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So-called experts will mostly claim that nuclear energy production is safe, that redundancy after redundancy has been built into nuclear power plants in the U.S. to reduce the catastrophic risks that they pose. But after the incident at Fukushima in Japan, how can we be so sure that these redundancies will stand up to unforeseen natural or man-made disasters? Or do we think ourselves so wise as to believe that our engineers in the U.S. have taken all possible catastrophic scenarios into account concerning nuclear reactors? I think it would be wise to remain humble.
Discussions over nuclear policy usually tend to leave out the elephant in the room: nuclear waste. At present, there is no repository in the U.S. for waste, nor is there one even on the docket. A clear question arises then: how responsible is it to continue accumulating thousands of tons of nuclear waste without a clear and feasible solution to the repository dilemma? Consequently, how responsible is it to continue relying on nuclear energy for nearly 20% of the U.S.'s energy production? What sources of energy production are being obscured by a focus on nuclear energy?
But of course, the issue of the safety of nuclear reactors and power plants is beside the point. The question still remains: what we are going to do with the waste that is manufactured with each kilowatt-hour of energy generation? No local, state, or national politician seems willing to touch this issue with a ten-foot pole because there is such little consensus surrounding the issue and so much outrage at the idea of putting a nuclear waste repository "in my backyard." The outrage goes beyond the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) idea as well.
There is no guarantee, regardless of expert assurances, that stored nuclear waste will remain benign for thousands of years to come. There's no guarantee that stored waste will even be harmless for a generation or two. There are no guarantees, period. This area is uncharted in human history and if history means anything anymore, we should be aware that new fields of practical application come with their mistakes. What would be the potential costs of a nuclear mistake?
If you're skeptical, you're not alone. I don't recall many "experts" ever predicting a Three Mile Island or a Chernobyl occurring. It will be argued, though, that U.S. nuclear reactors were and are much more sophisticated (i.e. safe) than those at Chernobyl and that we have learned the lessons of Three Mile Island. Japan also thought they had learned lessons from these incidents too, and they were wrong and we have yet to discern the full extent of the consequences. Given the alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass, why is there even serious debate surrounding our future reliance on nuclear energy?
The answer is clear even though the politics more often than not obscures the commonsense solutions. Americans shouldn't have to concern themselves with 30 foot protective walls to prevent a major loss of human life or economic welfare. Americans shouldn't have to place their energy dependence on a source of energy that could, at least in theory, literally be used to annihilate the planet. With safer and cheaper renewable sources of energy available, it is insane to continue down the path of nuclear energy.
While human beings have harnessed the power of nuclear energy, we apparently haven't consistently harnessed the power of sound policy or common sense. We tried nuclear energy and we still have more questions than answers, more concerns than relief, and more disparate sources of energy available for the market than ever before. Why continue to play Russian roulette when there are safer games to play with greater rewards? Why not actually begin to focus our time and energy on renewable sources of energy like wind, solar, geothermal, or biomass? Let's not wait for a U.S. Fukushima to occur before we start questioning the wisdom of pursuing nuclear energy.
Virginia may be the "Top State for Business," but it is among the least sensible when it comes to responsible energy policies. So far, the McDonnell administration has paid lip-service to the advantages of renewable forms of energy. But change towards a more inclusive renewable energy "portfolio" in Virginia has been slow, and in some respects stagnant.
While most proponents of renewable energy understand that wind energy, solar energy, energy from biomass, and geothermal energy will only make up a part of Virginia's energy future, it's a sizable part nonetheless that cannot be ignored. Bulldogs for the McDonnell administration like Virginia Senator Steve Martin contend that the governor has made significant moves towards "greening" Virginia. It seems, however, that we have different conceptions of what a "green" Virginia will look like.
And here's the real kicker: renewable energy has the enormous potential to save businesses in Virginia considerable revenue over the long run. Furthermore, for a billion-dollar-a year-tourism industry in Virginia, renewable sources of energy could help alleviate some of the negative environmental impacts of nonrewable sources of energy like excessive air pollution (i.e. air pollution that causes ill health effects), thus sustaining the windfall revenue stemming from tourism-related activities. Renewable sources of energy can also bring "home-grown" sources of energy to Virginia, helping to alleviate foreign energy "shocks" that could throw Virginia's economy in the wrong direction.
Renewable energy, then, cannot and should not be put off any further if Virginia wishes to retain its position as top state for business. Virginia is an energy intensive state that cannot afford to sit and wait for the next energy shock to ransack its business success. Virginia has the education system, the capital, the people, and the political and grassroots will to turn our state into a renewable energy capital. It's time we moved in this direction inexorably for current generations and those still to come.
Dominion Virginia Power "dedicated" a new scrubber at their Chesterfield Power Station on Thursday in an effort to clean Virginia's air, or at least to be perceived to be doing so.
The scrubber for the 344-megawatt unit is supposed to remove over 95% of sulfur dioxide. In addition, the scrubber will also result in an 80% reduction in mercury, as well as hydrochloric and sulfuric acids.
The latest scrubber will be placed with units that went into operation in 2008.
In 2003, Dominion Virginia Power signed a "voluntary" pollution settlement agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency for the scrubbers.
The implications of Dominion Virginia Power's dedication seem to be that their move to clean Virginia's air is a charitable endeavor. News flash Dominion, protecting Virginia's environment is part of your duty as an energy provider.
That's right, it's no longer acceptable (as it never should have been) to throw mounds of radioactive and toxic chemicals into a local body of water or the air.
Private individuals and companies should have every right to earn a profit, but not at the expense of human and environmental health.
We have a skewed debate in Virginia that goes something like this: protecting human and environmental health is expensive, so we'll do what we can (says the utility), but we have to make a profit.
As far as I know, Dominion has rarely been in danger of not turning a profit. It is the traditional straw-man argument to keep "business-as-usual" alive.
That row has been towed Dominion. It's time to step up or get out of the energy-providing field altogether.
Not far beneath the surface of a relatively small patch of land in Pittsylvania County in southern Virginia lies the front line over a battle for Virginia's future and its sense of identity. Searching Virginia's past, back as far as the first days of the Jamestown settlement, Virginian's found ways to live in relative harmony with their environment. They respected the natural world and in later periods numerous Virginia landowners would become rich from the soils of Virginia. The Founding Fathers, landowners whose wealth was owed primarily to rich tobacco crops, repeatedly stressed "mans" relationship to nature.
But the years, it seems, have swept away any vestiges of that symbiotic relationship that was once an ideal of many Virginians. Today, Virginians face the real threat of uranium mining. If the ban were to be lifted, another blow to the relationship between Virginians and their natural environment would result, a consequence whose value cannot be monetized.
More and more, some Virginian's appear to look at the natural world principally as a place to make a profit and not a symbol of what it means to be a Virginian. Making a profit through nature and revering nature are not, I should emphasize, mutually exclusive. But making a profit through nature by extracting radioactive elements from beneath the soil to be used in a nuclear reactor that produces waste with no foreseeable home for storage is, by any definition, a dispirited and unhealthy relationship.
Whether or not the uranium being pulled from the ground is as radioactive as some claim is almost beside the point. The issue of uranium mining has to do with the entire extraction, production, and waste chain. That is, to thoroughly understand the full implications of uranium mining, one has to look at the extraction process, the production process, as well as where all of the spent nuclear fuel is likely to wind up.
Despite the claims made about the safety of this process, there is no certainty in any affair in life. The example of Fukushima is a tragic picture of what overconfidence can result in when we deal with such powerful substances like nuclear energy. There are risks and not all of them are satisfactorily minimized for a host of different reasons.
The issue of uranium mining is truly an issue of mining for Virginia's soul. Instead of investing more profoundly in advanced energy technologies and looking towards the future, we continue to invest "in the moment," breaking our bonds with nature while ultimately hurting human individuals in the process. I am fully aware of the difficult choices we have to make on the energy policy front. But we are making energy choices off the cuff, without an eye towards the long-term, without an eye towards the safety of Virginians, without an eye towards how much we truly value the environment. Today it is uranium in Pittsylvania, tomorrow it is another energy resource somewhere else in Virginia. What will the consequences be and how will we think of ourselves when we call ourselves Virginians?
While water restrictions may be "inconvenient," they may become a normal part of our lives in Virginia.
On Monday, the Appomattox River Water Authority requested that its customers conserve water due to the low water levels of Lake Chesdin. That is, the authority enacted a voluntary water conservation request.
According to the Authority's Executive Director, Chris Dawson, Lake Chesdin's water levels have dropped by a foot. At the moment, Chesdin has a 300-day supply of water.
If Lake Chesdin falls on or below a 200-day supply, a mandatory water conservation measure will be imposed.
Some methods of voluntary conservation include the following: watering lawns on alternate days and limiting the washing of "noncommercial" vehicles to 2 days per week.
While these restrictions may prove inconvenient to some, Virginians should feel fortunate that they do not have to deal with the daily water restrictions that occur in a number of places in the mid-West and West. In these places, water is a privilege, not a right.
Virginia's wasteful use of its precious natural resources, like water, must stop.
The first priority is to change the way Virginians look at the scarcity of drinkable water and the role they can play in minimizing their deteriorating effect on Virginia's water supply.
We all have our role to play and if we all do our part to conserve Virginia's water supply, I'm confident we can avert some of the nasty repercussions of continuing our wasteful water practices.
Over a dozen of Virginia's legislators were coddled by Virginia Uranium Inc. during a three day paid vacation in France.
In between site-seeing missions in Paris, our elected representatives found time to survey AREVA's facilities, home to what is supposedly a successful example of a uranium mining operation.
What you probably won't hear about AREVA and its facilities are the less-than-stellar details that are usually withheld from the public eye.
According to a report by CRIIRAD in France (a nonprofit research commission on radioactivity in France), what was once COGEMA (now AREVA) used no radiation limit for scrap metal recycling prior to 1999. This appears to be one of many lapses in safety procedures by AREVA.
The report, called the "Radiological Hazards of Uranium Mining," also found that "all the French uranium mines where it made radiological surveys, the CRIIRAD laboratory discovered situations of environmental contamination and a lack of proper protection of the inhabitants against health risks due to ionizing radiation."
If this makes you think twice about uranium mining in southern Virginia, you're not alone.
Virtually every claim made by Virginia Uranium Inc. (VUI) about the safety of uranium mining has been debunked and until VUI can produce objective and verifiable evidence to prove their claims, it would be no less than an absolutely immoral endeavor to move forward with uranium mining in southern Virginia.
Besides the effects to human and environmental health, the issue is also one of political power. If uranium mining succeeds in Virginia it will be the Republican Party of Virginia that ultimately comes out with a new powerful political ally and campaign contributor, a political ally and campaign contributor whose interests are not in line with those of the rest of Virginia.
Virginians of every political persuasion, therefore, must be on the side of "Keep the Ban." The consequences of lifting the ban on uranium mining could quite possibly lead to one of the biggest disasters in Virginia's storied history.
Welcome to the future of nuclear power in Virginia. Dominion Virginia Power announced on Tuesday that its second nuclear reactor in Surry stalled amid attempts to restart it after an April 16 tornado knocked out electricity in the area.
Richard Zuercher, spokesman for Dominion Virginia Power, said that Unit 2 was shutdown on Monday following the detection of a problem in one of Unit 2's cooling ducts.
It remains unclear when another try will be attempted to restart the second nuclear reactor.
Let's face it, nuclear power has a number of drawbacks, and one of the least significant in the grand scheme of things is the inability of nuclear reactors to stay online when the electricity goes out.
We should also consider the elephant in the room: where to put all of the spent nuclear fuel.
Of course, there are some who purport to have a solution. Just build nuclear reactors that can reuse spent nuclear fuel, they say. Easier said than done, I'm afraid, given the high costs of building any type of new nuclear reactor.
I'm not suggesting Virginia completely phase out nuclear energy altogether. That would be impractical at best and damaging to Virginia's economy at worst.
But we need to open up unimpassioned debate about whether or not nuclear energy is going to be a long term solution to Virginia's energy needs, and if so, how much.
The Republican Party of Virginia has been especially resistant to any notion that nuclear energy might not be the godsend that many had hoped it would be. But I'm curious about how much each member even knows about nuclear energy, its positives and its negatives.
If Virginians were to weigh the negatives against the positives of nuclear energy, I'm confident that nuclear energy wouldn't be perceived as the panacea many political leaders would like it to be.
In what amounts to a paid vacation for 14 of Virginia's state legislators, Virginia Uranium Inc. has reportedly financed a trip for the 5 legislators to visit a closed mine in western France.
According to the Washington Post, the closed mine in western France was mined for 50 years until the late 1990s.
The 5 legislators arrived in Paris on Wednesday and will soon be followed by 9 more this coming Tuesday.
The Post reports that the 5-day trip is expected to cost $10,000 per person, including a number of days in Paris.
Virginia Uranium is interested in ending the 1982 ban in Virginia on uranium mining and the General Assembly can do just that.
Aside from the fact that western France does not share the same ecological conditions as southern Virginia and cannot therefore be fruitfully compared with a high degree of validity, the trip appears to be more than a fact-finding mission by Virginia's state legislators.
Indeed, the days spent in Paris appear to be an unethical way for Virginia Uranium to court the favor of the legislators in question, regardless of the similarities and supposed safety of the uranium mine in western France.
If Virginia's legislators truly care about the interests of Virginians and the perceptions of their constituents, they will reject the offer to stay in Paris on the dime of a special interest whose goals are not in line with those of the rest of Virginia.
Many of these legislators will no doubt take the offer, however, rejecting all principles of ethical governance in the process.
But we're only talking about the welfare of thousands of Virginians, right? No big deal.
The recent Clean the Bay Day and its volunteers found a wide assortment of interesting items, ranging from a toilet seat to the carcass of a 40-pound red drum.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation sponsored the yearly cleanup in the Chesapeake Bay.
Among the items found were 200,000 pounds of cast-offs that were pulled from Virginia's streams and shorelines.
Some of the items found include:
• A commode
• A car transmission
• A dead Atlantic sturgeon
• Numerous cigarette butts
• Cans
• Bottles
• Food wrappers
According to the Virginian-Pilot, over 6,300 volunteers participated in the cleanup. Teams of volunteers worked from Charlottesville to the Eastern Shore.
It's mindboggling to fathom that for many individuals, the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries are one large trash-can just waiting for new loads of trash.
Thanks to volunteers like those who took part in Clean the Bay Day, the Chesapeake is a little less polluted.
As always, there's still a lot of work that has to be done. One of the most fundamental, as well as one of the most difficult, tasks will be to change the mindsets of Virginians who look upon the occasional piece of trash thrown into the Chesapeake as of little consequence.
These things do add up of course, and stemming the tide of the cigarette butts, the bottles, cans, and food wrappers will especially go a long way in finally cleaning the Chesapeake Bay.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced on Tuesday that Virginian farmers, ranchers, as well as private, non-industrial forest landowners will be able to seek federal funds to implement conservation practices.
The Cooperative Conservation Partnership Initiative is making the funding available for eligible landowners.
31 projects will be funded in Virginia by the U.S. Agriculture Department, costing $7 million.
Among those projects approved are $999,000 for training and management practice assistance for the New River Grazing Management Initiative and $50,000 for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's water quality improvements in the Shenandoah River watershed.
Anyone who has already started to cringe over more federal subsidies being allocated to fund vital state activities should think about the consequences if federal money is not distributed.
At present, few agricultural landowners in Virginia have implemented vital conservation practices due to the costs. But the costs of allowing business as usual is just as economically and socially devastating.
Virginians are coming to realize more and more that nature and all of its many fruits are not boundless. There is an end to the resources we extract just as there's an ecological breaking point that we have to avoid.
Conservation practices will be a big step in a sustainable future for Virginia. And without federal money, these steps probably would not occur or, if they did, amount to much overall.
In what proved to be a strong turnout in support of wind energy at the Wind Energy Conference in Richmond on Saturday, grassroots activists and environmental groups demonstrated how serious they are about moving Virginia towards a greater reliance on wind energy.
Some of the speakers at the conference included Virginia State Senator Donald McEachin, business leader Terry McAuliffe, and Robert Mitchell of Atlantic Wind Connection.
Close to 200 grassroots activists and concerned Virginians showed up to hear the speakers discuss the possibility of increasing the use of wind energy in Virginia and the steps that will need to be taken to get there.
Most importantly, more Virginian's will need to get involved in the policy process surrounding wind energy. Public leaders will only push for a greater reliance on wind energy if their constituents are asking for it, and asking for it consistently.
Virginians can't wait for Dominion Power to decide several years down the road that it's time to seriously begin the construction of offshore wind farms off the coast of Virginia.
And Virginians cannot continue to hold out the hope that Governor McDonnell and his administration will aggressively push for increasing levels of wind energy. McDonnell has consistently proven that his wind energy rhetoric has no teeth.
Wind energy is not the only or final answer to Virginia's energy problems. But it's a good first symbolic step in the clean and renewable energy direction.
A fish kill in a Franklin County creek is being investigated by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to determine the cause.
Hundreds of dead bass, large carp, and catfish were found dead this week in Gills Creek by DEQ biologists. The creek runs into Smith Mountain Lake.
So far, the DEQ is holding out the idea that heat may be behind the fish kill. Over the last few days the water temperature has increased in the lake which could have taken vital oxygen out of the creek, according to the DEQ.
Some other potential causes also include contamination from farming pesticides or manure.
If heat is finally determined to be the culprit of this fish kill, then we have ourselves another harmful effect of the phenomenon that fewer people are finding harder to deny, global warming.
It is undeniable at this point that Virginian's in particular are raising the planet's temperature through various wasteful and energy intensive policies, which is why a renewed and sustained focus on wind and solar energy in Virginia is so vital to our future wellbeing.
The debate is not just about energy security, it's about attempting to stem the tide of global warming as much as possible throughout the remainder of the century and beyond.
Gov. McDonnell must move quickly to turn Virginia into a truly "green" state, for current and for future generations of Virginians.
A number of environmental groups and energy-minded activists will be meeting on Saturday in Richmond to discuss how offshore wind can be more quickly implemented throughout Virginia.
Dubbed the "Citizens Summit on Offshore Wind Power," the conference on Saturday is supposed to draw over 100 Virginians who wish to see the quick implementation of wind turbines in Virginia's coastal waters.
Some of the speakers include Robert Mitchell of Atlantic Wind Connection, the Google wind grid project, and Democratic activist and businessman Terry McAuliffe.
Following the conference, supporters of wind energy are set to march on the Virginia Capitol and rally in support of wind energy.
Given Virginia's strong coastal winds, many believe that Virginia has great potential to more fully exploit the power of wind.
It will be interesting to see how the governor and his administration respond to the wind conference, if he chooses to respond at all.
The wind conference is, among other things, another sad situation in Virginia where citizens are forced to fight for commonsense policies, policies which should already be in the works if the public interest were truly at heart.
Of course, it will be argued that wind energy is being developed at present and that these things take time. But as history demonstrates, when the political will is present, the unthinkable becomes thinkable and the impossible, possible.
Gov. McDonnell can make wind energy a much larger part of Virginia's energy portfolio now if he wishes. It's up to us as Virginians to make sure that's exactly what he does wish.
According to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), 4,000 gallons of cow manure spilled into a creek close to 14 miles south of Roanoke on Thursday.
The DEQ reports that the spill came from a storage pond south of Boones Mill and later made its way into a tributary of Buck Run Creek.
Individuals are being warned by the Franklin County Health Department to avoid contact with water in Buck Run Creek, which flows into a tributary of the Blackwater River.
How 4,000 gallons of cow manure gets spilled in the first place is apparently still unknown. But here again we seem to have another example of an egregious lack of safeguards and precautions surrounding substances that can have a toxic environmental effect.
This incident should have never occurred. If the requisite respect, time, and effort were paid to making sure something like this wouldn't happen, it probably wouldn't have.
Virginians, both now and into the future, will have to deal with the aftermath of environmental negligence.
This is why the environmentally minded of Virginia fight for stronger environmental safeguards and regulations and it's why we won't give up until we've achieved our goals. Virginia's future depends on it.
As a piece of the effort at "restoring" the Chesapeake Bay, regulators with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inspected seven dairy farms in the Shenandoah Valley, the Daily News-Record recently reported.
Spokesman for the EPA, David Sternberg, said that the results from the inspections will be shared with Virginia to figure out how any concerns can be addressed.
Gary Flory with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) said that the inspections focused on small dairy operations.
For now, the EPA's mandated pollution diet for the Chesapeake Bay remains law. But there are numerous groups who have teamed up to derail the federal government's efforts to restore the bay.
The Virginia governor and his administration have been walking a political tight-rope by claiming on the one hand that the bay needs restoring, while decrying on the other the burdensome expenses of a federally mandated effort to the clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
It is clearly indefensible to claim that any environmental restoration effort that negatively affects the private or public sector's bottom line is untenable.
Whether or not these claims of excessive costs of cleaning up the bay in Virginia are true or not, no monetary value is high enough to compensate for the loss of such a national and historical treasure like the Chesapeake Bay.
The private and public sector must learn that in the 21st Century and beyond the environment has every right to exist in relatively good health as they do themselves. This is more than a claim made on moral grounds, it is a practical one based on the notion that a healthy environment means a healthy human population. So to the extent that we degrade our local and nonlocal ecosystems, we also degrade our own health.
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