Fort McMurray, Alberta Canada. The tar sands boom is going down in flames; going up in smoke. The fire, which started May 1, 2016, has burned 156,000 hectares, which is 15.6 million acres, 602 square miles or 1,560 square kilometers.
As is evident in the image the flames are taller than the trees. Continue reading
Deepwater Horizon Spill in 2010. Photo: Gerald Herbert, AP.
11 Crew were lost in the explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20, 2010. In addition, roughly 5.2 million barrels of oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico during the 87 days between April 20, 2010 when the explosion occurred and July 15, 2010 when the well was capped.
BP, found guilty of “Gross Negligence” and “Willful Misconduct” in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, (BBC, EcoWatch), has agreed to pay $18.7 Billion over the next 15 years (BP Press Release, Reuters) to settle various claims with the United States, the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, and others. This amounts to 14.8% of BP’s current market capitalization.
Pursuant to the agreements, BP will pay $1.1 Billion per year over the next 15 years. While the $18.7 Billion amounts to 14.8% of BP’s current market capitalization of $125.59 Billion, the $1.1 Billion per year is only a loss of 0.88% of BP’s current market capitalization each year.
However,
Ft Calhoun Plant – Arial View
The Fort Calhoun nuclear plant reopened in December, 2013. The plant, on the west bank of the Missouri River about 20 miles north of Omaha, Nebraska, closed for refueling in April, 2011, and was flooded in June, 2011. Refueling a nuclear plant typically takes about 6 – 12 weeks. Due to the flooding, the Fort Calhoun plant was closed for 970 days, from April, 2011 until December, 2013. (NY Times / Associated Press, here). Back in June, 2011, the cost estimate by David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists, was roughly $970 Million in lost revenue, plus the costs of repairs. Continue reading
The Deepwater Horizon Spill
“You can’t have oil without oil spills.” – Markwayne Mullin, R, Oklahoma. (Official / GovTrack)
Wind and Sun Won’t Spill
In a period when the Dow Industrials rose 30%, the S&P 500 rose 40%, and the Popular Logistics “Sustainable Energy Portfolio” rose 223%, the “Fossil Fuel Portfolio” rose 21%.
This suggests that a paradigm shift is underway in the energy industry.
Fukushima Explosion, Courtesy Forbes
A lot of people have been talking about a new dawn of nuclear power (Telegraph, article from 2013 here). “Fukushima,” they say, perversely, “proves nuclear is safe because only 3 reactors melted down.” They also say, “a culture of safety can make or break nuclear power.” (Japan Times, op-ed, here).
I think these people are not asking the right questions.
For example, the melt-rate of Antarctic ice has double since before 2010, that is since before Fukushima. Andrew Freedman on Mashable, here, and Phil Plait, on Slate, here wrote about a scientific study, accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters which documents the increase in the rate at which Antarctic ice is melting. The study attributes this increased ice-melt-rate to rising ocean temperatures. The conventional wisdom is that “The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing ocean temperatures to rise.” But … what if this is only part of the problem?
What effect, if any, does the release of radiation from the Fukushima melt-down have on ocean temperature and therefore, the rate of melting ice?
Fukushima Steam
Rising from Sarcophagus
Rad-Waste flows to clouds
Rad-waste flows thru EAARTH
Carried on the Jet Stream’s winds
any-every-where
NYTimes … ABC … BBC … Guardian, UK
With Nuclear power,
an accident anywhere is an accident everywhere.”
If the cheapest unit of energy is
the one that we don’t need, the “Nega-Watt,” then
the next cheapest is the one that
doesn’t need fuel and doesn’t create waste.
The “Nega-Fuel-Watt / Nega-Waste-Watt.”
The Fires of Fukushima
Back in the 1960’s Nuclear Power was pitched as “Too Cheap to Meter.” Today the state of the art can be summarized in 15 words:
Chernobyl, Fukushima, San Onofre, Fort Calhoun, Indian Point, Radioactive Waste, Evacuation Plans and Emergency Response. Continue reading
Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station
Two Years Ago, April, 2011, the Fort Calhoun nuclear power station, on the banks of the Missouri River, north of Omaha, Nebraska, was shut down for refueling. It should have been a routine operation. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, NEI.Org, here, “U.S. nuclear reactors shut down once every 18 to 24 months to refuel approximately one-third of the reactor. In the 1980s and early ’90s the average refueling outage lasted about three months. Over the past decade, refueling outage durations have improved substantially. Now a typical refueling outage lasts one month.” Clearly Fort Calhoun, shut down for refueling 28 months ago in April, 2011, is not typical. Continue reading
Fukushima
Jeff Hanson, spokesman for the Omaha Public Power District, OPPD, in discussing the Fort Calhoun reactor, closed since April, 2011 for refueling then, in June, 2011, due to flooding, said,
“[Nuclear power is] a reliable source of electricity that’s carbon-free. That becomes more valuable going forward,” OPPD spokesman Jeff Hanson said.
This assertion that nuclear power is “carbon free” or that it produces “no greenhouse gases” is based on a simplified view of one aspect of the nuclear power – fissioning uranium – and ignores the complete picture.
Fallout Map from Fukushima Disaster
While fissioning uranium does not release carbon dioxide, when we look at the entire fuel / waste cycle we see that getting uranium out of the ground, fashioning it into fuel rods, transporting the fuel rods to the plant and managing the waste requires energy, and much of this energy releases carbon dioxide.
In “The World Will Not End and Other Predictions for 2012,” I developed a set of predictions for 2012, the accuracy of which were described by me in 2012 Revisited. Here are my predictions for 2013. As noted last year, I am extrapolating from patterns that I see – also known as reading tea leaves.
For an overview of the details see below.
Back in April, 2011, the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant, on the banks of the Missouri River about 19 miles north of Omaha, was shut down for refueling. The timing was perfect because in June, 2011, the Missouri River flooded. As pictured above, the plant that had been on the shore of the river was suddenly in the middle of the river.
THE PLANT IS STILL SHUT-DOWN – 20 Months after the incident.
Erin Golden, of the Omaha World News, told me on Dec. 19, 2012,
The plant is expected to be $129 million over budget in 2012. The OPPD [Omaha Public Power District] has set a target for the First Quarter of 2013 to bring the plant back on line. And the people at OPPD are optimistic that they will get the plant back on-line. The NRC, however, is not optimistic.
Indian Point, Aerial view, courtesy Earth Institute
Indian Point’s two reactors, operating since 1974 and 1976, generate up to 30 percent of New York City and Westchester’s power. Yet the plant remains controversial.
March 1, 2012, Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law, moderated the Forum on the Future of Indian Point held at Columbia Law School. The forum asked whether Indian Point was “Safe, Secure and Vital or an Unacceptable Risk?” Renee Cho covered it on the Columbia Earth Institute blog, here.
I was not there. However, have some thoughts …
Turbines at Windeby
Rather than “Can we get away from Nuclear Power?” The real questions we need to ask ourselves are:
Did the Japanese (and the rest of the world) NEED Fukushima?
Happy Earth Day. Think for the Future.
Matthew L. Wald, 
writing in the New York TImes, covers a new modeling technique to assess seismic risk to nuclear power plants. Quakes and U.S. Reactors: An Analytic Tool
With the release of a computer model of all known geologic faults east of Denver, nearly all of the nuclear power plants in the United States are about to embark on a broad re-evaluation of their vulnerability to earthquakes. The new mapping is the first major update of the fault situation for plants since 1989.
The map has been in preparation since 2008, well before the earthquake and tsunami that caused three meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan last March or the quake near Mineral, Va., last summer that shook a twin-reactor plant beyond the degree expected. Still, those events have lent urgency to the effort to assess the American plants’ ability to withstand quakes.
The new study does not calculate the risk of damage from an earthquake or even specify how much ground motion is likely at the reactor sites. That work is left to the plants’ owners, supervised by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The industry began to realize after the Fukushima disaster that engineers did not have a strong understanding of which structures and systems at the plants were most vulnerable.
As one of us, Lawrence J. Furman pointed out in Nuclear Power, Natural Disasters, and Security on Popular Logistics, on August 28, 2011,
“Nuclear power diminishes National Security and the stability of the electric grid.”
Mr. Furman also blogged on the nuclear plants at the North Anna Power Station, in Louisa County, Virginia, that were shut down because of the earthquake last summer, here, the eight plants that were shut down by Hurricane Irene, in the 8/28/11 post referenced above, and the Cooper and Fort Calhoun, Nebraska nuclear power plants. Cooper was shut down due to flooding on the Missouri River. Fort Calhoun was shut down for refueling in May, 2011. It was held offline in June, 2011, due to flooding of the Missouri River. Our coverage began here, on June 25, 2011, continued here, June 29, 2011. According to the NRC, here, the plant remains offline 285 days after the flood, at a cost, to the ratepayers, of $1 million per day, or $285 Million, and counting.
The nature of nuclear power is such that the plants can be shut down, as were Cooper, Fort Calhoun, and eight other plants from North Carolina to Connecticut, by the rain. Unlike solar energy systems, nuclear plants don’t come back on automatically.
As Mr. Furman wrote in “21 for 2011: The most significant events of the year,” here,
In the words of Mycle Schneider, “The industry was arguably on life support before Fukushima. When the history of this industry is written, Fukushima is likely to introduce its final chapter,” (click here). However, the three melt-downs at Fukushima, coupled with the melt-down at Chernobyl in 1986 and the partial melt-down at Three Mile Island in 1979, suggest a probability of one melt-down every 14 years and a major incident somewhere – and everywhere – every 11 years.