Nuclear power's "managerial disaster" still true 30-years later

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 disaster on a monumental scale… only the blind or the biased can now think that the money has been well spent.” 

Fast forward thirty years, we see the nuclear industry still imploding.  The “blind or biased” now include industry front groups like "Nuclear Matters"  arguing that American taxpayers and ratepayers should still be bailing out the teetering industry at any cost.  Ex-Environmental Protection Agency head Carol Browner and former New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg were recently stumping in Northern Ohio on behalf of industry to keep the deteriorating nuclear power plant there from closing.  However, their effort to spin the continued demise of dirty, dangerous and expensive nuclear power as a critical missed opportunity completely ignores the historic context that Forbes benchmarked decades ago for the business investment community. Nuclear power is fundamentally uneconomical. It has failed in the U.S. market economy and continues to fail worldwide.

Browner and Gregg’s snapshot of the remaining 99 U.S. reactors being down from 104 units needs to be put into an accurate historical context. In fact, the remaining 99 reactors are down from the 133 units originally licensed to commercially operate, which are down from 227 units that applied for construction permits and down again from 253 units ordered by the U.S. industry. This steady retreat is actually down from the 1,000 reactors that President Nixon’s “Project Independence” said would be operational by the year 2000.  

In fact, what Browner, Gregg and their cohorts are suggesting is that the American people invest even more to prop up what Forbes then cautioned investors “is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible.”

The nuclear industry is being priced out of the energy service market and at the same time becoming increasingly dangerous as a result of financial shortcuts and regulatory capture. The good news is that nuclear power is being replaced by rapidly growing solar and wind energy industries, energy efficiency and conservation. No surprise that Nuclear Matters, which is funded by the nuclear giant Exelon Corporation, would have the American consumers put the brakes on a 21^st Century of affordable and renewable energy competition and instead stay the course with a rerun of Forbes’ 1985 warning.

Entergy threatens to simply walk away from VY decommissioning after 60 years!

An 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, the country's second biggest nuclear utility, with one less than a dirty dozen atomic reactors in its fleet (Vermont Yankee -- VY -- was forced into permanent shutdown on Dec. 29th under intense public pressure), is threatening the State of Vermont to simply walk away from the radioactively contaminated site after 60 years, if the decommissioning is not yet completed.

The threat was made by Entergy Vice President Michael Twomey, to State of Vermont legislative committees. Under the Orwellian policy "SAFSTOR," the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) allows nuclear utilities to simply sit on permanently shutdown reactors, without doing radiological clean up or facility dismantlement.

Entergy only has about $666 million in the VY decommissioning fund -- only about half what is projected to be needed. The agreement to not require Entergy to put a single penny into the decommissioning fund, from when it took over VY in 2002 till now, was approved by Gov. Howard Dean's (D-VT) administration, well over a decade ago.

Entergy's plan is to keep the $666 million invested in the stock market, so its value can grow to the needed $1.25 billion. What happens if the money is lost in another stock market crash, Entergy is not saying.

Also, the decommissioning price tag could increase significantly, now that hazardous, radioactive stronium-90 contamination has been detected in groundwater and soil.

More.

Illinois speaks out against Canadian Great Lakes shoreline radioactive waste dump proposal

OPG'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 opposition to the proposal by nuclear utility Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to bury radioactive wastes from 20 atomic reactors across the province at its Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, on the Lake Huron shore in Kincardine, ON (see photo, left). Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump shared the good news in a press release, with the DuPage Co. resolution attached.

On Feb. 6th, the City of Chicago also passed a similar resolution. As reported in the Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump's press release, the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, said: “The Great Lakes hold 84 percent of North America’s fresh water and Chicago’s position as the paramount Great Lakes city makes OPG’s proposed nuclear waste repository a threat to both public health and our environment. As shown by our City Council’s unanimous approval of a resolution opposing the repository, as well as the many voices throughout the United States and Canada, passionate support to protect our Great Lakes spans across North America and cannot be ignored.” More.

Davis-Besse: The world's most dangerous nuke?

Harvey Wasserman explores this question on his "Solartopia, Green Power, and Wellness Hour" radio show of Feb. 10th. Here is his summary of the show:

"THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS NUKE might well be DAVIS-BESSE near Toledo, Ohio. Its Keystone Kop litany of shoddy construction, operator mishap and completely uncaring mis-management is unique---and uniquely dangerous.

But Ohio citizens now have a chance to shut it down by denying it the huge rate hike its owners are asking for this crumbling, decrepit reactor and at least one additional coal burner.

We're joined by local attorney TERRY LODGE and KEVIN KAMPS of BEYOND NUCLEAR, along with TIM JUDSON of the NUCLEAR INFORMATION & RESOURCE SERVICE. They fill us in on the sorry history and perilous present of this insanely faulty reactor.

Join us to hear atomic realities you couldn't make up. Here's how you might help shut this thing:

Write the PUCO at: docketing@puc.state.oh.us

Here is the label folks should use in the subject line of the email, as well as the body of the email message, so PUCO can route the public comments to the correct proceeding:

OPPOSITION COMMENT UNDER CASE # 14-1297-EL-SSO

Major legal victory in Missouri for distributed solar PV!

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 Environment, have just won a major legal victory before the State of Missouri Supreme Court.

The ruling blocks an electric utility from wiggling out of providing rebates to customers who install solar photo-voltaic (PV) panels on their homes, as required by a 2008 state-wide Missouri voter referendum on minimum renewable portfolio standards. The utility, Empire District Electric Co., lobbied for and won the exemption from the State of Missouri legislature. But the State Supreme Court ruled the exemption was an illegal end run around the popular will of "Show Me State" voters, who passed the initiative by a 2 to 1 margin. More.