"Thank you, Tallahassee, for making us pay so much for nothing"

Tampa Bay Times Business Columnist, Robert Trigaux, has let Florida state legislators and the Public Service Commission have it "for passing a law forcing Duke Energy customers to pay up to $1.5 billion in higher rates for a long proposed nuclear power plant in Levy County that will not be built...And no, Florida customers, you're not getting any of that money back."

Trigaux continues "The real reason the witless sheep in Tally let this happen is that power companies wanted to shift both the cost and the risk of building a nuclear plant on to its customers and off of its shareholders...Nowhere in the country do you see big Wall Street firms or banks lending billions of dollars to electric utilities for nuclear plants. The risk is too high. The recent history of building nuclear plants is plagued with fantastic delays and enormous cost overruns."

His column is an excellent exposé on "advance fee recovery" or CWIP -- Construction Work in Progress -- which is illegal in most states. In Indiana in the 1980s, for example, Citizen Action Coalition successfully sued the Hoosier State's would-be nuclear utilities for making illegal CWIP charges on ratepayers' electricity bills. The court ruled the utilities had to return hundreds of millions of dollars to ratepayers. Two nuclear power plants, at Bailey and Marble Hill, were stopped dead in their tracks.

In 1976, Kay Drey -- now a Beyond Nuclear board member -- helped lead a statewide referendum making CWIP illegal in Missouri, a law, enacted through grassroots democracy at its best, that still stands. In Iowa, Mike Carberry, of Green State Solutions and Friends of the Earth, has helped lead an environmental/ratepayer coalition which has successfully fended off nuclear lobbyists at the state capital for several years, blocking legalization of nuclear CWIP.

But CWIP has been made legal in several southeastern states, thanks to nuclear industry lobbyists' sway over state legislators and governors' mansions there. Floridians have now learned the hard way why nuclear CWIP is a really bad idea. But Georgians and South Carolinians are beginning to learn the same hard lesson. Even Georgia's Republican governor has suggested that Southern Co. shareholders should eat some of the major, all-too-predictible cost escalations at Vogtle 3 & 4; South Carolinians have seen a half-dozen rate increases in just the past few years, all going towards keeping up with Summer 2 & 3's skyrocketing pricetag.

Speaking out against foreign ownership of U.S. atomic reactors

Recently elected to the U.S. Senate, Ed Markey (D-MA) has watchdogged the nuclear industry for four decades while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. Today, he has spokean out against NRC weakening its rules on foreign ownership of U.S. atomic reactors.For several long years, an environmental coalition comprised of NIRS, Beyond Nuclear, Public Citizen, and Southern Maryland CARES co-intervened against the proposed new atomic reactor at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay, and won. The death blow in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing proceeding was dealt by a contention against foreign ownership of U.S. atomic reactors, argued pro se by NIRS executive director Michael Mariotte. Baltimore-based Constellation Energy abandoned the project, leaving French government-owned Electricite de France (EDF) holding the bag with 100% ownership stakes, a clear violation of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Reading the writing on the walls, no other U.S. nuclear utility stepped forward to fill the void. The project was doomed, and ultimately defeated.

As NIRS states in its press release below, "Earlier this week, EDF announced that it is permanently leaving the U.S. nuclear power market and will no longer attempt to build new reactors here."

Now NRC is trying to loosen its rules prohibiting foreign ownership of U.S. reactors. NIRS put out the following message:

"[T]oday NIRS submitted lengthy comments to the NRC--supported by 65 other groups [including Beyond Nuclear] -- urging the strengthening of the rules implementing the Atomic Energy Act's ban on foreign ownership, control or domination. The legislative history of the Act shows that Congress intended that no more than about 25% of a reactor can be foreign-owned, but the NRC has moved far away from that over the years. It's time that the agency do what Congress intended and actively prevent foreign control of U.S. nuclear reactors. Here is a press release about the comments; here are the comments themselves (pdf); and here are comments submitted today by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) [photo, above left] (also pdf).

The NRC is planning a webinar on the issue on August 21. Here is the information; contact the NRC if you'd like to speak during this meeting."

NRA questions efficacy of TEPCO's plan to block radioactive water from leaking into ocean with below-ground walls

As reported by the Asahi Shimbun, the Japanese national government's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) is doubtful that Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) plan to construct underground walls will succeed in blocking the flow of radioactively contaminated water into the ocean at the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. NRA is instead suggesting the radioactively contaminated groundwater be pumped out. But TEPCO is already scrambling to store nearly 300,000 tons of radioactively contaminated water, an amount that grows by 800 tons per day.

Small number of nuclear evacuees choose to return to life in former "No Entry" zone

As reported by the Asahi Shimbun:

'TAMURA, Fukushima Prefecture—When the sun set on Aug. 1, Hisao Watanabe sat under the fluorescent lights of his living room in the Miyakoji district here and could not contain his joy.

“I don’t need to go back tonight,” said the 78-year-old farmer, who had grown accustomed to returning to a rental apartment in Tamura’s Funehiki-machi district.

Watanabe joined the government’s first long-stay program for nuclear disaster evacuees that started Aug. 1 in Miyakoji.

The district, which lies partly within a 20-kilometer radius of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, was designated a no-entry zone after the nuclear accident unfolded in March 2011. But it was reorganized as a “zone preparing for the evacuation order to be lifted” in April 2012.

The government said radioactive decontamination work in the area was completed in June, and that residents could return home for extended stays from August through October.

The returning residents must reapply for the long-stay program every month, and they can remain at their homes for a maximum of three months. The government is renting out dosimeters for residents who return, and it plans to lift the evacuation order as early as in November after consultations with the Tamura city government.

But with Tokyo Electric Power Co. still struggling with radioactive water leaks and other problems at the Fukushima plant, not everyone from Miyakoji is eager to return home.

Among the 380 residents of 121 households in the district, 112 residents of 28 households applied for long-term stays by July 31. Of them, 82 residents of 22 households returned to their homes on Aug. 1...".

"Radioactivity levels higher in water deeper underground at Fukushima plant"

As reported by the Asahi Shimbun: 

"Radioactive cesium levels were much higher in water deep underground at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant than in samples taken closer to the surface, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said on Aug. 1.

TEPCO measured the radioactivity of water samples taken from the vertical shafts of two concrete trenches for pipes each connected to the turbine buildings of the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.

The samples were collected on July 31 at a depth of 1 meter, 7 meters and 13 meters on the seaward side of the plant.

Cesium-134 levels of 300 million becquerels and cesium-137 readings of 650 million becquerels per liter were found in water samples from a depth of 13 meters in the trench for the No. 2 reactor turbine building, according to TEPCO.

Levels of radioactive materials that emit beta rays, including strontium, were 520 million becquerels at the same site, TEPCO said.

In the trench for the No. 3 reactor turbine building, cesium levels of 39 million becquerels were found in water at a depth of 1 meter...".