Category Archives: Nuclear

Activists Grill NRC on San Onofre Restart


Ecological Options Network (EON)
posted

video of public comments at the latest

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) meeting
about restarting San Onofre 2,
where

documents indicate Southern California Edison knew the new steam
generators were defective years before they even installed them.

EON

noted:

In these video excerpts from the 4-3-2013 NRC webcast, informed
activists hammer the NRC staff and SoCal Edison reps with
penetrating comments and questions about apparently collusive
fast-track plans to restart one of San Onofre’s broken
reactors—in a tsunami and earthquake zone, in the middle of a
strategic U.S. military base, in a surrounding urban area with a
population of 8.5 million people—a plant that is not
cost-effective 99% of the time, operated by a utility with the worst
safety record in the country.

What could possibly go wrong?

Participants include Ace Hoffman, David Freeman, Kendra Ulrich, Dan
Hirsch, John Geesman, Ray Lutz, Gary Headrick and Myla Reson.

Activists just helped convince NRC

to deny a license for Calvert Cliffs 3 in Maryland,
and Continue reading →

Alcohol, drugs, and broken nuke equipment

A broken cooling water pump at Fermi 2 yesterday plus
60% lost safety data today.


Airflow and quality problems at Kewaunee and Three Mile Island.
Drugs at Saint Lucie in Florida
and alcohol at Nine Mile Point 1 in New York and
at Braidwood in Illinois.
And four workers injured at Callaway in Missouri.
Apparently nuke employees can get terminated for off-site
recreational drug use, but not for fires or broken equipment.

We’ve already seen the

event about fire at Plant Vogtle.
Here are more events in the NRC

Current Event Notification Report for April 4, 2013
and also today,

April 5, 2013,

Continue reading →

Fire at Plant Vogtle


Vogtle 1 since 2006

Does a
Nuclear Operations Unusual Event (NOUE) give you a warm and fuzzy feeling?
When it’s a fire at a nuke on the Savannah River?
They didn’t shut Unit 1 down for that,
but Unit 2 has been down for almost a month.

NRC

Current Event Notification Report for April 4, 2013,

NOTIFICATION OF UNUSUAL EVENT BASED ON A FIRE IN THE PROTECTED AREA
LASTING GREATER THAN 15 MINUTES

“Vogtle Unit 1 has declared an NOUE based on a fire within the
protected area boundary not extinguished within 15 minutes of
detection.

“At 0632 [EDT] Unit 1 received a fire alarm in the Unit 1 control
building. A systems operator was dispatched to investigate and
reported back that a small flame was visible inside 1ND3I1, computer
inverter. Fire brigade was dispatched in accordance with fire
response procedures. No other systems or parameters affected.

Continue reading →

Even the smallest amount of tritium can have negative health impacts, and most nukes leak tritium.



Received yesterday on

Nuclear Plant Hatch radioactive leaks. Tritium (3H, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen)
is the stuff nuclear Plant Hatch
is letting leak into our groundwater.
NRC lists 44 leaking sites
out of 65 active reactor locations.
No solar or wind plants leak tritium.
-jsq

In case you haven’t seen this yet:

TRITIUM: HEALTH CONSEQUENCES.
Excerpt:

Most studies indicate that tritium in living creatures can produce

Continue reading →

Apple: from 35% to 75% renewable energy in two years



All it takes is the will to get it done, and Apple is doing it:

from 35% renewable energy in 2010 to 75% in 2012, and 100%
at all Apple data centers.
Cost? They’ll save more than they spent.
Time for Georgia Power and Southern Company to stop dragging their feet
and help us get on with it in Georgia.

Peter Burrows wrote for Bloomberg Thursday that

Apple got nudged:

Continue reading →

Nuclear Plant Hatch radioactive leaks

The NRC publishes annual

Radioactive Effluent and Environmental Reports for every operating nuclear power reactor.
The reports for

Plant Hatch 1 & 2 say
radioactive tritium has repeatedly leaked into the soil and groundwater,
but the internal swamp is getting less radioactive.
Reports like this are not needed for wind or solar plants.


Plant Hatch Unconfined Perched Aquifer Tritium Concentration November 2011


Annual Radiological Environmental Operating Reports for 2011

According to a 2007

Industry Groundwater Protection Initiative Voluntary Data Collection Questionnaire,

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 →

David defeats Goliath: Calvert Cliffs 3 nuke license denied, first ever by NRC



David (tiny five-person activist group NIRS with no lawyer)
defeated Goliath (the world’s biggest nuclear reactor manufacturer, Areva, and operator, EDF).
Previously

a committee terminated the licensing process
but the proposed operator wanted NRC review for the Calvert Cliffs 3
nuclear reactor.
For the first time ever, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied
a nuclear license, closing the book on Calvert Cliffs 3 for good,
and probably taking down
with it half a dozen or more other proposed reactors.

ENENEWS posted a roundup 12 March 2013,

NIRS: Victory! License denied for U.S. nuclear reactor — First time in history NRC has upheld denial

Who is this proposed nuclear operator?
The

NIRS press release explains:

Continue reading →

Fukushima still broken 2 years after

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami
that heavily damaged four of the six nuclear reactors at


Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan on 11 March 2011, also known as 3/11.
The broken reactors at Fukushima continue to leak radioactive substances into
groundwater, the sea, and the air, where it is carried across oceans
to the U.S. and elsewhere.
And it could still get much worse:

if the No. 4 reactor pool, still suspended in the air, collapses and causes
the disintegration of spent fuel rods from all the other reactors there,
Tokyo, 200 miles away, will have to be evacuated.
Fukushima’s GE reactors are the same GE Mark I design as Southern Company’s
Plant Hatch 1 and 2 only 100 miles from here at Baxley, GA,
and about 200 miles from Atlanta and Charleston.
Hatch

is leaking radioactive tritium into our groundwater again.
Five more reactors

within 500 miles of here
are also GE Mark I.



Among the 311 or so facebook pages and websites about Fukushima
or against nuclear power is this concise one,

Unplug Nuclear Power,
which offers a simple action anyone can take tomorrow:

On 3/11, we will mark Fukushima day by using as little utility
supplied electricity as possible. This direct Action is designed to
punish the utility companies for continuing to push for nuclear
power even after the Fukushima disaster has proven that it is just
too dangerous. On that day, we will punish them in the only way that
they understand, by denying them our money. There will be four
levels of participation, go to the website,

www.unplugnuclearpower.com for a more complete description. Also, be
sure to join the Event. Finally, if you are in a group our
organization that can endorse this Action, please let us know.

As

Jeremy Rifkin so concisely spelled out,
nuclear power is over

Continue reading →

Scorecard on Internet and Energy at the Bird Supper


Gretchen Quarterman, Dexter Sharper, Bill Slaughter, and others at the Bird Supper in Atlanta

On the 27th of February I posted

Internet and Energy at the Bird Supper
and Gretchen and I went to the Bird Supper in Atlanta and discussed
those four bills with legislators.
Our local elected officials were lobbying on the same side of many of
the same bills.
It’s past crossover day now, when bills are supposed to be
approved by one house of the Georgia legislature in order to be
taken up by the other.
How did that come out?
We all beat the mighty telcos and cablecos on two bills!
But Georgia Power is even mightier, and won on two bills.
Plus one legislator’s name is connected with 3 out of 4 of those bills.
And our local delegation cancelled itself out on the one vote
that actually went to the floor.

Internet Access: help stop two telecommunications bills

The local Industrial Authority, Chamber of Commerce, Valdosta City Council,
and Lowndes County Commission have recently realized that
fast Internet access is essential to attract businesses,
for their employees to work at home, for applicants to apply for jobs,
for students to submit assignments, and for general quality of life.
And there’s good news from the legislature!

Continue reading →