New Nukes Stalled

  • One nuclear reactor was delayed because government regulators said they can't say whether the current design can withstand earthquakes and other disasters. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The power industry wants to create
loads of low-carbon electricity. To
make that happen, they want to build
more than two dozen nuclear reactors.
Shawn Allee reports there could be
delays for at least half of those:

Transcript

The power industry wants to create
loads of low-carbon electricity. To
make that happen, they want to build
more than two dozen nuclear reactors.
Shawn Allee reports there could be
delays for at least half of those:

Westinghouse’s AP-1000 reactor was supposed to revive the nuclear industry. But recently, government regulators said they can’t say whether the current design can withstand earthquakes and other disasters.

Critics of nuclear power are pouncing on the news.

Henry Sokolski is with the Nonproliferation Policy Center. He says one government agency’s set to approve loan guarantees to build these reactors.

“If you do that, there won’t be much discipline in the industry to not screw up, there’ll be less.”

Westinghouse says it will provide the government with tests to prove its reactor is safe.

It’s not clear whether the government will delay final approval of the design.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Government Meeting on New Nukes

  • Some nuclear companies envision reactors in tiny power stations or even factories. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Commercial nuclear reactors pretty
much come in two sizes: big and huge.
Companies want to create much smaller,
cheaper reactors. Shawn Allee reports they’re pitching their ideas
to the government this week:

Transcript

Commercial nuclear reactors pretty
much come in two sizes: big and huge.
Companies want to create much smaller,
cheaper reactors. Shawn Allee reports they’re pitching their ideas
to the government this week:

These nuclear companies envision reactors in tiny power stations or even
factories. They expect good sales because nuclear power creates almost no
carbon emissions.

But before they can sell even one reactor, they have to go through a
nuclear gate-keeper. That’d be the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

NRC spokesman Scott Burnell says, today, the government is laying out the
ground rules.

“The NRC has focused on large commercial scale nuclear power plants for
several decades. We have requirements for safety systems, for security
where these small reactor designers need to look at our requirements
closely, to make sure they can meet them.”

Burnell says some small reactor designs include technology the NRC has
never approved before.

He says it could take the government up to ten years to evaluate those
designs.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Momentum for Great Lakes Compact?

  • Color satellite photo produced from NOAA-14 AVHRR satellite imagery. (Photo courtesy of Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, NOAA)

A delay in the approval of the Great Lakes water
diversion compact might be ending. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A delay in the approval of the Great Lakes Water
Diversion Compact might be ending. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

The compact, agreed to by eight Great Lakes Governors and Canadian Provincial Leaders, aims
to discourage other areas from seeking Great Lakes water. Four states have ratified the
agreement. But various disputes in Wisconsin over water conservation and getting water to
communities that straddle the Great Lakes basin delayed the compact there.

A new, bipartisan deal apparently headed to approval in the Wisconsin legislature pleases the
Council of Great Lakes Governors, and its executive director Dave Naftzger.

“This could really be the tipping point that pushes the region over the edge and enables the deal
to finally get done so this region can take the finalized compact to Washington for final approval.’’

Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania are the other states still working on ratifying the Great Lakes
Water Diversion Compact.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Part 1: Selling the Family Farm to Developers

  • A former farm field in Central Ohio ready for development. It's an increasingly common sight in this area. This land is right next door to a dairy. Worried about his new neighbors, the farmer is planning to sell. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

In the Great Lakes region, farmland is rapidly being developed into homes, office parks and shopping centers. Nationally, farmland is lost at a rate of more than 9-thousand acres a day. But in order for this development to happen, someone has to sell their land. In the first of a two-part series on farmers and the decisions they make about their land, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamara Keith introduces us to some farmers who have made the difficult choice to sell:

Transcript

In the Great Lakes region, farmland is rapidly being developed into homes, office parks
and shopping centers. Nationally, farmland is lost at a rate of more than nine-thousand
acres a day. But in order for this development to happen, someone has to sell their
land. Tamara Keith introduces us to some farmers who have made that difficult choice:


At a busy intersection in a newly suburban area, a red barn and white house sit back
off the road. Lush green pasture land hugs the old farm buildings. But the days are
numbered for this bucolic scene.


(sound of construction)


Across the street dozens of condos are under construction… and farmer Roy Jackson has
put this 216-acre farm in Central Ohio under option for development. As soon as the
developer gets approval to build, Jackson’s farm will be no more.


“I’m a third generation farmer and you put your roots down and to see your land be
developed is something I have seen coming, but to actually see it happen across the
road; it’s a sad thing, but it’s progress.”


Sitting on his front porch, Jackson looks our on a neighborhood where once there were farms.


Jackson: “At one point we farmed over 1500 acres and now we’re down to about 300.”


Keith: “What happened?”


Jackson: “We’ve lost a lot of it to development. In the estate of my mom and dad
we had to sell that to settle the estate and that was part of it as well.”


Like many in agriculture, Jackson didn’t own all the land he farmed. He was leasing
it and when the owner decided to sell for development, Jackson was out of luck. Now
he says there’s not enough land left to farm profitably.


“I have a son that wants to farm with me and to do it here, there just isn’t enough
land to sustain two families and make a living for both.”


So, he’s found a big piece of land down in Kentucky, in an area where land is still
plentiful and development pressures are distant. He’s leasing it with an option to buy.
Soon Jackson and his son will have the cattle ranch they’ve been planning for years.
It just won’t be in the state where his family has farmed for three generations.


(sound of heavy machinery)


Workers operate backhoes to grade the ground in an open field that will eventually
be home to some seven-thousand people in a new development. Retired farmer and
agriculture educator Dick Hummel recently sold a portion of this land, allowing
the project to move forward.


“I had some people critical of me because I was going to sell farmland, but on
the other hand, I really didn’t. I traded. You just have to accept that in this
community because that’s what’s going to happen. That’s what has happened. Plus
the fact, it’s been pretty tough farming and this has given a lot of farmers a
chance to sell some land for some excellent prices.”


Hummel sold about 100 acres of farmland and bought some new land – 77 acres –
farther out in the country. His father had bought what Hummel calls the “home farm”
in 1935, and that family history weighed heavily on Hummel when he was deciding what
to do.


“It was harder to decide to sell that land because it had been in my family for many
generations than it was the agricultural part.”


His father bought the land for 100 dollars an acre and Hummel was able to sell it
for a whole lot more. Asked why he sold, Hummel’s answer is simple.


“The offer. I hadn’t thought about selling at all. I didn’t even know that they
would want any of this particular land ’till all at once there were others that
were selling for a price. I heard about that, and first thing I knew, a heck of
a lot of land in this area was selling. So you compare notes as to prices, et
cetera and so forth, and that’s how it happens.”


Hummel says he wasn’t pressured to sell. He’s well past retirement age, and
he says it was the right decision personally. And such is the case for most
farmers who sell their land for development, says Sara Nikolich, Ohio director
with American Farmland Trust.


“You’ve got acres of farmland that can be sold for 20, 30,000 dollars an acre at times.
For a lot of farmers that’s their retirement they’re sitting on, and when you have
development surrounding you and you don’t have any public policy to promote agriculture
and perhaps you don’t have any heirs, you don’t have any options available to you other
than development.”


And so, the personal decisions of individual farmers are transforming some of the
nation’s rural landscape into suburban landscapes.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Point: Agreements Will Help Protect Great Lakes

  • The proposed Annex 2001 agreement is the subject of lively debate as to whether it will help or hinder the conservation of the Great Lakes (Photo by Jeremy Lounds)

In 1998, an Ontario company wanted to sell Lake Superior water overseas. Their proposal raised fears that Great Lakes water could be diverted with little oversight. Now, officials from the eight states and two provinces in the region have come up with two proposed agreements that would regulate new water diversion requests. The proposed agreements are known as the Annex 2001 Implementing Agreements. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Cameron Davis says the agreements are a good first step in protecting a cherished resource:

Transcript

In 1998 an Ontario company wanted to sell Lake Superior water overseas. Their
proposal raised fears that Great Lakes water could be diverted with little oversight.
Now, officials from the eight states and two provinces in the region have come up with
two proposed agreements that would regulate new water diversion requests. The proposed
agreements are known as the Annex 2001 Implementing Agreements. Great Lakes Radio Consortium
commentator Cameron Davis says the agreements are a good first step in protecting a cherished
resource:


When I was growing up, my family and I used to go to the beach every Sunday. As I stood
looking out over Lake Michigan, I was awed at how it seemed to go on forever. Today I know
better. The Great Lakes are a gift left from the glaciers thousands of years ago. That’s
because less than 1% of Great Lakes water is renewed every year from rainfall, snowmelt,
and groundwater recharge.


Two proposed agreements by the states and provinces would make diversions of Great Lakes water
to places outside of the Great Lakes a virtual impossibility.


The agreements look to be a vast improvement over current laws. First, federal law in the U.S.
allows a diversion only if every Great Lakes Governor approves. That seems like a tough standard
to meet, but in fact, it’s already allowed two diversions of Great Lakes water to take place. In
the 1990’s, diversions were approved to Pleasant Prairie in Wisconsin and another one to Akron,
Ohio. The water was used for municipal supplies.


Second, the proposed agreements are an improvement over the Boundary Waters Treaty – a pact
signed between the U.S. and Canada almost 100 years ago. The treaty doesn’t cover one very
important Great Lake: Lake Michigan. Because Lake Michigan is solely within the U.S. and not
shared with Canada, the treaty leaves the lake unprotected. This is a problem because Lake
Michigan is directly connected to Lake Huron. So water diverted out of Lake Michigan means
water diverted out of Lake Huron.


The agreements are a good first step, but they need to be stronger. For example, they require
regional approval for diversions of water that go outside of the basin of more than one million
gallons per day, but they don’t require regional approval for withdrawals of up to 5 million
gallons per day that stay in the Great Lakes. In addition, the draft agreements need to do a
better job at requiring water conservation before potential water withdrawals can be considered.


We have a choice. We can be against the agreements and keep the status quo or work to make
them even stronger. We need to work to protect our region’s water so that our kids can continue
to look out over the Great Lakes and see them for what they are: vast, magnificent, but fragile
natural treasures.


Host Tag: Cameron Davis is the executive director of the Lake Michigan Federation.

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New Gmo Grass to Get Federal Approval?

  • The quest for a perfectly manIcured lawn has driven some lawn care companies to create a grass resistant to weed killer. Some worry, however, that they've created an invasive species. (Photo by Philipp Pilz)

An environmental watchdog group is hoping to block federal approval of a new genetically modified type of grass. The group says the grass poses a threat to natural areas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

An environmental watchdog group is hoping to block fedral approval of a new genetically
modified type of grass. The group says the grass poses a threat to natural areas. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


Two companies – Scotts and Monsanto – want the government’s approval to commercialize a type of
creeping bentgrass. The grass would mainly be planted on lawns and golf courses because it’s
resistant to Roundup, a popular weed killer. But critics of the bio-engineered grass say it
needs more testing. For one thing, they say, genes from the grass can spread and strengthen
non-native plants.


Joe Mendelson is with the International Center for Technology Assessment.


“The end result is you’re going to create a grass that is invasive, that will take over natural
areas like our grasslands and or forest areas, and we won’t be able to control it. That’s going
to have a very negative impact on a number of sensitive ecosystems.”


The U.S. Forest Service has also weighed in, saying the grass has the potential to have a
negative effect on all of the country’s grasslands and natural forests. Scotts has said the
bio-engineered grass poses no threat to natural areas.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

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