Adding a third nuclear reactor to Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant won’t solve Maryland’s energy crisis, declares Maryland Public Interest Research Group in a new report, Powering Maryland’s Future. First, the plant’s on-line date, 2015, is four years beyond our predicted date with blackouts. Nukes cost a bundle — two to five times more than clean energy options — the greenies report. Worst, they saddle us with a problem that’s defied solution for half a century: What to do with spent but still deadly radioactive wastes.

Solar power can warm us up and cool us down quicker, cheaper and safer, the report concludes.

Debate Calvert nukes at public meetings August 4, 11 & 19 at 7pm, at the Holiday Inn at Solomons. Hear Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition’s side of the story on August 12 at Enoch Pratt Free Library in downtown Baltimore.

See www.marylandpirg.org for the full report and event details …

The time is right for jellyfish, and we’ve seen their stinging, insouciant bells floating in Bay waters from Solomons to the Eastern Shore. When the age-old Chesapeake menace lays its tentacles on you this year, you’ll be able to ease the sting. Jellyfish Squish is a new FDA-approved spray clinically proven to eliminate the pain. It both stops the flow of toxins from nematocysts that have already fired into the skin and renders the remaining nematocysts inert. Formulated by Georgian stung-parent Chip Grayson and marine biologists at the Skidaway Island Institute of Oceanography near Savannah, it uses the topical anesthetic lidocaine. In double-blind studies at beaches throughout South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, 86 percent of victims they treated reported much or total relief within five minutes, with the rest reporting some relief.

Find your own relief at www.coastalsolutionsinc.com …

The best place to live in rural America is Kent County, Maryland’s Eastern Shore county between the Chester and Sassafras rivers that’s home to Chestertown. Progressive Farmer bases its judgments on access to health care, affordability, clean air, fewer neighbors, good schools, low crime, more entertainment and warmer climate. Kent is the only Maryland county in the Top 10 List or the Southeast’s Regional Top 20 List. Runners up are Ellis County, Kansas; Livingston County, Missouri; Obion County, Tennessee; Columbia County, Pennsylvania; Wexford County, Michigan, Fayette County, Texas, Coffee County, Alabama; Filchrist County, Florida; and La Plata County, Colorado.

“What makes Kent County stand out is its residents’ resolve to maintain a solid rural heritage,” write the editors. Read on at www.progressivefarmer.com …

Our Creature Feature comes to us from the Humane Society of the United States, which has made the Eastern box turtle a federal issue. Roads are notorious killers of the slow-moving and slow-breeding species. Now the feds are investing $130,000 into a Society project to study whether fencing and under-road culverts protect turtles from becoming road kill. The pilot begins this month in Maryland’s Greenbrier State Park at Boonesboro off Rt. 40 in Western Maryland. That’s where the initiative began, after park staffer Mary Jo Bartles found six dead turtles on a single road on a summer’s day in 2004 …