Obama and Alarmists Slapped down on Nuclear Policy and Polar Ice Claims

On August 13, a Federal Appeals Court found that the Obama administration is violating the law by not continuing its work on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site.  In a gift to Harry Reid, early in his first term, the President decided to stop the licensing process for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain project.  In a sharp rebuke to the administration the Court ruled that Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear-waste dump in Nevada, the court said the nuclear agency was “simply flouting the law” when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans to close the proposed waste site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The action violates a federal law designating Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear-waste repository.

Though other options exist for the reuse or storage of spent nuclear fuel, the law currently specifies Yucca Mountain as federal government’s designated storage area.  Establishing such a facility is critical to a successful restart of the nuclear energy industry.  Absent secure storage lenders and investors are wary of getting behind new nuclear plants.  In addition, under the law, because the federal government missed the statutory deadline to open a federal storage facility, the government is to paying nuclear power plants hundreds of millions of dollars to store spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste on site.

Unfortunately vis-à-vis the federal deficit and nuclear security, the administration and its allies in Congress will likely continue to flout the law by refusing to fund licensing and disposal at Yucca Mountain – so much for the Federal Court’s power.

On a second topic, it seems that what NOAA says about global warming is less important than what it found in the fine print of their reports.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released its “State of the Climate in 2012” report, which states that “worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record.” But the report ignores the fact that it was one of the coolest years of the previous decade, and thus reinforces the fact that no global warming has occurred for going on 17 years.  And, although NOAA reported that in 2012, “the Arctic continues to warm” with “sea ice reaching record lows,” it also stated that the Antarctica sea ice “reached a record high of 7.51 million square miles” on Sept. 26, 2012.  Indeed, the most recent figures for this year show that there’s been a slowdown of melting in the Arctic this summer as well, with temperatures at the North Pole well below normal for this time of year. Meteorologist Joe Bastardi calls it “the coldest ever recorded.”

I’d say I’ts time for global warming alarmists to get alarmed at their increasingly regular “mistaken” claims and missed predictions.

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