Archive for the ‘News’ Category

July 26, 2010

Harvey Wasserman
Huffington Post

Stewart Brand has become a poster boy for a "nuclear renaissance" that has just suffered a quiet but stunning defeat. Despite $645 million spent in lobbying over the past decade, the reactor industry has thus far this year failed to gouge out major new taxpayer funding for new commercial reactors.

In an exceedingly complex series of twists and turns, no legislation now pending in Congress contains firm commitments to the tens of billions of dollars reactor builders have been demanding. They could still come by the end of the session. But the radioactive cake walk many expected the industry to take through the budget process has thus far failed to happen.

The full story is excruciatingly complicated. But the core reasons are simple: atomic power can’t compete it and makes global warming worse.

In support of this failed 20th Century technology, the industry has enlisted a 20th Century retro-hero, Stewart Brand. Back in the 1960s Brand published the Whole Earth Catalog. Four decades later, that cachet has brought him media access for his advocacy of corporate technologies like genetically modified foods and geo-engineering… and, of course, nuclear energy.

In response to a cover interview in Marin County’s Pacific Sun, I wrote the following to explain why Stewart is wrong wrong wrong:

Stewart Brand now seems to equate "science" with a tragic and dangerous corporate agenda. The technologies for which he argues — nuclear power, "clean" coal, genetically modified crops, etc. — can be very profitable for big corporations, but carry huge risks for the rest of us. In too many instances, tangible damage has already been done, and more damage is possible.

If there is a warning light for what Stewart advocates, it is the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which much of the oil industry said (like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) was "impossible." Then it happened. The $75 million liability limit protecting BP should be ample warning that any technology with a legal liability limit (like nuclear power) cannot be tolerated.

Thankfully, there is good news: We have true green alternatives to these failed 20th-century ideas. They’re cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable and more job-producing than the old ways Stewart advocates.

Stewart and I have never met. But we have debated on the radio and online. Thank you, Pacific Sun, for bringing us to print.

Stewart’s advocacy does fit a pattern. He appears to have become a paladin for large-scale corporate technologies that may be highly profitable to CEOs and shareholders,but are beyond the control of the average citizen and work to our detriment. Because he makes so many simple but costly errors, let’s try a laundry list:

1. Like other reactor advocates, Stewart cavalierly dismisses the nuclear waste problem by advocating, among other things, that the stuff simply be dumped down a deep hole. This is a terribly dangerous idea and will not happen. Suffice it to say that after a half-century of promises (the first commercial reactor opened in Pennsylvania in 1957) the solution now being offered by government and industry is… a committee!!! Meanwhile, more than 60,000 tons of uniquely lethal spent fuel rods sit at some 65 sites in 31 states with nowhere to go. Like the reactors themselves, they are vulnerable to cooling failure, terrorist attack, water shortages, overheating of lakes, rivers and oceans, flooding, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes, and much more. This is no legacy to leave our children.
2. Equally disturbing is the industry’s inability to get meaningful private liability insurance. The current federally imposed limit is $11 billion, which would disappear in a meltdown even faster than BP’s $75 million in the Gulf. According to the latest compendium of studies, issued this spring by the New York Annals of Science, Chernobyl has killed some 985,000 people, and is by no means finished. It has done at least a half-trillion dollars in damage. The uninsured death toll and financial costs of a similar-scaled accident in the U.S. are incalculable, but would clearly kill millions and bankrupt our nation for the foreseeable future.

Stewart points out that there are also risks with wind and solar power. But clearly none that begin to compare with nukes, coal or deep-water drilling. If reactor owners were forced to find reasonable liability insurance, all would shut. A similar demand for renewables and efficiency would leave them unaffected.

3. Renewable/efficiency technologies today are cheaper, faster to deploy and more job-creating than nukes. It takes a minimum of five years to license and build a new reactor. The one being done by AREVA in Finland is hugely over budget and behind schedule. There is no reason to expect anything better here. Among other things, the long lead time ties up for too many years the critical social capital that could otherwise go to technology that can quickly let the planet heal.

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4. Like others who doubt the possibility of a green-powered Earth, Stewart posits the straw man of reliance on a deployment of solar panels that would blanket the desert and do ecological harm. In fact, the National Renewable Energy Lab estimates 100 percent of the nation’s electricity could come from an area 90 miles on a side, or a relatively modest box of 8,100 square miles. But as we all know, that’s not how it will be done. Solar panels belong on rooftops, where there is ample area throughout the nation, and an end to transmission costs. Likewise, wind farms do not "cover" endless acres of prairie, their tower bases take up tiny spots that remain surrounded by productive farmland. In this case, currently available wind turbines spinning between the Mississippi and the Rockies could generate 300 percent of the nation’s electricity. There’s sufficient potential in North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to do 100 percent. Cost and installation times put nukes to shame. The liability is nil, as is the bird kill, which primarily affects obsolete, badly sited fast-spinning machines in places like Altamont Pass. Those must come down, and there will certainly be other surprises along the way. No technology is perfect, and we need to be careful even with those that are green-based.

   Much of this will be discussed at the upcoming American Renewable Energy Day gathering in Aspen, August 19-22.

   But as we have seen, further threats on the scale of Chernobyl and the Deepwater Horizon cannot be sustained.

5. As for GMO crops, Darwin was right. Plants evolve to avoid herbicides just as bugs work their way around pesticides (which Stewart correctly decries). Now we see that "super-weeds" are outsmarting the carefully engineered herbicides meant to justify the whole GMO scheme, bringing a disastrous reversion to horrific, lethal old sprays. Chemical farming may be good for corporate profits, but it can kill global sustainability. In the long run, only organics can sustain us.
6. Stewart mentions that he is paid only for speeches. But a single such fee can outstrip an entire year’s pay for a grassroots organizer or volunteer. What’s remarkable is that the nuclear power industry spent some $645 million lobbying for its "renaissance" over the past decade — more than $64 million/year. It has bought an army of corporate lobbyists and legislators. Yet only a handful of folks with rear guard environmental credentials has stepped forward to fight for the old fossil/nuclear/GMO technologies.

Stewart is certainly welcome to his own opinions. But not to his own facts. Pushing for a nuclear "renaissance" concedes that it’s a Dark Age technology, defined by unsustainable costs, inefficiencies, danger, eco-destruction, radiation releases, lack of insurance, uncertain decommissioning costs, vulnerability to terrorism and much more.

That the industry must desperately seek taxpayer help and cannot find insurance for even this "newer, safer" generation, is the ultimate testimony to its failure. By contrast, renewables and efficiency are booming, and are a practical solution to our energy needs, which the corporate clunkers of the previous century simply cannot provide.

It’s been a long time since the Whole Earth Catalog was published. Its hallowed founder should wake up to the booming holistic green technologies that are poised to save the Earth. They are ready to roll over the obsolete corporate boondoggles that are killing Her. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the disasters in the coal mines and the Gulf remind us we need to make that green-powered transition as fast as we possibly can.

Harvey Wasserman -Author, SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Dallas Morning News Editorial

Cracked asphalt provides a stark reminder of the nonexistent margin for error at a controversial radioactive waste dump in West Texas.

When state inspectors visited the site in Andrews County, they found cracks up to an inch wide in asphalt near canisters of radioactive material. While cracked asphalt is fairly inconsequential – and pretty much par for the course – when it comes to our city streets, it can be a dangerous proposition at a radioactive waste dump.

A spokesman for Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists, which operates the low-level radioactive waste site, dismissed the cracks as superficial and said they have been repaired. But as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has noted, that asphalt pad is an important safeguard against ground contamination.

The TCEQ is rightly seeking more information about the condition and history of the 10-acre asphalt pad. And that’s not the only cause for concern at the site. The TCEQ also plans to issue a notice of violation for storing a concrete canister filled with the hottest low-level radioactive material longer than allowed.

The Andrews County site has received six violation notices during the last six years, as significant questions about its proximity to an aquifer have swirled. The latest problems emerged amid a disconcerting push to significantly expand operations in Andrews County, potentially allowing 36 states to ship low-level waste to Texas.

Fortunately, members of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission have tapped the brakes and are revamping the plan, which had appeared to be on the fast track for approval. It’s not clear, though, how soon the compact commission might act.

The cracked asphalt and the questionable canister point to crucial safety questions that must be answered before any expansion gets consideration. The rules that could open up the current Texas-Vermont disposal agreement and permit dozens of states to dump waste in Andrews County don’t merely need to be tweaked; they should be tabled until officials are sure that every precaution has been taken to protect Texas and its residents.

So far, that hasn’t happened.

The argument for extreme caution in Andrews County should not be mistaken for a not-in-my-back-yard reflex or a broader opposition to nuclear energy. It’s simply recognition of the high stakes associated with radioactive waste disposal.

Last month, 15 Texas legislators wrote to the compact commission, urging members not to adopt the rules allowing expansion at the site right now. They underscored significant liability issues, concerns about health and safety, as well as the potential fiscal impact a leak could have.

As the lawmakers note, key questions about preparedness, precautions and due diligence have not yet been answered. At least for now, Texas is not sufficiently equipped to become much of the nation’s radioactive dumping ground.

June 29, 2010

By ANNA M. TINSLEY
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

A plan to potentially let 36 states ship radioactive waste to West Texas — loads that likely would pass through North Texas on major highways and railroads — is being revamped by state officials.

This month, members of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission took down proposed rules that could have allowed dozens of states to send low-level waste to a site in Andrews County. Environmentalists and state lawmakers were among those expressing concerns about leakage, contamination and the safety of communities along shipping routes.

"The rules were withdrawn," said Margaret Henderson, interim executive director of the commission. "There had been a number of public comments. [Commissioners] will be going through them and considering" what to include in a new version of proposed rules, she said.

As commissioners consider new rules, the disposal site — run by Waste Control Specialists and owned by Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, a major Republican donor — faces a violation notice for storing a concrete canister filled with low-level radioactive material for longer than allowed.

The commission is working to determine how the company should deal with the violation. It is also setting new rules on what materials are accepted at the West Texas site and whether other states can apply to send their low-level radioactive waste there.

No date has been set for the commission’s next meeting, and no timetable set for when the reworked rules will be released to the public, Henderson said.

Waste disposal

The Andrews County site is on top of layers of red bed clay in a sparsely populated area north of Odessa. It has had a hazardous-waste disposal permit since 1997.

State environmental officials have already agreed to let the site accept low-level waste from Texas — including from two nuclear plants, Comanche Peak near Glen Rose and the South Texas project in Matagorda County — as well as from Vermont and federal sources.

Now the question is how many other states can apply to send their waste there. The commission has twice delayed voting on a proposal that could open the site to at least 36 other states.

After new rules are written, they must be republished in the Texas Register for at least 30 days, and the public must have at least 30 days to comment before a vote occurs.

State Rep. Lon Burnam, who has expressed concerns about contamination in the North Texas communities the waste would pass through, is skeptical about what happens next.

"I think it’s natural for the activists who had a lot of concerns to feel like we have had a temporary reprieve, but that’s a too-narrow focus," said Burnam, D-Fort Worth. "They got bombarded with critical commentary that they are supposed to process and take into consideration.

"It’s clearly our responsibility to manage our waste and our sister’s waste from Vermont. It is not our responsibility to become the nation’s nuclear waste dump."

Burnam said he thinks politics will delay the new rules for several months.

"I don’t think anyone is going to know what the new rules include until after the [November] election," he said.

Shipments would include items such as beakers, soil, gloves, test tubes and hospital equipment that have come in contact with radioactive material. They would be shipped on trucks or trains, many passing through the Metroplex on a regular basis.

Violation notice

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality officials have said the site will receive a violation notice for storing the canister of radioactive material for more than a year, as allowed under a license granted to Waste Control Specialists.

State inspectors recently found cracks on an asphalt pad near where the canisters sit. Waste Control Specialists officials say the cracks were repaired last month and were "superficial." But inspectors want the company to turn over information about the status of the pad’s condition and how it was built.

Meanwhile, preparation continues at the site to break ground on the disposal facility. Officials have said it will take nearly a year to prepare the collection area.

Its size will depend on licensing requirements, financing and what rule the commission passes, company spokesman Rickey Dailey said. Company officials have said they didn’t mind the commission’s delay.

This report includes material from The Associated Press.

ANNA M. TINSLEY, 817-390-7610

June 28, 2010

By Kate Galbraith
Texas Tribune

Seventeen years ago, Texas turned on its last nuclear reactor, about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth. In another decade, several more reactors could get built here — if events in Washington go the power companies’ way.

Nuclear power now accounts for 14 percent of Texas’s electricity usage (below the national average, 20 percent). The case for adding more reactors rests on a rising appetite for electricity sparked by a growing population and ever-proliferating gadgetry. And proponents point out that nuclear power, unlike coal or natural gas, is virtually free of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with global warming during its operations, although environmentalists strongly dispute the merits of the plants.

The federal government is moving ahead with a program that provides loan guarantees for the plants — a crucial step to placate financiers nervous about the economic risk of building them. Earlier this month, the Department of Energy agreed to a $3.4 billion guarantee for the expansion of a nuclear facility in Georgia, and the Obama administration recently asked Congress for more funds to help out more plants. Two proposed nuclear projects in Texas are high on the list of potential recipients.

"We’re very serious about moving ahead," says Jeff Simmons, who is leading the development efforts to add two new reactors to the Comanche Peak plant in Glen Rose, near Fort Worth. The project is a joint venture between subsidiaries of Luminant, a big Texas power generator, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The companies are hoping to get a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of 2012 — a crucial green light for the plant.

"Before we even get the license, we will be hundreds of millions of dollars into the development of this project," Simmons says.

A second project is proposed for Bay City. Already, that site, called the South Texas Project, has two reactors, which began operating in the late 1980s. NRG Energy and CPS Energy, the San Antonio utility, have applied for a license to add two more reactors as well, although CPS recently whittled down its share of the project in a legal settlement as cost estimates ballooned.

Many hurdles remain before either project can be built, however. No new nuclear plants in the United States have been started in several decades (the Bay City and Glen Rose projects are the only ones in Texas and are among the last plants nationally to be built). Fears of another Three-Mile Island-type accident have hung over the industry, and the economics are daunting. Nuclear plants are extremely expensive to build — each new reactor can cost $6 billion to $8 billion, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. As a result, many plant operators have convinced the government to extend the life of old plants rather than build new ones. (The four existing Texas reactors are new enough so that an extension is not an issue yet.)

Cost concerns have been compounded by the recent economic turmoil. With the credit markets still tight, financing a huge project is difficult. Also, the recession has depressed demand for electricity — which makes it less necessary to build more power plants in the near term. Texas’s electric usage last year was 1.3 percent less than forecast, and a new report from ERCOT, the state grid operator, projects that peak electricity use will grow by 1.72 percent annually between 2010 and 2019, compared with last year’s projection of 2 percent growth during those years. Also, low natural gas prices have pulled down the overall price of electricity, making it harder to justify building an expensive plant.

Economic uncertainties propelled one major nuclear plant operator, Exelon, to pull back on its plans. Last year Exelon changed its license application for a new plant in Victoria County to a less arduous application, for an "early site permit," which covers environmental and safety portions of the applications only.

"Right now we don’t plan to build a plant there. We do want to preserve the option to build there in the future," says Craig Nesbit, the vice president for communications at Exelon Generation.

Companies exploring a fourth possible Texas plant, in the Panhandle, have not yet applied for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, despite statements in 2008 that an application was planned for 2009.

The federal government holds the key to the economics, through loan guarantees. These essentially mean that the government will pick up the tab if the borrower — the plant owner — defaults. Earlier this month Southern Company agreed to a $3.4 billion loan guarantee for a reactor project in Georgia, part of a $8.3 billion loan-guarantee package for the plant announced in February. The total federal pot currently stands at $18.5 billion — enough for one more project but perhaps not more. (There is also a far smaller amount allocated to loan guarantees for renewable energy projects, which are considered risky and in need of federal guarantees because of their newness.)

As a result, there is jostling for a place in the loan-guarantee queue. The South Texas Project is third in line, after the Georgia project and a plant proposed by Constellation Energy. The Comanche Peak project is fifth in line. The Obama administration asked Congress in May to add $9 billion to the $18.5 billion program, which would mean enough for a few more projects after the Georgia one.

Environmentalists think nuclear power is a terrible idea.

"We think expanding the Texas nuclear fleet is a huge mistake because of cost and waste issues primarily — and that there are significantly cheaper alternatives that could provide the power at a fraction of the cost," says Tom "Smitty" Smith, the Texas director of the environmental and consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. Energy-efficiency and renewable energy — such as the wind power that has grown quickly in Texas — would be far more cost-effective, he says.

Smith also maintains that nuclear plants’ "zero-emissions" arguments on greenhouse gases (although potentially crucial in the forthcoming debate about national energy legislation) are a red herring. "There are enormous emissions of greenhouse gases during the mining and enrichment, construction, decommissioning and then the storage for 50,000 years of this waste," he says. (At both existing Texas plants, the waste is stored on-site.)

But in Somervell County, home to the Comanche Peak reactors, there is community support for building more. The county has used homeland security grants to buy a military-style armored truck — to defend itself and its plant if needed.

"We’ve got to have more nuclear power," says County Judge Walter Maynard. "From a selfish standpoint, it’s very viable to our local economy."

Expired waste, cracks in containment pad found at West Texas site

Sunday, June 27, 2010

By Betsy Blaney
Associated Press /Austin American Statesman

LUBBOCK — A site in West Texas for disposing of some of the nation’s low-level radioactive waste has two more problems to deal with.

Officials with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said the agency will issue a notice of violation within two weeks because the company that operates the site, near the town of Andrews, has stored a concrete canister filled with the hottest low-level radioactive material beyond the 365 days allowed under a waste processing license.

The commission is drafting requirements for Waste Control Specialists to deal with the violation, but because of "potential issues related to repackaging and transportation, the TCEQ will allow the waste to remain on site as long as WCS complies with TCEQ’s corrective action requirements," agency spokeswoman Andrea Morrow wrote in an e-mail.

No fines will be issued, she said.

Last month, the environmental agency denied the company’s request for an extension until June 8, 2011, for the canisters, which came from a Tennessee radioactive processing plant.

In a routine check at the Andrews site, state inspectors also found cracks up to an inch wide on a 10-acre asphalt pad near where the canisters of radioactive material sit.

Morrow said the pad is important because it is a safeguard against ground contamination.

A company spokesman said he was not aware of any pending action from the commission. Rickey Dailey said the company thinks the nine canisters should be classified under its storage license, which has no time limit for interim use.

"We have a difference of opinion, and we’re continuing discussions to resolve the issue," he said.

The cracks were repaired and sealed last month, Dailey said. He said they were "superficial" and did not jeopardize the integrity of the pad.

Inspectors now want the company to submit engineering assessments on the pad’s condition and its long-term viability and to provide details of past and future repairs, according to a May 25 commission letter to the company.

They will also look at how the pad was constructed years ago, said Susan Jablonski, the agency’s radioactive materials division director.

"We want to do further investigation," she said. "We’re interested in the condition of the pad for any storage of radioactive material as well as the ongoing maintenance of that in the future."

The pad once held hundreds of 20,000-pound canisters of uranium byproduct from a shuttered weapons plant in Ohio, where the ore was processed for use in reactors to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons from the 1950s until 1989. These canisters are buried at the site.

The state’s pending action against Waste Control Specialists comes as a commission overseeing a low-level radioactive disposal compact involving Texas and Vermont is considering allowing 36 other states to dispose of their material, which includes workers’ clothing, glass, metal and other materials used at nuclear power plants, hospitals, universities and research labs.

The commission has not set a date to vote on proposed rules for importing the waste, which are opposed by some lawmakers and environmental groups.

News of the cracks and the pending violation notice didn’t surprise environmental groups.

"I think that, so far, Waste Control Specialists’ performance doesn’t inspire confidence," said Trevor Lovell of Public Citizen Texas . "This is poor performance from a company that boasts of being the nation’s solution for low-level radioactive waste."

Since 2004, the site has gotten six violation notices, none of which were classified as major. The commission has given the site a high compliance rating.

Two years ago, environmental commissioners signed off on an agreement for two violations and fined the company about $151,000.

The site had mismanaged hazardous waste near a rail car unloading area, and personnel failed to get authorization before letting radioactive material — including plutonium 239 and radium 226 — be released into the septic system inside a laboratory.

Should the commission adopt the rules on procedures for importing the waste from the other states, Morrow said the company would need to apply for an amendment to its disposal license to allow for burial of that type of waste.