Standing in solidarity against dirty energy

TransCanada Pipelines, which wants to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline across multiple U.S. states, for shipping dirty tar sands crude oil for export overseas, is also a major nuclear power utility. It owns a large share of Bruce Power, operator of the largest operating nuclear power plant in the world (the Japanese competition at Kashiwizaki-Kariwa is currently idled) -- Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, on the Lake Huron shoreline of Ontario, 50 miles from Michigan's Thumb.

Among the crazy, dangerous ideas Bruce Nuclear is pushing are: shipping 64 giant, radioactive steam generators, by boat on the Great Lakes, across the Atlantic, to Sweden, for "recycling" into consumer products; and hosting a "Deep Geologic Repository" for all of Ontario's so-called "low" and intermediate level radioactive waste (from 20 reactors), less than a mile from the drinking water supply for 40 million people in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American/First Nations. TransCanada's Bruce Nuclear didn't get away with the former; but the fight is still on against the latter.

Another crime against health and the planet that Bruce Nuclear engages in is incineration of all of Ontario's "low" level radioactive waste, imported from 20 reactors, with untold radioactive releases into the environment. It's the radioactive ashes leftover that Ontario Power Generation wants to bury along the Lake Huron shore at TransCanada's Bruce Nuclear Generating Station.

TransCanada's Bruce Nuclear is also a shameless opponent to any competition from wind power or solar photo-voltaics.

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps will join with Reject and Protect/Cowboy and Indian Alliance (see photo, above left, showing the Cowboy and Indian Alliance's horseback arrival into D.C. on Earth Day!) opposing TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline on Saturday, April 26th on the National Mall in Washington. Another member of the very broad coalition of environmental allies who will be there is Honor the Earth and its director, Winona "No Nukes" LaDuke.

Kevin's placard will commemorate, on one side, the Enbridge oil pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River, just upstream from his hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan in July 2010 (the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history, 1.4 million gallons of Canadian tar sands crude -- see Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage on the "Dilbit Disaster" (diluted bitumin, another name for tar sands crude oil) by Inside Climate News here); on the other side of the placard, it will commemorate the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe's 28-year mark (April 26, 1986 to April 26, 2014).

Along similar lines, Beyond Nuclear recently stood in solidarity with the Center for Biological Diversity, Public Citizen, more than a dozen other national groups, and scores of grassroots roots to protest the U.S. EPA's decision to allow BP to enter into federal contracts, despite the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, as well as a very recent Canadian tar sands crude oil spill into Lake Michigan from a notorious BP facility in Whiting, IN.

ANA Capitol Hill Awards reception set for May 19th -- inaugural recipient of Dr. Judith Johnsrud "Unsung Hero Award" soon to be announced!

Dr. Judith Johnsrud, July 1, 1931-March 9, 2014. Among the world's finest people.Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Consultant & Facilitator for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), made the following announcement on April 9th:

"After careful review of the many strong nominations submitted by ANA activists and considerable discussion/debate, the 2014 DC Days Committee selected the following individuals to invite to be honored at the Monday, May 19th Capitol Hill Awards reception.

Representative Ed Bluemanaur (Oregon) - Sponsor of the REIN-IN Act and other legislation to reduce nuclear weapons spending

Representative George Miller (California) - Protector of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and advocate for sick weapons complex workers

Donna Busch - Whistle-blowing former Manager of Environmental and Nuclear Safety at Hanford Waste Treatment Plant

Eric Schlosser - Author of the book Command & Control exposing the illusion of nuclear weapons safety

Dr. Judith Johnsrud "Unsung Hero Award" - to be named by Beyond Nuclear

   

Wouldn't You Like to Know ! -- Secret Grassroots Activist Award

Thanks for all the great input -- as everyone on the DC Days Committee will tell you, narrowing the list of deserving nominees was difficult."

Beyond Nuclear has established the Dr. Judith Johnsrud "Unsung Hero Award" in honor of our dearly departed founding board member, who devoted a half-century of her life to the anti-nuclear cause. Judy was herself awarded a lifetime achievement award by Sierra Club in 2012. Beyond Nuclear honored her memory in a TMI+35 newsletter, as well as with a commemorative postage stamp bearing her portrait (taken by Atomic Photographers Guild founder Robert Del Tredichi, from his 1980 book The People of Three Mile Island).

The inaugural recipient of the Dr. Judith Johnsrud "Unsung Hero Award" will be announced in the near future.

Beyond Nuclear is a proud member group of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. Please consider attending ANA's annual DC Days, including attending its moving Capitol Hill Awards reception on Monday evening, May 19th.

Radioactive "Moral Hazard": DOE loans, and guarantees, $6.5 billion for two new reactors for a 0%, $0.00 credit subsidy fee!

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy reports in a press release entitled "New Documents Confirm Utility Giant Southern Company Gets Sweetheart Deal from Energy Department for Multi-Billion Nuclear Loan Guarantees for Vogtle Reactors":

"As revealed today in an Energy & Environment News story by Hannah Northey, the credit subsidy fee for utility giant Southern Company and its utility partner, Oglethorpe Power, for billions of dollars in taxpayer-backed federal loan guarantees, is nothing, $0. This shocking information was disclosed two months after the Department of Energy (DOE) finalized terms of $6.5 billion worth of loan guarantees that were offered as part of an $8.3 billion package to build two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia. A third partner in the project, MEAG, has yet to have their $1.8 billion loan guarantee finalized."

Please register your disapproval of this nuclear sweetheart deal, at taxpayer expense and risk, to President Obama, your two U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Representative! You can be patched through to your Members of Congress via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

More.

Update on April 25, 2014 by admin

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) has posted a blog linking to a CREDO petition initiated by NIRS, calling on U.S. Senators Boxer (D-CA) and Markey (D-MA), strong nuclear power wathdog who, respectively, chair and serve on the Environmental and Public Works Committee, with jurisdiction over nuclear power matters, to request a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation into the ZERO credit subsidy fee "no money down" scandal. At the bottom of the CREDO petition site is a link to NIRS' GreenWorld blog post about the Vogtle 3 & 4 sweetheart deal, at taxpayer expense.

The SACE blog also links to a clever and insightful "by the numbers" blog written by Sue Sturgis, Institute for Southern Studies Editorial Director.

"Fukushima No. 1 boss admits plant doesn’t have complete control over water problems"

As reported by Reuters, although Japanese Prime Minister Abe said to International Olympic Committee dignitaries in Buenos Aires last September “Let me assure you the situation is under control” at Fukushima Daiichi, in his successful bid to secure the 2020 Summer Games for Tokyo, it appears he was mistaken.

“It’s embarrassing to admit, but there are certain parts of the site where we don’t have full control,” Akira Ono told reporters touring the plant last week.

Ono is TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi top manager.

He was referring to recent incidents, including TEPCO directly "203 tons [203,000 liters, or about 53,600 U.S. gallons] of highly radioactive water to the wrong building, flooding its basement. Tepco is also investigating a leak into the ground a few days earlier from a plastic container used to store rainwater. In February, a tank sprouted a 100-ton [100,000 liters, about 26,400 gallons] leak of radioactive water, the most serious incident since leaks sparked international alarm last year."

The ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) was fabricated at Fukushima Daiichi by Toshiba with participation by Areva. It is designed to filter out some 60 radioactive substances from the constant flood of radioactive water at the site, including Cs-137 and Sr-90 contamination. However, apart from some test runs, ALPS has largely sat idle for the past two years. Just two days ago, "a ton [about 264 gallons] of radioactive water overflowed from a tank" in the ALPS system.

Thus, 440,000 tons [440,000,000 liters, or more than 116 million gallons] of highly radioactive water has accumulated in some 1,000 hastily built storage tanks, some of which have themselves failed, overflowed, or leaked, releasing large quantities of contamination into the soil, groundwater, and ocean.

Each week, TEPCO adds another two to three 1,000-ton [1,000,000 liters, or more than 264,000 gallons] storage tanks to deal with the non-stop deluge of radioactively contaminated cooling water needed to keep the melted cores in "cold shutdown," as well as the radioactive groundwater it mixes with in the basement levels of the shattered reactor buildings and damaged turbine halls.

"Three Years After the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Disaster: Bringing he Focus Back on Life"

As posted at the Fairewinds Energy Education website, Chiho Kaneko, a member of the Board of Directors of Fairewinds Energy Education, discusses how:

The Fukushima Daiichi disaster opened the door to see how this is not merely a Japanese crisis. It is a crisis that transcends geography and time. We traced the roots of this crisis back 60-years to the fishing boat Daigo Fukuryumaru, or #5 Lucky Dragon, and American efforts to force nuclear power upon the Japanese people.

The website includes a link to the video, as well as the transcript of Chiho Kaneko's remarks.