Remembering the Horror of Chernobyl

GOP Wants EPA to Keep Sitting On Its Ash
— By Kate Sheppard
| Wed Feb. 23, 2011 12:04 PM PST
The Environmental Protection Agency has been weighing several regulatory options for dealing with coal ash, the toxic remnants left behind in the process of burning coal in our nation's power plants. The new regulations have been delayed for months now, and there's a good deal of concern that the agency may bow to pressure from industry groups to set a weaker standard. But if House Republicans get their way, the EPA won't set new rules for coal ash disposal at all.

Among the many anti-environmental provisions in the spending bill that the House passed early Saturday morning was a provision blocking the EPA from finalizing a coal ash rule, sponsored by Reps. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.). As the Center for Public Integrity reports, both lawmakers have been heavily backed by utilities.

The EPA was already under a great deal of pressure to issue a weak rule on coal ash, the stuff captured by scrubbers because we have deemed it too hazardous to emit into the air. The agency proposed a tough rule in October 2009 that would have designated the waste as toxic, but when the rule emerged from the White House Office of Management and Budget last May a much weaker option was also on the table. The administration has faced a good deal of pressure from utilities and the coal-ash recycling industry to adopt the weaker option in setting a final rule.

Right now, utilities are allowed to dump the ash into vast open pits. The EPA signaled its plans to regulate the waste in December 2008, after an earthen dike containing 1.1 billion gallons of the sludge ruptured at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tennessee. But if House Republicans get their way, nothing will change—leaving a number of communities around the country in harm's way. The Environmental Integrity Project has identified 137 sites where toxic materials from coal ash have leached into the groundwater, and the EPA has labeled 49 dump sites "high hazard."

The House-passed continuing resolution would also bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions and slash the agency's budget by a third.

There is an illusion of the disaster being localized, but it is not. We are living in the state of permanent catastrophe that is touching us more and more.
Vladimir Usatenko.

unless everybody puts the panels on their roofs.

To encourage development of nuclear power, under the Nuclear Power 2010 Program the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has offered interested parties the opportunity to introduce France's model for licensing and to subsidize 25% to 50% of the construction cost overruns due to delays for the first six new plants

about 45% of the 2006 world supply of uranium came from old nuclear warheads, mostly Russian. At current supply and demand levels, those old stockpiles will be completely depleted by 2015.

The world's present measured resources of uranium, economically recoverable at a price of 130 USD/kg according to the industry groups...... and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are enough to last for "at least a century" at current consumption rates.[

Wind power provided 18.9% of electricity production and 24.1% of generation capacity in Denmark in 2008,[1] Denmark was a pioneer in developing commercial wind power during the 1970s, and today almost half of the wind turbines around the world are produced by Danish manufacturers such as Vestas and Siemens Wind Power along with many component suppliers

As concerns over global warming grew in the 1980s, Denmark found itself with relatively high carbon dioxide emissions per capita, primarily due to the coal-fired electrical power plants that had become the norm after the 1973 and 1979 energy crises of the 1970s.[3] Renewable energy became the natural choice for Denmark, decreasing both dependence on other countries for energy and global warming pollution. Denmark adopted a target of cutting carbon emissions by 22% from 1988 levels by 2005.[3] In 1988, two years after the Chernobyl disaster, the Danes passed a law forbidding the construction of nuclear power plants.[

I suppose your solar was subsidized by us taxpayers, it is not economically viable at this point.

As much as 60 years to fully decommission a nuclear power plant in the US.

In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requires plants to finish the process within 60 years of closing. Since it may cost $300 million or more to shut down and decommission a plant, the NRC requires plant owners to set aside money when the plant is still operating to pay for the future shutdown costs.[38] In June 2009, the NRC published concerns that owners were not setting aside sufficient funds.

On 23 October 2009, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released the majority of the site for unrestricted public use, while approximately 11 acres (45,000 m2) of land including a storage building for low-level radioactive waste and a dry-cask spent fuel storage facility remain under NRC licenses.

Today, the TMI-2 reactor is permanently shut down with the reactor coolant system drained, the radioactive water decontaminated and evaporated, radioactive waste shipped off-site to a disposal site, reactor fuel and core debris shipped off-site to a Department of Energy facility, and the remainder of the site being monitored. The owner says it will keep the facility in long-term, monitored storage until the operating license for the TMI-1 plant expires at which time both plants will be decommissioned.[6] In 2009, the NRC granted a license extension which means the TMI-1 reactor may operate until April 19, 2034.

You don't need 99% of the modern technology that's running off the grid.