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Toshiba and CB&I have agreed to terminate a number of
agreements originally signed between Shaw Group and Toshiba related to
construction of two Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs) at the South
Texas Project (STP). Since the agreements were signed in 2010, Shaw was
acquired by CB&I, which later sold the reactor construction
business to Westinghouse, itself a Toshiba company.
Here's the link to his posting "Internal Exposure Concealed: The True State of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident"...http://apjjf.org/2016/10/Yagasaki.html
On
January 29, 2016, an international group of scientists,
conservationists and philanthropists urged California's leaders and
Pacific Gas & Electric to do all in their power to Save Diablo
Canyon Power Plant so it can provide clean electricity for decades to
come.
Signers include former Whole Earth Catalogue Founder,
Stewart Brand; NASA climate scientist James Hansen; Santa Clara
University conservation biologist Michelle Marvier; 1976 Nobel Prize
winner Burton Richter; President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical
Center; Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Richard Rhodes; University of
Wisconsin Nelson Center for the Environment Director, Paul Robbins.
January 29, 2016
The Honorable Governor Jerry Brown
The Honorable Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Chairperson, California Lands Commission
Mr. Michael Picker, Chairperson, California Public Utilities Commission
Mr. Robert Weisenmiller, Chairperson, California Energy Commission
Ms. Mary Nichols, Chairperson, California Air Resources Board
Ms. Effie Turnbull-Sanders, Chairperson, California Coastal Commission
Mr. Anthony Early, CEO Pacific Gas & Electric
Dear
Governor Brown, Lt. Gov. Newsom, Chairperson Picker, Chairperson
Weisenmiller, Chairperson Turnbull-Sanders, Chairperson Nichols, and Mr.
Early,
We are writing as scientists, conservationists, and
philanthropists to urge you to do everything in your powers to ensure
that California’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon Power Plant,
is relicensed.
In particular, we urge you to work together to
expedite state regulatory approvals and eliminate redundant regulatory
processes so that PG&E can request a renewal of Diablo Canyon’s
operating license from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We
urge you not to allow unrelated conflicts, politics, ideology or
irrational fears to get in the way.
Diablo Canyon provided 22
percent of all the clean energy electricity generated in California in
2014. If closed, it will likely be replaced by natural gas and
California’s carbon emissions will increase the equivalent of adding
nearly two million cars to the road.
Closing Diablo Canyon would
make it far harder to meet the state’s climate goals. Already, the
percentage of electricity California generates from clean energy
declined from 53 percent in 2011 to 38 percent in 2014. Without Diablo,
California’s clean electricity generation would decline to 26 percent
while electricity from natural gas would rise to 70 percent.
Declining
electricity from clean energy sources, including hydro-electric dams,
underscores the importance of nuclear, the only source of zero carbon
power that is reliable no matter the weather or climate. In 2014, Diablo
Canyon — a single power plant — produced 24 percent more electricity
than all of California’s wind, and 33 percent more electricity than all
of California’s solar.
Diablo Canyon produces twice as much power as all of California’s solar panels, and 40 times more than its largest solar farm.
Diablo
Canyon has been repeatedly inspected, upgraded, certified, and
re-certified as safe by the independent federal Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) for three decades. Independent nuclear safety experts
view Diablo Canyon as one of the best-run nuclear power plants in the
world, and believe it is highly likely NRC would renew Diablo Canyon’s
license to operate from 2025 to 2045.
While it is within the
purview of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to assess
the safety of Diablo Canyon, the CPUC has neither the technical
expertise nor the political independence of the NRC. We encourage CPUC
to limit its oversight to the minimum that fulfills its legitimate
obligations in this area.
There is no reason why Diablo Canyon
should require another environmental impact report (EIR), as Lt. Gov.
Gavin Newsom, who acts as chairman of the State Lands Commission, says
he will request. California EIRs are warranted when new developments are
under consideration or when an existing development wishes to make
significant operational or design changes. Neither of those conditions
has been met.
To protect the integrity of the EIR process, and not
allow EIRs to be used in a selective or arbitrary way, we encourage the
Lands Commission to reject the request for an EIR.
State
environmental regulations of Diablo Canyon’s once-through-cooling should
pose no obstacle to re-licensing as there are various low-cost
mitigation options available to PG&E. Staff and consultants for the
California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) and PG&E have
already identified options, such as the creation of an artificial reef
and land conservation, as ways PG&E can mitigate its impact at a
cost that would allow the plant to remain profitable.
Keeping
Diablo Canyon open will result in greater protection for California’s
spectacular natural environment, while closing it would reduce it.
Today, the rocky intertidal area around Diablo Canyon is one of the most
pristine in San Luis Obispo County owing to its protection from public
use. The coastal exclusion zone around Diablo Canyon has thus served to
protect 12 miles of valuable marine habitat and wildlife.
If
Diablo goes away, so too will the possibility of land conservation
purchased by PG&E for mitigation. And because Diablo Canyon’s land
footprint is so small, it will very likely be replaced by electricity
from power plants, whether fossil or renewable, whose footprint is much
larger.
For its part, we encourage PG&E to publicly commit to
seek the re-licensing of Diablo Canyon, and to agree to reasonable
regulations, regulatory questioning and process, and to commit to invest
in reasonable mitigation measures.
Diablo Canyon helps PG&E
meet its commitment to providing clean, inexpensive and reliable
electricity to Californians, as well as its fiduciary duty to its
shareholders. Diablo Canyon is a reliable and profitable source of clean
energy. While natural gas prices are at historic lows, they are
unlikely to stay low. And moving from nuclear to natural gas would
undermine PG&E’s commitment to clean energy.
We thank you all
for your commitment to clean energy, conservation, and climate action,
and hope you will see how protecting Diablo Canyon is in the best
interests of California’s environment, economy and people, as well as
our shared global climate.
We hope you will do all in your power to work with each other to expedite the regulatory and renewal process.
Sincerely,
Climate and Conservation Scientists
Andrew Balmford, Professor of Conservation Science, University of Cambridge
Mark S. Boyce, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta
Barry Brook, Professor and Chair of Environmental Sustainability, University of Tasmania
Luigi Guido, Professor at Department of Biology and Biotechnologies Università di Roma Sapienza Viale Università 32, Roma, Italy
F
Stuart Chapin III, Professor Emeritus of Ecology, Department of Biology
and Wildlife, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska,
Fairbanks
Chris Dickman, conservation scientist, University of Sydney
David Dudgeon, Chair and Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, University of Hong Kong, China
Erle Ellis, Professor, Geography & Environmental Systems University of Maryland
Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
James Hansen, Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions Program, Columbia University, Earth Institute, Columbia University
Chris Johnson, Professor of Wildlife Conservation, University of Tasmania
David
W. Keith, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics for the Paulson
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Public
Policy, Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University.
Lian Pin Koh, Chair of Applied Ecology and Conservation, Director, Unmanned Research Aircraft Facility (www.uraf.org) Australian Research Council Future Fellow II, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide
Charles J. Krebs, Emeritus Professor, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia
William
F. Laurance, PhD, FAA, FAAAS, FRSQ; Distinguished Research Professor
& Australian Laureate; Prince Bernhard Chair in International Nature
Conservation; Director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and
Sustainability Science
David W. Lea, Professor, Earth Science, University of California
Michelle Marvier, Professor, Environmental Studies and Sciences, Santa Clara University
Joe Mascaro, Program Manager for Impact Initiatives, Planet Labs
Robert May, Oxford OM AC Kt FRS, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
Richard Muller, Professor of Physics, University of California, Berkeley; Co-Founder and Scientific Director, Berkeley Earth
Robin Naidoo, Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Reed Noss, Provost's Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Biology, University of Central Florida
Peter H. Raven, President Emeritus, Missouri Botanical Garden. Winner of the National Medal of Science, 2001
Burton Richter, Nobel Prize Winner, Physics, 1976
Paul Robbins, author, Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction; Director, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin
Cagan
H. Sekercioglu, professor of conservation ecology, Department of
Biology, University of Utah; former senior scientist at the Stanford
University Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Utah.
Tom Wigley, Climate and Energy Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
Stephen
E. Williams, Centre for Tropical Biodiversity & Climate Change,
College of Marine & Environmental Sciences, James Cook University,
Australia Conservationists and Philanthropists
Daniel Aegerter, Chairman, Armada Investment
Tom Blees, Executive Director, The Science Council
Stewart Brand, founder, Whole Earth Catalogue
Jeremy Carl, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
John Crary, Crary Family Foundation
Gwyneth Cravens, author, Power to Change the World
David Douglas, Partner, Applied Invention
Christopher Foreman, author, The Promise & Peril of Environmental Justice, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland
Valerie Gardner, Founder, Tiny Blue Dot; Chair, Atherton Environmental Programs Committee
William Gloeve, Californians for Green Nuclear Power
Kirsty Gogan, Executive Director, Energy for Humanity
Garrett Gruener, Managing Director, Gruener Ventures
Steve Hayward, Professor, Pepperdine University Graduate School of Public Policy
Ben Heard, President, Decarbonise South Australia
Steve Kirsch, CEO, Token
Joseph
B. Lassiter, Senior Fellow, Senator John Heinz Professor of Management,
Practice in Environmental Management, Harvard Business School
Martin Lewis, Department of History, Stanford University
Jessica Lovering, Director of Policy, Breakthrough Institute
Max Luke, MS Candidate, Technology & Policy, MIT, Research Associate, Utility of the Future Project, MIT Energy Initiative
Mark Lynas, author, The God Species
Lindsay Meisel, Breakthrough Generation, 2008
Norris McDonald, President, Center for Environment, Commerce & Energy
Elizabeth Muller, Elizabeth Muller, Founder and Executive Director, Berkeley Earth
Carl Page, President, Anthropocene Institute
Steven Pinker, Harvard University, Better Angels of Our Nature
Rachel Pritzker, Pritzker Innovation Fund
Roland Pritzker, Pritzker Innovation Fund
Steve
Rayner, James Martin Professor of Science & Civilization, Director,
Institute for Science, Innovation & Society, Professorial Fellow,
Keble College, University of Oxford
Ray Rothrock, Venture Capitalist, Partner Emeritus, Venrock
Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Peter Schwartz, author, Art of the Long View
Robert Stone, co-founder, Energy for Humanity
Michael Shellenberger, co-author, Break Through, Time Magazine Hero of the Environment
Sam Thernstrom, Executive Director, Energy Innovation Reform Project
Stephen Tindale, Executive Director, Alvin Weinberg Foundation
Barrett Walker, Trustee, Alex C. Walker Foundation CC: Pacific Gas and Electric Board of Directors Lewis Chew, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Dolby Laboratories, Inc. Fred J. Fowler, Retired Chairman of the Board of, Spectra Energy Partners, LP Richard C. Kelly, Retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Xcel Energy Inc. Richard A. Meserve, President Emeritus, Carnegie Institution of Washington Rosendo (Ro) G. Parra, Retired Senior Vice President of Dell Inc. Anne Shen Smith, Retired Chairman and, Chief Executive Officer of Southern California Gas Company Barry Lawson Williams President of Williams Pacific Ventures, Inc. Barbara L. Rambo, Chief Executive Officer of Taconic Management Services Forrest E. Miller, Retired Group Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Development of AT&T Inc. Roger H. Kimmel, Vice Chairman of Rothschild Inc. Maryellen C. Herringer , Retired Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of APL Limited
Recently, Environmental Progress (EP) published numbers
showing that clean energy as a percentage of global electricity has
been in decline for two decades. This is not just because fossil fuels
are expanding more rapidly than clean energy, but also because the
amount of electricity the world generates from nuclear energy has been
on the decline. While solar and wind have grown significantly, they have
not grown enough to make up for lost nuclear.
Now, in a new analysis,
EP finds that unless something changes, things are about to get much
worse. In the US, 13 nuclear plants are at high-risk of closure within
the next 24 months, and half of all U.S. plants are at risk of premature
closure over the next decade and a half. If that happens, the resulting
higher carbon emissions will wipe out 43 percent of the EPA’s planned
Clean Power Plan reductions.
Things
are changing rapidly around the world. Within the European Union,
nuclear plummeted from 49 to 27 percent of electricity between 2011 and
2014, and will decline another 20 percent in coming years. Germany’s
carbon emissions went up last year and yet it still intends to eliminate
its nuclear fleet. Sweden is attempting to tax its nuclear plants out
of the market, and Swiss voters may decide this fall to follow Germany
and Sweden.
Meanwhile, Japan may open as few as one-third of the nuclear plants it
closed after 2011 Fukushima accident, even as its air pollution from
burning fossil fuels has skyrocketed.
The good news is that it’s not too late to prevent the loss of these
valuable sources of clean energy. While nuclear energy is feared by many
in the West, there is growing recognition by scientists and
environmentalists that nuclear energy is essential to reducing future
warming — and that many of the things many of us once believed about
nuclear are either not true or greatly exaggerated.
Last December I left Breakthrough Institute, the think tank I co-founded
in 2003, so I could dedicate myself full-time to reversing the decline
of clean energy. Over the last four and half months I have been
variously alarmed and inspired. I was alarmed to discover that the
situation facing nuclear was much worse than I had realized. I was
inspired to find such a large and growing number of people who were as
concerned about the problem as I was, and equally committed to fixing
it.
And so, with this email, I am happy to formally launch Environmental Progress,
a new environmental research & policy organization whose mission is
to build a movement of citizens, scientists and conservationists
advocating ethical and practical energy solutions for people and nature.
Our
highest immediate priority is to stop the hemorrhaging of nuclear
plants, and build new ones. Along with dozens of prominent climate and
conservation scientists, we are sending open letters to President Barack
Obama, national environmental leaders, and legislators in Illinois, and
a new web site that describes our vision, introduces our people, and
offers a graphics-heavy explanation of the clean energy crisis.
This is a crucial week for nuclear. Later this week I will give
testimony to Illinois legislators about high environmental impacts of
closing, and the low economic cost to saving, nuclear plants in that
state. And I will be speaking at a joint White House – Department of
Energy event in Washington, D.C. on the crisis facing America’s largest
source of clean energy.
The main obstacle to saving Illinois’s largest source of clean energy —
and preventing emissions from sky-rocketing — is, sadly, its most
influential environmental organization, the Environmental Law and Policy
Center (ELPC). ELPC is aggressively lobbying to replace Illinois
nuclear plants with natural gas while, rather audaciously, taking
funding from natural gas and other energy companies.
The situation in California is almost as dire. State officials could
force the closure of our last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon, which
provides one-quarter of our clean power, as early as June 28.
As in Illinois, officials with environmental groups, including Friends
of the Earth and Sierra Club, are lobbying publicly and
behind-the-scenes to close the plant, which would be replaced by natural
gas, and increase carbon emissions the equivalent of adding one and a
half million cars to the road.
Environmental
Progress is honored to have a remarkable group of scientists and
economists serve on EP’s Advisory Board. The group includes many of the
scientists I’ve worked with over the last few months to urge
policymakers to protect nuclear power by treating it fairly: James
Hansen, the climate scientist; Burt Richter, Stanford nuclear expert and
1976 Nobel Prize winner; Peter Raven, conservation giant and former
head of Missouri Botanical Garden; three ecologists, Stewart Brand,
Michelle Marvier and Barry Brook, who advocate environmental solutions
that also benefit the poor; and Joe Lassiter, Harvard Business School
professor and nuclear policy expert.
Over the last two years I have travelled extensively seeking to
understand environmental problems and solutions at the ground level in
Rwanda, Uganda, the Congo, Indonesia, China, Japan and most recently
India. During that time I interviewed everyone from subsistence farmers
struggling to survive to senior government officials — who offer a very
different perspective than industry and government press releases — and
made a lot of friends from those places along the way.
That group includes Ning Li, the nuclear engineer who brought Bill Gates
new advanced nuclear company to China; Junji Cao, one of China’s
leading air pollution experts; Kun Chen, a senior engineer building
China’s advanced thorium molten salt reactor; four brilliant Indian
economists, Samir Saran, Vijaya Ramachandran, Joyashree Roy and Rathin
Roy; John Asafu-Adjaye, a Ghanian economists focused on energy and the
environment in sub-Sahran Africa; Woody Epstein, a nuclear expert living
in Japan; and Todd Moss, a senior development economist at the Center
for Global Development.
There
is no shortage of policy solutions to save nuclear plants — rather,
there is a shortage of political will. The obvious reality is that,
around the world, anti-nuclear organizations are undermining
environmental progress. Reversing the decline of clean energy and
liberating all humans from wood fuel use will require more than energy
analyses like the one we release today. What's needed is a new
environmental movement. My hope is that Environmental Progress will
contribute significantly to creating one.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a
hearing on Tuesday, May 17 at 10 a.m. to examine the status of advanced
nuclear technologies.
The hearing will be webcast live on the committee’s website, and an
archived video will be available shortly after the hearing is complete.
Witness testimony will be available on the website at the start of the
hearing.
All remaining Minamisoma evacuation orders will be lifted in July…
Fukushima’s child thyroid cancer rate is probably due to over-diagnosis…
More than half of the forests in re-populated communities are below the
national decontamination goal… Tepco agrees to a decommissioning lull
during the Group of Seven summit… Tokyo approves safety upgrades for two
research reactors.
Letters: At Hiroshima, Obama should lower the nuclear threat Read
more at
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160516_Letters__At_Hiroshima__Obama_should_lower_the_nuclear_threat.html#bJHWtzvwOysS8QWH.99
Los Alamos Is Latest EM Field Office to Transition to Energy.Gov Website
A screenshot of the new EM Los Alamos Field Office website.
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. – The EM Los Alamos Field Office today introduced a new user-friendly website
with a sleek, simple design that delivers timely information about the
legacy cleanup activities underway at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory.
Previously, EM’s Los Alamos cleanup efforts were featured on the laboratory’s website.
Now, the EM field office, just over a year old, has launched its own
website with the goal of increasing transparency by providing more
resources that stakeholders, residents, media, and other members of the
public can click to with ease.
The website offers an array of information. The field office’s
services — legacy waste remediation and disposition, soil and
groundwater remediation, and demolition, deactivation, and material
disposition — are described in comprehensive accounts in separate
sections.
Other pages on the site focus on the office's public participation
programs and mission to safely clean up and reduce risks to the public,
workers, and the environment associated with legacy material,
facilities, and waste sites at the laboratory. Fact sheets, newsletters,
press releases, and information on safety, budget and performance, and
the laboratory’s history can be easily viewed and downloaded.
Increased capabilities allow access to the website through mobile
platforms and multiple Web browsers, enabling users to quickly search
relevant content and move through the website’s organized sections.
“We’re excited to have an online platform dedicated to our new field
office. The EM Los Alamos Field Office website provides an up-to-date
picture of our legacy waste cleanup mission at Los Alamos National
Laboratory — the work we’ve done, what we’re focused on now and what we
have planned for the future. We’re looking forward to sharing our
progress with our stakeholders and keeping them informed with regular
updates,” EM Los Alamos Field Office Manager Doug Hintze said.
Transitioning numerous office and field site websites to a single
platform is expected to help DOE avoid $10 million in costs annually
while improving and integrating the Department's communications
infrastructure.
The head of a Nebraska
utility recommended shutting down the nation's smallest nuclear power
plant by the end of the year, sayin