Free Republic

After months of behind-the-scenes lobbying, multiple marathon hearings and several revisions to the legislation, New Jersey lawmakers finally approved a controversial bill on Thursday to bail out the state’s nuclear power plants. The bill (S2313/A3724) cleared the state Senate by a 29 to 7 vote and passed the Assembly 60 to 10 with one abstention. It now goes to Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk. The measure would effectively impose a surcharge on ratepayers to prop up nuclear power plants owned by Public Service Electric & Gas—the state’s largest energy company—if a state board determines the plants need financial assistance. A typical...

Shortened title. Full title: Exclusive: Peter Schweizer Reveals Joe Biden’s Son’s Massive Deal with Chinese Company ‘Trying to Steal’ America’s Nuclear Secrets Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and author of the new book Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, joined SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight on Monday to detail the involvement of Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden’s second son, in a China-backed private equity firm’s investment in a Chinese atomic energy company indicted for “nuclear power conspiracy against the United States.”

Belgium has started to make iodine pills available free to its 11 million citizens in case of an accident at its ageing nuclear plants, while saying there is no “specific risk.” The government has also launched a website in the country’s official languages of French, Dutch and German to tell people what to do in an emergency as it begins implementing plans announced two years ago. {snip} Pharmacies interviewed by Belgian media said they had begun receiving some of the 4.5 million boxes of 10 iodine pills – which help reduce radiation build-up in the thyroid gland – that were...

The Georgia Public Service Commission on Thursday is set to decide the fate of Plant Vogtle, the only nuclear reactor under construction in the U.S., which is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. At Thursday’s hearing, a commission made of five elected officials, all Republicans, will vote on whether to permit Georgia Power’s new plan for the project, which includes an updated cost projection and construction timeline, or to cancel it. Georgia Power is estimating $12.2 billion in costs for its 45.7 percent share of the project, and for the reactors to be producing electricity by 2021...

Energy Secretary Rick Perry has a vision for developing fully mobile, hot tub-sized nuclear power plants that could become the latest piece in the Energy Department's innovation and grid resiliency push. Perry brought up the idea while addressing a National Clean Energy Week conference late last month. He used it as an example of what the Trump administration means when it talks about energy "innovation" as part of its energy dominance agenda. Perry called them "small modular reactors." But the version of the technology he described would function more like a nuclear battery than a conventional, water-cooled nuclear power plant....

Hurricane Harvey made land fall in Texas this week and the flooding was historic. What is shaping up to be the most costly natural disaster in American history, the storm has left refineries shut down, interrupted wind and solar generation, caused a constant worry about gas explosions, and caused a chain of events that led to explosions and fires at the Arkema chemical plant that is only the beginning. The two nuclear reactors at the South Texas Project plant near Houston were operating at full capacity despite wind gusts that peaked at 130 mph as the Hurricane made landfall. The...

It is safe to say that solar panel installations in the path of Hurricane Harvey are finding it impossible or nearly so to generate electricity this week in south Texas. It is also safe to say that wind turbines in the area are not faring so well, either. According to the online news source North American Wind Power, one large installation in the path of the storm sent all 39 workers home as the hurricane closed in, but operated remotely until the wind hit 55 mph. It was then shut down. Others were challenged by the “intermittency of wind” said...

Nuclear Worker: “Imminent flood coming” near nuke plant from Hurricane Harvey… “Potentially catastrophic”… Running out of food… Working tirelessly to manage problems… Area turned “upside down

Thorium is an abundant material currently disposed of as waste. It is found in coal ash piles and mine tailings. A single Rare Earths mine could produce enough Thorium byproduct to power the entire planet. To do so requires a very different nuclear reactor than the kinds we use today. Not one that uses solid fuel rods, but a reactor in which the fuel is kept in a liquid state. Not one that uses pressurized water as a coolant, but a reactor that uses extremely stable molten salts.

Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it. Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives. All of which begs the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste? Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue...

Will Ohio lose both its nuclear power plants? If gauging the response of legislators is any indication, Ohio’s nuclear plants seem to be doomed. Clearly, grassroots organizers such as Generation Atomic, the American Nuclear Society, and North America Young Generation in Nuclear have failed to convince legislators to act to save Ohio’s only nuclear generation assets. These organizers have been working for months under the ultimatum from FirstEnergy Corp, the plant’s owners: convince Ohio lawmakers to pass ZEN (Zero Emission Nuclear) legislation by June 30th or else the plants will close and decommissioning will begin. That threat carries with it...

The company that owns the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history, announced that it plans to shutter the facility in 2019 unless the state of Pennsylvania steps in to keep it open. The plant near Harrisburg, Pa., hasn’t been profitable for the past five years, according to owner Exelon Corp. The company announced last week that it failed to auction off future energy production from Three Mile Island for the third year in a row. “Today is a difficult day, not just for the 675 talented men and women who have dedicated...

A record radiation level has been detected inside the No. 2 reactor at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, with the estimated reading of up to 530 sieverts per hour, the plant operator said Thursday. The reading means a person could die from even brief exposure, highlighting the difficulties ahead as the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. grope their way toward dismantling all three reactors that melted down in the March 2011 nuclear disaster. The plant operator also announced that based on an image analysis, a 1-square-meter hole has been found on a metal grating beneath the...

An internet security specialist says that Stuxnet, the computer malware that targeted Iran's nuclear facilities in 2010 and widely attributed to Israel and the US, has spiraled out of control and attacked a Russian nuclear plant and the International Space Station.

With Trump at the helm, sentiment gives way to practicality in the energy industry. For the vast untapped potential of the nuclear energy industry and the uranium that feeds it, this could contribute to a market-disrupting revival that no longer bows to fear and the politics of economy. While there have been some oversupply issues keeping uranium prices down, the bigger problem has been negative sentiment rather than real fundamentals, but the Trump presidency will see through that. Trump’s take on nuclear energy is quite simple. As he noted after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan: “If a plane goes...

United States defense policy toward Taiwan must change. Now there is a rare opportunity to make that happen with the election of Donald Trump. But everyone knows he lacks experience in foreign affairs, although he is a man with great instincts. If he can prevail over the established litany, there is a chance that Taiwan can stay independent. But if he follows the "party line" from the State Department and their supporting chorus in parts of the Pentagon, Taiwan is a goner. It is only a question of time. Taiwan is an island that lives next to a behemoth in...

France may be hit by power shortages this winter, with almost one third of the country’s nuclear power plants out of action. It might be time to bring out the extra blankets at home. Grid operator RTE warned on Tuesday that it would have to take “exceptional measures” to keep the French warm this winter due to the fact that 20 of the country’s 58 nuclear power plants have been temporarily disconnected for safety checkups. These measures may include “short power cuts in certain areas of the country in order to continue providing electricity to homes during the winter period”,...

For at least two decades, nuclear engineers have been talking about new reactor designs, but few have progressed to become important components of the industry. Naturally, as with any new technology, there are always boosters and their enthusiasm should be treated with caution, but there is definitely potential for advances that could mean a surge in nuclear power. One aspect that needs greater attention is the benefit of smaller reactors, which greatly reduce risk on the part of investors. Some new designs are more incrementally advanced, such as the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) developed by Areva and EDF in France,...

Let’s for a second imagine a world without nuclear energy. That’s a tough one but let’s try. No nuclear bombs, of course, no Chernobyl and Fukushima, no worries about Iran and North Korea. A wonderful world, maybe? Probably not, because without nuclear energy we would have burned millions more tons of coal and billions more barrels of oil. This would have brought about climate change of such proportions that what we have today would have seemed negligible. Nuclear energy and uranium, which feeds it, are controversial enough even without any actual accident happening. Radioactivity is dangerous. Nobody is arguing against...

Sweden said on Friday it would phase out some taxes on nuclear power and build new reactors to replace aging plants and secure energy supplies for decades to come. Nuclear power providers in Sweden have said they would be forced to shut the country's loss-making nuclear reactors unless a tax on nuclear capacity is abolished, risking a spike in electricity prices and energy shortages for industry. "The aim is ... to make sure we can always guarantee electricity at competitive prices, in a stable and sustainable way, both in the short and long term," Energy Minister Ibrahim Baylan told reporters....