Oyster Creek, courtesy of Nukeworker.com

Chicago, Illinois based Exelon Corporation recently announced that it will close the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in 2019. (NY Times, NJ.com AP). Oyster Creek, in Lacey, New Jersey, is the nation’s oldest operating nuclear power plant. It’s roughly 75 miles south of New York City and 60 miles east of Philadelphia. Exelon was recently granted a 20-year extension on its operating license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission despite the wishes of local environmentalists, environmental groups, and people concerned about evacuations in the event of an emergency, and public concerns from the NJ Department of Environmental Protection.

The plant uses a single pass cooling system which sucks in 500 Billion gallons of cool water each year (click here) from Barnegat Bay, heats it 20 to 30 degrees, and returns the heated water to the bay. This kills billions of adult and juvenile fish, clams, crabs, and shrimp, and hundreds of billions, if not  trillions of hatchlings, less than a centimeter in length. This has had a negative effect – possibly a disastrous effect – on the fish and wildlife populations of Barnegat Bay during the 40 year operating life of the plant to date. The NJ DEP demanded that Exelon retrofit the plant with cooling towers.

Exelon claims the cooling towers would cost $600 million, roughly $1.00 per watt for the 610 megawatt reactor. Other estimates for the cooling towers range from $200 million to $800 million. Exelon decided to close the plant rather than spend the money on the cooling towers and other maintenance.  This is a gain for current Exelon shareholders as they defer a hundreds of millions on capital improvments, and corresponding hundreds of millions of liabilities, while they collect revenues and realize profits from the sale of electricity for the next nine years.

Oyster Creek, aerial view.

While cooling towers would not pump heated water into the bay, they would pump steam into the atmosphere – which would have other environmental effects. Looked at from a systems perspectives, nuclear power is a technology for generating electricity, heat, radioactive wastes, which also presents national security challenges.

Dan Yurman, writing in The Energy  Collective, suggests that there might be more to Oyster Creek than the economics of avoiding the expense of the cooling towers. “In a December 9 message to subscribers,” he writes, “Morningstar called Oyster Creek the ‘lowest margin plant’ for Exelon, and said that it had been plagued by ‘relatively high operating costs.’”

Like Vermont Yankee (click here) and Indian Point (here), Oyster Creek is associated with leaks of tritium (here). Dennis Zannoni, the former nuclear safety engineer for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, has long held that Exelon was not managing Oyster Creek safely (click here) and its operating license should have been revoked, not renewed. We wrote here about Kerry Beal, the whistleblower who exposed guards sleeping on the job at the Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant, and who was fired in 2007 by Exelon Nuclear.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency is expected to draft regulations in 2011 under Section 316 of the Clean Water Act to require power plants to reduce their thermal discharges into the nation’s waterways. This could have significant implications for other power plants, such as Indian Point, on the Hudson River, and the Salem plant on the Delaware.

New Jersey has 311 megawatts of solar energy, about 221 which were installed between June 30, 2009 and Sept. 30, 2010. The energy from Oyster Creek and the other nuclear power plants can easily be supplied by new photovoltaic solar systems and wind turbines. These clean, renewable and sustainable energy technologies operate with significantly lower environmental externalities – no radioactive or other hazardous wastes, no national security concerns, no fuel, therefore no mines, wells, fuel processing and transportation.

EPA declares ‘emergency’ asbestos cleanup in Montana town - via Wikinews.

For the past ten years, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been overseeing the asbestos clean-up in the small town of Libby, Montana, which has been on the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List since 2002.  

On Wednesday, the Obama administration declared Libby and the immediate area a “public health emergency”. Under this state of emergency the EPA is increasing clean-up assistance and medical care. According to federal prosecutors, asbestos has taken 200 lives and is the root cause of at least 1,000 illnesses in the surrounding area.

“This is a tragic public health situation that has not received the recognition it deserves by the federal government for far too long,” according to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

In the 1920’s The Zonolite Company began producing vermiculite, a mineral that is often used in insulation. Between 1963 and 1990, W.R. Grace & Company took over the mine operations. Tremolite asbestos was discovered in the vermiculite product. A study conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry discovered that the incidence of asbestosis in the population of the mine site area is far higher than the national average.

Airborne asbestos exposure can lead to mesothelioma, a cancer which develops in the sac surrounding the lungs and chest cavity

, the abdominal cavity, or the sac surrounding the heart. Prolonged exposure can lead to lung scarring, asbestosis, and lung cancer . Patients diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma generally are left with six months to a year before death.

The Chesapeake: Oxygen & Fish Catch

“Poisoned Waters,” a documentary on PBS Frontline examines the state of our nation’s waterways. It focuses on the Chesapeake and the Puget Sound. As the title suggests, the nation’s waterways are far from pristine. Click here for Tim Wheeler’s review in the Baltimore Sun and here for Frontline. The documentary suggests that the Clean Water Act, in response to Earth Day, 1970, started off well. But gutting regulation, castrating the EPA, allowing open dumping and externalizing cleanup costs do not solve pollution problems. Perdue, in his denial that chicken manure contributes to algae blooms in the Chesapeake, sounds like a shill for the tobacco industry saying “Well we know the plaintiff smoked 4 packs a day for 25 years. How do we know the cigarettes caused lung cancer? How do we know lung cancer killed him? He died when his heart stopped. The cancer was in his lungs.”

This image, from Science Daily, shows a dead zone in the northern stem of the Chesapeake. The area in red shows oxygen depletion. The area in blue shows oxygen. The green circles in the blue zone show fish catch.

On Earth Day, 2009, we have much to do.  It is not as if we have accomplished nothing in the last 39 years. However, we see two glaring omissions in the clean water act.  It doesn’t regulate farm waste or coal ash. We also need to understand that regulation and enforcement are effective and deregulation and voluntary compliance does not work.  After all,  we have police and prosecutors to chase and bring to trial criminals in order to protect the citizens. Speed limits and parking regulations are not “goals” or “guidelines” for voluntary compliance. They are hard and fast laws. Break the law; get a ticket. This paradigm must be applied to protecting the nation’s waterways.

But here’s an idea:  Take this algae-manure system and transform it from one that is destroying an estuary into one that is creating the biofuels for the next generation of cars and power plants!

In April of 2007, the Supreme Court ruled the federal Environmental Protection Agency must regulate carbon emissions unless it presents scientific proof that greenhouse gases do not contribute to global climate change. On Nov. 13, the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board ruled it would do so. We need alternatives to fossil fuels and nuclear power, if for no other reason than to obey the law.

Traditional hydroelectric plants harness the energy in waterfalls. New designs harness the energy in tides, waves and ocean currents. Wind farms harness wind energy. Solar energy systems harness sunlight. Geothermal systems use heat from within the earth.

The sun will shine and the wind will blow regardless of the presence of solar panels and wind turbines. By harnessing a process rather than consuming a resource, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and other clean, renewable, sustainable technologies generate power without fuels, and without greenhouse gases, mercury, radioactive wastes, other pollutants and without the cost of fuel.

Saving the shore from global warming will help the economy. And it’s the law.

This was published as a letter to the editor in the Asbury Park Press, Friday, 12/5/2008.

The EPA is planning on licensing fees aimed at livestock operations with more than 100 tons of carbon emissions per year,  according to Nick Butterfield, speaking for the EPA, quoted by Bob Johnson, AP, published in the Washington Post. The farmers are against this. Ken Hamilton, of the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation says it will cost owners of a modest sized cattle ranch $30,000 to $40,000 per year.  This seems correct – if you do the math, the fee is $30,000 for 172 dairy cows, which seems high.

The fee structure seems, to this non-farmer, high and skewed against dairy farmers. It reaches $30,000 per year with only 172 dairy cows, 343 head of beef cattle, and 1,500 hogs. But, by generating popular support against carbon emission regulations, this seems really designed to support the coal industry.

The fee structure:

• Dairy Cows:     $175 per head, with 25 or more.
• Beef Cattle:      $87.50 per head, with 50 or more.
• Hogs:               $20 per head, with 200 or more.

Head of livestock for $30,000 annual fee:

• Dairy Cows:     172
• Beef Cattle:      343
• Hogs:            1,500

While Popular Logistics understands that too much of American agriculture is non-sustainable, and while we are in favor of regulating carbon emissions, we would start with Coal, Nuclear, and factory farms, and increasing the CAFE standards and auto mileage requirements,  not by taxing modest ranches of 25 or 50 head of cattle. Popular Logistics also recognizes a distinction between carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, the nuclear fuel cycle, and the environmental effects of mining, and carbon emissions from cattle ranching and hog farming, especially from organic farming.  We would therefore suggest that the EPA create a carbon offset program that would allow ranchers and hog farmers to offset the carbon emissions of their livestock with trees, wind turbines, and photovolotaic solar installations.