Group items tagged

Government plans to fast-track major projects pose a real threat to their action plan on global warming (UK's nuclear future is mapped out as race to tackle climate change hots up, 10 November). Reports on the government's national policy statements have predictably focussed on the controversial issue of new nuclear reactors, but a fundamental flaw in the proposals, which has gone largely unreported, threatens to undermine UK targets for tackling climate change. Under the Climate Change Act, the UK has been set legally binding "carbon budgets", setting limits on how much carbon the UK can emit, over five-year budget periods, for the next 15 years. Some of the projects covered by the national policy statements, such as new coal and gas-fired power stations, are likely to have a significant impact on UK emissions - but bizarrely the effect that these developments would have on UK carbon budgets is missing from the proposals, and this issue won't be considered by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC).

Government plans to fast-track major projects pose a real threat to their action plan on global warming (UK's nuclear future is mapped out as race to tackle climate change hots up, 10 November). Reports on the government's national policy statements have predictably focussed on the controversial issue of new nuclear reactors, but a fundamental flaw in the proposals, which has gone largely unreported, threatens to undermine UK targets for tackling climate change. Under the Climate Change Act, the UK has been set legally binding "carbon budgets", setting limits on how much carbon the UK can emit, over five-year budget periods, for the next 15 years. Some of the projects covered by the national policy statements, such as new coal and gas-fired power stations, are likely to have a significant impact on UK emissions - but bizarrely the effect that these developments would have on UK carbon budgets is missing from the proposals, and this issue won't be considered by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC).

The government says nuclear power is safe, but others say an airplane hit or frontal assault would be big trouble. BAY CITY, Texas (CNNMoney.com) -- At a nuclear power plant in Texas, two men dressed in combat gear are perched atop a steel-framed watchtower armed with assault rifles, firing on both moving and stationary targets some 300 yards away. This is only a drill, but the threat they're preparing for is very real. It's one of the worst disaster scenarios imaginable: Terrorists infiltrate a nuclear power plant and cause a meltdown.

The government says nuclear power is safe, but others say an airplane hit or frontal assault would be big trouble. BAY CITY, Texas (CNNMoney.com) -- At a nuclear power plant in Texas, two men dressed in combat gear are perched atop a steel-framed watchtower armed with assault rifles, firing on both moving and stationary targets some 300 yards away. This is only a drill, but the threat they're preparing for is very real. It's one of the worst disaster scenarios imaginable: Terrorists infiltrate a nuclear power plant and cause a meltdown.

"The Council of State has suspended three articles in the regulations governing the tender process," the Union of Turkish Engineers' and Architects' Chambers, or TMMOB, said in a statement. "With this decision, the nuclear power plant tender has legally ended. It has been rendered invalid," it stated. There was no immediate response from the government to the court decision. The tender process has been under fire since it emerged in September last year that only one consortium had bid for the project and offered an above-market price. The consortium, including Russia's Inter Rao and Turkey's Park Teknik, later revised down its proposed price for supplying electricity, but Ankara said the new offer was also very high.

"The Council of State has suspended three articles in the regulations governing the tender process," the Union of Turkish Engineers' and Architects' Chambers, or TMMOB, said in a statement. "With this decision, the nuclear power plant tender has legally ended. It has been rendered invalid," it stated. There was no immediate response from the government to the court decision. The tender process has been under fire since it emerged in September last year that only one consortium had bid for the project and offered an above-market price. The consortium, including Russia's Inter Rao and Turkey's Park Teknik, later revised down its proposed price for supplying electricity, but Ankara said the new offer was also very high.

"A blinding flash of light followed by a cloud of complete darkness. A city in shambles. A face peeks out from beneath heavy wooden beams, eyes dart left and right, trapped as fires begin to consume everything. These memories of the atomic bomb decimating Hiroshima haunt Takashi Teramoto. Sixty-five years later, he recounts the story to about 40 Mill Pond students and their parents during a live video conference organized by sixth-grade teacher, Rebecca Kline and the Executive Director of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, Steve Leeper. While it was early in the morning in Hiroshima when the live video conference took place, it was 7:30 p.m. for the audience in the Mill Pond auditorium. The live image of Teramoto, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima and his interpreter, Elizabeth Baldwin, were projected on a large screen while pictures were displayed in am accompanying slideshow. This video conference was organized as part of a campaign by the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation to abolish all nuclear weapons in the world. Leeper explained that they are not doing this campaign to attack America or complain about what happened. Their concern is preventing mass destruction by nuclear weapons from ever happening again. "

President, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Before the Indian Parliament votes on limiting the liability of nuclear operators due to accidents, it should carefully consider the much higher limits that the United States has set for itself about $11 billion per incident industry maximum (under the Price-Anderson Act). The liability of the operator of the plant would be just Rs. 500 crores, about $110 million, which is just one percent of the U.S. limit, and about $450 million per accident. The proposed law allows an adjustment of this upwards or downwards to a possible lower limit of just Rs. 300 crores, or about $65 million. But more than that, Parliament should consider that the actual damages could be far greater than the U.S. liability limit. A 1997 study by the U.S. governments own Brookhaven National Laboratory, on Long Island, New York, found that the severe spent fuel pool accidents could result in damages from somewhat under $1 billion of up to $566 billion, depending on a how full and hot the pool is at the time of the accident and the intensity of the postulated fire. The high-end figure would amount to over $700 billion in 2009 dollars. Vast amounts of land --- up to about 7,000 square kilometers in the worst case would have to be condemned. Large numbers of people would have to be evacuated. Further, the maximum estimated monetary damages do not take into account some critical elements. For instance, the Brookhaven amount does not include excess cancer deaths, estimated to range from 1,500 to more than 100,000. Worst case nuclear reactor accident cancers and condemned area were estimated to be generally comparable to the upper end of the spent fuel accident estimates.

"Many might be alarmed to learn of a homemade nuclear reactor being built next door. But what if this form of extreme DIY could help solve the world's energy crisis? By day, Mark Suppes is a web developer for fashion giant Gucci. By night, he cycles to a New York warehouse and tinkers with his own nuclear fusion reactor. The warehouse is a non-descript building on a tree-lined Brooklyn street, across the road from blocks of apartments, with a grocery store on one corner. But in reality, it is a lab. In a hired workshop on the third floor, a high-pitched buzz emanates from a corner dotted with metal scraps and ominous-looking machinery, as Mr Suppes fires up his device and searches for the answer to a question that has eluded some of the finest scientific minds on the planet."

"NEARLY a quarter of a century after the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine exploded and spewed radioactivity across the world, it has finally stopped making Scottish sheep too "hot" to eat. For the first time since the accident, levels of radioactive contamination in sheep on all Scottish farms dropped below safety limits last month, enabling the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to lift restrictions. Controls on the movement and sale of sheep have been in force since after the explosion in 1986. The Chernobyl reactor near Kiev scattered a massive cloud of radioactivity over Europe after it overheated, caught fire and ripped apart because of errors made by control room staff. It was the world's worst nuclear accident, and has been blamed for causing tens of thousands of deaths from cancers. Peat and grass in upland areas of Scotland were polluted with radioactive caesium-137 released by the reactor, blown across Europe and brought to ground by rain."

"In the most "Woody Allen esque" protest I've seen in a while, 50 activists dressed as renewable energy sources (sun, wind, water) used a fire truck to get into one of the dodgiest nuclear plants in Sweden. I'm going in! They want their govenment to follow through on a decades old national referendum to phase out nuclear power. The Swedish parliment will vote this week on whether to stick to the nuclear power phase out, or backslide and open the door to new reactors. Our man in Sweden says: "The Swedish parliament is risking the country's reputation and position as a progressive leader in clean and safe energy development. All the evidence shows that nuclear power is a dangerous, expensive and dead-end distraction from the real solutions to climate protection and energy security. Reactors are standing in the way of energy efficiency and renewable energy programs." -- Ludvig Tillman, energy campaigner for Greenpeace Nordic."

"On May 3, 1969, after hours of bitter debate, the Sierra Club fired David Brower. The organization's first paid staffer, Brower had transformed the Club from an exclusive, politically timid, white male hiking outfit of 2,000 members. But the old guard didn't like the direction that Brower, its executive director, was taking the staid organization: toward political confrontation, grassroots organizing and attacks on industrial pollution, nuclear power and the Pentagon. This kind of green aggressiveness in the face of entrenched power alienated funders, politicians and, eventually, the Internal Revenue Service, which, after Brower's successful international campaign to halt the construction of two mega-dams in the Grand Canyon, moved to strip the group of its tax-deductible status. The IRS action proved to be the final straw and Brower was booted out."

"Exelon will get incentives from the American Power Act and the bill will increase the company's earnings in five years, if it passes. John Rowe, chief executive officer of nuclear firm Exelon, saw the writing on the wall about government penalties and rewards for producers of greenhouse gases. Rowe considers himself the "senior chief executive in the utility industry" having served in those positions since 1984. He presided over Exelon's formation from the merger of Chicago utility Unicom and Philadelphia utility Peco. During his time at Unicom predecessor Commonwealth Edison, Rowe changed the course of the company's future to focus on nuclear power instead of dirtier coal and oil-fired plants."

"How do wars begin? With a "master illusion", according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA's pioneers in "black propaganda", known today as "news management". In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an "incident" that became the "conclusive proof of North Vietnam's aggression". This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. "The CIA," he said, "loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons-the Agency maintains communist arsenals in the United States and around the world. They floated this junk off the coast of central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place, and they brought in the American press. Based on this evidence, two Marine landing teams went into Danang and a week after that the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam." An invasion that took three million lives was under way."

Call it the alphabet soup rule. You can tell how important an issue is in the Legislature by how many groups with long acronyms line up behind it or against it. In the battle over AmerenUE's attempt to change Missouri law so that it can charge consumers higher rates while building its proposed nuclear plant in Callaway County, the first salvo was fired by MEDA, or the Missouri Energy Development Association. The group represents most of the state's utilities, and, of course, it's in favor of the plant. MEDA's Warren Wood makes the bill sound like it's pro-consumer, pro-environment.

POLICE, fire crews, and paramedics mounted a massive operation after a radioactive box was dumped in a ditch near Gatwick. Pensioners George and Betty Upton compared the scene to a plane crash when they came home on Monday to find their property swarming with emergency services. A specialist chemical hazard team was called in to inspect the suspect wooden crate, which ADVERTISEMENT had metal containers inside, before declaring that the levels were too low to be harmful.

A story covered by the Idaho Statesman, New West online magazine and the local Associated Press - but apparently few others - was listed by Time magazine as one of the most underreported news stories of the year. Back in May, about 6,700 tons of radioactive waste was shipped from a U.S. military base in Kuwait to a US Ecology waste storage facility west of Grand View in Owyhee County. The waste had been created by a 1991 fire at U.S. Army Camp Doha, which ignited military vehicles and munitions containing depleted uranium used in armor-piercing shells. The shell fragments were removed and disposed in the United States by the U.S. Army in 2005, and the waste that came to Idaho was what was left of the contaminated soil from which the fragments were removed. New West broke the story before the shipments came.

The Seabrook Fire Department responded on Tuesday, Dec. 9, to a report of smoke in a building at FPL Energy Seabrook Station, the nuclear power plant, according to firefighter Koko Perkins. Personnel were evacuated from the office building at the plant after smoke came from a heating system, according to Seabrook Station spokesman Al Griffith. The building is near the Science and Nature Center, on plant property, but well outside the nuclear power plant's protected zone, Griffith said.

During the presidential campaign, Republican candidate John McCain pledged to build 45 nuclear reactors by 2030 to meet the nation's energy needs. With just about everybody but the most ardent of global-warming deniers recognizing the negative impact that coal-fired plants are having on the environment, the proposal was appealing politically because it rolled energy independence and global warming into one package. It also was unrealistic. The United States has neither the manpower nor the materiel to construct that many nuclear power plants in that time period, and the companies that develop and design nuclear plants would face similar constraints. Clearing regulatory hurdles can take decades - and don't forget the NIMBY factor.

Both U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Congressman Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., took the occasion of a Surface Transportation Board hearing here to fire a few shots over toward the Department of Energy. Berkley essentually said Bush administration plans to build a $3 billion railroad in Nevadas to haul nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain should be rejected. "Nevadans oppose this $3 billion 'Railroad to Nowhere,'" said Berkley, "and we recognize the dangers thatb will accompany decades of toxic nuclear waste shipments to Yucca Mountain."

Today's topic: U.S. should just say no to imported hazard Our View For a nation that still hasn't found a sure-fire way of storing its own nuclear waste without worry, it certainly shouldn't be taking waste from other nations. U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, a Democrat, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican, have teamed on legislation that would ban foreign nuclear waste. The legislation follows efforts by a Utah company, EnergySolutions, to import up to 20,000 tons of nuclear waste from Italy that would go through ports at Charleston, S.C., or New Orleans, and through Tennessee on its way to the EnergySolutions site in Utah. The company says it has plenty of room at its site to handle domestic and international waste, although it proposes to reserve a cap of 5 percent of its capacity for foreign material. Advertisement Gordon and Alexander emphasize the need for the U.S. to handle its own waste before taking on the responsibility of handling that of other countries. Gordon says it's about preserving room for domestic waste. He also says with each load that goes through a community, there could be a problem. Alexander says he agrees with Gordon that the U.S. shouldn't become "the world's nuclear garbage dump."

The U.S. military is set to run a "realistic" test Friday of a system built to knock out long-range missiles that could be fired by North Korea or Iran, the Pentagon said. The drill, over the Pacific, will be the first since September 2007 involving an attempted intercept by the sole U.S. shield against long-range ballistic missiles.

American Electric Power Co. says a damaged reactor at its Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant will not be back in service until at least next September or perhaps even sometime in 2010. The plant is near Bridgman in Berrien County's Lake Township. One of its two reactors was shut down on Sept. 20 after severe vibrations caused by broken low-pressure turbine blades damaged the main turbine and generator, causing a fire.