According to World Nuclear News, the Swedish utility Vattenfall is suing Germany at the Washington-based International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes concerning the closure of the Brunsbüttel and Krümmel nuclear power plants. As announced by Vattenfall on October 10: “The hearing on Vattenfall’s claim against the Federal Republic of Germany at the International Centre for
UtilityDIVE has reported local mayors and nuclear energy supporters now represent parties challenging Pacific Gas & Electric’s plan to close the 2,240 MW Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and replace it with a combination of renewables and efficiency. Presently, six mayors of cities in San Luis Obispo County, where the plant is located, filed with regulators last
The New York Public Service Commission voted Monday on a 50% clean energy standard. Officials say this will reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030, ensuring the state’s power mix is diverse and can attract billions in clean energy investments. New York’s Clean Energy Standard mandates the state obtains half its power from renewable sources
Pacific Gas & Electric has announced its Diablo Canyon nuclear plant will close. CleanTechnica reports the electricity provider for northern California has reached a deal with environmental and labor groups to close the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and replace it with renewable energy + greater energy efficiency + energy storage. On June 21, PG&E provided this perspective: “Reflecting California’s changing energy landscape, PG&E
You want solar power? These guys seem unlikely to provide it. (Found on Facebook—thanks to Greenpeace UK.)
Agora Energiewende this week released the results of a cost analysis of four different CO2-free power scenarios in Europe. Says Patrick Graichen, executive director of Agora: Wind and solar systems will dominate the power system in increasingly more countries. The battle for the cheapest CO2-free power mix is decided. In the future wind and solar
Readying Fukushima 1 Unit 4 for decommission operation, but… (Kyodo News/flickr.com/photos/simplyinfo/) Not so fast with the Fukushima decommissioning, TEPCO. A Japanese government-affiliated agency (the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization) has advised the Tokyo Electric Power Company that its proposed method of clearing Reactor Unit 4’s exposed cooling pool needs a test run before anyone commits
If you’ve ever wondered about the composition of the electricity delivered to your home (most of us have no clue), there’s one quick and easy way to find out. The EPA’s ‘Power Profiler’ tool has apparently been around for at least 2 years, but I only discovered it recently. Although the data used to generate
Via DailyKos, here’s the “official meme of 2011“: Seems spot on to me. We certainly covered the Japan nuclear meltdowns, Arctic ice cap meltdown, and multiple (Republican-driven) Congressional meltdowns repeatedly here on Planetsave. Though, decided that the Charlie Sheen and other meltdowns were outside our jurisdiction, somewhat thankfully. What will 2012 bring?
Some top activism news from the past week or so: 1. Masked Activists in Germany Sop Transport of Nuclear Waste As the title indicates, some activists in Germany are fed up with the creating and unsafe transport and storage of nuclear waste (well, no one even knows where to ‘permanently’ store the nuclear waste). So,
Everything is connected: the things we do, the things others do, affect people’s lives. The aura of our material planet is a body of energy that is part of us and extends around us from the inside out. This connectivity is showing up willfully in our streets. Bill Mikkiben points out: “We cannot solve the carbon problem until we solve the power problem.” He also acknowledges the good timing of now-linking movements of activism. The time of putting positive energy into a collective force is in action now as a space to heal these gaping wounds in culture and environment unfolds.
Over 200 anti-nuclear activists blocked the Hinkley Point power plant in Somerset, UK yesterday. While the effort is now over, the activists consider the event to have been a wonderful success.
TEPCO reported that radiation levels are over 10,000 millisieverts per hour on the second floor of reactor one. The problem with that report is that Geiger counters can’t measure past 10,000 millisieverts per hour. So how high is the radiation level on the second floor of reactor one?
We have featured a number of WellHome’s infographics on our site and, as a result, the folks there decided to ask us what matters we thought were most important at the moment and worth creating infographics about. I supplied them with my feedback and they’ve gone ahead and made an infographic on some of the topics I thought was hot and worthy of their time.
Well, it’s no Fukushima, but the concerning news from Nebraska, where one (Calhoun) nuclear power plant is shut down and waiting for flood waters to recede to start up again (something that may not be until the Fall) and another (Cooper nuclear power plant) has mostly been in operation but is under threat as well now. The news is that, yesterday, a dam (or AquaDam) built around the Cooper nuclear power plant and other flood protection systems broke. And that may just be a sign of things to come….
One of our most popular stories over the past week was about a Nebraska nuclear power plant (or two, actually) at risk of some serious problems. A ton of people have been coming to our site via Google searches related to that for days. Normally, with such big news, we have to compete with other leading news sites for such views and may get a lot fo traffic for awhile, but generally not for several days. But, that didn’t seem to happen this time. Turns out, there may have been an obvious reason for that.
A fire in an electrical switch room on Tuesday briefly knocked out cooling for a pool holding spent nuclear fuel at the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant outside Omaha, Neb., plant officials said….
One of the big news stories of the day is a bright one for those concerned about nuclear power. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi’s nuclear power plans got crushed by a public referendum when well over 90% of voters voted “Heck No!” (but yeah, not in those words).
Check that out! Some Greenpeace activists in Italy dropped a huge anti-nuclear banner 20 minutes into a huge Italian soccer match (and you know Italians are huge soccer fans). Furthermore, the banner stayed up for the whole game!
The game was apparently the Italian league finals for the Coppa Italia — the Italian Cup. The two teams playing were renowned Palermo and Internazionale (Inter) Milan.
Follow the rest of the Hank D and the Bee series at JoeMohrToons.com. For cartoon updates and other green goings-on, follow Joe on Twitter @GreenCartoons.
One of our loyal readers (the creator of the environmental music film above) passed on to me that Florida Power & Light (FPL) wants to put two new nuclear reactors on the shores of Biscayne Bay and the South Florida Wildlands Association is organizing a mock evacuation and rally for tomorrow (Saturday) in opposition to such a plan. Here’s more….
The Topic: Radiation Exposure.
The Question: How do scientists know what kind of (and how much) radiation exposure we do or do not face?
Here are a couple of great cartoons by Tom Toles on U.S. politics, Wall Street, energy “policy” in the U.S., climate change, and our response to the nuclear disaster in Japan.
Radioactive materials have been detected in seawater south of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station according to a press release from the Tokyo Electric Power Company. The radioactive materials were found from seawater around the discharge canal, which runs south from the nuclear plant which was damaged by the earthquake on March 11.
This is a beautiful video. Beautiful message, words, music, and images. The video of the eagle at the end is truly amazing…
Summary update from the Guardian at 8:35am EST: • A “core meltdown” might have occurred at reactor 2 Fukushima Daiichi. NHK World reports, as fears grow over the safety of the nuclear plant continues. Fuel rods are reportedly fully exposed. The nuclear and industrial safety agency (NISA) has tried to circulate the coolant by steam
The U.S. Seventh Fleet said Monday it had moved its ships and aircraft away from a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear power plant after discovering low-level radioactive contamination.
The scientists used a general circulation model known as ModelE (developed at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York). The model calculates ocean-atmosphere coupling effects in addition to allowing varying aerosol inputs.
The initial input for the simulation was 5 teragrams (megatons) of black carbon particles injected into Earth’s upper troposphere. This is the estimated result of the surface detonation of 100 Hiroshima-size bombs (each equivalent to 15K tons of TNT).
I’ve done an early read of reactions to Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address (full text) from leading green thinkers around the web. It is always interesting to see how different people with the same overall intentions view something — what they focus on can be quite different. Reflecting on and integrating some of
A new book published by Oxford University Press by University of East Anglia scientists Tim Lenton and Andrew Watson proposes that future humans must recycle 100 percent of everything we want to use and that we must be fuelled by sustainable energy sources. The book, entitled Revolutions that Made the Earth, is the culmination of
Yes, first of all, by stabilize we don’t mean keep it exactly the same — that is impossible. We mean not pumping it so full of CO2 that we see unprecedented warming and ‘natural’ disasters and perhaps even an unlivable climate at some point. Anyway, this post is a share of an in-depth post by
Susan Kraemer of our sister site Cleantechnica recently covered an interesting story, a comparison of solar to nuclear and coal by weight. Take a guess which one wins. Here’s the intro from Susan. An interestingly novel way of comparing solar power with nuclear power finds that solar easily bests nuclear. Ken Zweibel has an analysis at The
Greenpeace flew a blimp (or “airship”) over the Vermont Nuclear Reactor “Vermont Yankee” this week,.. as you know since you already read our first story on the activist effort, right? (Hint: read the back story if you haven’t yet.) Greenpeace has now released a video (below) and several pictures of this flight over Vermont Yankee. Additionally,
An old nuclear reactor in Vermont, the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station, has had a number of problems lately and Greenpeace has taken notice. “The 38-year-old reactor has a history of contamination issues, including a recent leak of radioactive water,” Becky Striepe of our sister site Ecoscraps writes. In February, the Vermont Senate voted 26-4
BP oil spill is capped, but have we learned our lessons? Finally! The BP oil spill is reportedly capped. Jeremy Bloom over on our sister site, FailDrill, has a good in-depth post on this story (BP Shuts Off the Oil, For Now“) but thought I’d throw in a few cents here as well.
According to Missouri Senator Kit Bond (R) the cap and trade Waxman-Markey Bill “is really a pig in a poke.” That’s what he told the committee on Tuesday, anyway. Given the opportunity to speak in front of a committee on the financial impacts that the climate bill would have on farmers, Senator Bond wasted no time calling the bill a hoax.
With the historic passage of climate legislation through the House of Representatives, many concerns have trickled forth. Does the climate legislation do enough? Will it even work? Does it have the right aim? With the issuance of similar concerns have come proposed solutions and substitutions. The republicans have proposed that 100 nuclear power plants be built by 2030 in place of the proposed cap-and-trade climate bill. I’ve recently written two articles on the republican “solution” to both the climate and economic crises. And today I’m writing more.
“We all remember this time last year,” said Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday. “We were in the midst of an energy crisis, paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline, and Americans were seeing their utility bills skyrocketing.” Since then, he went on to say, the energy problems haven’t disappeared and no changes in policy have been made.
[social_buttons] In southeast Utah rests a peaceful town located on the banks of a peaceful river. Here the Green River flows between two canyons, Gray and Labyrinth, allowing for farming and ranching in an arid desert. Driving through Green River, Utah doesn’t take but a few moments, including a stop to purchase some mouth-watering melons,
Thousands of anti-nuclear campaigners have assembled along a train route in Germany to protest the annual convoy carrying tons of nuclear waste from France to a storage facility in northeastern Germany. [social_buttons]In what is becoming an annual ritual of civil resistance and direct action in Germany, more than 15,000 anti-nuclear protesters turned out along the
Milestone Move by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission It’s taken two decades and billions of dollars, but the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository project has finally reached a new plateau. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, (NRC) has accepted an application for licensing, and will begin a lengthy process of safety studies, hearings and public meetings. The application
Yucca Mountain, “Yes”; transport waste through my state?, “No”; what Grand Canyon? It’s hard to tell if Senator McCain’s age is catching up with his memory, or if he’s just trying to ride a lot of fences when it comes to nuclear power. The Sierra Club sent out a release today, pointing out the Senator’s
The folks in Idaho, according to a release by the Environment News Service, are apparently tickled pink that the French Company, AREVA, is planning construction of a $2 billion uranium enrichment plant near Idaho Falls, Idaho. It’s AREVA’s first such facility in the U.S. and it plans to serve the nuclear power industry. There are
In what was reported earlier as a minor situation, comes news that a uranium leak from one of France’s nuclear power plants has tainted well water and two rivers 30 miles from the tourist city of Avignon, which is currently hosting an arts festival. No Fishing Allowed and Drinking Well Water is Banned According to
Just another reason why uranium isn’t the way to go, it costs the taxpayer way too much money for what he receives. Take the former Fernald Feed Materials Production Center at Fernald, Ohio, that’s about 20 miles northwest of Cincinnati. The former uranium processing site opened in complete secrecy during the Cold War in 1951.
For a lot of years, I’ve respected and admired Arizona Senator John McCain, and even though he is a Republican, he seemed to be more moderate than his right-wing compatriots. That changed today when I read that he has proposed construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030. Adding insult to injury, he told a
As promised in a podcast interview on February 11th, Edward Sproat, manager of the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, filed a license application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
Oh it’s a very happy day when you get to see a conflict like this one arise. And though it isn’t necessarily new, it’s oh so very entertaining. Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore was quoted at a chamber breakfast in Idaho Falls and the Idaho Environmental Forum in Boise this past week, as saying that the
