"Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" available online for free

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Dec. 2009, 335 pages, published by the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), is viewable online at no charge in PDF format. Go to: http://www.nyas.org/Publications/Annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1. Then click on “Full Text.” Then, under “Annals Access,” next to “Nonmembers,” click on “View Annals TOC free.” This will allow you, chapter by chapter, to download and/or view the entire text of the book, for free. As the 25^th commemoration of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe approaches (April 26, 2011), this vital book could not be more timely. It is written by Alexey V. Yablokov of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, Russia; Vassily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V. Nesterenko, of the Institute of Radiation Safety in Minsk, Belarus. Janette D. Sherman-Nevinger of the Environmental Institute at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, U.S.A. has served as the Consulting Editor. Please help spread the word about this significant scientific study, and its availability online at no charge. Its hardcopy sale price from the NYAS has been a whopping $150 for nonmembers – out of reach, of course, for most all-volunteer anti-nuclear groups. Besides that, NYAS only printed 700 hardcopies of the book to begin with. Now, no copies are left, and it is unknown if more will be printed.

Beyond Nuclear challenges NRC over Seabrook license renewal

Beyond Nuclear representative Paul Gunter went before a federal licensing board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to argue that rather than relicense New Hampshire’s Seabrook nuke for another 20 years, it can be replaced by wind power that is under development 10 to 50 miles out into the Gulf of Maine for five gigawatts of renewable baseload electricity by 2030. It is outrageous enough that NextEra Seabrook Nuclear LLC (aka Florida Power & Light) is submitting a license extension application 20-years before the current license even expires also in 2030.

In fact, NextEra is using the opportunity as an end run around the environmentally friendly renewable energy renaissance rapidly dawning offshore in the deep water of the Atlantic Ocean.  

Beyond Nuclear makes the legal case that NextEra’s application violates national environmental policy law by significantly misleading the federal government with a self-serving evaluation and dismissal of the  neighboring wind alternative which in fact will render the continued harmful operation of Seabrook obsolete.

Coincidently on December 1, 2010, the National Wildlife Federation released its own report “Offshore Wind in the Atlantic, Growing Momentum for Jobs, Clean Air and Job Protection” further validating Beyond Nuclear’s challenge to bring a halt to an unreasonable and dangerous extension of the nuclear age.

Inside EPA: "Agencies Struggle to Craft Offsite Cleanup Plan for Nuclear Power Accidents"

On Nov. 10th, Inside EPA's Douglas Guarino broke the story "Agencies Struggle to Craft Offsite Cleanup Plan for Nuclear Power Accidents." It revealed that NRC, EPA, and FEMA disagree about which agency would be responsible for long term cleanup after a major radiation release, and where the funding to do so would come from. Due to the heightened interest surrounding this story, Inside EPA has made the article, including embedded links to the corresponding FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) response documents, available to non-subscribers via the above link.

Davis-Besse: 20 MORE years of radioactive Russian roulette on the Great Lakes shore?!

Davis-Besse "red photo," showing boric acid crystal/rust "lava" flowing from dangerously corroded reactor lid.Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps has written a fully referenced overview of major near-misses that have occurred over the decades at FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse atomic reactor near Toledo in light of its recent application for a 20 year license extension. These near misses include a 1977 Three Mile Island precursor, a 1985 steam generator dryout that blocked cooling to the core, a 1998 tornado direct hit and dicey electricity supply for safety critical cooling systems, a 2002 "hole-in-the-head" (see photo to left), a 2010 beginning of a new "hole-in-the-head," and numerous additional incidents.

Nuclear reactors are accidents in progress; Wasserman column

Columnist Harvey Wasserman, in a new piece entitled America's Eggshelll Nukes, writes that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission knows that nuclear reactors are not accidents waiting to happen, but accidents in progress. Read more.