Clear Green Washing Fraud by the NYT: CO2 Emissions in NE

June 8

So these guys just to want to construct high voltage transmission line for foreign juice.

Vermont and most of these northern states have historically one of the most corrupt people associated with managing the high voltage transmission system.

But you get it, foreign energy and foreign power plants… where we should be using American produced energy and American plant power plants run by good Americans.

Special Report: Vermont smack in the middle of crucial electricity supply and demand
 
Essentially, is the president's CO2 initiative all foreign based...well, for NE.
 John Herrick Jun. 8 2014, 8:13 pm

Last I knew, Vermont is the eighth most expensive electricity in the states. I see no plan giving Vermont a special price on electricity for economic development and jobs. 

Yet we have power shortages and astronomical price increases in NE since 2012...warnings of future grid failures and increasing prices for decades to come. It is basically massive corruption with obstructing natural gas capacity into New England...

Ultimately, have they been crashing in their cap and trade chits for short term profits...consuming invaluable excess or standby grid capacity in the process.

I get it, if you hollow out the businesses who use large amount of electricity and then kill off the power plants in New England...you be are green as hell.

And nobody ever is worried about becoming too dependant on Canada for massive amounts of green electricity...nobody gives a shit about making American jobs for the poor and middle class. 

I see marginal reduction in CO2 in coming years, offset by selling coal overseas, among others, development of the poor countries...I see the green and CO2 reduction initiative as the means to inject massive levels of fraud and institutional inaccuracies in our nation culture. The fraud and political corruption coming from the green initiative will destroy our nation and kill us before global warming does. 

I do believe global warming is coming and it will be big...
 
So what caused economic growth in NE from 2000?

Basically we are shifting to enormously spending money and treasure on ineffective and expensive trading bureaucracies...we will be increasingly spending money on trading electronic debits instead of producing electricity.  We are massively increasing the opportunity for fraud and corruption.

It is selective use of data for a agenda...green washing in a gigantic scale.

We are going to be a nation who trades worthless electronic garbage...feeding the ultra wealthy...instead of a nation of producing better lives for its people.

This is what you get stuck with when you are required to stick to the published facts.

In Some States, Emissions Cuts Defy Skeptics

That does not mean these states are off the hook under the Obama plan unveiled this week —they will probably be expected to cut more to help achieve the overall national goal — but their strides so far have not brought economic ruin. In New England, a region that has made some of the biggest cuts in emissions, residential electricity bills fell 7 percent from 2005 to 2012, adjusted for inflation. And economic growth in the region ran slightly ahead of the national average.

Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York cut their power-sector emissions more than 40 percent from 2005 to 2012, according to the Georgetown Climate Center, with Maryland close behind at 39 percent. The states are part of a nine-state project called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and, like much of the country, have benefited from the recent abundance of cheap natural gas.

Oh, I get it, it is Greener entertainment to drive circulation...



Mass. pipeline plan stirs hope and alarm

Natural gas flow would cross state; Clash on energy, environment

RICHMOND — A Houston energy company has proposed building a multibillion dollar pipeline that would connect Massachusetts to abundant natural gas from Eastern shale fields, entering the state through this small town on the New York border and stretching across dozens of municipalities into the Boston metropolitan area.

The proposal, by Kinder Morgan, has the potential to lower — or at least stabilize — what are some of the highest energy costs in the nation by opening up new supplies of cheap, domestic natural gas and expanding a pipeline system that is becoming inadequate to meet the region’s hunger for energy, analysts say.

But the plan, which has yet to be filed with federal authorities, has sparked fierce opposition in many of the roughly 45 Massachusetts municipalities through which the pipeline would pass.

“This would be a gas super- highway across the most pristine lands in the state, family farms, old New England towns,” said Richard Hewitt of Groton, which is on the proposed route.

While the pipeline has received great attention in communities it would cross, it has gained little notice in the rest of the state. The proposal, which Kinder Morgan has shopped to local officials and residents in recent months, renews the long-running conflict between economic development and environmental protection, setting the need to bring energy to population centers against concerns of rural communities through which pipelines and transmission lines run.

In Richmond, a place with a population of less than 1,500 south of Pittsfield, residents noted that five pipelines already run through town. At a Wednesday meeting with Kinder Morgan, many raised concerns about declining property values, the potential for explosions, and damage to forests, wetlands, and watersheds.

“I think we lead the county in pipelines. It really wouldn’t surprise me if we lead the state,” said Neal Pilson, a member of Richmond’s zoning board of appeals. “I think I speak for any people here: We’re not really interested.”
 

More than a dozen municipalities have passed nonbinding resolutions against the project.

The proposed pipeline would branch off the company’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline, which runs from Texas to the Northeast. The branch would stretch 418 miles from Troy, Pa., in the heart of Pennsylvania’s gas country, to Wright, N.Y., and then into Richmond, eventually sliding across Massachusetts’ northern spine to Dracut.

Kinder Morgan said it plans to file its proposal with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees interstate transportation of gas, and begin seeking federal permits by October. State and local governments don’t have much jurisdiction over such projects.

The company estimates the pipeline, which it hopes to begin using by November 2018, would create about 3,000 construction-related jobs and generate $25 million a year in tax revenue in Massachusetts. The pipeline would carry enough gas for 1.5 million homes.

Regional energy officials say additional pipeline capacity is sorely needed in New England, which has become increasingly reliant on natural gas.

In Massachusetts, about half of the state’s homes heat with natural gas, while about two-thirds of the electricity consumed in the state is generated in gas-fired plants.

That share is expected to rise as aging coal and nuclear plants shut down. Two of Massachusetts’ three remaining coal plants stopped operating last week; the third is set to close by 2017. In addition, Vermont Yankee, a nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt., is to shut down by the end of the year.

As a result, said Gordon van Welie, head of ISO New England, the region’s power grid operator, the state and region are quickly running out of pipeline capacity to provide sufficient, affordable supplies during periods of peak demand, such as winter cold snaps. That has led to temporary shortages and spiking wholesale natural gas prices, which can get passed on to customers. “If anything,” van Welie said, “our situation is becoming more dire.”

Northeast Utilities and National Grid, the state’s largest utilities, have expressed interest in buying space to transport gas on a different pipeline expansion project now under federal review.

New England governors, meanwhile, are collaborating to increase the number of energy sources, considering options such as importing more hydroelectricity from Canada, developing wind projects, and building new gas pipelines. Massachusetts officials are quick to point out that more pipeline projects are not a done deal.

“We know that we have a problem that needs to be addressed,” said Barbara Kates-Garnick, undersecretary of energy in Massachusetts. “While we might need more capacity in pipelines, the size and amount is not totally clear at this point.”

Some residents and environmentalists question the need for new pipelines. A study conducted for the New England governors by the consulting firm Black & Veatch found that yet another pipeline would be unnecessary if — after an already-filed expansion of the Algonquin Gas Transmission line — renewable power and energy efficiency can keep demand for natural gas flat.

Shanna Cleveland, an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, a Boston-based environmental advocacy group, said that rather than build more pipelines, the region should aggressively pursue energy efficiency and other power sources, such as wind and solar.

But Kinder Morgan is moving forward. “The reason we’re looking at the project in this region is because of what policy makers are telling us is necessary,” spokesman Allen Fore told about 300 in Pepperell.

Fore said Kinder Morgan’s proposal is still in the early stages, and the public would have time to weigh in. Opposition is growing, much of it organized by a grass-roots effort called No Fracked Gas in Mass. The name refers to controversial drilling technique known as fracking that has opened vast reserves in shale deposits in Pennsylvania and other states.

“This is my life we’re talking about here,” said Melanie Masdea, who has lived in Richmond since she was 4. “I don’t want a fourth pipeline in my backyard.”

Cooper Nuclear Plant's Secret Safety Related Shutdown

So the other day I noticed in the “Power Reactor Status Report” the Cooper plant's power level was at 1% power. Hmm I thought, must be coming up in power. Thought, bet you they are coming out of an outage. Did a wide ranging search on the internet and then the NRC's "event notification report", nothing. That is really strange.

They had a degraded recirculation pump seals. The seals failed and then leaked into the primary containment. We don’t know if they exceeded the leak rate? It was a unexpected failure and the Entergy is undergoing a investigation over it. So they shutdown (May 29/30) and replaced the seals. This was primary system water leakage as I was told. 

 How often does this happen? How many stealth nuclear plant safety shutdowns do we have in the USA?  

The only way I was cued into this was from the arcain "power reactor status report" that almost no else looks at.

NRC Employees Being Intimidated By Managers

2014 Non-Concurrence Process Assessment

Video of proceeding

Staffers at Nuclear Regulatory Commission Report Backlash After Dissent

Seventy-five percent of Nuclear Regulatory Commission employees who participated in an internal survey said they received poor performance reviews after registering formal objections to agency decisions, a report made public Wednesday says.

For employees that object to policy, technical or administrative statements contained in agency documents working their way up the NRC management chain for approval, the agency has a formal "non-concurrence" process meant to ensure that the concerns of those staffers are heard.

According to the survey, which was conducted last year by the NRC Office of Enforcement, many of those surveyed about their own experience submitting formal objections through the program believed there had been negative consequences to doing so.

In addition to the three quarters of survey participants who reported poor performance reviews after raising objections, 63 percent felt they were excluded from work activities and 25 percent thought they were passed over for promotions.

Meanwhile, 25 percent said they were verbally abused by their supervisors or colleagues after submitting a formal objection, and only 32 percent said their views were fully considered before a decision was made.

The enforcement office report says the NRC inspector general's office was able to substantiate several of the claims of poor performance reviews after raising objections. "Regardless of whether negative consequences actually occurred, staff recognizes that the perception of negative consequences can have a chilling effect on employees and can potentially inhibit them from raising concerns," the report adds.

Speaking at a congressional hearing Wednesday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said he was concerned that safety and security issues raised by NRC employees are not being adequately considered as the agency grapples with how to revise its regulations following the onset of the Fukushima disaster in 2011.

"Especially post-Fukushima, it's very important that we get this culture to change," Markey said.

In addition to the survey results, Markey said that, during the past year, his staff "has heard from an increasing number of whistleblowers from many different offices at NRC. … They feel that when they step forward to report safety, security or other problems, they are systematically retaliated against."

The commission made the 2014 report public Wednesday evening after Markey cited it during the morning hearing.

NRC spokesman David McIntyre suggested that not all formal staff objections end badly. He noted that Joseph Giiter, chief of the agency's risk analysis division, filed such an objection to a January NRC staff paper regarding how the agency would handle requests from nuclear power plants looking to have their licenses renewed for a second time.

Giiter still holds his management job after objecting to the official staff position that such aging reactors should not have to conduct new assessments of potential risks associated with their continued operation, McIntyre said.

The commission faced fierce questioning on a number of safety and security issues Wednesday, including on whether it would stop exempting shuttered nuclear power plants from certain emergency-planning and security regulations.

In a letter to commission Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane last month, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Markey and three other senators noted that retired U.S. atomic power plants still have significant amounts of nuclear waste at their sites, and likely will for the foreseeable future.

The senators raised concerns that the commission has already exempted 10 such plants from certain emergency rules and questioned whether it was wise to do so in light of the Fukushima disaster and the threat of terrorism. They noted that the commission is expected in the near future to consider applications for similar exemptions from four additional sites.

One of those sites is the San Onofre nuclear power plant near San Diego, which shut down last year amid concerns that it had been operating with defective parts. During Wednesday's hearing, Boxer read from the facility's exemption request, which she said is seeking to "discontinue off-site emergency planning activities" for the surrounding community and "reduce the scope of onsite emergency planning" at the site itself.

According to Boxer, part of the request is to discontinue evacuation planning for the area. "They're basically asking to be let off the hook," she said.

Boxer's staff held up an aerial photo that showed a recent wildfire coming within a half-mile of the San Onofre site, and the senator raised concerns that future blazes could have catastrophic consequences if they reached the facility.

Reading from a 2003 paper co-authored by Macfarlane and two activists, Boxer said land contamination caused by a fire in a plant's spent fuel pool "could be significantly worse than Chernobyl."

Senator David Vitter (R-La.) sought to put the request in a different light, saying that an operational power plant is a "different animal" than one that has shut down.

For her part, Macfarlane said the commission would not exempt the defunct plant from all emergency planning requirements. But she and the other four presidentially appointed commissioners declined to go any further, saying NRC staff was still studying the request.

During the hearing, Boxer also hammered the commissioners over other recent safety and security decisions. Those included one in which they had elected not to require plant operators to speed up the transfer of nuclear waste from the spent-fuel pools and into dry-cask storage containers, which some experts argue are more secure and less vulnerable to fire. The commission voted 4-1 on the issue, with MacFarlane, a Democrat, casting the lone opposition vote.

The senator also released a legal analysis that she said showed the commission was improperly withholding documents pertaining to the San Onofre plant. The analysis, written by a legal expert formally employed by the Congressional Research Service, seeks to rebut legal arguments made by the agency.

MacFarlane "demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of … Congress’s investigatory power in the … matter; misstates the authority of three cited cases dealing with the law on congressional intercession in agency decision making; ignores the overwhelming contrary case law … that is applicable in this situation; and shows a lack of awareness of over 90 years of congressional investigations in which agencies have been consistently obliged to provide documents and testimony," the report by Morton Rosenberg said.

The analysis also argues that Boxer's Environment & Public Works Committee has authority to obtain the documents through "compulsory process."

According to Boxer, the panel will get the material "one way or another."

The Palisades Saga

My Palisades to Salem pump impeller addendum to my 2.206 just came up on the NRC web site.

June 6:

Chairman at Cook and Palisades...Palisades is the the 4th worst plant in the USA. I believe this worsened in the last few months.

Despite the stances by Upton and Macfarlane, Kevin Kamps, of Beyond Nuclear, argued Macfarlane’s stop at Palisades marked the fourth visit to the plant by an NRC commissioner in two years, the most for any U.S. reactor. One of several watchdog group representatives who met with Macfarlane Thursday in Benton Harbor, he issued a statement afterward in which he called for the NRC to address “the potentially catastrophic risks’’ of spent fuel rods stored in “faulty dry casks’’ on the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Ok, let say the chairman target plant to visit was the cook plant. She would just say she is visiting Cook, and that be the end of it. If the target was Palisades...the NRC would know the outsiders would think the problems are Palisades are worsening because of the visit. So they thought up deluding the effect by her visiting both plants.

This is just like the NRC, who goes out of the way to protect the bad actors...like they got into all this trouble through no fault of their own and they are victims of the community.

My 2.206

Critique of inspection

Nuclear Regulatory Chair Hears Concerns About Plants in West Michigan

BENTON HARBOR, Mich. (June 5, 2014) – A group of concerned citizens and environmental groups met today with the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to discuss two plants in west Michigan.

The closed-door meeting was held at the Courtyard Marriott in Benton Harbor with Chairman Allison MacFarlane.

The conversation focused on the Donald C. Cook site in Bridgman and the Palisades Plant in Covert Twp.

Palisades has been in the spotlight since its 2007 purchase by Entergy because of several problems.

Bette Pierman, a Democratic candidate for Michigan’s 21st District Senate seat, told FOX 17 she had concerns about the Palisades facility.

“There are failing infrastructure problems right now,” said Pierman. “There’s leaks that have been going on. Some of them since 2007 – recorded and reported.”

The most recent reported leak at the plant involved 70 gallons of oil, which officials said did not pose a threat to any bodies of water.

During a planned refueling outage between January and March of 2014, workers discovered a piece of metal – an impeller blade – lodged in a reactor vessel. It was determined the object wasn’t a hazard.

“That’s not the issue,” Pierman said. “The issue is that they’ve got failing equipment that continues to fail and they’re not taking care of the problem.”

Nuclear power is considered a clean energy, with greenhouse gas emissions on par with energies like solar, hydroelectric and wind.

With more than half a dozen leaks at the Palisades plant since 2012, people like Kraig Schultz, with Michigan Safe Energy Future, are raising concerns about safety and what would happen in an emergency.

“It’s not an option for any of our nuclear power plants to fail,” Schultz said. “The consequences of a disaster on U.S. soil is something we cannot allow to happen.”

While the NRC declined an on-camera interview on Thursday, Rep. Fred Upton and MacFarlane will be touring the Palisades plant before answering questions from the media on Friday.

The Nationwide Abuse of a Person Who is Mentally Ill

"neurologists have deemed Los Angeles Clippers co-owner Donald Sterling to be mentally incapacitated, two sources with detailed knowledge of the situation told CNN on Friday."

When I heard them recordings, they were ugly...but I thought this was an eighty year old guy. I wondered why aren't we treating him with a little care based on his age. This wasn’t a man at the top of his game and certainly that young woman was taking advantage of an elderly man. Why aren’t we ignoring his rough spots, as everyone in your family would tend to do if he was your relative? And his ex-wife/partner was saying he has dementia. The warning signs were all there.

So was CNN and all the media...the NBA...pumping ratings by showcasing this elderly mentally incapacitated man?

Certainly looks like to me this was a symptom of dementia and being elderly....

So I think this who deal is about a out of control media who is only out for ratings and disconnected from morality...

Is this ahead of us with our aging boomer population for the next twenty years...where they will humiliate the elderly with declining minds for sport and entertainment... 

 

 

Are We Underestimating America's Fracking Boom?

Entergy is bragging about all the work they got in LA.

Are We Underestimating America's Fracking Boom?
 
Check Out Sasol's Energy Complex in Lake Charles, La.

Start with exotic Nazi technology, take a detour with South African apartheidists, and add a bit role for Iranian imams. What you have is—what else? —one of the most improbable and important American business stories of the past decade.

It's the tale of a company called

Sasol, SOL.JO +1.04% the former South African state oil company, which is embarking on what could be the single-largest foreign investment project in U.S. history.

Sasol is building a 3,034-acre energy complex near a bayou in Lake Charles, La. Tapping into cheap, fracked natural gas as well as the pipeline and shipping infrastructure along the Gulf Coast, Sasol plans to spend as much as $21 billion there.

It is expensive, elaborate and dirty work. Sasol plans to reduce, or "crack," the gas into ethylene, a raw chemical used in plastics, paints and food packaging. It also plans to convert the gas into high-quality diesel and other fuels, using a process once advanced by Nazi scientists to power Panzer tanks. The state of Louisiana is even kicking in $2 billion of incentives to make it happen.

Sasol CEO David Constable watched Big Board trading last month. Bloomberg News

This is engineering on a scale so large that it requires closing 26 public roads, buying out 883 public-property lots, and hiring 7,000 workers at peak construction. Some 100 additional trucks will be on the road each day once the complex is completed. Entrepreneurs have already begun construction of a "man camp" to house 4,000 temporary workers streaming into Lake Charles for this and other projects.

In that way, Sasol is a metaphor for what we don't yet understand about America's gas boom. Most know what fracking has meant for oil and gas prices. But because much of the work hasn't started yet, few appreciate the true extent of the industrialization that's about to begin.

So let's put it this way: We are building a Qatar on the Bayou. From whole cloth, companies are laying new cities of fertilizer plants, boron manufacturers, methanol terminals, polymer plants, ammonia factories and paper-finishing facilities. In computer renderings, the Sasol site looks like a fearsome, steel-fitted Angkor Wat.

In all, some 66 industrial projects—worth some $90 billion—will be breaking ground over the next five years in Louisiana, according to the Greater Baton Rouge Industry Alliance. Tens of billions of other new investments could be coming, says Louisiana's economic development secretary, Stephen Moret. How many projects will actually get built remains to be seen.

The Game

Assuming that most will, you realize we are still probably underestimating the positive impact of the gas boom on both local and national economies. The entire GDP of the state of Louisiana is about $250 billion annually.

"As an economist, I can only say,‘'Wow. Holy Cow,'" said Loren Scott, a Louisiana economist who has studied the state for 40 years. "We typically measured expansion in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars. Something like that makes your eyes bug out." He expects, for instance, that once 10-year tax-abatement deals expire, schools boards will "find themselves with a bonanza."

Similarly, we probably underestimate the deepening shortage of skilled laborers needed to design, weld and operate these mechanical beasts. Wages are already pushing higher, which could delay or even squelch some projects.

So, too, do we not understand the environmental effects of this building binge. The Sasol plant alone is expected to emit 85 times the state's "threshold" rate of benzene each year. It will also produce massive streams of carbon dioxide and treated water. And it is just one new facility of many. "I don't want to wear a gas mask to go to bed at night if this plant is coming in," said Rufus Victorian, a pipe fitter, at a 4½-hour public hearing on the plant in March.

Amid the coming boom, Sasol's vision is especially audacious. The history of gas-to-liquid plants is mixed, prone to cost overruns and technology snafus. Should gas prices rise, or oil prices fall, they can quickly become huge money losers. Right now, the arbitrage is in Sasol's favor. Oil trades at around 24 times the price of natural gas. In 2007, by comparison, it was around seven times. Sasol needs the ratio to be at least 16 to make money.

Historically, Sasol did a lot of its work converting coal to fuel, a necessity during the apartheid era in South Africa when oil supplies were constrained by a trade embargo. The company still carries an outsider's edge, going wherever the best deals may be. That has taken it to Qatar, as well as Iran, Uzbekistan and Nigeria.

U.S. sanctions forced Sasol to leave Iran, where it purchased crude oil for a South African refinery and invested in a chemical venture with a state-backed company.

Iranian imams do not make the best bedfellows—which is partly why Sasol Chief Executive David Constable appreciates doing business in America. "If you're going to build a plant, from a logistics standpoint…it is No. 1 in the world," said Mr. Constable in an interview. Access to cheap gas, customers, capital, rule of law and ease of building "ticks all the boxes very nicely. It couldn't have happened to a better country."

Louisiana's waterways are a huge plus, making it easy for Sasol to ship its products via barge. They also make it easier to deliver the four 2,000-ton chemical reactors needed for the plants. The docks are just 1½ miles from the Sasol site.

Then there are the gas pipelines, which make it easy to pull in gas from the shale fields of Texas.

"That's why it's so much more difficult for a China or Europe to jump into shale gas in a big way. If you look at the natural-gas pipelines around the country, it's like a spider web," Mr. Constable said.

There's much more toil for both Sasol and the country at large. The environmental costs cannot be overlooked.

But in the grand veneers of politics, there is much to work with here. You can almost hear President Obama announcing his begrudging approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline with a line that goes something like this:

"Friends, we are taking dollars out of Iran's pockets and putting them into our own. The energy century is going to reindustrialize America, and if we do it right, this is going to be bigger than we even know."

Banned by Linkedin Nuclear Safety Group for caring about the safety of our nation

 

June 1

Madalina,

That is just great. Now i am going to have to look up another difficult word in a dictionary (divagate).  I spend half my time here looking up new words. Just because I am stupider than you, it shouldn’t give you the right to hold me up to higher standards than all the rest of you smarter people.  This is the bane of existence to the poor and disenfranchised all over the world.

I never really you understood why educated people have a penchant to put issues in any old artificial category or order. I am sorry I just don’t get it. You’d rather debate what category to put an issue in, than fix it or acknowledge it is a problem.

A person here brought up environmental issues with coal and many and many other issues unrelated to the category at hand. Some even admitted than their entries really aren’t related to the title. We all draw outside the lines here at one time or another.  I do respect your enforcement of order on this discussion site and have great respect, more than you than you realize with a central authority or even in government. Certainly I don’t think many people respect their government here, and the antis are worse than you!

Yes, I do have less education than you and have difficulty with writing...why do you openly have to humiliate me over it.

In the whistleblower businesses we call this rules-ies. It when a person has a disagreement over a safety or corruption issue...then management holds the troublemaker to a different set of standard or rules enforcement then their friends. If you aren’t in my group, then we will hold accountable to a different set of rules. If I am a national regulator and worst my vaulted rules and policies... but I can subvert the reputation of a regulator...undermine government itself... by protecting the agency and a troubled plant through the selective releasing of information at a public annual public meeting. Many times the game of rule-sies leads to both sides tattling to higher manager or the regulator over any perception of rules violations. It is a war of the rules. ..the first causality in war is truth.

What I find so despicable here is the anonymous managers assuming they understand what my comment meant (in my head) without a chance to explain.  This is so very cowardly. So you have anonymous managers and unknown infractions...or secret infractions. These are all ingredients of the McCarthy era, Guantanamo Bay or the Ceausescu era. It is a rule or law is applied one way for your friends, then another way for someone who sees the world differently than you.

I won’t even go there in you game of painting me as a fallacy maker...you haven’t even had the courage to identify my fallacy making.  I think it was unprofessional to paint me with the word rant. If I called you or one of your managers as ranting, I’d be banned for life. I wonder what kind of environment it be if you had anti-nuclear managers...how many of you pro nuke guys would be moderated.

http://steamshovel2002.blogspot.com/2014/05/banned-by-linkedin-nuclear-safety-group.html

Continued

I was at the last Vermont Yankee annual ( 2013) conduct of plant operations meeting  with the NRC last week. We put on a pretty sophisticated presentation to the NRC. They wanted public feedback and we gave it to them. My job was to talk about the problems with their new diesel generator...it is the last ditch power source to the plant. Course it is my diesel generator...I forced them to get it. I talked about regional infrastructure problems to the top NRC’s regional administrator. The Millstone recent LOOP, Pilgrims issue with their switchyards and their repetitive LOOPs, and the whole thing not designed for the climate. As far as Dave C, don’t forget about Millstone’s power excursion accident in late 2011 and another special inspection of this year over the repetitive failures of the turbine feed pump. These guys are sicker than the NRC makes them out to be. Overt capture behavior!

So the NRC is playing rules-ies here in the annual meeting. It is the selective release of information saying its one kind of meeting and then doing another kind of meeting...they didn’t want to get the violations into the newspaper. Basically, everyone is given 3 minutes to speak or ask questions...hardly enough to even get a response. It is common knowledge the NRC security guy with the microphone gives 2 minutes to some people and 6 minutes or more to other people.  If we can’t trust the NRC not to play rules-ies, the selective release of information to make a plant look better than they are...to be ethical and moral...why would you expect the owners on managers on linkedin to play fair and be moral? Our whole political system was invented to prevent the tyranny  of the majority over the minority. This is a huge symptom of the NRC being captured. This below story was carried all over the state. 

http://www.reformer.com/state/ci_25870194/critics-see-lack-info-at-vermont-yankee-meeting

“We feel the public was shortchanged by NRC's shifting the emphasis of the meeting to general information on decommissioning at the expense of focused discussion about significant deficiencies in management and operations at Entergy Vermont Yankee," said Clay Turnbull, a trustee and spokesman with the nuclear watchdog group New England Coalition.

Turnbull, who attended the meeting, said in an email, "Nowhere in print, on a screen or verbally did NRC present the ten violations of 2013 to the public. The violations repeatedly point to management making poor decisions, poor project planning, and cutting costs at the expense of safety."

I afraid my reputation will be sullied if I continue to participating in such an unfair and unjust site. If the moderation ever clears, I’ll still have the sword of Damocles hanging over my head within a secretive Ceausescu era star camber. I will never be completely free to express my thoughts and concerns. I do think the atmosphere has been permanently changed over these events. I am going to miss this place and the awfully smart people I’d seen here. I honestly don’t know what you could say to make me stay and you never rescinded the moderation.

I had 759 visits to my Palisades RCP problem.
...Romania saw one of the biggest increases in household electricity and gas prices between 2012 and 2013, figures from Eurostat
show.

Although its average household electricity price per 100kwh is technically one Europe’s lowest at EUR 12.8, Romania saw one of the steepest price increases between the second half of 2012 and the second half of last year, with a 16.8 percent rise. This is compared to a 4.4 percent increase between 2011 and 2012.

After Germany (21.7 percent) and Greece (19.7 percent), the 2012-2013 jump was the biggest hike in Europe.

Although it appears low, when expressed in purchasing power standards (PPS), it can be seen that, relative to the cost of other goods and services, Romania’s electricity prices are among the highest with a PPS of 25.9
Hmm, the energy markets and dependance on Russia?

Energy in Romania describes energy and electricity production, consumption and import in Romania.
Romania has significant oil and gas reserves, substantial coal deposits and it has substantial hydroelectric power installed. However, Romania imports oil and gas from Russia and other countries. To ease this dependency Romania seeks to use nuclear power as an alternative to electricity generation. So far, the country has two nuclear reactors, located at Cernavodă, accounting for about 18-20% of the country's electricity production, with the second one online in 2007. Nuclear waste is stored on site at reprocessing facilities.
Electric power in Romania is dominated by government enterprises, although privately operated coal mines and oil refineries also existed. Accordingly, Romania placed an increasingly heavy emphasis on developing nuclear power generation. Electric power was provided by the Romanian Electric Power Corporation (CONEL). Energy used in electric power generation consisted primarily of nuclear, coal, oil, and liquefied natural gas (LNG). Of the electricity generated in 2007, 13.1 percent came from nuclear plants then in operation, 41.69 percent from thermal plants (oil and coal), and 25.8 percent from hydroelectric sites.^[1] It was predicted in 2007 that the generation structure by the year 2010 would be 10.2 percent hydroelectric, 12.2 percent oil, 22.9 percent coal, 10.2 percent LNG, and 44.5 percent nuclear.

So a government owned nuclear utility with two Candu units...overseen by government employees...embedded in a nascent energy market.

...May 14: Nuclearelectrica is a state-ownedcompany, its shares being held by the Ministry of Economy andCommerce, which has as main objective power generation with the only nuclear power plant in Romania. 

...Romanian power producer Nuclearelectrica posts 30% lower profit for first quarter

Romanian energy producer Nuclearelectrica (BVB ticker: SNN), which operates Romania’s only nuclear power plant at Cernavoda, posted a net profit of RON 102 million (EUR 23 million) for the first quarter of 2014, 30 percent lower compared to the same period last year.

The company’s electricity sales were down 11 percent, to RON 433 million (EUR 97 million), although the amount of energy sold was unchanged compared to the first three months in 2013 at 2.8 TWh. However, energy sales prices on the free market were 13 percent lower this year.

Nuclearelectrica’s operational profit before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) declined by 28 percent due to lower revenues. It was also impacted by the tax on special constructions introduced by the Romanian government at the beginning of this year, which increased the company’s expenses with taxes and fees by RON 22 million (EUR 4.94 million) in the first quarter.

Nuclearelectrica has been listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) since September 2013 and has a market capitalization of RON 2.36 billion (EUR 530 million). The company is 81 percent owned by the state while investment fund Fondul Proprietatea holds a 9.7 percent stake.

Nuclearelectrica’s share price lost 12.9 percent on Wednesday, May 14, on the ex-dividend day. The company pays a gross dividend of RON 1.21 per share which is 12.6 percent of the price at which the shares traded the day before.

Why are my posts going through moderation in all of my groups?

Last Reviewed: 04/02/2014

 

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Doctor Tronea to me: 

"Mike Mulligan, I am not the only manager of this forum, but I am surely not the one who put you on moderation. Your posts may be moderated also because a manager in other forums that these I run blocked you for some reason. For your information, this happened to other members of this forum and I have checked and the settings for their posts are the default ones, which means that comments in existing threads are not moderated, but opening new threads is. This may be a linkedin bug, I don't know.

You frequently use the threads on this forum to rant about issues unrelated to the respective discussion, i.e. you use to divagate, and yet I have not done anything against this except for reminding you from time to time to either stick with the topic or to open a separate discussion on whatever you want, as long as it is relevant for nuclear safety.

Don't you realize that if I wanted to ban you I would have done it? As long as I continue to consider that some of the issues you bring up in the discussions are worth of noting and exceed the discomfort you cause with your divagations, you are as welcome to this forum as anybody else.

As for human freedom in Romania, what is the relevance?! If I would be a tyrant, would that necessarily make me representative of the whole country and every body else similar to myself? 

This is for you and for everybody else and it is an unwritten rule of this forum: I may tolerate occasional personal attacks, within certain limits, but I will not tolerate fallacies used in arguments and misleading information posted for the purpose of manipulation. With this being said, I would appreciate if you would tone down your posts a bit in terms of language, so that you don't provoke the "pro-nuke guys" to gang up on you.

I apologize to the others for this digression in a thread about regulatory capture. Please continue on the subject.

Believe me, they don't do this because you are laughing stock...they do this beause they fear and know you are right.
　

I read the announcement as one extremist pro-nuker could flag me into moderation. 

“one of your recent contributions was marked as spam or flagged for not being relevant

Yep...the the extremist pro nukies ganged up on me and got me kicked off. I won't participate being moderated.  

Note: It sure looks like Madalina has shifted me to a approving comment mode or worst. Or it could be issues with my computer or with Linkedin itself slowing down. But this has been going on for days so I find that unlikely.

Your group posting status

Your posts across groups are being moderated temporarily because one of your recent contributions was marked as spam or flagged for not being relevant. Learn more.

She is the owner of the Linkedin site: Dr Madalina Tronea. Isn't 'Madalina' a pretty first name.  

She is a expert in nuclear technology...not on public involvement in the nuclear industry, public acceptance and participation of the technology.  

She is the head or a safety advisor to Romania’s NRC or something.

Being in a tiny country with only two troublesome reactor designs...I think she has big troubles with being too controversial.  

A CANDU heavy water reactor...

Romania Nuclear Program

Romania currently has 1,400 MW of nuclear power capacity by means of one active nuclear power plant with 2 reactors, which constitutes around 18% of the national power generation capacity of the country. This makes Romania the 23rd largest user of nuclear power in the world.

nuclear safety adviser, Head of the Nuclear Regulations and Standards Section

CNCAN - National Commission for Nuclear Activities Control (Romania)

April 2004 – Present (10 years 2 months)

-Review and assessment of licensing submissions and of the documentations submitted periodically by the licensees for regulatory approval
-Review and assessment of the integrated management manual (former quality management manual) of the licensee;
-Inspections and audits of licensee’s arrangements under the integrated management system, including aspects related to: decision-making process on matters important to safety, use of operating experience and of probabilistic safety assessments for improving procedures and practices, training programmes for the personnel with duties important to safety, management of organisational changes, the development of the processes of the management system
-Examinations (theoretical and practical - on the full-scope simulator) of control room operators, shift supervisors in view of licensing or licence renewal;
-Elaboration of nuclear safety regulations (in the areas of siting, design, operation) and management of the consultation process with the stakeholders prior to formally issuing the new regulations;
-Participation in the periodic licensing meetings and in the integrated inspections held on the occasion of major licensing milestones during the commissioning and operation phases of a nuclear power plant;
-Involvement in international activities: review meetings under the Convention on Nuclear Safety, technical meetings and workshops organised by the IAEA, meetings of the Working Party on Atomic Questions (WPAQ) of the Council of the European Union, meetings of WENRA members and the work of the RHWG, work on the development of topical question sets (regulation of nuclear installations) to be used in the IAEA Self-Assessment Tool to aid in the preparation of IRRS (Integrated Regulatory Review Service) missions

　

Uh-Oh-Exelon power plants in jeopardy

Exelon Corporation (NYSE:EXC)’s Nuclear Plants Don’t Secure Contracts

Dallas, Texas 05/28/2014 (FINANCIALSTRENDS) – Three different nuclear plants that are owned by Exelon Corporation (NYSE:EXC), the Chicago-based company, have been unsuccessful in securing contracts at the key auction that was last week, which decides exactly which of the power plants will provide power to its electrical grid. The company’s Byron & Quad Cities plants located in Illinois & the Oyster Creek plant located in New Jersey had been priced-out of the auction by the competing power providers, said EXC last week. This jeopardizes the future of these assets.

 

The State’s decision

 

Exelon Corporation (NYSE:EXC) relies very heavily on the revenue from this capacity-auction to prop-up the nuclear plants & had been anticipating results of the annual bidding-war as it also decides the fate of many plants that the company has not been able to operate profitably. UBS Investment Research’s executive director for the U.S. electric utilities, Julien Dumoulin-Smith said that the reality is now that it’s up to the state to finally choose what they wish to do. It is very clear that they are out of the money. It is now up to the state to take the decision about whether they now want to keep the assets running /not.

 

Nuclear power friendly policies

 

With many of EXC’s 6 nuclear plants within the state now on the bubble, many rumors had been doing the rounds in Springfield that the company would now ask the state for a kind of a bailout. Chris Crane, the company’s chief executive officer said that Exelon Corporation (NYSE:EXC) is not now seeking any legislative fix but the House Resolution had surfaced last week, which had been sponsored by Michael Madigan, , the House Speaker. This urges the United States EPA, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as well as the electric grid-operators, to now adopt the policies that are very friendly to nuclear power.

Auction results place Exelon power plants in jeopardy

Three nuclear plants owned by Chicago-based Exelon Corp. failed to secure contracts to provide power to the electrical grid at an annual auction held last week.

Exelon’s Byron and Quad Cities plants in Illinois were priced out of the auction by competing power providers, the company said Tuesday, placing the future of those assets in question. Its Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey, which is slated to close in 2019, also didn’t clear the auction.

The company relies heavily on revenue from the so-called capacity auction to prop up its nuclear plants and was anticipating the results of the annual bidding war as it decides the fate of several plants the company has had a difficult time operating profitably.

As previously reported, Exelon has been threatening to close its struggling nuclear plants in the wake of less expensive electricity produced by wind generators and cheap natural gas.

But House Speaker Michael Madigan wants to help keep those plants open. They are among the top employers in the towns and counties in which they operate. A resolution sponsored by Madigan was introduced to the House last Friday urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the electric grid operators, to adopt policies that are "friendly" to nuclear power. Translation: enact a new rule to curb carbon emissions, which would be a boon to Exelon because its nuclear plants do not release greenhouse gases.

“The fact that three of Exelon’s nuclear plants didn’t clear in the auction is the clearest evidence yet that reforms are needed to ensure we have an adequate amount of clean generation resources in the future,” said Paul Adams, a spokesman for Exelon. “Byron, Quad Cities and Oyster Creek have been the workhorses of Illinois’ and New Jersey’s electric grid for decades and are significant contributors to their state and local economies.”

With several of Exelon’s six nuclear plants in the state on the bubble, rumors had surfaced in Springfield that Exelon would ask the state for a bailout. But Exelon CEO Chris Crane said the company is not seeking a legislative fix.

“The reality is now it’s up to the state to choose what they want to do. Clearly they’re out of the money. It’s up to the state to decide if they want to keep these assets running or not,” said Julien Dumoulin-Smith, executive director for U.S. electric utilities for UBS Investment Research.

The resolution also asks three state regulatory bodies to prepare reports that would be beneficial to Exelon’s lobbying efforts if it pushes legislation in the future.

Among them: An Illinois EPA report that explains the “societal cost” of increased greenhouse gas emission in the state if nuclear plants close and a report from the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity that look at job losses that would come from closing those plants.

Power providers who bid in to the auction -- which helps provide power to 61 million people in the Chicago area and states to the east -- agree to provide power to the electrical grid three years out in exchange for kind of reservation fee that is provided by the electrical grid through consumer electricity bills.

In the past, such payments have boosted Exelon's revenue by $1 to $8 per megawatt-hour, depending on the year.

Power providers who made the cut in this year’s auction will get $120 per megawatt day in 2017 and 2018 for agreeing to be available to the electrical grid. That’s up from $59.37 at last year’s auction when Exelon suffered a hit to its stock after the low capacity revenue was announced.

Clinton's capacity payments last year in an auction that serves the Midwest power grid were just pennies. And a Tribune analysis of power prices that Exelon’s plants take on the market indicates that Clinton plant is the company’s least profitable plant.

Exelon’s investors didn’t blink at the news. The stock was up about 4 percent at midday.

“I think the market was already discounting these plants,” said Travis Miller, director of utilities research at Chicago-based Morningstar. “Management has been forthright about the economic challenges its nuclear fleet faces.”

Miller said investors don’t appear to be counting on the idea that the plants will shut down. Exelon has several options to keep them running, including bidding them into incremental auctions and even taking them out of commission for the single year in which they weren’t chosen to provide power to the grid. If anything, the news is helpful to Exelon as it bids to have carbon rules implemented that will reward it for the fact that its plants don’t emit greenhouse gases.

Exelon repeated that argument Tuesday.

“As proven during the record cold temperatures this winter, nuclear plants are an incredibly reliable generation source, typically producing power 24/7 regardless of weather,” Adams said. “And they do so without producing emissions, which makes them an indispensable resource if we are to meet upcoming greenhouse gas reduction requirements. Yet as these auction results demonstrate, the market does not sufficiently recognize the significant value that nuclear plants provide in terms of reliability and environmental benefits.”

No new Hinsdale Bridges...I've be dead before a new one gets built!

Negotiators agree on 10-year highway plan

By GARRY RAYNO
State House Bureau

CONCORD — Without discussion, House and Senate negotiators reached a tentative agreement Friday on the state’s $3 billion 10-year highway improvement plan containing three key projects for the state: the Interstate 93 expansion between Salem and Manchester, rebuilding the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge and expanding a section of Route 101 in Bedford.
House Bill 2014 is intended to work with a 4.2-cent gas tax increase signed into law this week by Gov. Maggie Hassan. It’s the first increase in the gas tax in New Hampshire since 1991.

The bill’s prime sponsor, House Public Works and Highways Committee Chair Rep. David Campbell, D-Nashua, said the plan is heavy on maintenance and preservation of the current infrastructure and light on new projects.
At Friday’s meeting between Senate and House negotiators, there was no discussion as the two sides reached agreement on 17 bills including the 10-year highway plan.

The $15.6 million project to widen Route 101 for two miles from Route 114 and Boynton Street intersection has been a top priority for the area but until this year has not been a priority in the 10-year plan.
State highway officials say that section of Route 101 is way over capacity and the scene of more than 500 accidents in the last 10 years. Campbell has called it the most dangerous section of road in the state.
Under the 10-year plan, half of the $32 million generated by the gas tax increase beginning July 1 would be used beginning in 2017 to repay $200 million in bonds to complete the I-93 expansion from Salem to Manchester.
Without the additional money, work would have stopped on the project in late 2016 and the state may have had to renew environmental permits that would expire before the work could be completed.

The plan also addresses replacing the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge in Portsmouth, which is the state’s No. 1 red-listed bridge. The bridge needs to be replaced and the shipping lane widened to accommodate the next generation of freight tankers carrying oil, propone, salt and other products into Portsmouth Harbor.
Maine and New Hampshire will split the cost of the $160 million project that also includes replacing the railroad trestle that carries nuclear waste out of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Under the plan, the state would issue Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicles or GARVEE bonds to pay for its share of the work on the bridge, and use about $50 million in federal grant money earmarked for the bridge to continue work on the I-93 expansion and $8 million of the federal money for widening Route 101 in Bedford.
There are a number of turnpike projects in the plan that cannot be funded without a toll increase, which is not being proposed, including expanding I-93 from Bow through Concord and Interstate 293 through the Millyard.
Among the unfunded projects would be eliminating the Merrimack ramp tolls on the F.E. Everett Turnpike when the Bedford toll plaza moves south of the Manchester airport access road, which is also unfunded.
The Exit 12 toll ramp will be eliminated in about two months, costing about $650,000 to remove. The ramp toll elimination was in the gas tax legislation signed by Hassan on Tuesday.

The 10-year plan takes $1.2 million a year earmarked for guard rail replacement and uses it for secondary road rehabilitation projects, and redirects $1.1 million for turnpike exit renumbering to paving projects on rural roads.
The Senate made some technical changes the House needed to approve before the bill becomes law.

The House and Senate will vote on the conference committee report next week