Not so much when
it comes to energy policy
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| From Fake Science |
By
Will Collette
Charlestown’s
obsessive opposition to wind energy and lack of interest in other types of
green energy raise lots of questions about our town leadership’s commitment to
the environment. We are one of the most vulnerable communities in Rhode Island
to the effects of ocean rise and intensified storms caused by climate change.
Plus we are just 20 miles down-wind from the trouble-prone Millstone nuclear power plant,
well within the 50 mile danger zone that a major accident would generate.
The
Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) has just sent yet another team of special
inspectors
to the Millstone Nuclear Power Station just outside of New London, to find out
why the cooling system for the newer of their two reactors, Unit 3, keeps having problems.
The
NRC has a well-deserved reputation for being among the worst regulators, a
captive of the industry it is supposed to regulate. When they actually admit
problems, it is truly cause for alarm. Click
here for examples.
The
NRC took this latest action because the cooling pump failed on July 15 and
again on September 10. The NRC issued Millstone
with a “white finding” over a violation of “low-to-moderate significance” on August 28.
Cooling pump problems are a major big deal because the operator’s ability to
bring in cooling seawater to keep the reactors at a safe temperature is what
keeps reactors from melting down.
Millstone
just completed its first ever
training drill of its personnel and surrounding community first responders on
how they would respond to an attack by terrorists. It took them
until the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11 to come up with the bright idea that
they should be prepared for an attack by foreign or domestic terrorists.
On top of everything else, Millstone
sucks in billions of gallons daily from Long Island Sound and then discharges
all that water after its been heated by its journey through the two operating
reactors severely disrupting the marine ecology. But at least the water keeps
the plant from blowing up.
The NRC knows what it's doing, tight?
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| 5.6% of NRC employees fell for phishing spam like this |
If
all this isn’t enough to bother you, consider how the NRC discovered
that it had been hacked by foreigners twice, and another time by an unknown
hacker,
according to an internal report. In one incident, 215 NRC employees were sent
“phishing” e-mails (you get them, I sure – the ones that say you need to click
on a link and enter requested information to keep from losing a service) and a dozen of them took the bait!
The
Inspector General’s Cybercrime Unit was eventually able to trace the phishing
e-mail back to its foreign source. But in the course of investigating that
hack, we learn that 5.6% of this sample of NRC employees are idiots.
The
report noted that in other incidents, NRC employees opened attachments that
downloaded malware. Given the US’s own history in hacking the nuclear programs
of its enemies – the best known case being the “Stuxnet” virus that American
and Israeli hackers injected into Iran’s nuclear weapons development program
(setting their bomb-making back by months), you’d think the NRC would be a
little more cyber-security conscious.
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| Stuxnet almost crippled Iran's A-bomb program |
On
September 23rd, URI is hosting a talk by an expert on the Stuxnet
hack (details here) as part of its
fall series on privacy and cyber-security.
Anyway,
I just don’t get why our supposedly environmentalist leaders of the Charlestown
Citizens Alliance have nothing to say about energy, other than to oppose
wind power in all its forms, including small wind turbines for residential use.
If you want to understand why you can’t build a wind turbine in Charlestown for
your own personal use, click
here.
Meanwhile, out
in the real world…
Deepwater Wind
has received all the federal approvals it needs for its pilot five-turbine
30-megawatt wind farm on the far side of Block Island and with almost no more
hurdles, is getting ready to build, starting next summer and go on line in 2016.
Right
behind them is Cape Wind, with its planned offshore wind project off Nantucket.
They recently announced they plan to base their shore operations, where the
turbines will be assembled and the construction will be staged, in New Bedford.
In addition to hundreds of construction jobs, there will also be hundreds of
permanent jobs in New Bedford, a town that desperately needs the work.
There
was an interesting
article in the New Bedford Standard-Times about constructive efforts the
wind industry and fishing industry are undertaking to co-exist. One of the fishing
industry officials, Jim Kendall, summed up the situation this way: "There is a big feeling that this is just another
thing encroaching on us, but we know we'll have to coexist to survive."
Of
course, that’s easier said than done.
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| Portsmouth is fixing an expensive screw-up. Cost lots of money but no lives |
In
Charlestown, during the fight against the proposed Whalerock wind turbine
project, opponents cited some trouble-plagued turbine projects that made wind energy look bad. Not bad
in the sense of irradiating tens of thousands of people or exposing people to toxic
gasses, but wind turbines that failed or worked poorly.
One
conspicuous example is the huge municipal turbine bought by the town of
Portsmouth and erected on the side of Route 24, the route to Fall River and the
Cape. That turbine was supposed to power Portsmouth High School and other town
buildings and save a lot of money. Town leaders were especially proud of the bargain-basement deal they got when they bought it.
Except
then it broke. It turns out it was assembled wrong and in a short time, that caused the gearbox to burn out. The turbine manufacturer went out of business and Portsmouth was stuck with
this glaring monument to failure.
But
they finally figured out exactly what went wrong and how to fix it, at a cost
estimate of $885,000 by replacing key elements of the system without having to
do a complete tear-down and new construction.
They
put it out to bid and got several bids within their budget. They also
received $250,000 as a share of a lawsuit settlement, courtesy of Attorney
General Peter Kilmartin. In July, the RI Commerce Corporation (formerly known
as the Economic Development Corporation) renegotiated Portsmouth’s $370,000
loan on favorable terms.
While
I won’t believe that turbine is fixed until it’s been up and running for a few
months, it looks like good news for wind energy in Rhode Island.
Just
a few short miles from the broken Portsmouth turbine is an energy problem of a
much larger and different sort: the Brayton Point Power Plant in Somerset MA,
formerly owned by the current owners of the Millstone nuclear power plant.
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| Brayton Point |
Brayton
Point has been New England’s dirtiest coal-fired power plant. Shortly after
Millstone’s owner, Dominion Energy, sold Brayton Point to Equipower Resource
Group, a company that apparently buys old power plants and then flips them.
They shocked everyone by announcing the imminent closure of Brayton Point, a
decision that scared the hell out of Somerset which has long counted on Brayton
Point to provide nearly all of the town’s tax base and jobs.
The
closing date has since been pushed back to 2017. But now, there’s an active push to
find other, perhaps greener, uses for the old power plant. However, what
do you do with an old, clapped-out coal burner? The only remotely practical
idea I’ve read so far is to convert it to burn natural gas in the hope that the
market for cheap gas remains stable for the long term.
Meanwhile,
Brayton Point and the other assets of the Equipower Group are about to be
bought by energy giant Dynergy, which still plans to shut Brayton Point down.
Dynergy will pay Equipower $3.45 billion for its collection of antique power
plants.
Will somebody please explain to me how they make money doing this?
Will somebody please explain to me how they make money doing this?
Despite
their complexity, energy issues drive our economy and
impact our planetary environment. They are life-and-death issues for all of us,
so it’s in our interests to stay knowledgeable.
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| This is one of the few approved forms of alternative energy in Charlestown |
Except if you live in Charlestown, where
the CCA Party looks after us and prevents
all forms of wind energy and attacked our last Town Administrator for exploring the feasibility of a bio-fuel facility as a way to put an old toxic
waste site back to productive use.
With the recent announcement of a new
round of funding for small-scale solar projects that included Charlestown among
the prospective locations, I am waiting for our Town Council to invoke Charlestown’s
new border protection policy that bans anyone from doing anything, no
matter how good for the environment, without the CCA Party’s approval.