GreenWorld

The Astronomical Cost of New Subsidies for Old Reactors: $280 Billion.

GreenWorld has covered the unfolding story of the American nuclear power industry’s clamor for new subsidies and bailouts since it started in 2014. Purely as a spectator sport, it might have been entertaining to watch the country’s largest utilities go from proclaiming a “Nuclear Renaissance” a decade ago to peddling the message that “Nuclear Matters.” But there is just too much at stake to treat…

Watts Bar 2: Winning a Battle While Losing the War

New Electrical Generation From Wind & Solar Is 21 Times Greater Than That Expected from Watts Bar 2 (prepared by the SUN DAY Campaign, October 2016) [Editor’s Note: GreenWorld is pleased to publish this guest post by Ken Bossong, of the SUN DAY Campaign. Ken puts the startup of the first U.S. nuclear reactor in 20 years in perspective with the growth of renewable energy sources. To say that…

New York Just Proved Why Bailing Out Nuclear Power Is a Bad Idea

New York approved a $7.6-$10 billion subsidy to prop up uncompetitive nuclear power plants–twice as much money as it will take for the state to achieve a goal to generate 50% of its electricity with renewables by 2030. Yesterday, New York became the first state to adopt a policy to subsidize aging, uncompetitive nuclear reactors. The state’s Public Service Commission, which regulates utility…

GreenWorld’s Future:

Dear GreenWorld readers, As you have probably heard, GreenWorld’s founder, editor, and primary author, Michael Mariotte, passed away in May. That loss been difficult for all those who have known him, whether personally, professionally, or through his inimitable written voice. The blog has taken a needed and appropriate hiatus, as we adjust to life without Michael and think through the editorial…

Michael Mariotte: Counterweight to Nuclear Energy (1952 – 2016)

Let us be clear: without Michael Mariotte’s decision in the mid 1980’s to devote his talents to stopping the nuclear industry, many things would be very different today. Michael could not do what he did without Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), and the many thousands of people who work with NIRS could not have produced the results they did without Michael at the helm. This is one…

Exelon seems to think the rules are for others

Cover sheet of NRC letter to Exelon raising questions about the company’s efforts to reclassify public documents on emergency planning. It might seem that we’re guilty of dumping on Exelon in these pages, which is possibly true, especially since there is an apparently endless supply of Exelon-initiated issues worthy of bringing to public attention. After all, Exelon is the nation’s largest…

How to take on the nuclear shills: here’s one approach.

Exelon’s aging, unprofitable Quad Cities reactors. Earlier this month, we reported that climate scientist Dr. James Hansen and the pro-nuclear Breakthrough Institute’s Michael Shellenberger had leaped–apparently on their own–into the battle over the future of some of Exelon’s unprofitable nuclear reactors in Illinois. In a nutshell, Exelon wants a taxpayer and/or ratepayer (it doesn’t really care…

New radwaste plan is another “con” from DOE

Likely transport routes and amounts of radwaste that would be sent to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, if that proposal should be resurrected. The Department of Energy (DOE) has a new generation of leadership; “larger than life” John Kotek is promoting nuclear energy via selling a “durable solution” to the problem of deadly radioactive waste that is the direct result of generating electric power from the…

How low can they go? Hansen, Shellenberger now shilling for Exelon

Exelon’s Clinton reactor nearly bankrupted the small utility and rural co-ops that originally built it. Despite being bought for a few cents on the dollar by Exelon, it still isn’t economic and Exelon is “threatening” to close it. Photo by cryptome.org. While some potential legal challenges remain, the approval of the Exelon-Pepco merger by the Washington, D.C. Public Service Commission means…

Japan Diary 2016, Fukushima+5, Part 7. These women are pissed.

The post-Fukushima period is generating oceans of data, but much of it is useless. These women generate their own, but also want more solid data than the government has been willing to provide. Don’t get me wrong: These women are pissed! (My word not theirs.) And they have every right to express that, even in Japan, at least according to its constitution. I cannot leave Japan without peeling back…

Wishful thinking: the basis of new nuclear economics

Generation IV reactors are not going to save the nuclear power industry. That nuclear power’s miserable economics are pretty much killing the industry, especially in the western world, is a reality acknowledged by virtually everyone at this point. After the first burst of reactor construction from the late 1960s until the early 1980s collapsed under the weight of multi-billion dollar cost…

Exelon: now the nation’s largest electric utility

This building–an artist’s rendition–doesn’t actually exist. Yet. But now that Exelon is the nation’s largest electric utility, who knows what it could do? Exelon has long been the nation’s largest nuclear power utility. Now it is the nation’s largest electric utility, period. Yesterday, the Washington, D.C. Public Service Commission, which had twice rejected the proposed merger of Exelon and…

The nuclear industry’s game plan to take your money and keep reactors operating

Exelon again threatens to close its aging, uneconomic, Fukushima-clone Quad Cities reactors–a threat that would be better as a promise. With the failure of last decade’s nuclear “renaissance” leading to dismal prospects for expansion, and rising operating costs–including modest and insufficient post-Fukushima improvements–making a large number of existing reactors uneconomic in the deregulated…

From the beginning of the nuclear fuel chain exemplified here by Australia’s Ranger uranium mine, to the end of the chain characterized by lethal radioactive waste with no scientifically-defensible storage method, nuclear energy is dirty energy. NIRS is launching a new campaign today, called #NuclearIsDirty. Over the next twelve weeks, we will be rolling it out through a series of online events,…

Japan Diary 2016, Fukushima+5, Part 5. “Dose” does not exist, only exposure

The onset of the Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011 set off a new round of anti-nuclear protest across the world so large even the U.S. NRC was forced to take notice. About 300 people gathered in the Diet Offices to commemorate the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and Tepco’s meltdowns. Hosted by Friends of the Earth Japan and a large network of NGOs in Japan working on every nuclear concern,…

Japan Diary 2016, Fukushima+5, Part 5. We Are All Hibakusha: Fission Never Results in Peaceful Atoms!

A Japanese court this week ordered the shutdown of two reactors at Takahama, leaving Japan with only two reactors (at Sendai) currently operating five years after the onset of the Fukushima disaster. “All my life I have tried to find the truth, and make it beautiful.” – Sting It never ceases to amaze me how many wonderful people I meet in this work. Every stop on this tour is populated by…

Japan Diary 2016, Fukushima+5, Part 4. Atomic Radiation is More Harmful to Girls and Women

I have been in this job at NIRS for 25 years (03-03-1991—now). I can hear: “Mary, 50 women is not a meaningful sample size!” (I reply: Correct; for a study). And: “Those women you met at Mama Tea Parties are self-selected activists—so they are a completely biased sample!” (Me: Correct, but this is not a study; these women are not a sample, they are leaders! They are Representatives with a capitol…