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THE WITNESS
The race to be the cleanest and greenest in our virtual world is definitely on. Facebook announced today that it is building another data center, a big one, this time in the windy state of Iowa, which currently leads the nation in electricity generated from wind with an eye-popping 25 percent! Continue reading
Vermont residents and activists join a Greenpeace rally outside the Statehouse, following a vote by Vermont Senate to retire the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in 2012.
In February 2010 Greenpeace and our Vermont colleagues convinced the Vermont legislature to reject the license from the state’s lone nuclear plant, Vermont Yankee and shut the plant down in 2012. The Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 that operating Vermont Yankee was not in the best interest of Vermonters.
Entergy, the out-of-state corporate owners of Vermont Yankee, challenged this ruling in court. Last January U.S. District Court Judge Murtha sided with Entergy and said that Vermont was improperly motivated by safety.
The State of Vermont appealed that ruling and was in court in New York yesterday.
Below is an account of yesterday’s hearing from Richard Watts, University of Vermont professor and author of Public Meltdown: The Story of Vermont Yankee. Continue reading
Salem Nuclear Generating Station, New Jersey
Several nuclear reactors in New Jersey and New York shutdown as Hurricane Sandy slams into East Coast.
The morning after Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern seaboard several nuclear reactors in New Jersey and New York are now shutdown and information on their status is sparse if available at all. Continue reading
On Tuesday, we told you about the 70 activists who poured onto two nuclear sites in Sweden in an effort to show how lax the security is at these plants.
We didn’t tell you that at least six of them hid overnight at two of the plants: four at Ringhals and two at Forsmark.
They evaded security all night, and were only discovered when Greenpeace Sweden phoned the media early this morning to reveal their presence at the plants. This is despite the fact the operator Vattenfall said yesterday that “security had worked exactly as intended”. Oh dear.
One of the overnighters was Greenpeace International energy campaigner Lauri Myllyvirta. Here’s what he wrote about the experience: Continue reading
A full sized nuclear power plant that has been running for a few months has enough radioactive material in it to kill all life on Earth. It’s also a very complicated and sensitive piece of technical equipment. It’s also, basically, a glorified steam engine, with intense heat and pressure forces balancing on a fine edge of containment.
In other words, a nuclear power plant is a catastrophe waiting to happen, and a PERFECT magnet for someone who would want to cause major damage to the society. Continue reading
I am at a detention centre at South Korea’s airport, quickly writing these few words as best I can on a mobile phone. Together with my colleague, Dr. Rianne Teule, I have been denied entry to South Korea.
We have done nothing wrong. That is, unless you agree with the government in Seoul that exposing the risks of nuclear power and calling for better protection of people from radiation is wrong. Continue reading
Historic news that Japan will phase out nuclear power has rounded off yet another terrible week for the global nuclear industry.
Japan’s decision to end its reliance on nuclear power by the 2030s means it will join countries such as Germany and Switzerland in turning away from nuclear power after last year’s Fukushima disaster. Continue reading
With tomorrow’s scheduled shutdown of Japan’s Tomari nuclear power plant the country will be free from nuclear power for the first time since 1966. Can it seize this historic opportunity? Here at Greenpeace we believe it can.
All of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors will be offline. Now, the country’s government must learn from its mistakes of the past, listen to its people and scientists, keep reactors offline, and usher in Japan’s renewable and sustainable future. History is within their grasp.
There will never be a better time. Since the terrible events of March 11 last year when an earthquake and tsunami triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan has shown that nuclear power can be abandoned quickly and with an invisible impact on people’s daily lives. The Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry Yukio Edano has said there will be no restrictions on electricity use or rolling blackouts.
The operator of the destroyed Fukushima reactors, Tokyo Electric Power added “for the electricity supply and demand in the foreseeable future, we expect to maintain stable supply.” If there are electricity shortages this summer it will be the fault of the government who instead of properly planning energy conservation and pouring resources into renewables have been obsessed with restarting Japan’s discredited nuclear reactors as fast as possible.
So why is the government frantically trying to restart the country’s reactors without the consent of the people living nearby? Why should the people of Japan suffer more nuclear risks? The country’s nuclear reactors and infrastructure are in no state to withstand another major earthquake that experts warn is almost inevitable.
The Washington Post chose Earth day to pose the question: Can the world fight global warming without nuclear power? In fact, we can do just that, as Greenpeace’s Energy Revolution scenario has shown. Let’s keep the nuclear reactors on the drawing board; they don’t meltdown there, like they do in real life. Continue reading
Blogpost by Justin McKeating, Greenpeace International
Occupation of a watch tower on the Belene site with the mothballed construction in the background that was stopped in 1992 and was to be torn down completely in 2009. - (c) Greenpeace / Prochazka
Yet more news in the past week about how bad an investment nuclear power is. In Bulgaria a plan to build a nuclear power plant was cancelled while in the UK plans to build two new plants were thrown into chaos.
First, on March 28, the Bulgarian government announced it was cancelling the Belene nuclear power plant, construction of which began way back in 1981. This brings to a successful close10 years of resistance to this bad idea. There were death threats against one of the key activists, Albena Simeonova, legal actions, and the involvement of hundreds of activists, volunteers, citizens, experts, politicians and civil servants.