In the USA (Today) and Spain

Today’s editions of USA Today in many regions of the country include a special section on the nuclear energy industry. The section includes a foreword by NEI President and CEO Marvin Fertel on the value of nuclear energy as well as articles and advertising from many nuclear energy companies. This isn’t online, so it actually requires getting the fingers a little inky to read it. But it’s USA Today – it’s just about everywhere. (If I can get hold of a pdf version, I’ll post it for you.)

---

Twenty Greenpeace activists entered a nuclear reactor compound in eastern Spain early Tuesday and several of them climbed a refrigeration tower to protest the use of nuclear power, a Spanish official and Greenpeace spokeswomen said.

There are a fair number of places where this kind of stunt might well make you a martyr to your cause. But as long as no one is hurt, Greenpeace’s little stabs at publicity will fall on fishy eyes that view the merry prankster approach as awfully yesterday. But wait:

A plant security guard was "slightly injured" by the activists as they entered. The guard was treated at the plant medical facility, the government spokeswoman said.

That’s not good at all and a real invitation to trouble. I can’t speak to plant security in Spain but this kind of interaction seems almost inconceivable in the United States – not just going onto the plant grounds without severe trouble ensuing but knocking around a security guard, something that would be greeted very darkly here – and should be.

Protesting si, mischief quizas, injury no.

The town and the plant share the same name – Asco. Spain has nine reactors at seven sites.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Just a small correction, Spain has 8 operable reactors

February 18, 2011 at 6:03 PM

Bill said…

"The town and the plant share the same name – Asco. Spain has nine reactors at seven sites."

At first glance, I misread this as saying that '– Asco[comma] Spain has nine reactors at seven sites.'!

February 21, 2011 at 1:47 PM

Fifi said…

And, as if right on cue, Spain announces that it's scrapping its planned phase-out of nuclear power.

http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2011/02/spain-scraps-phase-out-of-nuclear.html

February 22, 2011 at 9:34 PM

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog