nuclear
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Critical List: Fukushima will take decades to decommission; North Sea gas leak
Is Fukushima news ever positive? A new assessment of damage at the plant shows levels of radiation higher than expected, which means decommissioning the plant could take decades. Building cleantech requires certain resources — rare earth metals, water, biomass — that are getting scarce. Mohamed Nasheed, the deposed Maldives president, is doing a media tour […]
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Critical List: Senate voted against Keystone XL; CSA delivery by sailboat
The Senate voted against approving Keystone XL. Japan has almost shut down its nuclear industry; next month only one out of 54 reactors will be working. Those affected by the BP oil spill could get 60 percent of the settlement money they’re owed as soon as a new program to pay out claims is set […]
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Critical List: Vermont can’t shutter nuke plant; microbes turn seaweed into biofuel
The EPA will test water in Dimock, PA, and is delivering drinking water to four homes there. Silly Vermont. You wanted to shut down a nuclear plant? Only the federal government can regulate nuclear power! For biofuels, seaweed could be the new corn.
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Critical List: Congress does everything it can to screw the environment; fabric cleaned by sunlight
Congress voted to put sanctions on Iran, which would make it harder for Iran to sell oil, but potentially make oil sales more profitable for the regime overall. After all the work that the anti-Keystone coalition did, Republicans are trying to tack a measure to approve the pipeline onto a bill that extends the payroll […]
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Critical List: 74 percent of warming is human-made; Schwarzenegger takes on clean energy
A study quantified the share of climate change that can attributed to humans and found that at least 74 percent of warming is human-made. 2010 saw the biggest jump in carbon dioxide output, ever. The mission of Occupy Green/Red Chile is to keep the GM industry's hands off of New Mexico's peppers. Ah-nold doesn't think […]
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Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown more terrifying than we thought
In a new report, Tokyo Electric Power company has revealed that the Fukushima meltdown probably did more damage and was more dangerous than anyone realized at the time. The report's based on a simulation, but that simulation indicated that the entire ration of fuel inside one reactor could have turned into a pile of molten […]
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Eco-shocking the airwaves
For his podcast, Radio Ecoshock, Alex Smith interviews mostly off-the-radar authors, scientists, and activists about the climate crisis.
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Learning from history: Why natural gas prices will rise
Here’s the standard story about the U.S. power grid: It gets baseload supply from hydro, nuclear, and coal (in that order), using natural gas (and the occasional oil plant) as a swing producer to meet peak demands. Renewables play on the margin, but are neither big nor reliable enough to matter from a grid planning […]
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Republicans critical of Solyndra sought loan guarantees for coal, nuclear
There's ample evidence that pretty much everyone in Congress — even vocal critics of the government’s investment in Solyndra — is into loan guarantees for energy, whatever they tell the cameras after a few of these relatively risky ventures inevitably fail. Rep. John Boehner, for instance, requested loans to enrich uranium under the same loan […]