{"id":15450,"date":"2016-01-17T19:27:49","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T00:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=15450"},"modified":"2016-01-17T19:59:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T00:59:26","slug":"is-porter-ranch-the-natural-gas-industrys-three-mile-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/is-porter-ranch-the-natural-gas-industrys-three-mile-island.html","title":{"rendered":"Is Porter Ranch the natural gas industry’s Three Mile Island?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nThirty-six years ago, Three Mile Island turned public opinion against nuclear power.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe worst in history, right now still spewing after three months\r\nand Los Angeles County and the state of California have declared emergencies\r\nat Porter Ranch,\r\nis the “natural” gas industry’s Three Mile Island.\r\n

\r\nNuclear, too was touted as safe, clean, and infamously “too cheap to meter”.\r\nIt turned out to be none of those things, and neither is fracked methane.\r\nThree Mile Island alone didn’t stop the thousands of nukes President Nixon promised,\r\nbut it sure helped.\r\nThe Porter Ranch disaster has already lasted far longer, had worse direct effects, and is in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area.\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nPlus TMI was the first U.S. civilian nuclear accident.\r\nThe “natural” gas industry has leaks, corrosion, fires, explosions, and now earthquakes monthly and sometimes daily.\r\nSure, the shadow of nuclear war hung over the nuclear power industry, but the monthly fireballs from methane explosions hangs over the natural gas industry. \r\nThe 2010 San Bruno, California explosion is back in the news because, says AP 13 January 2015:\r\nPROSECUTORS: PG&E RESISTED RECORD-KEEPING CHANGE AFTER SAN BRUNO BLAST<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nIt’s time for a complete moratorium on all new natural gas projects,\r\nlike the moratorium on all new nuclear projects after Three Mile Island.\r\nInstead, let’s get on with what we didn’t have back then:\r\nsolar and wind power already less expensive than any other sources of power,\r\nfar cleaner and safer, much faster to deploy, using no water, and requiring no eminent domain.\r\n

\r\nIn\r\n\r\n1962 President John F. Kennedy famously said<\/a>:\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard….”\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nIn 1969 Americans did walk on the moon.\r\n

\r\nBut one of those “other things” was massive civilian nuclear power, and that didn’t happen.\r\n

\r\nIn 1973 President Nixon promised<\/a>, in the name of energy independence:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAt present there are 30 nuclear power plants in operation in the\r\nUnited States; of the new electrical generator capacity contracted\r\nfor during 1972, 70 percent will be nuclear powered. By 1980, the\r\namount of electricity generated by nuclear reactors will be\r\nequivalent to 1.25 billion barrels of oil, or 8 trillion cubic feet\r\nof gas. It is estimated that nuclear power will provide more than\r\none-quarter of this country’s electrical production by 1985, and\r\nover half by the year 2000.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat would have taken thousands of nuclear power plants by the year 2000.\r\nActually there were 103 in 2001<\/a>,\r\nand several have already been closed down, some, like Crystal River and San Onofre because they’re broken, and others because they’re just not profitable.\r\nSure, Southern Company is still building its two hugely expensive white elephants on the Savannah River, and Florida Governor Rick Scott wants to build two more at Turkey Point near Miami, in the path of rising sea levels, but there sure aren’t thousands and there are no plans to build anywhere near that many.\r\n

\r\nThe\r\n\r\nanti-nuclear movement<\/a> got going not long after Nixon’s speech, and hit the news especially when people started getting arrested at the site of the just-permitted Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire<\/a>.\r\nProtests and arrests rapidly increased there and elsewhere,\r\nbut were very controversial among the general public.\r\n

\r\nThen, \r\naccording to History.com<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn March 1979, a series of mechanical and human errors at the Three\r\nMile Island nuclear generating plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,\r\nresulted in an accident that profoundly affected the utility\r\nindustry. A combination of stuck valves, misread gauges and poor\r\ndecisions led to a partial meltdown of the reactor core and the\r\nrelease of radioactive gases into the atmosphere. Although the\r\nhealth effects were not serious, the accident heightened public\r\nfears and led to the immediate shutdown of several plants. In\r\naddition, a moratorium on the licensing of all new reactors was\r\ntemporarily imposed, significantly slowing the industry for several\r\nyears.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\nCoincidentally, that same month, a movie with big stars,\r\n\r\nThe China Syndrome<\/a> came out about:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“A reporter finds what appears to be a cover-up of safety hazards at a nuclear power plant.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nLater that same year, 29 October 1979, on the fiftieth anniversary\r\nof the 1929 stock market crash,\r\n\r\nanti-nuclear activists blocked entrances to the New York Stock Exchange<\/a>,\r\nand some were arrested.\r\nNo, that didn’t shut down the stock market (they have underground tunnels).\r\nBut that occupation and other attempts to bring the failings of the nuclear industry\r\nto its financial backers did send a message that was heard.\r\n

\r\nAs\r\n\r\neven nuclear apologists admit<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe claim is made that nuclear is inherently just too expensive to\r\nuse, but, in fact, it was a coordinated assault by Wall Street and\r\nits foot soldiers in the environmentalist movement that drove the\r\ncosts up.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWell, that’s actually backwards, because Wall Street sure didn’t start the anti-nuclear or environmental movements.\r\nBut Wall Street eventually listened and stopped financing nuclear boondoggles.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nLike the original nukes at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River, which ended up costing\r\n26 times as much as originally projected<\/a>.\r\nThat was $165 million per unit for the four originally planned in 1971,\r\nramped up to $4,435 million per unit when only two were finally completed\r\nin the 1980s.\r\nAnd that’s not even taking inflation into account, which actually about doubled\r\neven that final cost.\r\n

\r\nThe inflating costs of “natural” gas start with fracking poisoning groundwater and air and directly linked to earthquakes already two years ago<\/a>.\r\nThe glut of gas from fracking drives the pipelines that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is rubberstamping as fast as it can,\r\ngranting eminent domain to run easements through private property,\r\npaying only a pittance, and leaving the landowners to pay property taxes\r\nand everybody else nearby to pick up the tab for emergency responders.\r\n

\r\nSpectra Energy, already infamous for thirty years of\r\n\r\ncorrosion, leaks, fires, explosions, and fines by U.S. and Canadian agencies<\/a>,\r\nnow wants to drill under the Suwannee and Santa Fe Rivers in Florida\r\nfor its 36″ Sabal Trail pipeline.\r\nLast May \r\nSpectra had a pipeline blow out under the Arkansas River in Little Rock<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nKinder Morgan (KMI) has applied to FERC for a Jacksonville Expansion Project (JEP) to expand its Florida Gas Transmission (FGT)\r\npipeline to 36 inches in diameter like Sabal Trail, from\r\nSuwannee County to Jacksonville, \r\nsaying\r\n\r\nSabal Trail can connect if it wants to<\/a>.\r\nA 4″ FGT pipeline blew up in\r\na fireball in Bell, Florida in 2012 when a tree fell on it<\/a>.\r\nIn 2009 an FGT pipeline blew up between the Florida Turnpike and I-95<\/a>, flying a 104-foot piece of 18-inch pipe through the air, shutting down both roads, and fortunately missing a high school.\r\nJEP or Sabal Trail would carry 80 times as much fracked methane\r\nas that Bell pipeline or 4 times as much as the one that almost hit the high school.\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe same KMI also wants to plow its petroleum products Palmetto Pipeline\r\nacross all Georgia coastal rivers to Jacksonville.\r\nWhat could possibly go wrong?\r\nAnd we may not have our China Syndrome movie yet, but we do have\r\nPush Back the Pipeline’s documentary At What Cost? Pipelines, Pollution and Eminent Domain in the Rural South<\/a>, which is a good start.\r\n

\r\nThen there are the\r\n\r\nrisks to the fragile karst limestone containing our sole source of drinking water, the Floridan Aquifer<\/a>, that WWALS Watershed Coalition just fought a four-month legal battle over, with Sierra Club Florida now joining in more<\/a> along with long-time pipeline opponent SpectraBusters<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nThere have been no accidents yet from liquid natural gas (LNG) export facilities,\r\nbecause so far as I know none have gone into operation yet, but\r\n\r\nFERC and\r\ntwo other U.S. federal agencies and a Canadian one<\/a> are busy rubberstamping those, too.\r\nThere certainly have been explosions at LNG facilities, and the risk is so well known that\r\nU.S. law limits liability for LNG tankers<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nSouthern California Gas Co.’s\r\n\r\nAliso Canyon Storage Field<\/a>,\r\nfinally got both Los Angeles County<\/a> and the state of California<\/a> to declare states of emergency,\r\nafter\r\nafter evacuating many of the residents of nearby Porter Ranch\r\nand closing down a couple of schools for the duration,\r\n\r\nis still spewing methane into the sky above Los Angeles almost three months on<\/a> with no end in sight.\r\n

\r\nEven worse, the methane leaks have spread\r\n\r\nat least ten miles throughout heavily residential San Fernando Valley<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nMaybe Porter Ranch as the “natural” gas Three Mile Island\r\nwill bring some attention to the huge problems of the fossil fuel industry.\r\nOr will we have to wait for the fracked methane Chernobyl or Fukushima?\r\nWill the methane-soaked San Fernando Valley have to catch fire and explode\r\nbefore we stop the runaway natural gas industry?\r\n

\r\nLet’s not wait for that.\r\nYou can\r\n\r\npetition for U.S. Senators to call in the Government Accountability Office (GAO)\r\nto rein in FERC<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nEven better, \r\nas Porter Ranch residents are insisting<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nShut. It. All. DOWN.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNot just the Aliso Canyon disaster.\r\nAs \r\nanother petition says<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nEnact a MORATORIUM on new fossil fuel infrastructure approvals by FERC until the investigation is complete and changes are implemented. \r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nJust like there was a moratorium on new nukes after Three Mile Island.\r\n

\r\nMore than 80 health professionals already demanded that back in September<\/a>: no new fossil fuel projects, and get on with converting the U.S. to renewable energy.\r\nAnd not just FERC.\r\nNo new fossil fuel projects by FE, MARAD, or whoever else.\r\n

\r\nMaybe Porter Ranch is<\/em> Chernobyl; maybe TMI was BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, which\r\n\r\nspewed oil for about as many days as Aliso Canyon has spewed methane<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nThere is no reason to keep digging in the ground for energy: look up!\r\n\r\nStanford Professor Mark Z. Jacobson and his researchers have shown us\r\nin peer-reviewed articles\r\nhow to power every U.S. state (and 138 countries) on wind, sun, and water power,\r\nwith\r\nplans to get there by 2050<\/a>,\r\nwith 90% by 2035.\r\n

\r\nThere is no excuse for further destruction of property, air, water, or life\r\nfor the profit of a few fossil fuel companies.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nShut. It. All. Down.\r\n

\r\nLet the sun rise now!\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thirty-six years ago, Three Mile Island turned public opinion against nuclear power. The worst in history, right now still spewing after three months and Los Angeles County and the state of California have declared emergencies at Porter Ranch, is the “natural” gas industry’s Three Mile Island. Nuclear, too was touted as safe, clean, and infamously […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[203,19,6124,104,73,24,55,36],"tags":[339,862,903,9045,9048,785,8062,8751,7068,167,8701,7361,8709,9042,9043,981,8451,7622,8702,4202,7731,9040,12,7,9047,1706,8452,562,9049,117,8737,6970,6076,8937,9041,6597,8731,9046,8714,6966,902,9044,6,1467,8727,8716],"class_list":["post-15450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-florida","category-history","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-safety","category-solar","category-water","category-wind","tag-california","tag-canada","tag-chernobyl","tag-clamshell-alliance","tag-fe","tag-ferc","tag-fgt","tag-florida","tag-florida-gas-transmission","tag-fukushima","tag-georgia","tag-hazards","tag-history","tag-jacksonville-expansion-project","tag-jep","tag-jimmy-carter","tag-john-f-kennedy","tag-kinder-morgan","tag-lake","tag-lng","tag-lng-export","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-marad","tag-mark-z-jacobson","tag-moon","tag-natural-gas","tag-neb","tag-nrc","tag-nuclear","tag-phmsa","tag-pipeline","tag-porter-ranch","tag-richard-m-nixon","tag-sabal-trail-transmission","tag-safety","tag-san-fernando-valley","tag-solar","tag-spectra-energy","tag-three-mile-island","tag-tmi","tag-valdosta","tag-wall-street","tag-water","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-41c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15450"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15460,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15450\/revisions\/15460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}