Last week's granting by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission of combined construction and operating licenses for two nuclear plants to be built in Georgia -- both Westinghouse AP1000s -- is the culmination of a scheme developed by nuclear promoters 20 years ago.
There have been huge changes in energy since. The consequences in death and illness of of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster have become manifest. Wind energy has become cheaper than nuclear -- thus is the fastest growing new energy source -- and solar is well on its way. The two troubled giants of nuclear power, Westinghouse and General Electric, sold out to the Japanese in 2006: Toshiba took over Westinghouse's nuclear operations and GE partnered with Hitachi. And then there's been the catastrophe at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant complex.
Still, as if a runaway train, the nuclear juggernaut has roared on.
The strategy for what happened last week was set with the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 1992. The vote in the House of Representatives was 381-to-37. "As the bill wound its way through the Senate and the House, the nuclear industry won nearly every vote that mattered, proving that Congress remains captive to industry lobbying and political contributions over public opinion," reported the Nuclear Information & Resource Service then. (The same could be said about Congress now.) The New York Times said, "Nuclear lobbyists called the bill their biggest victory in Congress since the Three Mile Island accident."
The measure, signed into law by the first President Bush, provided for "one-step" nuclear plant licensing. Previously, there were hearings held in the area where a nuclear plant would be built -- one on granting a construction license and, later, a second on whether to issue an operating license.
This presented a big problem for the nuclear industry -- not that the Atomic Energy Commission or its successor, the Nuclear Energy Commission, ever turned down an application for a construction or operating license. But at the hearings for a construction license major issues arose -- such as, with the proposed Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island, New York, the impossibility of evacuation off the crowded island in the event of a major accident, important in the eventual stoppage of Shoreham. And at operating license hearings, whistle-blowers would emerge, often engineers and others involved in the construction of the plant, going public with testimony about faults, defects and dangers.
Under the Energy Policy Act of 1992, instead of these hearings, the NRC, sitting in Washington far from the areas and people to be impacted, would be authorized to grant in one move a construction and operating license. That's what the NRC did last week for the two AP1000 nuclear plants that the Southern Company plans to build at its Vogtle site near Augusta.
Westinghouse said in the 90s that with this "one-step" process, it would take but five years after NRC approval for an AP1000 to be completed. Indeed, that was what the nuclear industry was saying last week about the Georgia project.
Westinghouse also, before the Energy Policy Act of 1992, touted its AP1000 as an "advanced" nuclear power plant. The act specifically greased the skids for "advanced" nuclear power plants. It featured a section titled "Subtitle C-Advanced Nuclear Reactors" that stated: "The purposes of this subtitle are (1) to require the Secretary [of Energy] to carry out civilian nuclear programs in a way that will lead toward the commercial availability of advanced nuclear reactor technologies; and (2) to authorize such activities to further the timely availability of advanced nuclear reactor technologies."
To push the new system along, NuStart, which calls itself "a consortium for new nuclear energy development," was formed. NuStart, says further on its website, that it has been "formed to respond to a Department of Energy issued solicitation to demonstrate the NRC's COL [Construction and Operating License] process." NuStart has been working closely with utilities for them to utilize the one-step licensing process and build new "advanced" nuclear plants. As to its funding, its website says that "NuStart is participating in a 50-50 cost sharing program" with the Department of Energy.
Thus U.S. tax dollars have been and are being used for a system all but eliminating public input to get new "advanced" nuclear power plants up and running -- and fast.
NuStart lists 10 corporate "members." These include the Southern Company, Exelon, Entergy and other utilities committed to nuclear power as well as Westinghouse and GE. The president of NuStart "since its inception," says the NuStart website, is Marilyn Krey. "Marilyn is also Vice President, Nuclear Project Development for Exelon," it states. Exelon owns the most nuclear power plants of any U.S. utility. "Prior to joining Exelon, Marilyn was a reactor engineer and project manager for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," it goes on. Yes, the nuclear power-revolving door.
The chairman of the NRC, Gregory Jaczko, voted against the licensing on February 9. He cited the need to "learn the lessons from Fukushima." Jaczko stated: "I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima had never happened."
But the other four NRS commissioners -- nuclear power zealots all -- voted for the licensing. "There is no amnesia individually or collectively regarding the events of March 11, 2011 and the ensuing accident at Fukushima," wrote Commissioner Kristine Svinicki for the four. No, not amnesia -- they all know of the Fukushima disaster, but with their staunch allegiance to nuclear power, they don't give a damn.
There will be challenges to the licensing -- which beyond being the first issuance of combined construction and operating licenses is the first time since the 1970s that the NRC has given approval for a new nuclear power plant. There were no applications to build new nuclear plants as atomic energy, rightfully, went into a deep eclipse for decades.
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy announced: "Our challenge maintains that the NRC is violating federal laws by issuing the license without fully considering the important lessons of the catastrophic Fukushima accident." It will also raise various safety issues involving the AP1000.
And there are many. Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts -- one of the few members of Congress not in the pockets of the nuclear industry or a national nuclear laboratory in their district -- earlier in the year wrote Jaczko, "These concerns include those raised by one of the [Nuclear Regulatory] Commission's most long-serving staff that there is a risk that an earthquake at, or aircraft impact on, the AP1000 could result in a catastrophic core meltdown." In a statement last week, he re-emphasized the finding made in a report to the NRC by its staffer Dr. John Ma, a structural engineer, that theAP1000's "containment structure could" -- in Ma's words, " shatter like a glass cup"-- because of "flaws in the design of the shield building if impacted by an earthquake or commercial aircraft."
Of the NRC's licensing move, Markey said: "Today, the NRC abdicated its duty to protect public health and safety, just to make construction faster and cheaper for the nuclear industry."
As to finances, not only was -- and is -- taxpayer money being used to facilitate the new nuclear plant licensing scheme, it is the basis for their construction. Wall Street is wary of nuclear power. So the Department of Energy is providing the Southern Company with $8.3 billion in taxpayer-based loan guarantees for its new nuclear plants, part of a multi-billion dollar loan guarantee fund that has been established for new nuclear power plants.
In a sales brochure for the AP1000 -- online at www.AP1000.westinghousenuclear.com
-- Westinghouse trumpets it as "Simple, Safe, Innovative." Throughout the brochure is also the line: "The Nuclear Renaissance Starts Here." But although the AP1000 might be of a different design, even the brochure acknowledges severe accidents can happen. "The AP1000 is designed to mitigate a postulated severe accident such as a core melt," says the brochure. Mitigate, not eliminate.
It also includes a "Probabilistic Risk Assessment" by the NRC on the possibility of "Core Damage Frequency" and "Large Release Frequency" at an AP1000. For both, the odds are given as very low, reminiscent of the very low odds NASA once set for a catastrophic accident involving one of its space shuttles -- until the Challenger blew up.
"It follows," says Westinghouse, "that the AP1000 also improves upon the probability of large release goals for advanced reactor designs in the event of a severe accident scenario to retain the molten core within the reactor vessel." Improves upon -- not eliminates the release of catastrophic amounts of radioactivity.
If Americans are anxious about a disaster involving the AP1000 -- and want wind and solar and other safe, clean, renewable energy technologies which they can live with instead -- well, under the new system, that's too bad. With the new nuclear licensing system -- devised 20 years ago and now moving ahead despite Chernobyl and Fukushima and the availability of energy alternatives that render nuclear power unnecessary -- the citizenry and what they want are to be excluded.
The NRC, meanwhile, is expected to next month issue combined construction and operating licenses to South Carolina Electric & Gas Company to also build and run a pair of AP1000s.
As anti-nuclear crusader Dr. Helen Caldicott, president emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility, has been saying: "People must rise up." Indeed, they must.
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Get over it.
Why the love affair with a power supply that has proven problems?
Why the love affair with a a power supply that has proven problems?
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-chernobyl-birds-smaller-brains.html
"To find out more, I asked Gaschak to clarify his critique of the Chernobyl bird study in which he was directly involved. He says the research was flawed from the get-go, starting with the study design. The reason: researcherÂs selected study sites that varied in radiation levels, but they failed to control for important differenceÂs in habitat vegetationÂ, which would affect bird distributiÂons.
Gaschak notes that he collected the raw bird data in the Red Forest, the highly contaminatÂed region that surrounds the power plant, but when he saw Møller's analysis before publicatioÂn it contained 'quite unexpected results.' He also doubts that the team could have obtained the volume of data they have based on the time they spent in Chernobyl.Â'
Gaschak, however, was unwilling to specify precisely which numbers he felt were most suspect because he had already 'wasted a lot of time on Møller & Mousseau.' He did say that he once questioned Mousseau about Møller's methods but didn't get any straight answers. Instead, he says, Mousseau was 'irritatedÂ' by his queries and eventually he and Moller 'avoided any contact' with him.
'They have an idea to show by any means that radiation has exclusivelÂy negative effects,' GÂaschak says, 'That's it. Truth is not their target.'"
http://resosol.org/InfoNuc/Chernobyl/paradis-animaux/scientific-meldown2009.html
Read the study: http://cricket.biol.sc.edu/chernobyl/papers/Mousseau-Moller-Bull-Atomic.pdf
http://youtu.be/yf1ur9aBiS8
Watch this and rethink Nuclear!
One rotten apple doesnt spoil the bunch
Nuclear power has even stronger credentials as a pro-environmental energy source. It is the only major power source that is virtually emissions free. The only way you can claim to be seriously anti-carbon is if you are seriously pro-nuclear (if you want to keep the lights on).
Wind and Solar are intermittent and unpredictable. The wind does not always blow, and the sun does not always shine. After more than a century of trying, we still have not found an economical way to store electricity on a large scale. Until we do, wind and solar will remain unsuitable as 24/7 sources of energy.
Nuclear power’s many benefits simply cannot be ignored. In addition to zero carbon emissions, nuclear also produces very little waste, requires little real estate to operate and produces large amounts of power, reliably and around the clock.
In other words, nuclear power is the most efficient source of clean electricity with the smallest environmental footprint.
You left out Global Pollution, like Fukushima
You left out RISK of a Trillion Dollar Eco-Disaster
You left out radioactive WASTE
You left out pathway to NUKES
and much more!
Why nuclear is on the way out:
1. Radiation is dangerous to man
2. Expensive to build compared to Competitive Power Sources.
3. Creates long lasting radioactivÂe waste
4. Risky because Nature can destroy any land based nuclear reactor,
… Any place anytime 24/7/365!
5. No insurance for radioactive damages to property or people!
BTW Solar (of all flavors) is less costly and faster to construct!
2. No need to spend a trillon dollars to clean up something that's harmless. There is no scientific evidence that it needs to be done to that extent. The massive cleanup is required because of the irrational fear generated by anti-nukes such as yourself.
3. Would you rather eat and breath pollution from coal and other fossil fuels that's proven to cause real harm and real deaths or have it contained in a very small volume for burial like radioactive waste?
4. Nature can destroy anything at anytime. Point is, in the unlikely event that nature destroys a nuclear plant, worst that happens is adding trace amounts of radiation to the natural background with no harm to the general public. What happens when nature destroys a hydroelectric plant? Total devastation to the surrounding countryside and thousands of deaths and rampant disease.
5. Why would you need radiation insurance for people or property when it's proven to do no harm?
Wind and solar are cheaper and can be backed up using the existing peaking gas turbines runing on clean waste bio char bio fuels.
27/7, forever.
In other words,
we don't need trillion dollar cancerous disasters, million year cancerous waste, . civilization ending proliferation, that is expensive welfare supported nuclear power.
Show me a precedent in history that would lead anyone to believe we can make the transition from reliable baseload fossil fuels and nuclear to unreliable renewable energy sources quickly or inexpensively?
Regardless of how much you want to abandon fossil fuels along with nuclear and move to a renewable-energy-based world, a realistic assessment – grounded in science, engineering and simple arithmetic – says it will take decades, if not generations, and trillions of dollars of investment to get there.
What horrible reasoning...
How many computer start ups have failed since the introduction of the PC or Apple? Overall, what do these many failures say about the current state of computing? Hardly anything. Certainly not that computing itself is a failure. As always, failure is an integral part of success. In failure you learn what works and what doesn't. But nuclear power is not and can not be afforded the luxury of teachable moments. If nuclear power fails, WE ALL PAY... possibly on a genetic level that we have no knowledge of yet
It is worth repeating - playing with the nuclear dragon is an unprecedented, unwarranted, unnecessary experiment on life itself
Not only does nuclear power not have the freedom to fail, it can't go bankrupt either. Why? We taxpayers pay for it regardless if it suceeds or fails catastrophically. As an industry, nuclear power has always been an ugly government/corporate/quasi-military mutation. For entrenched security concerns it must always retain this model
If we, the people had ever had a choice, nuclear power, in all of its forms, would have gone bankrupt decades ago
The Frankenstein's monster of nuclear power trudges on, an everpresent threat to our children and theirs, enriching a well conected few, only by undemocratic means and through the implicit threat of the use of force against the people that oppose its use.
Right On as usual!
Faved, already fanned!
How about this one?
Los Alamos security officer shot in head after charging some nice little nuclear workers with embazzlement.
......Walp’s supervisor, whom he declines to name, chastised him and told him to “go along with the corporate philosophy.â€
“I said, ‘What, in your opinion, is the corporate philosophy?’ He said, ‘Your main job is to protect the lab—its contract, its image.’â€
That was the beginning of the end of Walp’s assignment at LANL, which lasted just 11 months. While he was still at the lab, Walp began to investigate two characters who would eventually be convicted of embezzling $300,000 worth of goods from LANL: facilities manager Peter Bussolini and purchaser Scott Alexander. The two hid items ranging from water tanks to ATVs inside Cold War-era Quonset hut bunkers at LANL before spiriting them off the hill. Walp’s work, along with that of Steve Doran, a former Michigan state trooper whom Walp brought on board as a security investigator, led to a dramatic raid on Bussolini’s and Alexander’s residences on Halloween of 2002—and ultimately to their imprisonment on federal charges. ......
http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-6571-who-killed-richard-burick.html
Please keep posting!
Nowhere on that page is the icebreaker's special nature mentioned, so maybe the outfit whose name is on the masthead thought it would be OK. And indeed it is OK: they're busted. It's over.
nice try to divert the conversation!
TEPCO might like to hire you!
Chu will tour the Vogtle nuclear power plant near Waynesboro, Ga., and “highlight steps the Obama Administration is taking to restart America’s nuclear energy industry,†according to the Energy Department.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/210651-overnight-energy
The reactors will be near Augusta, Ga.
So what caused the delay in expanding nuclear power? After all, it has cost advantages over wind and solar power. And unlike coal, it does not have the emissions that so trouble environmental activists
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/feb/14/0214b-fp1-nuclear-progress-in-georgia/
The nuclear Industry was President Obama's biggest donor!
:-(
AP1000 less safe then old reactors no redundant containment
http://m.chronicle.augusta.com/latest-news/2010-04-21/groups-say-new-vogtle-reactors-need-study?v=1271900068
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/critics-challenge-safety-of-new-nuclear-reactor-design/?src=busln
Multiple levels of defense for accident mitigation are provided, resulting in extremely low core-damage probabilities while minimizing occurrences of containment flooding, pressurization and heat-up.
The AP1000 meets the U.S. NRC deterministic-safety and probabilistic-risk criteria with large margins. Results of the Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) show a very low core damage frequency (CDF) that is 1/100 of the CDF of currently operating plants and 1/20 of the maximum CDF deemed acceptable for new, advanced reactor designs.
http://ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/ap1000_safety_psrs.html
Ask The Japanese!
*Nuclear Denial
http://is.Âgd/XPjMd0
The illogical belief that Nature cannot destroy any land based nuclear reactor, any place anytime 24/7/365!
I guess you cold say the same thing for Fukushima, except it is a Trillion Dollar Eco-Disaster which will haunt Japan for generations; something that the USA cannot afford; especially since Nature can destroy any land based nuclear reactor, any place anytime 24/7/365!
"Wall Street is wary of nuclear power. So the Department of Energy is providing the Southern Company with $8.3 billion in taxpayer-based loan guarantees for its new nuclear plants."
Under existing policy, owners of nuclear power plants pay a premium each year for $375 million in private insurance for offsite liability coverage for each reactor unit. This primary or first tier, insurance is supplemented by a second tier. In the event a nuclear accident, causes damages in excess of $375 million, each licensee would be assessed a prorated share of the excess up to $111.9 million. With 104 reactors currently licensed to operate, this secondary tier of funds contains about $11.6 billion. If 15 percent of these funds are expended, prioritization of the remaining amount would be left to a federal district court. If the second tier is depleted, Congress is committed to determine whether additional disaster relief is required.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/funds-fs.html
Tell use how a plant that is amortized for 30-40 years is going to finance the safe storage of the waste for a tenth of the time that it remains hazardous to human health?
Ha Ha Ha
More Nuclear Baloney (NB);
So tell US how this would pay for a Trillion Dollar Eco-Disaster like Japan has...
Good Luck
Having poor insurance is worse than having no insurance because it provides a faulty sense coverage...
Its a guarentee against the loan default.
So better not protest - it could cost you in the end.
Hmm...Looks like America's citizens need to ask their representatives to pass legislation revising this "one step", "Quick!-Let's-fast-track-these-nuke-plants-before-the-neighbors-have-a-chance-to-object!" process, and demand one which instead gives us more say in what gets built in our neighborhoods.
After all, its OUR children (and not some hotshot calling the shots in Washington) who are the ones most susceptible to the "permissible" ongoing releases of radioactive steam in our communities located near nuclear waste generating power plants (not to mention potential accidents requiring venting like at Byron recently, and leaks like we are seeing in San Onofre, or worse, like the disaster at Fukushima).
It may be "permissible" and acceptible to people who have no moral compass or conscious to allow the scientifically-PROVEN increased cases of thyroid cancer and leukemia in children and increased women's breast cancer rates for those living within a 50 mile radius of these death producers, but WE the PEOPLE do NOT FIND it acceptible. Period. (Does anyone else see the insideousness of the irony that we actually PAY them to fuel our premature deaths by exposing us to ongoing radioactive releases?)
It's time our leaders started representing US, their constituents, not those deep-pocketed vested interests who buy their loyalty using OUR hard-earned tax dollars. Isn't that their job and why we elect them?
Is this a reasonable and fair situation? I think so. What we saw before under the two-part process was that people making a reasonable effort to construct and run infrastructure - that they believed had the correct permissions - were unable to use the infrastructure built due to the second approval step. This is a waste of effort and materials that everyone can reaosnably see is a problem.
If we (as a society) put the effort towards building a nuclear plant, we should also make sure that there's going to be a chance to get somethig out of that effort - reliable, affordable electricity. To do that, the consultation needs to be before construction, not halfway through or (worse) just prior to operation.
The article completely fails to describe the real process or the decisions that produced it. "Enlightening" is not an adjective I'd apply to it.
Why support that RISK?
Faved, already fanned!
We only have one planet, but greed and self-serving attitudes of such people are helping to pollute it for millenia to come. Truly amazing. All the more reason people need to wake up and speak up against nuclear power. No one comes out of this unaffected in some way. Especially now that the ongoing releases from Fukushima Daichi (and Daini, etc.) continue to waft their way over the the United States and raise our "background levels" double and triple what they used to be. No stopping the runaway fissioning coriums that have melted through. They don't have the technology invented yet to stop them!
And yet, we allow these folks to continue to play with such deadly fire, using our hard-earned tax dollars? Fool me once...
But the deniers will just put their blinders on and pretend all is well, so they can push more of their Death Spewers onto the American public.
No concern about cleaning up the millions of tons of waste they have created with no place to store it...
No concern about the aging dinosaur infrastructure with leaking pipes, many of which are underground, leaching into ground water which they can't even get to because they are encased in the concrete...(See the 4-part AP report on the subject of Tritium leaking out of 75% of U.S. nuclear power plants!)
It is so obvious they just want to make their money while they're still alive, and leave the mess to their children's generation to deal with. Not very responsible behavior or attitudes, are they? Shame on them...
"An earthquake at, or aircraft impact on, the AP1000 could result in a catastrophic core meltdown."
"The AP1000’s containment structure could shatter like a glass cup because of flaws in the design of the shield building if impacted by an earthquake or commercial aircraft.â€
Then the US would have it's own Trillion Dollar Eco-Disaster to pay for!