https://www.npr.org/2021/11/21/1056835748/u-s-emergency-oil-stockpiles-spr-gas-prices

November 21, 20215:00 AM ET

Camila Domonoske

Twitter

A recent surge in gasoline prices has left President Biden scrambling for options to do something about it.

One that’s getting a lot of attention is the possibility that the Biden administration will release crude oil from the country’s emergency oil stockpile, known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Much will depend on oil prices, which have soared over the past year, recovering to their pre-pandemic levels and then some. But after rising to more than $86 a barrel in October, they have since dropped to less than $80.

A lot of factors are affecting prices — including the fact that the White House is now talking about tapping the stockpile.

Here’s an explainer on the country’s oil reserves and whether tapping them would actually be effective.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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The post Leave It In The Ground – Biden should not tap the Petroleum Reserves appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://news.yahoo.com/us-very-bullish-on-new-nuclear-technology-granholm-says-110016617.html

U.S. ‘very bullish’ on new nuclear technology, Granholm says

Ben Adler

·Senior Climate Editor

Sat, November 6, 2021, 5:05 AM·6 min read

GLASGOW, Scotland — In an interview at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told Yahoo News on Friday that the Biden administration is “very bullish” on building new nuclear reactors in the United States.

“We are very bullish on these advanced nuclear reactors,” she said. “We have, in fact, invested a lot of money in the research and development of those. We are very supportive of that.”

Nuclear energy is controversial among environmental activists and experts because while it does not create the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, it has the potential to trigger dangerous nuclear meltdowns and creates radioactive nuclear waste.

Most of the Biden administration’s effort to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and almost all the rhetoric at the climate change conference, also known as COP26, is about promoting other clean forms of energy, such as wind and solar power.

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Go there and scream. I mean read. More next week.

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The post We Don’t Need No Stinkin Baseload – What we need is more storage appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-world-is-stuck-with-decades-of-new-plastic-it-can-t-recycle?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Ants are useful creatures. As the most numerous insects on Earth, they have colonized nearly every habitat on land. So when a researcher wants to understand how far a contaminant has spread, they turn to ants.

In 2012, a group of French researchers found phthalates in the body of every ant they sampled. Ants from France, Hungary, Spain, Morocco, the Greek island Egine, and Burkina Faso all had at least some of the common plastic additive embedded in their skin. In the conclusion to the paper announcing their findings, they added a restless-sounding note: “In an attempt to find ants bearing no phthalate on their cuticle,” they wrote, they would next look farther afield. There had to be ants out there not yet full of plastic.

But there were not. Five years later, the team published their follow-up. They had sampled ants from the most remote forests of Guyana, and the areas in the Amazon rainforest farthest from any urban center. Again, phthalates were embedded in their skin. “These findings suggest that there is no such thing as a ‘pristine’ zone,” they wrote in a 2017 paper.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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The post The Oil Companies Have Poisoned The World – I am not talking about their refined fuels appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

Destroy, Destroy, Destroy. That is what this President does because he has bought the general idea of “Disruption and Replacement” coming from Silicon Valley as a good thing for society. He doesn’t not understand that Disruption with out planning is BAD for society in general and only makes a few men (and women) rich. Or maybe, he actually does understand and just doesn’t care. One makes him evil by nature and the other makes him evil by nurture. I’ll leave it up to you to decide. One thing for sure is that his whole Presidency has been a disaster for the environment and the Earth, and that will be his lasting legacy.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/10/28/tongass-national-forest-alaska-exempt-roadless-rule-usda/6065610002/

USA Today

Feds end road, logging restrictions in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, one of the world’s largest temperate rainforests

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The post The Cheeto Burrito Seeks To Destroy Tsongass National Forest – Destruction is his legacy appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://news.yahoo.com/belarus-cranks-1st-nuclear-plant-122609420.html

MOSCOW (AP) — Belarus’ first nuclear power plant began operating Tuesday, a project that has spooked its neighbor Lithuania, which immediately cut off importing electricity from Belarus at the news.

The Russian-built Astravyets nuclear power plant, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, has been connected to Belarus’ power grid and has started producing electricity, according to Belarusian electricity operator Belenergo.

Lithuanian authorities long have opposed the plant’s construction, arguing that the project has been plagued by accidents, stolen materials and the mistreatment of workers. In line with the country’s law banning electricity imports from Belarus once the plant starts, Lithuania’s Litgrid power operator cut the inflow of electricity from Belarus upon receiving data that the Astravyets nuclear reactor had started producing energy.

Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, which built the plant, has rejected the Lithuanian complaints, saying the plant’s design conforms to the highest international standards as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. watchdog.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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The post What Could Go Wrong With A Russian Nuke – That’s what Lithuanian thought appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled?utm_source=digg

September 11, 20205:00 AM ET

Laura Sullivan

Twitter

Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.

None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.

“To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust,” she said. “I had been lying to people … unwittingly.”

Rogue, like most recycling companies, had been sending plastic trash to China, but when China shut its doors two years ago, Leebrick scoured the U.S. for buyers. She could find only someone who wanted white milk jugs. She sends the soda bottles to the state.

But when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn’t want to hear it.

“I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage,” she says, “and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You’re lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It’s gold. This is valuable.”

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Go there and read. Next time you see an empty gallon milk jug. Light it on fire in protest. More next week.

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P.S. Today is recycling day in Riverton and they just took my plastic away. hahahahaa

The post Recycling Plastic Was Always A Lie – There is only so much plastic furniture and astroturf the world needs appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://environmentalprogress.org/who-we-are

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The post Michael Sellenberger Is A Lying Fool – He is a huge supporter of Nuclear Power appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://logicmag.io/nature/what-green-costs/?utm_source=digg

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Go there and read. More next week, if there is a next week.

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The post The Darkside Of The Green Revolution – Lithium extraction really messes things up appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/us/pge-outage.html

PG&E Power Outage: Live Updates as Californians Face a Blackout

The second phase of a safety plan intended to prevent wildfires left hundreds of thousands more without electricity.

By Thomas Fuller

Right Now

Around 600,000 electricity customers were without power on Thursday morning.

The second phase of the shutdown cut power to about 250,000 more customers.

SAN FRANCISCO – Large areas of Northern California remained without power on Thursday as a major outage rocked the region for a second day. About 600,000 electricity customers were affected on Thursday morning after the state’s largest utility carried out the second phase of its intentional power cut.

Pacific Gas and Electric said extreme winds overnight forced the additional shutdown, which the utility organized to prevent equipment from sparking fires.

The second phase affected bedroom communities in the San Francisco Bay Area and added to the hundreds of thousands of customers who had lost power on Wednesday. As of Thursday morning, the company had restored power to 137,000 customer

And here is a map to see if you or someone you love is effected.

http://critweb-outage.pgealerts.com/?WT.mc_id=Vanity_pge-outages

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Go there and weep. More next week.

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The post Pacific Gas & Electric Cuts Power To 600,000 – They are bankrupt as well appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-france-nuclear/china-launches-worlds-first-epr-nuclear-project-in-taishan-idUSKBN1OD0Y4

World’s second EPR nuclear reactor starts work in China

A next-generation EPR nuclear reactor in China has carried out its first chain reaction, French energy giant EDF announced Wednesday, becoming the second using the much-delayed European technology to reach the milestone.

The fission reaction at the Taishan 2 reactor on Tuesday follows the Taishan 1 becoming last year the first of its kind to advance to the operational stage.

“The nuclear reaction was authorised and yesterday the Chinese reactor carried out a fission reaction for the first time,” EDF chairman and CEO Jean-Bernard Levy told Europe 1 radio on Wednesday.

As a side note, if you are interested in a Guide To Solar Power, the replacement for nukes. Please look here.

https://www.flexible-solar-panel.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-solar-energy/

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Go to all of those places and read. More next week.

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The post Nuclear Power In China – The new frontier appeared first on Community Energy Systems.