Civil Disobedience Will Shut Down Indian Point

Four lone anti-nuclear protesters this week shut down a private road a few hundred metres from the nuclear plant at Sizewell, Suffolk for 15 minutes without being challenged. No arrests were made, and in fact the police were NEGOTIATING with the protesters who had put concrete tubes around their arms to end the stand off. Think about that for one minute...four protesters successfully blocked access to a nuclear facility in England. More importantly, they laid across the road to the facility for 15 minutes before PLANT SECURITY noticed they were there...can you imagine if they had been TERRORISTS?

One thing becomes abundantly clear...American communities being forced to play host to ancient, dangerous nuclear facilities for another 20 years have a very powerful weapon at their disposal. Civil Disobedience. We have over 20 million people who live within 50 miles of Indian Point. Properly organized, said facility could easily be laid siege too in a peaceful act of civil disobedience as hundreds, even thousands, or tens of thousands of protesters descended on the gates of the facility with their camping gear.

It is doubtful that County Commissioner Andy Spano would authorize the use of force to remove such protesters, and in fact he just might surprise everyone and join the fun by parking a RV across the entrance to the sight as a Command Center for such a peaceful protest. We could even shuttle people in shifts, keep a round the clock protest going for weeks, if not months. If Congressman John Hall grew a back bone, he could bring in the entire MUSE contingent, and we could turn it into the biggest spontaneous musical protest against the nuclear industry since the No Nukes concerts back in 1979. The traffic grid lock alone from such and event would prove conclusively that the Emergency Evacuation Plan will not work.

Such a act of Civil Disobedience would leave Senator Clinton no choice but to get off the NUCLEAR FENCE and choose sides in this confrontation. Quoting Arlo Guthrie, we would have us a MOVEMENT. Imagine similar events with local politicians joining in at other nuclear plants simultaneously. Vermont Yankee, Pilgrim, Oyster Creek, Millstone and others all besieged in the same fashion at the exact same time.

Illegal Aliens and their supporters put half a million people into the streets of Los Angeles demanding Amnesty...surely we can put ten or twenty thousand people out in front of say five or so nuclear reactors?

Protesters block road to N-plant

Press Association
Saturday December 1, 2007 10:28 AM

Four protesters blocked a private road leading to a power station to highlight the threat they say terrorists could pose if the nuclear industry was expanded.

Demonstrators said they stood a few hundred metres from the plant at Sizewell, Suffolk for 15 minutes without being challenged.

The group staged the protest days after plans were announced for a new generation of nuclear reactors in England.

Police said no arrests had been made and officers were negotiating with demonstrators. They said the three women and one man were fastened together by concrete filled tubes attached to their arms.

Protesters said they wanted to spell out the dangers of nuclear expansion to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

"We were lying across the road for 15 minutes fastened together before the security guards came," said one protester, Mell Harrison, 36, of Bungay, Suffolk.

"We were 200 metres from the reactor. If we can do it so can terrorists. Imagine that. We didn't get inside the fence. But protesters have done that before.

"If Gordon Brown wants to expand the nuclear industry he should realise that he will face an awful lot of opposition. All the old problems with nuclear power have not gone away.

"What will we do with the waste? What about coastal erosion and the effect that will have on plants. There are accidents. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl really happened. It could happen again. And what about terrorism?

Ms Harrison, who works for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, added: "The Government will discover that an awful lot of people have concerns and people will protest. The answer isn't nuclear power. We must explore alternatives."

Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2007, All Rights Reserved

Mobilize To Stop Loan Guarantees Next Week

Next week the House and Senate will try to reconsile their two versions of the Energy Bill, and neither version is very friendly towards truly sustainable energy sources. More importantly, the nuclear industry will have all Lobbyist on Deck to try to push through ONE HUNDRED PERCENT loan quarantees for new reactor builds. It is imperiative that the entire GREEN community be on the phones next week doing everything possible to have the loan quarantees and the $50 Billion nuclear gift GUTTED from any bill sent to the White House.

Already, Constellation Energy is trying to use fear, threats and intimadation to force through the 100 percent loan guarantees, announcing this past week that they will not break ground on a new reactor build next year without said loan quarantees in place...so, stop the loan guarantees, and we stop the new builds in their tracks, slow down the Nuclear Renaissance train.

So, this weekend send emails to every one of your elected officials in Washington DC, and starting Monday lets be prepared to SWAMP the House and Senate switchboards with calls demanding that the $50 billion in loan guarantees be stripped from the Energy Bill.

AP
Industry Pushes Nuclear Loan Guarantees
Wednesday November 28, 1:25 pm ET
By Dan Caterinicchia, AP Business Writer

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071128/constellation_nuke_loans.html?.v=1

Constellation Energy Executive Says Nuclear Plans Will Be Delayed Without Loan Guarantees

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Constellation Energy Group Inc. will not break ground on a new nuclear plant in Maryland next year unless a federal loan-guarantee program is in place, an executive from the power company said Wednesday.

"If the loan-guarantee program is able to materialize in early 2008 so we are able to secure loan guarantees for construction of a new plant at the end of 2008," the company's board could move forward, said Michael Wallace, president of Constellation Energy Generation Group. "If it doesn't, we won't."

The Energy Department last month said it will guarantee loans for up to 80 percent of the construction cost of new nuclear reactors, but that budget constraints mean the earliest any company proposing a new reactor could benefit is 2009.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said then that he would seek "substantial" budget increases for loan guarantees to support seven to eight nuclear plants.

"The trend line is positive and encouraging, but today we're not there," Wallace said at a conference in Washington, referring to the industry's ongoing dialogue with the Energy Department, Congress and the White House. But he said it's not a question of whether it will happen, but when.

Three companies already have submitted complete construction and operating license applications for new reactors to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Constellation filed a partial application earlier this year for a proposed new reactor in Lusby, Md.

Under We Told You So...Nuclear Industry Starts Letting 80 Year Life Span Out of Bag

Green Nuclear Butterfly many months ago warned the public that the Nuclear Industry planned on keeping their 104 aging reactors up and operational for 40, not 20 years. The reason we knew this to be true, is because of a DOE report we had read wherein it was stated the industry needed to keep as many of its aging fleet up and running through 2050 as possible, as it would take that long to get enough new reactors up and running to offset the power losses represented by reactor retirement and decommissioning. The Propaganda War to prepare host communities to accept this reality began with an article in the Sun earlier this week.

Generating more power
Nuclear plants might be run past their allowed maximum

By Paul Adams
Baltimore Sun

October 27, 2007

Faced with the competing threats of global warming and a looming energy shortfall, federal regulators are contemplating whether another 20 years of service can be squeezed out of the nation's aging nuclear power plants without compromising safety.

Many say they believe that the 104 nuclear reactors operating in the U.S. will be forced to retire faster than industry can replace them, unless regulators act to extend their lives to 80 years from the current 60-year maximum. The discussion is of particular interest in Maryland, where Constellation Energy Group owns two aging nuclear reactors and is considering whether to build a third to meet the state's growing energy needs.

Though it will be years before any licenses expire, the debate has urgency because utilities are making decisions that will affect how many nuclear plants will be built during the next 20 years.

The issue might prove critical to efforts to keep the lights on without adding polluting greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Nuclear plants produce 20 percent of the nation's energy supply but account for more than 70 percent of the electricity from all sources classified as emissions-free.

The plants also dispatch some of the cheapest electricity to the power grid, making them critical to keeping the nation's utility bills in check, proponents argue.

"The practical reality is that if those plants are determined not to be viable for an additional 20-year operating cycle, then we need to start building new generation today," said Alex Marion, executive director of operations and engineering for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group. "Twenty percent of the nation's capacity is a tremendous amount of energy to make up with non-nuclear facilities."

The concern is acute in Maryland, where state officials worry about a power shortfall in coming decades. The operating licenses for the two reactors at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear station in Lusby - the backbone of the region's power supply - are set to expire in 2034 and 2036, respectively. Nationwide, the first plants will hit mandatory retirement under current regulations as early as 2029.

That's a blink of an eye, given that it could take 10 years to come up with regulations for extending the licenses. Also, experts point out that it can take a decade to plan, build and license a new plant. Some 30 nuclear projects are proposed, but no one has committed to construction.

There is widespread concern that the industry lacks the financial backing, infrastructure and manpower to replace all of the existing nuclear plants before time runs out on their current licenses. The infrastructure required to build new plants in the U.S. largely disintegrated after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident raised concerns about the safety of nuclear power.

Yet industry analysts say they expect demand for nuclear energy to increase if Congress reaches agreement on legislation placing limits on carbon emissions - a move that would spur demand for emissions-free generation. Congress also included a package of tax breaks and loan guarantees in the 2005 energy bill.

"Policymakers may come back and say, 'We need you guys to build many, many more plants at a higher rate of construction,'" said Gary Vine, an executive director in the nuclear section of the Electric Power Research Institute. "When that happens ... you're going to probably find our ability to build new plants just to support U.S. energy security is going to be well beyond our capacity."

The Energy Information Institute, the statistical arm of the Energy Department, estimates that demand for electricity will grow by 40 percent by 2030 - about the time nuclear licenses start to expire. The industry would have to build up to 300 conventional plants by then to keep pace. More will be needed if existing nuclear facilities are phased out.

To buy time, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is teaming with scientists and engineers to study what kind of maintenance and equipment monitoring are needed if nuclear plants are made to last 80 years. The agency said the effort is in the planning phase, but it has a workshop on the topic scheduled for February.

Reactors require extensive monitoring and upkeep as they age. Major components, such as steam generators, can break down, costing hundreds of millions of dollars to replace. One major focus will be whether reactor vessels - massive structures that contain the reactor core and coolant - can stand up to intense pressure, heat and radiation for another 20 years. Reactor vessels are exposed to significant neutron radiation over time, which can cause the metal to become brittle.

"The technical question is how long can they go," said Revis James, director of EPRI's energy technology assessment center. "I don't believe anyone has ever done that study or calculation."

Critics of the industry say the stakes are high for regulators. Experience has proven that mistakes can be made even when the industry is trying to take initiative. The most recent example involved the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo, which had to be temporarily shut down in 2002 after technicians discovered that acid used in cooling water had almost eaten through the reactor vessel's lid.

Early evidence of the corrosion had been detected a few years before, but not acted upon until it grew worse.

"The downside is there have been a number of aging-related failures, because, despite everybody's best efforts, we've missed them," said David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group that follows nuclear issues.

Lochbaum, who has been critical of federal regulators, said the NRC has limited resources and can't watch over every worker's shoulder or keep track of every piece of equipment.

But regulators have been down this path before. U.S. nuclear plants were originally given 40-year licenses to operate. The NRC published regulations in the mid-1990s allowing plants to operate another 20 years if owners met strict safety requirements designed to catch age-related mishaps.

Constellation's Calvert Cliffs plant was the first to do so in March 2000. A new nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs under consideration would cost an estimated $4 billion or more. Still, many say energy from both the new and old reactors will be needed to meet the state's energy needs without adding pollution.

Michael J. Wallace, executive vice president of Constellation Energy, said the company would be interested in extending Calvert Cliff's operating license another 20 years but will need to weigh the economics when the time comes. Maintaining a nuclear plant is like car care - at some point, it becomes cheaper to buy a new one rather than keep fixing the old model.

"The economics are pretty compelling when, for $20 [million] to $30 million, which would be the typical cost of the license extension, you can get a 1,000- to 1,100-megawatt nuclear plant that can run for 20 years," said Per F. Peterson, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley. One megawatt is roughly enough to power 1,000 average homes.

Rising electricity prices have made existing plants highly profitable for the industry. Peterson said there are few components inside a plant that can't be replaced economically.

The exception would be the reactor vessel. Peterson said the size and cost likely would make replacing a vessel impractical. But few say it will come to that.

"We have done a lot of research on reactor vessel toughness," said Vine, the EPRI nuclear expert, "and I think the belief we have now, both in the industry and on the NRC side, is that most of these vessels are OK for well into 80 years and beyond."

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A powerful anti-nuclear movement is growing again

Why is Uncle Sam so Committed to Nuclear Power?
By Peter Montague of Rachel’s Democracy & Health News

Excerpts:

Can investors be fooled twice? Financially, the nuclear power industry has never stood on its own two feet without a crutch from Uncle Sam. Indeed, the nuclear power industry is entirely a creature of the federal government; it was created out of whole cloth by the feds in the 1950s. At that time, investors were enticed by offers of free money — multi-billion-dollar subsidies, rapid write-offs, special limits on liability, and federal loan guarantees. Despite all this special help, by the 1970s the industry was in a shambles. The British magazine, the Economist, recently described it this way: “Billions were spent bailing out lossmaking nuclear-power companies. The industry became a byword for mendacity, secrecy and profligacy with taxpayers’ money. For two decades neither governments nor bankers wanted to touch it.”

+++

To grease the skids for a nuclear revival, the most important change the NRC has made has been to creatively redefine the meaning of the word “construction.” This change was enacted in April, 2007, with lightning speed — six months from initial proposal to final adoption. By way of comparison, it took the NRC eleven years to adopt regulations requiring drug testing for nuclear plant operators.

“Construction” has traditionally included all the activities undertaken to build a nuclear power plant, starting with site selection, evaluation, testing and preparation, construction of peripheral facilities like cooling towers, and so on. Even the earliest stages of siting are crucially important with a facility as complex and dangerous as a nuclear power plant.

In April of this year, the NRC officially redefined “construction” to include only construction of the reactor itself — excluding site selection, evaluation, testing and preparation, construction of peripheral facilities and all the rest. At the time, one senior environmental manager inside NRC complained in an email that NRC’s redefinition of “construction” would exclude from NRC regulation “probably 90 percent of the true environmental impacts of construction.” Under the new rules, by the time the NRC gets involved, a company will have invested perhaps a hundred million dollars. Will NRC commissioners have the backbone to toss that investment into the toilet if they eventually find something wrong with the site? Or will they roll over for the industry and compromise safety?

The lawyer who dreamed up the redefinition of “construction” is James Curtiss, himself a former NRC commissioner who now sits on the board of directors of the nuclear power giant, Constellation Energy Group. This revolving door pathway from NRC to industry is well-worn.

One NRC commissioner who voted in April to change the definition of construction is Jeffrey Merrifield. Before he left the NRC in July, Mr. Merrifield’s last assignment as an NRC commissioner was to chair an agency task force on ways to accelerate licensing.

In April, while he was urging his colleagues at NRC to redefine “construction,” Mr. Merrifield was actively seeking a top management position within the nuclear industry. In July he became senior vice president for Shaw Group, a nuclear builder that has worked on 95% of all existing U.S. nuclear plants. Mr. Merrifield’s salary at NRC was $154,600. Bloomberg reports that, “In Shaw Group’s industry peer group, $705,409 is the median compensation for a senior vice president.”

No one in government or the industry seems the least bit embarrassed by any of this. It’s just the way it is. Indeed, Mr. Merrifield points out that, while he was an NRC commissioner providing very substantial benefits to the nuclear industry by his decisions, his concurrent search for a job within the regulated industry was approved by the NRC’s Office of General Counsel and its Inspector General. From this, one might conclude that Mr. Merrifield played by all the rules and did nothing wrong. Or one might conclude that venality and corruption reach into the highest levels of the NRC. Or one might conclude that after NRC commissioners have completed their assignment inside government, everyone in the agency just naturally feels they are entitled to a lifetime of lavish reward from the industry on whose behalf they have labored so diligently.

+++

... investors should think twice before buying into the “nuclear renaissance” because there’s another “renaissance” under way as well: A powerful anti-nuclear movement is growing again and they will toss your billions into the toilet without hesitation. Indeed, with glee.

Read the entire article here:
Celsias