Hitting a Nuclear Roadblock (Time)

[jpak]

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1738951,00.html

Steve Creamer wants to talk about saving the world. The CEO of EnergySolutions, a nuclear power cleanup and disposal company, says it's his personal mission to help usher in the "nuclear renaissance," an era he says is coming on the heels of the carbon emission dark ages. Creamer has spent the past three years amassing a near monopoly on low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) management in the U.S. His company now handles 99% of such waste, which includes contaminated clothing, equipment residue from reactor water and other materials. After acquiring eight companies and putting them under the Utah-based EnergySolutions umbrella, Creamer took the company public last November. Revenues for 2007 were just over $1 billion, but are expected to climb this year.


But Creamer's "renaissance" is the kind others don't want in their backyard. EnergySolutions had been, for the most part, operating under the national radar — until news of the company's plans to import 20,000 tons of LLRW from Italy hit the local Utah media late last year and the national media shortly afterward. EnergySolutions had hoped to process the waste at a Tennessee facility and deposit 1,600 tons of it into the company's radioactive waste landfill in Clive, Utah. But now a torrent of opposition has come up against that plan.

Local newspapers ran editorials opposing it. Utah Congressman Jim Matheson co-sponsored legislation that would stop LLRW importation altogether. And then came what may have been the deathblow. As public pressure mounted, Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who initially supported the plan, vowed to quash it. He ordered the state's representative to a multi-state compact that oversees LLRW disposal to vote against it. The company has since filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the compact does not have authority over the Utah landfill. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will ultimately approve or deny the application.

EnergySolutions has invested heavily in reputation-building, including millions for naming rights to the basketball stadium that hosts the Utah Jazz. The company has also contributed to Senators and Congressman who wield power over the nuclear industry. EnergySolutions spent more than $1 million on lobbying in 2007 and its political action committees have donated more than $145,000 to House and Senate campaigns since 2005. (The company has operations in South Carolina and its political action committees and employees have given at least $45,800 to that state's senior Senator Lindsey Graham since 2005.) In Utah, the EnergySolutions Inc. Fund for Effective Government contributed $5,000 to Matheson in the 2005-2006 cycle and $1,000 so far in the 2007-2008 cycle. That seems to have been for naught. Matheson now declares that EnergySolutions wants to make Utah a "dumping ground."

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[NNadir]

1. I think I'll write a diary about Italian dangerous fossil fuel waste dumped in every country on the

planet.

It is very strange that nuclear illiterates are making a big deal about the Italian radioactive material when they couldn't care less about the radioactivity and PAH's and other coal waste the Italians have been dumping into the atmosphere because they have embraced the anti-nuke stupidity position.

Of course the illiterate reporters at Time, the magazine that covered with enormous stupidity the "Saddam Hussein Niger Uranium" story, couldn't care less about dangerous fossil fuel waste dumped into the earth's atmosphere because of anti-nuke stupidity.

Time Warner is famous for selective attention, just like the asses at the dangerous natural gas promoters at Greenpeace.

There is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke on the planet who would remark on Italian dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping.

There is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke who has ever written about the dangerous fossil fuel waste dumped by Italians.

In fact they have cheered for it.

These anti-nuke fundies, with their arbitrary attention to waste, seem not to recognize that Italy has the oldest geothermal plants in the world, having started running them in 1913, and still, with enormous geothermal resources, still have been funding their anti-nuke ignorance with the dumping of dangerous fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere.

Yet the same people sit around saying that Italy didn't need nuclear power.

People who care about lung tissue feel differently.

Since the stupid nuclear phase out in Italy - the only one that actually eliminated nuclear power immediately - Italy has dumped more than 7 and a half billion tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere, and they're a small country:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1co2.xls

The United States should collect as much nuclear material as it can. It is critical that we become world leaders in this technology again, in spite of mystic fundie fantasies notwithstanding.

This Italian material will injure zero people. It has never injured anyone and there is no indication that he ever well.

This contrasts hugely with the Italian dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping, which is in the lungs of my children and every other child on the planet.

The anti-nuke fundie community couldn't care less.

[kristopher]

2. That is some problem with logic you have there, Marvin.

A) Fossil fuels are an environmentally threat.

B) Nuclear power is an environmental threat with the additional risk of nuclear proliferation.

C) Renewables have disappearingly small comparative environmental footprint.

Since people don't want to exchange B for A Marvin concludes it must be because people don't care about A.

Contrary to NNadir's forthcoming claim, all of these can serve our electricity needs.

[losthills]

3. They don't have any lobbyists here on DU, do they?

[jpak]

4. ...

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2008/05/pennies-from-heaven-nuclear-stock-fund.html