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Remembering S. David Freeman, the ‘green cowboy’
Remembering S. David Freeman, the ‘green cowboy’

Dave was a giant in the fight against climate change and nuclear power. His lasting legacy will be the green energy “seeds” he planted across the country and the communities that are safer from his successful efforts to shutdown nuclear power and fossil fuel plants. He was a force for nature and will be missed.

Nuclear power is not a viable solution for Green New Deal
Nuclear power is not a viable solution for Green New Deal

The Green New Deal resolution is a bold and necessary path forward to tackle the climate crisis. To be successful, it must leave nuclear power behind.

Revolving doors at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Revolving doors at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Today, Friends of the Earth and 33 of our allies wrote to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission insisting that they postpone two important votes until after Commissioner William Magwood leaves for his new position at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency. Since June, our coalition has been trying to guard against serious conflicts of interest involving Commissioner Magwood and his allegiance to his future employer. While the revolving door between the nuclear…

Nuclear nonsense in House energy bill
Nuclear nonsense in House energy bill

Last week, the House passed the FY15 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, which funds the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons and power programs. In response, the Office of Management and Budget issued a Statement of Administrative Policy suggesting the president would veto the bill if it were presented to him based on a number of provisions including the House bill’s funding for the Mixed Oxide Plutonium Fuel Program, often called MOX, and Yucca…

Fukushima lessons still haven’t been learned three years later
Fukushima lessons still haven’t been learned three years later

Three years ago this month an earthquake struck Eastern Japan, sparking a tsunami and a triple reactor meltdown in Fukushima. While the disaster has faded from much of the world’s memory, it is an ongoing tragedy for the 83,000 residents of Eastern Japan waiting to return home to an evacuation zone the size of Connecticut. Tokyo Electric Power Company, commonly known as TEPCO, and the Japanese government continue to struggle cleaning up the reactor…

“All of the above” disappoints all around
“All of the above” disappoints all around

The president’s “all of the above” energy strategy is hypocrisy. There, I said it.

President Obama cannot be serious about climate change if his Department of Energy is working to prop up dirty fuels like nuclear and coal. It should be simple to understand why both coal and nuclear have no business in a clean energy future. Burning coal directly emits toxic pollutants including greenhouse gasses and multiple meltdowns have demonstrated the immediate risks from…

MOX nuclear fuel program falls behind yet again
MOX nuclear fuel program falls behind yet again

Department of Energy misses yet another deadline for plutonium disposition program

As Friends of the Earth has long contended, the Department of Energy doesn’t really have a plan for disposing of surplus nuclear weapons plutonium. For over a decade the Department of Energy has been pursuing a plan to blend the plutonium, left over from Cold War nuclear stockpiles, into commercial nuclear reactor fuel. For over a decade this program, called the Mixed Oxide Plutonium…

South Carolina does not consent to being the nation’s nuclear waste dump
South Carolina does not consent to being the nation’s nuclear waste dump

Finding a new home for old waste

Tuesday, Aiken, S.C., became the first community to reject a new nuclear waste dump.

Back in 2010 President Obama found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. Sen. Reid had stopped plans for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., dead in its tracks and the backlog of U.S. spent nuclear fuel was only growing. In classic diplomatic style, President Obama delegated the decision about…

The Fukushima Daiichi disaster: Ongoing lessons for California
The Fukushima Daiichi disaster: Ongoing lessons for California

Former Japanese Prime Minister Naota Kan warned today that restarting the damaged San Onofre nuclear reactor is driven by the same industrial and regulatory forces in the United States that are seeking the restart of Japanese nuclear reactors. He told a nuclear safety seminar that the worst-case nuclear accident at Fukushima-daiichi would have required evacuating a 190-mile radius from from the disaster, an area in which 50 million people live, threatening the entire future of…

The NRC – Edison’s atomic lapdog

To say that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- charged with ensuring the safe operation of the nation’s aging, degraded nuclear fleet -- is a paper tiger would be far too kind. Rather than just de-fanged and flimsy, on Wednesday, they went rogue -- disregarding the demands of federal legislators and acting as a law unto themselves -- in order to remove a critical regulatory barrier for restarting an incredibly damaged nuclear reactor, San Onofre Unit…