There’s a Bizarro World quality to this period in history. Anyone covering news in these Interesting Times cannot possibly chronicle all the news that really marks the journey as we careen into our unimaginably strange future. Add yours in comments, but here’s what I found:
In desperate times, people look at desperate measures.
James Lovelock - - who is one of the leading environmentalists on the planet has made a startling proposal: that the best way to save the Amazon from being destroyed is to turn it into a repository for nuclear waste.
He argues in “The Revenge of Gaia” that animals and plants don’t perceive radioactivity as a danger. What is far more threatening to ecosystems are people — who create extensive farming or mining and construction sites. So to keep humans out of valuable ecosystems, we could dump our nuclear waste there.
That will keep people out.
Oddly, both plants and animals have increased around the areas of Belarus that were heavily radiated after the accident at Chernobyl, although radiation reduces their lifespan.
The lack of human intervention may make nuclear wildlife refuges more beneficial overall:
Neglecting its responsibility to protect & preserve the fragile Arctic ecosystem, Russia is planning to use floating nuclear reactors to power its oil drilling efforts in the region.
Nuclear power is one of the most controversial alternative energies, partially due to the toxic waste it creates. Now physicists at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a system that uses fusion to eliminate the transuranic wastes created by nuclear plants.
California’s nickname of the Golden State couldn’t be more apropos than with its leadership on energy. PBS recently devoted an entire episode of “Nova” to the subject of “The Big Energy Gamble” about California.
Thousands of anti-nuclear campaigners have assembled along a train route in Germany to protest the annual convoy carrying tons of nuclear waste from France to a storage facility in northeastern Germany.
In what is becoming an annual ritual of civil resistance and direct action in Germany, more than 15,000 anti-nuclear protesters turned out along the route to Gorleben on Sunday—twice the number at a similar protest at the site two years ago—in the largest and most violent anti-nuclear protest in Germany since 2001.
Over the last few years the nuclear industry has used concerns about climate change to argue for a nuclear revival. Although industry representatives may have convinced some political leaders that this is a good idea, there is little evidence of private capital investing in nuclear plants in competitive electricity markets. The reason is simple: nuclear power is uneconomical.
In an excellent recent analysis, “The Nuclear Illusion,” Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh put the cost of electricity from a new nuclear power plant at 14¢ per kilowatt hour and that from a wind farm at 7¢ per kilowatt hour. This comparison includes the costs of fuel, capital, operations and maintenance, and transmission and distribution. It does not include the additional costs for nuclear of disposing of waste, insuring plants against an accident, and decommissioning the plants when they wear out. Given this huge gap, the so-called nuclear revival can succeed only by unloading these costs onto taxpayers. If all the costs of generating nuclear electricity are included in the price to consumers, nuclear power is dead in the water.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established final radiation standards for the proposed spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste disposal facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
Milestone Move by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
It’s taken two decades and billions of dollars, but the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository project has finally reached a new plateau. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, (NRC) has accepted an application for licensing, and will begin a lengthy process of safety studies, hearings and public meetings.
The application was filed June 3rd by the Department of Energy (DOE), and was accepted as “sufficiently complete” for the agency to move forward with the process which could take up to four years.
Yucca Mountain, “Yes”; transport waste through my state?, “No”; what Grand Canyon?
It’s hard to tell if Senator McCain’s age is catching up with his memory, or if he’s just trying to ride a lot of fences when it comes to nuclear power.
The Sierra Club sent out a release today, pointing out the Senator’s love affair with nuclear power, revealed a YouTube clip of McCain saying he would not approve of shipping 77,000 tons of dangerous nuclear waste through his home state of Arizona, but felt it would be ok to move it through 44 other states.
With this in mind, let’s examine his stand on drilling for uranium in the national parks surrounding the Grand Canyon.
