"The Iran Nuclear Deal 70 Years After Hiroshima and Nagasaki"

Margaret Harrington, host of "Nuclear-Free Future Conversation" on Channel 17/Town Hall Meeting Televsion in Burlington, VT, interviewed Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps on the Iran Nuclear Deal announced on July 14th, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing 70th anniversaries on Aug. 6th & 9th, and the Japanese Abe administration's restart of an atomic reactor at Sendai post-Fukushima, despite overwhelming popular opposition. A major theme of the conversation is how nuclear power and nuclear weapons are flipsides of the same coin. (Note: there appears to be "dead air" and a black screen at the 29:00 to 30:00 minute mark of the interview, but it resumes after that).

Exelon threatens to close three reactors by early next year, absent $1.8 billion IL bailout

NRC file photo of two-reactor Quad Cities nuclear power plant in ILScott Stapf of the Hastings Group's tweet put it well: Nuclear blackmail: Exelon threatens to kill Quad Cities plant if IL lawmakers don't hand over loot.

As reported by Crain's Chicago Business, despite a windfall compliments of regional grid operator PJM (provided at ratepayer expense), Exelon Nuclear is nonetheless still threatening to close its two reactors at Quad Cities, unless the Illinois State Legislature provides it another massive bailout, to the tune of $1.8 billion.

Exelon has also said its downstate single reactor plant, Clinton, could be next to close, early next year, absent the state bailout. A dozen years ago, the Clinton site was a "Nuclear Renaissance" showcase, with a Nuclear Regulatory Commission rubber-stamped "Early Site Permit" for a second new reactor there, a proposal suspended many years ago now.

Nuclear Energy Information Service of Chicago has led the charge in opposition to the state nuclear bailout.

Earlier this week, E&E published an interview with John Rowe in which the former Exelon CEO said that shutting Illinois's uncompetitive atomic reactors is "the proper market-driven answer."

"Prefab Nuclear Plants Prove Just as Expensive"

"Burning money" graphic by Gene Case, Avenging AngelsRebecca Smith has reported in the Wall Street Journal that the "[m]odular method has run into costly delays and concerns about who will bear the brunt of the expense."

The Vogtle 3 & 4, GA, and Summer 2 & 3, SC Westinghouse-Toshiba AP1000 construction sites are featured. At the former, federal taxpayers would be left holding the bag for $8.3 billion in nuclear loan guarantees, if the project defaults. At the latter, ratepayers have been gouged, repeatedly, for many years, to finance the troubled construction.

These cost overruns and schedule delays were to be expected, however, based on the previous history of nuclear power in the U.S. and overseas.

More.

Karl Grossman donates Long Island nuclear power fight records to East Hampton Public Library

Karl Grossman at the PCLI Media Awards, June 7, 2012. Karl Grossman has covered Long Island politics for over 50 years. He is an honored member of the Long Island Journalism Hall of Fame.Karl Grossman, a Beyond Nuclear board member and 53-year investigative journalist on Long Island where he is based, is donating his document collection to the East Hampton Public Library, as he has reported at LIPolitics.com.

Grossman has covered many environmental, political, and social issues over the past half-century, including a major nuclear power fight on Long Island:

From 1966 into the 1980s, the Long Island Lighting Company sought to build seven to 11 nuclear power plants in Suffolk County with Shoreham the first. My files include thousands of records of this ultimately defeated scheme to make Long Island what was termed in the nuclear establishment’s parlance of the time, a “nuclear park.”

Grossman's coverage of that nuclear power fight led to the publication of his 1986 book Power Crazy: Is LILCO Turning Shoreham Into America's Chernobyl?

(Other books on nuclear power by Grossman include his 1980 Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, and his 1997 The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, among others.)

As Grossman has described it, his document collection will now provide an Atomic Age, modern era "book-end" for the Long Island archive at the East Hampton Public Library dating back to the Colonial era.

Cora Henry: "70 Years After Bomb, Hiroshima Activists Defy Nuclear Energy Industry"

Kosei Mito, showing Elisabeth Fernandes, of Osaka, and her niece his research on nuclear power. They are on the banks of the Motoyasu River, in front of the Atom Dome. Mr. Mito's guide badge, with an anti-nuclear weapons symbol, reads “IN-UTERO SURVIVOR.” Photo taken March 12, 2015 by Cora Henry in Hiroshima, Japan.Cora Henry, a journalism student at Indiana University, has published an article entitled "70 Years After Bomb, Hiroshima Activists Defy Nuclear Energy Industry."

Henry's article explores the history of the evolving position of Hiroshima's Hibakusha, literally “radiation-affected people,” towards nuclear power. She interviewed survivors of the bombing at the iconic remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industry Promotion Building, known as the Atomic-Bomb Dome.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, an anti-nuclear power consensus has emerged in both major Hibakusha organizations, with some members now very active in the ongoing campaign to resist atomic reactor restarts across Japan.

Update on August 5, 2015 by admin

Lauren McCauley has published an article along similar lines at CommonDreams. In "As Anniversary Nears, Atomic Bomb Survivors Speak Out Against Nuclear Power," McCauley interviews Japanese Hibakusha from Fukushima City to Brazil who are outspoken opponents to nuclear power, and the impending restart of atomic reactors -- namely, at Sendai nuclear power plant -- in Japan under the Prime Minister Abe administration.

One correction to the article: there have been very limited atomic reactor restarts in Japan, even after the beginning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe. For example, two reactors at Ohi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture operated for a number of months in 2012. However, for the most part, almost all of the 48 operable atomic reactors in Japan have remained shut down since 3/11/11. Six reactors were rendered inoperable by the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe: the operating Units 1, 2, and 3 melted down; Unit 4, although not operating that day, nonetheless exploded; Units 5 and 6, not operating that day, have nonetheless been retired, due to the hazardous radioactive contamination of the entire area. Japanese nuclear utilities have also announced the permanent shutdown of numerous additional reactors in the past four years, although a number remain operable.