Beyond Nuclear marches and stands for climate justice

Strike for Climate Action, San Francisco, CA. Photo: Mary Spadaro.In Washington, D.C., Beyond Nuclear staff took part in both the International Youth Climate Strike on Friday, September 20, 2019, as well as the Shut Down DC climate action on Monday, Sept. 23.

D.C.'s International Youth Climate Strike had around 20,000 participants, marching from Judiciary Square, and rallying for hours on the National Mall at the U.S. Capitol. There were 1,100 separate such strikes across the U.S., and 4,500 around the world, in 150 countries. Altogether, four million people took part globally, the single largest day of action to save the climate yet.

Anti-nuclear colleagues took part in Climate Strikes in their home towns, such as Nuclear Energy Information Service in Chicago, and Native Community Action Council in Las Vegas, Nevada, to name but two.

The Shut Down D.C. climate action in D.C. involved 2,000 activists willing to risk arrest, conducting 22 separate non-violent direct action blockades of major intersections across the city, resulting in around three dozen arrests. Another Shut Down climate action took place in San Francisco, involving spectacular street art. See image at right, and more aerial photos here.

Three Mile Island: What was once too cheap to meter, is now too toxic to clean up

Three Mile Island Alert has put up a billboard in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, warning folks that vigilance is still very much needed, even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant's last operating unit shut down for good last Friday.

Of course, the "too cheap to meter" part is a sarcastic joke. Nuclear power has long been too expensive to matter. (And in their remarkable 1999 book, The Nuclear Power Deception: U.S. Nuclear Mythology from Electricity "Too Cheap to Meter" to "Inherently Safe Reactors", authors Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska document that Lewis Strauss, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, who uttered the infamous phrase in the early 1950s, already had in hand plenty of evidence that nuclear power would be exorbitantly expensive.)

While de-fueled reactors means a core meltdown is no longer possible, by definition, the high risks have now moved to the high-level radioactive waste storage pools, and irradiated nuclear fuel dry casks. And, as TMIA warns above, hazardous radioactive contamination blankets the site in the middle of the Susquehanna River.

Nuclear corporations Exelon of Chicago, IL, and FirstEnergy of Akron, OH, are currently responsible for the decommissioning phase at Three Mile Island's Unit 1s and 2. Word is, they will "SAFSTORE" the plant for decades to come, before beginning facility dismantlement, and "low-level" radioactive waste and contamination export to a dump someplace else. (There is nowhere for high-level radioactive waste to be shipped off to.)

But nuclear utilities sometimes change their policy on a dime, and move into prompt decommissioning at breakneck speed. In fact, both scandal-ridden Holtec International (and its decommissioning partner, SNC-Lavalin), as well as NorthStar (a consortium which includes Waste Control Specialists, as well as Orano, formerly Areva, of France) claim such prompt decommissioning as their business model.

Vigilance is required. Such firms often seek to drain down already woefully inadequate decommissioning trust funds, as at Three Mile Island, to line their own pockets, and pay unrelated bills. All this, while doing as little actual radioactive contamination cleanup as they can get away with, and taking as many short cuts on safety and security re: on-site high-level radioactive waste management as they can get away with. The fight is on.

EnviroVideo hosts Beyond Nuclear on "Trump's Nuclear Push"

EnviroVideo's Karl Grossman interviews Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps on the Trump Administration's effort to revive the economically failing and increasingly dangerous nuclear power industry in the United States and foreign sales most notably in Saudi Arabia. The interview covers the range of important nuclear issues with industry myth-busters including its latest false claim that nuclear power is a "zero emissions" solution to the growing climate crisis.

Infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant is closing today

Middletown, PA town council meeting, June 20, 1979. Photo by Robert Del Tredichi, from his book "The People of Three Mile Island" (Sierra Club Books, 1980). Used with permission.As reported by CNN.

Three Mile Island-Unit 1 in PA had been announced by its owner Exelon Nuclear to be closed by May 2018, but this was its bid to leverage a public bailout. After it failed to orchestrate a PA State Legislature bailout, on May 8, 2019, Exelon Nuclear confirmed that TMI-1 would close for good, by Sept. 30, 2019. It is now closing today, for good.

As we have feared, the closure of Three Mile Island Unit 1, for lack of a public bailout, is now being used as leverage to force through bailouts for several other dangerously old atomic reactors in Pennsylvania, as this WGAL report shows.

Beyond Nuclear's founding board member, Dr. Judith H. Johnsrud (1931-2014), intervened against the licensing of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, long before it was built. She did so as a founder and leader of the Environmental Coalition on Nuclear Power. Johnsrud also co-founded Nuclear Information and Resource Service. After she passed on, Beyond Nuclear established the Dr. Judith H. Johnsrud "Unsung Hero" Award, awarded annually during the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability "D.C. Days" to grassroots anti-nuclear activists who embody her spirit, and carry on her work.

Rebutting nuclear industry propaganda, Beyond Nuclear has documented the harm caused to people and the environment by the March 28, 1979 50% meltdown of the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor core.

The good news from the TMI-1 permanent shutdown is that, by definition, once the irradiated nuclear fuel is removed from the reactor core for the last time, a meltdown can no longer occur. Also, no more high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) will be generated.

However, watchdog vigilance must continue. The high-level radioactive waste storage pool, as well as the inadequate dry cask storage permitted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, still threaten catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity. Also, the radioactive contamination of the site, in the middle of the Susquehanna River, must be cleaned up.

The companies vying for control over decommissioning -- Holtec/SNC-Lavalin, NorthStar, EnergySolutions -- are notorious. They seek to maximize profits by looting decommissioning trust funds, while doing as little radiological cleanup, and taking as many short cuts on HLRW management safety, as they can get away with.

Update on September 22, 2019 by admin

• USA Today - Three Mile Island, where a meltdown forever changed nuclear energy in America, shuts down Friday - Ledyard King

Update on September 25, 2019 by admin

Nuclear Engineering International has also reported on this story.

Update on September 26, 2019 by admin

So too has the Washington Post.

Pro-bailout for coal and nuclear ad in OH alleges bailout opponents are agents of Red China militarism!

It has been reported that HB6 (Ohio House Bill 6) coal/nuclear bailout supporters have purchased $1 million in advertizing on television and radio. The first anti-petition television ad began airing in late August 2019. The petition would put the issue on the November 2020 ballot in Ohio, to let voters decide yea or nay on bailing out dirty old coal plants in OH (including one in Indiana!), and dangerous old atomic reactors on OH's Lake Erie shore, namely Davis-Besse and Perry.

View the absurd ad here.

Remarkably, incredibly, it claims HB6 opponents are pawns of Red China! Quite to the contrary, they include the corporate competitors to nuclear and coal (including renewables and efficiency), as well as AARP, ratepayer advocates, environmentalists, etc. Ironically, HB6 is pure corporate socialism, benefitting FirstEnergy Nuclear, an atom splitter and coal burner. So much for capitalism -- FirstEnergy seems to oppose the concept of competitive capitalism with a level playing field, embracing rather a nuclear and coal version of robber baron, crony, monopolistic capitalism, at the expense of its competitors, as well as the public.

The ad campaign even also goes after anti-HB6 petition gatherers directly. In this sense, the HB6 supporters behind these ads are, yet again, directly attacking Ohio democracy, enshrined in its constitution. The ad could be at least in part responsible for the first documented case of physical violence perpetrated by an anti-petition canvasser, against a pro-petition canvasser. Other pro-petition canvassers have been stalked, intimidated, and harassed, by anti-petition canvassers, as well. The ad calls on the public to phone a 1-800 number to report pro-petition canvassers spotted in their town or neighborhood, so they can go there immediately and block their efforts (anti-petition canvassers are called blockers).

Some Ohio newspaper editorial boards have already lambasted the ad for its preposterousness.