Nuclear Power Stations get green light

So Ed Miliband has decided that nuclear power has had enough of a ‘rest’ and has given the go ahead for 10 new nuclear power stations to be built…

Ok, so it’s not strictly been ‘resting’ nuclear power does account for 13% of the country’s current power usage (yeah I was surprised too!) but with all this renewed vigour for nuclear power doesn’t that mean they’ll be a huge amount of toxic waste substances produced? The new power stations are planned to be built on 10 different sites, these sites are reported to be:  Braystones, Sellafield and Kirksanton, all in Cumbria, Heysham in Lancashire, Hartlepool, Co Durham, Sizewell in Suffolk, Bradwell in Essex, Hinkley Point in Somerset, Oldbury in Gloucestershire and Wylfa in Anglesey.

Mr Miliband stated: “…Change is also needed for energy security. In a world where our North Sea reserves are declining, a more diverse, low-carbon energy mix is a more secure energy mix, less vulnerable to fluctuations in the availability of any one fuel…”

This is good in a way as continually burrowing into the earth to find more coal reserves for the 18 existing coal burning power stations it seriously taking its toll, not to mention how large the average persons carbon footprint is. It maybe seems a little contradictory then to also announce that he will still continue to support the building of coal fired power stations provided they are fitted with greener technology which in turn has been met by companies refusing to invest huge sums into this greener system.

Greg Clark, the shadow energy and climate change secretary, said: “…Ed Miliband’s statement is made necessary by the Government’s admission in July that it expects power cuts in 2017 – the first time since the 1970s that a British government has had to make such a disclosure…”

“…The cause of this National Emergency has been obvious for many years. Over 12 years, 15 successive energy ministers – a new one every nine months – behaved like the ostrich and stuck their heads in the sand rather than face up to the action that was needed to address our energy black hole…”

Kate Hudson, chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said: “…Nuclear power is dirty, dangerous and expensive. It is totally unacceptable for Ed Miliband to see a ‘relatively good’ safety record as sufficient – nuclear disasters have the potential to make any other kind of industrial accident look harmless in comparison, potentially affecting millions of people…”

Well with arguments raging on both sides I guess this debate is something that will go on for some years to come, burn all the fossil fuel in the world and create tons of carbon and pollution or go down the nuclear route for more efficient energy production but incredibly toxic waste products.

This entry was posted by Clayton on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 11:22 am and is filed under Technology & Software News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Op-Ed by Alice Slater on Chaos in Japan

Chaos
March 14, 2011
by Alice Slater

Sometimes chaos comes along as a wake-up call to humanity.  The double-whammy- earthquake-tsunami in Japan this week is overwhelmingly sad.   To be at the total chaotic effect of the elements—to be wiped out by a wave of water from the sea, is an insult to the arrogance of modern humanity that thinks it can insulate and protect itself with technological know-how from the calamities visited upon our earth by Mother Nature.  It is ironic that this catastrophe took place in earth-quake plagued Japan where scientists and engineers actually protected against this seventh largest earthquake cataclysm in recorded history, by spending billions on new infrastructure, building their homes, offices, and factories on rubber shock absorbers and reinforced pillars that merely swayed with the punch and didn’t collapse despite the enormous force from the renting of the earth—a force so powerful it actually moved Japan ten feet eastward and caused the axis of the earth to shift.  Yet even the careful, methodical,  Japanese couldn’t realistically anticipate the power of the tsunami well enough to protect their land against the violent onrush of the ocean in the wake of the spasms caused by the radical shift in the earth’s tectonic plates.

And while they had provided adequate technology to guard their lethal nuclear power plants even against the quaking earth, the surge of the ocean destroyed their best efforts to insure backup and shut down plans to always keep water pumping on the nuclear fuel, even during an earthquake. They were unable to avoid the loss of electricity essential to maintain and pump a constant stream of cool water to cover the radioactive fuel in their reactors, and after  the pumping machines failed to deliver water to the overheated guts of the fuel vessel,  they were unable to keep this foolhardy technology from “melting down” and spewing its lethal radiation across the land, and eventually perhaps across the planet, hanging like a sword of Damocles over the earth as radioactive particles are borne on the air currents that circle the globe.

More than 200,000 people were evacuated in the vicinity of the five nuclear reactors  at Fukishima which may be failing.   The reports are mixed and unclear from the Japanese government.   We know that numbers of people were contaminated with radioactivity on their skin and clothing and that the government is distributing potassium iodide tablets to prevent thyroid cancer in people who may have been exposed to radioactivity released in a series of explosions at two reactors.  Those tablets will not prevent other forms of cancer and leukemia that may increase exponentially from the release of the radioactivity at the reactors.  We also know that US sailors aboard the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, that was sent from our military base in Okinawa to the vicinity of the accident, have now been contaminated by airborne radioactivity.  Meanwhile the US mainstream media continues to downplay the catastrophic potential of so many reactors in Japan to create an environmental holocaust,  where brave workers are struggling to cool their hot radioactive fuel, while industry spokespeople assure us that our reactors in America are much safer, that Chernobyl only had 50 immediate deaths, while Russian scientists recently reported that there were close to 1,000,000 cancer deaths since the dreadful accident in 1986 spewed lethal radiation over a broad swath of the Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and then dispersed to many other countries in the Northern Hemisphere.

Let this chaos be a wake-up call for a time out on any new nuclear energy development.  And like the massive mobilization gathering strength in Japan with emergency workers coming from all over the world to help rescue and recover the tens of thousands of people overcome in their villages by the trembling earth and fierce rushing waters, let us make a massive global effort to put a solar panel on every roof, a geothermal pump in every house and building, windmills on every windswept plain, tidal energy pumps in our rivers and seas to harness the clean safe energy of our Mother Earth.

In the words of that famous visionary thinker, Buckminster Fuller:
We may now care for each Earthian individual at a sustainable billionaire’s level of affluence while living exclusively on less than 1 percent of our planet’s daily energy income from our cosmically designed nuclear reactor, the Sun, optimally located 92 million safe miles away from us.

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A December to Remember

Who's naughty or nice? This holiday season holds the promise of great gifts for the regional environment

December brings connotations of the holiday season.  Office parties, vacations, holiday shopping, football bowl games, family gatherings, overeating, lighting the menorah, and Christmas lights and trees.  For Heal the Bay, this December is anything but a time to ease into the new year.  As always, there is our push for year-end giving.  Tis the season for charitable write offs.  Also, once again, Heal the Bay is spearheading the Day Without a Bag event.  Over 25,000 bags will be given away at over 150 locations throughout L.A. County on Dec. 16 as a reminder to bring reusable bags whenever you go shopping.  Once again, partners include L.A. County, Los Angeles, other cities, retailers, grocers and other environmental groups.  This year, the event has spread across much of the state with counties from San Diego to San Francisco participating.

However, this December is as busy as any previous December I can remember.  Tomorrow, the city of Los Angeles Energy and Environment committee will finally hear the Low Impact Development ordinance.  The Department of Public Works-crafted ordinance has been ready to go since January, but it is finally coming up tomorrow morning. In essence, the ordinance will require new and redevelopment to capture and use or infiltrate 100 percent of the runoff generated by a three quarter-inch storm.  If the LID ordinance gets approved by city council, the long term benefits for L.A. and the region will include improved water quality, enhanced flood control, greener communities and augmented groundwater supply.

On Dec. 10, the State Lands Commission is scheduled to vote on Chevron’s EIR to continue mooring oil tankers off its El Segundo refinery.  The vote could just be to approve or deny the EIR, but the Commission can modify terms of the annual lease (Chevron only pays a little over a million bucks a year to unload crude and park tankers in the middle of Santa Monica Bay) or grant them a lease of up to 30 years.  Chevron is pushing hard to get approval ASAP because the composition of the State Lands Commission changes from Governor Schwarzenegger, Lt. Gov. Maldonado, and Controller Chiang to Governor Brown, Lt. Gov. Newsom and Chiang in January.  A 30-year lease at a million bucks a year is bad economic business for California.  A smarter play would be to grant a 10-year lease and for the state to obtain the true economic value of leasing the Bay to Chevron for its corporate economic gain.  Also, Heal the Bay commented on numerous safety issues and oil spill response issues pertaining to Chevron’s continued long term operation of the mooring.

On Dec. 14, the State Water Resources Control Board is scheduled to vote on an amendment to the Once Through Cooling policy for power plants.  The ink on the existing policy is barely dry, but LADWP is seeking regulatory relief from the policy through a broad and precedent setting amendment rather than proceeding through the process laid out in the existing policy — a result of over five years of studies, hearings, guidance from the energy regulators, and workshops.  Three other power companies have sued for regulatory weakening, so the policy is definitely under attack statewide.  A successful amendment to the policy at a time before the policy has ever been used would open the floodgates for power companies to get their own regulatory relief from the policy.  Heal the Bay is pushing hard for the State Board to require DWP to go through the policy process in the spring rather than approving a policy gutting amendment on the 14th.  The USEPA and about 20 environmental and fishing industry groups also oppose the amendment.

On Dec. 15, history could be made at the California Department of Fish and Game Commission hearing in Santa Barbara.  The Commission will vote on a final Marine Protected Area network for Southern California.  The two year process has been quite contentious and the recommended network does not fully meet the Scientific Advisory Team’s guidelines.  However, the compromise network, with very weak protection off of Palos Verdes and a disappointing level of protection off of Catalina, has been approved by the Blue Ribbon Task Force and vetted by the Commission.  If the vote follows form for the previous MPA networks, the Commission should approve the Integrated Preferred Alternative on the 15th.  The end result would be an MPA network that covers two thirds of the California coast.  The Southern California network generally meets scientific guidelines for the rest of the region and includes some extraordinary areas like the submarine canyon off of Point Dume.  Most importantly, the network would provide significant protection for marine life in state waters that should lead to significant recovery of numerous depleted populations and to more robust ecosystems in California coastal waters.

No matter what, this will be a December to remember for coastal waters and watersheds.  Hopefully, those memories will be good memories.  Other than that, there isn’t much going on in the marine conservation and pollution prevention arena locally this month.  Just eggnog, candy canes, unwrapping gifts, and opening holiday cards.  Happy holidays.

Filed under: Environmental Education, Environmental Leaders, Heal the Bay, L.A. DWP, Legislation, Marine Life, Marine Protected Areas, MPAs, Oil, Plastic, Power Plants Tagged: | Chevron, Day Without a Bag, Low Impact Development, MPAs, once through cooling

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Cooling Off

The State Water Board rebuffed DWP's effort to water down new cooling policies at plants like its Scattergood facility.

In a nail biter, the State Water Resources Control Board got the three votes it needed Tuesday to turn down a broad amendment that would have gutted California’s new Once-Through Cooling policy for power plants. Board members Tam Doduc, Fran Spivy-Weber and Art Bagget supported the motion to uphold the policy and oppose the amendment.

The board also agreed to expedite analysis of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s implementation plan next summer. Over the past year, the DWP has argued numerous times that it can’t meet the OTC policy compliance deadlines for re-powering three of its power plants by the end of 2021.

Earlier, the DWP promised to phase out all OTC, but it wanted until 2031 for Scattergood and up to 2040 for co-generation power plants.  But, then DWP lobbied the State Water Board for a policy amendment to extend the compliance timeframe in exchange to phasing out OTC at all three power plants.  Instead of introducing a narrow amendment for DWP, the State Board proposed an expanded amendment, opening up a Pandora’s box in the OTC policy for co-generation and fossil fuel plants up and down the entire state coastline.

As a result, a number of enviro and fishing communities joined to oppose the expanded amendment for gutting the policy. Linda Sheehan, the executive director of California Coastkeeper Alliance, took lead in the comment-writing and organization effort. Santa Monica Baykeeper, NRDC, Sierra Club and Surfrider also strongly opposed the amendment at the hearing.

To demonstrate the over-the-top nature of the proposed amendment, nearly every coastal  power company in the state attended the State Board hearing to support the amendment (and of course, asked for further weakening of the OTC policy). In addition, DWP pulled out all the stops by having its top lobbyist, former Assemblymember Cindy Montanez, testify on its behalf. DWP also got legislators Bradford and Deleon, the Central City Assn. (do its leaders support any environmental issues?), the Police Protective League and others to back the misguided effort. Even See’s Candies wrote a letter of support for DWP. Sweet!

In the end, common sense prevailed. The State Water Board wants to see everyone’s implementation plans before considering schedule changes. That’s how the policy is supposed to work.

Now the ball is in DWP’s court. Its leaders have a big incentive to put together an implementation plan ASAP, and they should continue working with the environmental community to pull it off.  However, they may need to recalibrate their expectations on compliance deadline extensions to just focus on grid reliability issues.

Filed under: Environmental Governance, L.A. DWP, Power Plants, Water Quality Tagged: | DWP, once through cooling, Power Plants, State Water Resources Control Board

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Crisis Averted

The DWP came to its senses on AB 1552.

Last week the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power gutted and amended a pending state bill (AB 1552) and inserted new language that would have significantly eased newly established rules for how power plants suck in ocean water to cool themselves.  DWP leaders went on the offensive against these regulations, even though an existing city policy on Once Through Cooling legislation doesn’t exist. They moved forward without a city council vote on the proposed legislation. (And in an interesting bit of timing, lawmakers introduced the measure just as the L.A. City Council commenced its two-week summer break.) 

Instead of trusting public process, which considered both economics and grid reliability, the DWP crafted AB 1552 as a cynical exemption that applied only to itself. If the bill became law, DWP would have been able to skirt the intent of the new policy by receiving severely weakened flow reduction targets for its OTC plants in comparison with similar facilities statewide.  The utility even had the nerve to write in a new definition of technical feasibility that is completely inconsistent with the federal Clean Water Act and last year’s Supreme Court ruling on the issue.

Fortunately, the DWP came to its senses late this week and dropped the offensive gut-and-amend legislation, thereby averting a horrible precedent at the state legislature. Even before the clandestine backroom shenanigans began in Sacramento, DWP initiated discussions with the State Water Board last week. Discussions on the DWP compliance plan strategy were promising enough this week to lead the utility to shelve the bill.

DWP’s heavy-handed tactics to blow up the OTC policy through AB 1552 would have set a precedent that would result in continued degradation of California’s coast and ocean.  This week, numerous power companies lobbied legislators to get their own exemptions added to the legislation.  The bill undermined the integrity of the public, administrative and legislative processes and passage of the legislation would have led to erosion of collaborative approaches to environmental protection. Finally, passage of AB 1552 would have encouraged more last-second legislative attempts to avoid compliance with environmental laws and regulations.

California’s 19 OTC power plants are permitted to pull in over 16 billion gallons of water for cooling daily, or over 17.9 million acre-feet per year, killing virtually everything in the cooling water in the process. These power plants kill tens of billions of fish, larvae and invertebrates annually, according to the State Water Board, including 30% of the recreational fish stock off the Southern California coast. The DWP operates three OTC plants in Los Angeles County: Scattergood on the Santa Monica Bay and the Haynes and Harbor facilities in the port area.

Rightly concerned about the ecological devastation caused by OTC, the state’s Water Quality Control Board conducted five years of public hearings before issuing new restrictions on how plants will cool themselves in the future. The board adopted the new rules in May, nearly 35 years after passage of the federal Clean Water Act, which includes strict requirements to protect aquatic life resources from the harm caused by operating coastal power plants.

The new rules call for a roughly 90% reduction in plants’ impacts on marine life through impingement (fish getting stuck on screens) and entrainment (fish and invertebrate larvae getting sucked into power plants and cooked).

The care, inclusiveness and transparency of assembling the state’s new OTC policy can’t be overstated. The California Energy Commission, California Public Utilities Commission, California Independent System Operator, State Lands Commission, Ocean Protection Council, federal EPA, and a wide variety of stakeholders representing power plants, fishing interests, conservation groups, environmental justice organizations and energy experts all participated in shaping the policy over the last five years.

Independent studies assessed the feasibility and potential grid reliability impacts of the new rules. The highly public process included about a dozen workshops and hearings, and culminated in the approval of a policy that puts energy reliability first.

I’m strongly encouraged that the DWP wised up and moved forward on compliance plan negotiations with the State Water Board.  Heal the Bay will work with the DWP and the state to ensure that the final plan protects marine life and complies with state policy.

Filed under: Environmental Governance, Power Plants, wildlife Tagged: | AB 1552, DWP, once through cooling

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Fight the Power

Once Through Cooling plants suck the life out of the ocean

I just sat through a seven-hour workshop on the State Water Board’s long-awaited Once Through Cooling power plant policy for California. Arguably, this may be the most important coastal resource protection action in California this year. State Water Board staff put together a draft policy that could finally hold the power industry accountable for decades of non-compliance with the Clean Water Act. In essence, the policy requires OTC plants to comply with Section 316b of the Act and greatly reduce their impacts on fisheries and marine life. These plants use ancient steam generation technologies that literally suck the life out of the ocean. Fish are caught on screens and larvae and eggs get cooked in the plant.

The many speakers who showed up largely stuck to their scripts. The enviro community came out en masse (Keepers, NRDC, Surfrider, Sierra Club, and Heal the Bay) and largely supported most of the draft policy with a strong call for policy simplification and the elimination of giant compliance loopholes. The strength behind the enviro position came from the Second Circuit Federal Court of Appeals on the Riverkeeper I and II cases. Our positions are also supported by the Supreme Court.

The power companies all complained about the policy being too expensive, too difficult to comply with, and hampered by too short deadlines. However, they couldn’t provide any suggestions on improving the policy while still complying with the Clean Water Act. The differences in the testimony delivered by the various power companies were largely negligible, with NRG the only one espousing a neutral position.

The power industries’ blanket opposition to every part of the policy (including the font choice) is disappointing, given that the energy regulators (CEC, Cal-ISO, and the PUC) all supported the policy and developed the compliance deadlines for each of the 19 power plants covered by the policy.

Glaringly absent from the workshop were the sport and commercial fishing communities. A 2005 study demonstrated an overall entrainment mortality of 1.4% of larval fishes in the Southern California Bight. Recreational fish impingement totaled 8% to 30% of sportfish species caught in the Southern California Bight.

We need the fishing community to come out and support strengthening the OTC policy as vigorously as its members are fighting Marine Protected Areas. The issue marks a great chance for the environmental and fishing communities to collaborate for mutual benefit. And the fish win too.

But, there isn’t much time for the fishing community to weigh in. The final decision on the policy will probably come in December. Comments are due Sept. 30.  A strong OTC policy will lead to healthier coastal fisheries and a repowered, more energy efficient California.

Filed under: Power Plants Tagged: | fishing community, MPAs, once through cooling, Power Plants, State Water Board

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Memo to Antonio … continued

It's time to treat L.A.'s rivers as habitat rather than flood control channels. Photo: lacreekfreak.org

Yesterday,  I outlined  my top three green initiatives that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa should tackle in the remainder of his second term. Here’s a look at some other environmental issues that he should make a priority:

Fast-track city approval of a Stream Protection Ordinance in 2010. The Department of Public Works has spent three and a half years working on a stream protection ordinance.  Based on Watershed Protection Division analysis, there are approximately 462 miles of riparian habitat that would receive some level of protection under the draft ordinance.  Council districts 11 (Rosendahl), 2 (Krekorian), and 12 (Smith) all have over 60 miles of habitat, while 11 out of 15 districts have at least 12 miles of habitat.  The ordinance would protect the city’s remaining stream habitat by requiring development buffer zones of 100 feet for soft-bottomed habitat and 30 feet for concrete-lined channels. We need to start treating streams like habitat rather than flood control channels. Unfortunately, the ordinance has been frozen in the mayor’s office for over two years. If the mayor says he wants to protect L.A.’s streams, the ordinance would likely sail through City Council.  Unfortunately, the ordinance is not on the mayor’s radar.

Build the East Valley Water Recycling project by 2012. The water crisis is only getting worse and L.A. needs to rely more on local, sustainable water supplies.  For example, the mayor should demand that DWP and the Department of Public Works build a microfiltration-reverse osmosis facility for the East Valley Water Recycling project by 2012. This water recycling project is what’s called indirect potable reuse. The treated wastewater is applied to a spreading basin, where it infiltrates into the groundwater. Joel Wachs’ ill-fated “Toilet to Tap” mayoral campaign in the 1990s helped kill this reasonable initiative.  The project addresses public health concerns by adding additional treatment to Tillman recycled water.  Microfiltration and reverse osmosis do a superb job of removing pathogens and emerging contaminants. The project should not have to wait for the DWP’s final water recycling plan (which hopefully will have a 100K acre foot per year target rather than only 50K acre feet).

The mayor’s water plan uses an integrated approach that includes more water recycling, conservation (how about an ordinance requiring waterless urinals in all public buildings?), wellhead treatment at contaminated aquifers, and rainwater infiltration and capture and use. L.A. also needs a landscape ordinance that will force locals to live within their water means by planting climate-appropriate plants rather than turf ready for Augusta National or tropical vegetation. A high-profile, water recycling project in conjunction with additional water conservation measures sends a message to Angelenos that we can thrive as a city using local water supplies. We are surrounded by water agencies that have a superior water recycling record, including Calleguas MWD, Las Virgenes MWD, the Los Angeles county Sanitation Districts, West Basin MWD, the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, and the Orange County Water District. DWP can do the same.

Ban single-use plastic bags and blown polystyrene food packaging citywide. Our addiction to single-use plastic packaging is out of control.  In Los Angeles County, we use more than 6 billion single-use plastic shopping bags each year. We need the mayor to set an example for the region by banning plastic bags and blown polystyrene food packaging in his city.  Many U.S. cities and many nations throughout the world have already acted on these issues.  The global marine debris crisis is only getting worse and society’s benefit is limited to convenience in exchange for despoiling the most beautiful and isolated places on Earth. Heal the Bay’s Coastal Cleanup Day and A Day Without a Bag are not enough.  Behavioral change will be far more effective if our product choices are sustainable.

Support the state policy to phase out once-through cooling in coastal power plants. The DWP has stated its support of the draft policy to transition out of once-through cooling, which literally sucks the life out of the ocean by using seawater to cool plants. The agency says it can’t meet the 2017 deadline to convert its three coastal power plants. The state policy gives DWP the opportunity to repower the coastal power plants with more energy efficient technologies (sorely needed) as long as they use closed cycle or recycled cooling. The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that once-through cooling is not Best Available Technology for compliance with the Clean Water Act. Under the draft state policy, reduction of impingement of fish and entrainment of fish larvae must be greater than 90% or so. L.A. needs to support the policy and offer detailed explanations for why its three power plants can’t meet the 2017 deadlines. However, the city shouldn’t ask for more than an additional three years to comply with the policy. The DWP should support the current policy with the 2017 deadline. At the most, they should support the policy with a 2020 deadline. Along with a statewide network of Marine Protected Areas, the phase out of once-through cooling in California will go a long way towards restoring sustainable fisheries along our coast.

I’ve prattled on enough, but there are many more green issues on which the mayor can have a positive impact. Clearly, moving towards more renewable energy and energy conserving technologies and creating a green enterprise zone are two of his top priorities. The mayor lends his considerable clout to subway and light-rail issues and greening the goods transportation efforts at the Port of L.A. And I’m particularly excited by the potential of the city’s Zero Waste Plan.

If the mayor resolves to have the city achieve the modest goals listed above, then his bold promise of making L.A. the cleanest, greenest major city in America will have a chance to come to fruition.  More importantly, the mayor will have made his mark on making L.A. a more livable, sustainable community for years to come.

Filed under: Environmental Governance, Heal the Bay, Legislation, Marine Debris, Marine Protected Areas, Plastic, Port of Los Angeles, Power Plants, Water Conservation, Water Plan Tagged: | Antonio Villaraigosa, green initiatives, L.A. River, Los Angeles, once through cooling, stream protection, Water Recycling

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