Category: Energy

The Fusion Breakthrough Suggests That Maybe Someday We’ll Have a Second Sun

By Bill McKibben / The New Yorker – Reader Supported News / Dec. 13, 2022

In the meantime, we need to use the sun we’ve already got. On Tuesday, the Department of Energy is expected to announce a breakthrough in fusion energy [it did]: — scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have succeeded for the first time in making their complex and expensive machinery produce more power than it uses, if only for an instant.

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News  September 2022

In downtown New Orleans, Entergy Corporation’s highrise headquarters looms ominously  over mere mortals in the French Quarter and on Bourbon Street.

On August 2 the Baton Rouge Louisiana Advocate reported, “Louisiana Public Service Commission Suing Federal Energy Commission.”  (FERC). The Advocate explained that the lawsuit alleged that FERC ” is slow walking a decision regarding Entergy’s Grand Gulf nuclear plant.”

By Michael Hiltzik / Los Angeles Times / Aug. 16, 2022

The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant lies on the coast near San Luis Obispo within 20 miles of four active earthquake faults.

The faults were apparently unknown to the plant’s owner, Pacific Gas & Electric, which certified during the construction period that no such faults existed within that distance. Unit 2 was built in accordance with flawed blueprints.

There have been efforts to close the plant for years, gaining intensity as PG&E’s atrocious safety record came to light.

Will the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant Ever Shut Down?

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

We thought it was a done deal. The Diablo Canyon nuke plant, the last operating one in the state, located on the central coast near San Luis Obispo, was due to permanently close, one nuclear reactor in 2024, the second the following year.

In 2016, even owner Pacific Gas & Electric agreed to the deal.

But, as the Doors predicted Back in the Daze, “The future’s uncertain and the. end is always near.”

By Colleen O’Connor

President Biden called for a three-month gas tax holiday from federal fees at the pump.

It not only landed with a thud, it couldn’t even pass muster with Speaker Pelosi. A puny 18-cent savings per gallon for a three-months comes to less than a $10-a-month savings (unless you are a diesel trucker).

And whatever happened to the $400 dollar gas cards for California residents that Governor Newsom proposed in his budget?

At least, it had some sense to it.

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

On May 20 Michigan newspaper The Holland Sentinel reported,”Pallisades Nuclear Plant Shuts Down 10 Days Early.”

The plant was scheduled to close for good on May 31, but, The Sentinel reported, plant owners “made a conservative decision” to pull the plug 10 days early due to “control rod seal” problem.

San Diego Gas and Electric — which already charges its customers the highest electrical rate in the country — now wants to raise gas and electric bills even more — by almost 9 percent. This would begin in 2024 if state regulators authorize a proposed four-year spending plan submitted this week by the utility.

That means a typical residential customer would see their utility bills jump around $18 per month, according to the utility. (SDG&E defines “typical residential customer” as a user of 400 kwh hours of electricity and 24 therms of gas per month.)

by Sarah Mosko/ Times of San Diego / May 17, 2022

Former nuclear regulatory top dogs from the United States, France, Germany and Great Britain recently issued a joint statement opposing expansion of nuclear power as a strategy to combat climate change. Why? There’s not a single good reason to build new nuclear plants.

Here are ten solid reasons not to.

1. Nuclear is too slow. The new generation of proposed commercial nuclear plants, so called Advanced and Small Modular Reactors, is decades away in designing and building.

By Michael Steinberg
The names and faces and political parties in power may change, but the shill game remains the same: waste incredible fortunes on dangerous discredited boondoggles.

Nuclear power came into being as a reaction to the public’s horror after the US’s use of nuclear bombs to devastate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In reaction to this the government instituted the “Atoms for Peace program, most notably encouraging electric companies to build large nuclear power plants with huge subsidies that would produce electricity promised to be “too cheap to meter.”

In arguably one of the worse decisions of the Biden administration, the Energy Department announced Tuesday, April 19, that it was launching a program to provide up to $6 billion in grants to U.S. nuclear plants to help them keep operating.

All in the name of “clean energy.”

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement:

“U.S. nuclear power plants contribute more than half of our carbon-free electricity, and President Biden is committed to keeping these plants active to reach our clean energy goals.”

by Camille von Kaenel / inewsource / April 13, 2022

Sempra Energy, the parent company of San Diego Gas & Electric, is paying out its highest profits ever to its investors this month.

The upcoming payout to investors on Friday comes on the heels of a massive spike in bills for many SDG&E customers, who already shoulder the highest per-unit electric prices in the country. SDG&E executives blamed inf

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those who are working for a nuclear free world.

Russian Attacks on Ukraine Nuclear Plants Continue

As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters a second month, so too has its game of chicken against Ukraine’s nuclear facilities. One of the first actions of the February action was the Russian Army’s takeover of the devastated Chernobyl nuclear power station, as detailed in last month’s edition.