Join the March for a Clean Energy Revolution, Philadelphia, PA, July 24th!

Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) has issued an action alert, calling for folks to join the March for a Clean Energy Revolution in Philadelphia, PA on Sunday, July 24th, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. See the beginning of the NIRS action alert, below, and follow the link to see full action alert, including a tribute to NIRS former long-time executive director, and president, Michael Mariotte, who died on May 16th, after a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer. (Also, see Beyond Nuclear's own tributes to Michael Mariotte, posted at our website.)

Beyond Nuclear has joined in the NIRS-initiated planning for the March for a Clean Energy Revolution, and will take part on July 24th. Beyond Nuclear encourages everyone who can make it, to join in the Carbon-Free, Nuclear-Free contingent in Philadelphia on July 24th, as well as at the teach-ins, meetings, gatherings, etc., the day before. If you can't make it, please spread the word widely to those who can.

June 29, 2016

Dear Friends,

We invite you to join us for the next historic safe energy mobilization--the March for a Clean Energy Revolution, July 24 in Philadelphia. You can find more details on the march [as well as a tribute to the life and work of Michael Mariotte, at this link to the complete NIRS action alert.]

Solar-energized Juno to arrive at Jupiter on Independence Day

NASA Juno Spacecraft graphic, showing the three large solar panels providing it power, with Jupiter pictured in the backgroundInvestigative journalist Karl Grossman has been watch-dogging nukes in space since the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986.

As Grossman relates in his latest article, "Solar-energized Juno to arrive at Jupiter on Independence Day":

I broke the story 30 years ago about how the next mission of NASA’s ill-fated Challenger shuttle was to involve lofting a plutonium-powered space probe and I have been reporting in articles, books and on television on the nuclear-in-space issue ever since.

Grossman conveys the breakthrough Juno's well timed arrival at Jupiter (July 4th -- America's Independence Day) represents, showing that solar can power not just satellites orbiting Earth, and Mars missions, but also deep space missions. More.

Entergy FitzPatrick causes oil spill into Great Lakes

U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary aerial photo of oil sheen on Lake Ontario caused by Entergy Nuclear's FitzPatrick atomic reactor, visible in backgroundNuclear power is not "emissions-free," as its proponents so often claim. In fact, sometimes it causes oil spills into fresh drinking water supplies...

As reported by the Democrat & Chronicle, Entergy Nuclear's FitzPatrick atomic reactor on the Lake Ontario shoreline in upstate New York just released up to 30 gallons of oil into that drinking water supply, utilized by many millions of people downstream in two countries.

The oil spill was not detected nor announced at first by Entergy, or the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), but rather by a U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary air crew, who spotted the visible sheen on Lake Ontario's surface waters (see photo, left). But this is just the latest of many oil spills into fresh surface waters caused by Entergy Nuclear, not to mention other nuclear utilities. More.

Exelon to close three Illinois nukes in 2017 and 2018: Quad Cities 1 &2 and Clinton

The Chicago-based nuclear giant, Exelon Generation Corporpation, formally notified the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that it will permanently close its Quad Cities Units 1 & 2 and Clinton nuclear generating stations in Illinois.  The two Fukushima-style reactors at Quad Cities, both GE Mark I boiling water reactors will close in 2018 and Clinton, a GE Mark III boiling water reactor will permanently close in 2017.

The Exelon formal filing to the NRC is just the latest in a trend of reactor closure announcements across the country at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska by the end of 2016, Diablo Canyon Units 1 & 2 by 2025 in California. This latest trend of closure announcements follows on the 2013 shutdowns at Crystal River 3 (Florida), San Onofre 2 & 3 (California), and Kewanee (Wisconsin). Vermont Yankee (Vermont) permanently closed in 2014. Additional closure announces have been submitted to the NRC for Fitzpatrick (NY) in 2017 and the Pilgrim (Massachusetts) and Oyster Creek (New Jersey) nuclear power stations in 2019.  More reactor units, like Pennsylvania’s infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power station, are still pending formal announcements to the NRC.

Nuclear power is rapidly becoming redundant where conventional utility-scale renewable energy generation and efficiency cost less. Nuclear power’s full-on-all-the-time operating mode is recognized as inflexible to these increasing competitive electricity markets. Operating costs and major repairs for an aging and inherently dangerous nuclear technology have simply become unaffordable at many reactors. The added cost of even more safety-related nuclear accident retrofits is one more straw on the industry’s bowed economic back. Add to the steadily rising cost of nuclear power, energy efficiency is not only its cheapest competitor it is the quickest to deploy to customers at residential, commercial and industrial levels. As a result, electricity demand in the United States has continued to drop in five of the past eight years due to advances in energy efficiency technology. 

Diablo Canyon to close rather than extend operating license, sooner is necessarily better

In a historic agreement announced June 21, 2016 between environmental groups led by Friends of the Earth, labor unions and the California electric utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PGE), the Diablo Canyon nuclear generating station in San Luis Obispo will permanently shutdown in 2025 rather than seek a twenty-year license extension. By the same agreement, the power from the nuclear generator will be replaced with safe, clean, renewable energy generation, advanced electricity storage systems, energy efficiency and conservation.  Diablo Canyon is the latest in a series of reactor closure announcements where the tanking economics of atomic-generated power simply don’t add up. Nuclear corporations are finding it more profitable to shutter reactors than operate them and replace them with increasingly more affordable solar and wind power.  As California's last remaining operating reactor, Diablo Canyon's closure will mean that the seventh largest economy in the world will be nuclear free.  At the same time, the loss of the profit motive coupled with utility reticence to invest in mounting safety and environmental issues make nuclear power even more dangerous. This prompts the call to accelerate the shutdown schedule.

The Diablo Canyon reactors were designed in the 1960s, built in the 1970s and originally only looked at the earthquake siting risks coming from the distant San Andreas fault line 45-miles away and one other “insignificant” fault line. Since then, that threaten the reactors’ safe shutdown have emerged around the two-units location from the nearby Hosgri, San Luis Bay, Los Oso and the Shoreline fault lines that run as close as one mile away.  Just such unanalyzed and unacceptable risks versus the enormity of potentially devastating consequences are being recognized in post-Fukushima Japan as reason enough to shutdown nuclear power stations and legally deny their restart as in the case for the Takahama nuclear power station.  The continued operation of Diablo Canyon amid a minefield of earthquake faults until 2025 places the California region and beyond in the same peril as the earthquake-induced nuclear catastrophe proved at Fukushima, Japan.

The environmental consequences of continued operation of Diablo Canyon add more reason to move up the date for a more prompt closure. The Diablo Canyon’s antiquated once-through reactor cooling system that draws in 2.5 billion gallons of water each day and discharges it super-heated into Diablo Cove is responsible for 80% of the marine environment damage from electric power stations along the California coast.  

For many more reasons, including capping the production of unmanaged high-level nuclear waste that is accumulating onsite and onto future generations, the fight must go on to shutdown Diablo Canyon sooner rather than later.