EnergyStories:Week History

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Tents of the RRAMM Camp

Read the latest summary of the Weekly Top 100 Energy Stories! It's continuously contiunued using the "Weekly News" ticker on the main page...

About the Weekly News Stories

These stories are provided by abalone AT energy-net.org[1] week by week. They publish them in several anti-nuclear networks and on their blog. Here is their own description of the service:

The Energy Net has been online since 1988 when I was given the permission to take over the name from the folks that started the original Energy Net back in the early 1980’s.
The original Energy Net was a network of activists across California who were organizing community based renewable energy programs, starting with making homes more energy efficient. This popular project was in competition against PG&E’s version of how to reduce electricity demand. The project died when PG&E and NRDC was able to push their own version of how to do energy efficiency programs within “the captured” California Public Utilities Commission.
In 1988 The Energy Net first went online as a member of the global network of Bulletin Board Services (BBS) called Fidonet. It stayed a local BBS system until 1994 when we switched to its current location on the world wide web. The formation of this blog is hopefully the next jump in the evolution in online communications… The Energy Net has been the archival home of the Abalone Alliance, the California statewide antinuclear movement that ran between 1977 and 1985. Please check out these resources about the Alliance.
This blog (containing the weekly news, the editor) was setup on April 3rd 2007 in response to the growing push to develop nuclear power by the Bush Administration and the nuclear power industry. The blog has initially been setup as a vehicle for publishing the best nuclear news in the world. Go HERE to see the full RSS Feed from where these stories are coming from. As oldtimers start checking back in and get over the huge PR push by the media on nuclear, there will be a growing need to organize a response.


March 1st - 7th 2010
Nuclear quagmire!!! The last week of news continues to escalate. Its taken several hours more than usual to put this newsletter together. Obama’s change wasn’t what a whole lot of us were expecting. So the fallout continues to escalate worldwide as both Russia and Canada have announced new economic investment plans. The volume of news continues to grow and in a whole lot of unexpected directions.

Let’s start with Mordechai Vanunu, official refusal to accept a Nobel Peace prize. Follow that up with Nuclaire Sortir release of documents that threatens to blow the lid off of EDF/Areva’s EPR reactor design. The U.S. flip-flop on letting Pakistan into their version of the new nuclear club. The Paris nuclear conference. Sweden’s concern about the safety of their new repository geology, a new earthquake faultline near PI’s heated debate over Bataan. How dare I even mention the fact that Chile was in the middle of promoting the development of reactors just as the largest earthquake to hit the planet in a very long time hit! New opposition to the UK’s nuclear push emerged in the form of a biography by the former head of BFNL. Then there was the astounding news out of Palestine about how the U.S. lost three armed nuclear weapons during the Gulf war and continues to hide the story from the world. I’m not even gonna get into news out of Japan… Poland get’s financial support to start construction of reactors. South Africa, which recently abandoned its PBMR reactor project is now pushing new reactors down the throats of a pristine coastal community. Its not every week that so many major issues hit around the world! And oh my favorite in the bunch, There been a tripling of cancers near the community of Fallujah Iraq, and the media is starting to actually cover the story a bit that broke months ago. But wait…

The DOE finally filed for the formal closure of Yucca Mountain! That was followed days later with Washington state dems screaming where’s the science at Chu! I can imagine how Steve was laughing backstage after failing to present Nevada’s version of the science vs. DOE’s. A lot of interesting news out of Georgia. NPR did an excellent tech talk show with Lester Brown on Friday. It seems at least a couple of people finally got some of the Yucca story right. Washington was given $55 million by a federal court over the Yucca closure. But the idea of drilling super deep bore holes and dropping spent fuel down kind of sounds like a new way to seed volcanic activity to me… We are now seeing pro-nuclear conspiracy stories out there that there are, nor ever has been any danger of nuclear waste(I had to post it). Then over to one of the other favorite dumping grounds of the nuclear industry, Utah. The first of 16 million tons of the Moab tailings pile has been moved away from the Colorado River. A report by HEAL and IEER point to the likelyhood that Energy Solutions may have taken in wastes that were not allowed at their Clive facility. Thus, we are watching the fifth major Utah battle to be won in the last decade to happen there, as the DU waste dumping issue is now red hot. Speaking of Energy Solutions, they are having a bit of a hard time these days as a serious fire at their Tennessee facility finally made the news.

Then we have the death of a DOE worker at Hanford (not radiation), new plans to help workers get help, a push to force cooling towers at Oyster Creek, NJ, while California is considering blocking all seawater cooling for nukes or any other facility. Vermont’s IOU’s Entergy continues to make all kinds of bribes in its attempts to spin off a new nuclear company in New York, as a poll shows that 70% of Vermont responders don’t like the nuke anymore. Nationally a poll shows the public worried about waste, with numbers showing a drop in support. Attempts to reverse Minnesota’s nuclear moratorium died in committee. And oh, my has there been an explosion of op-ed pieces from P-Moore and more.

I can’t sumarize everything that happened, but one article jumped out at me and that was a story out of DOE’s Oak Ridge blog about how they are working on ways to streamline the NRC’s license process. What the hell!

Almost too much for anyone to even wrap their heads around this time. Triage is a tough to do!


  1. For protection against automatical email address robots searching for addresses to send spam to them this email address has been made unreadable for them. To get a correct mail address you have to displace "AT" by the @-symbol.