Return of the Yucca dump zombie?!

Political cartoon by Jim Day of the Las Vegas Review Journal (be sure to count the toes!)Despite hoots and hollers from nuclear industry lobbyists and their friends in Congress, the publication of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Yucca Mountain radioactive waste dump  Safety Evaluation Report volume, entitled "Repository Safety After Permanent Closure," does not herald the dump's resurrection. To the contrary, the State of Nevada, its congressional delegation, and their powerful allies in the U.S. Senate -- backed by a thousand or so environmental groups across the country -- remain adamantly, and tirelessly, committed to preventing the still-cancelled, unfunded, scientifically unsuitable dump-site from ever opening. More.

Beyond Nuclear press release on nuke industry op-ed plants in media

Media outlets publish cookie-cutter op-eds under different by-lines with the same false information

TAKOMA PARK, MD, October 9, 2014 -- Over the past three weeks, news outlets around the country have published op-eds and letters to the editor with identical phrasing under different by-lines suggesting they were orchestrated by a nuclear industry public relations campaign, Beyond Nuclear has found.

To date, Beyond Nuclear has identified nine articles containing the same, often false, talking points and sometimes identical language, written under seven different by-lines. The articles all promote the reprocessing of irradiated reactor fuel, but refer to it as “recycling,” sometimes as many as ten times in a single article. France is touted as the reprocessing Wunderkind.

“Media outlets should not accept articles that are clearly not the original work of the author and that have already appeared in other publications under a different by-line,” said Beyond Nuclear international specialist, Linda Gunter, who researched the apparent rash of plagiarism. 

“These publications also failed to fact check, allowing themselves to be the voice-piece of the nuclear industry and repeating statements that are fundamentally untrue. All of this raises some serious ethical questions.”

The articles appeared mainly in regional newspapers but also in Forbes magazine. Read the full press release.

REGISTER NOW for the Nuclear-Free Future Summit in D.C., Nov. 14-16 + Lobby Day, Nov. 17

This announcement was circulated by Mary Olson of NIRS:

Please come to our Second Nuclear Free Campaign Summit and Strategy Session

This event is for activists working for a Nuclear-Free Future! Here are the event details:

WHO: Sierra Club Nuclear Free Campaign and Allied Organizations / Activists
WHAT: National Summit for a Nuclear Free Future 
WHEN: Nov. 14-17, 2014 
WHERE: National 4-H Youth Conference Center, 7100 Connecticut Ave., Chevy Chase, MD 20815

http://tinyurl.com/NuclearFreeRegistration

More.

Hinkley Point C will be the most expensive nuke ever, if completed

It could be described as the precedent for a new age of electricity “robber barons” even though the project is likely never to be completed. The European Commission announced that it has approved United Kingdom public subsidies to  support the French government utility EDF to construct two European Pressurized Reactors at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, England. The initial price tag is now estimated to be £24 billion ($30.6 billion) already up from last year’s estimate of £16 billion. True to atomic power form the latest estimate only marks the figure from which the skyrocketing cost will be launched and likely to become the most expensive nuclear power plant ever built if the project is not abandoned first.   

The anti-nuclear/pro-renewables Austrian government immediately countered that it will sue in the European Court of Justice to reverse the decision. Likewise, Germany's government is also considering taking legal action. 

International energy analysts are citing the new figures to be enough to finance the deploymet of 7 Gigawatts of new offshore wind farms as compared to the 3.3 Gigawatts that France is proposing to build at Hinkley.

The European Commission deal awards EDF with a 35-year power contract for Hinkley Point C electricity as compared to the 15-year contracts that renewable energy projects now receive. The deal further establishes a guaranteed minimum revenue or “strike price” to EDF from indentured UK ratepayers of £92.50 per megawatt hour in what amounts to approximately twice the current wholesale price. By the end of the 35-year contract in 2058 there is no reliable measure of how much nuclear power will cost.

During a subsequent paralimentary debate in Germany following the decision,  Environmental Minister Barbara Hendricks declared that the European Commission's decision was "utterly wrong." She observed that  nuclear power is clearly not competitive compared to renewable energy "or else, prices wouldn't need fixing for 30 years."

"IEEFA: FirstEnergy financial condition unlikely to improve"

As reported by FierceEnergy, FirstEnergy has essentially declared war on renewables and efficiency, and is attempting to massively gouge ratepayers, as well as taxpayers, to prop up failing plants like its Davis-Besse atomic reactor. This according to a report by IEEFA -- the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

The article quotes Tom Sanzillo, IEEFA's director of finance:

"FirstEnergy's CEO has called this the 'lost decade. But it has not been a lost decade for other utilities investing in renewables and alternatives to coal,'" Sanzillo said. "FirstEnergy's corporate leadership is lost, and they are asking shareholders, ratepayers and government officials to pay for their management blackout."