League of Women Voters Shines Light on Nuclear S.C.

[bananas]

http://www.free-times.com/news/league-of-women-voters-shines-light-on-nuclear-sc-020514

League of Women Voters Shines Light on Nuclear S.C.
By Porter Barron Jr.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Back in 1997, when Mary Kelly, chemist and stalwart of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina, wrote her first report on the Palmetto State’s nuclear affairs, states across the country were sending their low-level radioactive sludge to the nuke dump in Barnwell County, and residents of Columbia’s low-income, predominantly black Edisto Court were speaking out against a nuclear-waste laundry that had quietly arrived in their neighborhood.

Kelly’s watchdog report, published by the League, provided many South Carolinians with their first understanding of exactly what was happening behind the high fences and security checkpoints at the seven major facilities in one of the most nuclearized states in the nation.

The League recently issued a follow-up report — dedicated to Kelly, who died in November — which offers a new overview of nuclear activities in South Carolina. It also airs concerns about the transportation of nuclear waste, such as spent nuclear fuels from overseas destined for reprocessing at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site; the protracted political battles over where to store mounting nuclear waste; and “dispelling the notion that reprocessing wastes would lessen the need for geologic storage,” such as the abandoned subterranean facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

<snip>

For Tom Clements, a long-time nuclear watchdog and policy expert based in Columbia, South Carolina’s nuclear situation has deteriorated since Kelly’s first report. As evidence, he points to numbers from a 2012 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service showing that, when Kelly’s report came out in 1997, South Carolina was home to approximately 2,100 metric tons of commercial spent fuel waste. As of today, he says, that number is closer to 4,300 metric tons.

“There’s still no plan for disposal,” Clements says. “The only thing that’s changed is the waste has doubled.”

Nuclear Waste in South Carolina: An Issue Brief for Citizens
Read the full report at http://lwvsc.org/files/nuclearwaste20140116.pdf

[Herself]

1. once the profits are made...

politicians get their pay off's, chapter closed.

[kristopher]

2. The dedication to nuclear explains this too...

They can't promote policies that will reduce the sales needed to pay for their nuclear plants.

South Carolina Senate plan would stop solar tax credits for homeowners

South Carolina’s skepticism about solar power emerged again Tuesday, when lawmakers agreed to phase out solar tax credits for homeowners at the same time utility regulators were offering little support for a large solar farm in the Upstate.

The Senate Finance Committee voted to drop the residential tax credit after 2017 as part of a bill intended to help businesses that want to use sun panels to save money. Under current South Carolina law, homeowners can claim a 25 percent tax credit off the cost of installing solar panels.

Senators said little about why they wanted to phase out the tax credit for homeowners, but Sen. William O’Dell, R-Abbeville, said a similar federal tax credit is to expire in the next three years.

Republican Sen. Wes Hayes, of York, and Columbia-area Democrats Nikki Setzler, Darrell Jackson and Joel Lourie questioned why South Carolina can’t have its own solar tax credit for homeowners, regardless of what the federal government does....

http://www.thestate.com/2014/02/04/3245364/sc-senate-plan-would-stop-solar.html