Green World Blog
News, views & musings for our nuclear-free, carbon-free future
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New York Just Proved Why Bailing Out Nuclear Power Is a Bad Idea
New York approved a $7.6-$10 billion subsidy to prop up uncompetitive nuclear power plants–twice as much money as it will take for the state to achieve a goal to generate 50% of its electricity with renewables by 2030. Yesterday, New York became the first state to adopt a policy to subsidize aging, uncompetitive nuclear reactors.…
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Michael Mariotte: Counterweight to Nuclear Energy (1952 – 2016)
Let us be clear: without Michael Mariotte’s decision in the mid 1980’s to devote his talents to stopping the nuclear industry, many things would be very different today. Michael could not do what he did without Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), and the many thousands of people who work with NIRS could not have…
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Exelon seems to think the rules are for others
Cover sheet of NRC letter to Exelon raising questions about the company’s efforts to reclassify public documents on emergency planning. It might seem that we’re guilty of dumping on Exelon in these pages, which is possibly true, especially since there is an apparently endless supply of Exelon-initiated issues worthy of bringing to public attention. After…
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How to take on the nuclear shills: here’s one approach.
Exelon’s aging, unprofitable Quad Cities reactors. Earlier this month, we reported that climate scientist Dr. James Hansen and the pro-nuclear Breakthrough Institute’s Michael Shellenberger had leaped–apparently on their own–into the battle over the future of some of Exelon’s unprofitable nuclear reactors in Illinois. In a nutshell, Exelon wants a taxpayer and/or ratepayer (it doesn’t really…
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How low can they go? Hansen, Shellenberger now shilling for Exelon
Exelon’s Clinton reactor nearly bankrupted the small utility and rural co-ops that originally built it. Despite being bought for a few cents on the dollar by Exelon, it still isn’t economic and Exelon is “threatening” to close it. Photo by cryptome.org. While some potential legal challenges remain, the approval of the Exelon-Pepco merger by the…
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Wishful thinking: the basis of new nuclear economics
Generation IV reactors are not going to save the nuclear power industry. That nuclear power’s miserable economics are pretty much killing the industry, especially in the western world, is a reality acknowledged by virtually everyone at this point. After the first burst of reactor construction from the late 1960s until the early 1980s collapsed under…
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Exelon: now the nation’s largest electric utility
This building–an artist’s rendition–doesn’t actually exist. Yet. But now that Exelon is the nation’s largest electric utility, who knows what it could do? Exelon has long been the nation’s largest nuclear power utility. Now it is the nation’s largest electric utility, period. Yesterday, the Washington, D.C. Public Service Commission, which had twice rejected the proposed…
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The nuclear industry’s game plan to take your money and keep reactors operating
Exelon again threatens to close its aging, uneconomic, Fukushima-clone Quad Cities reactors–a threat that would be better as a promise. With the failure of last decade’s nuclear “renaissance” leading to dismal prospects for expansion, and rising operating costs–including modest and insufficient post-Fukushima improvements–making a large number of existing reactors uneconomic in the deregulated marketplace, the…
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#NuclearIsDirty
From the beginning of the nuclear fuel chain exemplified here by Australia’s Ranger uranium mine, to the end of the chain characterized by lethal radioactive waste with no scientifically-defensible storage method, nuclear energy is dirty energy. NIRS is launching a new campaign today, called #NuclearIsDirty. Over the next twelve weeks, we will be rolling it…
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One More Chance to Defeat Exelon Bid for an Energy Mega-Monopoly
On Friday, the District of Columbia’s utility regulators dealt what may end up being a fatal blow to Exelon’s bid to buy local utility Pepco and become the largest utility in the country. Or maybe not. In a complex decision that almost literally gave those of us in the room whiplash, the Public Service Commission:…
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