Green World Blog
News, views & musings for our nuclear-free, carbon-free future
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The alternative is now the mainstream
According to Lazard, the most cost-effective options to reduce carbon emissions are wind and utility-scale solar. Rooftop solar might fit there, except that Lazard found that the cost of installing rooftop solar in the U.S. runs twice that of the rest of the world. It’s a truism perhaps most prevalent in the music scene: today’s…
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Dear John (Hansen)
James Hansen is a tireless climate campaigner, but he’s no energy expert… November 13, 2015 Dear John, Thanks for the e-mail yesterday from your PR firm, notifying me of the press conference you’re planning on December 3 in Paris, in conjunction with the COP 21 climate negotiations. Though I have to admit I was a…
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Revisiting the pawn/toast prognostication as more reactors close
Another one bites the dust: New York’s Fukushima-clone Fitzpatrick reactor will close permanently next year. In mid-September, I wrote a piece delving into prognostication–always a dangerous endeavor–identifying (with tongue slightly in cheek) the nation’s most troubled nuclear reactors and dividing them into two piles: pawn or toast. Toast was those reactors most likely to shut…
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Why October 21 will become known as International Embarrassment Day
Imagine it’s October 2017. A young conservative, let’s say Marco Rubio (because the idea of the other young conservative in the race, Ted Cruz, is just too odious), has been elected President. He and his new energy secretary and new treasurer decide what the U.S. needs more than anything is some shiny new nuclear power…
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Pilgrim’s closure, and what’s next for New England.
Entergy’s Pilgrim reactor–the latest victim of nuclear power’s increasingly wretched economics, not to mention sustained citizen activism. Photo by Enformable. A generation or so ago, New England was one of the most nuclear-dependent regions in the nation. If one defines New England as including New York, then that relatively small corner of the U.S. map…
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Mainstreaming the nuclear exit
Exelon’s Ginna reactor in New York, one of a growing number of economically troubled reactors. Photo from IAEA. It’s no great revelation to say that the mainstream media, fractured though it may be these days, holds great power. It’s not direct power; the media can’t make actual decisions. Rather, the media grabs a theme–a meme…
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Some unanswered questions
The Summer reactors construction site July 30 2015. As Alice Cooper once sang, “we still got a long way to go….” – (c) 2015 – SCHighFlyer@gmail.com There are some questions that are simply unanswerable; for example, how is it that Donald Trump’s approval rating is not zero? What defect in the U.S. educational system has…
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The great nuclear bailout list: who’s a pawn, who’s toast.
Washington DC residents rally outside the District Building September 17, 2015 against Exelon’s proposed takeover of Pepco. Photo by Tim Judson When a nuclear power utility says one of its reactors is economically troubled and it may close early, should you believe it? For that matter, when a nuclear power utility says anything at all,…
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Nuclear advocates fight back with wishful thinking
The IEA/NEA’s new report doesn’t say what the NEA wishes it did. It must be rough to be a nuclear power advocate these days: clean renewable energy is cleaning nuclear’s clock in the marketplace; energy efficiency programs are working and causing electricity demand to remain stable and even fall in some regions; despite decades of…
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Ukraine’s nuclear giant attacks activists, not safety problems
The sprawling South Ukraine nuclear complex. Life isn’t easy in Ukraine these days. There’s an ongoing low-grade war in the eastern part of the country that constantly threatens to explode as Russian troops continue building their forces in the region. In the rest of the country, there’s serious economic contraction–far worse to Ukraine’s economy, on…
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