Global warming is not the only area where there is a crooked scientific consensus: Cholesterol and statins

The cholesterol/statins hoax is by now just about unwound.  Skeptics will see many parallels to what happens among warmists.  The video below is very thorough so takes over an hour to watch but it is a fascinating tale in human venality



I have been blowing the whistle on the cholesterol nonsense for years See e.g. here




‘Solar monster’ sparks suburban scrap in Boston



A retired couple might echo that lament after installing a ground-mounted grid of energy-soaking panels — dubbed “the solar monster” by one city councilor — that has pitted neighbor against neighbor and sparked a vitriolic war of words.

“It’s a foreign body, basically,” said Mary Downing, scowling as she looked at her neighbors’ carbon-friendly tower. “We don’t want to be out on the deck in the summer, by the pool, and see that thing.”

“That thing” is a stack of 20 solar panels that turns with the sun each day and powers the four-bedroom home where Lola and Richard Eanes live.

It hums rather than rumbles, moves a foot or two several times a day, and shuts down for the night.

“We have grandchildren, and we’ve been thinking about climate change and what has to be done to reduce energy,” said Lola Eanes, a former private investigator who unveiled the unit last December. “It’s a plus for the environment.”

But on Putnam Street, a thickly settled stretch of older homes 20 miles north of Boston, neighbors have railed against the eco-friendly structure as if it were a landfill, saying its unsightly appearance offsets any environmental gains.

“It’s a gross injustice. I couldn’t be more upset about it,” said Ted Downing, echoing his wife’s objections. “It’s so unresidential.”

Neighbors have complained to Beverly officials, who say the tower does not violate any city regulations. And they have brought their complaints to the Eaneses, who have been taken aback by the angry reaction.

“They ganged up on me,” Lola Eanes said. “It’s a new thing, and maybe they don’t like change.”

Eanes said the complaints have ranged from the expected to the outrageous, including fears that the panels might emit cancer-causing radiation, cause massive erosion, interfere with Beverly Regional Airport, and emit a blinding glare.

Nonsense, Eanes said.

“What right do they have to call this an eyesore? Even the state wants everybody to go solar,” she said. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

And it’s a boon for the budget. The couple paid for electricity only from June through September, four months when they turned on the air conditioning and circulated the water in their pool, Eanes said. Even then, the bill was far lower than the $350 to $500 a month they had paid before.

But neighbors condemn the tower as an out-of-place blemish that will depress property values and tarnish the neighborhood’s character. Going green is great, they say. Just find another way to do it.

“It’s not that we’re against solar, but it belongs on the roof,” Mary Downing said.

Neighbors also complained that they weren’t warned about the plan.

The Eaneses “didn’t say one word about what they were doing and how they were doing it,” said Bill Soares, whose bedrooms face the panels. “One day I came home, and there were surveyors poking around, and I asked them, ‘What are you doing?’ ”

He didn’t like their answer. They were laying the groundwork for a 21-by-16-foot gray, metallic grid supported by an 11-foot tower wrapped in faux-greenery. It’s only the second residential solar tower in Beverly, but its placement is what irks neighbors most.

“It is located physically closer to four other homes than the owner’s home,” Soares said. “I hold both the city and the Eaneses accountable for that callousness, lack of concern, and unsympathetic attitude toward the neighbors.”

City officials said no notification or public hearings were required, but neighbors argued that common courtesy should count for something.

The dispute is linked to the odd layout of the Eanes property, a “pork-chop” lot with a narrow strip of land that runs hundreds of feet from the street to the couple’s home. The tower stands on that strip.

Some of the neighbors, once friendly, no longer speak with the couple. The rift might be permanent.

“We have a place in New Hampshire and get up there on weekends, so we really don’t have much to do with them,” said Richard Eanes, a former plaster contractor.

Compared with his exasperated neighbors, Eanes was diplomatic.

“I’m stuck with the property value diminished. I’m stuck with looking at the thing. And I’m stuck with a neighbor who paints the other neighbors as obstructionists,” Soares said. “It’s infuriating.”

For her part, Lola Eanes said the real eyesore is the drooping telephone poles that line the streets.

“None of them stand completely straight. Some of them have large transformers on them. Some of them have coils of tangled wires attached, and they are all sagging,” Eanes said. “Can these opposing neighbors really say that my sleek solar array with underground wiring to my home is less attractive?”

Sleek solar array or solar monster, the tower may be the last of its kind in Beverly, said city planner Aaron Clausen. The City Council is expected to review draft regulations early next year that could prohibit large, ground-mounted panels from front yards.

Whatever the outcome at City Hall, the “solar monster” of Putnam Street is here to stay, Lola Eanes said.

“We’re not fighting anymore. It’s there, it’s done,” she said, waving away the criticism with a flick of her hand. “It's really been quite a ride.”

SOURCE




Reducing Antiquities Act land grabs

Special interests blatantly misrepresent President Trump and Interior Secretary’s actions

Paul Driessen

Acting on recommendations by Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, on December 4 President Trump significantly reduced the size of two enormous areas in Utah that Presidents Clinton and Obama had set aside as limited-access, no-development zones under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

Mr. Trump’s action reduced the Grand Staircase Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments from a combined 3.2 million acres (the size of Connecticut) to 1.2 million acres (slightly smaller than Delaware).

Utah residents and elected officials applauded the move as long overdue. The Patagonia and North Face outdoor apparel companies, environmentalist groups, and various liberal politicians and news outlets branded the action a desecration, claimed President Trump “stole” the lands from the American people, and launched coordinated and hyperventilated disinformation campaigns.

In reality, the actual thefts were masterminded and conducted by previous White House officials, in cahoots with radical environmentalists. Employing the immense power of the federal government, they took valuable state lands, multiple private lands and property rights, and a private company’s most valuable asset (America’s largest clean coal deposit) without any compensation whatsoever.

The Antiquities Act was intended to protect areas of historic, prehistoric or scientific value, and lands designated as monuments were to be “the smallest size compatible with the proper care and management” of objects or sites to be protected. Its goal is to safeguard fossils, unique plants and habitats, Native artifacts and sites, geologic structures and special scenic areas from damage, desecration and looting.

The first national monument ever designated (the 1,347-acre Devils Tower) respected the law’s language and intent, as have most designations since then. However, in recent decades presidents have increasingly used the act to circumvent Congress and replace proper legislative processes with executive decrees. They established enormous de facto wilderness areas with the stroke of a pen – usually with little or no consultation with people and elected officials in communities that would be most severely impacted.

It is these abuses that Messrs. Zinke and Trump sought to correct. In so doing, they followed decisions by Presidents Coolidge, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Taft and Wilson, who also reduced the size of previous monument designations. The Utah changes address arguably the greatest onshore Antiquities Act abuses.

President Clinton designated the 1,880,461-acre Grand Staircase Escalante Monument in large part to make a billion-dollar coal deposit off limits, by preventing any roads from reaching it. The action was quietly engineered by Katie McGinty, his White House Environmental Policy Office director, in collaboration with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Even Mr. Clinton was not fully aware of what he was signing, and Ms. McGinty totally blindsided Utah Governor Michael Levitt, who (like every other citizen and official in Utah) knew nothing about the massive land lockup until it was a done deal.

(For all the sordid details, read chapter 12 in Cracking Big Green or chapter 4 in Undue Influence.)

President Obama designated the 1,351,849-acre Bears Ears NM three weeks before leaving office, largely to make still more energy, mineral and other resources off limits to exploration and development. He too did so without prior consultation with Utah’s governor, congressional delegation or residents. Offshore marine national monuments now total 760 million acres – 7-1/2 times the size of California!

Monument designation means exploration, drilling, mining, timber harvesting, motorized vehicles, and even grazing and gathering firewood are prohibited. People’s property rights, lives, livelihoods, living standards and life savings are grievously affected. The entire tax, job and revenue base of communities, counties and states is impacted. Thousands of acres of state “school sections” – which states are granted at the time of statehood to finance schools – are made off limits, with no compensation.

That’s real thievery. At the very least, this demands careful consultation with the people who live there, and negotiations with their representatives to ensure that all these interests are considered and addressed. Stroke-of-the-pen monument decrees callously circumvented all these constitutional, legal and ethical safeguards. They ensured that valuable property was taken without due process or just compensation.

Taken together, the original Grand Staircase and Bears Ears Monuments were far larger than the combined acreage of Utah’s Bryce and Zion National Parks. They are in addition to Utah’s three other national parks, six other national monuments, four national recreation and conservation areas, hundreds of miles of national trails, 31 national wilderness areas, and millions of acres in other restrictive land use categories – in a state where the federal government still owns 61% of all the land.

Compare that to states east of the Mississippi, where federal agencies own, manage or control just 0.3% of Connecticut and Iowa, and 0.6% of New York, for example. People and officials in these states have no inkling of what it is like to live in Western states where 30% to 80% of all lands are federally owned.

Even more important, the remaining Utah monument areas are still huge. From Bears Ears, the new Shash Jáa monument is 130,000 acres (three times the size of Washington, DC) and Indian Creek is 72,000 acres (almost twice DC). From Grand Staircase Escalante, the new Grand Staircase is 210,000 acres (one-third of Rhode Island); Kaiparowits is 551,000 acres (81% of RI); and Escalante Canyons is 243,000 acres (36% of RI). To suggest that these monuments are now too small to safeguard their unique habitats, scenic areas, fossil sites, antiquities and Pueblo ruins is simply absurd – and disingenuous.

Imagine the Fish & Wildlife Service or other federal agency “protecting” one-half of Rhode Island or Delaware as a monument or endangered species habitat, to safeguard a Native American village site, small meteorite crater, scenic river valley, or rare fish, frog or bird habitat – on the bogus ground that making a smaller area off limits to human activity would leave it open to depredation.

That’s what Utah was dealing with – along with claims that a single mine, oil well, road, ranch, town or other sign of humanity’s presence … in areas the size of Rhode Island, Delaware or even Connecticut … would forever destroy the “wilderness character” of the entire area. This is what drives environmentalist activism and decades of pre-Trump federal land management policy. It’s deplorable and intolerable.

In reality, all areas removed from highly restrictive “national monument” status remain under the management and protection of multiple federal agencies and regulations. They are not being “stolen,” given to Utah or private interests, opened to rapacious looting and development, or left defenseless.

In stark contrast to the way Presidents Clinton and Obama designated the two original monuments, these decisions to reduce their size were made only after numerous extensive meetings and consultations, over a six-month period, with local residents and leaders, tribal and inter-tribal members and delegates, local, county and congressional representatives, environmental groups and many other parties.

If any of these or other people and organizations want official wilderness or park status for any of these areas that have been returned to traditional “multiple use” management and protection – they can and should utilize the legislative processes required by the Constitution, Wilderness Act and other laws. Any other approach would be improper, unconstitutional, illegal, unethical and dismissive of local interests.

On a related front, federal arrogance and heavy-handedness took the Obama era war on coal to the Navajo Nation. Citing specious climate change, health and “viewshed” justifications, regulators issued what were effectively execution orders for the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station and its associated coal mine –destroying two pillars of the precarious Navajo economy and living standards. In league with radical greens, they also scuttled plans to build the proposed state-of-the-art Desert Rock coal-fired power plant.

As in the case of huge Utah national monument designations, Navajo families and tribal leaders were deliberately and systematically excluded from the decision-making and property confiscation process.

This is the regulatory culture and mindset that President Trump and Secretary Zinke are trying to change. For doing so, they are meeting fierce resistance and disinformation from Patagonia, North Face and their allies. Shoppers might want to keep this in mind when thinking about what to buy for holiday gifts.

Via email





UK: The criminals, crackpots and extremists who have poisoned anti-fracking camp protests

Protesters claim that they represent communities near the fracking drilling sites But analysis shows that only around a quarter ever lived nearby before joining And convicted criminals and extremists are also involved

Anti-fracking protest camps in two areas of the country have been infiltrated by violent criminals, drug users, wild conspiracy theorists and ‘professional’ political activists, a Mail on Sunday investigation reveals today.

Policing the protesters, who frequently resort to ‘direct action’ such as blocking roads to hold up shale gas drilling, has cost local taxpayers almost £4 million this year and led to more than 400 arrests.

The protesters claim on their websites that they represent communities near the drilling sites and are protecting them from the dangers posed by fracking.

But analysis of those arrested shows only about a quarter had ever lived nearby until they joined the camps.

Many genuine locals – including those opposed to fracking – have vehemently condemned the protesters and the disruption their tactics cause.

At Kirby Misperton, near Malton in North Yorkshire, they have formed an anti-protester protest group, which already boasts more than 800 members.

And last week it emerged that on seven separate occasions, protesters in Lancashire made bogus 999 calls to the ambulance service, claiming they had been injured by police – but then refused to go to hospital, saying they were unhurt. Meanwhile, traffic chaos caused by protesters has delayed the response to genuine emergencies at least twice.

However, the protest camp residents have been applauded by visiting celebrities and Left-wing politicians, including Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas.

Ms Lucas told demonstrators at the fracking site at Preston New Road near Blackpool that they were on the ‘right side of history’.

She claimed that ‘direct action’ was necessary because they had ‘tried the democratic process and it hasn’t worked’.

When he visited, Mr McDonnell said he would ‘take back a message to Parliament and my colleagues that we need to give you all the support we can’. Throughout his career, Mr McDonnell has frequently called for direct action to achieve political change: after this year’s Election, he claimed it was needed to ‘bring down the Government’.

Inquiries by this newspaper have revealed:

At the Lancashire camp, protest leaders include individuals convicted of both violent and sexual assault, and a man with robbery and battery convictions who has used social media to incite vigilante attacks against a paedophile;

At Kirby Misperton, the camp was co-founded by Stephen Peers, who was given a three-month jail sentence in 2014 for an assault on his wife and later jailed again for illegally filming court proceedings;

His co-founder Ian Crane is a conspiracy theorist who hosts weekly internet TV shows in which he proclaims terrorist outrages such as 9/11 and recent attacks in London were the work of the British and American governments;

Mr McDonnell and Ms Lucas were briefed about allegedly ‘oppressive’ policing in Lancashire by a man who insists he is a ‘Jedi Knight’. Although his real name is Daniel Nye, he will only answer to the name ‘Master Lion’;

Posts on a Facebook page by protesters in Lancashire say a woman there was taken to hospital after taking a Class A drug ‘cooked up’ on site by another resident, while in Yorkshire, posts contain references to an alleged sexual assault.

Fracking – a method of producing natural gas by fracturing rocks deep underground using water pumped under pressure – has not taken place in Britain since 2011, when a test at another site in Lancashire by gas exploration firm Cuadrilla caused two minor tremors.

It was not until this year, following years of planning inquiries and legal battles, that Cuadrilla began to drill again at Preston New Road, where it has permission to conduct limited test fracks. Only then will it be known whether the area contains gas in viable quantities.

Rival firm Third Energy will conduct similar tests at Kirby Misperton. At both sites, the planning process will have to start again before the drillers can move to commercial production.

By the summer of 2017, there were three separate camps at Preston New Road and two camps at Kirby Misperton. Some residents have been arrested up to nine times for taking part in direct action protests.

A favourite tactic is ‘locking on’ – two protesters lie on the tarmac outside a site entrance with an arm inside a plastic pipe, their wrists locked to a metal rod driven through it. The pipe is wrapped in layers of concrete, so cutting them free is extremely difficult.

Another method is ‘slow walking’ – creeping very slowly in front of a lorry headed for the site. Yet another is ‘lorry surfing’ – climbing on top of a truck and refusing to come down, rendering it immobile.

At Kirby Misperton in October, protesters managed to break into the drilling site, where they climbed the rig and let off flares.

More than 100 police officers have been needed on some days at both sites – requiring some to be drafted in from other parts of the country.

 Superintendent Richard Robertshaw, who is heading the police operation in Lancashire, said: ‘Lock-ons cause maximum disruption. They require teams of specially equipped and trained officers to cut the protesters out without injuring them and it can take hours.’

He said the protesters know that they will be arrested and convicted. But invariably they are charged with a minor offence for which they will usually be given a conditional discharge.

He added: ‘The level of crime is low, but the level of disruption is very high. The protesters will say their intention is to make the development of fracking so painful and expensive that Cuadrilla won’t want to stay in this market.’

The cost for local taxpayers is also high. In August, the Lancashire operation alone cost more than £1 million and the total for the year will top £3 million. In Yorkshire, where the protests started later, the cost will be a further £800,000.

Sometimes protesters post live video feeds on social media which make it clear some have behaved aggressively to police. Supt Robertshaw said: ‘Officers have been briefed to expect a high level of verbal abuse. We have tried to be as understanding as possible to them exercising their right to protest.’

Fracking opponents from the political mainstream – such as Mr McDonnell and Ms Lucas – have claimed police tactics are oppressive. But when Lancashire engineer Brent Crossley asked friends to sign a letter to the chief constable expressing support for police, he quickly gathered 350 signatures.

He said yesterday: ‘The protesters are incredibly antagonistic. If you criticise them on social media, you will be bombarded with threats and abuse. They cause chaos on the roads. They say fracking will affect local house prices but they’re affecting them far more. The camps have become a permanent feature. I don’t see how they get away with it.’

Around Kirby Misperton, Ryedale Against Antisocial Protesters started only a month ago but now has more than 800 members – including some who oppose fracking.

Resident Ruth Hardie said: ‘I’m not in favour of fracking but we’re surrounded by protesters. ‘It’s a beautiful village, with three roads in and out – and they control two of them.’

She revealed that last month, her daughter, 11, contracted appendicitis. She only just managed to get her to the GP for an emergency appointment where the doctor diagnosed her condition and sent her to hospital, because the protesters began a lock-on in the middle of the village. After the operation, they narrowly missed another lock-on, which would have forced the sick child to walk home. She said: ‘We’re moving because of the protesters. I don’t feel safe here any more.’

Last Thursday, Kirby Misperton protesters disrupted a Ryedale district council meeting, forcing it to be adjourned – the third time they have disrupted a local or county council meeting in the past month.

Janet Sanderson, a Conservative member of both bodies, said they were ‘interfering with the democratic process – and whether you’re for or against fracking, that is unacceptable’. She said she had been jostled by protesters when she tried to take her seat, and when one councillor had tried to restore order, they had ‘yelled abuse’.

Most of those convicted of offences arising from the protests do not have convictions for other types of crime. But this newspaper has established from official court records that some do. For example, Preston New Road regular Adam Loughlin, alias ‘Bibbs Bloc’, was convicted of a sexual assault and placed on the sex offenders’ register for five years in 2013. And last week, he boasted on Facebook of his ‘special’ advent calendar containing several varieties of super-strong cannabis.

Meanwhile, fellow protester Ben Deevoy – who has convictions for robbery and battery – was jailed last year by magistrates for incitement after posting a video on social media urging viewers to help him attack a man convicted of possessing indecent images of children.

Deevoy said on the video: ‘He’s a paedo and he’s walking the streets. These f****** mugs must be taken off our streets… let’s find him, because I’m going to put my nut on his head and my steel toe-capped boots in his b****. Get me his address please guys.’

After a month in prison, Deevoy won his appeal – a judge ruled she did not believe anyone would have helped him conduct the attack.

Later, Deevoy posted a video of himself intimidating staff at a Blackpool hardware store he claimed was linked to Cuadrilla.

Another person arrested at Preston New Road is Sarah Boyle. In 2016, she was given a suspended jail sentence for causing actual bodily harm. She lured another woman to a Fleetwood flat and, according to prosecutors, ‘tortured’ her, burning her face with a lit cigarette and causing further burns to her legs with a stun-gun.

Lancashire Labour MP Graham Jones told The Mail on Sunday it was time to crack down on unlawful protests: ‘I’m neither for nor against fracking. But it seems evident these protests have been hijacked by some unsavoury characters from outside Lancashire. They disrupt the lives of local people and, it would appear, are intent on provoking the police and wasting taxpayers’ money.’

A Third Energy spokesman said: ‘In recent weeks, we have seen a period of sustained illegal protest by a small group, many of whom do not live locally. The cost of policing has sky-rocketed, and the wellsite operators have also incurred significant security costs.’

Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan added: ‘People have a right to protest lawfully. But what we have seen over many months are disruptive, dangerous and unlawful direct actions that have, for the most part, been organised and conducted by a hardcore of professional out-of-town protesters.

‘Several of these individuals have criminal records for offences that have nothing to do with fracking or legitimate political dissent.’

SOURCE





Advanced Nuclear Finds a More Welcome Home in Canada

Canadian regulators announced that Terrestrial Energy has completed the initial phase of a design review for its molten-salt nuclear power plant, giving the Ontario-based company a small early lead in the race to commission the first commercial fourth-generation reactor in North America.

To be sure, it’s a very early step in what will be a long regulatory process, the first of three phases in just the “pre-licensing” review. All the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has really said is that the company has demonstrated it intends to comply with regulatory requirements, while noting that the company has a lot more to do to prove that its conceptual designs will operate safely in the real world.

It will be at least the later part of the next decade before any Terrestrial reactor will be up and running. But industry observers say the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s nod represents an important step toward building a next generation of safer nuclear plants that could be cheaper to build and operate, and would meet a broader range of market needs.

“It’s the biggest milestone since we formed the company, and an industry milestone as well,” says Simon Irish, chief executive of Terrestrial, which has selected the Canadian National Labs in Chalk River, Ontario, as the site of the first plant.

The news is also notable as one more example of another nation forging ahead on the molten-salt technologies first developed decades ago in the United States. China is pursuing an ambitious and accelerated thorium-fueled molten-salt reactor, as MIT Technology Review previously reported, and so is the Netherlands nuclear research center NRG (see “Fail-Safe Nuclear Power”).

Meanwhile, fourth-generation-reactor companies such as London-based Moltex Energy and Advanced Reactor Concepts of Delaware have also opted to pursue early regulatory approval in Canada.

There are certainly efforts under way in the United States to pursue molten salt and other advanced nuclear technologies, including projects at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory and the university’s spinout Transatomic (see “Nuclear Energy Startup Transatomic Backtracks on Key Promises”). But so far, no known molten-salt projects have submitted a design certification application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (although NuScale is pursuing approval for a small modular reactor).

So why are things moving faster overseas?

While the U.S. nuclear review process is considered the “gold standard” on safety, some startups and researchers believe it’s not adequately accommodating of advanced technologies. A specific critique is that the commission doesn’t offer the early feedback that would let companies properly assess regulatory risk before investing hundreds of millions of dollars in further design and development.

The Canadian process is better defined and offers a series of earlier official reviews, says Ryan Fitzpatrick, deputy director of the clean-energy program at the think tank Third Way. The commission evaluates designs on the basis of broader safety principles rather than specific technological requirements, which offers greater flexibility for the varied set of emerging technologies, he says.

There have been some efforts to improve the U.S. review process. In March, the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee passed the bipartisan Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, which would require the NRC to establish a regulatory framework for licensing advanced nuclear reactors. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, in recent public appearances, has also highlighted the importance of pushing forward nuclear technologies, particularly small modular reactors—marking a rare area where the Trump administration is actively promoting a source of carbon-free energy.

Terrestrial’s 190-megawatt integrated molten-salt reactor combines several promising advanced nuclear approaches. Using molten salts rather than water to dissipate heat from the fission process is considered inherently safer, because it allows the reactor to operate at ambient atmospheric pressure. This lowers containment costs and enables cooling even when the system loses power (see “MIT’s Nuclear Lab has an Unusual Plan to Jump-Start Advanced-Reactor Research”).

The IMSR is also a small modular reactor. That means the components can be mass-produced in factories and shipped to their final site, promising to lower construction costs and risks (see “Small Reactors Could Kick-Start the Stalled Nuclear Sector”).

Terrestrial is a technology developer and design vendor. It hopes to get its plans preapproved through regulatory agencies and license its technology to other companies that will construct and operate the plants.

CEO Irish says he’s confident the company will be able to address the areas of work highlighted in the review, improving predictions about the behavior of the reactor core and collecting additional data on safety margins and operating performance.

The company’s U.S. affiliate has also begun early regulatory discussions concerning an advanced small modular reactor at Idaho National Laboratory, but it doesn’t plan to submit a licensing application until late 2019.

Many energy experts say the world is going to need far more nuclear power to address the escalating threat of climate change, simply because it’s a carbon-free energy source that doesn’t face the intermittency limitations of renewables like solar and wind.

But the industry has languished amid widespread public safety concerns, massive project costs and risks, high-profile boondoggles, and challenging regulatory requirements (see “Meltdown of Toshiba’s Nuclear Business Dooms New Construction in the U.S.”). Nevertheless, hopes are growing that advanced reactors can overcome some of these issues, helping to restore momentum in the sector.

“Advanced reactors are definitely a big part of getting nuclear to meet its full potential and pull its weight in the climate fight,” Fitzpatrick says.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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