October, 24 2019, 12:00am EDT

Failing Nuclear Industry Pushing for $23 Billion Federal Bailout
A bailout proposed by the nuclear industry would cost tax and ratepayers billions, while starving demand for wind and solar.
WASHINGTON
As the nuclear industry lobbies Congress for a bailout, a new analysis commissioned by Friends of the Earth shows that their favored tax proposal would entail massive costs for taxpayers, ratepayers and the climate. Even using the most optimistic projection, the direct costs to taxpayers totals $23 billion over ten years and $34 billion over 20 years.
"The dying nuclear industry wants a massive bailout at the expense of taxpayers and the climate," said Lukas Ross, Senior Policy Analyst for Friends of the Earth. "With just a decade left to prevent the worst of the climate crisis, we shouldn't dump more money into ancient nuclear reactors at the expense of cleaner and much cheaper renewables."
This new subsidy would add to over half a century of massive government support for the nuclear industry. The exact proposal would create a new 30 percent investment tax credit for existing nuclear reactors based on their refueling and capital costs. Utility giant Exelon, the largest nuclear operator in the country, is lobbying hard to include this proposal as a possible tax extender.
"Subsidizing nuclear keeps reactors on-line and crowds out the alternatives. It slows the transition to an electrical grid based on low-carbon distributed resources," wrote expert Dr. Mark Cooper, the author of the analysis and Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis at the Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment. "Nuclear power has no role to play in the long-term future of a low carbon electricity sector."
The burden to regular ratepayers and the climate would be significant as well. Keeping aging, expensive reactors online instead of replacing them with clean renewables blocks the transition to a low-cost, low-carbon energy future -- a delay that would cost regular electricity consumers $33 billion over the next 20 years.
"Stumbling from one bailout to the next isn't a business model," added Ross. "For the sake of taxpayers, electricity consumers and the climate, Congress must stop this endless nuclear boondoggle."
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
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"Young people are here because Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans are playing political games with our lives. We're over this bullshit."
Sep 28, 2023
A group of youth climate activists occupied House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's office in Washington, D.C. on Thursday to condemn the Republican leader and his caucus for pushing the U.S. government to the brink of a destructive shutdown as they demand draconian cuts to food aid, housing assistance, and environmental programs.
"We are fed up and we won't take it anymore," said Adah Crandall a 17-year-old Sunrise Movement organizer who joined a number of other climate activists inside McCarthy's (R-Calif.) office. "As storms rage stronger, fires grow hotter, and heatwaves grow more deadly, Kevin McCarthy is playing political games with our futures. We're facing a climate emergency and McCarthy can't even do his job."
The Sunrise Movement said around 150 students from across the nation traveled to Capitol Hill Thursday to take part in the protest, which comes just two days before the federal government is set to shut down.
Eighteen youth activists were arrested outside of McCarthy's office during the demonstration, according to the climate group.
Earlier Thursday, the Biden administration began notifying government employees that they could soon be temporarily furloughed after McCarthy rejected a bipartisan short-term funding proposal put forth in the U.S. Senate this week.
"Speaker McCarthy is a coward," Shiva Rajbhandari, a 19-year-old Sunrise Movement organizer. "McCarthy and Republicans can either do their jobs, act on the climate crisis, and fund our schools, or they can risk our economy to appease a few extremists. Our generation is watching and we will hold them accountable for their actions."
The impacts of a shutdown on critical government functions and programs—and the overall U.S. economy—could be massive.
"With each passing day, Washington would further deplete federal safety net programs that carry over their unused money from past years," The Washington Post's Tony Romm reported earlier this week. "Eventually, the government might not be able to provide some poor families with childcare, nutrition assistance, housing vouchers, or college financial aid. The longer a shutdown persists, the greater the blow it could ultimately deliver to an economy that has teetered for more than a year on the precipice of recession."
Food & Water Action warned Thursday that "in the event of a shutdown, serious and specific threats to food and water safety could immediately arise," noting that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulators "could be forced to suspend critical safety inspections at drinking water sources, hazardous Superfund waste sites, and chemical facilities."
Additionally, the group noted, the EPA "would be forced to shut down the $15 billion project to replace dangerous lead water pipes throughout the country, putting impacted families at continued risk."
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A new report found that Russian troops were likely "using the plant as a shield" in violation of the safety principles laid out by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Sep 28, 2023
The Russian forces occupying Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant have been violating the safety principles established by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the watchdog body has not been able to effectively monitor the situation.
That's the warning from a new Greenpeace report sent to Western leaders on Thursday, which argues that the IAEA needs to be more upfront about the reality of the situation.
"The IAEA reporting risks normalizing what remains a dangerous nuclear crisis, unprecedented in the history of nuclear power, while exaggerating its actual influence on events on the ground," wrote report authors Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist from Greenpeace East Asia, and Jan Vande Putte, a Greenpeace Belgium radiation and nuclear expert.
Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant on March 4, 2022, less than a month into the invasion.
"Since 2022 we have been deeply concerned by the multiple hazards and risks to the Zaporozhzhia nuclear plant posed by the Russian armed forces and the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom," Burnie and Putte wrote.
To address these concerns, Greenpeace Germany commissioned former U.K. military specialists at McKenzie Intelligence Services to report on conditions at the plant.
"The Russian armed forces and Rosatom occupation pose a constant nuclear threat to Zaporozhzhia and must be condemned."
The result, Greenpeace said, "provides detailed evidence that the Zaporizhizhia nuclear plant is being used strategically and tactically by Russian armed forces in its illegal war against Ukraine."
For example, the report found that Russian troops were firing from positions between one and 18 kilometers (approximately 0.6 to 11 miles) from the plant, had constructed small defensive positions with sandbags on the roofs of some of the reactor halls, and are using a type of truck near the plant that is commonly used to transport weapons and combustible material.
It also concluded that both Russian forces and Rosatom are acting in violation of the five principles that IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi laid out in June to prevent a nuclear accident at the plant.
These principles are:
- No launching attacks from or at the plant;
- No storing weapons at the plant;
- No threatening outside power sources;
- Making sure all important structures are protected; and
- No taking actions that go against these principles.
McKenzie found evidence that Russian forces have a firing pattern of settling in one location, attacking from another, and then moving again to avoid counterattacks. In this process, they appear to be "using the plant as a shield."
"All activity observed over the reporting period does suggest a precarious environment continues to exist at the plant," Burnie and Putte concluded.
The Greenpeace experts also reviewed the IAEA's monitoring in the context of McKenzie's findings, and argued that the agency could be more upfront about its limitations and Russia's violations.
IAEA only has four monitors for the largest nuclear plant on the continent, and they must conduct their investigation with restrictions placed on their movements and access, as well as the requirement that they make access requests a week in advance.
Despite all this, Burnie said in a statement, "the director general's reporting is incomplete and misleading, including the assessment of Russian noncompliance with safety and security principles."
"The Russian armed forces and Rosatom occupation pose a constant nuclear threat to Zaporozhzhia and must be condemned—but currently the IAEA is unable to fully report on the security and safety hazards they pose," Burnie continued. "That has to change."
The advocacy group prepared the report ahead of an IAEA discussion of the situation in Ukraine in Vienna Thursday, as well as the IAEA Board of Governors meeting October 2. On Wednesday night, Greenpeace sent copies to the board's member governments, The Guardian reported.
IAEA did not comment on the report directly. However, it told The Guardian that, without its inspectors stationed there since September 2022, "the world would have no independent source of information about Europe's largest nuclear power plant."
However, Greenpeace argued the agency could take steps to improve that information.
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The Democrat "directed his staff to deliver a gift to the House Oversight Committee to congratulate and salute Rep. Comer and his Team Americaâ„¢ squad as they embark on their historic impeachment journey."
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Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania continued his trend of calling Republican lawmakers on "their bullshit" by delivering a case of Bud Light beer to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability on Thursday, as the panel held its first hearing for the GOP's widely condemned impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
Instead of trying to avert the looming government shutdown, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)
caved to the far-right wing of his party earlier this month by announcing the impeachment probe—led by Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.)—despite the lack of any evidence of wrongdoing by the Democratic president.
Fetterman's office said that the first-term senator "directed his staff to deliver a gift to the House Oversight Committee to congratulate and salute Rep. Comer and his Team Americaâ„¢ squad as they embark on their historic impeachment journey."
His stunt was lauded online as "top tier trolling," given that some right-wing political leaders and other transphobic figures behind attacks on LGBTQ+ people and rights have boycotted Bud Light this year because of its paid partnership with trans social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Thursday was not the first time Fetterman has garnered attention for mocking the GOP's impeachment inquiry.
Asked by a journalist to comment on the probe just after McCarthy announced it, Fetterman sarcastically said in a video that quickly spread online, "Oh my gosh, you know, oh—it's devastating!"
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