Major legal victory in Missouri for distributed solar PV!

As reported by the The Joplin Globe, solar PV advocates including Renew Missouri (the Earth Island Institute) and the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center, and the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, have just won a major legal victory before the State of Missouri Supreme Court.

The ruling blocks an electric utility from wiggling out of providing rebates to customers who install solar photo-voltaic (PV) panels on their homes, as required by a 2008 state-wide Missouri voter referendum on minimum renewable portfolio standards. The utility, Empire District Electric Co., lobbied for and won the exemption from the State of Missouri legislature. But the State Supreme Court ruled the exemption was an illegal end run around the popular will of "Show Me State" voters, who passed the initiative by a 2 to 1 margin. More.

Carcinogenic Sr-90 detected in VY monitoring wells

As shown on this graphic chart, Sr-90 seeks human bone tissue. Credit: Russell Hoffman.As reported by Susan Smallheer at the Rutland Herald, the State of Vermont has detected radioactive, hazardous Strontium-90 in groundwater monitoring wells at Entergy's permanently shutdown Vermont Yankee atomic reator. State officials have indicated the Sr-90 almost certainly came from VY, and not atom bomb testing fallout. It very well could have come from the same leaks the contaminated soil and groundwater with tritium several years ago.

Sr-90 is a human bone seeker, and can cause bone cancer and leukemia, the article reports. This is shown on the graphic chart to the left (click here to see a bigger version).

Beyond Nuclear on Thom Hartmann's "The Big Picture" regarding Fermi 1, 2, and 3

Thom Hartmann, host of "The Big Picture"Thom Hartmann (photo, left) invited Beyond Nuclear onto his television program "The Big Picture" to discuss the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) impending decision to rubberstamp the proposed new Fermi 3 atomic reactor's license in southeast Michigan -- to be constructed on the very spot where the "We Almost Lost Detroit" Fermi 1 reactor had a partial core meltdown in 1966. The environmental coalition that has been intervening against Fermi 3's license for six and a half years, represented by Toledo attorney Terry Lodge, has vowed to appeal NRC's decision to federal court, if need be.

Thom also asked about the risks at Fermi 2 -- identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4 -- and the liabilities associated with U.S., Japanese, and other nuclear firms building dangerous new reactors in places like India and China.

Many have tried, all have failed // Washington Examiner: GOP must overcome Reid to get to Yucca nuclear storage

As shown in Jim Day's political cartoon (be sure to count the toes) in the Las Vegas Review Journal, the President Obama zeroed out funding, and ordered his DOE to withdraw the license application, in 2010.U.S. Senator Harry Reid's (D-NV) Communications Director, Adam Jentleson, put it concisely with that Tweet above, in response to a Washington Examiner article.

Even as Minority Leader in a Republican majority Senate, Reid can be counted on to block any attempt to resurrect the long-canceled high-level radioactive waste dump targeted at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as he has done for decades, ever since the "Screw Nevada bill" was passed into law in 1987.

In 2010, President Obama zeroed out funding for the Yucca Mountain Project, and ordered the U.S. Department of Energy to withdraw the construction and operating license application.

Entergy's Pilgrim suffered "a major loss of emergency assessment capability" during severe winter storm "Juno"

As this weather map shows, Pilgrim bore the brunt of winter storm "Juno."Pilgrim's bad week is turning into a bad month. As revealed by a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) "Event Notification Report" on Feb. 6th, Entergy Nuclear's Pilgrim atomic reactor on Cape Cod Bay south of Boston, MA suffered "a major loss of emergency assessment capability," during the severe winter storm nicknamed "Juno" on Jan. 27th. The report did not explain why it took ten days to report the incident. More.