News & Articles on Nuclear Power
Nuclear is not renewable, but it’s listed here for organizational reasons. I wasn’t really interested in nuclear, didn’t think it had any future, and that it was effectively dead. I wasn’t writing about it. However, like a vampire, nuclear kept rising from the grave and stalking the land. Talk continued of reviving it one more time. This talk had a real effect on public policy in North America, especially in Ontario, Canada. Thus, I felt it necessary to include nuclear topics and this was the place on my web site where it was easiest to insert
Trudeau making mistake investing in nuclear research
By
Peggy Cameron
The idea of citizens’ taxes going to experimental small nuclear seems especially short-sighted knowing that the Canadian government under former prime minister Stephen Harper sold Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) to SNC-Lavalin for $15 million.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Are Mostly Bad Policy
By
Michael Barnard
Small modular reactors won’t achieve economies of manufacturing scale, won’t be faster to construct, forego efficiency of vertical scaling, won’t be cheaper, aren’t suitable for remote or brownfield coal sites, still face very large security costs, will still be costly and slow to decommission, and still require liability insurance caps. They don’t solve any of the problems that they purport to while intentionally choosing to be less efficient than they could be.
Nuclear plant decommissioning costs three times as much as estimated
By
Michael Barnard
But they need a fund of closer to $70 billion, and they are short regardless. So the US fleet cleanup is going to cost the taxpayer probably closer to an additional $40 billion, if it all goes according to the estimates.
Net Zero without Nuclear: The Case Against Nuclear Power
By
Jonathon Porritt
I’ve been ‘anti-nuclear’ since 1974 –ever since I joined the Green Party. My basic position hasn’t changed much during that time. Not because I decided back then that nuclear power was an inherently ‘wicked’ technology that must be avoided at all costs. I can genuinely claim thatI’ve been waiting more than 45 years for someone to prove me wrong about nuclear power, to falsify my working hypothesis that it’s simply ‘the wrong technology at the wrong time’ for sorting out all the challenges that we face.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Are Mostly Bad Policy
By
Michael Barnard
People asserting that SMRs are the primary or only answer to energy generation either don’t know what they are talking about, are actively dissembling or are intentionally delaying climate action.
US Nuclear Site Cleanup Underfunded By Up To $70 Billion
By
Michael Barnard
Headlines out of the UK are pointing out the horrible state of affairs for nuclear generation decommissioning after a committee of Members of Parliament that the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority really doesn’t have a handle on the 17 sites, their costs, or the vendors they selected for cleanup. They are currently projecting $177 billion and 120 years for the full decommissioning, over $1 billion per site. Some of this is due to botched procurement, with two different cleanup vendors stripped of their contracts.
Recurring Problem Forced Diablo Canyon Nuke Unit Offline
By
Elizabeth Mccarthy
The untimely Oct. 15 shut down of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant’s Unit 2 is the second malfunction in a critical component of its electric generator, which was just rebuilt. In July, the same Pacific Gas & Electric unit was forced offline because then, as now, the cooling system that lowers the extreme heat inside the spinning generator was leaking hydrogen gas, which is the cooling fluid.
All About Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant
By
David Weissman
PG&E, which pled guilty to 84 cases of manslaughter this past spring, has been banking on regulatory inattention to increase profits while ignoring risks to residents and ratepayers from its aging Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.
Hitachi to abandon Wales nuclear power project
By
Hitachi Ltd. said Wednesday it is pulling out of a nuclear power plant project in Wales, citing a worsening investment environment, in a blow to Britain’s low-carbon energy policy.
Exelon Threatens to Close 2 Nuclear Plants as Battle Over State Subsidies Looms
By
Jeff St. John
Exelon is following through with a threat to close two of its Illinois nuclear power plants by next year unless it receives state support to boost their financial viability, a move that could undermine the state’s carbon-free electricity goals.
