Nuclear Power - Corporate Welfare

Ahh, the things that amaze me........ from The Washington Post's Wonkblog comes the following account of corporate welfare. Yet people worry that subsidies to homeowners for roof top solar is a giveaway......

Why is the Obama administration using taxpayer money to back a nuclear plant that’s already being built?

 By Steven Mufson February 21, 2014



If nuclear power is such a good idea, why does it need financial help from U.S. taxpayers?
This week, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced that the Obama administration would extend a $6.5 billion federal loan guarantee to cover part of the cost of building two new reactors at Southern Co.’s Alvin W. Vogtle site. Thursday he went to Waynesboro, Ga. to finalize the deal. Another $1.8 billion in guarantees could come soon.
The impact: Southern’s Georgia Power subsidiary, which owns 46 percent of the project, will save $225 million to $250 million because the loan guarantee will reduce interest costs. Instead of borrowing from a commercial bank, Southern can now borrow at rock bottom rates from the government’s Federal Financing Bank. And you, gentle reader, the taxpayer, take on all the risk if the project goes bust. Does the name Solyndra ring a bell?
If that’s not enough, Southern is also getting help from the federal production tax credit and other federal incentives that will ultimately save the company an additional $2 billion or so, Southern’s chief executive Tom Fanning said on a Jan. 29 conference call about earnings.
“This is a deeply subsidized project that will cost the taxpayers a lot,” said Ken Glozer, a former Office of Management and Budget senior official who is president of a consulting firm OMB Professionals.
Southern has said it didn’t need the loan guarantee to finish the project. But the guarantee doesn’t hurt.
The company also says that it will pass along the savings in financing costs to Georgia electricity ratepayers, but those ratepayers are already footing a large chunk of the reactors’ construction costs. Usually ratepayers only pay such costs once a generating station is in operation, not while it’s being built. In December, the Georgia Public Service Commission approved a three-year plan to spread out $465 million in rate increases, according to Wells Fargo Securities analysts. Southern said customer rates once the units are in service would rise between 6 and 8 percent, less than the 12 percent increase originally projected for capital costs.
This is all part of a bigger picture. Less than a decade ago, the nuclear industry was anticipating a renaissance, fueled by hopes that climate concerns about fossil fuels would trump safety worries and would help rally support beyond the industry’s usual allies. Congress tried to do its part by approving in the 2005 Energy Policy Act a $17.5 billion program of nuclear loan guarantees.
But even with that help, building a nuclear plant is extremely expensive, and for a single utility, even a large one, to undertake such a project means betting the farm, as former Duke Energy chief executive Jim Rogers once put it. Moreover, costs rose since 2005. While Congress envisioned helping half a dozen reactors or more, the program is now expected to cover only three or four.
Then, if those challenges weren’t enough, the industry was hit by the recession, competition from low natural gas prices, and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that destroyed three reactors at the Fukushima plant and fanned safety concerns worldwide.
It wasn’t just a perfect storm. It was three perfect storms.
Moniz said the Vogtle project was “not only a major milestone in the Administration’s commitment to jumpstart the U.S. nuclear power industry, it is also an important part of our all-of-the-above approach to American energy as we move toward a low-carbon energy future.”
Many experts say it’s not the sort of milestone Congress and the industry once had in mind. The nuclear industry is nearly halfway through a more than $30 billion construction program, with the two new reactors being built in Georgia, and three others in South Carolina and Tennessee. Like the ones in Georgia, a pair under construction in South Carolina can rely on a state law allowing costs to be passed along to customers while construction is in progress. The fifth is being built by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
But while five reactors are under construction, four others have closed down or announced plans to close down. Two cited competition from natural gas plants and two others faced large repair and upgrading costs. The renaissance seems to be stillborn.
Proponents of nuclear power are still trying, though, and they say that the loan guarantee and production tax credits aren’t any different from what wind and solar projects get. Level playing field and all that. Besides, Southern says, Solyndra was a new company with a new technology whereas Southern has been around for roughly a century and nuclear power plants have been in operation for decades.
“Loan guarantees have been in place for years and are a successful vehicle used by the federal government to ensure investment in critical infrastructure projects,” Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said.
The Vogtle loan guarantee had been conditionally approved by the Obama administration four years ago, and Southern is already well into construction — although it’s running about 21 months behind schedule according to the anti-nuclear group Public Citizen. (You can see photos of the project’s progress here.) The reactors are Westinghouse AP1000 models, a new generation reactor.
Wells Fargo last month lowered its earnings outlook for Southern, citing “construction risk” from the nuclear reactors as well as a modern coal plant under construction — and over budget — in Mississippi. Now that risk belongs to all of us.
“No doubt, this is a bad deal for the American people who have been put on the hook for a project that is both embroiled in delays and cost overruns and to a company that has publicly stated that it does not need federal loans to complete the project,” Allison Fisher, Outreach Director, Public Citizen’s Energy Program said. “This is a classic case of throwing good money after bad – an unnecessary and unconscionable decision to make with taxpayer money.”

Bonus fact: The reactor site in Georgia is named after the late Alvin Ward Vogtle Jr., former chairman of Southern. Vogtle was an Army Air Force pilot in World War II, and flew more than 30 missions before crash-landing in North Africa and being taken to a prisoner of war camp in Germany. On his fifth attempt, he escaped by scaling a 14-foot barbed-wire border fence and crossing to Switzerland. The character Steve McQueen played in the 1963 film “The Great Escape” was based on recollections of several veterans, including Vogtle.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/21/why-is-the-obama-administration-using-taxpayer-money-to-back-a-nuclear-plant-thats-already-being-built/?hpid=z4 

Nuclear Power Subsidies: The Gift that Keeps on Taking

By Sustainable Plant Staff April 26, 2011 03:29:17 pm

 

 

Since its inception more than 50 years ago, the U.S. nuclear power industry has been propped up by a generous array of government subsidies that have supported its development and operations. Despite that support, the industry is still not economically viable, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The report, “Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable Without Subsidies,” found that more than 30 subsidies have supported every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to long-term waste storage. Added together, these subsidies often have exceeded the average market price of the power produced.

“Despite the fact that the nuclear power industry has benefited from decades of government support, the technology is still uneconomic, so the industry is demanding a lot more from taxpayers to build new reactors,” said Ellen Vancko, manager of UCS’s Nuclear Energy and Climate Change Project. “The cost of this technology continues to escalate despite billions in subsidies to both existing and proposed plants. Instead of committing billions in new subsidies that would further distort the market in favor of nuclear power, we should focus on more cost-effective energy sources that will reduce carbon emissions more quickly and with less risk.”

Pending and proposed subsidies for new nuclear reactors would shift even more costs and risks from the industry to taxpayers and ratepayers. The Obama administration’s budget proposal would provide an additional $36 billion in federal loan guarantees to underwrite new reactor construction, bringing the total amount of nuclear loan guarantees to $58.5 billion, leaving taxpayers on the hook if the industry defaults on these loans.

The key subsidies for nuclear power do not involve cash payments, the report found. They shift the risks of constructing and operating plants – including cost overruns, loan defaults, accidents and waste management – from plant owners and investors to taxpayers and ratepayers. These hidden subsidies distort market choices that would otherwise favor less risky investments.

The most significant forms of subsidies to nuclear power have four principal objectives:

• Reduce the cost of capital, labor and land through loan guarantees and tax incentives.
• Mask the true costs of producing nuclear energy through subsidies to uranium mining and water usage.
• Shift security and accident risks to the public via the 1957 Price-Anderson Act and other mechanisms.
• Shift long-term operating risks such as radioactive waste storage to the public.

The report evaluates legacy subsidies that helped build the industry, ongoing support to existing reactors, and subsidies available for new projects. According to the report, legacy subsidies exceeded 7 cents per kWh, well above the average wholesale price of power from 1960 to 2008. In effect, the subsidies were more valuable than the power the subsidized plants produced.

“Without these generous subsidies, the nuclear industry would have faced a very different market reality,” said Doug Koplow, the author of the report and principal at the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based consulting firm, Earth Track. “Many of the 104 reactors currently operating would never have been built, and the utilities that built reactors would have been forced to charge ratepayers even higher rates.”

The industry continues to benefit from subsidies that offset its operating costs, which include uranium mining, cooling water, accident liability insurance, waste disposal, and plant decommissioning. The exact value of these subsidies, however, is difficult to ascertain. According to the report, ongoing subsidies range from 13 percent to 98 percent of the value of the power produced. Even at the low end however, subsidies account for a significant portion of nuclear power’s operating cost advantage over competing energy sources.

Subsidies to new reactors could significantly exceed those enjoyed by the existing fleet. In addition to benefiting from ongoing subsidies to existing plants, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 introduced a new suite of subsidies for nuclear power. The report estimates that these subsidies could be worth between 4.2 and 11.4 cents per kWh, or as much as 200 percent of the projected price of electricity when these plants are built.

“All low-carbon energy technologies would be able to compete on their merits if the government established an energy-neutral playing field and put a price on carbon,” said Vancko. “Investing in nuclear power carries the unique risks of radioactive waste storage, accidents, and nuclear weapons proliferation that must be fully reflected in the technology’s costs, which is not the case today.”
Based on these findings, the report recommends that the federal government reduce subsidies to the nuclear power industry. If subsidies are necessary, the government should award them competitively to the most cost-effective low-carbon energy technologies. The report also recommends that the government modernize liability systems for nuclear power and establish regulations and fee structures for uranium mining, waste repository financing, and water usage that fully reflect the technology’s cost and risks.

“After 50 years,” said Koplow, “the nuclear industry needs to move away from government patronage to a model based on real economic viability. The considerable operational and construction risks of this power source need to be reflected in the delivered price of power rather than dumped onto taxpayers.”
 

 http://www.sustainableplant.com/2011/04/nuclear-power-subsidies-the-gift-that-keeps-on-taking/

 

 

Cell Phone Toxic Waste

Lot of toxic waste for our convenience - from The New York Times -

May 4, 2013

Where Do Old Cellphones Go to Die?

By LEYLA ACAROGLU

AMERICANS replace their cellphones every 22 months, junking some 150 million old phones in 2010 alone. Ever wondered what happens to all these old phones? The answer isn’t pretty.

In far-flung, mostly impoverished places like Agbogbloshie, Ghana; Delhi, India; and Guiyu, China, children pile e-waste into giant mountains and burn it so they can extract the metals — copper wires, gold and silver threads — inside, which they sell to recycling merchants for only a few dollars. In India, young boys smash computer batteries with mallets to recover cadmium, toxic flecks of which cover their hands and feet as they work. Women spend their days bent over baths of hot lead, “cooking” circuit boards so they can remove slivers of gold inside. Greenpeace, the Basel Action Network and others have posted YouTube videos of young children inhaling the smoke that rises from burned phone casings as they identify and separate different kinds of plastics for recyclers. It is hard to imagine that good health is a by-product of their unregulated industry.

Indeed, most scientists agree that exposure poses serious health risks, especially to pregnant women and children. The World Health Organization reports that even a low level of exposure to lead, cadmium and mercury (all of which can be found in old phones) can cause irreversible neurological damage and threaten the development of a child.

The growing toxic nightmare that is e-waste is not confined to third world outposts. It also poses health problems in the United States where, for several years, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has kept inmates busy processing e-waste. There are concrete steps the government, manufacturers and consumers could take to better dispose of electronic trash and to help prevent the pileup of more e-waste and the hazards e-waste processing poses.

The United States, for example, remains the only industrialized country that has not ratified the Basel Convention, an international treaty that makes it illegal to export or traffic in toxic e-waste. Fully implementing the treaty would be a step toward joining global efforts to contain toxic waste troubles.

The Responsible Electronics Recycling Act, introduced in Congress in 2011, would have made it illegal to export toxic waste from the United States to countries that don’t belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The aim was to stop dumping e-waste on the world’s poorest nations and thus to provide an incentive for safer waste management in our own country. The bill had bipartisan support but was never put to a vote.

The European Union provides a model for industrial regulation that would shift the burden of safe product disposal back to the manufacturers that produce electronic goods. Its Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive requires electronic sellers to accept, free of charge, any of their used products brought in by customers for recycling. The goal is to have properly recycled 85 percent of the European Union’s e-waste by 2019. Similarly, Japan requires its electronic manufacturers to establish their own recycling facilities or commission third parties to recycle a range of products, from computers and cellphones to TVs and air-conditioners.

Government or consumer pressure on manufacturers to design electronics with end-of-product-life issues in mind could be enormously helpful. Most cellphones, for example, are deliberately designed to make disassembly difficult. Changes in the way manufacturers glue, screw and solder components together would make it easier to dismantle discarded phones and thus reduce the risks posed by crude recycling techniques like those deployed by Ghanaian children.

THERE are alternative phone service business models that could be beneficial to producers, users and the rest of us. For example, manufacturers could sell products complete with prearranged recycling service or subscriptions that made it possible, for example, for phone user to exchange old units for new ones rather than throwing them away. Under a product service system model, companies recycle old units and repurpose core components. Xerox uses a similar model for its photocopiers, without impact on sales or profits.

In the absence of government regulation or industry initiative, consumers could play a role in determining what happens to products that have outlived their usefulness. Most phones and small electronics are designed with obsolescence in mind. But what if we held on to our gadgets longer and repaired, rather than replaced them? We could recycle the ones we no longer use through certified recycling services like e-Stewards, a nonprofit organization that runs certification programs for e-waste recyclers, ensuring that goods are not improperly exported.

As consumers we need to demand better end-of-life options for our high-tech trash; if manufacturers and government fall down on the job, we, the millions of Americans who own cellphones, should press for safe recycling.

Leyla Acaroglu is a sustainability strategist based in Melbourne, Australia.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 12, 2013



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/opinion/sunday/where-do-old-cellphones-go-to-die.html

Paying For Trouble - When You Think What You Buy Is Safe

She had her house sprayed for fleas, and then the trouble began

By Sue Eisenfeld, Published: May 23

Last winter, despite a low-level warning beacon in my gut, I hired a company to apply a chemical flea treatment in our house. Not wanting to waste time on home remedies that might not work, I thought, “Let’s just get it over with.”

I made this decision even though I’d been a “ban lawn-care pesticides from our campus” activist in college and had spent nearly my entire professional life as a communications consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency, writing materials for the public about environmentally sound behavior.

As an environmentalist, I am an organic vegetarian. I avoid processed foods with ingredient names I can’t pronounce, use reusable tote bags, avidly recycle and drive a low-emissions car.

Yet, on the eve of my decision, I looked at my poor kitty. Despite applications of topical anti-flea drops, he’d been licking himself raw during the past four months. I had to take some kind of action, and fast.

The treatment seemed reasonable: An aerosol flea spray would be applied directly to the floor; it wasn’t some kind of flea bomb or fogger. I assumed that if there were risks or warnings or precautions I should know about, the pest control company, which we’d used to treat the exterior of our house against ants, would tell me. I decided to trust “the system” — which, I reasoned, was created to protect consumers, after all.

The next morning a man came to our house with two aerosol cans of a pesticide and targeted our hardwood floors and rugs, as well as the concrete floor in the basement. The pesticide — in the form of a mist designed to fall quickly to the floor — contained chemicals to kill insects and interrupt the life cycle of fleas.

The technician didn’t provide any instructions other than to take the cat and stay out of the house for three to four hours until the product had dried.

Six hours later, my husband and I returned home and found big wet drops all over the floors. When we called the pest control company, the manager was perplexed. He recommended that we mop up the residue, then throw away the sponge.

While my husband did the mopping, I wrote an instant message to a friend: “This is a disaster,” I typed. “Don’t worry about it,” he wrote back. “It’s no big deal.”

Strange symptoms

The next morning, I awoke to a headache in the back right quadrant of my skull. I felt a bit woozy and off balance and figured I was coming down with a cold. By evening, my arms were buzzing with an odd, electric energy. My husband and my cat were fine.

The next day, my left arm and leg felt icy hot. And my torso reacted to cold as if it were being stung by yellow jackets.

In another 24 hours, my fatigue was so intense that even if the house had been on fire, I couldn’t have peeled myself out of bed. A day later, my right side lost much of its strength. I struggled to brush my teeth, write, type and lift a fork. Standing up in the shower and lathering my hair became things I could no longer do at once.

Two trips to the emergency room ruled out a stroke and a brain tumor. But an MRI scan showed a lesion on the spinal cord in my neck. This scar or defect, I was told, had chewed away some of the protective myelin that coats nerves and transmits messages in the nervous system. This damage was scrambling messages being sent throughout my body about temperature and pain and strength and balance.

Process of elimination

A week after my symptoms began, a neurologist diagnosed the problem as transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord. Until my spinal tap and blood test results came back, he couldn’t tell me the cause.

Transverse myelitis can be the result of a viral infection such as chickenpox, shingles, herpes, flu, HIV, hepatitis A or rubella. It can also be caused by abnormal immune system reactions, and it’s sometimes a complication of syphilis, measles or Lyme disease.

The neurologist said my symptoms could also be caused by multiple sclerosis, lupus, thyroid disorder, tuberculosis or other diseases.

“What about pesticide exposure?” I asked.

My doctor listened to the story of the chemical flea treatment and the coincidental timing of the onset of symptoms, and then rushed out of the room to call the manufacturer of the chemical spray. When he came back, he reported that the company’s medical staff said no one there had heard that their product had caused such symptoms.

“It’s concerning, however,” my doctor said. “And I sure wouldn’t use that stuff myself.”

He put me on a megadose of intravenous steroids for five days, then steroid pills for a week. My icy-hot sensation began to fade, and my strength began to return, although a full recovery took several months.

Soon my test results started streaming in. Lyme disease: negative. Lupus: negative. Meningitis: negative. Tuberculosis: negative. Cancer cells: negative. But four tests involving the cerebrospinal fluid that are often used as indicators of multiple sclerosis came up positive — stunningly unpleasant news that made my mind swirl.

“We can’t know for sure about multiple sclerosis,” my neurologist explained, “until you get a follow-up MRI in four to five months, to see whether the lesion is still there or if there are any new ones.” A definitive diagnosis, he explained, requires either two “episodes” like the one I had experienced, or two or more lesions on the spinal cord. I would now just have to wait.

Seeking information

My recovery involved physical therapy, occupational therapy, exercise and rest. My mental recuperation required research. I wanted to know more about this pesticide.

First I found the pesticide label online, with its information about using the product properly. What this told me was that the technician had not given me enough information. The label instructs users to cover all food-processing surfaces, utensils and exposed food prior to spraying. We hadn’t been told to do anything like that — to remove the dishes sitting out on our drying rack, to cover our cutting board or the fruit and vegetables on our counter.

The label directs pesticide applicators to avoid thoroughly wetting the surfaces being sprayed. Yet there had been those drops on the floor six hours later. It also says that the sprayed area should be ventilated after treatment. News to us.

I then contacted the pest control company and the manufacturer to report the incident. The pest control company said that an experienced technician had done the work. The manufacturer declared that information about any reports of health effects was proprietary.

So I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the EPA, the federal agency responsible for regulating pesticides. Although incident reports made to the manufacturer may be considered proprietary, the manufacturer must give them to the EPA, which also collects incident reports from the public and from other government agencies and nongovernmental organizations.

A few weeks later, I got my response: an 82-page report from the EPA that made it clear to me that MS wasn’t the cause of my symptoms. The report showed that from 1992 until early 2010, 156 “minor” human incidents had been reported to the agency concerning the product used in our house, as well as 24 “moderate” and 515 “major” human incidents.

Among the complaints in the moderate and major medical incidents were dizziness, difficulty breathing, difficulty swallowing, muscle weakness, tremors, abdominal pain, disorientation, stumbling, coma, seizure, liver failure, lethargy, numbness, blurred vision, chills, blood in the urine, memory loss, migraines, inability to walk and heart attack.

A second FOIA request about three of the active ingredients in “my” pesticide revealed that thousands of medical complaints had been filed about these chemicals when they were used in other pesticide products.

Four months after my neurological episode, when I was finally able to walk in a straight line and not have my right hand buzz every time I bent my head toward my chest, I had another MRI. As I had expected — after weeks of follow-up neurological studies, blood tests and second opinions — the possible MS diagnosis was thrown out. My spinal cord lesion — attributed to, as my neurologist put it, “an autoimmune response to pesticide exposure” — had vanished.

At home, I threw away our conventional cleaning products and purchased all-natural cleaners. I canceled our quarterly outdoor pesticide treatment against ants. I bought essential-oil bug spray for summertime mosquitoes. I returned to working on the book I had just started to write and the new career I had launched.

I could have left it at that: gratitude, a new beginning, a renewed commitment to health. But I knew something more needed to be done to prevent incidents like mine — or worse — from happening to others. So here’s what I learned:

Consumers must receive more information about the pesticides being used in their homes. And they need regulatory backup protection.

If the company I dealt with had been required by law to show me the label information or read it to me aloud like a Miranda warning, I would have put away the apples and tomatoes, covered the cutting board and dishes, and, later, opened the windows and set up fans.

Similarly, if, before treating my house, the pest company had been required to provide me with the EPA’s Citizen’s Guide to Pest Control and Pesticide Safety — much as contractors, home sellers and landlords are required to give occupants certain brochures about the hazards of lead-based paint — I might have been encouraged to evaluate less-toxic alternatives or ask more questions.

If the label information had provided directions for contacting my state pesticide regulatory agency to report misuse or problems, I might have called soon after my problems surfaced. The agency could have sent an investigator to my house in Virginia to collect evidence to determine if the pest control company had broken any laws.

Finding pesticide residues on a food preparation surface or on a cat’s water bowl “would hang an applicator,” one state investigator told me. Not obeying the label instructions is a violation of federal and state law, and in Virginia, the company could be fined up to $5,000 for this violation, a penalty that could motivate it to train its technicians better and provide homeowners with more information.

Beyond that, it’s time to improve the system for regulating pesticides. Congress and other policymakers should reform the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1947 and the EPA regulations that implement it. Pesticide manufacturers, in performing mandatory safety studies before their products are allowed on the market, should be required to test the combined effects of multiple pesticides and the effects of their pesticides combined with chemicals that people are exposed to each day, such as plastics and drugs.

Manufacturers should also be required to tell the EPA and consumers what the “inert” or “other” ingredients are that can make up 95 percent of a pesticide product: Some of these substan-ces can be even more toxic than the active ingredients.

The federal pesticide law or EPA needs to better define what kinds of detrimental effects are unreasonable for people to suffer. Currently, if a pesticide performs its intended function without “unreasonable adverse effects” to human health or the environment when used according to label instructions, it is allowed on the market. But the law never defines “unreasonable.” It says only that to determine “unreason­able risk,” EPA must take into ac­count “the economic, social, and envi­ronmental costs and benefits.”

Finally, EPA should be required to assess whether any “green” products can achieve the same results as pesticides, with less risk. The federal law should require an assessment of such alternatives as part of the pesticide approval process, eventually restricting the use of certain chemicals as safer approaches and technologies become available. This idea would be a new way of thinking, but it is time for the outdated regulatory approach to pesticides to move into the future.

My decision to use a chemical pesticide in my home was a moment of weakness, a test of blind faith in a system that was supposed to protect me from harm. No one knows why I was affected and others in my household weren’t. Thankfully, I am completely recovered.

Yet, the desire for quick, no-fuss ways to get rid of bugs will never fade. Without additional protections, unwary consumers will continue to turn to chemical products they assume are safe. They will find that they may be protected from bugs — but not from harm.

Eisenfeld is a writer and editor in the Washington area. This article was excerpted from the May issue of Health Affairs and can be read in full online at www.healthaffairs.org.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health/she-had-her-house-sprayed-for-fleas-and-then-the-trouble-began/2011/04/21/AFmjC49G_story.html

Refrigerators Beyond Energy Star

Greener refrigerator set to enter U.S. market in 2011

By Leslie Tamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2010; A04

Greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide may not get as much global attention, but policymakers and business leaders view curbing these emissions as a way that nations can shrink their carbon footprints.

Refrigerators have a role in this story.

For decades, Americans have known only two types of household refrigerators: the pre-1996 fridge that uses an ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerant - commonly known by its trademark name, Freon - and the subsequent models that use the global-warming refrigerant called hydrofluorocarbon (HFC).

When CFCs float into the air, their chlorine molecules eat the ozone. HFCs may not harm the ozone, but they can hang in the atmosphere for decades, absorbing radiation that would otherwise be released into space.

A better refrigerant, environmentalists have argued since the early 1990s, is a hydrocarbon refrigerant.

Made of only carbons and hydrogens, these "natural" refrigerants do not degrade the ozone and are easily broken down by the sun. Compared with the atmosphere-degrading refrigerants currently used in American households, hydrocarbons contribute little to global warming.

As early as next year, Americans may have a new hydrocarbon refrigerator option that can reduce their global warming impact and their energy bills. U.S. manufacturers would be entering the HFC-free domestic refrigeration market that the Germans helped establish in 1993.

Back then, the United States was phasing out CFCs, and the chemical industry was introducing HFCs as a possible replacement. Greenpeace, the nonprofit advocacy group, was not happy with the "environmental alternative" to CFCs, said Amy Larkin, director of Greenpeace Solutions.

Although domestic refrigeration accounts for less than 2 percent of current global HFC consumption (automobile air conditioners emit the most HFCs), an HFC refrigerant's impact on the climate is 3,830 times more potent over a 20-year period than the most common greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

"But hydrocarbons weren't on anyone's radar," Larkin said, "and when we brought this to the government agencies, telling them these were a better, safe, efficient alternative, we were ridiculed."

Regardless, Greenpeace appealed to a small German manufacturer and helped engineer the world's first hydrocarbon domestic refrigerator. Within three weeks, Greenpeace pre-sold 70,000 HFC-free "Greenfreeze" refrigerators.

Since March 15, 1993, when the first Greenfreeze refrigerator debuted in Germany, more than 400 million hydrocarbon household units have been sold worldwide by several major manufacturers including Whirlpool, Haier and Sanyo.

HFC-free refrigerators have been sold in Mexico, South America, Cuba and parts of Africa, along with Japan, China and throughout Europe.

"Europe has produced incredibly safe, popular refrigerators, but there's still some suspicion in the U.S.," said Durwood Zaelke, director of the Secretariat of the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement.

Hydrocarbons are flammable, and there have been isolated incidents of exploding hydrocarbon refrigerators.

But manufacturers meet their country's standards and often have an independent safety organization evaluate their appliances. Although hydrocarbon units may have more robust components to prevent leaks, they do not differ much from HFC refrigerators. Typical refrigerators enclose the refrigerant in a hermetically sealed system away from anything that may spark, such as the refrigerator light.

Based on the track record of the hydrocarbon refrigerators, Zaelke said, it's unclear whether concerns about exploding refrigerators is "a true safety concern or just a clever argument for those who make chemicals. One would think they're relatively safe when there are millions sold in Europe."

General Electric plans to introduce the first hydrocarbon household refrigerator in the United States in June 2011, giving Americans a more environmentally friendly option, though at a hefty price.

Insulated with hydrocarbon foam and cooled by a hydrocarbon refrigerant called isobutane, the 30-inch HFC-free refrigerator would be part of GE's luxury Monogram brand, selling for about $6,000 to $6,500.

"You're making a significant investment, but this is all part of the gradual reduction in how much HFCs are used," said Merrell Grant, the general manager of GE Monogram.

Before these refrigerators can roll out to retailers, however, GE says it will wait for final approval from the Environmental Protection Agency's Significant New Alternatives Program.

SNAP, which regulates chemicals or technologies that replace ozone-depleting substances, ruled in 1994 that hydrocarbon refrigerants were too risky to be used in household refrigerators in the United States. According to an EPA spokesman, at the time there was not enough information about the hydrocarbon refrigerant's flammability potential, and there were other non-flammable refrigerants available.

After issuing a proposal in July 2010 to amend the SNAP rule, the EPA is expected to approve use of HFC-free refrigerants in domestic refrigerators next year.

"Hydrocarbons will slowly take over the market," said Stephen O. Andersen, former director of Strategic Climate Projects in the EPA's Climate Protection Partnership Division.

Hydrocarbons are already commonplace in many household appliances - gas stoves, water heaters, furnaces - and used in products such as bathroom cleaners, air fresheners and cooking sprays.

"Refrigerators are safe with hydrocarbons," Andersen said. "Come on, people will hold a blow dryer in one hand, and a can of aerosol hairspray in the other."

A handful of companies based in the United States have started using natural refrigerants in industrial food service equipment. Select Ben & Jerry's stores in Boston and the District received federal approval in 2008 to use hydrocarbon propane freezers as demonstration projects. Coca-Cola has also invested $60 million to advance HFC-free cooling globally.

At the recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, 400 international companies, including Unilever and Wal-Mart, pledged they would phase out HFCs from all industrial equipment by 2015. Said former EPA official Andersen: "I think if the market sees the tide changing and starts converting everything to hydrocarbons . . . it could make a big difference."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122602479.html

Latex Paint Disposal

The DC Department of Public Works web site seems to be of two minds about latex paint (and it's can). First latex paint is listed as "Unacceptable household hazardous waste" and then under a section called "How You Can Help" we are told that latex paint is "not hazardous".

"Unacceptable household hazardous waste and e-cycling items include:

• Air conditioners (Call 311 for a bulk trash collection appointment.)
• Ammunition (Take to the closest police station.)
• Explosives (Take to the closest police station.)
• Latex paint (Dry out and place in the trash.)

How You Can Help

Latex paint is NOT HAZARDOUS. If you have unused latex paint, remove the lid and let it dry out. Then place the can in the trash. You can speed up the drying process by adding some kitty litter to the paint."


Not sure I want to cut through the semantic acrobats of the logic that allows both of those assertions to be true nor do I want to push the limits of recycling possibilities - I just want to get rid of the stuff in as safe a manner as I can given the circumstances...... and it is clear DPW wants me to dry the paint out and put it in the trash.....

So I dried out the paint and left the paint can in the trash container a couple of weeks ago. After the garbage crew came through, I found the paint can left behind next to the garbage can. Other garbage was gone but not the paint can. Hmmmmmm. Will try again.