Do we need another nuclear plant in the state, or are the risks too great? Should we reduce our reliance on nuclear power? What other sources of energy should we invest in? Our guests include David Talbot, chief correspondent for Technology Review magazine at MIT, who wrote an article called “The Great German Energy Experiment”
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Today, NIRS and 37 other organizations submitted a formal Petition for Rulemaking to the NRC to expand emergency evacuation zones around U.S. nuclear reactors and make other improvements in emergency preparedness. We’re calling this the Nuclear 911 campaign. The widespread radioactive contamination caused by the Fukushima nuclear disaster (and Chernobyl before it) makes clear that
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The Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant sits on a peaceful bend of the Connecticut River, where jays call and herons dive lazily over sun-dappled water. There’s something ominously familiar, however, about the tower of Vermont Yankee’s reactor, which has the same design as those that melted down last spring at Fukushima in Japan. And just
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The horrible news from Japan continues to be ignored by the western corporate media. Fukushima’s radioactive fallout continues to spread throughout the archipelago, deep into the ocean and around the globe—including the US. It will ultimately impact millions, including many here in North America. The potentially thankful news is that Fukushima’s three melting cores may
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It’s old. FPL employees are afraid to report safety concerns. Just like in Japan, Turkey Point is extremely susceptible to a meltdown caused by a natural disaster. And just like in Japan, Turkey Point’s spent fuel pools are a catastrophe waiting to occur. If Turkey Point melts down, Miami is doomed. Gus Garcia-Roberts reports for Miami New Times.

A sample of fish taken in 2010 from the Connecticut River, nine miles upstream from the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, yielded some eyebrow-raising results that came to light Tuesday. For the first time in 13 fish samples the state has had tested since January 2010, this one showed low levels of the powerful radionuclide strontium-90
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Recent, yet-to-be-released testing by such a group in Fairfield County and nearby New York areas has found low levels of two types of radioactive strontium in the milk of goats, cows and humans. The results, expected to be released within weeks, were termed “striking” by one expert who reviewed the data provided to Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

Studies by another activist group have found strontium in the baby teeth of Fairfield County children.

Imagining New York’s energy supply without the Indian Point nuclear power plants, some see dirtier air, higher utility bills and an increased risk of blackouts. Others see a lower risk of catastrophe from a terror attack or natural disaster.

A federal task force Wednesday recommended sweeping regulatory changes to better protect the public and the nation’s 104 nuclear reactors, including two at the Millstone Power Station in Waterford, in light of the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster in Japan, Patricia Daddona of The Day in New London reports.

“Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera. Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has
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Prime Minister Naoto Kan has ordered the temporary closure of Hamaoka – the nuclear plant that sits on an active faultline – while a new tsunami wall is built, and he has abandoned plans to build 14 reactors over the next 20 years, opting instead for a 20% increase in renewables.

Several members of a crowd of more than 150 sought assurance from executives giving a presentation about the Millstone Power Station that owner Dominion will put spent fuel from one shuttered reactor into safe dry storage on the site.

Those at Waterford Town Hall included a woman who said she wasn’t convinced by Millstone owner Dominion executives’ premise that the two operating Unit 2 and 3 reactors and the closed Unit 1 reactor could withstand a natural catastrophe like the earthquake and tsunami that wrecked still-troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors in Japan.