NRC file photo of Fermi 2 on the Lake Erie shore. Fermi 3 would be built immediately adjacent to Fermi 2 — ironically enough, on the very spot where Fermi 1 had a partial core meltdown in 1966!U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rulings regar…
Continue readingCategory Archives: News
Forbes magazine’s February 11, 1985 cover story headlined “Nuclear Follies.” The business investment journal wrote “The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a d…
Continue readingAn aerial view of the known extent of the tritium contamination in soil and groundwater at the VY site, on the banks of the Connecticut River in southeastern Vermont.Entergy Nuclear is infamous for its arrogance. Now, reports the Associated Press…
Continue readingOPG’s proposed so-called Deep Geologic Repository for radioactive waste burial would be located less than a mile from the Great Lakes shoreline.Today, DuPage County, the second most populous in Illinois, announced the passage of a resolution in opposit…
Continue readingFirstEnergy’s dirty, dangerous, and uncompetitive Davis-Besse atomic reactor, with Lake Erie in the background.Harvey Wasserman explores this question on his “Solartopia, Green Power, and Wellness Hour” radio show of Feb. 10th. Here is his summary of t…
Continue readingPhoto credit: http://www.csisun.com/solar-installations/As reported by the The Joplin Globe, solar PV advocates including Renew Missouri (the Earth Island Institute) and the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center, and the Missouri Coalition for the E…
Continue readingAs shown on this graphic chart, Sr-90 seeks human bone tissue. Credit: Russell Hoffman.As reported by Susan Smallheer at the Rutland Herald, the State of Vermont has detected radioactive, hazardous Strontium-90 in groundwater monitoring wells at Enterg…
Continue readingThom Hartmann, host of “The Big Picture”Thom Hartmann (photo, left) invited Beyond Nuclear onto his television program “The Big Picture” to discuss the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) impending decision to rubberstamp the proposed new Fermi …
Continue readingAs shown in Jim Day’s political cartoon (be sure to count the toes) in the Las Vegas Review Journal, the President Obama zeroed out funding, and ordered his DOE to withdraw the license application, in 2010.U.S. Senator Harry Reid’s (D-NV) Communication…
Continue readingAs revealed by a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) “Event Notification Report” on Feb. 6th, Entergy Nuclear’s Pilgrim atomic reactor on Cape Cod Bay south of Boston, MA suffered “a major loss of emergency assessment capability,” during the sever…
Continue readingNRC file photo of Exelon’s Ginna atomic reactor on the Lake Ontario shore of upstate NY near RochesterAs reported by the Democrat and Chronicle, Exelon Nuclear’s Ginna atomic reactor — one of the oldest in the U.S. — is at risk of near-term shutdown….
Continue readingA Swiss-led European Union (EU) initiative to amend and strengthen international reactor safety standards in a post-Fukushima world was blunted by the United States delegation to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Convention on Nucle…
Continue readingNRC file photo of VY. The HLRW storage pool is located in the lighter colored upper portion of the reactor building, some 50 feet or more in the air.As reported by Vermont Digger, a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Atomic Safety and Lic…
Continue readingThe 500+ ton stator crashed through the floor, on top of its heavy haul vehicle, causing extensive damage, killing one worker, and injuring several others.David Lochbaum, director, Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, writes:
“O…
NRC file photo of Entergy’s Pilgrim atomic reactor, a Fukushima twin-designOn Jan. 26th, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) slapped Entergy Pilgrim (photo, left) with two “White Findings” in the aftermath of four unplanned shutdowns in 2013, …
Continue readingLogo from Public Citizens’ action alertPublic Citizen, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, PowerDC, and others have organized a rally in opposition to the proposed Exelon-Pepco merger, to be held in downtown Baltimore, MD at 10:30am on Thurs., Feb. 5th….
Continue readingCooper atomic reactor is shown here during a historic flood in the 1990s.As reported by Joe Jordan at Nebraska Watchdog, security protocols have changed little, if at all, at the Cooper nuclear power plant (photo, left) in Nebraska, a full year after a…
Continue readingPolitical cartoon by Jim Day of the Las Vegas Review Journal (be sure to count the toes!). President Obama and his DOE defunded and walked away from the Yucca Mountain dump project in 2009-2010, declaring it “unworkable.”As reported by Steve Tetrault a…
Continue readingNRC file photo of Entergy’s Pilgrim atomic reactor, located south of Boston on Cape Cod Bay. Plymouth, MA bore the brunt of winter storm “Juno,” but Pilgrim was one of the only electric grid casualites.As reported by Wicked Local Plymouth, despite bear…
Continue readingIronically enough, NEI left this Tweet up for days after Pilgrim was shut down by snow storm “Juno”!As reported by the Boston Globe, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will send a 4-5 person Special Inspection Team to Entergy Nuclear’s Pilgrim atom…
Continue readingNRC file photo of Entergy’s Pilgrim atomic reactor, on Cape Cod Bay south of Boston. Pilgrim bore the brunt of Nor’easter “Juno.” NRC’s website reports that Pilgrim is still at 0% power, as of 9pm Eastern ThursdayAs reported by the Pulitzer-Prize winni…
Continue readingIrradiated nuclear fuel being moved in a high-level radioactive waste storage pools. The courts ruled in 2012 that NRC’s days (well, many decades!) of lawlessness regarding nuclear waste generation, storage, and disposal are over.In a legal filing toda…
Continue readingCarol Browner, a paid spokesman for industry PR front group “Nuclear Matters,” is but the latest in a long line of nuclear power snake oil salesman, seeking to gouge ratepayers and taxpayers”Nuclear Matters,” a high-priced front group featuring paid, p…
Continue readingNRC file photo of Davis-Besse on the Lake Erie shoreline east of ToledoAs reported by Tom Henry of The Toledo Blade, the Jan. 15 Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) hearing in Toledo revealed a growing coalition of environmental, public interest…
Continue reading“Burning money” image by Gene Case, Avenging AngelsOn Jan. 27, the City Club of Chicago is sponsoring a luncheon under the innocent-sounding heading of, “Illinois’ Energy Future: A Policy Discussion.” However, two of the main …
Continue readingNRC file photo of Entergy Nuclear’s Pilgrim atomic reactor on Cape Cod Bay near BostonAs reported by The Enterprise, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has kept Entergy Nuclear’s Pilgrim atomic reactor (photo, left), near Boston, on its “degr…
Continue readingORGANIZE!As reported by David Roberts at Grist, Exelon Nuclear proposed takeover of Pepco represents a “Big, nuke-heavy utility looking for new ratepayers to fleece.” It is part and parcel of Exelon’s desperate bid to keep its dirty, dangerous, uncompe…
Continue readingTransCanada Pipelines, infamous for its Keystone XL tar sands pipeline scheme, is also a nuclear power utility and generator of radioactive wastes.
TransCanada is a major partner in Bruce Nuclear, which leases and operates Ontario Power Generation’s B…
Entergy’s Palisades atomic reactor is located on the Lake Michigan shoreline in Covert, MI. The Great Lakes serve as drinking water for 40 million North Americans in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Natio…
Continue readingThe Japanese nuclear industry has announced it will permanently close five more of its remaining 48 “operable” nuclear reactors by March 2015, leaving the country with 43 reactors “operable” but still not actually “operating.” Two of the plants to be d…
Continue readingAs many of our anti-nuclear colleagues rallied on Sunday to pay tribute to their fallen comdrades at Charlie Hebdo, their protest against the silencing of dissenting voices was brought close to home once again. The group Coordination Anti-nucléa…
Continue reading“Nuclear power burning money” image, created by Gene Case of Avenging Angels, was featured on the cover of The Nation magazine. Used with permission of the artist.As reported by FierceEnergy, First Energy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) commissio…
Continue readingWorkers pictured at Palisades last spring doing repair work on top of the reactor vessel head. Entergy provided this and other photos of the work to the NRC.As reported by Lindsey Smith at Michigan Radio, around 185 workers at Entergy’s Palisades a…
Continue readingA map of Nuclear Illinois, prepared by NEISAs reported by Kari Lydersen of Midwest Energy News in an article entitled “Illinois report says Exelon nuclear straits not so dire,” a massive bailout of $580 million per year at ratepayer expense may not b…
Continue readingWe pause today to remember those slain at the French satirical news magazine Charlie Hebdo. Several of the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo were close allies of the French anti-nuclear movement, even providing cartoons to the French anti-nuclear network, “…
Continue readingToday, thanks to decades of citizen organizing and protest; the wise backing of the elected officials of the State of Vermont; the attempted deception of Vermont Yankee owners, Entergy, whose representatives even lied under oath; and the hopeless econo…
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A number of CEP members have expressed a strong interest in returning to the matter of long-term spent fuel storage early in 2015. We are fortunate to have been approached by the Washington DC-based Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) to organize a joint meeting with the CEP in January as part of an 18-month effort to generate action on the movement of used nuclear fuel in the U.S. With the short timeframe, we will need to finalize the event very quickly.BPC is working on an initiative, “America’s Nuclear Future: Taking Action to Address Nuclear Waste,” to reinvigorate and expand the discussion on nuclear waste, identify barriers inhibiting progress on nuclear waste, and explore options to break through the barriers. The effort is being run by Tim Frazier who previously ran the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. I am mindful that a joint program with the BPC will be far more impactful than a program that we might endeavor to execute on our own.
Important to the BPC effort are regional meetings to identify and discuss the barriers to moving forward on nuclear waste and potential actions to remove the barriers. BPC has hosted meetings in the Northeast at MIT in June, in the Southeast at Georgia Tech in Atlanta in September, and in the Midwest in Chicago in November. A joint BPC/CEP meeting for Southern California is planned for the evening of Tuesday, 27 January, or Wednesday the 28th.
Meeting Overview
Plans include two panel discussions. The intent is to present a range of viewpoints and panelists are to be announced. The first panel will focus on federal issues as facilitated by Tim Frazier. David Victor will chair a second panel discussion with a focus on San Onofre and state issues. The second panel discussion will include the full CEP, a facilitated public comment period, and serve as our Regular Meeting for 1Q 2015.
The doors are opening wider on our discussion of Nuclear Waste at San Onofre. Once again we have the opportunity to bring this topic forward on to the national stage. The question is will you join us? Only you can make your voice heard.
Aging Nuke Dumps On Fault Lines In Tsunami Hazard Zones = Fukushimas… Any Questions?
PLEASE Turn off a light for Fukushima USA / San Onofre
PLEASE Turn off a light for Fukushima USA / San Onofre
A number of CEP members have expressed a strong interest in returning to the matter of long-term spent fuel storage early in 2015. We are fortunate to have been approached by the Washington DC-based Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) to organize a joint meeting with the CEP in January as part of an 18-month effort to generate action on the movement of used nuclear fuel in the U.S. With the short timeframe, we will need to finalize the event very quickly.
BPC is working on an initiative, “America’s Nuclear Future: Taking Action to Address Nuclear Waste,” to reinvigorate and expand the discussion on nuclear waste, identify barriers inhibiting progress on nuclear waste, and explore options to break through the barriers. The effort is being run by Tim Frazier who previously ran the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. I am mindful that a joint program with the BPC will be far more impactful than a program that we might endeavor to execute on our own.
Important to the BPC effort are regional meetings to identify and discuss the barriers to moving forward on nuclear waste and potential actions to remove the barriers. BPC has hosted meetings in the Northeast at MIT in June, in the Southeast at Georgia Tech in Atlanta in September, and in the Midwest in Chicago in November. A joint BPC/CEP meeting for Southern California is planned for the evening of Tuesday, 27 January, or Wednesday the 28th.
Meeting Overview
Plans include two panel discussions. The intent is to present a range of viewpoints and panelists are to be announced. The first panel will focus on federal issues as facilitated by Tim Frazier. David Victor will chair a second panel discussion with a focus on San Onofre and state issues. The second panel discussion will include the full CEP, a facilitated public comment period, and serve as our Regular Meeting for 1Q 2015.
The doors are opening wider on our discussion of Nuclear Waste at San Onofre. Once again we have the opportunity to bring this topic forward on to the national stage. The question is will you join us? Only you can make your voice heard.
Aging Nuke Dumps On Fault Lines In Tsunami Hazard Zones = Fukushimas… Any Questions?
PLEASE Turn off a light for Fukushima USA / San Onofre
Continue reading PLEASE Turn off a light for Fukushima USA / San Onofre
Beyond Nuclear board member Karl GrossmanOn December 26th, Beyond Nuclear board member, investigative journalist, author, and EnviroVideo host, Karl Grossman, wrote:
“Next week will mark the 24th year for EnviroVideo. Here’s the first documentary we di…
U.S. NRC Chairman Stephen G. BurnsAs reported by the Associated Press, the NRC announced that President Obama has appointed NRC Commissioner Stephen G. Burns (photo, left) to serve as the Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He will be…
Continue readingDid you know that embrittled nuclear reactors could shatter like glass? Watch Fairewinds Energy Education’s Nuclear Science Guy Arnie Gundersen (photo, left) demonstrate reactor embrittlement and imagine the shattering glass as a shattering nuclear rea…
Continue readingAn artist’s rendition of the GEH ESBWR, proposed by DTE to be built as “Fermi 3” at its nuclear power plant in Monroe Co., MIOn Dec. 16th, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) five Commissioners, in a unanimous ruling, denied an environmen…
Continue readingHarvey WassermanBeyond Nuclear was pleased to be invited back on to Harvey Wasserman’s “Solartopia Green Power and Wellness” radio show today. Here is Harvey’s description:
“A RATEPAYER REVOLT against nuclear power and the nationwide battle for Solarto…
NRC file photo of Palisades, located in Covert, MI.The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has cited Entergy Nuclear for violating its own workers’ radiological safety at the problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shore in s…
Continue readingThe host of the Nuclear Hotseat podcast, Libbe HaLevy, has honored Beyond Nuclear by interviewing Kevin Kamps about the environmental coalition intervention against Entergy Nuclear’s Palisades atomic reactor in Michigan. Palisades has the worst embritt…
Continue reading
In my opinion, I’m very concerned about the way the SCE/CEP was set up and the direction the leadership of SCE/CEP is now taking us. Instead of taking the neutral position and uncovering and observing the evidence as presented they consistently and obviously put a positive spin on it. Everything is fine and SCE is doing the best job possible.- We must ask ourselves does this repeated positive spin serve the public interest? In my opinion No.
- Is this Community Engagement Panel doing the best job possible to protect the safety of our communities and California? In my opinion we are not.
- Can or will the SCE/CEP make the changes necessary in its charter to become an effective and strong safety advocate for the decommissioning and safe storage of nuclear waste at San Onofre that the people of California deserve until such time as the DOE takes possession of this long-term problem? In my opinion that is still up in the air.
To this point SCE’s attempt to be inclusive and transparent clearly has it’s limits. While asking me and others to bring up the safety concerns of the local citizens, SCE and the SCE/CEP leadership has then glossed over them, seeing these concerns only to be checked off their list one by one. Example; Tim Brown told the CA Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee on Aug 12, 2014 that local concerns have be heard and addressed. Implying some sort of conclusion or satisfaction by all with SCE’s predestined decommissioning plan. Link for Senate hearing http://youtu.be/_q6YulhHpcU?t=1h2m9s starting time for Tim Brown 1:02:10 to 1:17:45. Nothing of course could be further from the truth for many in our local communities. SCE, Inclusiveness is not just a tool to be used on the “Yellow Brick Road to decommissioning”, we are not in the Land of Oz after all. We are however in the backyards of over 8.4 million Californians. SCE and its CEP leadership now have a consistent record of spinning information to fit the SCE agenda. For example, regarding “defense in depth”, the chairman, after being concerned at first at the lack of defense in depth for dry cask long-term storage, concluded after his ‘”careful research”, that citizen activists had not asked about ” defense in depth” for waste storage before and that the nuclear industry and the NRC has done a poor job in defining and getting the word out about “defense in depth” for nuclear waste and dry cask storage. Citing “defense in depth” as cladding on fuel rods, ceramics on the fuel pellets , even the 5/8″ thickness of the canister itself and concrete overpack of the casks as if these were “defense in depth” that were unspoken of in the past. And he was right they were not spoken of in the past as “defense in depth” because they were not considered nor should we consider them today as “defense in depth”. While these have some small measure of defense, they are not in anyway sufficient or adequate for long-term storage of nuclear waste within a heavily populated area like Southern California, and everyone in this nuclear industry knows the calculated risk they are betting on with California’s future.
David Victor’s report Safety of Long-term storage in casks: Issues For San Onofre Dec 9, 2014 does have some items we do agree on: “It is likely that spent fuel will be stored in dry casks at the San Onofre nuclear site for very long periods of time—most likely well beyond the 20-‐year period for initial licensing of the casks.” page 2 of report. “Some elements of what will be needed for “defense in depth” are not yet fully in existence—for example, actual equipment that would allow removal of fuel from a cask without an onsite pool has been designed and a prototype was demonstrated in the 1990s, but no such full scale commercial system currently exists. Similarly, full-‐blown procedures for repairing all forms of cask cracking are not yet fully certified” page 4 of report. Other than these items there is not much here other than “pro nuclear industry spin.” Read full report at:https://docs.google.com/document/d/13DurWxC8l3l_VCNEGXz5bg0V4FJteepR7LVuUjPz4Xk/edit?usp=sharing
Related articles
Fukushima Clean-Up Based On Shady Science And Tax Payer Rip-Off
Where will all our nuclear waste go? Disposal is at a critical stage, feds say
State Approves $3.3 Billion Settlement to Close San Onofre
Plan divides billions in closed nuke plant costs
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Aging Nuke Dumps On Fault Lines In Tsunami Hazard Zones = Fukushimas… Any Questions?
PLEASE Turn off a light for Fukushima USA / San Onofre
PLEASE Turn off a light for Fukushima USA / San Onofre
In my opinion, I’m very concerned about the way the SCE/CEP was set up and the direction the leadership of SCE/CEP is now taking us. Instead of taking the neutral position and uncovering and observing the evidence as presented they consistently and obviously put a positive spin on it. Everything is fine and SCE is doing the best job possible.- We must ask ourselves does this repeated positive spin serve the public interest? In my opinion No.
- Is this Community Engagement Panel doing the best job possible to protect the safety of our communities and California? In my opinion we are not.
- Can or will the SCE/CEP make the changes necessary in its charter to become an effective and strong safety advocate for the decommissioning and safe storage of nuclear waste at San Onofre that the people of California deserve until such time as the DOE takes possession of this long-term problem? In my opinion that is still up in the air.
To this point SCE’s attempt to be inclusive and transparent clearly has it’s limits. While asking me and others to bring up the safety concerns of the local citizens, SCE and the SCE/CEP leadership has then glossed over them, seeing these concerns only to be checked off their list one by one. Example; Tim Brown told the CA Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee on Aug 12, 2014 that local concerns have be heard and addressed. Implying some sort of conclusion or satisfaction by all with SCE’s predestined decommissioning plan. Link for Senate hearing http://youtu.be/_q6YulhHpcU?t=1h2m9s starting time for Tim Brown 1:02:10 to 1:17:45. Nothing of course could be further from the truth for many in our local communities. SCE, Inclusiveness is not just a tool to be used on the “Yellow Brick Road to decommissioning”, we are not in the Land of Oz after all. We are however in the backyards of over 8.4 million Californians. SCE and its CEP leadership now have a consistent record of spinning information to fit the SCE agenda. For example, regarding “defense in depth”, the chairman, after being concerned at first at the lack of defense in depth for dry cask long-term storage, concluded after his ‘”careful research”, that citizen activists had not asked about ” defense in depth” for waste storage before and that the nuclear industry and the NRC has done a poor job in defining and getting the word out about “defense in depth” for nuclear waste and dry cask storage. Citing “defense in depth” as cladding on fuel rods, ceramics on the fuel pellets , even the 5/8″ thickness of the canister itself and concrete overpack of the casks as if these were “defense in depth” that were unspoken of in the past. And he was right they were not spoken of in the past as “defense in depth” because they were not considered nor should we consider them today as “defense in depth”. While these have some small measure of defense, they are not in anyway sufficient or adequate for long-term storage of nuclear waste within a heavily populated area like Southern California, and everyone in this nuclear industry knows the calculated risk they are betting on with California’s future.
David Victor’s report Safety of Long-term storage in casks: Issues For San Onofre Dec 9, 2014 does have some items we do agree on: “It is likely that spent fuel will be stored in dry casks at the San Onofre nuclear site for very long periods of time—most likely well beyond the 20-‐year period for initial licensing of the casks.” page 2 of report. “Some elements of what will be needed for “defense in depth” are not yet fully in existence—for example, actual equipment that would allow removal of fuel from a cask without an onsite pool has been designed and a prototype was demonstrated in the 1990s, but no such full scale commercial system currently exists. Similarly, full-‐blown procedures for repairing all forms of cask cracking are not yet fully certified” page 4 of report. Other than these items there is not much here other than “pro nuclear industry spin.” Read full report at:https://docs.google.com/document/d/13DurWxC8l3l_VCNEGXz5bg0V4FJteepR7LVuUjPz4Xk/edit?usp=sharing
Related articles
- Fukushima Clean-Up Based On Shady Science And Tax Payer Rip-Off
- Where will all our nuclear waste go? Disposal is at a critical stage, feds say
- State Approves $3.3 Billion Settlement to Close San Onofre
- Plan divides billions in closed nuke plant costs
- Consumers to pay $3.3 billion in deal to divide costs from closed San Onofre nuclear plant
- Ratepayers file suit over San Onofre nuclear plant
Aging Nuke Dumps On Fault Lines In Tsunami Hazard Zones = Fukushimas… Any Questions?
PLEASE Turn off a light for Fukushima USA / San Onofre
Continue reading PLEASE Turn off a light for Fukushima USA / San Onofre
The Tihange 3 nuclear reactor in Belgium was shut down on November 30 due to a fire. It is now the fourth Belgian nuclear reactor to be out of service, as another plant at Tihange and two at Doel have been shut down due to defects or security concerns….
Continue readingNRC file photo of Entergy’s Palisdes atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shoreline in southwest MichiganA coalition of environmental groups and concerned local residents has intervened against Entergy Nuclear’s License Amendment Application (LAR) to th…
Continue readingThere’s still time to show your appreciation for the work we do at Beyond Nuclear. We know that “Giving Tuesday” is crowded with appeals. We thank you for making Beyond Nuclear one of the choices for your year-end giving. Click here to give.
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