Category Archives: Climate change

Pilgrim nuke down because of cold, heat, leak: when does it ever run?

Down in

January, February, April,

May, running low March and June,
and now likely to go down because of summer heat,
under what conditions does Entergy’s Pilgrim nuke near Boston, MA like to run?
Entergy also couldn’t keep the power on during the Super Bowl
and

still has Arkansas Nuclear 1 down since a fatal accident in March.
To be fair,

many nukes can’t handle heat.
Remind me,

why are we building more of them?


Pilgrim 1 NRC Power Reactor Status Jan-July 2013

Christine Legere wrote for Cape Cod Times 18 July 2013,

Seawater temps too high for Pilgrim cooling,

PLYMOUTH — The ongoing heat wave could force Pilgrim Nuclear
Power Station to shut down, as soaring temperatures continue to warm
the Cape Cod Bay waters that the plant relies on to cool key safety
systems.

Pilgrim’s license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires Continue reading →

It is not enough to add a little solar and wind on top of fossil and fission fuels –a German @ GA PSC 2013-06-18

A German national residing in Georgia
asked for a serious effort on energy efficiency and conservation
while switching to real renewable energy sources instead of
fossil fuels and nuclear,
at

the Georgia Public Service Commission meeting Tuesday 18 June 2013.

She said increasing fires and floods were part of climate change,
and we need to do something about it.



I always hear this phrase “growing energy demand” as if it’s something,
some matter of fact.
A growing economy means growing energy demand, and that means
consequently growing waste, growing pollution, growing inequity,
and so on.
Any thinking person should notice that we need to find a way out.
For anyone concerned about our future, business as usual is
no longer acceptable.
We need drastic changes in our energy supply.
We need to use less.



Only a month earlier, Tom Fanning, CEO of Georgia Power’s
parent company Southern Company

reemphasized yet again that

To us, growing the economy is how we’re going to make profit.

Yet GA PSC could do something about that antique attitude,
as this speaker pointed out: Continue reading →

Floods cause oil spill in the tar sands capital of Calgary

Meanwhile, solar panels seldom flood and work again as soon as
the sun comes out.
And how much more flooding would we get here with a good hurricane
sitting still for a while?

John Upton write for Grist 25 June 2013,

Calgary floods trigger an oil spill and a mass evacuation,



Epic floods forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes last
week in Calgary, Alberta, the tar-sands mining capital of Canada.
More than seven inches of rain fell on the city over the course of
60 hours.

Now the floodwaters are Continue reading →

Nukes siphon funds from solar and wind –Jill Stein

It’s refreshing to see cogent criticism with a minimum of personal attacks.
While I think President Obama’s climate speech was indeed the best
by any president ever, that bar is low, and there is substantial
room for improvement.

PR from Green Shadow Cabinet yesterday,

RELEASE: Obama’s climate proposals fall dangerously short, ignore time-critical opportunity to revive the economy,

Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2012 presidential nominees noted,


“You can’t give your child an ‘all of the above diet’ with toxic
lead and arsenic, and think that adding some spinach and blueberries
is going to make it OK. Likewise, reducing carbon pollution from
coal does not make fracking, tar sands oil, deep water and Arctic
drilling OK. The climate is spiraling into runaway warming. Obama’s
promotion of cheap dirty fossil fuels makes coal regulations just
window dressing on a disastrous policy.”

In addition to its broad concerns on fossil fuel use, Continue reading →

Review of the misleading movie Pandora’s Promise

Here’s a trailer for the “documentary” pro-nuke film that comes out today,



Pandora’s Promise.
The film discounts solar and wind energy because its makers
don’t understand the exponential decrease in solar prices or
the night backup power ability of wind connected with a smart grid.
The vast majority of the American people already are demanding
those real renewables instead of nuclear or coal,
and the economics of wind and solar are also rapidly beating natural gas.

Atom Ecology’s promotional writeup 7 June 2013,

Pandora’s Promise – Anti-Nuclear Mob Burns Environment In Coal Fired Forges Of Industry For 30 Years begins,

A new documentary film that reveals how opposition to and voting
against nuclear power turned into massive increases in coal burning
power plants. The far worse outcome for the environment as coal has
filled energy demand is the story just coming to theatres.

The tiny germ of truth in that ten years ago is just plain wrong now
that coal is not the alternative because

solar has reached grid parity with nuclear, coal, and natural gas.

The movie plays up Stewart Brand’s conservationist credentials
and his conversion to pro-nuke.


Not in that movie, but

in this TED talk,
you can see
Stewart Brand lose a debate with Mark Z. Jacobson, who argued
we can power the whole world with sun, wind, and water.
Jacobson’s summary: Continue reading →

China carbon cap and Georgia Power



If China implements a carbon tax, will Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers
change his recent answer to a question about a carbon tax,
which was “why would anyone want that?”


Paul Bowers speaking
In February

the Chinese Ministry of Finance (MoF) said China would soon tax
carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions,
and that’s getting closer in

the country whose capital Beijing has smog bad it’s literally off the charts.
Katie Valentine wrote for ThinkProgress 22 May 2013,

Bombshell: China May Be Close To Implementing A Cap On Carbon Pollution,

China is taking steps to tackle its huge
carbon output. Today, the country announced the
details of its first carbon trading program, which will begin
in the city of Shenzhen next month. The southern city is one of seven
cities and provinces, including Beijing, which will take part in
the pilot program, set to be completely implemented by 2014.



And according to one local news source, China could
implement an absolute, nation-wide cap on its carbon
emissions by 2016. China’s 21st Century Business Herald
reported this week that the country’s State Council still needs to
approve the carbon cap proposal submitted by the National Development
and Reform Commission, a government entity that controls much of the
Chinese economy. The proposal, which the State Council is reportedly likely
to support, would ensure China’s emissions would
not increase past the country’s target cap, regardless
of economic growth — though it’s still unclear what
that cap would be. The paper reported that the NDRC also predicts
China’s greenhouse gas emissions will peak in 2025, rather than 2030,
as earlier predictions stated.

If the cap is adopted,

Continue reading →

Fossil fuels get five times the subsidies of renewable solar and wind



Fossil fuels get more than $70 billion dollars a year in
U.S. government subsidies (tax breaks and direct spending),
while solar and wind get only about $12 billion,
so fossil fuels got more than five times as much,
while

nuclear got ten times as much (especially
in Georgia).
Even corn ethanol, that sounded-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time
boondoggle, gets more subsidies than solar and wind put together.

That’s without even going into the
externalities
such as healthcare costs due to polution, environmental destruction
through mountaintop removal for coal, tar sands oil drilling,
and fracking for natural gas, and wars for oil and uranium.

Continue reading →

Valdosta PR about wastewater issues

The city of Valdosta responds. I have decorated this PR with a few
images with links, and a few comments after it. -jsq


Mayor and Council Address Recent Wastewater Issues,

The Valdosta Mayor and City Council are committed to providing quality
municipal services that meet the expectations of our citizens. In addition
to providing fire and police protection and other beneficial quality of
life services, the city leadership is equally committed to providing
adequate water and wastewater treatment services to its citizens,
maintaining a functioning sewer collection system and discharging treated
water in an environmentally responsible manner.



Recently, citizens have been inundated with information about
the current state of the city’s wastewater treatment plant and sewer
collection system, as well as the decisions made during the recent flood
event. The following information is provided to explain the recent event
and to help citizens better understand these important issues and the
dedicated work of their elected officials and municipal staff.

THE SITUATION

Continue reading →

Renewable Portfolio Standards: GA, NC, and ALEC

Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS) are being proposed
in Georgia and ALEC is trying to do away with them in North Carolina.
If ALEC doesn’t like them, there must be something good about RPS.
Let’s get on with real renewable energy in Georgia.



In Georgia,

HB 503,
sponsored by Karla Drenner, Carol Fullerton, Debbie Buckner, Scott
Holcomb, Spencer Frye, and Earnest Smith,
would create a Renewable Energy Credits Trading program as part of
renewable portfolio standards,
as Kyle wrote for Spencer Frye’s blog 10 March 2013,

Let the Sunshine In.
Unfortunately, HB 503 includes biomass as a renewable energy source.
Maybe they just mean landfill gas, which I consider a special case
since it’s being produced anyway, and since methane is worse as
a greenhouse gas than CO2, burning landfill gas makes some sense.
Nope, in

the actual bill, 46-3-71 (1):

‘Biomass material’ means organic matter, excluding fossil fuels and black liquor,
including agricultural crops, plants, trees, wood, wood wastes and residues, sawmill
waste, sawdust, wood chips, bark chips, and forest thinning, harvesting, or clearing
residues; wood waste from pallets or other wood demolition debris; peanut shells; cotton
plants; corn stalks; and plant matter, including aquatic plants, grasses, stalks, vegetation,
and residues, including hulls, shells, or cellulose containing fibers

The barn door in there is “harvesting”, which can mean whole trees,
but the rest isn’t much better.
We don’t need to be burning things that increase atmospheric CO2
and end up stripping our forests.
In

North Carolina they staretd with just tops and limbs and then tried to escalate
to whole trees.
We already
fought off the biomass boondoggle here in south Georgia;
let’s not have it encouraged statewide.
Especially when we have better solutions: solar and wind power.
HB 503 isn’t going to get passed this year, since it didn’t make
crossover day, so maybe its sponsors can clean up that biomass mess
before they submit it again.

Speaking of North Carolina,

Continue reading →

$1.88 billion and more on Kemper Coal to be charged to Mississippi Power customers



Risks at

Southern Company’s Kemper Coal plant in Mississippi?
Push those costs onto the public, of course!
Southern Company and its subsidiary Mississippi Power
got the MS Public Service Commissioners to approve super-CWIP
(Construction Work in Progress)
for Kemper Coal: automatic rate increases for MS Power customers for years.
Just like Southern Company and its biggest subsidiary Georgia Power
got the Georgia legislature to approve Super-CWIP for the new nukes
at Plant Vogtle back in 2009.
And both CWIP projects are already over budget.
How about we cancel those boondoggles and build solar and wind instead?

AP reported 13 December 2012,

After spending $1.88 billion, Southern Co. still faces risks on plant in Kemper County,

Continue reading →