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October 11, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Huge Cost Overruns May Defeat Small Reactor Prototype as Investors Flee

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020

With projected costs leaping from a 2017 estimate of $3.6 billion, to $4.2 billion in Nov. 2019, and reaching $6.1 billion last July, municipal investment in a Utah scheme to build the nation’s first so-called small modular reactors (SMRs) is starting to dry up.

To date, Logan, Utah and Lehi City have quit the project, and Bountiful, Utah’s power department says the chances are greater than 50-50 that it too will withdraw.

“[I]f we can’t bring this power in at a competitive price we just won’t build this project,” said LaVarr Webb, a spokesperson for the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), Reuters reported. UAMPS is the Utah state agency that delivers electricity to member cities in six western states. Webb told the Washington Examiner he expected other members could decide to leave too.

The experimental reactor venture is being built at the Idaho National Laboratory. UAMPS is partnered with dozens of regional cities, the companies NuScale, Fluor, and Worldwide Construction, and the US Dept. of Energy. The plan is to build the first of 12 small modular reactors by 2029. Cities including Brigham City, Hyrum, Logan and Lehi joined the effort to subsidize some of the development costs for the first SMR, which is being engineered to produce 60 megawatts.

A major financial shock was the Energy Department reneging on its promise to provide $1.4 billion for the first reactor, the Cache Valley Daily reported. Then in early August, the Utah Taxpayer’s Association issued a scathing report urging all the municipalities to quit the project citing cost overruns, construction delays, and “dependence on unpredictable federal subsidies.”

Edwin Lyman, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Director of Nuclear Power Safety, told Reuters, “the only hope for the UAMPS project, or any other of these first-of-a-kind projects, is that the Department of Energy will end up financing it.”

—JL

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter

October 11, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Renewables Outshine Nuclear; Reactor Futures Slammed by Investors’ S&P 500

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
By Christine Manwiller

As renewable energy sources become more cost effective, nuclear power is being seen as a losing investment. In its November 2019 report “The Energy Transition: Nuclear Dead and Alive” S&P Global Ratings stated, “Renewables are significantly cheaper and offer quicker payback on scalable investments at a time when power demand is stagnating.” Indeed, current international energy investment trends favor renewables, largely because nuclear power is not considered “clean.” Building nuclear reactors is hugely expensive due to increasing construction costs, and the complexity of meeting safety requirements imposed after Fukushima. Significantly, the S&P report even tells investors that nuclear power would not exist without “massive government support.”

S&P also advises against investing in small modular reactors (SMRs), which may eventually be permitted, but which can’t be developed without government funding. Although SMRs are considered a low initial investment, the reactors’ safety can’t be assured, high-level radioactive waste leaves the same disastrous legacy, while renewables are far less expensive and quicker to bring online.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

October 11, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Bribery Scandals Prove Nuclear Industry Must Cheat to Beat Safe Renewables

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
Excerpted from Op/Ed by Tim Judson, David Kraft and Pat Marida, Augusta Free Press, 8 Sept. 2020

In Ohio, Republican House Speaker Larry Householder has been arrested, along with his chief of staff and three lobbyists. They were charged as co-conspirators in a [$60 million] bribery and racketeering scheme involving the passage of a controversial nuclear bailout. In Illinois, House Speaker and state Democratic Party Chair Michael Madigan is under investigation, while the state’s largest utility company, Commonwealth Edison (ComEd, a subsidiary of Exelon) is cooperating under a deferred prosecution agreement and paying $200 million in fines. The investigation includes ComEd’s maneuverings to attain a nuclear bailout….

Mr. Householder and his co-accused funneled dark money to statehouse candidates, all but one of whom voted for the bailout after getting into office. Then they conspired to kill a ballot measure seeking to repeal the bailout….

In Illinois, ComEd admitted that it provided $1.3 million in payments to associates of Speaker Madigan from 2011 through 2019. ComEd admitted that the payments were to curry favor with Madigan over matters important to the utility, including the nuclear bailout….

The $200-million slap-on-the-wrist that ComEd is paying in fines is less than one year’s worth of the $2.4 billion bailout it secured from the Illinois legislature….

[T]he Illinois and Ohio subsidies are among the smaller ones: $7.6 billion for Exelon in New York; up to $3 billion for Exelon and PSEG in New Jersey; and a proposal for up $500 million per year for Exelon and FirstEnergy in Pennsylvania … have power companies done the same in other states, where even larger subsidies are on the table?…

Aging, uncompetitive nuclear reactors cannot keep up with the technological leaps and bounds and plummeting costs of renewable energy….

It’s time for lawmakers to repeal the nuclear bailouts and let the people of their states choose their energy future in an atmosphere free of corruption. If public opinion is any guide, they will always choose clean, renewable energy over dirty nuclear.

See full article: https://augustafreepress.com/corruption-scandals-expose-nuclear-industry-for-what-it-is/

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

August 1, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Majority of Millennials Support Banning Nuclear Weapons

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2020

The majority of young people around the world support banning nuclear weapons, according to a new poll commissioned by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The poll surveyed over 16,000 millennials (aged 20-35) across 16 countries and territories (Afghanistan, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Occupied Palestinian territory, Syria, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States) in 2019.

The use of nuclear weapons is “never acceptable” in wars or armed conflicts, say 84% of respondents. Support for this statement remains strong in nuclear-armed countries; 77% of in Israel, 81% in France, 86% in Russia, 83% in the United Kingdom, and 73% in the United States responded that nuclear bomb use in wars or armed conflicts is never acceptable. An even greater percentage of those surveyed in some countries find that the use of nuclear weapons is “never acceptable”—92% in Switzerland and 98% in Syria.

“The next generation has spoken: they don’t want nuclear weapons in their future,” said Alicia Sanders-Zakre, ICAN Policy and Research Coordinator, in response to the poll. “Today’s leaders should take heed and join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a first step towards a nuclear-weapon-free future.”

—ICAN

Filed Under: Direct Action, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter

August 1, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Sentencing Dates Changed for Kings Bay Plowshares 7

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7—Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Martha Hennessy, Fr. Steve Kelly, Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick O’Neill, and Carmen Trotta pictured in mug shot, will be sentenced in June 2020.
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2020

On Friday, May 22, Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the Southern District Federal court of Georgia in Brunswick, assigned new dates for seven defendants according to the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (KBP7) lead attorney, Bill Quigley. Many of the defendants had asked the court to postpone their May 28 and 29 court dates to accommodate their right to be sentenced in person in court, not by video, witnessed by the public and press. The seven were convicted of three felonies and one misdemeanor on October 24, 2019 for their nonviolent, symbolic disarmament act at the Kings Bay Trident submarine base.

The defendants had also asked for home confinement during this time of Covid-19, as entering prison could be a death sentence. Their request was denied by the prosecution. Elizabeth McAlister, 80, the eldest of the KBP7 defendants and widow of Phil Berrigan, was notified that her court date was changed from May 28 to June 8. She is to be sentenced by video while she stays at her home in Connecticut. McAlister served over 17 months before trial. The US attorney is asking for three to five years of probation and restitution. [Update: McAlister was sentenced to time served and three years supervised probation on June 8.]

Martha Hennessy, granddaughter of Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement, was granted an adjournment and given a new date on June 29, 3:30 pm, in Brunswick, Georgia. Patrick O’Neill, Clare Grady, Mark Colville, Carmen Trotta, and Fr. Steve Kelly also asked for an adjournment and were given June 29 and 30 as their new dates to appear with no times yet specified. They were not told whether they’ll be allowed to be sentenced in person in open court or whether they’ll have to travel to Brunswick to be sentenced remotely by video once they get there. [Update: On September 3, Carmen Trotta is scheduled for 9 am, Steve Kelly 1 pm, and Clare Grady at 4 pm. On September 4, Mark Colville 9 am, Patrick O’Neill 1 pm and Martha Hennessy at 4 pm.]

The sentencing recommendations call for up to 45 months for Steve Kelly (already served over two years) and up to 27 months for the others. Supervised probation and restitution are also requested. Judge Godbey Wood is free to sentence upward or downward from these guidelines.

As they wait for sentencing each of the defendants and their families continue to serve as their communities’ human needs grow exponentially during this Covid-19 pandemic. The defendants call for the release of people in prisons, in federal and state prisons, county and city jails, especially the elderly, the infirm and all non-violent offenders.

On April 4, 2018, acting on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 used a bolt cutter to enter a remote gate at Naval Base Kings Bay in St. Mary’s, Georgia, and walked two miles through swamp and brush. They then split up, prayed, symbolically poured blood, and spray-painted demands to disarm nuclear weapons and to love one another. They hammered on parts of a shrine to nuclear missiles, hung banners quoting Dr. King’s, “the ultimate logic of racism is genocide,” and another naming the ominicidal logic of Trident. The seven then waited to be arrested.

—Kings Bay Plowshares 7

Filed Under: Direct Action, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter

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