Green World Blog
News, views & musings for our nuclear-free, carbon-free future
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The EPR “anamoly;” what’s at stake for Areva
Installation of the reactor dome at Areva’s EPR reactor at Flamanville, France. Now, indications of a serious problem with the reactor pressure vessel could scuttle the already delayed and over-budget project. In early April, the troubled French nuclear reactor manufacturer Areva announced that there is an “anamoly” in the reactor pressure vessel installed at Electricite…
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Yucca opposition: it’s not just Harry.
Spouting conventional wisdom in Washington is a booming business. It’s the business of innumerable reporters and pundits and even supports entire publications, like Politico and The Hill. The trick, I guess, if you’re in the conventional wisdom trade, is to find some tiny little nuance to that wisdom that is ever so slightly different than…
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The utilities’ war on solar won’t work. Because Americans already have decided the outcome.
Last week, we published the tale of two public opinion polls, one from Gallup and one from the Nuclear Energy Institute, that asked the same question but came up with radically different numbers. Another new poll provides additional proof that one of those polls cited last week–the NEI poll–is the one that is way off…
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Exelon plays dirty
Exelon’s Fukushima-clone Dresden nuclear complex (Unit 1, on the right, has been closed since 1978 as it couldn’t meet safety regulations). It should surprise absolutely no one that a utility that relies on dirty energy to make its money also plays dirty when its money is threatened or when a state legislature is considering whether…
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Comparing the opinion polls; why NEI gets it so wrong
Digging into the Gallup poll shows Americans’ energy priorities: clean energy. Every Spring, Gallup conducts a poll on energy issues and the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) usually does so too–and usually tries to beat Gallup to the punch so that it can tout its numbers first. Not surprisingly, the NEI numbers somehow always show large…
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Oops! Real reason for Exelon-Pepco merger inadvertently revealed
Oops. Exelon’s nuclear cat was inadvertently let out of its radioactive bag by the Baltimore Sun today. The Sun was supposed to run an ad last Thursday in support of the proposed takeover of mid-Atlantic utility Pepco by Exelon. The ad was supposed to show that some sort of local coalition of community groups support…
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Rooftop solar benefits all ratepayers
We’re pleased to repost, with permission, this post that was published yesterday by David Schlissel and Karl Cates of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. We linked to this post yesterday on Facebook and Twitter, and it was the day’s most popular link for us. Still, we thought it deserves a wider audience.…
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The most important state action this year
Exelon has raised the stakes. It’s time to take them on. And win. Today NIRS and our colleagues at Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) in Chicago kicked off the most important state-level action we’ll be doing all year: taking on Exelon’s full-court press for a bailout of its aging, uneconomic nuclear fleet in Illinois. If…
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Sen. Alexander tilts at windmills
Yesterday, the Department of Energy released a major new report on wind power that, in its words, looks “at the future of wind power through 2050 and the economic benefits that come with a robust wind industry.” That future and those benefits are quite clear. DOE predicts that wind alone can provide 10% of our…
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Fukushima four years on
Today is, in case anyone forgot, the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the seemingly endless Fukushima nuclear disaster. Four years later, hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced from their homes and previous livelihoods; hundreds of tons of radioactive water continues to leak from the reactor site into groundwater and the Pacific Ocean;…
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