U.S. Energy Secretary calls for more nuclear power while celebrating US$35 billion Georgia reactors

Jeff Amy, The Associated Press  May 31, 2024

The four nuclear reactors and cooling towers are seen at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, Friday, May 31, 2024, in Waynesboro, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)n

WAYNESBORO, Ga. (AP) — U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Friday called for more nuclear reactors to be built in the United States and worldwide. But the CEO of the Georgia utility that just finished the first two scratch-built American reactors in a generation at a cost of nearly US$35 billion says his company isn't ready to pick up that baton.

Speaking in Waynesboro, Georgia, where Georgia Power Co. and three other utilities last month put a second new nuclear reactor into commercial operation, Granholm said the United States needs 98 more reactors with the capacity of units three and four at Plant Vogtle to produce electricity while reducing climate-changing carbon emissions. Each of the two new reactors can power 500,000 homes and businesses without releasing any carbon.

“It is now time for others to follow their lead to reach our goal of getting to net zero by 2050," Granholm said. "We have to at least triple our current nuclear capacity in this country.”

The federal government says it is easing the risks of nuclear construction, but the $11 billion in cost overruns at Plant Vogtle near Augusta remain sobering for other utilities. Chris Womack is the CEO of Southern Co., the Atlanta-based parent company of Georgia Power. He said he supports Granholm's call for more nuclear-power generation, but he added that his company won't build more soon.

“I think the federal government should provide a leadership role in facilitating and making that become a reality,” Womack said. “We’ve had a long experience, and we’re going to celebrate what we’ve gotten done here for a good little while.”

Friday’s event capped a week of celebrations, where leaders proclaimed the reactors a success, even though they finished seven years late.

On Wednesday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp floated the idea of a fifth Vogtle reactor. Although the Republican Kemp rarely discusses climate change, he has made electric vehicles a priority and has said new industries demand carbon-free electricity.

“One of the first questions on their minds is: Can we provide them with what they need?” Kemp said. “We can confidently answer ‘Yes!’ because of days like today.”

The new Vogtle reactors are currently projected to cost Georgia Power and three other owners $31 billion, according to calculations by The Associated Press. Add in $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid Vogtle owners to walk away from construction, and the total nears $35 billion.

Electric customers in Georgia already have paid billions for what may be the most expensive power plant ever. The federal government aided Vogtle by guaranteeing the repayment of $12 billion in loans, reducing borrowing costs.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s administration held a meeting to promote nuclear power, saying it would create a working group to ease the challenges that dogged Vogtle.

The Biden administration promised that the military would commission reactors, which could help drive down costs for others. It also noted support for smaller reactors, suggesting small reactors could replace coal-fueled electric generating plants that are closing. The administration also pledged to further streamline licensing.

Granholm said that she believed others could learn from Vogtle's mistakes, like starting construction before plans were completed. She also predicted additional models of the Vogtle reactors, which were the first of their kind built in the United States, could be built at lower cost.

“So the question is, how do you learn from the new design in the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth plant? If you don’t vary the design, it gets 30 per cent less expensive every time you build it,” Granholm said.

In Michigan, where Granholm was a Democratic governor, she announced in March up to $1.5 billion in loans to restart the Palisades nuclear power plant, which was shut down in 2022 after a previous owner had trouble producing electricity that was price-competitive.

But with much of the domestic effort focused on building a series of smaller nuclear reactors using mass-produced components, critics question whether they can actually be built more cheaply. Others note that the United States still hasn't created a permanent repository for nuclear waste, which lasts for thousands of years. Other forms of electrical generation, including solar backed up with battery storage, are much cheaper to build initially.

In Georgia, almost every electric customer will pay for Vogtle. Georgia Power owns 45.7 per cent of the reactors. Smaller shares are owned by Oglethorpe Power Corp., which provides electricity to member-owned cooperatives, the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton. Utilities in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as in the Florida Panhandle and parts of Alabama also have contracted to buy Vogtle’s power.

Regulators in December approved an additional six per cent rate increase on Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers to pay for $7.56 billion in remaining costs at Vogtle, with the company absorbing $2.6 billion in costs. That is expected to cost the typical residential customer an additional $8.97 a month in May, on top of the $5.42 increase that took effect when Unit three began operating.

 

AltaGas and Royal Vopak give final OK to build B.C. export facility

The Canadian Press

AltaGas Ltd. and joint venture partner Royal Vopak have approved a final investment decision for a large-scale liquefied petroleum gas and bulk liquids terminal project near Prince Rupert, B.C.

The decision to go ahead with the Ridley Island Energy Export Facility comes after a five-year environmental preparation and review process.

The companies say site clearing work is more than 95 per cent complete and the project is expected to come online near the end of 2026.

The capital cost of the project is estimated at $1.35 billion.

The facility will be built on a 0.77-square kilometre site next to AltaGas and Vopak's existing Ridley Island propane export terminal.

The first phase will include about 55,000 barrels per day of initial liquefied petroleum gas export capacity, including propane and butane, 600,000 barrels of LPG storage, a new jetty and extensive rail and logistics infrastructure. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 30, 2024.

Canopy CEO says he's 'somewhat given up' on pace of U.S. cannabis legalization

Mitchell Consky, BNN Bloomberg

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One cannabis company CEO says he’s “somewhat given up” on the pace of U.S federal cannabis legalization.

During an interview with BNN Bloomberg on Thursday, David Klein, chief executive officer of Canopy Growth, explained that his business doesn’t depend on federal legalization to “work really well.”

“At some point the (U.S.) federal government will decide to completely legalize it and put a federal excise tax regime in place and so forth but we don’t need that for our business to be functioning, profitable and successful,” he said. 

“We need rescheduling, which is going to happen, safe banking would be very helpful and we’re hearing really good things coming about as it relates to that, and the last thing that would be helpful, in particular for our structure, is safe harbour for the exchanges.”

He added that, after these measures, “90 per cent of the benefit that canopy could get from federal legalization will already be in the bank.”

Klein pointed out that Canopy is a relatively new company in a relatively new industry, one that sees “changes that happen literally every single week.”

“From our perspective we feel that we just delivered a really strong quarter with growth in each of our businesses, we’ve cleaned up our balance sheet so we have a really clean balance sheet at this point with over $200 million worth of cash in our bank accounts. And no debt due until 2026.”

He mentioned that regulatory reform will be happening in the U.S. and abroad, an opportunity that Canopy feels prepared for. 

“The best thing we can do as a company is to grow and grow our operating profit,” he said. “There is a level of debt we can sustain and maybe we’re just about there. The best thing we can do is just execute on our business and look for opportunities to grow our operating profits wherever we can.”

Klein explained that companies under Canopy, such as Storz and Bickel, a manufacturer of vaporizers for medical use cannabis, has seen a strong fourth quarter. “They were up 43 per cent,” he said. 

“Our international business was up 32 per cent on the top line in the quarter. Our Canadian business was up four per cent in the quarter. Each of those businesses as a standalone is profitable in and of themselves. And then we have the public company costs that actually put a little bit of a burden on the business’s overall profitability.”

Klein added that, if the company was private, Canopy would be profitable today. 

“Right now, the opportunity is growth and using the capital markets to help us grow is super important,” he said. 

The results of Canopy’s U.S. business, Canopy U.S.A., is not consolidated into broader business outcomes of Canopy Growth, Klein mentioned. 

“When plant touching businesses in the U.S. are allowed to trade on the Nasdaq, we’ll be able to collapse that structure and consolidate all together.” 

In terms of lower yields, Klein mentioned Canopy is prepared to adjust to agricultural elements. 

“We’re an agricultural business at the end of the day, and an agricultural business producing in Canada,” he said. “We grow our cannabis in a greenhouse that’s supported with LED lights and it’s not as sunny in Canada in the winter months. We had lower in yields. We’re correcting for that by adding more lights to our facilities going forward so we won’t have that dip in the future and we’ve already seen margins recover in Q1 back to the previous levels we’ve been at in Canada.”

To watch the rest of Klein’s interview with BNN Bloomberg, watch the interview

Sport and physical activity alone can’t tackle health inequities in Indigenous communities

Story by Janice Forsyth, Professor, School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia 

and Taylor McKee, Assistant Professor, Sport Management, Brock University

THE CONVERSATION

While there are many benefits to sports participation, overstating those benefits can obscure systemic issues.© (Shutterstock)

Organized sport is often positioned as a remedy for the many health issues that Indigenous Peoples face. While there are many benefits to sports participation, overstating those benefits risks obscuring the systemic problems they endure in trying to create their own visions for health.

While research indicates that encouraging youth to be engaged in sport and physical activity is essential for improving health outcomes, the relationship between sport participation and health in Indigenous communities is not so simple.

For instance, a recent literature review by the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health calls attention to a significant policy problem: Indigenous youth are more physically active than non-Indigenous youth, and yet they self-report poorer health outcomes.

This illustrates why using sport participation as a policymaking lodestar for affecting positive health outcomes is troublesome. Sport has historically failed to address the systemic issues that burden Indigenous Peoples and their communities. To address these deep-seated issues, a more comprehensive and culturally grounded approach to sport policy is needed.

Related video: Athletes, coaches and parents aim to boost mental health in youth sports (WAVY Norfolk)  Duration 1:38  View on Watch

Dailymotion  Indigenous health centre calls for more support amid funding struggles

1:43

CityNews   A new report gives Children and youth in Canada a “D+” for physical activity

2:41

National sport policies

National sport policies are important because they serve as a guide for how and why the federal government will invest in sport. Canada’s first sport policy, An Act to Encourage Fitness and Amateur Sport, dates back to 1961. It mostly featured cost-sharing agreements with the provinces and territories to get people involved in sport for fitness and competition.

After that, the federal government began to focus increasingly on high performance sport. Since the 1970s, billions of dollars have been invested in athletes to win gold, silver and bronze medals, as if their accolades would stimulate greater physical activity among citizens.

The overall orientation of these policies is captured by the expression “from playground to podium” — a fitting summary of the reach and ambition of most of them.

Now, a new national sport policy is on the immediate horizon, and with it will come a renewed discussion regarding the connection between health and sport in Canada. The consultation report that forms the basis for the new policy refers to sport as an “integral component of health and culture in Canada,” with quotes throughout that describe it as a form of health care.


Sport and health

The relationship between sport participation and federal policymaking is longstanding and rooted in the conventional wisdom that encouraging youth to be engaged in sport reliably leads to better health outcomes.

For instance, the first goal of the 2002 Canada Sport Policy aimed to significantly increase the number of Canadians participating in sport, saying sports participation “contributes to healthier, longer, and more productive lives.”

The 2012 Canadian Sport Policy continued to highlight the positive health benefits of sports participation, saying it “strengthens their personal development, provides enjoyment and relaxation, reduces stress, improves physical and mental health, physical fitness and general well-being, and enables them to live more productive and rewarding lives.”

Clearly the 2012 policy meant health in a wide sense. These were grand claims, considering only 34 per cent of Canadians participated in some form of organized sport in 2012. By 2023, that number rose to almost 50 per cent, due in large part to return-to-play initiatives after the COVID-19 pandemic — a trend that may be in reverse due to the rising cost of living.

For Indigenous Peoples, there is no official survey that tracks Indigenous participation in sport in Canada. This means assumptions about sport being a driver for Indigenous health may not be relevant for many segments of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit populations. It also means sport policy may exacerbate their existing health inequities, instead of addressing them.
Social determinants of Indigenous health

Although sport is an important and valued aspect of Canadian life, the relative impact it can have on the overall health of a community is tempered by many external factors — a point illustrated by the federal government’s public health resources.

Approaching sport from a social determinants of Indigenous health perspective would shed light on why and how this happens. The Canadian government currently uses the 12 social determinants of health and health inequalities to guide its policies.

The social determinants of Indigenous health go beyond the government’s current approach to include assessments of other negative factors like settler colonialism, as well as positive factors like Indigenous culture and spirituality.

Likewise, Call to Action 89 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission urges decision-makers to embrace a broader perspective of sport that engages health. It states:

“We call upon the federal government to amend the Physical Activity and Sport Act to support reconciliation by ensuring that policies to promote physical activity as a fundamental element of health and well-being, reduce barriers to sports participation, increase the pursuit of excellence in sport, and build capacity in the Canadian sport system, are inclusive of Aboriginal peoples.”

Dangers of sport evangelism

Without critically considering how we frame sport’s role in Canadian life, any new policy risks the dangers of sport evangelism: the false belief that sport alone can provide a miraculous fix for social and structural issues.

The long list that makes up the social determinants of Indigenous health is a visible reminder of the need to understand sport in that complex matrix.

In both mainstream and Indigenous communities across Canada, sport is neither inherently good nor bad. Rather, it is a tool that must be used responsibly. This requires us to acknowledge both its potential and limitations for enriching the lives of its participants, especially those who we know face health inequities, as Indigenous Peoples do.

This article is republished from The Conversation, >, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

Read more:
Home game: Rethinking Canada through Indigenous hockey

Indigenous knowledge is the solution to Canada’s health inequities

Taylor McKee receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Janice Forsyth is affiliated with the Aboriginal Sport Circle, a national non-profit that focuses on Indigenous sport development in Canada.

As a Latina Vegan, I’m Decolonizing a Cruel & Racist Food System

Story by Lauren T. Ornelas, As Told To Nicole Froio •

Growing up in Texas in the 1970s, I spent long periods away from my mother. My parents divorced when I was 4 years old, so my mom raised my sisters and me by herself. To make ends meet, she spent long hours at work, trying to earn enough money to feed, clothe, and house us. That meant other people in the community took care of us during the day. While my mother was away, I would watch the cows on the hillside, and I would think about how sad it must’ve been for the mother cow to come home and not find her baby there anymore. In this sense, I saw myself in these animals, and I didn’t want to be responsible for disrupting any family of cows the way capitalism was interrupting mine.

As an elementary school student, it was my innate connection to non-human animals like cows, and my understanding of the harms of raising and slaughtering calves, that moved me to become a vegetarian. But, as a kid, it was difficult for me to stick with this diet, mostly because of my family’s financial restraints. Sometimes, all we could eat was what others donated to us or what our school served us, and that often included meals with meat. I realized then that poverty prevented me from eating my ethics and that I didn’t have the freedom to eat how I wanted to.

Being Chicana, I’ve long known that food is political, even if it shouldn’t be. My mom supported the Delano Grape Strike, a labor movement the predominantly Filipino organization Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) launched against the grape growers in Delano, California, in 1965, California, to fight against the exploitation of farmworkers. She boycotted non-union grapes and taught me about the impact of labor exploitation on the bodies and minds of farmworkers. By the time I got to high school, I was getting involved in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. I learned that I could make a difference from far away, that, like my mom, one of the things I could do was boycott companies with vested interests in the apartheid regime, so I did.

For me, food, animal rights, and racialized liberation struggles have always been linked, but I learned early that not everyone recognized the interconnectedness of this violence. In 1987, I was excited to get involved in the animal rights movement. But my elation was stolen by the reality of white supremacy within the movement. My colleagues regularly brought me out as a token Latina vegan in order to shame my people into veganism or to prove that the vegan movement wasn’t only white; however, these same folks rarely listened to me when I discussed why Latines don’t always have the access to plant-based foods or the labor struggles of farmworkers. Instead, they pitted animal rights and human rights against each other, as if I couldn’t care about and work on both at the same time. For decades, I did work I believed in while feeling exploited and misunderstood by organizations and people who were supposed to be my comrades.



As a Latina Vegan, I’m Decolonizing a Cruel & Racist Food System© Provided by Refinery29

Then, in 2006, while I participated in the World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, I felt seen, understood, and affirmed for the first time. I was sharing space with people who looked like me, sounded like me, and shared both my passion for the work and grievance with how it was being carried out. They, like me, understood how the lack of human rights is inherently linked to the lack of rights for non-human animals. There, surrounded by fervor and gripe, I realized that if we wanted to be a part of a movement or organization that cared deeply for all living beings, we would have to take matters into our own hands.

Later that year, I founded the Food Empowerment Project, an organization that seeks to create a more just and sustainable world by recognizing the power we have as food eaters. Through the publication of free, accessible, and culturally sensitive resources on our website, we encourage ethical food choices. We published our first big resource, Vegan Mexican Food, in Spanish and English in 2007, making Mexican recipes available to everyone looking to practice veganism without losing their cultural foods in the process. But more than just veganized recipes, this resource discusses the changes in our diets that took place due to colonization, to explain the introduction of farmed animals into the Americas, and to take us back toward a food system that is free from the exploitation of humans and non-human animals.

Education, a people-animal-land liberation politic, and advocacy are all at the root of this work. Growing up experiencing food apartheid, I know that being vegan isn’t easy for people who are lower income or who live in food deserts. I also know that many people in my community, largely impoverished migrants and people of color, work in the food industry with little-to-no labor protections. As such, we often experience the harms of the non-ethical food production practices. In terms of food consumption, Black, Latine, and Indigenous people are the most impacted by lack of access to healthy foods and, as a result, struggle with higher rates of dietary diseases. When it comes to food labor, cycles of poverty leave our communities with few career paths outside of farm work, forcing us to toil for low wages and no paid time off at companies that break labor laws with impunity.

Through the Food Empowerment Project, we see how these struggles are interconnected and fight against abuses of both human and non-human animals. Through working with community organizations, conducting original surveys and studies, and sharing our findings with local politicians, we increase access to healthy food options where they are absent. Similarly, we advance the rights of farmworkers by supporting legislative and regulatory changes as well as corporate efforts led by the laborers. And we promote ethical veganism through education, outreach, and resources.

We owe young people direct changes, as quickly as we can, to make up for the horrors that we’ve been wreaking on each other, on the planet, and on non-human animals. With the Food Empowerment Project, I am committed to pulling at all of the threads of oppression, tugging at them until everybody’s free.

Libcom.orglibcom.org/article/beasts-burden-antagonism-and-practical-history

Beasts of burden - Antagonism and Practical History | libcom.org

Beasts of burden - Antagonism and Practical History. An attempt to rethink the separation between animal liberationist and communist politics. (Published ...

Libcom.orglibcom.org/article/beasts-burden-review

Beasts of Burden - Review - Libcom.org

Jul 24, 2005 ... A review of the pamphlet Beasts of Burden by Antagonism Press (1999) from undercurrent #8. Author. Undercurrent. Submitted by libcom on July ...

Libcom.orglibcom.org/article/letter-animal-liberation-gilles-dauve

Letter on animal liberation - Gilles Dauvé - Libcom.org

Nov 18, 2005 ... This is a letter sent by French readers to the authors of Beasts of Burden. This pamphlet has the merit of addressing a vital question: If ...

WAIT, WHAT?!

The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that voting is not a fundamental right. What's next for voters?

Story by Margery A. Beck •


 Kansas Supreme Court Justice Caleb Stegall asks a question during the Hodes & Nauser v. Kobach case, May 27, 2023, in Topeka, Kan. Stegall wrote the majority opinion issued Friday, May 31, 2024, that said voting is not a fundamental right conferred by the Kansas Constitution's Bill of Rights.

 (Evert Nelson/The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP, Pool, File)© The Associated Press

Asplit Kansas Supreme Court ruling last week issued in a lawsuit over a 2021 election law found that voting is not a fundamental right listed in the state Constitution's Bill of Rights.

The finding drew sharp criticism from three dissenting justices on the high court. The Associated Press looks at what the ruling might mean for Kansas residents and future elections.


WHAT IS THE ISSUE?

The ruling itself is wide-reaching, combining different lawsuits at various stages of litigation that challenge three different segments of a 2021 election law passed by the Kansas Legislature. It was a lawsuit challenging a ballot signature verification measure in which a majority of the high court found there is no right to vote enshrined in the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

The measure requires election officials to match the signatures on advance mail ballots to a person’s voter registration record. The high court reversed a lower court’s dismissal of that lawsuit and instructed the lower court to consider whether the measure violates the equal protection rights of voters. But four of the court's seven justices rejected arguments that the measure violates voting rights under the state's Bill of Rights.


Douglas County, Kan., Clerk Jamie Shew discusses the operations of voting drop boxes while giving a tour of his office's warehouse in Lawrence, Kan., March 21, 2022. In the wake of a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that finds voting is not a fundamental right under the state's Bill of Rights, Shew says constant changes in election law are confusing not only to election officials, but to voters. (AP Photo/John Hanna, File)© The Associated Press

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?

The decision was written by Justice Caleb Stegall, who is seen as the most conservative of the court’s seven justices, five of whom were appointed by Democratic governors.

Stegall dismissed the strongly-worded objections of the dissenting justices, saying there is not a “fundamental right to vote” in Section 2 of the Bill of Rights, as the groups had argued.

The dissenting justices said that ignores long-held precedent by the Kansas Supreme Court. Justice Eric Rosen said “it staggers my imagination” to conclude Kansas citizens have no fundamental right to vote and called the majority opinion a “betrayal of our constitutional duty to safeguard the foundational rights of Kansans.”

Justice Melissa Taylor Standridge called the decision troubling, with far-reaching implications, and that the ruling “defies history, law, and logic and is just plain wrong.”

“For over 60 years, this interpretation of section 2 has been our precedent,” she wrote. “Without even a hint that it’s doing so, the majority overturns this precedent today.”

WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE RULING?

A determination that voting is not a fundamental right could embolden state lawmakers to push for further restrictions on advance voting and mail-in ballots, said Jamie Shew, election officer for Douglas County — Kansas’ most populous county.

The constant changes in election law are also confusing not only to election officials, but to voters, Shew said.

“I’ve had two voters who came in this morning, and they’re like, ‘Well, I read the paper about signature verification. Is my signature going to get tossed out?’” he recalled. “They were really nervous about it.”

Election laws had been fairly constant since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by Congress, Shew said. But that changed in 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out a key provision of that act, he said.

“Since then the rules just keep changing,” Shew said. “And I think our job is making sure that voters not only don’t get confused, but also don’t get frustrated and just stop participating.”

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

The Republican-led Legislature passed a raft of election law changes in 2021 over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto amid false claims by some in the GOP that the 2020 presidential election wasn’t valid. Since that election, there have been lawsuits over voting across the country, and partisan election law battles have continued in high-profile states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Fights for election advantage are also being waged in smaller states like South Dakota and Nebraska.


WHAT'S NEXT?

Shew said he and other election officials will focus on meting out the state's voting laws fairly and helping make sure the public understands them.

Justice Dan Biles said in his dissent that courts must insist that the signature verification requirement — if it survives the lawsuit against it — is handled reliably and uniformly across the state. That includes analyzing the procedures for how a mismatched signature is flagged, how a voter is notified of the mismatch and whether the voter is given a reasonable opportunity to cure the problem.

“The Kansas Constitution explicitly sets forth—and absolutely protects—a citizen’s right to vote as the foundation of our democratic republic,” Biles wrote, “so it is serious business when a government official in one of our 105 counties rejects an otherwise lawful ballot just by eyeballing the signature on the outside envelope.”

Margery A. Beck, The Associated Press