Find us on Facebook
Follow us on TwitterMcDonnell talks up nuclear energy, offshore drilling
Jill Nance/The News & Advance
Republican candidate for governor Bob McDonnell shakes hands with supporters gathered at the Depot Grille on Friday in Lynchburg.
Bob McDonnell brought his gubernatorial campaign to Lynchburg on Friday, urging donors and campaign activists to help in a race where a president, sitting governor and national labor unions are supporting his opponent.
The Republican said he’s running against not just Democrat Creigh Deeds, but also against the support Deeds is getting from President Obama and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. “They’re pretty capable people,” he said.
McDonnell mixed with a lunchtime crowd at the Depot Grille downtown before visiting the Areva nuclear company and heading out to a Lions Club food festival in Appomattox.
“Virginia has the most nuclear capacity of any state in the U.S.,” McDonnell told the lunch crowd, naming Areva, Northrup Grumman, the U.S. Navy, Dominion Power, and Babcock & Wilcox as the state’s nuclear assets.
“We are going to be in the forefront of the energy picture for a long time to come,” McDonnell said, adding that coal and natural gas also are Virginia resources.
“I’m a strong supporter of drilling offshore in Virginia,” he said to diners’ applause.
“Virginia is going to be the first state to drill offshore in 2011. It’s already set.
“I will be the governor that will see that through,” and it could mean transportation dollars for Virginia roads, McDonnell said.
Later, McDonnell explained that the federal government is preparing an auction of offshore leases to oil companies and “we are supposed to be first.”
If that sale goes through, and if oil companies’ explorations are fruitful, and if Congress approves sharing royalties with Virginia as it did for Gulf of Mexico states, Virginia could start receiving oil money by 2014, McDonnell said.
McDonnell said he would earmark the oil revenues 80 percent for transportation and 20 percent for green energy development. The revenues could be $200 million per year, he said.
“If you don’t earmark it right now for transportation, it will get carved up 10 different ways” by the General Assembly, McDonnell said.
Those oil revenues would be shared throughout all of Virginia’s nine transportation districts, McDonnell said.
Another part of his transportation plan, which calls for selling the state-owned liquor stores to private vendors, also would generate revenues to be shared among all transportation districts, McDonnell said.
The sale would produce $500 million for the stores and $200 million per year of sales tax from them afterward. All of it would be designated for transportation, he said.
Other aspects of McDonnell’s transportation plan are earmarked for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.
He proposed that a share of sales tax revenues stay in Northern Virginia to be used for transportation, and that growth of revenues from Virginia’s ports stay in Hampton Roads for highways, bridges and tunnels. Both those areas have heavy traffic congestion, he said.
State Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, said he hoped to have further conversations with McDonnell concerning a U.S. 29 bypass around Charlottesville.
“It’s going to take gubernatorial action to break the logjam” in which state funds allocated for the Charlottesville bypass have not been spent on the bypass, Newman said.
Although the bypass wasn’t mentioned in McDonnell’s transportation plan, “having a plan is the first step,” Newman said.
Advertisement
Reader Reactions
Superfund (MOST RADIOACTIVE) sites, such as Savannah River Site, are on the National Priority Site Lists. The National Priorities Site List is the list of the most radioactive and toxic waste sites in the United States, and therefore eligible for long-term remedial action financed under the federal Superfund program.
Environmental Protection Agency regulations outline a formal process for assessing hazardous waste sites and placing them on the National Priority Site List. The National Priority Site List is intended primarily to guide the EPA in determining which sites warrant extreme investigation for severe radioactive and toxic contamination.
Living near Superfund Sites in South Carolina (including those using drinking water emanating from those areas) will make you and your loved ones even more vulnerable to catastrophic illness and cancer due to your proximity to the site, which also includes a substantial loss of value for your property. The EPA claims that:
[We have] set up a “Post Construction Completion” (or PCC) strategy to ensure that Superfund response actions provide for the long-term protection of human health and the environment. EPA’s Post Construction Completion activities also involve optimizing remedies to increase effectiveness and/or reduce cost without sacrificing long-term protection of human health and the environment.
Even so, respected doctors, biologists and environmentalists stand firm on their findings that Superfund sites will continue to pose high risks for cancer and other catastrophic illnesses and will continue to be a substantial threat to the long-term health and well-being of those communities surrounding Superfund sites.
According well documented reports by Bob Alvarez, a highly respected nuclear scientist who served in the Department of Energy (DOE) and is now with the Institute for Policy Studies, the Savannah River Site is the most contaminated site in the federal system, with about four and a half times the level of deadly radioactivity as the next deadly radioactive contender, the Hanford Site.
Both sites reprocessed spent fuel rods to extract plutonium for weapons.
There was an incident in 2000. Not that it was related to the MOX facility, which is only under construction. But such details matter not to a zealot.
The end of my MOX sentence should have said “... than is the metal.“, not that you actually read it.
What’s the date of the incident?
SAVANNAH RIVER SITE
WORKERS CONTAMINATED WITH PLUTONIUM
SEVEN SAVANNAH RIVER SITE WORKERS WERE CONTAMINATED WITH PLUTONIUM WHEN A STILL–UNEXPLAINED RELEASE OCCURRED IN THE FACILITY WHERE PLUTONIUM IS PROCESSED FOR STORAGE. OF THE EIGHT WORKERS IN THE ROOM AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT, ONLY ONE WAS WEARING A RESPIRATOR. SAVANNAH RIVER SITE REGULATIONS FOR THE WORK AREA REQUIRE ONLY THAT PROTECTIVE COVERALLS BE WORN (WTF!!!!).
IN FOLLOW-UP TESTS, THE SEVEN EXPOSED WORKERS WERE FOUND TO HAVE POSITIVE NASAL AND SALIVA SMEARS AND FOUR HAD POSITIVE CHEST COUNTS.
AND ONE NEEDS NO EXPLANATION AS TO WHY THE PRO-NUKE CROWD ARE STILL SCRATCHING THEIR B _ _LS AND WONDERING WHY THEIR GLORIOUS “NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE” IS D.O.A., WITH NO SMART INVESTOR WANTING TO TOUCH IT, AND NO SUPPORT FROM THE PUBLIC MAJORITY, WHOSE ULTIMATE SAFETY THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY CONSIDERS EXPENDABLE FOR THEIR DOOMED CAUSE. I REST MY CASE.
Well NukeFacts, technically you are correct in asserting that the plutonium in MOX is easier to remove than other fuel types. That’s because there is NO plutonium in other commercial nuclear fuel types! And plutonium oxide is much less suitable from a weapons proliferation standpoint than is the oxide.
Check your facts, NukeFact-less!
THE SAVANNAH RIVER SITE WAS ISSUED WITH A “NOTICE OF VIOLATION” FOR MULTIPLE FAILINGS IN QUALITY CONTROL EVALUATIONS, CONSTRUCTION PROCEDURES, AND SAFETY TESTING.
AREVA’s claim that MOX somehow helps in the battle against nuclear proliferation is patently false. IN REALITY, MOX PRESENTS A GREATER PROLIFERATION RISK THAN EVEN CONVENTIONAL NUCLEAR FUEL. The plutonium required to create MOX could be stolen by terrorists and can be diverted to nuclear weapons programs. Once the MOX fuel is produced, the plutonium content is also easier to extract than from other varieties of nuclear fuel.
AREVA’s MOX plant may well remove weapons-grade material from stockpiles but it certainly doesn’t remove the dangers, nor AREVA’s stupidity and lack of oversight (especially your own).
NukeFacts needs to get your facts right. Building the Savannah River MOX facility is a policy decision to convert 34 tons of plutonium into a fuel for use in commercial reactors. I’d have thought you’d be cheering elimination of such “bad” material.
Oh, I forgot. You’re a zealot. Nevermind.
We’re grateful to Areva’s North America blog for pointing us towards a speech Areva’s Chief Executive Officer Anne Lauvergeon made back in April of this year. Entitled, ‘Nuclear Industry’s Role In Nonproliferation’, the speech was given to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
We’d like to take a look at the number of fascinating things Ms Lauvergeon had to say during her speech…
…the fact is that we witness worldwide enthusiasm for nuclear energy coming from governments, coming from utilities, or electro-intensive industries…
Or, in other words, from vested interests. Notice she didn’t say ‘and the public’ or ‘and environmental groups’. Can a handful of cheerleaders really be described as ‘worldwide enthusiasm’?
Renewable energy sources, she says…
…don’t meet competitiveness requirements as well, needing heavy subsidies in the USA as well as in Europe. It’s not shocking to subsidize a source of energy at the early stage of its development, but we have to be aware of it.
Unlike nuclear energy which is a source of energy late in its development (having been developed in the 1950s) which is still needing heavy subsidies. Nuclear, says Ms Lauvergeon meets ‘all three requirements of sustainability, competitiveness, and security’. How can an energy source be sustainable when it’s reliant on a finite resource, in this case uranium? If it’s so competitive, why has the CEO of French nuclear giant EDF recently called for a ‘level playing field’ to be created so nuclear power can compete with renewable energy sources? How does having to rely on imported nuclear fuel give energy security to those countries without their own supply? Don’t expect answer from the likes of Atomic Anne.
And on and on she went. She dwelled briefly on the myth of the so-called ‘proliferation proof’ closed nuclear fuel cycle (here’s a clue: it isn’t closed and still produces dangerous nuclear waste). Have a quick look at the speech yourself (don’t spend too long – it’s eight pages) and try and find your own favorite piece of nuclear spin. Maybe we’ll offer a prize for the best one.
There was a spectacular piece of easily debunked spin from Lauvergeon in the question and answer session after her speech. It’s indicative of how Areva and the nuclear industry deal with questions. Questioned about the Savannah River Mixed-Oxide (MOX) fuel plant being built in South Carolina, she said…
…it’s a little bit over budget because the decision around this facility in Savannah River has taken a little bit more time in to the Department Of Energy forecast in the beginning. So you know when the projects are longer to be able to be developed, it’s very often a little bit more expensive.
In 2007, the Department of Energy posted the cost of Savannah River at $3.6 billion. In 2009 the cost was $4.8 billion. That’s a budget overrun of 33 per cent with costs set to rise still further. That’s a definition of ‘a little bit more expensive’ of which we’ve previously been unaware.
One thing she did get right however was this…
Two billion people are currently living without access to electricity, left by the wayside. And no electricity means life expectancy of 35 or 40 years. We cannot allow this situation to continue.
It’s a shocking state of affairs that cannot, we agree. And yet with stories like those of Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother and her newly solar-powered homestead, it’s all too apparent that Areva and Anne Lauvergeon don’t offer the cheap, secure and quickly-provided solution these two billion people – not to mention the rest of us - so urgently need.
NukeFacts needs to desist from copy and paste and share whatever morsel of original thinking he (generic pronoun) is capable of.
Advertisement