Green World Blog
News, views & musings for our nuclear-free, carbon-free future
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Nuclear Newsreel, Friday, June 6, 2014
SCANA has applied for its seventh rate increase for construction of its two new Summer reactors. As you can see from this photo taken May 22, 2014, they’re a long way from being finished. The EPA’s proposed new carbon rules have dominated the news this week, but there has been more happening–especially on the clean…
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Old Reactors v. New Renewables: The First Nuclear War of the 21st Century
The trend is clear: nuclear costs keep rising while solar and wind become ever more cost-effective. By Mark Cooper Within the past year, a bevy of independent, financial analysts (Lazard, Citi, Credit Suisse, McKinsey and Company, Sanford Bernstein, Morningstar) have heralded an economic revolution in the electricity sector. A quarter of a century of technological…
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Doh! We goofed. And other fallout on nukes/climate issue + poll!
Can EPA’s new carbon rules save Exelon’s uneconomic Clinton reactor? Doh! We goofed! More specifically, I goofed. In an Alert NIRS sent out yesterday on EPA’s new carbon rules and other nukes/climate issues, I wrote: “As worded, it seems that EPA would encourage ratepayer (that’s you and I!) subsidies of 6 cents per kilowatt/hour of…
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EPA’s proposed carbon rules provide subsidies to uneconomic, aging, dangerous nuclear reactors
The fastest and cheapest ways to reduce carbon emissions are more renewables and energy efficiency. This city in Japan shows points the path…. The Environmental Protection Agency’s long-awaited proposed rules to attain carbon emission reductions from existing power plants was released today. We’ve noticed some environmental groups already have sent out mass e-mails urging their…
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Exelon loses big in PJM electricity auction
Exelon’s Byron reactors couldn’t sell their electricity at the PJM auction. So Exelon wants a legislative bailout. Yesterday, in our post about three nuclear industry victories–but a long-term and continuing trend that forecasts trouble for the nuclear and fossil fuel industries–we wrote: “The PJM power grid, which covers 61 million customers from the mid-Atlantic to…
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Nuclear industry wins short-term victories, but losing long-term battle
Three major decisions, in three different venues, made last week a good week for polluting utilities and thus a bad one for actual people. But the longer-term trends stayed on track, with the nuclear/fossil fuel industry still in growing trouble and facing decline as the transition to a nuclear-free, carbon-free energy future continues on. The…
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Beware the nuclear/fossil fuel alliance and its upcoming climate split. Both spell trouble.
Extraction industries are by definition polluting industries. Photo of Australia’s Ranger uranium mine from Wikipedia. What the nuclear and fossil fuel industries have most in common is that they are “extractive” industries–their basic business is extracting energy sources from our earth (coal, uranium, oil, gas) and using that fuel to provide electricity and transportation–causing enormous…
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Nuclear Newsreel, Wednesday, May 21, 2014
It’s mid-week, a good time to catch up on some of the news–and there has been a lot of it recently. Uranium Forecast If you want to know what the nuclear industry really thinks about the future of nuclear power, it always pays to look at the uranium mining industry, which has to forecast future…
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Five days in solar news
When I began working at NIRS in 1985 solar power was just a dream. Oh sure, President Carter had put a few solar panels up at the White House (which President Reagan promptly took down, just to make sure everyone knew there would be no future in solar), and a few, mostly off-the-grid types had…
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Listen to the nuclear advocate.
We read a lot of material produced by nuclear power supporters as well as information provided directly from the nuclear industry. Most of it is bunk; but what is most telling is that most of it is less than candid as well–especially materials aimed at the public and policymakers. Neither the industry nor its supporters…
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