nuclear power
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Why closing NYC's only nuclear power plant would be a really bad idea
Rawwwrrr! It's a progressive cat-fight! On the one side is New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who wants to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River, just 25 miles north of the Bronx.
On the other side is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who thinks this would be a really crap idea, mostly because it would mean replacing fully a quarter of the power delivered to NYC with greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuel power plants. Also, it would probably lead to brownouts.
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The U.S. gets more power from renewables than from nuclear
A new report from the Energy Information Administration shows that in 2011, renewable power in the U.S. surpassed nuclear for the first time. In the first three months of the year, renewable energy plants -- including geothermal, biomass, wind, water, and solar -- were responsible for about 12 percent of the country's energy production, while nuclear produced only 2 percent.
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Nuclear power is fine — it's corporate power that's dangerous
In the Guardian, George Monbiot argues that nuclear power was the least of Fukushima's problems. Sure, the nuclear industry is corrupt and regulation-resistant -- but name a power industry that isn't. When it comes to health threats, says Monbiot, the conscienceless scumbags in the nuclear industry are miles ahead of all the other conscienceless scumbags.
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Horde of jellyfish shuts down nuclear plant
In keeping with the recent trend of wildlife disrupting human activity through sheer numbers, a bunch of jellyfish just shut down a nuclear power station in Scotland. The plant manually shut down operations yesterday because of a "high volume" of jellyfish on its seawater filter screens. (As far as we know, the jellyfish were not […]
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Germany Sets the Bar for a Green Energy Future
Today is a historic day in Germany and for green energy world wide. The German Parliament has made a precedent setting move – not only have they set a plan to phase out all nuclear by 2022, but the Parliament has committed to renewable energy like wind and solar as the replacement. The decision will […]
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More radioactive water leaks at Fukushima
Japan's damaged Fukushima plant is now holding oceans of contaminated, radioactive water in its storage tanks, and that water keeps leaking out. Today, the country's Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency said that fifteen tons or so of water had leaked.
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Critical List: Wildfire threatens Los Alamos; a sweet electric bike
In Arizona, the wildfire is at the edge of Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has radioactive materials and other nasty stuff on the premises. It’s all safety stored, the government says. We’re also being told that everything’s cool at that nuclear plant in Nebraska that’s knee-deep in the flooded Mississippi.
China's going to run out of water within 30 years at current rates of consumption.
More people want their own personal wind turbine, but it's not a status symbol. Yet. -
Small nuclear reactors get their first customer, but are no panacea
Small nuclear reactors are the mobile homes of the the nuclear power universe -- they can be built in factories rather than on-site, then shipped to their destination and hooked up to the local power grid without any expensive upgrades to transmission infrastructure.
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Critical List: Two nuclear plants in the path of Missouri River floods; sea levels are rising
Two nuclear power plants are in the path of the Missouri River floods, but DON'T WORRY EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
A new study verifies that the sea has risen more quickly during the past one hundred years than at any other time in the last millennium, and that climate change is definitely, absolutely, positively, no question to blame for that.
Because the Obama administration likes tourist attractions that bring in gazillions of dollars to Arizona's economy, it's not going to let anyone mine for uranium on the 1 million acres of land surrounding the Grand Canyon for the next 20 years. After 20 years … well, hell, it’s only a big hole in the ground.