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ARTICLE ARCHIVE

Nuclear Power

Nuclear power cannot address climate change effectively or in time. Reactors have long, unpredictable construction times are expensive - at least $12 billion or higher per reactor. Furthermore, reactors are sitting-duck targets vulnerable to attack and routinely release - as well as leak - radioactivity. There is so solution to the problem of radioactive waste.

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Entries from November 1, 2016 - November 30, 2016

Tuesday
Nov292016

New Wikileaks docs cover Three Mile Island and worried governments' response to partial meltdown

Monday
Nov212016

4 Arrested Protesting AIM Pipeline in New York State

As reported by Democracy Now!:

In New York state, four people were arrested Saturday protesting the construction of Spectra Energy’s AIM pipeline. The pipeline is slated to carry fracked gas only hundreds of feet from the aging Indian Point nuclear power plant and then under the Hudson River. The arrests came as more than 100 activists rallied at a construction site in Verplanck, New York. The pipeline has faced years of resistance from residents in New York state and Rhode Island. [Also see updates and alerts re: the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, at Beyond Nuclear's Human Rights website section.]

Monday
Nov212016

Rumors swirl re: Trump's pick for Energy Secretary

The U.S. Department of Energy oversees U.S. nuclear weapons policies (under such divisions as National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Environmental Management (EM), etc.), as well as nuclear power promotions at its Office of Nuclear Energy (ONE). As reported by Politico, President-elect Donald J. Trump's rumored pick for Energy Secretary could include:

Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm has long been seen as a leading candidate for Energy Secretary. Hamm, an Oklahoma billionaire who has been a friend of Trump’s for years, has been the leading influence on Trump’s energy policy during the campaign. But Hamm has said he plans to stay at Continental.

If Hamm passes, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a Trump energy adviser, could be offered the job though he’s begun to douse cold water on that idea recently. Other names floating near the top of the mill include venture capitalist Robert Grady, who is also thought to be in line for Interior; James Connaughton, a former utility executive who was President George W. Bush's head of White House Council on Environmental Quality; and Kristine Svinicki, the sole Republican on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is in the running for a high-level post at the Energy Department like undersecretary — a No. 3 job — but a source close to the Trump transition said she’d be considered for secretary as well. (emphasis added)

Hamm and Cramer are leading advocates in favor of the highly controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL; see Beyond Nuclear's Human Rights website section for updates and action alerts re: the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's resistance to DAPL.) Democracy Now! has reported that Trump is personally invested to the tune of $500,000 to a million dollars in DAPL.

Not only did Connaughton lead George W. Bush administration efforts to oppose the Kyoto Protocol on the climate crisis from his perch at White House CEQ, but in 2009, he joined the Constellation Energy Group, an Exelon company, to manage environmental and energy policy, and government relations (a.k.a. lobbying). He served as Executive Vice President and Senior Policy Advisor at Exelon, the largest nuclear power utility in the U.S., from March 2012 to March 2013.

Svinicki has been an NRC Commissioner since March 2008, where she has consistently voted and acted as a rubber-stamp for the nuclear industry. Before that, she worked for many years as a high level Capitol Hill staffer for such members as Larry Craig (Republican U.S. Senator from Idaho), as well as a Department of Energy official, where she performed much the same function.

Friday
Nov182016

Navajo water protector speaks in solidarity with Standing Rock at COP22 in Morocco

Friday
Nov182016

Trump Picks Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General

As reported by Democracy Now! during its news headlines:

Donald Trump has chosen Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. Sessions is a former prosecutor who was elected to the Senate in 1996. As a senator, he’s consistently supported anti-immigration legislation. In 2010, he was a leading proponent of the efforts to repeal the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to everyone born in the United States. Jeff Sessions has also been a vocal opponent of the Voting Rights Act. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sessions for a federal judgeship, but he was denied confirmation because of his history of racist comments, including reportedly saying he thought the Ku Klux Klan was "OK until I found out they smoked pot." He has also called the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP "un-American" and "Communist-inspired."

Sessions has also long been a pro-nuclear power advocate on Capitol Hill. As but one of countless examples, Sessions keynoted a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Regulatory Information Conference (RIC) on March 11, 2008, delivering a pro-nuclear power pep talk, no doubt quite pleasing to the many hundreds or thousands of nuclear power industry representatives present in the audience. Ironically enough, his keynote speech was three years to the day before the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe in Japan would begin to unfold.