IS THE “NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE” DEAD YET?

Huffington Post: IS THE “NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE” DEAD YET?
By Harvey Wasserman

America’s much hyped “reactor renaissance” is facing a quadruple bypass. In actual new construction, proposed projects and overseas sales, soaring costs are killing new nukes. And the old ones are leaking like Dark Age relics on the brink of disaster.

As renewables plummet in cost, and private financing stays nil, the nuclear industry is desperate to gouge billions from Congress for loan guarantees to build new reactors. Thus far, citizen activism has stopped them. But the industry is pouring all it has into this fall’s short session, yet again demanding massive new subsides to stay on life support.

Here’s a lab report:

Soaring costs at Vogtle, the US’s one active new reactor project, have stuck Georgia ratepayers with $108 million in unplanned overcharges … and that’s just for starters at a site where actual construction has barely begun. Vogtle’s builders are hiking rates by nearly 3x as much as the original $1.30/month promised when it first agreed to soak ratepayers for the plant — in advance. This new hike was opposed by the PSC’s own staff, which blasted the whole deal for being shrouded in secrecy.

Currently calculated to cost a sure-to-soar $14.5 billion, the Vogtle project got $8.33 billion in federal loan guarantees from Obama in February. Citizen/taxpayer groups have since sued to see the details, which the administration is keeping secret. Georgia Power, which is building Vogtle, has already asked for another $1 billion rate increase.

Such soaring rates and slipping schedules defined the first generation of “too cheap to meter” reactors, which almost without exception came in years late and billions over budget. Costs of the two original Vogtle reactors jumped by 1,263% — from an original $660 million budget to nearly $9 billion — forcing up statewide rates more than 12%. Construction was promised for 7 years, but actually took 16.

The French giant AREVA’s “new generation” projects in Finland and Flamanville, France, have also soared hugely over budget and behind schedule. So there’s every indication the new generation of reactors will be as catastrophically behind schedule and over budget as the first.

John Rowe, the CEO of Exelon, America’s top reactor owner (17 in 3 states), says low gas prices could delay construction of new merchant nukes in the US by a “decade, maybe two.” Merchant power plants sell electricity into open competitive markets.

Because atomic energy can’t compete with natural gas or renewables and efficiency, Exelon has withdrawn its application to build two reactors in Victoria County, Texas. “We haven’t totally abandoned” the project, says Rowe. But “it’s very unlikely we would do it for a long time.”

American reactor component makers are angry with India for a passing new law requiring the industry to assume substantial liability for a catastrophe they might cause.

The horrifying aftermath of Bhopal, where Union Carbide killed thousands of local citizens with a lethal gas emission for which they have not been held fully accountable, still weighs heavily in India. But the atomic industry will not tread where it’s held liable for the true costs of its potential disasters. In the US, liability is capped at around $11 billion, even though the financial damage from a full-scale catastrophe could easily soar into the trillions. Minimum estimates from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which occurred in a remote, impoverished area, have exceeded $500 billion. By recent estimates the death toll is 985,000 and still counting.

On behalf of US corporations, the Obama Administration is demanding the Indian liability requirements be lifted. Especially in the wake of BP’s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it is a stunning admission that even after fifty years, reactor technology cannot be held accountable for its technical vulnerabilities, here or abroad.

America’s aging fleet of first generation reactors is leaking profusely. Indian Point, north of Manhattan, has suffered seven unplanned shut-downs in two years.

In recent months serious emissions of tritium and other radioactive substances into the air and water have been found at Vermont Yankee, Indian Point, New Jersey’s Oyster Creek and many more. Ohio’s infamous Davis-Besse, where boric acid ate virtually all the way through a reactor pressure vessel, has sprung some two dozen leaks which cannot be explained by its owner, First Energy. In Vermont, leaks from pipes the operators said did not exist have seeped contaminated water into the Connecticut River. As reactor owners petition to extend operating licenses for decades to come, the rickety, embrittled old plants become increasingly dangerous.

Will this finally kill the much hyped “renaissance” of a Dark Age technology defined by quadruple failures in human health, global ecology, sound finance and increasingly shaky performance?

The longer those are stopped, the more likely a Solartopian transition to the only sources that can sustain us: increased efficiency and the green-powered birth of the Age of Renewables.

Read more:
http://pacevirginia.org/2010/09/14/huffington-post-is-the-nuclear-renaissance-dead-yet-by-harvey-wasserman/

ACTION ALERT: Petition for Intervention Deadline October 4, 2010, Dominion –Virginia Power at North Anna

ACTION ALERT


Petition for Intervention Deadline October 4, 2010
Dominion –Virginia Power at North Anna
Change in reactor design forces new hearings


The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League’s ongoing intervention in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing of Dominion-Virginia Power’s North Anna Unit 3 has reached a major turning point. On June 29, 2010, Dominion submitted a new license application, substituting a US Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor design for the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor.

As a party granted leave to intervene, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League pressed the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board for a new licensing process under 10 CFR 2.309 and 10 CFR Part 52. This would have opened the docket to all interested parties and required the publication of a notice in the Federal Resister. Dominion and the NRC opposed this. So, the ASLB has given the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League until October 4, 2010 to submit new contentions.

We are asking all interested parties to assist us by submitting position statements, technical analyses, expert affidavits and legal briefs opposing a new APWR reactor at North Anna. Documents submitted to the League before the deadline will be used in the renewed intervention. Limited appearance statements may also be submitted at any time to the ASLB Panel.

The June 29, 2010 revision to the Combined Operating License Application (COLA) involves a more substantial change than a typical license application amendment. Dominion has substituted a different nuclear reactor design from the one it originally proposed to build. As a result, the COLA now incorporates by reference the Design Control Document (DCD) for the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., U.S. Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor, rather than the DCD for the General Electric-Hitachi Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor, which was referenced in the original COLA. Dominion’s revision of its license application includes 20,022 pages of documents, with extensive new information and a completely different reactor design (DCD). The ASLB has stated that the DCD itself is not subject to challenge in this proceeding, despite the fact that the North Anna Final Safety Analysis Report (FSAR) now refers to a different design. Further, the new Environmental Report (ER) also contains new information.

We believe the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has committed a grave error in its recent order limiting the public’s right to participate in licensing of nuclear power. Most of the Commission’s reviews and most of the opportunities for the Intervenor and the affected public to participate have passed. A diminishing number of occasions for review and comment on the North Anna Unit 3 remain. We know of no other example of a reactor license being so fundamentally altered in midstream. The reactor design swap has thrown a monkey wrench into the proceeding. We believe it violates Atomic Energy Act and other applicable laws and regulations

To assist in this effort, contact the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.

Louis Zeller
Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League
PO Box 88 Glendale Springs, NC 28629
(336) 982-2691.
BREDL@skybest.com

Also, contact the ASLB judge who has jurisdiction over this matter.

Administrative Judge Ronald Spritzer, Chair
Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel
Mail Stop - T-3 F23
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001
E-mail: Ronald.spritzer@nrc.gov

Read more:
http://www.bredl.org/alerts/ALSB-10042010deadline.htm

Nuclear Miracle Is Plagued By Fast-Rising Reactor Costs And Cheap Renewables

Comment:  The most expensive way to boil water:  Nuke Power!  The governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell  embraces the French Nukes with open arms.  The French has a hold over Lynchburg, VA, has a web site called, Virginia Energy Independence Alliance!  The president of VEIA was VP of Areva, NA but now says he is retired.  The VEIA goes to all the meetings of the VA Uranium Subcommittee and always are first on the signup sheets, strange, I think so!  So Gov, why are you in bed with the French Nukes, these dudes do not know how to build nuke plants or mine uranium, all the  French understands is to rip all the dump American government by begging for monies to build the cycle of death:  Nuke Plants!

by Staff Writers
South Royalton VT (SPX) Sep 14, 2010

The so-called "French nuclear miracle" embraced by some U.S. policymakers as a model for this nation is a misconception masking a pattern of fast-rising nuclear reactor construction costs and a "crowding out" of investments in renewable energy, such as wind, solar and hydro-electric power, according to a new study by Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment.

Study author Mark Cooper, the VLS Institute's senior research fellow for economic analysis, said: "The problems in the French nuclear industry are similar to the problems that have long afflicted the U.S. industry, so there it no reason to believe that things will change if the U.S. follows the French path.

If the U.S. nuclear industry is relaunched with massive subsidies, this analysis shows the greatest danger is not that the U.S. will import French technology, but that it will replicate the French model of nuclear socialism.

Nuclear power will remain a ward of the state, as has been true throughout its history in France; a great burden on ratepayers, as has been the case throughout its history in both France and the U.S.; and it will retard the development of lower-cost renewables alternatives, as it has done in France and portions of the U.S."

Cooper's study, titled "Policy Challenges of Nuclear Reactor Construction: Cost Escalation and Crowding Out Alternatives. Lessons from the U.S. and France for the Effort to Revive the U.S. Industry with Loan Guarantees and Tax Subsidies."

Key study findings include the following:

Nuclear reactors are not cheaper in France. Both the U.S. and French nuclear industries have experienced severe cost escalation in recent years.

Measured in 2008 dollars, U.S. and French overnight costs were similar in the early 1970s, about $1,000 per kilowatt (kW).

In the U.S. they escalated to the range of $3,000 to $4,000 per kW by the mid-1980s. The final reactors were generally in the $5,000 to $6,000 range.

French costs increased to the range of $2,000-$3,000 in the mid-1980s and $3,000 to $5,000 in the 1990s.

The report finds that the claim that standardization, learning, or large increases in the number (and size) of reactors under construction will lower costs is not supported in the data.

In France and the U.S. building nuclear reactors and central station facilities crowd out energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The French track record on energy efficiency and renewables is poor compared to similar European nations.

In the U.S., past nuclear construction future nuclear plans appear to crowd out alternatives - a trend that would worsen significantly under large-scale subsidization of nuclear reactors, which mirrors the French model.

States in which utilities have not expressed an interest in getting licenses for new nuclear reactors have a better track record on efficiency and renewable and more aggressive plans for future development of efficiency and renewables.

The U.S. would have even more to lose in terms of renewables than France if it followed France's model of more nuclear power.

According to the new report, the U.S. has a much greater opportunity to develop alternatives not only because the cost disadvantage of nuclear in the U.S. is greater, but also because the portfolio of alternative resources is much greater in the U.S.

The U.S. consumes about 50 percent more electricity per dollar of gross domestic product per capita than France, which has the highest electricity consumption among comparable Western European nations. The U.S. has renewable opportunities that are four times as great as Europe.

Commenting on the study, Stephen Thomas, professor of energy studies, University of Greenwich, London, and a member of the editorial boards of Energy Policy, Utility Policy, Energy and Environment, and International Journal of Regulation and Governance, said:

"The French nuclear power industry is in crisis on three counts: its new reactor technology, the Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR), is proving expensive and difficult to build and gaining safety approval is proving slow and problematic; the existing 58 reactors are far less reliable than its European and US peers; and its flagship nuclear companies, the utility Electricite de France (EDF) and the reactor vendor, Areva are struggling to control their levels of debt.

This experience suggests that, far from being a model to emulate, the French experience is a cautionary tale of overdependence on nuclear power and on the state becoming too embroiled in commercial decisions."

Missing from most U.S. discussions of the "French model" is information about the history and recent experience of French nuclear costs, detailed analyses of past U.S. costs and current cost projections and a careful examination of the impact of the decision to promote nuclear reactor and other central station construction on the development of alternative energy sources. Cooper's paper uses historical qualitative and statistical analysis to fill those gaps.

Read more:
http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/Nuclear_Miracle_Is_Plagued_By_Fast_Rising_Reactor_Costs_And_Cheap_Renewables_999.html

No to nuclear power, towns say

By Jan Ravensbergen
Montreal GazetteSeptember 10, 2010

More than 250 Quebec municipalities and regional municipal governments have banded together to demand the province shut the door once and for all on nuclear energy - by mothballing Hydro-Quebec's Gentilly-2 nuclear reactor instead of rebuilding it.

Copies of a resolution thus far adopted by 255 municipal bodies were presented to three opposition members of the Quebec National Assembly Friday by Mayor Gaëtan Ruest of Amqui, who has been spearheading a campaign launched in spring 2009.

The thick stack of identically worded resolutions will be tabled in the full legislature "at the right moment," to be chosen by Parti Québécois MNAs Scott McKay and Martine Ouellet and Amir Khadir of Solidarité Québec after the assembly reconvenes Sept. 21, Ruest said. All three MNAs endorsed the effort.

"There are another 1,250 municipalities to go," Ruest told reporters at a news conference held in conjunction with a full-day forum of Quebec environmental activists focussed on two themes. They covered the anti-nuclear initiative in the morning and - during an intensive afternoon session that drew an audience in excess of 180 - emerging issues and vigorous developintg opposition to controversial plans to conduct shale-gas exploration and production in many parts of the province.

"Don't want their dirty energy? Neither do we!" declared a flyer inviting participation, carrying among many group names that included a Quebec citizen coalition actively opposing shale-gas activities, Nature Quebec, Greenpeace and a range of other environmental groups.

Public-opinion polls show almost two-thirds of Quebecers are opposed to a plan by Hydro-Québec to rebuild Gentilly-2, said Michel Duguay, a nuclear physicist at l'Université Laval who coordinates the Mouvement Sortir le Québec du Nucléaire. The umbrella group that speaks to the issue on behalf of some 85 environmental groups.

Ontario is backing off nuclear power generation of the Canadian-developed CANDU variety, Duguay said, adding that Quebec has a golden opportunity to follow that example.

The utility has not yet obtained regulatory approval, Duguay said.

Read more:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/nuclear+power+towns/3507913/story.html

Tears Fell Softly......911

My daughter wrote this poem when she was 15 after 911 happened. It is meant to be read and printed as two towers. It is dedicated to all those whose lives was lost. To all of you who served and are serving in the military for our safety and FREEDOM, THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts...

...911

by Meg Caro

Tears fell softly

And the world cried

We stood by and watched

As thousands died

Hate crimes done cruelly

And no one knows why

How could this happen?

Why did they die?

The towers fell quickly

Like the tears from our eyes

We couldn't stop it

And no one knows why

Emotions a mess

So many distressed

Our freedom attacked

And burned all the rest

Taken unjustly

It was not their time

How could this happen?

Why did they die?

Still running swiftly

The tears from our eyes

Afraid of the future

So many died

Fear took control

As smoke filled the sky

A shadow of darkness

Covered our lives

The days went by

And still the world cried

Disbelief in our hearts

And tears in our eyes

But stronger we stand

Smiling through the pain

A prayer to all those

Who lost family in vain

United through hope

We will not give in

GOD BLESS AMERICA

We surely will win...

Nuclear Power is the Problem, Not a Solution

Published on Friday, April 15, 2005 by the Australian
by Helen Caldicott

There is a huge propaganda push by the nuclear industry to justify nuclear power as a panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases.
In fact Leslie Kemeny on these pages two weeks ago (HES, March 30) suggested that courses on nuclear science and engineering be included in tertiary level institutions in Australia.

I agree. But I would suggest that all the relevant facts be taught to students. Mandatory courses in medical schools should embrace the short and long-term biological, genetic and medical dangers associated with the nuclear fuel cycle. Business students should examine the true costs associated with the production of nuclear power. Engineering students should become familiar with the profound problems associated with the storage of long-lived radioactive waste, the human fallibilities that have created the most serious nuclear accidents in history and the ongoing history of near-misses and near-meltdowns in the industry.

At present there are 442 nuclear reactors in operation around the world. If, as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power were to replace fossil fuels on a large scale, it would be necessary to build 2000 large, 1000-megawatt reactors. Considering that no new nuclear plant has been ordered in the US since 1978, this proposal is less than practical. Furthermore, even if we decided today to replace all fossil-fuel-generated electricity with nuclear power, there would only be enough economically viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to four years.

The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted for. The cost of uranium enrichment is subsidised by the US government. The true cost of the industry's liability in the case of an accident in the US is estimated to be $US560billion ($726billion), but the industry pays only $US9.1billion - 98per cent of the insurance liability is covered by the US federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the existing US nuclear reactors is estimated to be $US33billion. These costs - plus the enormous expense involved in the storage of radioactive waste for a quarter of a million years - are not now included in the economic assessments of nuclear electricity.

It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.

In the US, where much of the world's uranium is enriched, including Australia's, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Kentucky, requires the electrical output of two 1000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50per cent of global warming.

Also, this enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth, Ohio, release from leaky pipes 93per cent of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly in the US. The production and release of CFC gas is now banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it is the main culprit responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle utilises large quantities of fossil fuel at all of its stages - the mining and milling of uranium, the construction of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic decommissioning of the intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20 to 40-year operating lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities of radioactive waste.

In summary, nuclear power produces, according to a 2004 study by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith, only three times fewer greenhouse gases than modern natural-gas power stations.

Contrary to the nuclear industry's propaganda, nuclear power is therefore not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year. These releases are unregulated because the nuclear industry considers these particular radioactive elements to be biologically inconsequential. This is not so.

Read more:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0415-23.htm

New Book Concludes: Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer

Comment: Thanks Dr. G. Edwards for all you do and the article!  The nukes are trying to ram this stuff down our throats and will sell their souls for more of the cycle of death!

September 3, 2010 at 10:33:49
By Karl Grossman

This past April 26th marked the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident. It came as the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear government officials in the United States and other nations were trying to "revive" nuclear power. And it followed the publication of a book, the most comprehensive study ever made, on the impacts of the Chernobyl disaster.

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment was published by the New York Academy of Sciences. It is authored by three noted scientists:
Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the Russian president; Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Its editor is Dr. Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist long-involved in studying the health impacts of radioactivity.

The book is solidly based--on health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports--some 5,000 in all.

It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of theChernobyl accident. That is between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow.

The book explodes the claim of the International Atomic Energy Agency--still on its website that the expected death toll from the Chernobyl accident will be 4,000. The IAEA, the new book shows, is underestimating, to the extreme, the casualties of Chernobyl.


Alice Slater, representative in New York of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, comments: "The tragic news uncovered by the comprehensive new research that almost one million people died in the toxic aftermath of Chernobyl should be a wake-up call to people all over the world to petition their governments to put a halt to the current industry-driven "nuclear renaissance.' Aided by a corrupt IAEA, the world has been subjected to a massive cover-up and deception about the true damages caused by Chernobyl."
Further worsening the situation, she said, has been "the collusive agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization in which the WHO is precluded from publishing any research on radiation effects without consultation with the IAEA." WHO, the public health arm of the UN, has supported the IAEA's claim that 4,000 will die as a result of the accident.

"How fortunate," said Ms. Slater, "that independent scientists have now revealed the horrific costs of the Chernobyl accident."

The book also scores the position of the IAEA, set up through the UN in 1957 "to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy," and its 1959 agreement with WHO. There is a "need to change," it says, the IAEA-WHO pact. It has muzzled the WHO, providing for the "hiding" from the "public of any information"unwanted" by the nuclear industry.

"An important lesson from the Chernobyl experience is that experts and organizations tied to the nuclear industry have dismissed and ignored the consequences of the catastrophe," it states.

The book details the spread of radioactive poisons following the explosion of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant on April 26, 1986. These major releases only ended when the fire at the reactor was brought under control in mid-May. Emitted were "hundreds of millions of curies, a quantity hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." The most extensive fall-out occurred in regions closest to the plant--in the Ukraine (the reactor was 60 miles from Kiev in Ukraine), Belarus and Russia.

However, there was fallout all over the world as the winds kept changing direction "so the radioactive emissions"covered an enormous territory."

The radioactive poisons sent billowing from the plant into the air included Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90.

There is a breakdown by country, highlighted by maps, of where the radionuclides fell out. Beyond Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, the countries included Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The radiological measurements show that some 10% of Chernobyl poisons "fell on Asia"Huge areas" of eastern Turkey and central China "were highly contaminated," reports the book. Northwestern Japan was impacted, too.

Read more:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/New-Book-Concludes-Cherno-by-Karl-Grossman-100902-941.html

Hurricane Earl ... and Floating Nuclear Plants

Comment:  Nuke's idea, really floating nuke plants on East Coast, if not hurricanes, there are Noreaster, radiation on the brain!  No to nukes!

Karl Grossman.Investigative reporter
Posted: September 3, 2010 10:33

It was supposed to happen off the U.S. Atlantic Coast and was scuttled because of skyrocketing costs, public opposition, and a lack of need. But the concept of floating nuclear power plants is back. Russia, copying the U.S. plan, recently launched the first of what it says will be many floating nuclear plants that it will moor off its coastline and sell to nations around the world.

Consider, with Hurricane Earl moving up the Atlantic Coast, the situation if floating nuclear power plants were, as planned, moored off it.

Consider the Russia program in terms of accident consequences -- the plants are being called "floating Chernobyls" -- and as a terrorist issue. The fuel the plants are to use is weapons-grade uranium. Nations which Russia's state nuclear corporation has been talking to about buying the plants include Malaysia, Algeria and Indonesia.

But David Lochbaum, senior safety engineer at Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientist, is highly critical. Lochbaum describes an accident at a floating nuclear power plant as "worse" than at a land-based one. "In a meltdown, a China syndrome accident, the molten mass of what had been the core would burrow into the ground and some of the radioactive material held there. But with a floating nuclear plant, all the molten mass would drop into the water and there would be a steam explosion and the release of a tremendous amount of energy and radioactive material," he explains. "It would be like a bomb going off." A large plume of radioactive poisons would form and "many more people would be put in harm's way," says Mr. Lochbaum, for 18 years an engineer in the nuclear industry and an instructor for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"This project is clearly a risky venture," said Alexander Nitikin, former chief engineer on Soviet nuclear submarines and a senior radiation inspector for its Department of Defense. He now heads the St. Petersburg branch of the Bellona Foundation, an international environmental organization. "Safety shouldn't be neglected for the profits Rosatom wants to get from selling floating nuclear power plants to the troubled regions. Such Rosatom activities simply violate the idea of non-proliferation."

Describing the plants as "floating Chernobyls in waiting," the main office of Norway-headquartered Bellona declares that "Russia has neither the means nor infrastructure to ensure their safe operation, has made no plans for disposing of their spent fuel, and has not taken into consideration the enormous nuclear proliferation risks posed."

A group of Russian scientists -- including nuclear physicists and engineers and noted Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov -- has written a book on the Russian undertaking titled: Floating Nuclear Power Plants in Russia: A Threat to the Arctic, World Oceans and Non-Proliferation. "One would have imagined that the Chernobyl catastrophe would have taught us to treat nuclear technologies with caution," states the book. It says "trouble-free operations of floating nuclear power plants cannot be" and "the only question is how serious the emergency and its consequences." In a chapter on the plants as "an attractive object of nuclear terrorism," the book cites an impossibility of providing "protection from...underwater saboteurs and on the surface from a rocket-bombing strike." Each floating nuclear plant will contain "the ready material for ten nuclear bombs in the way of enriched uranium of weapon quality." It notes "the idea of creating floating nuclear power plants originated in the USA" but was dropped and recommends Russia do the same.

The U.S. floating nuclear plant scheme was hatched, interestingly, while a vice president of Public Service Electric and Gas Co. of New Jersey, Richard Eckert, was taking a shower. Company literature spoke of Mr. Eckert having a revelation while showering of the sea supplying the massive amounts of water nuclear plants need as coolant. The utility convinced Westinghouse to build floating nuclear plants. A huge facility was constructed on an island off Jacksonville, Florida with the plants to be towed into position. The project was canceled in 1984 after $180 million was blown.

There is strong opposition in the area off which the first floating nuclear plants would be moored -- the Murmansk Region. The Romir polling agency has found some 71 percent of respondents there said they were "strongly negative." And, "protests against the project have already occurred," says Vitaly Servetnik, chairman of the organization Nature and Youth.

Of the floating nuclear plants, Vladimir Chuprov, energy projects chief for Greenpeace Russia, says: "It is better to invest in solar and wind energy rather than produce time bombs."

Read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-grossman/hurricane-earland-floatin_b_704283.html

St. Lucie Unit 1 nuclear reactor to get more scrutiny, NRC says

By Susan Salisbury Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 6:06 p.m. Friday, Sept. 3, 2010

Florida Power & Light Co.'s St. Lucie Unit 1 reactor is in the "yellow" performance category, and a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission team will be giving the reactor a detailed inspection later this month, the NRC reported Friday.

All of the nation's 104 nuclear plants continue to operate safely, including FPL's St. Lucie units on Hutchinson Island and Turkey Point south of Miami, the NRC said in an assessment issued Friday.

There are five levels of plant performance, with 85 plants performing at the highest level, known as "green," 12 at the next highest "white" level, and seven at the third "yellow" level of performance, including St. Lucie 1. There are no plants operating in the two lowest categories, the NRC said.

The St. Lucie plant was first classified as yellow in April after air leaked into a cooling water system.

"That yellow finding is what we categorize as having substantial safety significance," Roger Hannah, an Atlanta-based NRC spokesman, said Friday.

"We consider their performance to be degraded, or below regulatory expectations," he said.

Read more:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/st-lucie-unit-1-nuclear-reactor-to-get-896427.html

Deal to clean up LA-area nuclear accident site

By NOAKI SCHWARTZ (AP) – 4 hours ago

LOS ANGELES — State and federal officials announced Friday a potentially historic agreement to remove all radioactive contamination from a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959 at a rocket testing site just outside Los Angeles.

Residents who have fought for years for the cleanup heralded the agreement signed by the Department of Energy, NASA and state officials. The agreement must still go through a public review process.

The decades-old site is known as the Santa Susana Field Laboratory and is now largely owned by Boeing Co.

Boeing said in a statement that it had only just learned of the agreement and was reviewing it.

Proponents of the deal said it would require a high-level cleanup in the most polluted parts of the site.

"It's more than we'd hoped for a long time," said Marie Mason, the head of a four-member homeowner's association who are all sick with leukemia, breast cancer or serious thyroid conditions. "We are thrilled."

Read more:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gZzfvoltn1uEZoEeezdwLPMrrXHgD9I0MS1O0

Crack at Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant explained

Comment:  NRC: "It won't hurt ya, I mean really, do you really trust NRC...NO!

By Richard Danielson, Times Staff Writer
Friday, September 3, 2010

CRYSTAL RIVER — From the start, one question especially has concerned the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Why Crystal River?

Why did a 42-inch-thick wall at that nuclear plant separate into two layers during a big maintenance project last fall? Other nuclear plants have done similar jobs 26 times around the country, but no one ever saw a crack like Crystal River's — a crack that has kept the plant off-line for 11 months and piled up nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in outage costs.

On Thursday, NRC officials said they think they know the answers to that question and others.

First, NRC inspectors said Progress Energy's analysis of the crack — known as a delamination — was thorough and supported the company's conclusions about when and how it formed. And they concluded that because the wall separated when the plant was shut down with no fuel in the reactor, there was no risk of a release of radiation.

Read more:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/crack-at-crystal-river-nuclear-power-plant-explained/1119240

Nominate scientists for NAS nuclear cancer risks panel

The National Academy of Sciences Nuclear & Radiation Studies Board announced that they are accepting nominations for panelists to participate in a study assessing cancer risks from nuclear facilities.

Nominations will be accepted through September 30, 2010, and can be submitted by email (crs@nas.edu), phone (202-334-3066), or fax (202-334-2077).

Please participate in this nominating process by suggesting independent scientists.

The NAS needs to know we are watching and participating. Beyond Nuclear will post updates as appropriate.

The study will be conducted in two phases. Phase one, which started on September 1, 2010, will determine how best to conduct an epidemiological study on the cancer risks from Nuclear Regulator Commission (NRC) licensed facilities in the United States and will continue for 15 months.

Read more:
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2010/9/2/nominate-scientists-for-nas-nuclear-cancer-risks-panel.html

What Exelon’s Wind Energy Buy Means For the Future of Nuclear Power

Comment:  No to Nuke Power, yes to WindMills, Solar Panels, Tidal!  Nukes power is the cycle of death, starting with uranium mining, not clean, not green, not CO2 free, too expensive and just so old.....




By Kirsten Korosec
September 1, 2010

Exelon (EXC) announced this week it was buying John Deere Renewables for as much as $900 million, a purchase that marks the company’s entrance into the wind generation business and suggests its lack of confidence in a nuclear energy renaissance.

As the largest U.S. utility owner and the country’s biggest nuclear generator, Exelon’s actions often foreshadow where the energy industry is headed.


It wasn’t so long ago that President Obama gave nuclear power a huge boost by endorsing the energy source in his State of the Union speech. A month later, the Energy Department announced $8.3 billion in government-loan guarantees to help Southern Co. (SO) to build a new nuclear power plant — the first in more than 30 years — in Georgia.

But in the months since, the momentum for the much-touted nuclear renaissance has slowed to a crawl for a number of reasons. For one, energy prices are too low right now to justify the expensive and lengthy process of secure financing and receive regulatory approval for a new nuclear plant, let alone building the reactor itself.

Exelon’s wind purchase includes $860 million for existing turbines and $40 million if John Deere starts construction of 230 megawatts of projects before the deal is finalized at the end of the year. The 735 megawatts of installed wind capacity it’s buying is enough to power up to 220,000 homes in the eight states. About 75 percent of the wind megawatts are already contracted out, which provides some stability for Exelon. With this single deal, Exelon will become one of the country’s largest wind operators.

Low energy prices and sapping energy demand has not only cause Exelon to back off nuclear energy, it’s also fueled a surge in acquisitions. In fact, acquisitions in the U.S. power industry grew more than 20-fold by value in the first eight months of 2010, according to a recent Bloomberg report. And it’s a trend that will continue as companies try to snap up assets while electricity prices remain low.

http://www.bnet.com/blog/clean-energy/what-exelon-8217s-wind-energy-buy-means-for-the-future-of-nuclear-power/2441

Renewed battle against nuclear energy

By Melanie S. Welte
Monday, August 30, 2010; A11

DES MOINES - It's been 33 years since Raye Fleming's arrest outside Southern California's Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, near the height of the furor against nuclear power.

That was the first arrest of many, and Fleming thought such actions paid off as a generation of Americans turned against nuclear power.

"It was just the correct, moral thing to do," said Fleming, 66.

But after years of believing they had won the fight against nuclear energy, activists feel the battle is starting all over again. And they're trying to figure out how to win in an era of Facebook and Twitter and get the younger generation involved in the movement.

Lately, the option for nuclear energy has gotten more popular.

President Obama has backed billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees to build two nuclear reactors in Georgia. Political support for nuclear power has grown, especially after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlighted risks of fossil fuel production. And people are more open to nuclear energy.

For those like Fleming, that change is hard to understand.

"A call for more nuclear power plants," Fleming, of Arroyo Grande, Calif., said with a sigh. "It's still not safe. There's still no solution to the waste storage and it's costly."

For many, the issue isn't as simple as it once was. Concerns about global warming have left several environmentalists unsure about what really is the "green" side of the issue, and it's been more than 30 years since the last high-profile accident in the United States.

"It's 2010. It's not 1979. It's a different generation.

There are different styles," said Michael Mariotte, a longtime opponent of nuclear power who heads the Maryland-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "The whole idea of mass marches and that kind of thing doesn't have the same kind of resonance as back then." Mariotte's group alerts members to big issues via Facebook, links to anti-nuclear stories through Twitter and posts videos on YouTube.

For one group in Georgia, it's the newer crop that really has brought those technological skills to the table, along with a passion to educate others via the Internet, said Glenn Carroll, the coordinator with Nuclear Watch South, which opposes the proposed reactors in Georgia.

"We have a lot of writing and publishing talent in our ranks, and we are meaning to be a go-to resource where you can learn the basics about nuclear power and you can get in touch via directories and links with people in your town," she said.

Protesting nuclear power in the Twitterverse has helped the movement grow.

"I think that's how people have gotten savvy over it," said 31-year-old Emma Ogley-Oliver, a Nuclear Watch South member.

When she got involved in the nuclear power issue three years ago, she learned a lot from those who began the fight in the 1970s.

They are also attending "action camps" to teach the ins and outs of mobilizing, citizen participation and how nuclear energy works.

Jane Magers of Des Moines has fought nuclear power for nearly 40 years.

She senses a change, a feeling that "we've got to have energy at all costs." But Magers said she's confident that the increased support for nuclear energy will melt away when utilities announce where they intend to build.

No one, she said, wants to live near a nuclear plant.

"The groundswell [against nuclear power] will come when they announce where the sites are," she said.

Read more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/29/AR2010082903890.html

Vt. auditor: Raise nuke plant shutdown fund checks

The Associated Press
August 31, 2010, 5:38PM ET,

MONTPELIER, Vt., Vermont state Auditor Tom Salmon says the state should do a better job tracking the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's decommissioning fund.

The fund, set up to pay for the Vernon reactor's eventual dismantlement and removal of radioactive components, has come under fire from lawmakers and nuclear watchdog groups as having less in it than will be needed.

The report notes the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission pointed to an $87 million shortfall in the fund at the end of 2008.
Read more:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9HUNCPO1.htm