Green World Blog
News, views & musings for our nuclear-free, carbon-free future
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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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New study: Meeting carbon reduction goals economically means no nuclear power
Renewables are not only the environmental answer to climate change, they are the economic answer too. This is a short piece about a much longer piece that you will want to take a bit of time to read. Actually, it is unfair to describe it as a “piece.” It’s a study, by Mark Cooper, who…
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New York’s Nuclear Fork in the Road: Subsidizing Old Reactors Is a Dead End
New York is striving to implement one of the most aggressive renewable energy strategies in the nation. Yet at the same time, Gov. Cuomo wants to bail out the upstate and uneconomic FitzPatrick and Ginna reactors–which would only slow the deployment of renewables and would cost NY ratepayers billions. Last week, we let you know…
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The verdict is in: solar and wind have won the technology race
We continue to hear the same old arguments over and over again–in comments in these pages, in blogs and newspaper op-eds, in press releases and out of the mouths of those utility execs trying to hold on to the 20th century model of electricity generation and distribution, and, most depressingly, in the U.S. Senate which…
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Governor Cuomo’s schizophrenic nuclear policies
NY Governor Cuomo thinks Indian Point is too dangerous to operate. He’s right. But why are upstate reactors any different? In mid-1986, New York Governor Mario Cuomo was asked about the future of nuclear power. The future of nuclear power, he replied, “is Chernobyl.” He understood that nuclear power is dangerous, and he understood that…
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2016 could be a transformative year
If 2015 was the year that the ongoing global energy transition away from nuclear power and fossil fuels and toward a clean energy system based on renewables gained public notice, then 2016 naturally should be the year that the transition takes visible and meaningful steps forward. Two critical steps that occurred in December ensure that…
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PTS at Palisades; yes, they knew.
A couple decades ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) published what it called the “bathtub curve.” This curve charted the expected and observed performance of nuclear reactors from initial operation until final shutdown. The main finding of note was that when a reactor first comes online, typically there are a large number of problems…
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Looking back–for just one day
Still got a long way to go….Vogtle Units 3 (left) and 4, July 30, 2015. At GreenWorld, we like to look forward. Forward to the day that nuclear power is a bad but fading memory and our planet is powered as safely, cleanly and affordably as possible with renewable energy and advanced 21st century efficiency,…
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