Keith Bradsher and Hiroko Tabuchi report in the New York Times today:
Years of procrastination in deciding on long-term disposal of highly radioactive fuel rods from nuclear reactors are now coming back to haunt Japanese authorities as they try to control fires and explosions at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
Some countries have tried to limit the number of spent fuel rods that accumulate at nuclear power plants: Germany stores them in costly casks, for example, while China sends them to a desert storage compound in the western province of Gansu. But Japan, like the United States, has kept ever-larger numbers of spent fuel rods in temporary storage pools at the power plants, where they can be guarded with the same security provided for the plants.
Now those temporary pools are proving the power plant’s Achilles’ heel, with the water in the pools either boiling away or leaking out of their containments, and efforts to add more water having gone awry. While spent fuel rods generate significantly less heat than newer ones do, there are strong indications that some fuel rods have begun to melt and release extremely high levels of radiation.
The reason why the United States stores spent fuel rods on site is because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has been able to block building the Yucca Mountain nuclear depository in Nevada for years. In 2009, President Barack Obama cancelled Yucca Mountain entirely.
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Late in the 111th Congress, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was building bipartisan support for a Resolution of Disapproval under the Congressional Review Act that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
Due to a parliamentary quirk, the Resolution needed only a majority to pass (that is, it wouldn’t necessitate 60 votes to beat a filibuster) and it was entitled to a vote, so the Democratic leadership in the Senate could not sweep it under a rug. Moreover, there are 23 Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2012, and the political mood of the country in the summer of 2010 was shifting right. (This was evidenced by the GOP’s success in last November’s elections.) As such, an EPA reform bill was an attractive vote for many Senate Democrats from purple states, where the EPA is held is lower esteem than in, say, California or New York. As a result of these factors, Sen. Murkowski’s Resolution appeared to have good prospects.
Enter Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Just as Sen. Murkowski’s Resolution was gaining steam, Sen. Rockefeller introduced legislation that would delay the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases for two years, rather than repeal its authority outright (as Sen. Murkowski’s Resolution would have done).
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My CEI colleague Sam Kazman has a great oped in today’s Wall Street Journal, on how federal regulators are making us dirtier…literally.
Here’s the gist:
In 1996, top-loaders were pretty much the only type of washer around, and they were uniformly high quality. When Consumer Reports tested 18 models, 13 were “excellent” and five were “very good.” By 2007, though, not one was excellent and seven out of 21 were “fair” or “poor.” This month came the death knell: Consumer Reports simply dismissed all conventional top-loaders as “often mediocre or worse.”
How’s that for progress?
The culprit is the federal government’s obsession with energy efficiency. Efficiency standards for washing machines aren’t as well-known as those for light bulbs, which will effectively prohibit 100-watt incandescent bulbs next year. Nor are they the butt of jokes as low-flow toilets are. But in their quiet destruction of a highly affordable, perfectly satisfactory appliance, washer standards demonstrate the harmfulness of the ever-growing body of efficiency mandates.
Read the whole thing here.
Today, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a major rule to regulate power plants under the Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAP) Section 112 of the Clean Air Act.
This post is a primer on this consequential and controversial decision.
Section 112 of the Clean Air Act
- In 1970, the Congress added Section 112 to the Clean Air Act, requiring that the EPA list and regulate Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) that could “cause, or contribute to, an increase in mortality or an increase in serious irreversible or incapacitating reversible illness.” The Congress ordered the EPA to establish standards for HAPs that provided “an ample margin of safety to protect public health.”
- Due to difficulties interpreting what should constitute “an ample margin of safety,” the EPA largely ignored Section 112 for two decades.
- In 1990, the Congress, frustrated with the slow pace of HAP regulation, amended the Clean Air Act to remove much of EPA’s discretion over the implementation of Section 112. Lawmakers listed 189 pollutants for regulation. They also legislated HAP pollution controls, known as Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards. The Clean Air Act amendments set a “MACT floor” (i.e., a minimum HAP pollution control) at “the average emission limitation achieved by the best performing 12 percent of the existing sources.”
- Section 112 MACT standards apply to both new and existing stationary sources.
- Notably, the Congress required the EPA to proceed with caution before it regulated Electricity Generating Units (“EGUs,” or power plants). The 1990 Clean Air Amendments mandated a study on the public health threats posed by EGU HAP emissions, and the EPA Administrator was authorized to proceed with the regulation of HAPs from EGUs only after evaluating the results of this study, and concluding that “such regulation is appropriate and necessary.”
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Yesterday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved H.R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, as amended, by 34-19. The bill would stop EPA from ‘legislating’ climate policy through the Clean Air Act. All 31 Republicans and three Democrats (Mike Ross of Arkansas, Jim Matheson of Utah, and John Barrow of Georgia) voted for the bill.
Opponents introduced several amendments, all of which were defeated.
Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) offered an amendment stating that Congress accepts EPA’s finding that “climate change is unequivocal.” Rep. Diana DeGett (D-Colo.) offered an amendment stating that Congress accepts as “compelling” the scientific evidence that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are the “root cause” of climate change. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) offered an amendment stating that Congress accepts EPA’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) offered an amendment limiting H.R. 910’s applicability until the Secretary of Defense certifies that climate change does not threaten U.S. national security interests. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) offered an amendment allowing EPA to issue greenhouse gas regulations that reduce U.S. oil consumption. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) offered an amendment limiting H.R. 910’s applicability until the Centers for Disease Control certify that climate change is not a public health threat. Rep. Inslee also offered an amendment limiting H.R. 910’s applicability until the National Academy of Sciences certifies the bill would not increase the incidence of asthma in children.
These amendments had no chance of passing, but that was not their purpose. The objective, rather, was to enable opponents to claim later, when the full House debates the bill, that a vote for H.R. 910 is a vote against science, public health, national security, energy security, and children with asthma. This is arrant nonsense, as I will explain below. [click to continue…]
The Senate may vote today on the McConnell Amendment to S. 493. The amendment is identical to S. 482, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which was passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday evening, with bipartisan support. The legislation would revoke the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
Although this looked like a long shot when Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) surprised everyone by offering it yesterday, the Democratic leadership realized late yesterday afternoon that they might lose. That’s when Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced his two-year delay bill as an amendment. That has fallen flat. The outcome appears to be in doubt this morning. There could be a vote and McConnell’s amendment could pass narrowly. There could be a vote and the amendment could fail narrowly. There could be a deal on all the amendments pending and the amendment could be withdrawn as part of the deal. McConnell could pull the amendment because it’s going to fail. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) could pull the bill from the floor because the amendment is going to pass.
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The Environmental Protection Agency is using an obscure aesthetic regulation in the Clean Air Act to run roughshod over western states.
East of the Mississippi, President Barack Obama’s regulatory crackdown on coal threatens to shutter up to 40 gigawatts of electricity generation. Yet due to a variety of factors (the low sulfur content of western coal, low population density, and newer plant stock), coal-fired plants west of the Mississippi are in a much better position to withstand the regulatory onslaught .
In order to target western coal, the Environmental Protection Agency is leveraging a long ignored provision of the Clean Air Act designed to improve visibility, known as the Regional Haze rule. Notably, this is an aesthetic regulation, not a health-based regulation. In practice, eastern states are exempt from Regional Haze requirements, because the EPA allows states to meet this aesthetic regulation in the course of complying with health-based regulations.
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Last Thursday, the House Energy & Power Subcommittee, on a voice vote, approved H.R. 910, the “Energy Tax Prevention Act.” My colleague Myron Ebell blogged about it over the weekend in a post titled Inside the Beltway.
The present post offers additional commentary. The full House Energy and Commerce Committee marks up the legislation today and tomorrow.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) led the charge for the minority, claiming H.R. 910 “rolls back” the Clean Air Act. Wrong. H.R. 910 restores the Clean Air Act (CAA). Congress never intended the CAA to be a framework for greenhouse gas regulation, and never subsequently voted for it to be used as such a framework. The terms “greenhouse gas” and “greenhouse effect” never even occur in the Act, which was enacted in 1970, years before global warming was even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. [click to continue…]
This post was written by Competitive Enterprise Institute General Counsel Sam Kazman
EPA’s global warming regs are being challenged in a complex set of cases pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. At issue are rules ranging from EPA’s underlying endangerment ruling to its decrees on stationary and vehicle greenhouse gas emissions. A number of petitions for reconsideration were filed with the agency as well, several of them based on the Climategate materials. EPA denied those petitions last summer in a voluminous document which is also part of the litigation.
Among those suing EPA are states, trade associations, public interest groups (including CEI) and individual companies. If you count each separate action brought by each petitioner (including CEI) against each rule, there are 85 cases.
The petitioners tried to have the regulations put on hold until the court decides the cases, but their motion was denied back in December. Both sides have filed suggestions on how the briefing of the cases should proceed, since the court will require almost everyone to file joint briefs. Once the court issues its schedule and format for the briefs, the cases will start moving forward again.
The House of Representatives took the first step on Thursday toward reclaiming its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The Energy and Power (yes, that really is its name) Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee marked up and passed H. R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which is sponsored by Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.). H. R. 910 would pre-empt EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act unless and until explicitly authorized to do so by Congress.
Actually, there was no marking up. The Democrats opposed to the bill offered no amendments, and the bill was passed on a voice vote. The full Committee has scheduled a mark-up of the bill next Monday and Tuesday. That means H. R. 910 could come to the House floor by early April. There is no doubt that it will pass the House by a wide margin. The only question is how many Democrats will end up voting for it. My guess is that quite a few Democrats are worried about getting re-elected and will therefore vote for it.
The subcommittee meeting was one long whine by minority Democrats. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), the ranking Democrat on the full committee and chief sponsor of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that failed in the last Congress, said that H. R. 910 would codify science denial. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) chimed in that he was worried the Republicans would try to repeal the law of gravity. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) instead thought that Republicans were trying to repeal the first law of thermodynamics and cause children all over the world to get asthma.
Preventing asthma is now the principal reason brought forward by the global warming alarmists in Congress to cripple the U. S. economy with energy-rationing regulations. Here is what I learned from a ninety-second internet search: “The majority of people with asthma notice that cold, dry air causes more symptoms than mild-temperature or hot, humid air.” Of course, some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists have recently found that global warming is causing a lot of cold weather.
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