Living in Peace and Wisdom on our Planet

The Department of Energy wants to give the Southern Company a nuclear power loan guarantee at better interest rates than you can get on a student loan. And unlike a home mortgage, there may be no down payment. 

Why? 

The terms DOE is offering the builders of the Vogtle atomic reactors have only become partially public through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. ...  See entire blog item

The future of nuclear power now hangs on a single decision by President Obama---and us.

His Office of Management and Budget could cave to the unsustainable demands of reactor builders who cannot handle the standard terms of a loan agreement.

Or he could defend basic financial procedures and stand up for the future of the American economy.

You can help make this decision, which will come soon.

It's about a proposed $8.33 billion nuke power loan guarantee package for two reactors being built at Georgia's Vogtle.   Obama anointed it last year for the Southern Company, parent to Georgia Power.  Two other reactors sporadically operate there.  Southern just ravaged the new construction side of the site, stripping virtually all vegetation.

It's also stripped Georgia ratepayers of ever-more millions of dollars, soon to...  See entire blog item

The horrible news from Japan continues to be ignored by the western corporate media. 

Fukushima's radioactive fallout continues to spread throughout the archipelago, deep into the ocean and around the globe---including the US. It will ultimately impact millions, including many here in North America. 

The potentially thankful news is that Fukushima's three melting cores may have not have melted deep into the earth, thus...  See entire blog item

Humankind is now threatened by the simultaneous implosion, explosion, incineration, courtroom contempt and drowning of its most lethal industry.

We know only two things for certain:  worse is yet to come, and those in charge are lying about it---at least to the extent of what they actually know, which is nowhere near enough.

Indeed, the assurances from the nuke power industry continue to flow like the floodwaters now swamping the Missouri Valley heartland.

But major breakthroughs have come from a Pennsylvania Senator and New York's Governor on issues of evacuation and shut-down. And a public campaign for an end to loan guarantees could put an end to the US industry once and for all.

FUKUSHIMA:  The bad news continues to bleed from Japan with no end in sight. The "light at the end of the tunnel" is an out-of-contro...  See entire blog item

This may be the moment history has turned definitively against atomic energy. 

To be sure:  we are still required to fight hard to bury reactor loan guarantees in the United States.  There are parallel struggles in China, Indian, England, France and South Korea.

The great fear is that until every single reactor on this planet is shut, none of us is really safe from another radioactive horror show.

Thus the moment is clearly marked at Fukushima by three reactors and a radioactive fuel pool still untamed after three months, with the horrific potential to do far more apocalyptic damage than we've seen even to date. 

That image includes Japanese school children ...  See entire blog item

At the end of John Huston's 1948 classic "Treasure of Sierra Madre," armed bandits tell Humphrey Bogart they are federal agents.

Bogie demands to see their badges. 

"Badges?" says their leader.  "We ain't got no badges. We don't need any badges.  I don't have to show you no stinking badges."

Now nuclear fleet operator Entergy has, in effect, told New York the same thing.

Fire protection? We ain't got no fire protection.  We don't need any fire protection.  ...  See entire blog item

New readings show levels of radioisotopes found up to 30 kilometers offshore from the on-going crisis at Fukushima are ten times higher than those measured in the Baltic and Black Seas during Chernobyl.

"When it comes to the oceans, says Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceonographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, "the impact of Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl."

The news comes amidst a tsunami of devastating revelations about the Fukushima disaster and the crumbling future of atomic power, along with a critical Senate funding vote today:

Fukushima's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company,...  See entire blog item

Japan will build no new nuclear reactors. It's a huge body blow to the global industry, and could mark a major turning point in the future of energy.

Says Prime Minister Naoto Kan: "We need to start from scratch… and do more to promote renewables."

Wind power alone could – and now probably will – replace 40 nukes in Japan.

The United States must join them. Axing the $36 billion currently stuck in the 2012 federal budget for loan guarantees to build new reactors could do the trick.

Wind potential alone between the Mississippi and the Rockies could produce 300% of the nation's electricity. That doesn't include solar, geothermal, ocean thermal, sustainable bio-fuels and the many more renewable sources poised to re-shape the...  See entire blog item

In the wake of the apocalyptic nightmare at Fukushima, the multi-trillion-dollar global nuclear power industry is looking over the abyss at a long-overdue extinction.

But the issue is far from decided. Japan's horrifying catastrophe has sent the industry's spin machine into overdrive. Hell-bent on minimizing the dangers of this unprecedented disaster, we've been shown the script of what reactor-backers are willing to say and do to save themselves.

It is not a pretty picture. It focuses on the assertion that there are safe doses of radiation, and that atomic energy has harmed few, if any. Three Mile Island "hurt no one." There were few casualties at Chernobyl. And Fukushima's long-term damage will be minimal.

Atomic apologists argue that only nuclear...  See entire blog item

Five things are certain about solar panels going back on the White House roof:

• They won't generate nuclear waste;
• They won't be targets for terrorists hoping cause an atomic holocaust;
• They'll be working many years before any new atomic reactor could be built;
• They'll deliver...