Politics in the Zeros

California pretends to be a crunchy granola wonderland of renewable energy. The reality is the vast bulk of its power comes from natural gas and imported coal and hydro power, with electricity shortages almost certainly coming soon. Idled nuclear plants and less hydroelectric power due to drought will create power shortages in throughout California this summer. [...]

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The Southern California Edison’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station has been completely down for months and electricity prices are rising in the area because of this. While the problem here is a temporarily closed site, it highlights the problems of going from petroleum-based and nuclear power to renewables. How do you keep the lights on and prices [...]

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These nuclear plant outages are generally due to equipment problems. As aging plants are taken offline or closed, where will the replacement power come from? ? New coal or nuclear plants face huge regulatory hurdles as well as almost certain sustained protests and thus probably will never be built. That leaves natural gas as the [...]

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In something of a stealth maneuver during the 2012 holiday season, the U.S. Department of Energy set about to give every American a little more radiation exposure, and for some a lot, by allowing manufacturers to use radioactive metals in their consumer products – such as zippers, spoons, jewelry, belt buckles, toys, pots, pans, furnishings, [...]

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What could possibly go wrong with boiling underground tar sands by using nuclear power???

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For the better part of a year, Vermont Yankee, Vermont’s only nuclear power plant which is owned by the Entergy Corporation of Louisiana, has operated unlawfully, without the necessary “certificate of public good” it needs from the state’s Public Service Board (PSB). On December 4, the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution (NEC) filed a [...]

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They were arrested at a nuclear power protest at the Vermont Yankee plant. The Vermont justice system may have wanted just another routine jury trial on charges of criminal trespass, but for the accused six grandmothers the day-long trial was also an opportunity to bear witness, each in her own polite way, that they had acted [...]

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The likelihood was very low that an earthquake followed by a tsunami would destroy all four nuclear reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, but in March 2011, that’s what happened, and the accident has yet to be contained.  Similarly, the likelihood may be low that an upstream dam will fail, unleashing a flood that [...]

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“What the Fukashima?” and dozens of other anti-nuclear messages graced the bridges of the Interstate Highway from Northampton, Massachusetts, to Burlington, Vermont, reminding Columbus Day weekend leaf peepers that were passing close to the evacuation zone of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, still operating past its 40-year design life. “What the Fukushima?” refers to the basic design of  the 1972 Vermont [...]

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Despite such protests as last weekend’s demonstration against thermal pollution of the Connecticut River, the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant has recently come to stand for the proposition that, when a nuclear plant reaches the end of its 40 year design life, it can still get a federal permit to keep on running for another 20 years. This proposition [...]

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