Free Republic

After listening to all the responses last night to the Gentleman from Nevada asking the Candidates what they would do with Yucca Mountain, they all got it wrong IMHO.If my memory is correct, Pres. Carter signed an agreement with the Soviets in regards to Nuclear Proliferation and one of the concessions he made was not to reprocess our spent fuel from Nuclear Power Plants. This would allow to recapture unspent fuel and make pellets of it again for refueling. France does, and it maybe folklore, but I have seen it claimed all their spent fuel would fit in a closet.If...

Forty-one years ago on Sesame Street, Kermit the frog sang a plaintive song, “It’s not easy being green.” In a gesture of solidarity, perhaps he should fax the lyrics to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose government is suddenly discovering the costs of weaning itself off nuclear energy. In the wake of Fukushima, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on 30 May that Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy and Europe's biggest, would become the first industrialized nation to shut down all of its 17 nuclear power plants (NPPs) between 2015 and 2022, an extraordinary commitment, given that Germany’s 17 NPPS Germany produce...

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's nuclear chief on Monday proposed to allow the U.N. nuclear watchdog "full supervision" of its nuclear activities for five years provided that sanctions against Tehran are lifted, but the official did not give details of his offer. The United Nations has imposed four rounds of Security Council sanctions over Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used to produce nuclear fuel or materials for an atomic bomb. Iran's nuclear program is already subject to routine IAEA inspections. IAEA cameras monitor Iran's nuclear activities. including its contentious uranium enrichment sites. Vice President Fereidoun...

Solyndra, the first recipient of a loan from the Department of Energy, told us that it thinks it will produce solar panels at a price that's competitive with standard sources of energy in the next 2-3 years. "We see a clear path," says Kelly Truman, the VP of marketing, sales and business development, "and in 2-3 years we'll hit grid parity." We spoke with Truman yesterday who said the $535 million loan from the DOE will finance 73% of a new factory, though he declined to say how the company would pay for the remainder of the project. The current...

A 5.9 magnitude earthquake centered just northwest of Richmond, Va., shook much of Washington, D.C., and was felt throughout the Eastern seaboard and iron belt region of the United States. In the wake of the much more powerful Japanese earthquake of earlier this year, and its effect on the nearby Fukushima nuclear plant, this is certain to bring attention to the Virginian nuclear plant that may have been effected as well. While there are no reports yet on the integrity of the local plant, reports of the epicenter being based in Mineral, Virgina suggest that the North Anna nuclear plant...

Connecticut’s electric utilities and the state’s largest power generator cheered a federal panel’s report urging the U.S. Department of Energy to do what the state advocated for years — remove nuclear waste from Connecticut, rapidly. The federal Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future issued its draftThe dry casks storing 412 metric tons of spent uranium at the former site of Connecticut Yankee in Haddam. report on July 29, addressing the problem of storing uranium once nuclear reactors finish with it. The report is a precursor to a final report in January, and the commission is accepting comments through October....

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- A pair of gunmen firing from motorcycles killed an Iranian physicist involved in the country's disputed nuclear program on Saturday in an attack similar to other recent assassinations of scientists that Tehran blamed on the U.S. and Israel. The slaying is sure to add to tension with the West, as Iran moves ahead with an atomic program that four rounds of U.N. sanctions have failed to slow.

A federal judge said Monday he would not order that Vermont's only nuclear plant be allowed to remain open while a lawsuit to determine its long-term future plays out. The state is moving to close the Vermont Yankee plant, with both the governor and the state Senate on record as wanting it to close when its initial 40-year license expires next March. The plant's owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., got a 20-year license extension for Vermont Yankee from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and filed a lawsuit arguing that the federal action pre-empts the state's effort to close the plant....

A nuclear power station in eastern Scotland had to shut down its reactors after "high volumes" of jellyfish were found on its seawater filter screens, the operating company said Thursday. "Both units at Torness power station were manually shut down on 28 June, due to the high volumes of jelly fish fouling the cooling water screens," said a statement from EDF Energy, which runs the power station near Dunbar. It explained that the shutdown was purely a precautionary measure and insisted that "at no time was there a danger to the public", nor had there been any impact on the...

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. — Attorneys and witnesses have wrapped up the first day of a two-day hearing before a federal judge in Vermont over whether the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant can continue to operate while a protracted legal fight plays out over its future. Entergy witnesses told lawyers that if the plant is forced to shut temporarily, it will lose about $20 million a month in revenue and may shut down permanently rather than wait for the legal fight to be resolved. Entergy lawyer Kathleen Sullivan said Vermont lawmakers tried to hide that they had nuclear safety in mind when they...

Fukushima nuclear crisis pushing up prices of liquefied natural gas The crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has created a domino effect that is fueling price rises for liquefied natural gas (LNG) and causing friction between importers and exporters. The rapid economic growth of China and India had already been pushing up LNG prices on the international market. But moves in Europe away from nuclear power in light of the Fukushima disaster are lifting the prices even higher. The short-term trading price of LNG imported by Japan has more than tripled over the past two years. The...

A good piece on what Fukushima means for the global-warming crowd Published: Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 1:32 PM Updated: Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 1:55 PM By Paul Mulshine/The Star Ledger It's here on the freakonomics blog. What I like about this crowd is that they follow the data wherever it leads them. In this forum on the aftermath of Fukushima, it leads to the conclusion by most of the experts that the abandonment of nuclear power will mean a lot more carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere. The first comment gives a good analysis: /snip These guys don't proceed to...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As record floodwaters along the Missouri River drench homes and businesses, concerns have grown about keeping a couple of notable structures dry: two riverside nuclear power plants in Nebraska. Though the plants have declared “unusual events,” the lowest level in the emergency taxonomy used by federal nuclear regulators, both were designed to withstand this level of flooding, and neither is viewed as being at risk for a disaster, said a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “We think they’ve taken all the necessary precautions and made the appropriate arrangements to deal with the flooding conditions,” said...

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. – 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 those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. ***[Snip 12 paras]*** Commercial nuclear reactors in the United States were designed and licensed for 40 years. When the first ones were being built in the 1960s and 1970s, it was expected that they would be replaced with improved models long before those licenses expired. But that never happened. The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island,...

Officials at the Omaha Public Power District say there have been no releases of radioactive material since flooding from the Missouri River caused them to declare a low-level emergency June 6 at the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant. The emergency level, declared as "a notification of an unusual event," is the lowest possible of four standard emergency classifications set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and, as of now, there has been no risk to the public. Officials say they have sandbagged the area surrounding the plant to a level greater than what the projected water levels will reach, and...

It is becoming evident to many that the March nuclear catastrophe at Japan’s six reactor Daichi Fukushima complex has dealt a huge, possibly fatal, blow to the nuclear industry’s hopes of a revival. A year ago even global warming enthusiasts reluctantly embraced nuclear power as a carbon-free energy generating system, and the industry was ramping up for glory days as a result. The triple whammy against nuclear power beginning with the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, followed by 1986’s Chernobyl disaster and now Fukushima, effectively present a “three strikes and you’re out” call against civilian nuclear energy power...

Jaczko has broken promises to Congress, put Americans at risk, and treated the lives of our allies with reckless disregard. On April 20, 2005, two men appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works for hearings relating to their appointments as members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). One of, them, Peter Lyon, presented credentials including three patents, 160 technical publications, and three decades of experience working at Los Alamos National Lab. The other, Gregory Jaczko, had no patents, no publications, and no technical work experience whatsoever. The contrast in qualifications between Jaczko and Lyon, or...

In a dramatic about face, Angela Merkel agreed last month to phase out nuclear power in Germany by 2022 -- part of a gloabl backlash after the Fukushima disaster. Now many Germans are recognizing the downside to her decision, according to SPIEGEL. First, higher emissions. The German Energy Agency warned that by 2020 they will not be able to achieve a 40% reduction in carbon emissions relative to 1990. Instead they will manage only a 30-33% reduction. Second, higher electricity costs. Jürgen Grossmann, head of energy giant RWE, accused Merkel of creating an "eco-dictatorship" and promoting de-industrialization. On Friday, he...

The narrative of the Obama presidency has been a soap opera, with the lead character careening from one dilemma to another -- never resolving any. Each episode ends on a cliffhanger -- a promise that the next show will grant resolution on whether the economy will grow or descend into a double-dip recession or will the Middle East become a idealized democratic wonderland or the tinderbox of a new world conflict. Yet the lead in this drama is so self-assured that he feels a sense of entitlement to the trappings of the role he now portrays. President Obama has become...

BERLIN (AP) — Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany, announced plans Monday to abandon nuclear energy over the next 11 years, outlining an ambitious strategy in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster to replace atomic power with renewable energy sources. Chancellor Angela Merkel said she hopes the transformation to more solar, wind and hydroelectric power serves as a roadmap for other countries. "We believe that we can show those countries who decide to abandon nuclear power — or not to start using it — how it is possible to achieve growth, creating jobs and economic prosperity while shifting the energy supply toward...