Category Archives: Nuclear

TVA needs to listen to former chair S. David Friedman about solar power

Will you bet on the blinkered money-only policies of the current
TVA Chair, or the accurate clean solar future predictions of former
TVA Chair S. David Friedman?

Seven years ago S. David Friedman wrote:


“As a substitute for oil, coal, and nuclear energy, the sun can
replace the three poisons with inexhaustible fuel.”

The former TVA Chairman wrote that in 2007 his boook

Winning Our Energy Independence: An Energy Insider Shows How,
which also says (page 4):

There are breakthroughs in new technology that promise to make
the cost of solar power as low as that of coal, nuclear, and oil.
Almost simultaneously in South Africa and the Silicon Valley in the
United States, companies are building huge new solar factories to manufacture
a paper-thin solar coating that can generate electricity that could
actually lower our electric bills.
These breakthroughs promise solar power at 75 percent less than today’s price. Continue reading →

Georgia Power can’t get a schedule from its own contractors for Vogtle nuclear project

After two years of no integrated project schedule (IPS),
Georgia Power tried to get the
the elected Public Service Commissioners to
tell it how to enforce a contract for Plant Vogtle that Georgia Power
brought to them.
This video clip ends with formerly staunch pro-nuclear Commissioner
H. Doug Everett saying any company that did that probably would be imprudent.
And Everett also said:

We haven’t seen any results.


Georgia Power’s representative, I think Rob Trokey, said:

We have agreed haven’t we that
the company does not manage this project.
They oversee it,
they may report to this commission the status of it,
but it does not manage this project.

Answer from the Commission:

It doesn’t.

So who does?
According to Georgia Power: Continue reading →

Bloomberg notices solar now cheaper than all other forms of energy

What Jon Wellinghoff predicted a year ago is starting to filter

300x199 Solar prices dropped below all other energy sources, in Georgia solar breakeven, by John S. Quarterman, 30 November 2014
into the news media: solar is going to win, and very quickly.
Welcome to a sunny world!

Tom Randall, Bloomberg, 29 October 2014,

While You Were Getting Worked Up Over Oil Prices, This Just Happened to Solar,

After years of struggling against cheap natural gas prices and
variable subsidies, solar electricity is on track Continue reading →

China, U.S., and Russia energy deals: bad news for Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline?

The U.S. and China made a historic deal on climate change this week.


Here’s the good (it’s real, it’s huge, and it’s positive economically
for both countries), the bad (nuclear is first on the list of those “clean energy” sources), and the ugly.
Also this week China made a second huge natural gas deal with Russia:
what does that mean to the current U.S. push for LNG exports,
including the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline gouge through Georgia?

The Deal

Rebecca Leber, The New Republic, 12 November 2014,

The World Has Waited for the U.S. and China to Take Action on Climate Change. They Just Did.

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on
Wednesday commitments to reduce both countries’ greenhouse gas
emissions. The surprise announcement, which came while Obama visits
Beijing this week, is the clearest sign yet the two countries are
serious on climate change.

After months of negotiations Continue reading →

China can go 80% sun, wind, water power by 2050 –WWF


300x424 Cover, in China's Future Generation, by WWF, February 2014
If the most populous country in the world can do it,
even the Sunshine State and the rest of the world can do it.
With no new nuclear,
depending heavily on on energy efficiency and conservation,
using China’s huge number of rooftops for solar power,
with almost as much wind power, plus a bit more hydropower,
China can go 80% renewable energy by 2050.
While reducing energy use per capita and increasing
GDP per capita.
So this path will not only improve Chinese quality of life
by getting rid of massive pollution by

reducing emissions 90% from
otherwise-projected levels; it will also give Chinese citizens
more money in their pockets.
China has no more sunshine than the U.S. or much of Canada does,
so there’s no reason the Canada, U.S., and pretty much every country can’t do this, too. Continue reading →

NYC Schools to use more solar power; how about in sunny southeast?

Solar high schools: not just for

Dublin, Georgia anymore.

New York City, and Rochester, NY, too!
How about solar Lowndes High School?
Or the new Valdosta High School?
Or since Valdosta has already
put solar at its Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant,
how about on other city buildings?
How about on the county palace?
Or in Hahira, Dasher, Remerton, or Lake Park?

Erin Durkin wrote for New York Daily News 29 September 2014,

24 NYC schools getting solar panels in $28M project — and City Hall could be next, Continue reading →

SolarCity in Buffalo: 1,000 megawatts capacity, 3,000 jobs

Three times as many millios of dollars invested as expected, 3,000 jobs, and
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says “they could have gone anywhere on the planet”.
They could have come here.
They went to snowy Buffalo.

David Robinson wrote for Buffalo News 23 September 2014,

‘Historic day for Buffalo,’ Zemsky says of SolarCity RiverBend plans,



SolarCity’s planned factory in South Buffalo — and the 3,000
jobs that come with it — packs a powerful economic punch.

To be built on the former Republic Steel plant site in South
Buffalo, the factory is expected to bring more new jobs to the
region than the steel maker ever had in its heyday.

With the ability to make enough solar panels to generate more than
1,000 megawatts of electricity, the factory would be Continue reading →

Georgians march in NYC for climate action

It’s a start.
At least New York City is already doing something.
Time for Georgia to stop burning more fossil fuels and uranium
and get on with solar power.


By Lisa W. Foderaro, NY Times, 21 September 2014,

At climate change march in New York, a clarion call for action,

Participants from across the country began arriving early on Sunday
morning at the staging area near the American Museum of Natural
History. Rosemary Snow, 75, stretched her legs after a nearly
14-hour bus ride from Georgia.

Continue reading →

Solar or wind investment will produce more energy than oil or natural gas

We already knew solar and wind are better investments than nuclear or natural gas,
and now we find they’re already better than oil.

In Impact Lab 18 September 2014,

$100B invested in wind or solar will produce more energy than oil,



Kepler Chevreux, a French investment bank, has produced a
fascinating analysis that has dramatic implications for the global
oil industry. The investment bank estimates that $100 billion
invested in either wind energy or solar energy — and deployed
as energy for light and commercial vehicles — will produce
significantly more energy than that same $100 billion invested in
oil.

The implications, needless to say, are dramatic. It would signal the
end of Big Oil, and the demise of an industry that has dominated the
global economy and geo-politics, for the last few decades. And the
need for it to reshape its business model around renewables, as we
discuss here.

“If we are right, the implications would be momentous,”
writes Kepler Chevreux analyst Mark Lewis.

“It would mean Continue reading →

All of the above: mercury water, methane fracking, radioactive waste, water overuse; EPA go clean renewables instead –Susan Corbett




South Carolina Sierra Club Chair Susan Corbett summed up
the problem with

the EPA’s carbon rule:
it opposes one poison while promoting others.
We can make a real green clean energy policy
based on conservation, efficiency, solar, and wind energy.
Remember, you can still

send in your own comments directly to EPA.


SC Sierra club, chair at EPA Atlanta hearing, by Elaine Cooper on YouTube 30 July 2014: Continue reading →