CNBC: In recent weeks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled against a proposed partnership between NRC Energy and Toshiba, citing a law that prohibits control of a U.S. plant by a foreign corporation.
Elsewhere, Duke Energy scuttled plans to construct two nuclear reactors in North Carolina, while California officials warned that two damaged reactors could be shut down permanently if the NRC doesn’t take action to get the plants back online…
With shale and natural gas gaining currency and the cost of building plants soaring, nuclear energy’s stock is steadily being devalued. All this is playing out against the backdrop of Japan’s nuclear disaster two years ago at Fukushima, which made policymakers think twice about extolling the virtues of nuclear power… (more)
Reality of the risk, costs and slowness of coming online is hitting the nuclear energy. Major accidents will pop up now and then, but there are lots of constant environmental problems with nuclear.
We just did a radio show yesterday with native Indians from the Grand Canyon and Black Hills areas. There are some amazing nuclear accidents related to the mining of uranium that have not been reported. They are still emitting radiation into the air, soil and water as they remain open pit mines — there are thousands of them. One example, three months after Three Mile Island a damn burst at Church Rock in New Mexico where waste from uranium mining was being stored. It flooded into the little Colorado River and the main Colorado River emitting more nuclear poison than Chernoybl. The cancer rates are incredibly high in the area. This is one example of many — it is a major environmental scandal that has hardly been reported. We’ll be writing an article about it in our weekly Wednesday column at Truthout.org. We are doing the research to add to the comments made by our radio guest. It is shocking.
So, at the other end — the excavation for nuclear — the environmental damage is terrible and the clean-up is costly.
The first step solutions to the energy crisis are conservation and efficiency. We waste half the energy we use in this country. No one talks about this because it is not very sexy but it is the low hanging that is the essential first step to an energy problem for this century.
KZ