FUKUSHIMA NEWS
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NEW NUKES for Georgia???
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PO Box 8574
Atlanta, GA 31106
404-378-4263
nukewatchsouth@mindspring.com
NO NUKES Y'ALL!
GEORGIA | VOGTLE 3 & 4
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REPEAL THE CWIP TAX
OOPS! GA Power drops the Vogtle pressure vessel
SAVANNAH 1/31/13: Days after Georgia Power circulated a news story bragging about the arrival of the 300-ton Korean-made reactor pressure vessel for Vogtle, an anonymous source leaked the news that Georgia Power had almost rolled the massive reactor pressure vessel into an alligator swamp en route from the Port of Savannah to the Vogtle construction site near Augusta, Georgia. The reactor vessel platform misaligned with the lauded Schnaebel rail car 1/4 mile from the Port of Savannah and the load has languished in the port railyard ever since.
The embarrassing news circulated and NUCLEAR WATCH SOUTH activists joined the Stop Plant Vogtle coalition to make sure the Public Service Commission knew about it with an impromptu performance of Georgia Power Choo Choo. Two weeks prior, dozens of citizens had jammed the PSC's public hearing room to protest cost overruns and CWIP taxes for the $14.2 billion (and mounting) nuclear construction project, unaware that Georgia Power was actively covering up their rail mishap.
Read more about it on Friends of the Earth's TOM CLEMENTS blog.
Nuclear Watch South joins legal opposition to license for two new reactors in Georgia
Groups contend that NRC failed to fully consider Fukushima lessons before issuing license to construct and operate two new nuclear reactors
2/17/12: ATLANTA, GA The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) voted 4-1 on February 9, 2012, to issue the final license for two new reactors at the site of the currently operating Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko cast the only dissenting vote, effectively agreeing with nine national, state and regional groups who will file a challenge in federal court.
TELL OBAMA "NO TAX $ $ $ FOR VOGTLE!"
A major legal challenge has been filed charging the NRC with violating federal law to issue the license without considering the important lessons of the catastrophic Fukushima accident in Japan and regarding the ways the Vogtle operation should be modified to protect public safety and the environment. The groups are asking federal judges to order the NRC to prepare a new environmental impact statement (EIS) for the proposed Vogtle reactors that explains how cooling systems for the reactors and spent fuel storage pools will be upgraded to protect against earthquakes, flooding and prolonged loss of electric power to the site. The EIS must also detail how emergency equipment and plans for the nuclear plant will be revised to account for accidents affecting multiple reactors on the Vogtle site, as happened at Fukushima.
As part of the action, the organizations are also challenging the validity of the Westinghouse-Toshiba AP1000 design, on which the new Vogtle reactors are based.
"It is terribly irresponsible of the NRC to rush this risky reactor project through even as Japan continues to grapple with the unstable condition of the wrecked Fukushima reactors," says Nuclear Watch South Coordinator Glenn Carroll. "There are many concerns with nuclear energy even beyond those raised by the Fukushima catastrophe. We hold out hope that Southern Company and Georgia Power may yet come to their senses to recognize the tangible successes of wind and solar power and decide to abandon dead-end, out-moded nuclear power.
"After all, Southern Company has not invested a dime of its own money so far, so they have nothing to lose and everything to gain if they choose to install solar panels on all that land they've already cleared," Carroll concludes.
The organizations filed their lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The nine organizations taking the legal action are: Friends of the Earth, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Center for a Sustainable Coast, Citizens Allied for Safe Energy, Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions, North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, Nuclear Information and Resource Service and Nuclear Watch South.
Although Southern Co. has already commenced extensive preliminary construction activities at the Vogtle site, the license would allow Southern to complete construction of the containment, reactor cooling systems, spent fuel storage pools, and other major reactor components.
The organizations charge that these major structures could change substantially if they are redesigned to take the lessons of the Fukushima accident into account, and therefore continued construction of the new Vogtle reactors could be wasting money and resources. And if the license is disapproved in the lawsuit or Fukushima-related retrofits make the project too expensive to finish, utility ratepayers in Georgia are likely to be stuck with the expense of a large and useless concrete mausoleum, similar to many other abandoned reactor projects across the U.S.
Separately, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy has sued the Department of Energy for failing to disclose key information about the terms of DOE’s $8.3 billion loan guarantee for the new Vogtle reactors, especially the risk posed to U.S. taxpayers should the estimated $14 billion project default. The organizations remain very concerned that utility customers and taxpayers have been forced to put more “skin in the game” than Southern Co. and its utility partners and shareholders. With prices of natural gas very low, even the CEO of Exelon has said publicly that he wouldn’t build a nuclear plant today.
MEDIA CONTACT: Glenn Carroll, Nuclear Watch South, 404-378-4263, atom.girl@mindspring.com
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NUCLEAR WATCH SOUTH COORDINATOR ON DEMOCRACY NOW!
Anti-Nuclear Activists Mobilize to Oppose
Obama-Funded Construction of Georgia Nuke Plants
DEMOCRACY NOW! (2/24/10) The news in Vermont follows Obama’s announcement last week of $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of the first new nuclear power plants in the United States in close to three decades. The loan guarantees will help the Atlanta-based Southern Company build two more nuclear reactors in Burke County, Georgia, near the city of Augusta. We speak to Nuclear Watch South coordinator Glenn Carroll, who has been leading efforts against the construction of the new plants.
ALSO ON DEMOCRACY NOW! Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen speaks about the historic vote to shut Vermont Yankee and the cover-up of an underground plume of radioactive tritium heading for the Connecticut River. Arnie's stunning and informative interview with Amy Goodman begins at the 10:30 mark.
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“RADIOACTIVE RIP-OFF”
Tax-Funded Nuclear Bailout for Southern Company
OBAMA SAYS $8.3 BILLION IN NUCLEAR LOAN GUARANTEES
ATLANTA (2/16/10) ~ The “Nuclear Renaissance” promoted by Bush’s last administration reached a controversial milestone today with President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu’s much-anticipated announcement that $8.3 billion in tax-funded loan guarantees will be granted to Southern Company to construct two new reactors in Georgia. The reactors are proposed in addition to the two reactors already at Plant Vogtle in Burke County on the Savannah River near Augusta. Southern Company has not said that it will take the deal. Loan guarantee details were worked out in closed-door meetings between the U.S. Department of Energy and privately-owned electricity giant Southern Company.
Glenn Carroll, coordinator of Georgia-based environmental group Nuclear Watch South expressed dismay about the nuclear loan guarantees announcement. “It is a giant radioactive rip-off for Georgians and the U.S. taxpayers to promise our money for nuclear reactors. Radioactive risk and radioactive waste are the only promises that nukes can be counted on to keep.”
Despite Obama's announcement, Southern Company will not qualify to receive the tax-funded loans until it obtains a license to build the reactors from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The license is opposed by several environmental groups. Southern Company has resisted using union labor, a possible loan guarantee condition which may drive up already high estimates for the reactors. The loan guarantees are also contingent upon NRC approval for the Vogtle reactor design. A generic license for the Westinghouse “AP 1000” reactor design which Southern Company proposes for the Vogtle site is being questioned by the NRC over safety concerns. The Westinghouse design has downgraded the typical robust concrete “containment building” to a much less substantial “shield building” made from stacked concrete blocks.
NO POISON POWER NEEDED HERE!
It will be a shame if Southern Company misses out on the green energy revolution because it is blinded by promises of easy money to pursue antiquated nuclear energy.
The new nuclear reactors are part of a federal energy legislation package which attempts to address climate change. There are hopeful trends which may yet offset the need for new reactors which take many years to license and construct. Energy Department figures from the third quarter 2009 saw renewables surpass nuclear’s contribution to the total energy picture for the first time. The American Wind Energy Association reports that close to 10,000 Mw of new wind power joined the grid in 2009 — that's ALOT of clean power especially when you consider it would take the better part of a decade to install new nuclear energy. In addition, U.S. energy consumption habits have finally begun to shift and Southern Company predictions for energy need are not likely to materialize as it, too, has reported a downturn in electric sales for the past two years (the first time ever that sales have dropped for two years in a row).
“Loan guarantees for nuclear reactors are short-sighted,” says Ms. Carroll. “We predict that while we are waiting for nuclear energy to get itself ready, forward-thinking efficiency measures and small-scale installations of wind and solar which are joining the grid every day will transform the energy landscape and offset the need for more radioactive poison power. It will be a shame if Southern Company misses out on the green energy revolution because it is blinded by promises of easy money to pursue antiquated nuclear energy.”
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"To the village square
we must carry the facts
of atomic energy.
From there must come America's voice."
ALBERT EINSTEIN
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KNOW ABOUT IT
Breakthrough study by IEER proves we can get off coal, oil and nuclear by 2040
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RADIOACTIVE
TEA PARTY!
ALICE is none other than Nuclear Watch South's Leslie Minerd who is joined by White Rabbit Tom Clements (Friends of the Earth), Red Queen and SC Sierra Club Chair Susan Corbett, and Tea Party Host Extraordinaire, the Mad Hatter, Tim Liszewski of Carolina Peace Resource Center. Alice and Crew crashed the 2008 Tea Party rally in Columbia, SC, and put tax-funded nuclear loan guarantees in front of the Tea Partiers and the local media.