What Do We Mean When We Say "Clean Energy"? | Co.Exist | ideas impact

We need to stop using natural gas and nuclear on our way to truly clean power.

Nobody wants dirty fossil fuels, and given that coal plants are closing all across this country, the energy industry is scrambling to present it’s next in line: natural gas and nuclear power. They’re claiming that it’s clean. And while we desperately need to get off dirty coal and oil, this bait and switch is dangerous...

read: What Do We Mean When We Say "Clean Energy"? | Co.Exist | ideas impact

on this blog –
whats up: #BustTheMyth :: nukes are NOT carbon-free, clean, safe, green, or affordable!

#NuclearHotseat :: "Nuclear plants are crime scenes" - Nuclear racketeering & Snap! Crackle! Pop! as investigative journalist Greg Palast busts nuke fraud, conspiracy and lies in his interview w/Libbe HaLevy on Nuclear Hotseat #264.

 Nuclear racketeering & Snap! Crackle! Pop!

Greg Palast

This Week’s Featured Interview:

Greg Palast is an investigative reporter whose news-breaking stories appear on BBC Television, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and Rolling Stone Magazine, and is author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures’ Picnic, which is cited in our interview.  He is best known in the US for uncovering Katherine Harris’ purge of black votersfrom Florida’s voter rolls in 2000.  He is currently finishing the final frames of his new film on the upcoming theft of the 2016 election: “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits.”

Numnutz of the Week:

It’s a trifecta of Numnutzery – nuclear reactor “safety” practices ignored at three separate nuclear reactors.

Listen Here

What Radionuclides are at Drigg Nuclear Waste Dump Near the Irish Sea? Many Still Lethal After Natural Erosion Expected to Undermine It (Still Time to Oppose Drigg-Decision 15th July) | Mining Awareness

"low level doesn’t mean low risk. Nor does it mean short-lived, as is seen below. Many have half-lives of thousands and even millions of years. Rather, this is a dilute to deceive scam so popular with illegal polluters, but this is condoned by the UK Government (as well as by the US govt)..."

read: What Radionuclides are at Drigg Nuclear Waste Dump Near the Irish Sea? Many Still Lethal After Natural Erosion Expected to Undermine It (Still Time to Oppose Drigg-Decision 15th July) | Mining Awareness

Still Time to Oppose Drigg-Decision by 15th July –Information on how to oppose Drigg found here

As Public Service Commission Revises Its Plan to Subsidize Nuclear Plants in the NYS Clean Energy Standard, AGREE & NIRS File Legal Memorandum Challenging the Executive Overreach, Legal Problems, and Soaring Costs of the Proposal | AGREE

As Public Service Commission Revises Its Plan To Subsidize Nuclear Plants In The NYS Clean Energy Standard, AGREE & NIRS File Legal Memorandum Challenging The Executive Overreach, Legal Problems, And Soaring Costs Of The Proposal

For immediate release

Contacts: Jessica Azulay jessica@allianceforagreeneconomy.org cell  (917) 697-4472 office 315.480.1515;  

Stephen Kent, skent@kentcom.com, 914-589-5988

[Albany, NY – July 8]  On Friday afternoon, July 8, the Department of Public Service issued a new proposal for how the state should subsidize unprofitable nuclear power plants in Upstate New York. The proposal would dramatically change the formula – and the price tag – for the nuclear bailout program under consideration this summer by the Public Service Commission at the request of Governor Cuomo.

Instead of taking into account nuclear reactors’ individual costs and targeting subsidies to help them break even, as had been previously proposed, the new proposal bases subsidies on the “social cost of carbon.” The new formula is simpler to calculate, but likely much more expensive.

The new proposal is likely an attempt for the Department of Public Service to address some of the legal issues with the nuclear tier that parties have been raising in the case.

But in a legal memorandum also filed in the case today by Alliance for a Green Economy and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, the nuclear tier suffers from multiple legal deficiencies that are unlikely to be remedied from superficial changes to the policy. 

The memorandum raises concerns that the Governor overreached his authority in directing the Public Service Commission to create a program to save financially struggling nuclear reactors. It also points out how vulnerable the policy is to legal challenge by Entergy Corporation, the owner of Indian Point. The Indian Point reactors are being carved out of the policy, which is meant only to benefit upstate reactors. The Governor wants to shut the Indian Point reactors, while keeping upstate reactors open. Entergy has threatened to sue over the policy, claiming the proposal to leave out its facility is arbitrary and capricious.

In a statement issued today, Alliance for a Green Economy and Nuclear Information and Resource Service said:

“The new proposal filed today by the Department of Public Service seems like an ill-conceived attempt to salvage a legally questionable policy that suffers from no technical or policy rationale.

“This new proposal doesn’t change the fact that the Public Service Commission and the Governor are still intending to throw away billions of dollars on uneconomical dirty nuclear plants, when that money should be going toward renewables and efficiency. What New York needs is a plan for real long term decarbonization of our energy system, not short-sighted bailouts for an industry that has proven economically and environmentally disastrous. 

“Every time we turn around the price tag of the nuclear subsidies keeps going up. This new proposal will cost more over the first 2 years than the Department of Public Service estimated the first 7 years of their previous proposal would cost.”

Sources:  Alliance for a Green Economy, www.allianceforagreeneconomy.org

Nuclear Information and Resource Service, www.nirs.org

NOTE TO EDITORS AND PRODUCERS:  Copies of the legal memorandum are available on request.   Sources are available for interviews, including over the weekend.  They include Jessica Azulay, Program Director ,Alliance for a Green Economy; Richard Brodsky, attorney, former State Assemblyman, author of legal memorandum; and Tim Judson, Executive Director, Nuclear Information & Resource Service.  To request a copy of the memorandum or to arrange an interview, please use the media contacts listed above

As Public Service Commission Revises Its Plan to Subsidize Nuclear Plants in the NYS Clean Energy Standard, AGREE & NIRS File Legal Memorandum Challenging the Executive Overreach, Legal Problems, and Soaring Costs of the Proposal | AGREE

7.13 NIRS National Telebriefing: Dangerous Drinking Water

Register to join NIRS's next national telebriefing:

Dangerous Drinking Water

Wednesday, July 13 @ 8pm Eastern

(7pm Central, 6pm Mountain, 5pm Pacific)

The program will focus on US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Guidance that massively increases the permitted levels of radioactivity in drinking water for years after any nuclear incident that requires consideration of “protective action” ranging from a spill, leak or transport accident to a dirty bomb or nuclear meltdown—a nuclear  accident of any kind big or small. Allowable concentrations of radioactive elements allowed to come out of your tap would rise hundreds or even thousands of times above the current Maximum Concentration Levels allowed under the Safe Drinking Water Act regulations.

The briefing will include the following presenters, and will be followed by questions and answers with the audience:

• Diane D’Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director, Nuclear Information and Resource Service
• Emily Wurth, Water Program Director at Food and Watch
• Daniel Hirsch, Director, Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy, University of California Santa Cruz
• Moderator: NIRS Executive Director, Tim Judson

After you register you will receive an email with the call-in number. The briefing will run for an hour to an hour-and-a-half.

NIRS National Telebriefing: Dangerous Drinking Water

PETITION TO EPA: Don't Allow Radiation in Drinking Water! - Food & Water Watch

Despite nearly 50,000 Food & Water Watch supporters writing to the administration, urging them not to move forward a dangerous nuclear industry giveaway, the EPA's new guidance would allow for increased levels of radiation in your drinking water in the case of an emergency.

The Safe Drinking Water Act sets clear limits to protect your health and safety from radiation in the event of a disaster for a reason— because high levels of radiation are dangerous. For the EPA to even consider an increase is not only irresponsible, it's dangerous.

People should get clean drinking water in an emergency and should not be forced to drink water with a vastly higher concentration of radioactivity than is considered acceptable under the Safe Drinking Water Act.Sign below to urge the EPA to withdraw its proposal to increase the amount of radiation allowed in your drinking water. Your message will be sent to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and submitted as an official public comment.

SIGN NOW: EPA: Don't Allow Radiation in Drinking Water! - Food & Water Watch

see also:

7.13 NIRS National Telebriefing: Dangerous Drinking Water

Zombies, giant sea god join large anti-nuclear protest at Olympic Dam | Adelaide Now | #LizardBitesBack

MORE than 100 anti-uranium protesters from across the nation dressed as zombies and marched to the “gates of hell” outside Olympic Dam on Friday. It marked the start of a three-day protest by the Desert Liberation Front outside the BHP mine at Roxby Downs, bringing with them a heavy police presence. STAR Group officers, sniffer dogs, mounted police, dirt bike patrols, a helicopter and a drone were all visible at the mine site during the event’s first day. About half of the 200 protesters, including children, walked 2km to the mine’s front gates chanting “leave it in the ground, Roxby’s going down”...

more: Zombies, giant sea god join large anti-nuclear protest at Olympic Dam | Adelaide Now

The biggest Conflict of Interests of all time – mutantdaisys

And so it comes to pass. We have now reached the point where ‘neutrality’ or an ‘unbiased’ viewpoint can be bought, edited or suppressed with agreements made between two public agencies. One of the best example of this is the agreement struck on 28 May 1959 between the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The effect of this agreement has been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power, and so prevent the WHO from doing their proper job in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on human health...

more: The biggest Conflict of Interests of all time – mutantdaisys