The alleged “Project Need” in
Sabal Trail’s Friday FERC docket CP15-17 permit application
to get eminent domain for its 100-foot-wide gouge for a yard-wide hazardous fracked methane pipeline is: Sabal Trail claims it has contracts to sell the gas.
Let’s apply that logic to Sabal Trail co-owner FPL’s headquarters.
This is FPL headquarters at 700 Universe Blvd., Juno Beach, Florida, in the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s map: Continue reading
An actor turned anti-nuke activist after Fukushima just won a seat in Japan’s upper house in the national government.
Japan Times, 22 July 2013 (Tokyo time is 13 hours ahead of Georgia time),
Actor Yamamoto, ex-wrestler Inoki win,
Actor and anti-nuclear activist Taro Yamamoto and ex-wrestling star Antonio Inoki both won seats in Sunday’s Upper House contest, early returns showed.
Yamamoto, 38, who ran as an independent in the Tokyo constituency, appeared set to enter the upper chamber after failing to win a seat in the Lower House election in December.
He became widely known for his anti-nuclear power activities following the March 2011 Fukushima meltdowns. He has also campaigned against Japan’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade liberalization negotiations, while calling for improved social security.
Blogger In the Eyes of an Étranger reports Toro Yamamoto said about his election win:
“I will do a banzai to celebrate the occasion when I really end up helping the victims of the nuclear disaster. A thorny path lies ahead of me. Vested nuclear interests will no doubt try to sabotage my efforts. My only friend in my endeavor are the voters who entrusted their sacred votes.”
WSJ notes five seats for Tokyo were contested Continue reading
At yesterday’s Big Bets movie premiere, Southern Company doubled down and dug deeper in the hole.
Joeff Davis wrote for Fresh Loaf yesterday, Protesters picket utility’s Midtown film premiere, blast construction of new nuclear reactors
On the same day that tens of thousands of protesters rallied in Tokyo against the restart of Japan’s nuclear reactors, roughly 30 protesters chanted, marched, and handed out flyers today in Midtown to protest against Georgia Power’s construction of two new nuclear reactors in eastern Georgia. The two units, which are located about 175 miles from downtown Atlanta, are the first to be built in the United States in nearly three decades.
“Georgia Power is using our money to pay for something we don’t need, we don’t want and is killing us,” said Margie Resse as she handed out flyers outside the Fox Theatre. Southern Company, Georgia Power’s parent company, had reserved the historic Midtown venue to screen a documentary that it commissioned about the utility’s 100-year history for shareholders and executives.
The flyers claimed that Southern Company used “its notorious lobbying machine to
push a $2 billion rate hike” onto Georgia ratepayers to build “two risky nuclear reactors on the Savannah River,” which the groups say are months behind schedule and $900 million overbudget. The flyer urges ratepayers to refuse to pay a fee tacked on to utility bills that helps pay for the reactors’ construction.
Southern Company Spokesman Steve Higginbottom, standing just inside
the Fox Theatre’s entrance and speaking barely above the protesters’ chants, said that Southern Company supports the rights of protesters but disputes their claims.
The “$900 million” figure cited by protesters, he said, has been alleged by Westinghouse, the manufacturer of the reactor, and Shaw, the project’s general contractor.
Um, Southern Company’s response is to talk about infighting among the consortium building the new nukes? SO could be digging themselves a hole deeper than the one the reactors sit in….
I do compliment Higginbottom and Southern Company on being consistently civil, however.
-jsq
Takao Yamada wrote for Mainichi Japan 2 April 2012, In light of further nuclear risks, economic growth should not be priority,
A report released in February by the Independent Investigation Commission on theFukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident stated that the storage pool of the plant’s No. 4 reactor has clearly been shown to be “the weakest link” in the parallel, chain-reaction crises of the nuclear disaster. The worse-case scenario drawn up by the government includes not only the collapse of the No. 4 reactor pool, but the disintegration of spent fuel rods from all the plant’s other reactors. If this were to happen, residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate.
Fukushima is about 200 miles from Tokyo. Plant Hatch at Baxley, which has the same reactor design as at Fukushima, is about the same distance from Atlanta and Charleston, closer to Tallahassee and Jacksonville, and much closer to many of us in south Georgia.
The article concludes:
We cannot accept the absurd condescension of those who fear the worse-case scenario, labeling them as “overreacting.” We have no time to humor the senseless thinking that instead, those who downplay the risks for the sake of economic growth are “realistic.”
So, what do you get in a solar spill? Sunshine. What do you get when a wind turbine breaks? Maybe some local damage. What do you get when a nuclear plant fails? Oh….
-jsq
Such publicly owned networks can offer services that incumbents don’t, such as the 1Gbps fiber network in Chattanooga, Tennessee, run by the government-owned electric power board. And they sometimes have more incentive to reach every resident, even in surrounding rural areas, in ways that might not make sense for a profit-focused company.According to this map of Community Broadband Networks by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, quite a few small cities in south Georgia have municipal cable networks:
All three of Moultrie, Thomasville, and Cairo use CNS, whose brochure for Moultrie says you can get:
| Downstream | Upstream | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Mbps | 1 Mbps | $29.95 |
| 12 Mbps | 2 Mbps | $35.95 |
| 22 Mbps | 3 Mbps | $49.95 |
If Moultrie, Thomasville, and Cairo, and yes, Doerun can do this, why can’t Valdosta and Hahira?
And then how about add on a wireless network to reach the rest of us rural folk?
Maybe then we wouldn’t be the Internet backwoods.
-jsq
I wrote that article more than a year ago, and Internet speeds in rural Georgia have not improved much if at all. This isn’t just about playing Farmville. It’s about communicating with your relatives, about competing in business, Continue reading