Green World Blog
News, views & musings for our nuclear-free, carbon-free future
-
The nuclear industry’s COP 21 dilemma: 100% renewables is attainable
“Nuclear power plant construction” by James Douch – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – If you think you’ve been seeing a lot more pro-nuclear propaganda in the media than usual in the past couple of weeks, well, it’s not your imagination. The nuclear industry and its champions are out in force,…
Read More -
When a campaign strikes a nerve
Every successful campaign for social change causes reaction. After all, if the campaign weren’t hitting at vested interests, weren’t causing disruption for some entity, then there would be no need for a campaign–its goals would simply be adopted by acclamation. Indeed, campaigns that don’t generate reaction are campaigns that don’t succeed: that means they haven’t…
Read More -
Nuking clean energy: how nuclear power makes wind and solar harder
Average hourly load over a one-week period in January, April and July 2009. Credit B. Posner. This post first appeared on Power for the People, a blog focused on energy issues in Virginia, the home base of Dominion Resources–a company that is an industry laggard when it comes to renewable energy issues, and is still…
Read More -
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…
Read More -
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…
Read More -
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…
Read More -
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…
Read More -
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…
Read More -
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…
Read More -
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…
Read More