News

The TimesShamrock reports electric rate caps are coming off at what appears
to some activists as the worst possible time.
To read story, open pdf:  
 

PUC Expands the Role of the Office of Competitive Market Oversight to Include Electric Retail Choice Issues 

December 11, 2009

HARRISBURG – As part of a continued effort to facilitate a smooth transition to a competitive market as many Pennsylvanians face the expiration of generation rate caps, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) today announced it will be expanding the Office of Competitive Market Oversight (OCMO) to serve as the Commission’s electric retail choice ombudsman. 

 November 23, 2009, 5:00 PM

By MATTHEW L. WALD

The Associated Press

Workers found a gap in a concrete containment dome at Florida’s Crystal River nuclear power plant.

Almost every plan for limiting carbon dioxide output includes keeping old nuclear plants running. But as those plants age, they turn up new problems.

The latest is at a plant owned by Progress Energy in Crystal River, Fla., where a gap was found inside the thick concrete of a containment dome.

October 25, 2009

HARRISBURG - A bill to foster greater use of clean energy in Pennsylvania has become a moving target for environmentalists and industry groups.

The legislation means different things to different people and, therefore, it has engendered considerable debate as interests in Harrisburg attempt to stretch and pull the bill to meet their conception of what an economy run on clean energy should look like.

The bill's overall purpose is to require utility companies to purchase 15 percent of their power from clean and renewable energy sources by 2024. The current requirement, established in 2004, sets a goal of having 8 percent of purchases from alternate energy sources by 2020.

NRC memo:

    Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials in King of Prussia, Pa., have selected Adam Ziedonis as the new resident inspector at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Delta, Pa. 

    He joins NRC Senior Resident Inspector Fred Bower at the two-unit site, which is operated by Exelon Nuclear. 

New York Times
October 15, 2009

By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — Anything that hops, burrows, buzzes, crawls or grazes near a nuclear weapons plant may be capable of setting off a Geiger counter. And at the Hanford nuclear reservation, one of the dirtiest of them all, its droppings alone might be enough to trigger alarms.
A government contractor at Hanford, in south-central Washington State, just spent a week mapping radioactive rabbit feces with detectors mounted on a helicopter flying 50 feet over the desert scrub. An onboard computer used GPS technology to record each location so workers could return later to scoop up the droppings for disposal as low-level radioactive waste.
The Hanford site, overseen by the federal Department of Energy, produced roughly two-thirds of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, beginning in World War II and ending in the 1980s. Today it is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup, an effort that has cost tens of billions of dollars and is expected to continue for decades.
Yet the helicopter flights, which covered 13.7 square miles and were paid for with $300,000 in federal stimulus money, took place in an area that had never been used by the bomb makers.

BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com
Florida Power & Light will spend millions to assess whether the massive cooling canal system at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant is fueling salt contamination of the aquifer in South Miami-Dade County.
After nearly a year of balking at demands from water managers and county and state environmental regulators, FPL has bowed to expanded monitoring. It's a step the utility agreed to in its quest to complete an ``uprating'' plan intended to coax more power from its two reactors along Biscayne Bay.

By Patrick Cassidy
pcassidy@capecodonline.com
October 15, 2009 2:00 AM
HYANNIS — Steve Jones, a house painter from Salt Lake City, Utah, who summers on Chappaquiddick, knows preparing for nuclear war is not high on most people's to-do list.
"It's not something you're going to spend time on but what if it happened?" he said. "You wouldn't have a clue."
That is why he is pitching local public safety officials with a simple credit-card size device that detects radioactive fallout. Jones volunteers for Arizona-based Physicians for Civil Defense, a nonprofit group trying to provide officials with information on what to do in case of a nuclear detonation.

VY protesters disappointed

By BOB AUDETTE

BRATTLEBORO -- The four women who were arrested Monday for 

entering the gates of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to protest 

the plant’s operation were cited for unlawful trespass and released 

shortly after being taken into custody.

Even though some of the women have been arrested at the gates 

up to seven times, those charges were all dropped prior to a court 

hearing. Arrested were Harriet "Hattie" Nestel, 70, of Athol, Mass., 

Ellen Graves, 69, of West Springfield, Mass., Frances Crowe, 90, 

of Northampton, Mass., and Patricia "Paki" Weiland, 66, also of 

Northampton.

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