Hot News and Actions
August 14, 2008: Help Stop Nuclear Waste from Getting Out of Control - On Purpose
August 13, 2008: Last Chance to Tell Maryland PSC What You Think About Calvert Cliffs 3—Tuesday, August 19—be There!
July 2008: Find out how the Presidential candidates stack up on energy issues. A comparison chart from Grist.
July 24, 2008: FoE, NC WARN Urge NC and SC Commissions to Revoke Duke Nuclear Cost Approvals Due to Design Problems, Delays.  Press release with links to filings.
July 16, 2008: Testimony of Richard Webster, Legal Director for Eastern Environmental Law Center, before Senate Environment Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety. The testimony argues that the NRC's relicensing process is deficient and there are severe weaknesses in the oversight of reactor safety.
August 12 public meeting in Baltimore sponsored by Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition: let your voice be heard to Maryland Public Service Commission on the proposed new reactor at Calvert Cliffs. First info here.
July 17 , 2008: Powering Maryland’s Future, a new report from Maryland PIRG, shows that the proposed Calvert Cliffs-3 reactor would be too slow and too expensive to meet Maryland’s electricity needs, which can be generated more safely, cleanly, faster and cheaper from renewable energy sources and an aggressive energy efficiency program. Every state should have a report like this one!
July 1, 2008: Mothers for Peace and NRC face off at rare Commissioners’ hearing on dry casks and threat of terrorism.
June 30, 2008: The Department of Energy has issued a solicitation for applications for its loan guarantee program authorized by Congress in late 2007. This solicitation is for $30.5 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees, and includes $18.5 billion for new atomic reactors, $2 billion for front-end nuclear fuel cycle facilities (uranium enrichment plant), and $10 billion for renewable energy, energy efficiency and transmission projects. You can read the reactor solicitation here; the fuel cycle solicitation here; and the renewables/efficiency/transmission solicitation here.
June 6, 2008: Update on Krsko reactor accident in Slovenia, from Mycle Schneider Consulting.
May 15, 2008: Should the U.S. be a dump for foreign nuclear waste? Factsheet from HEAL Utah on EnergySolutions’ proposed import of 20,000 tons of radioactive waste from Italy.
April 11, 2008: EIS scoping comments from Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition on proposed Calvert Cliffs-3 reactor.
Chart submitted by Florida Power and Light to the Florida Public Service Commission showing cost estimates for two new reactors at Turkey Point ranging from $12.1 Billion to $24.3 Billion.
April 8, 2008: 185 Organizations/Activists Urge US Senate to Extend Sustainable Energy Tax Credits. Sustainable Energy Network Press Release.
March 27, 2008: Stop the Import of Radioactive Waste! Support HR 5632—Call Your Representative Now. NIRS Alert.
| | Reports, Papers and Info You Can Use
July 2008: Testimony of David Schlissel, Synapse Energy Economics, before the Maryland Public Service Commission, on the extraordinarily high cost estimates for new nuclear reactors. While this was prepared for hearings on the proposed Calvert Cliffs EPR, most of this testimony will be useful to anyone looking at nuclear power economics for any proposed reactor.
July 2008: New study (which reviews 103 previous studies and finds nearly all lacking) concludes that nuclear power is not carbon-free, and its carbon emissions, while far lower than all fossil fuels, are higher than renewable sources of energy. Published in Energy Policy, by Benjamin Sovacool, University of Singapore & Virginia Tech.
May 27, 2008: An important new article from Rocky Mountain Institute: The Nuclear Illusion by Amory Lovins and Imran Sheikh. “Nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options.” Read this to understand the reality of energy in the 21st century, and make sure your elected representatives at every level of government read it too.
June 2008:
New Greenpeace International factsheet on numerous problems with Areva’s European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), which is being proposed for Calvert Cliffs, MD and other sites in the U.S.
June 2008:
New Greenpeace International factsheet on construction problems with Areva’s EPR at Flamenville, France.
June 2008: Four-page summary of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research’s groundbreaking Carbon-Free, Nuclear-Free book, with main recommendations.
May 14, 2008: A major new report on the French reprocessing program from the International Panel on Fissile Materials finds that it does not reduce volume of radioactive waste and would have to be half its current cost to be economically competitive with storage of the waste, thus undercutting the Bush administration’s major arguments for reprocessing.
Blowing the Whistle on Nuclear Safety Lapses: Federal Whistleblower Protections Act At A Glance, article by attorney David Marshall at the law firm of Katz, Marshall & Banks, LLP, April 2008. Potential whistleblowers also may want to review NIRS brochure on whistleblower protection here.
April 3, 2008: Nuclear Power Plant Electricity: A Simple Costing Manual. This is a basic primer from energy consultant Philip D. Lusk that shows how to calculate the kilowatt/hour cost of electricity from a new nuclear reactor. Under the model’s fairly universal assumptions, the cost of electricity from a standard new reactor will be about 19.75 cents per kw/h. Most renewable and efficiency projects would be well below this number, and on an economic basis alone should be implemented first.
March 2008: Got Solar! NIRS Factsheet
March 31, 2008: New report slams President Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) program, finding—among other problems--that no economic cost-benefit analysis has been done, the technologies proposed do not exist, and the program would be too slow and expensive to address climate change. Report is from Institute for Policy Studies, Friends of the Earth, Government Accountability Project and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
March 21, 2008: Testimony of former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford to South Carolina PSC on the economics of Duke Power’s proposed Lee reactors, nuclear power and climate and more. Very useful!
Power Point presentation on
Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, by Dr. Arjun Makhijani of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Updated periodically. February 2008.
February 21, 2008: New report from World Wind Energy Association: 19.7 Gigawatts of wind power—the equivalent of 15-20 nuclear reactors—was added in 2007. Wind now generates more than 1% of worldwide electricity, and continues to be the world’s fastest growing source of power.
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