I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Michigan is among the states where decommissioned nuclear plants have left behind radioactive waste. The Big Rock nuclear power plant in Charlevoix was shut down in 1997 but eight casks of high level nuclear waste remain along the shores of Lake Michigan.
It’s something that’s happening across the nation.
Colin Woodward of the Christian Science Monitor reports on how nuclear waste presents challenges for the communities where it is accumulating.
Today there are 60,000 metric tons of spent fuel awaiting permanent disposal, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry association, and the nation’s power plants produce 2,000 tons more each year. Even if work on Yucca Mountain had continued, it wouldn’t have solved the problem: By the early 2020s, when it would have been completed, the nation’s nuclear waste would have already exceeded the repository’s 70,000-ton capacity.
Asked about the prospects for a central interim storage facility, DOE spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller says the government is not currently “focused on specific sites” but rather on developing “thoughtful, long-term solutions to nuclear waste storage that do not involve Yucca Mountain.” Energy Secretary Steven Chu plans to delegate that task to a special blue ribbon commission whose membership has yet to be determined.
Back in Michigan, people who live near the Fermi nuclear power complex in Monroe County last month asked the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to take a closer look at DTE Energy’s plan to begin long term storage of high level nuclear waste near the reactor on Lake Erie.
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