By: Erich Pica

On Feb. 16, while President Obama was in Maryland announcing an $8.3 billion taxpayer-backed loan guarantee for Southern Company to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia, inspectors at the Vermont Yankee reactor were finding dangerously high levels of tritium, a radioactive cancer-causing chemical, in the groundwater near the plant.

The next week, the Vermont state Senate voted overwhelmingly to shut down Vermont Yankee when its current license expires in 2012.

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R) called the timing of the nuclear loan guarantee announcement and the Vermont Senate’s decision “ironic.” More than just some coincidence, though, the Vermont Yankee situation demonstrates that from the mining of uranium ore to the storage of radioactive waste, nuclear reactors remain as dirty, risky, and as costly as they ever were. If President Obama’s recent enthusiasm for nuclear reactors has led you to believe otherwise, you’ve bought in to the administration’s greenwashing of nuclear.

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QUINCY,MA—

A disagreement between the housing authority and the city’s building and fire departments is holding up a $2.5 million federally funded heating upgrade for Quincy public housing.

The housing authority plans to replace hundreds of old steam radiators with gas-powered direct vent wall furnaces, similar to ones found in hotel rooms.

The wall heating systems are made by Rinnai America Corp. in Georgia. The housing authority wants to install them in 400 apartments at the Snug Harbor development in Germantown and 36 apartments at the West Acres development in West Quincy.

Jay Duca, Quincy’s inspectional services director, said he questions whether the heating units will provide enough heat for apartments.

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Sounding a familiar clean-energy theme, President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced details of a proposed energy rebate program he hopes will spur demand for insulation and water heaters – and jobs for hurting Americans.

Obama said the administration’s “HOMESTAR” program would reward people who buy energy-saving equipment with an on-the-spot rebate of $1,000 or more. He cast the idea as one that would save people money on utility bills, boost the economy and reduce American dependence on oil.

The plan would take the approval of Congress.

“When it comes to domestic policy, I have no more important job as president than seeing to it that every American that wants to work and is able to work can find a job,” Obama said at Savannah Technical College, in a state where the unemployment rate tops the national average of 9.7 percent.

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By: Leo Hindery Jr.

This Thursday, March 4, I am addressing the Apollo Alliance on Clean Energy and Good Jobs on the subject of “How to Make the U.S. a Leader in the Clean Energy Economy,” a topic made urgent in the midst of the ongoing Great Recession by the promising reality that ‘the deployment of just wind and solar power has the potential to support globally 20 million new jobs by 2030 and trillions of dollars in revenue.’

I believe that the answers — four in number — are actually pretty simple:

First — and foremost — we need to be much more capable and efficient in getting stimulus and private monies out the door into ‘things green’ and into improved infrastructure.

Second, we need to immediately level the global trade playing field, especially with China, which is already our biggest competitor in the green economy.

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It may well be that someday a lot of people will be hired by state and local agencies to weatherize homes – and actually do the work – on the grand scale envisioned when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed into law, a year ago this month. But by the end of December, some 10 months after the stimulus bill was enacted, most aspiring cast members of The Greatest Weatherization Show on Earth were still waiting for callbacks.

Over the past few months, a flurry of news reports – some of which we’ve recapped on GBA – have highlighted states’ struggles to expand their programs, manage huge funding increases delivered by the stimulus bill, and sort through accompanying federal regulations, such as the imposition of the Davis-Bacon Act’s prevailing-wage requirement. Federal officials are now echoing the concerns raised in the news stories.

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