner.com Ann Garrison 27 May 09 “………………
He had almost gone to Flagstaff to enlist just before the Gulf War, in 1991, but had gotten a job making better wages on the reservation instead. Eight of his friends had gone, and all eight had returned alive, but then, all eight had died of cancer, within two years. All eight had believed that uranium weapons poisoning caused their cancers; all eight had been on the deck of an aircraft carrier when a black cloud of munitions blowback descended upon them.
The Veterans Administration denied that their cancers had anything to do with uranium weapons, or, any sort of other toxic exposure in the Gulf,……………. I’m not going to name my friend, or the friends he lost, because the recruiting pressure in Native America is like nothing I’ve ever seen outside New Orleans.
I also learned about the horrific, ongoing post-World War II legacy of uranium mining contamination in Navajoland, which had killed many Navajo people and left many others suffering birth defects and illnesses, including cancer in numbers far disproportionate to the general population.
The uranium in the weapons that the Navajo vets had believed to be the reason they were dying might well have been mined, in their own poisoned homeland, as the U.S. built its post World War II nuclear power, weapons, and war machine.
SF Energy Policy Examiner: Uranium mining and weapons poisoning, on the Navajo Nation
1 This Month
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
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
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