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Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant
The Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant is an electricity-generating facility located in Red Wing, Minnesota, along the Mississippi River, and adjacent to the Prairie Island Indian Community reservation. The nuclear power plant, which began operating in 1973, has two nuclear reactors (pressurized water reactors) manufactured by Westinghouse that produce a total 1,076 megawatts of power. Units 1 and 2 are licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to operate through 2033 and 2034, respectively. The plant is owned by Northern States Power Company (NSP), a subsidiary of Xcel Energy, and is operated by Xcel Energy. Prairie Island is one of two nuclear power plants in Minnesota (the other being Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant in Monticello). Prairie Island has attracted controversy in the early 21st century for its operator Xcel Energy's decision to store nuclear waste in large steel casks on-site. As this area is a floodplain of the Mississippi, many opponen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Wing, Minnesota
Red Wing is a city in and the county seat of Goodhue County, Minnesota, United States, along the upper Mississippi River. The population was 16,547 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is part of the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. This city is named for early 19th-century Dakota Sioux chief Tatankamani, Red Wing. The federal government established a Mdewakanton Sioux Indian reservation—now Prairie Island Indian Community—in 1936 along the Mississippi River. The city of Red Wing developed around it. The National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Red Wing on its 2008 distinctive destinations list because of its "impressive architecture and enviable natural environment". History In the early 1850s, settlers from Mississippi River steamboats came to Red Wing to farm in Goodhue County, Minnesota, Goodhue County. They encroached on traditional territory of the Mdewakanton Sioux. The settlers cleared the land for wheat, the annual crop of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant
The Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant is a nuclear power plant located in Monticello, Minnesota, along the Mississippi River. The site, which began operating in 1971, has a single nuclear reactor (boiling water reactor) of the General Electric BWR-3 design generating 671 MWe. The plant is owned by Xcel Energy and operated by Northern States Power, its regional subsidiary. The reactor was originally licensed until 2010; a renewal license issued in 2006 has allowed it to continue operating until September 8, 2030. In January 2023, Northern States Power Company applied for a license renewal of 20 years beyond 2030. License for operation was renewed until 2050. Regulatory history Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant began operating in 1971, has a single boiling water reactor of the General Electric BWR-3 design generating 671 MWe. The nuclear reactor was originally licensed until 2010; a renewal license issued in 2006 allows it to continue operating until September 8, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obama Administration
Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, took office following his victory over Republican nominee John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Four years later, in the 2012 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee Mitt Romney, to win re-election. Alongside Obama's presidency, the Democratic Party also held their majorities in the House of Representatives under Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Senate under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid during the 111th U.S. Congress. Obama is the first African American president, the first multiracial president, the first non-white president, and the first president born in Hawaii. Obama was succeeded by Republican Donald Trump, who won the 2016 presidential election against Obama's preferred successor, Hillary Clinton. Historians and political scientists rank him among the upper tie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, is a proposed deep geological repository storage facility within Yucca Mountain for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste in the United States. The site is on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about northwest of the Las Vegas Valley. The project was approved in 2002 by the 107th United States Congress, but the 112th United States Congress, 112th Congress ended federal funding for the site via amendment to the continuing resolution, Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, passed on April 14, 2011, during the Obama administration. The project has encountered many difficulties and was highly contested by the public, the Western Shoshone peoples, and many politicians. The project also faces strong state and regional opposition. The Government Accountability Office stated that the closure was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Federal Government
The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct branches: United States Congress, legislative, President of the United States, executive, and Federal judiciary of the United States, judicial. Powers of these three branches are defined and vested by the Constitution of the United States, U.S. Constitution, which has been in continuous effect since May 4, 1789. The powers and duties of these branches are further defined by Act of Congress, Acts of Congress, including the creation of United States federal executive departments, executive departments and courts subordinate to the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court. In the Federalism in the United States, federal division of power, the federal government shares sovereignty with each of the 50 states in their respective t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations report to the president of NBC News, Rebecca Blumenstein. The NBCUniversal News Group also comprises MSNBC, the network's 24-hour liberal cable news channel, as well as business and consumer news channels CNBC and CNBC World, the Spanish language and United Kingdom-based Sky News. NBC News aired the first regularly scheduled news program in American broadcast television history on February 21, 1940. The group's broadcasts are produced and aired from 30 Rockefeller Plaza, NBCUl's headquarters in New York City. The division presides over the flagship evening newscast ''NBC Nightly News'', the world's first of its genre morning television program, ''Today (American TV program), Today'', and the longest-running television series in American hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Dedman
Bill Dedman is an American investigative reporter and author. He is best known for ''The Color of Money'', his 1988 investigation of redlining of middle-income black neighborhoods by banks and other mortgage lenders. Dedman received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for his articles in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Dedman is the co-author of the biography of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark and her family, '' Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune'', which was number one on ''The New York Times'' bestseller list and is being adapted into a television series for HBO. Often relying on public records more than insider accounts, Dedman has reported and written influential investigative articles on racial profiling by police, illegal steering of customers to different neighborhoods by real estate agents based on the race of the customers, police officers who tried to stop abusive interrogations of de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MSNBC
MSNBC is an American cable news channel owned by the NBCUniversal News Group division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. Launched on July 15, 1996, and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the channel primarily broadcasts rolling news coverage and Modern liberalism in the United States, liberal-leaning Opinion journalism, political commentary. MSNBC was originally established as part of a joint venture between NBC News and Microsoft (with its name being a portmanteau of MSN and NBC), encompassing the channel and the news website NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com. Microsoft would divest its stake in the channel in 2005, followed by the website in 2012; the website was then rebranded as NBCNews.com to associate it more closely with the NBC News division, leaving MSNBC.com to become a website for the channel and its opinion content. MSNBC initially focused on rolling news coverage, including long-form reports, interactive television, interactive programs, and stories con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kilowatt-hour
A kilowatt-hour ( unit symbol: kW⋅h or kW h; commonly written as kWh) is a non-SI unit of energy equal to 3.6 megajoules (MJ) in SI units, which is the energy delivered by one kilowatt of power for one hour. Kilowatt-hours are a common billing unit for electrical energy supplied by electric utilities. Metric prefixes are used for multiples and submultiples of the basic unit, the watt-hour (3.6 kJ). Definition The kilowatt-hour is a composite unit of energy equal to one kilowatt (kW) multiplied by (i.e., sustained for) one hour. The International System of Units (SI) unit of energy meanwhile is the joule (symbol J). Because a watt is by definition one joule per second, and because there are 3,600 seconds in an hour, one kWh equals 3,600 kilojoules or 3.6 MJ."Half-high dots or spaces are used to express a derived unit formed from two or more other units by multiplication.", Barry N. Taylor. (2001 ed.''The International System of Units.'' (Special publicatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iodine-131
Iodine-131 (131I, I-131) is an important radioisotope of iodine discovered by Glenn Seaborg and John Livingood in 1938 at the University of California, Berkeley. It has a radioactive decay half-life of about eight days. It is associated with nuclear energy, medical diagnostic and treatment procedures, and natural gas production. It also plays a major role as a radioactive isotope present in nuclear fission products, and was a significant contributor to the health hazards from open-air atomic bomb testing in the 1950s, and from the Chernobyl disaster, as well as being a large fraction of the contamination hazard in the first weeks in the Fukushima nuclear crisis. This is because 131I is a major fission product of uranium and plutonium, comprising nearly 3% of the total products of fission (by weight). See fission product yield for a comparison with other radioactive fission products. 131I is also a major fission product of uranium-233, produced from thorium. Due to its mode of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floodplain
A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river. Floodplains stretch from the banks of a river channel to the base of the enclosing valley, and experience flooding during periods of high Discharge (hydrology), discharge.Goudie, A. S., 2004, ''Encyclopedia of Geomorphology'', vol. 1. Routledge, New York. The soils usually consist of clays, silts, sands, and gravels deposited during floods. Because of regular flooding, floodplains frequently have high soil fertility since nutrients are deposited with the flood waters. This can encourage farming; some important agricultural regions, such as the Nile and Mississippi Basin, Mississippi Drainage basin, river basins, heavily exploit floodplains. Agricultural and urban regions have developed near or on floodplains to take advantage of the rich soil and freshwater. However, the Flood risk, risk of inundation has led to increasing efforts to Flood control, control flooding. Formation Most floodplai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cask
A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, usually alcoholic beverages; a small barrel or cask is known as a keg. Barrels have a variety of uses, including storage of liquids such as water, oil, and alcohol. They are also employed to hold maturing beverages such as wine, cognac, armagnac, sherry, port, whiskey, beer, arrack, and sake. Other commodities once stored in wooden casks include gunpowder, meat, fish, paint, honey, nails, and tallow. Modern wooden barrels for wine-making are made of English oak (''Quercus robur''), white oak (''Quercus petraea''), American white oak (''Quercus alba''), more exotic is mizunara oak ('' Quercus crispula''), and recently Oregon oak ('' Quercus garryana'') has been used. Someone who makes traditional wooden barrels is called a coope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
