Climate Crisis
National security risks grow with new nuclear energy
“Proliferation of nuclear weapons, nuclear terrorism, sabotage, coercion and military operations – these [national security] risks associated with nuclear energy can all be expected to grow as countries seek to implement their new nuclear energy objectives, according to a new report [“New Nuclear Energy: Assessing the National Security Risks,”] published today by George Washington University’s…
Read MoreRenewables exceed electricity demand
Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and author of No Miracles Needed: How Today’s Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air, has written a piece in Scientific American delineating the renewable revolution happening in California. He states: “California has hit record-breaking milestones in renewable electricity generation, showing…
Read MoreThe government is spending billions to restart Michigan’s Palisades reactor. Why?
[Yard sign design by Michigan Safe Energy Future-Kalamazoo Chapter and Palisades Shutdown Campaign; photo by Kevin Kamps] An op-ed published on April 16, 2024 in the Detroit Free Press, written by Roger Rapoport. Rapoport hosted a recently published, four-part podcast interview with Beyond Nuclear’s radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps, a 32-year watchdog on the Palisades…
Read MoreSystemic cover-up: New book profiles radiation risks and scientists
The Scientists Who Alerted us to Radiation’s Dangers by Ian Fairlie, PhD and Beyond Nuclear’s Cindy Folkers, MS, has just been published by The Ethics Press. The book profiles 23 radiation scientists over the previous half-century or so, who revealed that radiation risks were higher than thought, but who were victimized by governments and the…
Read MoreGAO excoriates NRC for abandonment of climate crisis licensing and oversight at US reactors
On April 2, 2024, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) publicly released an extensive report, “NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS: NRC Should Take Actions to Fully Consider the Potential Effects of Climate Change” (GAO-24-106326). U.S. Senators Tom Carper (D-Del) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va), both devout supporters of nuclear power expansion, asked GAO to review US energy infrastructure…
Read MoreFirst SMR domino falls, potentially to start cascade
Same financial risks viewed as generic to entire reactor type The nuclear industry is rattled by an Opinion piece appearing in the January 31, 2024 edition of the energy trade journal Utility Dive. The article, astutely entitled “The collapse of NuScale’s project should spell the end for small modular nuclear reactors,” is an extensively documented…
Read MoreMass Nuclear Layoffs
In Victorian times, cautionary tales were popular for deterring naughty behavior amongst children. Today, we are awash in such stories in the nuclear power sector — the latest regarding layoffs — and our politicians should be reading them. The latest example is NuScale, the company whose small modular reactor design was considered most likely to…
Read MoreMultiple nuclear giveaways backfire
An E&E article, “No takers for Biden’s nuclear bailout,” reports “[a] Department of Energy attempt last year to bail out struggling or recently shuttered nuclear plants failed to land a single qualified taker…DOE planned to announce the results of the 2023 bailout attempt by January 1, 2024, according to DOE’s March guidance for the second…
Read MoreCOP28’s tripling nuclear energy is unachievable
An opinion piece in the Boston Globe co-authored by Ernest Moniz, nuclear physicist and former US Secretary of Energy and Armond Cohen, lawyer and executive director of US-based Clean Air Task Force, defends tripling nuclear power capacity globally “as an essential part of mitigating climate change” to come out of the United Nations talks convened…
Read MoreTriple nuclear plan lands with a thud
The Declaration to Triple Global Nuclear Capacity by 2050 made at COP28 has had its balloon further punctured by its post-COP reception. Only 22 countries — and just 17 with existing nuclear power programs as Sharon Squassoni points out in her excellent numbers crunch in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — lined up to…
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