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Yes, sadly, our politicians are downright hypocrites, especially those on a certain side of the aisle. What they say versus what they vote for (and ask for) are completely opposite in many instances. After joining in the loan guarantee flogging after Solyndra, for example,  House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has gone and supported a $2 billion loan guarantee for an Ohio nuclear power plant (yes, that would be his home state of Ohio). He’s even gone so far as to say not backing the loan guarantee would “betray” Ohio workers.Last I heard, loan guarantees for nuclear power plants have a financial failure rate of over 50%. Umm…Going back to Boehner’s September opinion on loan guarantees: “for the federal government to be out there picking one company over another, one type of energy source over another, I think is wrong.”

“Boehner is far from the only Republican using Solyndra to score political points while asking for loan guarantees at the same time,” Think Progress reports. “In fact, Republican House members host $11.8 billion in loan guarantees in their districts.”

With mounting evidence linking hundreds of small earthquakes from Oklahoma to Ohio to the energy industry's growing use of fracking technology, scientists say there is one way to minimize risks of even minor temblors. Only, it costs about $10 million a pop.

A thorough seismic survey to assess tracts of rock below where oil and gas drilling fluid is disposed of could help detect quake prone areas.

The more expensive method will be a hard sell as long as irrefutable proof of the link between fracking and earthquakes remains elusive. "If we knew what was in the earth we could perfectly mitigate the risk of earthquakes," said Austin Holland, seismologist at the Oklahoma Geological Survey. "That is something that we don't have enough science to establish yet." A 4.0 New Year's Eve quake in Ohio prompted officials to shut down five wells used to dispose of fluid used in the hydraulic fracturing process. That comes less than a year after Arkansas declared a moratorium due to a surge in earthquakes as companies developed the Fayetteville Shale reserve.

The Portsmouth facility, and a sister plant under construction in Paducah, Kentucky, will convert 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) into uranium oxide (UO2), the most benign waste form with the safest disposition options, and aqueous hydrogen fluoride (HF), which can be sold commercially

Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening standards or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.Officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission regularly have decided original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.The result? Rising fears that these accommodations are undermining safety -- and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize nuclear power's future.

Examples abound. When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed -- up to 20 times the original limit. When cracking caused radioactive leaks in steam generator tubing, an easier test was devised so plants could meet standards.Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered in AP's yearlong investigation. And many of them could escalate dangers during an accident.

Despite the problems, not a single official body in government or industry has studied the overall frequency and potential impact on safety of such breakdowns in recent years, even as the NRC has extended dozens of reactor licenses.Industry and government officials defend their actions and insist no chances are being taken. But the AP investigation found that with billions of dollars and 19 percent of America's electricity supply at stake, a cozy relationship prevails between industry and the NRC.Records show a recurring pattern: Reactor parts or systems fall out of compliance. Studies are conducted by industry and government, and all agree existing standards are "unnecessarily conservative."

The NRC had declared delays in the new reactor approval process for AP1000 and ESBWR reactor designs. They NRC wants to complete their analysis on information from Fukushima Daiichi before moving ahead with the process to possibly approve either new design. Meanwhile Nuclear power companies are forging ahead with preparing sites for the reactors they hope to build. An interesting twist in that power companies can start a project before getting approval for the reactor they intend to build. This is then frequently used to pressure the NRC because work and spending is already underway. It was a key circumstance during the initial approval process at North Anna.

The Oyster Creek reactor in New Jersey, one of the oldest in the US has announced they will shut down for good in 2019. In 2010 Excelon threatened to close Oyster Creek unless a mandate requiring them to build cooling towers was removed. It appears that the cooling tower issues may have been a major factor in the decision to cease operations.  Containment corrosion and lawsuits over the lack of metals testing on the reactor were mounting against Oyster Creek. The people in the region and the state authorities were all working various angles to shut down the plant due to its many problems. They have succeeded. Now to just hope nothing bad happens at Oyster Creek before 2019.

At Davis Besse in Ohio, as they are replacing the reactor cap that has a pineapple sized hole in it, they discovered a long crack in the containment concrete. They had already sliced a hole in the containment dome to put the replacement reactor cap in. FirstEnergy claims none of this will degrade safety…..

As if the closing steel mills and automobile manufacturing plants weren't bad enough, some of the oldest, most risky atomic reactors in the U.S. are located in the Midwest. Worse still, they are on the shores of the Great Lakes, putting at risk the drinking water supply for 40 million people downstream in the U.S., Canada, and a large number of Native American First Nations. Altogether, 33 atomic reactors are located on the shorelines of the Great Lakes. Two of the most infamous of these radiologically risky "Rust Belt reactors" are Entergy Nuclear's Palisades in southwest Michigan, and FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse in northwest Ohio.

Last month, U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), a long-time watchdog on the nuclear industry, wrote the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about an acidic, radioactive leak representing a "crisis in the control room at the Palisades nuclear power plant." The leakage had been ongoing for a year, and was being "contained" in glorified buckets referred to by Entergy PR spokesman Mark Savage as "catch basins." Although the leak came to light when Palisades was forced to shutdown after its rate reached more than 30 gallons per day, it had been ongoing for months at a rate of 15 gallons per day. The tritiated and borated water is leaking from a 300,000 gallon Safety Injection Refueling Water storage tank, which is safety critical for both reactor core and radiological containment cooling. Whistleblowers contacted Washington, D.C. attorney Billie Pirner Garde, who alerted Rep. Markey, who wrote NRC. The NRC Office of Investigations has launched a probe into potential Entergy wrongdoing. On July 17th, NRC issued a "Confirmatory Action Letter" which enables Palisades to keep operating into 2013, even if the leak increases to nearly 38 gallons per day!

Markey demanded a copy of an internal Entergy report surveying its own workers on "safety culture" at Palisades. Michigan Radio obtained a copy, which reveals "a lack of accountability at all levels," and a workforce deeply distrustful of management, fearful that they will be harassed and punished if they dare to raise safety concerns.

Place: Audio Conference Call via FTS Conferencing. The USA toll- free, dial-in number is 1-866-659-0537 and the pass code is 9933701. Status: Open to the public, but without a public comment period. Background: The Advisory Board was established under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 to advise the President on a variety of policy and technical functions required to implement and effectively manage the new compensation program. Key functions of the Advisory Board include providing advice on the development of probability of causation guidelines, which have been promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a final rule; advice on methods of dose reconstruction, which have also been promulgated by HHS as a final rule; advice on the scientific validity and quality of dose estimation and reconstruction efforts being performed for purposes of the compensation program; and advice on petitions to add classes of workers to the Special Exposure Cohort (SEC).

In December 2000, the President delegated responsibility for funding, staffing, and operating the Advisory Board to HHS, which subsequently delegated this authority to the CDC. NIOSH implements this responsibility for CDC. The charter was issued on August 3, 2001, renewed at appropriate intervals, most recently, August 3, 2009, and will expire on August 3, 2011. Purpose: This Advisory Board is charged with a) Providing advice to the Secretary, HHS, on the development of guidelines under Executive Order 13179; b) providing advice to the Secretary, HHS, on the scientific validity and quality of dose reconstruction efforts performed for this program; and c) upon request by the Secretary, HHS, advising the Secretary on whether there is a class of employees at any Department of Energy facility who were exposed to radiation but for whom it is not feasible to estimate their radiation dose, and on whether there is reasonable likelihood that such radiation doses may have endangered the health of members of this class.

Matters To Be Discussed: The agenda for the conference call includes: HHS Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Amending 42 CFR Part 81 (to add Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia as a ``radiogenic cancer'' for the determination of probability of causation under Subpart B of EEOICPA); NIOSH SEC Petition Evaluation for Ames Laboratory (Ames, Iowa) and General Electric Company (Evendale, Ohio); NIOSH 10-mkYear Review of Its Division of Compensation Analysis and Support (DCAS) Program; Subcommittee and Work Group Updates; DCAS SEC Petition Evaluations Update for the August 2011 Advisory Board Meeting; and Board Correspondence.

Although the "Atoms for Peace" campaign was formally launched in 1957, corporate America began to promote peaceful uses of atomic energy as early as the first few months after Hiroshima. A Is For Atom, an artifact of this effort, takes this highly loaded and threatening issue straight to the public in an attempt to "humanize" the figure of the atom.A Is For Atom speaks of five atomic "giants" which "man has released from within the atom's heart": the warrior and destroyer, the farmer, the healer, the engineer and the research worker. Each is pictured as a majestic, shimmering outline figure towering over the earth. "But all are within man's power Ñ subject to his command," says the narrator reassuringly, and our future depends "on man's wisdom, on his firmness in the use of that power."General Electric, a long-time manufacturer of electric appliances, power generation plants, and nuclear weapon components, is staking a claim here, asserting their interest in managing and exploiting this new and bewildering technology. Its pitch: this is powerful, frightening, near-apocalyptic technology, but managed with firmness, it can be profitable and promising. This "Trust us with the control of technology, and we'll give you progress without end" pitch resembles what we've seen in films like General Motors' To New Horizons (on the Ephemeral Films disc). But the automobile, of course, wasn't a weapon of mass destruction.

In its first two years of release, A Is For Atom was seen by over seven million people in this version and a shortened ten-minute theatrical cut. In 1953 it won first prizes in both the Columbus (Ohio) and Turin (Italy) Film Festivals, the Freedoms Foundation Award, an "oscar" from the Cleveland Film Festival, and a Merit Award from Scholastic Teacher. In 1954 it won first prize in the Stamford Film Festival, a Golden Reel Award from the American Film Assembly, and a second Grand Award from the Venice Film Festival. The film was remade in the mid-sixties and is still available for rental.Like other John Sutherland films, A Is For Atom presents a portentious message in a visually delightful and often self-deprecating manner. "Element Town" and its quirky inhabitants, including hyped-up Radium and somnolent Lead, is unforgettable, and the animated chain reaction manages to avoid any suggestion of nuclear fear.

No environmental impact found to preclude new reactor * DTE has not decided to build new reactor yet * New reactor could cost about $8.5 billion NEW YORK, Oct 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said Friday it was seeking public input on a draft environmental impact statement for DTE's proposed new reactor at the Fermi nuclear power plant in Michigan. In a release, the NRC said its staff found no environmental impacts in its preliminary findings that would preclude the commission from issuing a combined license (COL) for a new reactor at Fermi. Michigan-based power company DTE submitted its new reactor application to the NRC in September 2008, requesting a license to build and operate an Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) at Fermi next to its existing reactor about 25 miles northeast of Toledo, Ohio.