For the third consecutive year I participated in the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s (ANA) annual DC Days event. I joined scores of concerned citizens from across the country, along with several people from the former Soviet Union (representing Russia, the Ukraine, and Kazakhstan). We spent three days traversing Capitol Hill, educating the Congress on ways [...]
SACE’s High Risk Energy Choices program director, Sara Barczak, co-authored this blog. After the Japanese government prematurely declared the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactors stable at the end of 2011, much of the media retreated from covering the still volatile situation. But given the commemoration of the one year anniversary of this nuclear accident, the international media [...]
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) voted 4 to 1 today to issue the Combined Operating License for Vogtle units 3 and 4 near Augusta, Georgia. This is the first license to be approved in the United States in over 30 years. During the brief affirmation session today Chairman Gregory Jaczko firmly dissented and said: “There are significant [...]
Bob Inglis’ call to “simultaneously eliminat[e] all subsidies” for energy is another way that he believes we can use the “power of free markets” to make better choices about energy use. Although “subsidies” are often discussed, it is a concept that is hard to pin down. The World Trade Organization definition of a subsidy amounts [...]
–SACE’s High Risk Energy Organizer, Mandy Hancock, co-authored this blog Earlier this week a rare, unexpected 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck Mineral, Virginia and its tremors were felt for hundreds of miles as far away as New York, Ohio, and the Carolinas (see a few maps here). Fortunately, only minor damage was recorded in most areas. [...]
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently asked for stakeholder input on the potential to begin rulemaking proceedings regarding the reprocessing of used (spent) nuclear reactor fuel. Reprocessing is the separation of ‘fissionable’ uranium and plutonium from used nuclear fuel. A plutonium-based fuel could then be produced, often referred to as mixed-oxide fuel or “MOX,” [...]
The ongoing disaster in Japan at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has launched the nuclear debate to the forefront of energy discussions even here in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently launched a 90-day task force to assess the safety of the U.S. nuclear reactor fleet and to determine what measures the [...]
Three and a half months have passed since Japan was struck by the devastating earthquake and tsunami that led to nuclear meltdowns in three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility. The severity of the crisis and the extent to which the government mishandled information is finally, slowly coming to light. As [...]
Unfortunately, the mainstream media is reporting increasingly less on the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan. Nonetheless, radioactivity continues to be released into the air and water at the severely damaged facility. Most notably, the Japanese nuclear safety agency announced that actual radiation levels were likely more than double what was initially [...]
It has been nearly three months since Japan suffered the massive earthquake and tsunami that triggered the ongoing nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. And yet the utility owner/operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), only recently confirmed that three of the nuclear reactors suffered complete meltdowns within hours of the earthquake, with reactor Units [...]
