Gaia's Gift Stone

DANCES with SHARKS

2007-05-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

TAGS: INDIAN POINT ANDREW SPANO ISOLATION FROM THE ISSUES

Gannett's Panel of Experts

2007-05-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

tags: Indian Point Journal News Phil Reisman Jorge FitzGibbon Matt Davies

RIVER DANCE,... INDIAN POINT

2007-05-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

America needs Nuclear

2007-05-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_1_nuclear_power.html

Why the U.S. Needs More Nuclear Power
Peter W. Huber, Mark P. Mills

Your typical city dweller doesn’t know just how much coal and uranium he burns each year. On Lake Shore Drive in Chicago—where the numbers are fairly representative of urban America as a whole—the answer is (roughly): four tons and a few ounces. In round numbers, tons of coal generate about half of the typical city’s electric power; ounces of uranium, about 17 percent; natural gas and hydro take care of the rest. New York is a bit different: an apartment dweller on the Upper West Side substitutes two tons of oil (or the equivalent in natural gas) for Chicago’s four tons of coal. The oil-tons get burned at plants like the huge oil/gas unit in Astoria, Queens. The uranium ounces get split at Indian Point in Westchester, 35 miles north of the city, as well as at the Ginna, Fitzpatrick, and Nine Mile Point units upstate, and at additional plants in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New Hampshire.
That’s the stunning thing about nuclear power: tiny quantities of raw material can do so much. A bundle of enriched-uranium fuel-rods that could fit into a two-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen would power the city for a year: furnaces, espresso machines, subways, streetlights, stock tickers, Times Square, everything—even our cars and taxis, if we could conveniently plug them into the grid. True, you don’t want to stack fuel rods in midtown Manhattan; you don’t in fact want to stack them casually on top of one another anywhere. But in suitable reactors, situated, say, 50 miles from the city on a few hundred acres of suitably fortified and well-guarded real estate, two rooms’ worth of fuel could electrify it all.
Think of our solitary New Yorker on the Upper West Side as a 1,400-watt bulb that never sleeps—that’s the national per-capita average demand for electric power from homes, factories, businesses, the lot. Our average citizen burns about twice as bright at 4 PM in August, and a lot dimmer at 4 AM in December; grown-ups burn more than kids, the rich more than the poor; but it all averages out: 14 floor lamps per person, lit round the clock. Convert this same number back into a utility’s supply-side jargon, and a million people need roughly 1.4 “gigs” of power—1.4 gigawatts (GW). Running at peak power, Entergy’s two nuclear units at Indian Point generate just under 2 GW. So just four Indian Points could take care of New York City’s 7-GW round-the-clock average. Six could handle its peak load of about 11.5 GW. And if we had all-electric engines, machines, and heaters out at the receiving end, another ten or so could power all the cars, ovens, furnaces—everything else in the city that oil or gas currently fuels.
For such a nuclear-powered future to arrive, however, we’ll need to get beyond our nuclear-power past. In the now-standard histories, the beginning of the end of nuclear power arrived on March 28, 1979, with the meltdown of the uranium core at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The Chernobyl disaster seven years later drove the final nail into the nuclear coffin. It didn’t matter that the Three Mile Island containment vessel had done its job and prevented any significant release of radioactivity, or that Soviet reactors operated within a system that couldn’t build a safe toaster oven. Uranium was finished.
Three Mile Island came on the heels of the first great energy shock to hit America. On October 19, 1973, King Faisal ordered a 25 percent reduction in Saudi Arabia’s oil shipments to the United States, launching the Arab oil embargo. Oil supplies would tighten and prices would rise from then on, experts predicted. It would take some time, but oil was finished, too.
Five months after Three Mile Island, the nation’s first energy secretary summed up our predicament: “The energy future is bleak,” James R. Schlesinger declared, “and is likely to grow bleaker in the decade ahead. We must rapidly adjust our economics to a condition of chronic stringency in traditional energy supplies.” Fortunately, some argued, the U.S. could manage on less—much less. Smaller, more fuel-efficient cars were gaining favor, and rising gas prices would curb demand. The nation certainly didn’t need any new giant electric power plants—efficiency and the development of renewable sources of power would suffice. “The long-run supply curve for electricity is as flat as the Kansas horizon,” noted one right-thinking energy sage.
In the ensuing decades, however, American oil consumption rose 15 percent and electricity use almost doubled. Many people aren’t happy about it. Protecting our oil-supply lines entangles us with feudal theocracies and the fanatical sects that they spawn. The coal that we burn to generate so much of our electricity pollutes the air and may warm the planet. What to do? All sober and thoughtful energy pundits at the New York Times, Greenpeace, and the Harvard Divinity School agree: the answer to both problems is . . . efficiency and the development of renewable sources of power. Nevertheless, the secretary of energy, his boss (now a Texas oilman, not a Georgia peanut farmer), and the rest of the country should look elsewhere.
The U.S. today consumes about 100 quads—100 quadrillion BTUs—of raw thermal energy per year. We do three basic things with it: generate electricity (about 40 percent of the raw energy consumed), move vehicles (30 percent), and produce heat (30 percent). Oil is the fuel of transportation, of course. We principally use natural gas to supply raw heat, though it’s now making steady inroads into electric power generation. Fueling electric power plants are mainly (in descending order) coal, uranium, natural gas, and rainfall, by way of hydroelectricity.
This sharp segmentation emerged relatively recently, and there’s no reason to think it’s permanent. After all, developing economies use trees and pasture as fuel for heat and transportation, and don’t generate much electricity at all. A century ago, coal was the all-purpose fuel of industrial economies: coal furnaces provided heat, and coal-fired steam engines powered trains, factories, and the early electric power plants. From the 1930s until well into the 1970s, oil fueled not just cars but many electric power plants, too. And by 2020, electricity almost certainly will have become the new cross-cutting “fuel” in both stationary and mobile applications.
That shift is already under way. About 60 percent of the fuel we use today isn’t oil but coal, uranium, natural gas, and gravity—all making electricity. Electricity has met almost all of the growth in U.S. energy demand since the 1980s. About 60 percent of our GDP now comes from industries and services that use electricity as their front-end “fuel”—in 1950, the figure was only 20 percent. The fastest growth sectors of the economy—information technology and telecom, notably—depend entirely on electricity for fuel, almost none of it oil-generated. Electrically powered information technology accounts for some 60 percent of new capital spending.
Electricity is taking over ever more of the thermal sector, too. A microwave oven displaces much of what a gas stove once did in a kitchen. So, too, lasers, magnetic fields, microwaves, and other forms of high-intensity photon power provide more precise, calibrated heating than do conventional ovens in manufacturing and the industrial processing of materials. These electric cookers (broadly defined) are now replacing conventional furnaces, ovens, dryers, and welders to heat air, water, foods, and chemicals, to cure paints and glues, to forge steel, and to weld ships. Over the next two decades, such trends will move another 15 percent or so of our energy economy from conventional thermal to electrically powered processes. And that will shift about 15 percent of our oil-and-gas demand to whatever primary fuels we’ll then be using to generate electricity.
Electricity is also taking over the power train in transportation—not the engine itself, but the system that drives power throughout the car. Running in confined tunnels as they do, subways had to be all-electric from the get-go. More recently, diesel-electric locomotives and many of the monster trucks used in mining have made the transition to electric drive trains. Though the oil-fired combustion engine is still there, it’s now just an onboard electric generator that propels only electrons.
Most significantly, the next couple of decades will see us convert to the hybrid gasoline-and-electric car. A steadily rising fraction of the power produced under the hood of a car already is used to generate electricity: electrical modules are replacing components that belts, gears, pulleys, and shafts once drove. Steering, suspension, brakes, fans, pumps, and valves will eventually go electric; in the end, electricity will drive the wheels, too. Gas prices and environmental mandates have little to do with this changeover. The electric drive train simply delivers better performance, lower cost, and less weight.
The policy implications are enormous. Outfitted with a fully electric power train, most of the car—everything but its prime mover—looks like a giant electrical appliance. This appliance won’t run any great distance on batteries alone, given today’s battery technology. But a substantial battery pack on board will provide surges of power when needed. And that makes possible at least some “refueling” of the car from the electricity grid. As cars get more electric, an infrastructure of battery-recharging stations will grow apace, probably in driveways and parking lots, where most cars spend most of their time.
Once you’ve got the wheels themselves running on electricity, the basic economics strongly favor getting that electricity from the grid if you can. Burning $2-a-gallon gasoline, the power generated by current hybrid-car engines costs about 35 cents per kilowatt-hour. Many utilities, though, sell off-peak power for much less: 2 to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. The nationwide residential price is still only 8.5 cents or so. (Peak rates in Manhattan are higher because of the city’s heavy dependence on oil and gas, but not enough to change the basic arithmetic.) Grid kilowatts are cheaper because cheaper fuels generate them and because utility power plants run a lot more efficiently than car engines.
The gas tank and combustion engine won’t disappear anytime soon, but in the imminent future, grid power will (in effect) begin to top off the tank in between the short trips that account for most driving. All-electric vehicles flopped in the 1990s because batteries can’t store sufficient power for long weekend trips. But plug-in hybrids do have a gasoline tank for the long trips. And the vast majority of the most fuel-hungry trips are under six miles—within the range of the 2 to 5 kWh capacity of the onboard nickel-metal-hydride batteries in hybrids already on the road, and easily within the range of emerging automotive-class lithium batteries. Nationally, some 10 percent of hybrid cars could end up running almost entirely on the grid, as they travel less than six miles per day. Stick an extra 90 pounds—$800 worth—of nickel-metal-hydride batteries in a hybrid, recharge in garages and parking lots, and you can shift roughly 25 percent of a typical driver’s fuel-hungriest miles to the grid. Urban drivers could go long stretches without going near a gas station. The technology for replacing (roughly) one pint of gasoline with one pound of coal or under one ounce of uranium to feed one kilowatt-hour of power to the wheels is now close at hand.
So today we use 40 percent of our fuel to power the plug, and the plug powers 60 percent of GDP. And with the ascent of microwaves, lasers, hybrid wheels, and such, we’re moving to 60 and 80 percent, respectively, soon. And then, in due course, 100/100. We’re turning to electricity as fuel because it can do more, faster, in much less space—indeed, it’s by far the fastest and purest form of power yet tamed for ubiquitous use. Small wonder that demand for it keeps growing.
We’ve been meeting half of that new demand by burning an extra 400 million tons of coal a year, with coal continuing to supply half of our wired power. Natural gas, the fossil fuel grudgingly favored by most environmentalists, has helped meet the new demand, too: it’s back at 16 percent of electricity generated, where it was two decades ago, after dropping sharply for a time. Astonishingly, over this same period, uranium’s share of U.S. electricity has also risen—from 11 percent to its current 20 percent. Part of the explanation is more nuclear power plants. Even though Three Mile Island put an end to the commissioning of new facilities, some already under construction at the time later opened, with the plant count peaking at 112 in 1990. Three Mile Island also impelled plant operators to develop systematic procedures for sharing information and expertise, and plants that used to run seven months per year now run almost eleven. Uranium has thus displaced about eight percentage points of oil, and five points of hydroelectric, in the expanding electricity market.
Renewable fuels, by contrast, made no visible dent in energy supplies, despite the hopes of Greens and the benefits of government-funded research, subsidies, and tax breaks. About a half billion kWh of electricity came from solar power in 2002—roughly 0.013 percent of the U.S. total. Wind power contributed another 0.27 percent. Fossil and nuclear fuels still completely dominate the U.S. energy supply, as in all industrialized economies.
The other great hope of environmentalists, efficiency, did improve over the last couple of decades—very considerably, in fact. Air conditioners, car engines, industrial machines, lightbulbs, refrigerator motors—without exception, all do much more, with much less, than they used to. Yet in aggregate, they burn more fuel, too. Boosting efficiency actually raises consumption, as counterintuitive as that sounds. The more efficient a car, the cheaper the miles; the more efficient a refrigerator, the cheaper the ice; and at the end of the day, we use more efficient technology so much more that total energy consumption goes up, not down.
We’re burning our 40 quads of raw fuel to generate about 3.5 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year; if the automotive plug-and-play future does unfold on schedule, we’ll need as much as 7 trillion kWh per year by 2025. How should we generate the extra trillions of kilowatt-hours?
With hydrogen, the most optimistic Green visionaries reply—produced by solar cells or windmills. But it’s not possible to take such proposals seriously. New York City consumes so much energy that you’d need, at a minimum, to cover two cities with solar cells to power a single city (see “How Cities Green the Planet,” Winter 2000). No conceivable mix of solar and wind could come close to supplying the trillions of additional kilowatt-hours of power we’ll soon need.
Nuclear power could do it—easily. In all key technical respects, it is the antithesis of solar power. A quad’s worth of solar-powered wood is a huge forest—beautiful to behold, but bulky and heavy. Pound for pound, coal stores about twice as much heat. Oil beats coal by about twice as much again. And an ounce of enriched-uranium fuel equals about 4 tons of coal, or 15 barrels of oil. That’s why minuscule quantities contained in relatively tiny reactors can power a metropolis.
What’s more, North America has vast deposits of uranium ore, and scooping it up is no real challenge. Enrichment accounts for about half of the fuel’s cost, and enrichment technologies keep improving. Proponents of solar and wind power maintain—correctly—that the underlying technologies for these energy sources keep getting cheaper, but so do those that squeeze power out of conventional fuels. The lasers coming out of the same semiconductor fabs that build solar cells could enrich uranium a thousand times more efficiently than the gaseous-diffusion processes currently used.
And we also know this: left to its own devices, the market has not pursued thin, low-energy-density fuels, however cheap, but has instead paid steep premiums for fuels that pack more energy into less weight and space, and for power plants that pump greater power out of smaller engines, furnaces, generators, reactors, and turbines. Until the 1970s, engineering and economic imperatives had been pushing the fuel mix inexorably up the power-density curve, from wood to coal to oil to uranium. And the same held true on the demand side, with consumers steadily shifting toward fuels carrying more power, delivered faster, in less space.
Then King Faisal and Three Mile Island shattered our confidence and convinced regulators, secretaries of energy, and even a president that just about everything that the economists and engineers thought they knew about energy was wrong. So wrong that we had to reverse completely the extraordinarily successful power policies of the past.
New York has certainly felt the effects of that reversal. In 1965, the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) announced plans to build a $75 million nuclear plant in Suffolk County, to come on line by 1973; soon after, it purchased a 455-acre site between Shoreham and Wading River. A bit later, LILCO decided to increase Shoreham’s size and said it wanted to build several other nuclear plants in the area. Public resistance and federal regulators delayed Shoreham’s completion. Then Three Mile Island happened. In the aftermath, regulators required plant operators to devise evacuation plans in coordination with state and local governments. In early 1983, newly elected governor Mario Cuomo and the Suffolk County legislature both declared that no evacuation plan would ever be feasible and safe. That was that. By the time the state fully decommissioned Shoreham in 1994, its price tag had reached $6 billion—and the plant had never started full-power commercial operation. To pay for it all, Long Island electric rates skyrocketed.
What scared many New Yorkers—and thus many politicians—away from nuclear power was what had originally attracted the engineers and the utility economists to it: nuclear facilities use a unique fuel, burned, in its fashion, in relatively tiny reactors, to generate gargantuan amounts of power. Do it all just right, end to end, and you get cheap, abundant power, and King Faisal can’t do a thing about it. But the raw material itself, packing so much power into so little material, is inherently dangerous. Sufficiently bad engineering can result in a Three Mile Island or a Chernobyl. And these days, there’s the fear that poor security might enable terrorists to pull off something even worse.
How worried should we really be in 2005 that accidents or attacks might release and disperse a nuclear power plant’s radioactive fuel? Not very. Our civilian nuclear industry has dramatically improved its procedures and safety-related hardware since 1979. Several thousand reactor-years of statistics since Three Mile Island clearly show that these power plants are extraordinarily reliable in normal operation.
And uranium’s combination of power and super-density makes the fuel less of a terror risk, not more, at least from an engineering standpoint. It’s easy to “overbuild” the protective walls and containment systems of nuclear facilities, since—like the pyramids—the payload they’re built to shield is so small. Protecting skyscrapers is hard; no builder can afford to erect a hundred times more wall than usable space. Guaranteeing the integrity of a jumbo jet’s fuel tanks is impossible; the tanks have to fly. Shielding a nuclear plant’s tiny payload is easy—just erect more steel, pour more concrete, and build tougher perimeters.
In fact, it’s a safety challenge that we have already met. Today’s plants split atoms behind super-thick layers of steel and concrete; future plants would boast thicker protection still. All the numbers, and the strong consensus in the technical community, reinforce the projections made two decades ago: it is extremely unlikely that there will ever be a serious release of nuclear materials from a U.S. reactor.
What about the economic cost of nuclear power? Wind and sun are free, of course. But if the cost of fuel were all that mattered, the day of too-cheap-to-meter nuclear power would now be here—nearer, certainly, than too-cheap-to-meter solar power. Raw fuel accounts for over half the delivered cost of electricity generated in gas-fired turbines, about one-third of coal-fired power, and just a tenth of nuclear electricity. Factor in the cost of capital equipment, and the cheapest electrons come from uranium and coal, not sun and wind. What we pay for at our electric meter is increasingly like what we pay for at fancy restaurants: not the raw calories, but the fine linen, the service, and the chef’s ineffable artistry. In our overall energy accounts, the sophisticated power-conversion hardware matters more every year, and the cost of raw fuel matters less.
This in itself is great news for America. We’re good at large-scale hardware; we build it ourselves and keep building it cheaper. The average price of U.S. electricity fell throughout the twentieth century, and it has kept falling since, except in egregiously mismanaged markets such as California’s.
The cheap, plentiful power does terrific things for labor productivity and overall employment. As Lewis E. Lehrman notes, rising employment strongly correlates with rising supplies of low-cost energy. It takes energy to get the increasingly mobile worker to the increasingly distant workplace, and energy to process materials and power the increasingly advanced machines that shape and assemble those materials.
Most of the world, Europe aside, now recognizes this point. Workers in Asia and India are swiftly gaining access to the powered machines that steadily boosted the productivity of the American factory worker throughout the twentieth century. And the electricity driving those machines comes from power plants designed—and often built—by U.S. vendors. The power is a lot less expensive than ours, though, since it is generated the old-fashioned forget-the-environment way. There is little bother about protecting the river or scrubbing the smoke. China’s answer to the 2-gigawatt Hoover Dam on the Colorado River is the Three Gorges project, an 18-gigawatt dam on the Yangtze River. Combine cheaper supplies of energy with ready access to heavy industrial machines, and it’s hard to see how foreign laborers cannot close the productivity gap that has historically enabled American workers to remain competitive at considerably higher wages. Unless, that is, the United States keeps on pushing the productivity of its own workforce out ahead of its competitors. That—inevitably—means expanding our power supply and keeping it affordable, and deploying even more advanced technologies of powered production. Nuclear power would help keep the twenty-first-century U.S. economy globally competitive.
Greens don’t want to hear it, but nuclear power makes the most environmental sense, too. Nuclear wastes pose no serious engineering problems. Uranium is such an energy-rich fuel that the actual volume of waste is tiny compared with that of other fuels, and is easily converted from its already-stable ceramic form as a fuel into an even more stable glass-like compound, and just as easily deposited in deep geological formations, themselves stable for tens of millions of years. And what has Green antinuclear activism achieved since the seventies? Not the reduction in demand for energy that it had hoped for but a massive increase in the use of coal, which burns less clean than uranium.
Many Greens think that they have a good grip on the likely trajectory of the planet’s climate over the next 100 years. If we keep burning fossil fuels at current rates, their climate models tell them, we’ll face a meltdown on a much larger scale than Chernobyl’s, beginning with the polar ice caps. Saving an extra 400 million tons of coal here and there—roughly the amount of carbon that the United States would have to stop burning to comply with the Kyoto Protocol today—would make quite a difference, we’re told.
But serious Greens must face reality. Short of some convulsion that drastically shrinks the economy, demand for electricity will go on rising. Total U.S. electricity consumption will increase another 20 to 30 percent, at least, over the next ten years. Neither Democrats nor Republicans, moreover, will let the grid go cold—not even if that means burning yet another 400 million more tons of coal. Not even if that means melting the ice caps and putting much of Bangladesh under water. No governor or president wants to be the next Gray Davis, recalled from office when the lights go out.
The power has to come from somewhere. Sun and wind will never come close to supplying it. Earnest though they are, the people who argue otherwise are the folks who brought us 400 million extra tons of coal a year. The one practical technology that could decisively shift U.S. carbon emissions in the near term would displace coal with uranium, since uranium burns emission-free. It’s time even for Greens to embrace the atom.
It must surely be clear by now, too, that the political costs of depending so heavily on oil from the Middle East are just too great. We need to find a way to stop funneling $25 billion a year (or so) of our energy dollars into churning cauldrons of hate and violence. By sharply curtailing our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, we would greatly expand the range of feasible political and military options in dealing with the countries that breed the terrorists.
The best thing we can do to decrease the Middle East’s hold on us is to turn off the spigot ourselves. For economic, ecological, and geopolitical reasons, U.S. policymakers ought to promote electrification on the demand side, and nuclear fuel on the supply side, wherever they reasonably can.

SPANO FLOOD INSURANCE

2007-05-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

SPANO PROPOSES NEW EMERGENCY PLAN NOT CONNECTED WITH INDIAN POINT

VIEW OF THE NEW ENERGY CENTER CAMPUS

2007-05-01T08:52:00.000-07:00

INDIAN POINT, REPLACED WITH DIESELS

FRANKENSPANO, TERROR MASTER

2007-04-30T15:00:00.000-07:00

INDIAN POINT ANDREW SPANO ELECTED MONSTROSITY

indian point opinion gap

2007-04-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

indian point opinion gap

indian point

2007-04-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Spitzer.... Here's How to Do It

2007-04-27T04:56:00.000-07:00

The difference between the general public repeatedly being shown acceptable safety conditions by an alarmist press wrongly deeming them possible emergencies, and a truly degraded or dangerous nuclear plant , ...has not been made sufficiently clear.

Even an absolute collapse of local political confidence in NRC and its day-to-day oversight cannot be solved by re-inspecting all 104 nuclear plants whenever a local political figure gains traction for the idea in his/her constituency. Such a development can only result in the squandering of resources, funding, and effort into situations not warranting such activity. Taken to its extrapolated worst case, this strategy would flood all 104 nuclear plants with hordes of intrusive inspectors, impeding plant operations, and possibly inducing the very events they came to inspect against.

One of the first principles espoused in the international IAEA document 75-INSAG-3, "Basic Safety Principles for Nuclear Plants", in its preamble by nobel laureate Mohammed El Baradei, is that effort must be targeted to need. "It is important to avoid concentrating resources on efforts that have only marginal effects"..

With local governmental figures voicing ephemeral concerns brought to their attention from activist, intervenor, and opposer groups, outside of any indication that acceptable safety has truly been compromised, we see a clear need for a high level separation of fact and claim, perhaps by a national or international committee, establishing guidelines, and trip-points for the beneficial use of independent safety assessments, and likewise setting precise indicators barring the frivolous use of ISA as a political panacea.

The basic safety case for each of the 104 American nuclear plants has been set out in their Preliminary Safety Analysis Report and their Final Safety Analysis Report. Deterministic comparison of each plant's adherence to its written safety case is provided in real-time by the presence of resident NRC inspectors, and the NRC Reactor Oversight Program.

Probabilistic analysis of the major US plant types can be done by qualified researchers at any time, setting out the risks versus the probabilities in general, allowing guidelines to stand as required reading for those who would inspect, and re-inspect, frivolously, without knowing anything at all about the limits of mere inspection.

(Inspection as a tactic cannot predict an unforseen event. The very evening an ISA is completed at plant "X", a meteor could strike the containment dome, and breach the reactor core--- the inspection would have been a total waste of time).

Politicians ignorant of Probabilistic Risk Analyses seek an absolute "How Safe Is It?" answer , one that eternal inspection, by its very nature, cannot supply. PRA can provide that overview. Therefore politicians should direct the Congressional Research Service to commission a national PRA report on the 104 reactors, as their own internal legislative guide on how to avoid useless calls for repeat ISA's. In point of fact, politicians have been slyly misguided by intervenor and opposer public relations operatives posing as "technical experts", and given the Maine Yankee ISA & shutdown as the one and only way to find out if your local nuke is dangerous. Actually, the MY ISA found the plant was acceptable for further operation. It was a bereft conglomerate corporate culture that had no further interest in its nuclear asset, and bailed out. So even in the case of Maine Yankee, the public was never told how safe the plant was, or was not.

In the face of this impossibility to get blood from a stone, vis-a-vis the ISA tactic, politicians must be educated where to look for this information. I would challenge Senator Clinton and Congressman Hall to write up legislation empowering NRC or CRS to do a "PRA Constitutional Report" on each of the American reactors, with appropriate funding and a clear legislative charter., and to report the results in a high level national safety assessment.

After this report had scientifically charted the relative safety of all 104, then , and only then, would ISA become a useful tool, targeted at whatever specific need had been scientifically unearthed in the PRA Constitutional. This also has the benefit of closely following the IAEA methodology set out in 75-INSAG-3, the high-level agenda-free international document most trustworthy as an authority in these matters.

Without such a framework, any call for an ISA, without clearly demonstrated need, can rightly be called frivolous misuse of legislative priviledge. Within such a framework, established need can form the basis of any future calls fo an ISA.

Reference Documents may be found at:

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/P082_scr.pdf , links to the current international standard for safety at nuclear plants. "75-INSAG-3"

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub991e_web.pdf, is the IAEA publication setting the international standard for judging safety in nuclear plants built to earlier standards.
The document is named "INSAG-8"

JOURNALISTIC MALFEASANCE (?)

2007-04-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

Yellow Journalism on the Hudson (?)

In an amazingling brassy and overt display of journalistic delinquency, Gannett Journal News reporter Jorge FitzGibbon manages to read a clearly worded Manhattanville poll, where 47 percent of local residents say they want Indian Point open, having judged it as posing little or no risk, versus 33 percent wanting it closed, and somehow produce the blatantly deceptive banner headline:

"POLL: PUBLIC WORRIED ABOUT INDIAN POINT"

Are you kidding Mr. Fitzgibbon? I have a copy of the Gannett Code of Journalistic Ethics here on my desk, and I can see at a glance , that you have skewed the facts.
Digging deeper than the headline, we see FitzGibbon intentionally blurring the two opposing sides, coming up with an untrue, unscientific description barely mentioning the pro-nuclear landslide, and claiming deceptively "residents still have worries" Oh yeah, Jorge? Maybe the 33 % on the anti side worry, but the wording of the survey question specifically asks if respondents have concerns, and the 47% majority specifically state that do not have any concerns.

What malicious alchemical formula can you use to turn gold back into non-factual lead, as you have done in taking the facts ....47% for, only 33% against, and coming up with this huge blunder of journalistic arrogance:

"Poll: Public worried" ?

Imagine a 47 to 33 landslide in any election. Let's say--- John Kerry 47%, GW Bush 33% in 2004, for instance (or the reverse). Piles of books would be written about the greatest landslide in modern electoral history. Robert F Kennedy would be out of a job---you can't electronically hack a fake 14% discrepancy in Ohio or anywhere else--- the gap is just too large.

And.... add to that 14% gap, the fact that it occurs after seven long years of feverish organizing, letter writing, blogging, and furious emailing, by mock-local groups covertly paid to spread fear by the G.R.A.C.E. foundation, Tamarind foundation, and the antinuke Helene Heilbrunn Lerner foundation, as well as Riverkeeper, Wespac, Ipsec and their duped contributors --- all for naught. Or rather .....all for a very clear minus 14.

Shame, Fitzgibbon.... Shame on you. And shame on Gannett for abetting such malicious unethical "journalism."

Actually journalism is the wrong word. Faux journalism maybe. Agendist Propaganda is coming closer. Maybe it would be more accurate to simply say:

Yellow Journalism.

I expect Mr. FitzGibbon to launch into a huffy retort tomorrow, perhaps telling us how corrupt the good nuns over at Manhattanville have become, shilling for Entergy , and publishing false survey reports. It's no more than I would expect from a Goebbels-on-the-Hudson.

Yes, I kind of like that .....

Goebbels-on-the-Hudson....

has a Gannett-type ring to it!

Kind of FitzGibbon-esqe !!

Real ISA, versus Faux ISA

2007-04-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

The difference between the general public repeatedly being shown acceptable safety conditions by an alarmist press wrongly deeming them possible emergencies, and a truly degraded or dangerous nuclear plant , ...has not been made sufficiently clear.

Even an absolute collapse of local political confidence in NRC and its day-to-day oversight cannot be solved by re-inspecting all 104 nuclear plants whenever a local political figure gains traction for the idea in his/her constituency. Such a development can only result in the squandering of resources, funding, and effort into situations not warranting such activity. Taken to its extrapolated worst case, this strategy would flood all 104 nuclear plants with hordes of intrusive inspectors, impeding plant operations, and possibly inducing the very events they came to inspect against.

One of the first principles espoused in the international IAEA document 75-INSAG-3, "Basic Safety Principles for Nuclear Plants", in its preamble by nobel laureate Mohammed El Baradei, is that effort must be targeted to need. "It is important to avoid concentrating resources on efforts that have only marginal effects"..

With local governmental figures voicing ephemeral concerns brought to their attention from activist, intervenor, and opposer groups, outside of any indication that acceptable safety has truly been compromised, we see a clear need for a high level separation of fact and claim, perhaps by a national or international committee, establishing guidelines, and trip-points for the beneficial use of independent safety assessments, and likewise setting precise indicators barring the frivolous use of ISA as a political panacea.

The basic safety case for each of the 104 American nuclear plants has been set out in their Preliminary Safety Analysis Report and their Final Safety Analysis Report. Deterministic comparison of each plant's adherence to its written safety case is provided in real-time by the presence of resident NRC inspectors, and the NRC Reactor Oversight Program.

Probabilistic analysis of the major US plant types can be done by qualified researchers at any time, setting out the risks versus the probabilities in general, allowing guidelines to stand as required reading for those who would inspect, and re-inspect, frivolously, without knowing anything at all about the limits of mere inspection.

(Inspection as a tactic cannot predict an unforseen event. The very evening an ISA is completed at plant "X", a meteor could strike the containment dome, and breach the reactor core--- the inspection would have been a total waste of time).

Politicians ignorant of Probabilistic Risk Analyses seek an absolute "How Safe Is It?" answer , one that eternal inspection, by its very nature, cannot supply. PRA can provide that overview. Therefore politicians should direct the Congressional Research Service to commission a national PRA report on the 104 reactors, as their own internal legislative guide on how to avoid useless calls for repeat ISA's. In point of fact, politicians have been slyly misguided by intervenor and opposer public relations operatives posing as "technical experts", and given the Maine Yankee ISA & shutdown as the one and only way to find out if your local nuke is dangerous. Actually, the MY ISA found the plant was acceptable for further operation. It was a bereft conglomerate corporate culture that had no further interest in its nuclear asset, and bailed out. So even in the case of Maine Yankee, the public was never told how safe the plant was, or was not.

In the face of this impossibility to get blood from a stone, vis-a-vis the ISA tactic, politicians must be educated where to look for this information. I would challenge Senator Clinton and Congressman Hall to write up legislation empowering NRC or CRS to do a "PRA Constitutional Report" on each of the American reactors, with appropriate funding and a clear legislative charter., and to report the results in a high level national safety assessment.

After this report had scientifically charted the relative safety of all 104, then , and only then, would ISA become a useful tool, targeted at whatever specific need had been scientifically unearthed in the PRA Constitutional. This also has the benefit of closely following the IAEA methodology set out in 75-INSAG-3, the high-level agenda-free international document most trustworthy as an authority in these matters.

Without such a framework, any call for an ISA, without clearly demonstrated need, can rightly be called frivolous misuse of legislative priviledge. Within such a framework, established need can form the basis of any future calls for an ISA.

Reference Documents may be found at:

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/P082_scr.pdf , links to the current international standard for safety at nuclear plants. "75-INSAG-3"

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub991e_web.pdf, is the IAEA publication setting the international standard for judging safety in nuclear plants built to earlier standards.
The document is named "INSAG-8"

HELEN CALDICOTT'S SICK "PHILOSOPHY"

2007-04-17T07:12:00.001-07:00

BULIMIA IS NOT THE ANSWER

A note to the backward-looking, anal-obsessive Dr.Helen Caldicott

What we perceive as life, is a thermodynamic process. It has a front end, a reactive gut, and a back end. At the front end it seeks or takes in local energy, in its gut it "uses" the energy, and at the back it releases processed, depleted material. In short it eats, it respirates, and it defecates. Because this is the innate nature of all life, there cannot be any life which leaves no waste. In terms of individual creatures, or individual species, waste can be either innocuous, distasteful, or eventually poisonous, when enough has accumulated. However in planetary terms, there is no place for the concept of waste.The accretion of various processed and/or depleted materials by one species, simply sets the stage for Darwin's evolutionary laws to result in another more parsimonious species that lives on the richly deposited life-resources, once viewed as useless, by the older, obsolete life form making them.

The methane-breathing hordes of the pre-Cambrian left their oxygen "waste" for today's species to savor as the essence of life itself. The guano-producing creatures who gave us our phosphate deposits provided rich fertilizer for our farms. The numberless shelled creatures of long ago have given us our limestone continents, and even more numerous bacteria, our fossil fuels. Coral reefs are an ongoing depositing, visible to our eyes, but typical of the wider pattern of life itself.

In planetary terms, therefore, there can never be an ideal steady state. The planet's essence is not static. Change is paramount. Whatever exists now, is a moment's flicker in an eons-old fire, a fire that consumes the planet eternally, or until the sun burns out and goes cold. A species, like coral, that inhabits, uses, and forever changes the place it inhabits, is not committing a "sin of pollution".The birds or bats who "foul" their islands or their caves with guano are not guilty of malicious "bad housekeeping". Bird species, and bat species need not apologize to Gaia for their guano. In fact it is their gift to Gaia, to make of it a new beginning, which Gaia always has done. By giving back their gift of evolved, changed Gaian essence, these creatures have both embodied Gaia, and done her good work for her. In fact it is their planetary duty to process what they find, and leave it changed. If it were not Gaia's wish that these species exist, they would not have arisen. The evolutionary path trod by their ancestor and precursor species led to their existence, by the self same process they engage in now, it has never changed, and if we think it has been "good" in the past, we are forced to accept the long vision that it is also "good" now, as it happens before our eyes.

So then why do many among us view the "man-guano" we produce as evil? Why, uniquely among all creatures that ever existed, or ever could exist, why must homo sapiens sapiens leave exactly zero evidence of ever having lived as a Gaian creation, breathing in, but not breathing out, eating but never defecating, living, but never leaving any gift behind for future species? As a nest-builder, mankind leaves his version of a coral reef in his infrastructure, his cities, his dams, his huge garbage middens, sources of great archaeological richness. Is the coral itself now to dismantle each reef, at the end of each creature's tiny life, to leave the ocean "just as they found it"? ( What might be an efficient policy for a public hiking trail can be a monstrous crime, when applied to humanity as a whole).

It is a delusion. It is a futile wish, a desire for false one-ended perfection, an effort to assuage a self-invented guilt by penitent abstention, self-denial, species-denial, history-denial, and finally life-denial. It is born in an ignorance of just what living species are, and thus what they are constrained to do. It is an imaginary delusion that mankind is a god, and therefore not subject to the eternal scientific, thermodynamic , and Gaian rules that determine planetary evolution. At its lowest and most embarrassing level, it is a simple wish to not have any anus. Were mankind changeable into the "perfected" creature many greenists propose as our ethical next step, it would be a creature that would simply never leave any waste. We would breathe in oxygen, but never breathe out CO2.... We might eat food (Vegan, as they would advise us).... but we would use it entirely, and thus never emit any urine, feces, buildings, or other lasting evidence of having processed the Gaian surround. It's a crock.

In a sustainability framework, this new anus-free human race would be ideal. Free of the guilt of "fouling" our planet, we could simply grow less in numbers on a continual basis, until we were rightly seen once again as food for other species, who would then eat us, and deposit us as THEIR waste, in the end.

So-- sustainability,... far from being a high moral concept, a way to successfully find our "true station" on the planet, is none of these things, but in fact is an ill-conceived self-mutilation. Stasis is not only an impossibility in a living thermodynamic surround, to seek it eventually stunts the expansive impulse describing the host creature as vital, current, and processing on behalf of the planet, and twists current existence into a refusal to process on behalf of Gaia, a delinquent posture of false altruism, never giving back, and thus interrupting evolution itself, in a megalomanic desire to preserve humankind's flickering instant as an eternal "sustainable" set- piece, and the races to come after be damned.....

Sustainability is therefore a monstrous hubris, born of self-deification, and over-mentalization. In point of fact there is a single sustainable condition, well known to all. That condition is death. By pathological mentalization, some young women imagine their bodies to need constant reduction, and so they abstain from food, or purge when they do eat, in an effort to achieve an unreachable, delusive "perfect" state, a state that in the end, untreated, will very certainly turn out to be their own death. In exactly analogous fashion, "Sustainability" is preached as an end to the very techniques that have led to mankind's current flourishing condition, a state of great health and vitality the world over, overrunning new habitats at every turn , an obviously successful adaptive episode, processing the planet's heritage fully and joyously, urging us instead to take up new, less fruitful, less expansive, less responsive, more isolating strategies---- for what purpose? That the planet may be denied our existence as who we truly are, as who the planet itself has evolved us to be, and be given a wan, mentalized, mutilated, bulimic ideal in its stead?

It stems from the bipolar nature of human thinking. In ancient languages, the words for up, & down, or for hot & cold are the same word. Only their use denotes which of the paired concepts is meant each time it is spoken. Thus we dream in opposites, always opposing. Since we seem successful, and happiness is reachable now for billions, unhappiness must also exist, in exactly equal measure. Maybe it does, or maybe it does not. Reality is not the issue. Perception of "balance" in the human mind is the great quest, and in this mentalization, greenists seek what is unfindable. They seek balance in an unbalanced , dynamic, evolving reality, and it is not to be found. In fact, the only true "balanced" condition vis-a-vis life, is the absence of life, either non-existence, or death. That a mentalization seeks balance and finds death, is a great human conundrum, dealt with in differing ways by Buddha, Christ, and the pagans. Buddha urges each to seek his own mental death, Christ invites us to worship his proxy death, and the pagans simply kill each other for the honor and the blood thrill.

Thus sustainability, as a philosophy, mines the same human quirk as Buddhism, much in vogue in the West, and infects media with invitations to mass bulimic purgings on all sides. The West, rejecting its worn-out Christianity, heartily embraces its new crypto-buddhist task, and purges en-masse, still forced to attain great individual freedom & wealth, but guilt-ridden about it unless it is bought off by some visible self-mutilation, be it a piercing, declasse clothes, or the refusal to eat meat. These mutilations must occur under the gaze of the less fortunate, to have best emotional effect. As an internal reactive mentalization, it can be viewed as a superstition, or a comforting delusion. Since it works against the very success tactics used by 99% of the human race, it is false, and if pursued relentlessly, it is evil. Muslims correctly regard it as an end-stage pathology, a sin, and thus a need for conversion to Islam.

Thus those who tell us coal use emits CO2, and nuclear power results in spent fuel are spouting a banality, as if it were big news, simply for the way it makes them feel. Forgetting to look forward, where our destiny lies, they turn back, to decry our own back-end, our waste-depositing apparatus, and, focused tightly on the anus-of-mankind to the exclusion of all else, they catalog the droppings, with great and obsessive fascination, urging the entire species to fear their own leavings, never realizing that the race, and the planet, are done with it, and need to move on, despite it.

This article proposes no new strategy to move forward, except that full acceptance of all aspects of human endeavor will be required, barring nothing, in order to fully process our Gaian surround,
and that looking back has been taught to us from ancient times as a mistake, one that turned Lot's wife to a pillar of salt.

tags: Indian Point, nuclear, helen caldicott, bulimia is not the answer

WHO IS DISPENSING GRATUITOUS FEAR?

2007-04-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

What kind of danger surrounds us here, in Westchester, in our ordinary lives?

A citizen named Monique Rahaman asked Andrew Spano in 2003 at an open forum "What will happen if the Valhalla dam breaks?" His answer was, (amazingly) "I guess we will all just float away." Aside from this crass sarcasm being absolutely unacceptable in an elected official, it points out the general conditioning that has been applied in the area, selectively trying to induce fear of Indian Point, while ignoring all other dangers as if they did not exist. Actually, dangers abound, from the 18" gap on the platform at Croton Station, to the tanks of chlorine and ammonia kept at South Street in Peekskill. However, those dangers have no advertising department. Other , more remote dangers have become the cult focus of fringe agitation groups.It is almost like a mental disease, when fully developed. In some particularly overconcerned few, it has actually manifested as a psychosis, one written up in eccentric blog posts, on zany websites. It is also absolutely wrong, factually. When Andrew Spano answered Monique Rahaman at his "Regional Security Teach-in", telling her that dam failure was, in his words, "Not too likely", he was unaware that over 200 major dam failures had occurred in the twentieth century, making the likelihood of a dam failure a 100% certainty, once every six months on average, for a over a hundred years. A major hurricane happens once every 30 years. A world war happens twice in a century. A space shuttle is lost once every 15 years, but a dam fails once every six months, on average. And that is without considering malicious intent.

Have many people been killed in dam collapses?
A: More than 1,350,000 people have been swept to their deaths by the roughly 200 dams outside China which have collapsed or been overtopped during the 20th century. Two large dams which burst when a massive typhoon hit the Chinese province of Henan in August 1975 left an estimated 80,000 to 230,000 dead. This disaster was kept secret by the Chinese government and was only revealed to the outside world in 1995. People have also died in earthquakes caused by the great weight of water in large reservoirs. A magnitude 6.3 earthquake caused by Koyna Dam in India in 1967 killed around 180 people.

The following sites catalog dam disasters

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/mdaflf.html
http://www.ci.fort-collins.co.us/oem/dam-failure.php
http://www.abag.ca.gov/bayarea/eqmaps/damfailure/damfail.html
http://simscience.org/cracks/intermediate/death.html
http://www.geol.ucsb.edu/~arthur/Teton%20Dam/welcome_dam.html
http://www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/stfrancis.htm
http://crunch.tec.army.mil/nid/webpages/nid.cfm

The Army Topo Engineering Center lists Kensico Dam
NID No NY00051, 168 ft high
as a Category 1 or "High Hazard" dam.

You may check this youself at:

Points of Contact:
Technical Assistance:
U.S. Army Topographic Engineering Center
CEERD-TR-A, ATTN: National Inventory of Dams
7701 Telegraph Rd.
Alexandria, VA 22315
rd1@tec.army.mil
General Dam Information:
Association of State Dam Safety Officials
450 Old Vine Street, 2nd Floor
Lexington, KY 40507
info@damsafety.org

The Croton Dam, in fact, collapsed just as it was completed, sweeping entire towns into the Hudson. It had to be completely rebuilt. So it HAS happened here. Right here.

As far as the likelihood of anybody surviving a Kensico Dam release, read this detailed scenario, written by a civil engineer who surveyed the topography for Riverkeeper, a few years ago, for a paper widely disseminated by Robert Kennedy jr., before his flirtation with Indian Point began.

South of the Kensico dam, there is no flat open plain waiting
to absorb and disperse any flood resulting from a dam failure.
Instead the dam sits at the head of the narrow, focused canyon
of the Bronx River, stretching South from the dam,
and running through the most highly populated section
of the most highly populated region in America.
As residents know, out of this canyon there is truly no escape.
All East to West roads in this area are small, twisting
stoplight-ridden vestiges of old colonial paths.
The only good roads run North to South - exactly the path of the water.

The water surface in the Kensico reservoir stands 355 feet above sea level. The dam stretches between two 400 ft hills,168 feet above the ground surface in the Kensico dam plaza. Therefore any wall of water leaving the dam will be 100+ feet high. Immediately South of the plaza,
two more 400 foot hills contain this water, hemming it in at a 250' elevation, forcing it South to the North White Plains Train Yard, where it will pick up Metro North Railcars-up to 200 of them,
and send them sailing like 80 ton surfboards. These objects, and the 100'+ high wall of water will smash into the abutments of the elevated Cross-Westchester Expressway, turning it over, killing hundreds, and in addition closing a major arterial route from New England to the West. Leaping over the fallen Expressway the mighty torrent will bear its load of railcars, 18 wheel truck bodies, propane tank trucks & passenger cars on again towards White Plains Proper. At The White Plains Train Station the ground elevation is about 200' above sea level, so the water is dropping fast, and accellerating.

At this point the Bronx River Canyon turns abruptly to the Southwest,
and the crest, with its load of giant floating debris will resist the turn, and overtop the channel,destroying both the Westchester County Center Building, and the White Plains Train Station. South of the station, below the brow of Battle Hill is the famous hairpin turn on the Bronx River Parkway. Below this elevated span, the valley narrows and steepens. This will have the effect of accellerating the stream into a monstrous White Water rapid
which will follow the old Bronx River Aqueduct South,
uprooting the Hartsdale Train Station, and Barrelling into Garth Woods,
turning its 150 year old trees into deadly missiles. It will roar into Scarsdale Station,the Garth Woods Apartment Houses and Our Lady of Fatima Church at about 300 miles per hour,easily sweeping them away.

At Crestwood, the historic Asbury church sits directly over
the abandoned Bronx River Aqueduct, and so after surviving 200+ years,
would finally disappear in the flood. The land surface at this point is 120 feet above sea level, so once again the water is barrelling downhill, and picking up speed.At Tuckahoe, the channel narrows radically in the old Burroughs Wellcome Factory Sluiceway, and at this point, unfortunately, a condominium sits hard by the stream ,
as does the Headquarters of the Hudson Valley bank.
These buildings will be overtopped by the constrained fury of the
narrowly channeled deluge, and will disintegrate, and head South.
The Tuckahoe train station and town hall will be screened by the
old factory buildings, but will be inundated up to the 200 foot elevation,drowning everyone in the town to a radius of 10 blocks.

Now comes a uniquely tragic episode. The mighty deluge, roaring southward at 300 miles an hour will enter Bronxville, and totally annihilate the Lawrence Hospital Complex, which sits in fact, directly on the Bronx River. None will survive. Patients, doctors,
the elderly, the embattled nursing staff, xray machines , operating rooms,and 100 years of medical records will be turned into sludge, joining the rapidly solidifying debris field. (a watery debris field does not disperse as it goes, like a smoke plume. a watery debris field solidifies, and bears its contents downstream like a battering ram.) Racing through Fleetwood and MountVernon in the tightly channeled Bronx River Parkway cut, between tall constraining concrete walls,
the flood will topple the 60 year old Cross County Parkway overpass,
which is some 80 feet high.It will fall spectacularly to the South,
its rotten,spalling concrete legs long in need of repair, but never getting it, terrified motorists able to watch the sickening arc of its fall in their last pitiful moments of life.At Wakefield in the Bronx, the tsunami will careen mightily into Misericordia Hospital on the East , and Woodlawn Cemetary on the West,ironically joining the newly dying with the long dead, for their last bit of camaraderie,on a 400 mile per hour slalom to the North River.Misericordia's xray machines will join Lawrence's xray machines, the Metro North railcars, the propane tankers, 18 wheelers & soccer moms as pathetic bits of dredge, shredding against the uprooted trees from Garth Woods, turning into a roaring, bloody, muddy stinking sludge of death.The death-sludge, now careening forward at an incredible 400 miles per hour, roaring like a thousand freight trains will slam into Fordham University, and the Bronx Zoo, in a fraction of a second wiping out a hundred years
of science and scholarship, and propelling scholars, wild beasts,
and the death-sludge hard against the Cross Bronx Expressway.
This is solidly built, and will not overturn. Instead the water and all its contents will rise in a mighty wall of water, overtopping the road,and spreading out in all directions into the narrow streets of the South Bronx,killing tens of thousands in a few minutes.
Finally, in the Swampy Flats between Clason Point and Hunt's Point,
the torrent will lay out its creation for all to see- a railcar here,
an elderly victim there, an 18-wheeler almost hidden in 7 feet of undiggable, irremedial life-sludge become death-sludge.

Gone will be two major hospitals, 3 major east-west arterials,
most water into New York City, all rail traffic on the harlem line,
which probably will be declared unrepairable and abandoned,
all use of the Bronx River Parkway, whose pavement will have been torn out in half mile chunks and buried under yards of Mount St Helens type mud, all further use of the IRT subway, whose tranformer yards and switch houses will now lie in the North River, and up to 3 million dead.
But they won't matter.

Why won't they matter?

They won't matter because they dont live in Bedford
and they don't have Robert F Kennedy Jr or Andrew Cuomo pleading to save them,and because Andrew Spano thinks they should "Just Float Away".

In point of fact, Spano is hiding just why he refuses to consider such an event. You see, the City of New York owns the dam, not Westchester County, so Spano has no budget for this disaster. So therefore it cannot happen. When Spano answered Monique Rahaman at his "Regional Security Teach-in", telling her that dam failure was, in his words, "Not too likely", he was unaware that over 200 major dam failures had occurred in the twentieth century, making the likelihood of a dam failure a 100% certainty, once every six months on average, for a over a hundred years.
A major hurricane happens once every 30 years. A world war happens twice in a century. A space shuttle is lost once every 15 years, but a dam fails once every six months, on average. And that is without considering malicious intent.

THIS DAM DISASTER IS OF NO USE TO MR. SPANO.
THEREFORE HE IGNORES IT, AS IMPOSSIBLE.

BUT HE HAS ANOTHER "PET" DISASTER,
AROUND WHICH HE IS KNITTING HIS CAREER.

IT IS A MUCH LESS LIKELY DISASTER,
FAR FETCHED IN THE EXTREME,
BUT FOR SPANO, IT'S A VISIBILITY THEME,
A RELEVANCE SUBSTITUTE.

You see, he has been tutored in all the fringe propaganda,
about Indian Point.

GAIA'S BEATING HEART-- EARTH'S OWN REACTOR !

2007-04-01T07:46:00.000-07:00

Here are a few citations in the exciting new field of planetary nuclear science. The planet itself contains a massive nuclear reactor at its core , fueled by Uranium, Thorium, and Potassium. Read, and enjoy!

Radioactivity in Earth's core up for a look
vast uranium field serves as natural reactor
Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Monday, November 29, 2004

Researchers are preparing to prove the discoveries of San Diego geologist, J. Marvin Herndon, who has found a huge, natural nuclear reactor or "georeactor" -- a vast deposit of uranium several miles wide -- at Earth's core, thousands of miles beneath our feet. Herndon and many others believe it explains otherwise puzzling phenomena of planetary science, such as fluctuations in the intensity of Earth's magnetic field. "Herndon's idea about (a reactor) located at the center of the Earth, has opened a new era in planetary physics," said four Russian scientists at Moscow's Institute for Nuclear Research and Kurchatov Institute in a Jan. 28 paper published online.
It might sound bizarre, the very idea of a "natural" nuclear reactor -- a geological version of commercial nuclear power plants such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon plant near San Luis Obispo. The reactor at the Earth's core is just a much bigger and deeper version of an extinct natural nuclear reactor that scientists discovered in a uranium mine in Gabon, Africa, in 1972.
The Gabon reactor consists of geological deposits of uranium that, being radioactive, naturally emit subatomic particles called neutrons. These neutrons split the nuclei in adjacent uranium atoms, causing them to emit more neutrons and, thus, to split even more uranium atoms -- in effect, it's a slow-speed chain reaction. Research in the 1970s revealed that the Gabon reactor operated intermittently for a few million years about 2 billion years ago.
Scientists have long known the planet's core is divided into a solid and liquid part composed largely of iron, the liquid circulation of which powers Earth's magnetic field. They have not thought of the core as a repository for uranium, because uranium was not understood until 1945. Although the inevitability of uranium in the core was proposed in 1939 by scientist Walter Elsasser, on the basis that it is the heaviest naturally occurring element, so it would migrate to the core via gravity.
Herndon has demonstrated how a uranium georeactor in Earth's core explains reality better than older scientific ideas, by providing more convincing ways to:
-- Explain the ratios of helium isotopes emitted from volcanoes in Iceland and Hawaii. Those ratios are consistent with the ratios of helium isotopes emitted by a nuclear reactor.
-- Explain why planets such as Jupiter emit far more heat than they absorb from the sun. Herndon thinks they, too, have natural nuclear reactors at their cores. (Because heat is continually generated by the decay of radioactive elements in Earth's crust and mantle -- the regions above the core -- scientists are uncertain whether Earth emits more heat than it receives from the sun.)
-- Explain variations in the intensity of Earth's magnetic field, which fluctuates over time. Herndon has shown that in the core, the georeactor drives the motions of the liquid iron that creates the magnetic field. But the georeactor varies in activity levels over time. Those activity variations, he believes, might explain intensity variations in Earth's magnetic field.
Now, Rob de Meijer and associates at the Nuclear Physics Institute in Groningen, the Netherlands, are planning to demonstrate Herndon's proposals. They're drawing blueprints for a large device that could detect ghostly particles called antineutrinos that have escaped from Earth's core. When put into operation, it will capture antineutrinos that would fly through the roughly 4,000 miles of solid rock and emerge at the Earth's surface.
The European scientists have proposed drilling a shaft more than 1,000 feet deep into the island of Curacao in the Caribbean. They hope to lower into the shaft devices called photomultipliers, which could detect particles from the hypothetical deep-Earth georeactor.
The estimated cost: $80 million. In an e-mail to The Chronicle, de Meijer said he is seeking funding from the Dutch government and industrial consortiums. He and his team plan to visit Curacao in January to take the geological samples needed to design the subterranean antineutrino "antenna," as they call it.
Curacao is a good location for the antineutrino detector because "the island's rocks have relatively few natural radionuclides that could mask the (antineutrino) signal from the Earth's core," the journal Physics World noted in September. The detector could be confused by antineutrinos emitted by commercial nuclear reactors, but Curacao is far enough from the southeastern United States that reactors in Florida won't affect it.
"Dr. Herndon is a brilliant and original thinker. I agree with his proposal" said geoscientist David Deming of the University of Oklahoma.
"The problem with most scientists working today is that they have no knowledge of the history of science," Deming adds. "As late as 1955, continental drift was regarded as the equivalent of alien abductions, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. By 1970, continental drift was an accepted part of the new theory of plate tectonics."
Richard Muller, a noted physicist and author at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley. Since the 1970s, Muller has done pioneering research in diverse fields, including cosmology and planetary sciences.
"Herndon's discovery is a very positive contribution to deep Earth science. He raises issues that are worth exploring at some length. " Muller adds. "I consider his work to be 'out of the box' thinking, and as such, it is valuable as a step forward in our understanding of reality."
On a side note, in case you're wondering: Unlike the planet-busting reactor of Superman lore, neither the Gabon reactor nor Herndon's hypothetical deep-Earth reactors could explode like atomic bombs. A-bombs require highly concentrated amounts of fissionable materials that are explosively compressed together in a fraction of a second -- far faster than the snail's-pace processes that would be characteristic of the natural reactors.
Herndon received his bachelor's degree in physics at UC San Diego in 1970. He studied nuclear chemistry and meteorites in graduate school at Texas A&M, where he received his doctoral degree for a thesis on meteorites. Operating as an independent scientist, over the years, he has published papers in prestigious journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. His main allies are non-Americans, like the de Meijer team. On Dec. 16, Herndon is scheduled to deliver the prestigious annual "Christmas Lecture" at the European Commission's Institute for Transuranium Elements in Karlsruhe, Germany. It is felt that the huge antinuclear bias in American society is preventing other U.S. academics from getting on board, as they might lose tenure positions or funding by bucking the strong academic antinuke culture on this issue. Had his two sons -- now physicians -- planned to become scientists, he says, "I would have steered them away from it because you can't make a living and do legitimate science; you have to 'howl with the wolves' or you don't survive. This is a sad testament to our times. There's something very wrong in American science."
Herndon’s proposal
According to traditional theory, the core of Earth consists of iron. The SanDiego scientist J. Marvin Herndon has argued that a large deposit of uranium also exists in the core, where it powers a natural nuclear reactor or “georeactor.” Herndon believes the nuclear process is responsible for variations in the intensity of Earth’s magnetic field.
During the radioactive decays, the georeactor releases ghostly particles called antineutrinos, which fly through thousands of miles of solid rock to Earth’s surface. Scientists will test Herndon’s georeactor by using special instruments to detect the antineutrinos as they pass through the outer crust.
Sources: nuclearplanet.com; www.ansto.gov.au/edu/about/about_neutron.htm;
Other scientists have expanded Herndon's proposal to include Thorium and Potassium.
nasa
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/29/MNGPIA17BL45.DTL

http://athene.as.arizona.edu/~lclose/teaching/images/lect8.html
Lecture 8
History of the Earth
Chapter 3
 The dynamic Earth (Introduction to Geophysics)
Most geophysical processes stem from the transfer of heat from the Earth's core to its surface.  
Why is the Earth's core hot?
1. The radio active decay of Uranium (U), Thorium (Th) and Potassium (K). Each radio active decay (the loss of some neutrons and protons) releases very little energy. However, all the countless events acting together release a large sustained amount of energy overtime. In the core of the Earth this energy is trapped and so the Earth's core is heated up.
2. As the solid inner grows latent heat is released as the molten outer core freezes to solid rock. Eventually the whole Earth will be solid and there will be no magnetic field.
3. Residual formation heat. Some of the kinetic energy (1/2mv2) of the impacting planetesimals would have been converted to heat. This residual formation heat helped melt the core initially.
4. Another early heat source was the heat produced as the heavy elements (like Iron (Fe) and Nickel (Ni)) "falling" into the core. This process also generated heat from friction.
 The exchange of heat from the hot core to the cool surface is called convection (heat rises, cold sinks). In this manner the whole Earth has a series of big convective cells in its mantel. The result is a complex series of movements of the crust of the Earth as it "rides" on top of the convective cells below.
Plate Tectonics  
In the 1950s and 60s geophysicists started to develop the concept of Plate Tectonics. Plate tectonics is the theory that describes the motion of the continental plates "riding" the tops of these massive convective cells in the Earth (like a conveyor belt).  
Here is a movie showing how the plates have moved the continents
Today these plates move by about 10 cm/yr
• when these plates stick, and then suddenly slip, an Earthquake occurs
• when the heavier ocean crust sinks below the lighter (granite) continental crust (at subjection zones) there will be Earthquakes and Volcanos -the ring of fire around the Pacific is built this way. The Continental crust will also be crumpled, and as a result it is typical to see mountain ranges along the edges of these faults (for example the rocky mountains and the Andes).
• Seamount Island Chains -like the Hawaiian Islands- are made when one hot spot in the Earths mantle leads to continuous eruptions in the same spot. But as the crust moves along the ocean floor a chain of new islands appear.Sometimes (but not often) two continental plates collide. In this case neither plate is heavier and so they both "crumple". This is occurring today as the Indian plate collides with the Asian plate. The result of this collision is the Himalayas which are the highest mountains on Earth.Why is a hot core important for life on Earth?
1. the surface temperature is higher
2. active volcanism can out gas the atmosphere and oceans
3. volcanism is required to form land masses above the ocean
4. hot spots in the sea floor can be "safe" habitats for life
5. hot springs and even hot water deep in the Earth can harbor life
6. volcanoes play a role in the Earth's carbon cycle
 Basin and Range
Tucson is located in a unique part of the world. The area where we live is called "Basin & Range" geography. This denotes that in Eastern California, Arizona, and New Mexico the terrain is dominated by short (often parallel) mountain ranges with large dry basins between them. This is a highly unusual land form caused by a unique event in the Earth's history.
• About 20 million years ago the continental plate of the Southwest became "attached" somehow to the pacific coast plate which was moving northwest at the time.
• Added to this was intense heat from magma close to the surface.
• The end result was the unique "Basin & Range disturbance" where the coast of California was pulled away from Arizona by some 38% of its original size.
• The hard cold rock on the top splintered into dozens of parallel ranges, while huge basins over 1 km deep were opened up between the rangeThe whole stretching event took a few million years. Then due to erosion the valleys filled in and the ranges wore down --further filling the valleys.
The reason Tucson exists today is because of the "fossil ground water" trapped in the huge 1 km deep valley basin exists below the city.

http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000B2C71-BCF0-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7
Why is the earth's core so hot? And how do scientists measure its temperature?

Jeff Atwell
Mount Vernon, Ohio

Quentin Williams, associate professor of earth sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz offers this explanation:
There are three main sources of heat in the deep earth: (1) heat from when the planet formed and accreted, which has not yet been lost; (2) frictional heating, caused by denser core material sinking to the center of the planet; and (3) heat from the decay of radioactive elements.
It takes a rather long time for heat to move out of the earth. This occurs through both "convective" transport of heat within the earth's liquid outer core and solid mantle and slower "conductive" transport of heat through nonconvecting boundary layers, such as the earth's plates at the surface. As a result, much of the planet's primordial heat, from when the earth first accreted and developed its core, has been retained.
The amount of heat that can arise through simple accretionary processes, bringing small bodies together to form the proto-earth, is large: on the order of 10,000 kelvins (about 18,000 degrees Farhenheit). The crucial issue is how much of that energy was deposited into the growing earth and how much was reradiated into space. Indeed, the currently accepted idea for how the moon was formed involves the impact or accretion of a Mars-size object with or by the proto-earth. When two objects of this size collide, large amounts of heat are generated, of which quite a lot is retained. This single episode could have largely melted the outermost several thousand kilometers of the planet.
Additionally, descent of the dense iron-rich material that makes up the core of the planet to the center would produce heating on the order of 2,000 kelvins (about 3,000 degrees F). The magnitude of the third main source of heat--radioactive heating--is large, but quantitatively uncertain. The precise abundances of radioactive elements (primarily potassium, uranium and thorium) are is poorly known in the deep earth.
In sum, there was no shortage of heat in the early earth, and the planet's inability to cool off quickly results in the continued high temperatures of the Earth's interior. In effect, not only do the earth's plates act as a blanket on the interior, but not even convective heat transport in the solid mantle provides a particularly efficient mechanism for heat loss. The planet does lose some heat through the processes that drive plate tectonics, especially at mid-ocean ridges. For comparison, smaller bodies such as Mars and the Moon show little evidence for recent tectonic activity or volcanism.
We derive our primary estimate of the temperature of the deep earth from the melting behavior of iron at ultrahigh pressures. We know that the earth's core depths from 2,886 kilometers to the center at 6,371 kilometers (1,794 to 3,960 miles), is predominantly iron, with some contaminants. How? The speed of sound through the core (as measured from the velocity at which seismic waves travel across it) and the density of the core are quite similar to those seen in of iron at high pressures and temperatures, as measured in the laboratory. Iron is the only element that closely matches the seismic properties of the earth's core and is also sufficiently abundant present in sufficient abundance in the universe to make up the approximately 35 percent of the mass of the planet present in the core.
The earth's core is divided into two separate regions: the liquid outer core and the solid inner core, with the transition between the two lying at a depth of 5,156 kilometers (3,204 miles). Therefore, If we can measure the melting temperature of iron at the extreme pressure of the boundary between the inner and outer cores, then this lab temperature should reasonably closely approximate the real temperature at this liquid-solid interface. Scientists in mineral physics laboratories use lasers and high-pressure devices called diamond-anvil cells to re-create these hellish pressures and temperatures as closely as possible.

http://www.physlink.com/News/121103PotassiumCore.cfm

Radioactive material may be primary heat source in Earth's core

Radioactive potassium, common enough on Earth to make potassium-rich bananas one of the "hottest" foods around, appears also to be a substantial source of heat in the Earth's core, according to recent experiments by University of California, Berkeley, geophysicists.
Radioactive potassium, uranium and thorium are thought to be the three main sources of heat in the Earth's interior, aside from that generated by the formation of the planet. Together, the heat keeps the mantle actively churning and the core generating a protective magnetic field.
But geophysicists have found much less potassium in the Earth's crust and mantle than would be expected based on the composition of rocky meteors that supposedly formed the Earth. If, as some have proposed, the missing potassium resides in the Earth's iron core, how did an element as light as potassium get there, especially since iron and potassium don't mix?
Kanani Lee, who recently earned her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, and UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science Raymond Jeanloz have discovered a possible answer. They've shown that at the high pressures and temperatures in the Earth's interior, potassium can form an alloy with iron never before observed. During the planet's formation, this potassium-iron alloy could have sunk to the core, depleting potassium in the overlying mantle and crust and providing a radioactive potassium heat source in addition to that supplied by uranium and thorium in the core.
Lee created the new alloy by squeezing iron and potassium between the tips of two diamonds to temperatures and pressures characteristic of 600-700 kilometers below the surface - 2,500 degrees Celsius and nearly 4 million pounds per square inch, or a quarter of a million times atmospheric pressure.
"Our new findings indicate that the core may contain as much as 1,200 parts per million potassium -just over one tenth of one percent," Lee said. "This amount may seem small, and is comparable to the concentration of radioactive potassium naturally present in bananas. Combined over the entire mass of the Earth's core, however, it can be enough to provide one-fifth of the heat given off by the Earth."
Lee and Jeanloz will report their findings on Dec. 10, at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, and in an article accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.
"With one experiment, Lee and Jeanloz demonstrated that potassium may be an important heat source for the geodynamo, provided a way out of some troublesome aspects of the core's thermal evolution, and further demonstrated that modern computational mineral physics not only complements experimental work, but that it can provide guidance to fruitful experimental explorations," said Mark Bukowinski, professor of earth and planetary science at UC Berkeley, who predicted the unusual alloy in the mid-1970s.
Geophysicist Bruce Buffett of the University of Chicago cautions that more experiments need to be done to show that iron can actually pull potassium away from the silicate rocks that dominate in the Earth's mantle.
"They proved it would be possible to dissolve potassium into liquid iron," Buffet said. "Modelers need heat, so this is one source, because the radiogenic isotope of potassium can produce heat and that can help power convection in the core and drive the magnetic field. They proved it could go in. What's important is how much is pulled out of the silicate. There's still work to be done "
If a significant amount of potassium does reside in the Earth's core, this would clear up a lingering question - why the ratio of potassium to uranium in stony meteorites (chondrites), which presumably coalesced to form the Earth, is eight times greater than the observed ratio in the Earth's crust. Though some geologists have asserted that the missing potassium resides in the core, there was no mechanism by which it could have reached the core. Other elements like oxygen and carbon form compounds or alloys with iron and presumably were dragged down by iron as it sank to the core. But at normal temperature and pressure, potassium does not associate with iron.
Others have argued that the missing potassium boiled away during the early, molten stage of Earth's evolution.
The demonstration by Lee and Jeanloz that potassium can dissolve in iron to form an alloy provides an explanation for the missing potassium.
"Early in Earth's history, the interior temperature and pressure would not have been high enough to make this alloy," Lee said. "But as more and more meteorites piled on, the pressure and temperature would have increased to the point where this alloy could form."
The existence of this high-pressure alloy was predicted by Bukowinski in the mid-1970s. Using quantum mechanical arguments, he suggested that high pressure would squeeze potassium's lone outer electron into a lower shell, making the atom resemble iron and thus more likely to alloy with iron.
More recent quantum mechanical calculations using improved techniques, conducted with Gerd Steinle-Neumann at the Universität Bayreuth's Bayerisches Geoinstitüt, confirmed the new experimental measurements.
"This really replicates and verifies the earlier calculations 26 years ago and provides a physical explanation for our experimental results," Jeanloz said.
The Earth is thought to have formed from the collision of many rocky asteroids, perhaps hundreds of kilometers in diameter, in the early solar system. As the proto-Earth gradually bulked up, continuing asteroid collisions and gravitational collapse kept the planet molten. Heavier elements – in particular iron - would have sunk to the core in 10 to 100 million years' time, carrying with it other elements that bind to iron.
Gradually, however, the Earth would have cooled off and become a dead rocky globe with a cold iron ball at the core if not for the continued release of heat by the decay of radioactive elements like potassium-40, uranium-238 and thorium-232, which have half-lives of 1.25 billion, 4 billion and 14 billion years, respectively. About one in every thousand potassium atoms is radioactive.
The heat generated in the core turns the iron into a convecting dynamo that maintains a magnetic field strong enough to shield the planet from the solar wind. This heat leaks out into the mantle, causing convection in the rock that moves crustal plates and fuels volcanoes.
Balancing the heat generated in the core with the known concentrations of radiogenic isotopes has been difficult, however, and the missing potassium has been a big part of the problem. One researcher proposed earlier this year that sulfur could help potassium associate with iron and provide a means by which potassium could reach the core.
The experiment by Lee and Jeanloz shows that sulfur is not necessary. Lee combined pure iron and pure potassium in a diamond anvil cell and squeezed the small sample to 26 gigapascals of pressure while heating the sample with a laser above 2,500 Kelvin (4,000 degrees Fahrenheit), which is above the melting points of both potassium and iron. She conducted this experiment six times in the high-intensity X-ray beams of two different accelerators - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory - to obtain X-ray diffraction images of the samples' internal structure. The images confirmed that potassium and iron had mixed evenly to form an alloy, much as iron and carbon mix to form steel alloy.
In the theoretical magma ocean of a proto-Earth, the pressure at a depth of 400-1,000 kilometers (270-670 miles) would be between 15 and 35 gigapascals and the temperature would be 2,200-3,000 Kelvin, Jeanloz said.
"At these temperatures and pressures, the underlying physics changes and the electron density shifts, making potassium look more like iron," Jeanloz said. "At high pressure, the periodic table looks totally different."
"The work by Lee and Jeanloz provides the first proof that potassium is indeed miscible in iron at high pressures and, perhaps as significantly, it further vindicates the computational physics that underlies the original prediction," Bukowinski said. "If it can be further demonstrated that potassium would enter iron in significant amounts in the presence of silicate minerals, conditions representative of likely core formation processes, then potassium could provide the extra heat needed to explain why the Earth's inner core hasn't frozen to as large a size as the thermal history of the core suggests it should."
Jeanloz is excited by the fact that theoretical calculations are now not only explaining experimental findings at high pressure, but also predicting structures.
"We need theorists to identify interesting problems, not only check our results after the experiment," he said. "That's happening now. In the past half a dozen years, theorists have been making predictions that experimentalists are willing to spend a few years to demonstrate."
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

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Anthrax in the Corn?....or Snowflakes?

2007-03-31T07:31:00.000-07:00

Hate always masquerades at first, as public concern. Within concern, much is allowed, and too easily forgiven. It ought not be. Every krystalnacht thinks of itself as doing a public service. Every Idi Amin, or Mugabe, starts out as a liberator. Each pogrom tries to claim the role of "protecting things around here". In our system, politicians are mere camp followers, and flights of high principle are roundly punished. So we veer toward cliques, caucuses, and in the end, gangs,.....by whatever name they are called. But once the banning starts, in goodly turn, like anthrax in the corn, it gets around to you. The time to stop it is yesterday. Failing that, we stand here now.

White Nuclear Snowflake is a privately conceived, totally unfunded volunteer effort undertaken to inform the public about certain issues in a deeper and more revealing way, exposing truths beyond the ordinary journalistic level. White Nuclear Snowflake has no corporate , governmental, or organizational affiliations whatsoever. White Nuclear Snowflake has never once been guided, influenced, steered, or remunerated in any way by anyone, except its own authors. White Nuclear Snowflake is 100% independent, a public service done in a spirit of truth and common understanding. The individual words of the name have particular implications, and were chosen creatively , because of those implications. White means pure, 100% unsullied. Nuclear means graced with the unlimited power of the earth itself, and Snowflake means arising spontaneously, out of the surround, a crystal embodiment of reality....... White Nuclear Snowflake.

Our deepest hope, is to live up to all three of the themes, in each post written.

Our suspicion, is that the human race has only just begun to awaken.

Our mission, is to bring it a cup of coffee, once it wakes up, and decide where to go from here.

All sojourners are cordially invited along for the ride.

ONLY THE MENTALLY SICK FIGHT GAIA

2007-03-30T03:00:00.000-07:00

Actually, how people handle truth is just step one of my introduction. After episodes of exaggeration, even lying, begin to establish a myth, a community of disbelievers gathers around whatever myth-of-choice appeals to them, creating a non-existent alternate "truth", which then serves as a rebel calling card. In other words, they try to form a club. Ho Hum.

At this point, members of the disbelief club, will begin to preach to others, hoping to "help the world". This is the ages-old proselytizing phenomenon, of which the Essenes, the Daoists, and Christ are just a few examples. None of these communities-of-millennium helped anything at all. They were all, in the end, 100% ephemeral. They were skeptic's clubs. They were activism societies. They were discrimination cadres, bent on dividing humankind into the sleepers (ignorant, unblessed, potential converts or slaves) and into the elect (those who bought the enabling myth, as literal truth). The plan , seemingly noble to its perpetrators, could only stem from their biologically limited innately human inner resource, and so devolved into hubris, attack, enslavement, and dictatorship. Woops! Monkeys will be monkeys, and these "true believers" in the end did nothing more than start a NEW false orthodoxy, to defeat an OLD false orthodoxy, all with lots of venom, agitation, self important delusion, and "absolute certainty". Nothing ever changed.

The very best systemic safeguards possible to human beings, are in existence at America's nuclear plants, no human entity or methodology could do it any better. Therefore ..what? If, as you say, we need ignorant civilian members of disbelief clubs incessantly interrupting the process to promulgate club myths, ghost stories, and chicken little feeding frenzies, then it would appear to me that the major thrust of progressivism is now anti-historical, inwardly seeking a non-existent former time (prior to high energy physics), and a delusional existence within non-existence. Living for a fable. Enjoy it. It empowers you . You feel important, dissing nuclear. Great.

However, the lying 'n' crying also acts to doom all citizens to a dark age of less, of retreat, of international deference, and a loathing for both science and optimism. This menu of backward agendae , when viewed in its totality, is clearly a pathology. It's sick.

We must trust those who dedicate their lives to medicine to be competent healers. We must trust those who dedicate their lives to study to be adequate educators. We must trust those who dedicate their lives to providing electric power to be competent, honest, and capable. If we breed a total mistrust of all institutions we will subject society, our society, to an acid bath of paranoia, weakening it , so that our future existence will be faced with the choice of being led by others' agendae, or entering a dark age. If we reject nuclear power, the race will go extinct.

Actually the process is in train as we speak. Enjoy your future, it is you, who will determine how good it is. Meanwhile some education is in order. Can you pinpoint what physical process heats the earth's core? It is Uranium 235 decay. The planet itself, and its nurturing of mankind by a beneficial environment, is nuclear at heart. Thinking religiously, we might dream a bit, and think of Gaia, whose white-hot beating heart is now known to be 100% nuclear.

Go ahead, fight the planet on this! Guess who is going to win?

The Holy Stone of Humanity's Survival

2007-03-30T02:38:00.000-07:00

God made uranium. Uranium developed naturally as a result of the physical maturation of elements within stars, and it forms the warming power within the earth. Inside the earth's core, is a white hot mix of molten iron, and molten uranium. The devil did not put it there. In point of fact there may not even be a devil. The heat energy occurring naturally within the core of our home planet , comes strictly from U235 fission. The iron by itself would not be warm. It takes the U235 to warm the earth, and thus provide the very cozy environment in which we live.

Without the uranium's warming power, life would probably not have arisen on this planet, and without the uranium, life certainly would not continue, as the oceans would freeze, and earth would be an ice ball.

To survive the human-induced global warming, it will require the massive use of nuclear power generation (along with wind and solar) to enable the human race to survive its self-induced environmental damage, caused by burning coal and oil .

Although nuclear substances have great curing powers in nuclear medicine, it's generally not uranium, usually cobalt or other isotopes, that is used. However, if the dying out of all humanity due to global warming is taken as a "big health issue", then yes, U235 fission power can be considered a "cure". It will cure us of dying out as a race.

Therefore I would call uranium the "Life Stone", the "Survival Stone", "Gaia's Gift", and perhaps even "God's Holy Stone", the one stone that can save 7 billion humans from dying horribly within the next 100 years, as the
earth heats up to 145 degrees farenheit, and civilization grinds to a halt, due to global warming caused by oil use, and coal use, and we choke on our own massive carbon footprint.

This mineral also powers Indian Point, a super clean, environmentally aware and very Green piece of the future, on the Hudson in New York State.

Ask Al Gore

Tags Indian Point Entergy Green Nuclear Butterfly Riverkeeper Al Gore An Inconvenient Truth Robert F Kennedy jr Solar Nuclear Renaissance

The Survival of the Human Race

2007-03-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

To the few antinuke stragglers still lost in the 1980's, it seems that a great sellout has occurred--- the old "anti" passion is not around anymore, and a few words to the left-behinds may be in order.

Something very important has happened.The modern world is about to need nuclear generated electricity in a big way, just to survive. Most of the major players, on both sides of the old issue realize this now.....

Even Al Gore........

Wall Street Journal, 3-28-07
By William Tucker

Al Gore recognizes that any solution to global warming is going to require a revival of nuclear power. He was edging toward that in his House of Representatives testimony last week -- yet downplayed the idea on the following grounds: "Nuclear power plants are the costliest to build and they take the longest time and at present they come in only one size -- extra large."

This is a curious notion. At present, the U.S. Navy has 10 giant aircraft carriers and 50 submarines that run on nuclear power; the average reactor generates about 200 megawatts (MW). The French Rubis class of submarines still operates on 48 MW. Although these reactors are enough to provide power for the lifetime of a submarine or drive a 100,000-ton aircraft carrier, they are small by commercial standards.

When Adm. Hyman Rickover "beached" a submarine engine at Shippingport, Pa., in 1957 to create the first country's civilian nuclear reactor, it produced only 60 MW of electricity. Dresden 1, built privately in 1960, was 210 MW and Indian Point 1, built by Con Edison in 1961, produced 275 MW.

Once the technology was established, reactors quickly grew to the 500-1000 MW range for one simple reason -- bigger is better. The principles of thermodynamics dictate that a single 1,200 MW generating station operates much more efficiently than two 600 MW plants. The same thing holds true for coal plants, nuclear power's chief rival in the electricity field. Both coal and nuclear plants are now built to the 1,200-1,500 MW range for economic reasons.

Yet all this hardly suggests that nuclear reactors "come in only one size -- extra large." Many research reactors produce only 5 MW. We've never reached the point where nuclear electricity runs cars or airplanes -- as early dreamers suggested -- but in theory it's possible.

"Mini-reactors" are now being suggested in many remote locations -- just as wind and solar energy are thriving where other power sources are not available. In Galena, Alaska, far up the Yukon River, Toshiba has proposed a 10 MW reactor to replace the town's diesel generators, which now produce electricity at ten times the normal price. The Russians have started building "floating reactors" as small as 3 MW to transport into isolated outposts of Siberia, where weather conditions make construction of power plants impossible. Both Canada and Venezuela are considering small reactors to cook the oil products out of the ground at remote tar sand deposits.

One of the most promising technologies is the "pebble bed modular reactor," in which nuclear material is reposited in tennis ball-sized graphite-coated spheres that sit in the reactor vessel as in a giant gumball machine. Each pebble is a "mini-reactor" with all the necessary components and a collection of them produces enough power. "We've found the optimum size to be around 250 MW," says Prof. Andrew Kadak, who has been working on a design at MIT.

Since balls can be inserted and withdrawn individually, the reactor never has to shut down for refueling. Temperatures do not climb high enough to cause a meltdown and proponents say this eliminates the need for an expensive containment structure -- although environmentalists dispute this. South Africa is scheduled to complete a 200 MW pebble bed reactor by 2012.

In his public testimony Mr. Gore seemed to be convoluting several things, suggesting somehow that nuclear plants are too expensive and take too long to build because they only come "extra-large." This is not true.

Nuclear plants take more time to build and are more expensive than comparative coal plants, but they are not prohibitively expensive. The Japanese are now building reactors in five years at competitive prices. Higher construction costs are more than compensated by lower fuel costs and higher capacity ratings. America's existing nuclear plants are now operating so profitably that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal recently proposed a windfall profits tax because the state's reactors were making too much money.

And this is all before environmental considerations are factored into the equation. In three years of operation, a 1,500 MW coal plant will spew three million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- the prime source of the world's carbon emissions. An identical nuclear reactor will produce only a few bundles of highly radioactive fuel rods that can be safely stored in a nearby storage pool. Yet coal currently pays for none of these environmental damages. A carbon tax of roughly $10 per ton would level the playing field and make nuclear power far more competitive.

The reason building nuclear plants has been expensive and time-consuming is because of exaggerated popular fears of the technology. The public is now coming around. Seventy percent now consider nuclear plants acceptable, meaning new plants will probably not become bogged down in endless court delays.

The only reasonable scenario for avoiding global warming is to substitute nuclear power for coal as our prime source of base-load electricity, supplementing it with wind and solar electricity for our spinning reserve and peaking-power needs. If Al Gore were to support a nuclear-solar alliance -- a joint effort by the carbon-free technologies to impose a tax on carbon emissions -- we could take giant steps toward solving the problem.

Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How a Nuclear-Solar Alliance Can Rescue the Planet," forthcoming by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Tags Indian Point Entergy Green Nuclear Butterfly Riverkeeper Al Gore An Inconvenient Truth Robert F Kennedy jr Solar Nuclear Renaissance

IT'LL JUST HAPPEN, AND BE GREAT

2007-03-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

THE FUTURE WILL NOT BE ANNOUNCED

Socially, there will never be a perfected system. Therefore, any argument from a social ideal is an argument based on delusion.
The empirical, the factual, tell us that multiple modalities interact moment to moment, and their intent is as unknowable as the inner content of all humans, taken as a single data instance. It is orders of magnitude too large to compute. It cannot be summed up, shortened, or simplified, unless absolute freedom and absolute human rights are to be quashed. Therefore the greater good is to always have an imperfect, mixed system. In such a system family, tribe, ethnos, religion, philosophy, commerce and raw passion must all have a place, for it is to be a best fit for the human animal, who resonates to all these modes. As far as science, there can never be a social science, for the reasons exposed above. All social science is tyrrany.
All knowing implications that assign value to certain acts, certain interactions, and proscription to other acts, other interactions are pleadings to mold the innately paramount human spirit into an innately inferior single modality. This is cultural imprisonment, with a pseudo-science delusive theory as its nightstick.

Therefore the very stance of the left, that there is a form to human interaction, and that the form can be studied, improved, or perfected, is a defacto wish to truncate the human spirit, foisted as a projected curse outward on to the vibrant chaotic amalgam which is all human life. It is a cult of false knowingness. It is a church without a god. It is a studious delusion, and a neurotic avoidance of the basic human duty---full engagement with all humans, equally.

Were progress to be possible, it could not be planned. It must of needs be struggled for. The new model will emerge only from the full engagement of all, energized even through conspiracies, criminalities, fixes, arrangements, and all the multitude of steering techniques outside the dry planner's board room. The one proscription which is valid, stems not from social science, but from deep inner human craving-- there must be no hate. But in the imperfect, hate will exist, so we may say-- let many work to the elimination of hate at all times. Other than this, all must be tolerated. All must be glorified. Spirit in Man is Godhood emerging. For Godhood to manifest, the full complement of living humanity must be in the mix. Therefore, no classes, no aristocracy, no intelligentsia, no hubris-of-the-word, no ethnic cleansing, no mass eliminations, no great wars, no barriers, no boundaries, no limit on the meeting, spirit to spirit, human to human, all to all.

The man has not been born , who could understand this, and engineer its coming. But every mind alive can make it come.
If a step forward can be made, it will be accidental, or seem so. It will be over before it is known about. Omega will not be announced.

ALICE (SLATER) IN WONDERLAND

2007-03-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

Jim Knubel's article in TJN recaps some points made over the weeks here about the press-burst spewed by local Democratic party notables last month, talking about an "Independent Safety Assessment" at Indian Point. One spot where Knubel and I disagree, is when he asserts that all the Demo-clique members want to simply close Indian Point. If and when positive press can be gained by spouting a "Shut it down" line, I'm sure any one of these professional issue hoggers would say exactly what would help them the most, in the public eye.

I find the fact that they are NOT saying "Shut it down" very telling.

The public wants the benefits of having Indian Point on line, and our savvy politicoes are aware of this want, based on an undenied general need. However, having been elected partly via the efforts of paid green and NIMBY groups, the Dems are hoist on the horns of a service dilemma.

If they appear to serve the public, they lose their partisan support.

If they serve the activists, they lose, bigtime, for the region and the public at large.

Their Solution?
Call for Alice in Wonderland to step in.

By banding together to demand an unneeded and obsolete ISA, they can appear reasonable to the public, while at the same time appearing to their contributing activist foundations to at least be "punishing the demon".
It's PR magic. They get to do nothing, and look green doing it.

What is truly needed, is a re-assessment of the Luddite myth-mongering cartel that has been employing long term paid PR hacks to cook up astroturf pseudo-grassroots "concern", spewing distortions, and attempting to set society against itself, to benefit their purely private no-nukes agenda.

Democratic researchers might start with the names Helene Heilbrunn Lerner, Alice Slater, G.R.A.C.E., Tamarind Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, along with Amsterdam Based N.I.R.S./WISE. A veritable crap-storm of fear-drenched nonsense has been put on the street for at least a decade by these oligarchs-in-camouflage, pawning their social-engineering experiment as "grassroots" concern. Google it for yourself. They total maybe 50 people. (but wield a billion PR dollars). That's who is "concerned", not anybody else. Don't let paid PR footsoldiers claim to represent the public. They do not.

Ironically, all our local Democratic officeholders
inadvertently admit they know this to be true,
by calling for an ISA.
.
.
.

THE DEADLY LEGACY OF FIRE

2007-03-19T06:34:00.001-07:00

It's a funny thing about physics. There is basically one, single, unitary physics, that has been true from the first picosecond of existence, and will remain true until the end of time. Therefore, there is no such thing as "nineteenth century physics", or "twentieth century physics". What was true in 1837, is still true today, 100% unchanged.

Which brings up a further realization. Any knowlege unearthed by Bohr, Fermi, Einstein and others in the 1930's, was as true in the time of the pharaos as it will be in the year 9595. We just remained ignorant until WWII. It existed just the same, all along. Also, the process of U235 fission,the so-called nuclear process, is the process which heats the earth's core, and has continually heated the earth's core for 14 billion years. So we see that nuclear science is not "twentieth century science". It is the way nature itself is arranged, forever. There is no possibility of an alternative system. Physics is not swayed by politics. Whether it is the Iranians doing nuclear engineering, or the North Koreans, or the Chinese, or the South Africans, or the Israelis, or the Pakistani's, or the Indians, or the Brazilians, or the Russians, or the French, or even the Americans, the discovery of nature's eternal truths is not an evil plot hatched by Dr. Strangelove to provide Helen Caldicott with a lecture career, it is the inevitable compilation of knowlege upon former knowlege that has made man unique among the animals, the first animal destined, it would seem, to eventually penetrate every hidden secret the universe has embedded within it, for some grand racial or planetary destiny as yet unknown. ( For more on that note, read the works of Teilhard de Chardin, or the Koran.)

I myself truly hate fire.

I loath its destructive properties. I shudder at the thought of the WWII Tokyo firebombings, and the Hamburg & Dresden firestorms, literal maelstroms which killed far, far more than all the atomic explosions that have ever happened. I hate the witchburnings of Massachusetts, and the middle ages, I hate the christmas tree fires related to be by my fire-chief father, telling of entire families wiped out in a few minutes. I hate the branding of slaves by the Romans, I hate Nero's burning of Rome, I hate the crude witless fire religions of Baal and the wicker-man druids. I hate the fire that claims the lives of thousands of poor people each year in kerosene heater mishaps, eradicating entire families in horrific scenes of pain and loss. I hate the intentional east Indian kitchen fires, which horribly take the lives of lower caste brides once their dowrys have been paid. I hate the huge industrial fires which now choke our atmosphere, and kill 1,000,000 people per year, mainly the very young and the very old. I hate the cleverly constrained fire knowlegeably packed into each bullet, each artillery shell, each improvised explosive device, and maliciously packed within each rocket propelled grenade shot at our young people in harm's way, maiming, killing, reducing their humanity to cooked, torn, useless meat.

But fire, a natural reaction of heat, air, and fuel, does not care that I hate it.

As historical evidence will show us, fire has been here without man, before man, and not requiring man, to burn entire continents in repeat forest fires, and prairie fires whose imprint remains today in carbon layers unearthed by archaeologists.

So mankind, it seems, as mankind now exists, cannot be imagined in the absence of fire. Without cookfires and hearthfires, how can man inhabit anything but the fruit-laden tropics? Man without fire cannot live in Canada, Germany, Poland, Russia, Manchuria, Japan, most of North America, all of Scandinavia, and vast stretches of lower south America. Man cannot exist above 1000 feet elevation, without fire at his side, and so is further constrained to just the bottomland.

Since I loathe the destruction attached to fire,.... must I now condemn humanity to retreat from Europe and Asia, back into the tropical bottomland of Africa's rift valley, to cringe in fear without metal, without adequate tools or weaponry? Should I orchestrate a vast removal of all things human from the Americas, from all the mountain areas, a vast voyage of revulsion back to the paleolithic haunts of our distant forebears? Would all fire's evil be left behind by this tactic?

Could all future witch burnings, slave brandings, and bride burnings be prevented by making this move? Could all the evil done by steel weapons, swords, guns, hatchets, maces, lances & daggers be forever prevented because without fire, we have no means to smelt the evil equipment of death?

And without steel, and bronze, and fire, will the "New Humanity" become a sainted race, living in harmony by nurturing Christian Science principles and eating a vegan diet, somehow overcoming our defenselessness by close cooperation, perhaps selecting a few victims to throw to the hyenas , appeasing them each time they appear , rather than using the old, crude, failed and disproven masculine method, of fashioning weapons, and thus eating hyena, rather than the other way around?

And what about "The Next Fire"?
What about the next physical truth discovered that unleashes great energies into man's use? With 98% of all the academic study ever done in all of history being done today, and 98% of all scientists who ever lived being alive right now, and 98% of all high energy-producing equipment ever fashioned being built even as we speak, there is a very high likelihood that a new craft, a "Power-Beyond-Nuclear" is glimmering right now in the first data taken by CERN's new Atlas device, just constructed high in the frigid uplands at the French-Swiss border.

Should we "Take the Moral Course" , and immediately shut Atlas down , before something so problematical comes leaping out of its data streams, that all the innate competitiveness in the human race finds even more powerful ways to kill hyenas, and lower caste dowry brides? How many child care centers can be built within its 20 mile circular annulus? How many homeless shelters? How many refugee intake compounds, instead of a single megalomaniacal atom smasher, doomed to start a new round of proliferation, and a hateful arms race?

But thinking a bit more calmly, the question arises---- Yes, once we have shut Atlas down, and built all the nurture centers in its shell..... How do we heat the place? How do we feed the refugees? How do we transport them there? How do we enforce order, and prevent cliques turning into gangs? How do we weed out the malicious "Jihad Refugees" taking advantage just to kill kaffirs when the opportunity arises? How do we power simple waste removal? What about bears?

For that, we are going to need fire.(and thus all that comes with it).

So despite my noble hopes, and my millennial aspirations, ..... it seems we are doomed.
Doomed to a hostile world, where fire makes steel, which kills. Doomed to a world where men defend themselves, and think, and experiment, trying to approach heaven via knowlege, seeking always "The Next Fire".

And if we reject that fate, and seek to return to being hyena-bait, as of old... those proposing the move should remember full well, that giving up all fire's bad attachments means giving up all of fire's good attachments along with it, and choosing a child or old person each day, to throw to the hyenas, who were here before us, and who rightly view us , in full environmental justice, only as food.

If you are skilled in handling analogy as a learning tool, it might have occurred to you by now that each thing I write here about the phenomenon of fire, is also applicable to the equally neutral physical phenomenon of U235 fission.

Have a nice day.

THE AL GORE AWARDS (?)

2007-03-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

Considering John Hall's Hydro Plan
(Al-Gore-Two-Faces-NIMBY-Trickle-Down-Award-of-the-year)

Because I'm priced and taxed out of the Hudson Valley in considering housing for my retirement years, I've developed an affinity for Windows Live Local, which has a wonderful "Bird's Eye View" feature, letting you view major portions of the USA, from about 1000 feet up. It beats Terraserver's satellite views, and Google Earth's false perspective views, by letting you actually see that chicken farm right down the road from your Arkansas dream house, or that huge car body dump just behind that bargain priced Vermont farmhouse. I've noticed a lot of active sand & gravel quarries throughout western Massachusetts, in fairly close proximity to new upscale development, and it started me thinking about Saint Lawrence Cement, Scenic Hudson, and low-head hydropower.

I have duly sent in my contributions to Scenic Hudson every year for decades, and a "Stop the Plant" sign graced my front lawn until the rain turned it to paste on a stick. I considered an open-pit cement mine with a 500 foot stack to be an unneeded monstrosity on the Hudson, seeing as it would have only brought about 60 jobs to the region.

But low head hydropower, on a scale to meet the expected 5000 new megawatt demand, (or the shortfall from closing IPEC), would require concrete production on a scale to match the construction of the New York State Thruway 50 years ago, (the event that originally brought the St Lawrence cement plant to the area). The clearing of all the damsites, the terraforming, the actual construction, and the re-gridding of the area with hundreds of new transformer step-up stations, towers, high tension poles, and, ultimately, the new widely-dispersed electric power maintenance operation, one that will have the effect of taking the now-invisible prime mover generation assets sequestered in Indian Point, Bowline, & other brownfield campuses, and scattering them willy nilly in everybody's backyard, all this could very easily transform the region negatively, in ways not yet envisioned by those dreaming only of a forest paradise, and not realizing that a forest paradise generates no electricity.

For one thing, a multiplicity of generating stations, is a multiplicity of terrorist targets, or even just vandalism targets, and is also a multiplicity of workers' trucks, paved parking lots, trash collection, maintenance spills, stacking yards, restricted razor wired compounds, dangerous high voltage high energy-containing structures by their hundreds, or even thousands, of necessity respecting no neighborhood, no mountainside, no trout stream, and bringing opportunistic eminent domain landgrabs by the hundreds for sure, industrializing the very woods we love so much, because that's where the water flows.

So my pristine hike, with my springer spaniel Murphy, just might find us waving to those hydro guys in their truck, (as they toss their coffee cups by the road), smelling the waft from the maintanance crew's Port-O-San, just as we are blocked by that razor wire and its armed guard, right near that pile of pipes, under that transmission tower that didn't used to be there, before New York's 2800 new low head hydro generating stations were built.

Moreover the concrete for the dams has to come from somewhere. So if we blocked St Lawrence Cement at Greenport, and patted ourselves on the back for it, immediately prior to requiring twice the amount of cement the place would have produced, thus dooming some folks in Massachusetts to bear the dust, the smoke, the trucks, and the scarring above and beyond their existing ugly gravel quarries, wouldn't we then qualify in spades for the "Al-Gore-Two-Faces-NIMBY-Trickle-Down-Award-of-the-year", for screwing everybody in Pittsfield, to make Beacon's concrete for them?

I don't know. I can't say for sure. But it does give me pause.

GOVERNMENT CONCURS ON IPEC SAFETY ... (despite Democratic Party Posturing)

2007-03-14T06:34:00.001-07:00

I was amazed to easily find the entire 2006 evaluation of Entergy's Indian Point Energy Center publicly available at the following NRC website urls:

http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/IP2/ip2_chart.html

http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/IP3/ip3_chart.html

Linking on to the public site, I was able to see that both units had all "Green" ratings for 2006, where green is performance within acceptable safety parameters, and a further list of all the coaching points NRC had brought to advise the units how to do better.

These are known as "findings" A finding is an area that NRC wants to see improvement on. A green finding has no safety impact, and is NOT a violation, simply a coaching point, on how to improve.

By reading through the green findings for IP2 & IP3, I was able to gain a feel for how the plants were coping. As in the GAO-2006-1029 report quoted earlier on this blog, it seems to the interested reader, to be fairly clear that things are going well at Indian Point.

So two separate agencies of the United States Federal Government agree on this. The NRC, a quasi-judicial agency of the executive branch, and the General Accountability Office, a pure investigative agency of the Democrat-dominated Legislative branch. The GAO report covers the years from 2001 through 2005, and the NRC report covers 2006.

How deflating it must be, for agendist local politicians to read that these two prestigious expert agencies both agree that Indian Point is completely safe, and running well, in dovetailing reports done at separate times by separate agencies, agencies with widely differing missions to serve.

It ought to be a clarifying experience, allowing politicians and the public to determine just who is bullshitting whom, vis-a-vis Indian Point. What part of "Safe" do they not understand? What part of "Well Run" do they not understand?

And as far as "Fine-'em" Feiner, who declared he wants NRC to take money from Entergy, it also answers his big attention grabbing media stunt-question of last week. When Feiner ingenuously asks "Why is Indian Point not being fined?" the NRC answer is: "Indian Point has no findings greater than Green".--- in plain words---There's nothing to fine. Read the two reports, and it will be explained to you, and to Feiner, and John Hall, Hillary, and Chuck-the-cluck Schumer, too.

NRC does not fine plants that are running safely. NRC does not interrupt its valuable & deeply revealing Reactor Oversight Inspections, to do uncalled-for, attention-grabbing Independent Safety Assessments.

So where does that leave the Gang-of-Six? It leaves them waving their little red books as they march around their little Tien Anmen Square mockup in the local press in Mao-like lockstep,
shouting their antinuke red guard slogans, to display their proper political orientation to all their papparazzi in media, who have always liked a communal demonstration, with slogans, even better than reality.

HAVEN'T YOU READ YOUR OWN GAO REPORT?

2007-03-08T07:19:00.000-08:00

HAVEN'T YOU READ YOUR OWN GAO REPORT?

In response to Several Democrats' call for an Independent Safety Assessment at Indian Point, I decided to see what resources were out there, if I were a congressperson, and just wanted to know how well NRC was managing Indian Point, without passing a special law, or holding a lot of wasteful press conferences.

And Whaddya know! I didn't have to believe NRC. I didn't have to ask Entergy. And I didn't have to pass a new law, either! The GAO, Congress' own investigative arm, had already published a report in September, 2006, describing just how well NRC was doing, managing the oversight of Indian Point.

I couldn't believe it! Had the anti-nuclear staffers of these Democrats hidden the GAO report from them? Probably, is my own conclusion.

Anyway, the report contains tables, showing Indian Point's safety rating improving continuously, since 2001. (2001 was the year that Entergy bought the place, by the way). The same charts show Indian Point firmly "In the Green". I guess that ought to reassure Hillary, and Mr Hall, Schumer & Hinchey.

All they have to do is read this post, or link to:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d061029.pdf
They don't have to even bother Congress with a useless new brouhaha, attracting a lot of attention, and wasting $20 million doing it! Of course, you don't get any media coverage, reading a report!

GAO-06-1029
September 2006

NUCLEAR
REGULATORY
COMMISSION
Oversight of Nuclear
Power Plant Safety
Much Improved

(these are exerpts, the whole report is much longer).

NRC provides an overall assessment of each plant’s performance through assessment letters issued to plants at the end of each 6-month period describing their specific performance and the level of oversight that will result. In addition, NRC has mechanisms to make available its oversight results, such as an Internet Web site devoted to the ROP that provides detailed summaries of each plant’s performance.

In the area of performance indicators, there were 156 instances out of more than 30,000 reports, or less than 1 percent, in which data reported for individual indicators were outside of NRC’s acceptable performance category. NRC assesses overall plant performance and communicates the results to licensees and the public on a semiannual basis.

Since 2001, the ROP has resulted in more than 4,000 inspection findings concerning nuclear power plant licensees’ failure to fully comply with NRC regulations and industry standards for safe plant operation, and NRC has subjected more than 75 percent (79) of the 103 operating plants to increased oversight for varying periods.

In addition, the nuclear power industry formed an organization, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), whose mission is to “promote the highest levels of safety and reliability, to promote excellence, in the operation of nuclear electric generating plants.” INPO provides a system of personnel training and qualification for all key positions at nuclear power plants, and workers undergo both periodic training and assessment. INPO also conducts periodic evaluations of operating plants, focusing on plant safety and reliability, in the areas of operations, maintenance, engineering, radiological protection, chemistry, and training. Licensees make the results of these evaluations available to NRC for review, and NRC staff use the evaluations as a means to determine whether its oversight process has missed any performance issues.

NRC increased its inspection resources by 9 percent in 2004, and then by another 5 percent in 2005, and was able to fully implement its baseline inspection program at all plants for both years. NRC reports show that resources expended in 2005 were almost 20 percent higher than those expended in 2002.With its current resource levels, NRC program officials believe they will be able to continue to implement all program requirements.

Physical plant inspections are the main tool NRC uses to oversee plant safety performance. NRC defined specific inspection areas by developing a list of those elements most critical to meeting the overall agency mission of ensuring nuclear power plant safety. These safety elements—or key plant inspection areas—are known as cornerstones.

During fiscal year 2005, NRC reported that inspectors spent 411,490 hours on plant inspections, which consist of baseline, supplemental, and special inspections. About 73 percent of this time was devoted to baseline inspections, which are conducted on an almost continuous basis. Baseline inspections are conducted by the NRC inspectors located at each site and specialists who travel to each site from NRC’s regional offices. These inspections are designed to detect declining safety performance in each of the cornerstones, and to review licensee effectiveness at identifying and resolving its safety problems. There are more than 30 baseline inspection procedures conducted at intervals that range from quarterly to triennially. Each of the baseline procedures specify a range of sample activities to inspect. Inspectors then select the type and number of activities to review on the basis of factors such as the sample activities available; their risk significance; the amount of time since a particular system or component was last inspected; and the inspector’s judgment, which is based on information such as reviews of the licensee’s corrective action program, allegations, or plant employee interviews. Risk is factored into the baseline inspection procedures in the following four ways: (1) areas of inspection are included in the set of baseline procedures, in part, on the basis of their risk importance; (2) risk information is used to help determine the frequency and scope of inspections; (3) the selection of activities to inspect within each procedure is informed with plant-specific risk information; and (4) the inspectors are trained in the use of risk information in planning their inspections. In addition to the more than 30 baseline inspection procedures, inspectors spend an average of 750 to 1,100 hours per year, conducting plant status reviews. These reviews are to ensure that inspectors are aware of plant conditions on a routine basis and include such activities as reviewing control room activities and status, attending licensee meetings, and conducting walk-downs of various plant areas.

Whether NRC takes enforcement actions in response to plant performance problems depends on whether there is a violation of a specific regulatory requirement.

When NRC issues greater-than-green inspection findings at a plant, it conducts supplemental inspections. One plant was subject to NRC’s highest oversight level in 2001 & 2002 because of a red finding for the failure of a steam generator tube. NRC conducted its most intensive supplemental inspection 2 months after the red finding was determined The licensee prepared a plan to address its deficiencies, and determined that a multiyear effort was necessary to develop and implement all corrective actions. Once the corrective actions were in place, NRC inspectors conducted follow-up inspections to examine the adequacy of the licensee’s efforts. Supplemental inspections, performed by regional staff, expand the scope beyond baseline inspection procedures and focus on diagnosing the cause of the performance
deficiency. There are three levels of supplemental inspections that are increasingly expansive in the breadth and depth of their analysis. The lowest level of supplemental inspection assesses the licensee’s corrective actions to ensure they were sufficient in both correcting the problem and identifying and addressing the root and contributing causes to prevent recurrence. The second level of supplemental inspection has an increased scope that includes independently assessing the extent of the condition for both the specific and any broader performance problems. The highest level of supplemental inspection is even more comprehensive and includes determining whether the plant can continue to operate and whether additional regulatory actions are necessary. The highest level of supplemental inspection is usually conducted by a multidisciplinary team of NRC inspectors and may take place over several months. Also, as a part of this supplemental inspection, NRC inspectors assess the adequacy of the licensee’s overall programs for identifying, evaluating, and correcting its performance issues, among other things.

In addition to its various inspections, NRC also collects plant performance information through its performance indicator program, which it maintains in cooperation with the nuclear power industry. On a quarterly basis, each plant submits data for 15 separate performance indicators—quantitative measures of plant performance related to safety in the different aspects of plant operations. Working with the nuclear power industry, NRC set thresholds for acceptable performance and assigned colors to each of the indicators to reflect increasing risk. In contrast to inspection findings, a green indicator does not indicate a performance deficiency but instead reflects performance
within the acceptable range, while white, yellow, and red represent decreasing levels of plant performance. NRC inspectors review and verify the data submitted for each performance indicator annually through their baseline inspections

On the basis of the results of its oversight process, NRC provides plant licensees and the public with an overall assessment of each plant’s performance. At the end of each 6-month period, NRC issues an assessment letter to each plant to describe its placement on the action matrix, what actions NRC is expecting the plant licensee to take as a result of the performance issues identified, any specific enforcement actions NRC has taken, and any documented substantive cross-cutting issues. If a substantive cross-cutting issue is identified, the letter will describe what actions NRC intends to take to monitor the issue and how the licensee is expected to respond to NRC with the corrective actions it intends to take. NRC also holds an annual public meeting at or near each site to review its performance and address questions from members of the public and other interested stakeholders.

In addition, NRC reviews the conclusions of independent plant assessments, such as those conducted by INPO. The purpose of this review is to selfassess the NRC inspection and assessment process to ensure that NRC is identifying similar performance issues.

NRC communicates the results of much of its oversight process to members of the public through an Internet Web site devoted to the ROP. This Web site makes available plants’ inspection reports and assessment letters, and other general materials related to NRC’s oversight process. NRC also provides a quarterly summary of every plant’s performance, consisting of its inspection findings, the color of each performance indicator, and its placement on the action matrix. NRC also provides a
short description of each inspection finding issued during the quarter.

In addition to its plant-level assessments, NRC assesses the results of its oversight process on an industry-level basis. NRC management holds an annual meeting to (1) discuss any significant performance issues identified at specific plants and (2) analyze the overall results of its inspection and performance indicator programs and compare them with other industrycollected and reported performance data. NRC program officials said that if they identified any negative trends or inconsistencies, they would take action to better understand and address the cause.

One plant was subject to NRC’s highest oversight level in 2001 & 2002 because of a red finding for the failure of a steam generator tube. NRC conducted its most intensive supplemental inspection 2 months after the red finding was determined The licensee prepared a plan to address its performance deficiencies, and determined that a multiyear effort was necessary to develop and implement all corrective actions. Once the corrective actions were in place, NRC inspectors conducted follow-up inspections to examine the adequacy of the licensee’s efforts.

QUESTION: WHICH IS MORE REASONABLE, AND ACCOUNTABLE? TO JUST READ THE EXISTING GAO REPORT, OR TO SPEND $20 MILLION HAVING IT READ TO YOU IN A PRIVATE,BOUTIQUE, DESIGNER VERSION ALL YOUR OWN--- THE INDEPENDENT SAFETY ASSESSMENT?

ANTINUKE IS ANTIPEOPLE

2007-03-07T10:53:00.000-08:00

ANTINUKE = ANTIPEOPLE

How easily those misled by "movement angst" misconstrue reality. A merchant plant operator entered the Lohud in 2000, intending to take NYPA's & Con Ed's unwanted, neglected, outliers, their atypical nuclear assets, and make them a winning proposition. Entergy's will, its vision, its avowed intention, was to reshape the assets, make them a single united service benefit for the region, and apply all the best methods to aid the customer base, the northeast region consumer, in continuing to prosper, expand horizons, and never suffer any return to former levels of less wealth, less freedom, less hope, less empowerment, or their ultimate ramifications, want , disenfranchisement, and/or deprivation.

This is a very people-centric vision. The assets are here, written in concrete and steel, but corrupt Con Ed myopia, along with NYPA state-agency myopia, did not choose to see any bright future. It took the naivete' of Entergy, to think of us all, the regional rate payer, as worthy of rescue.

However, the society at large hereabouts, is not done with its amazing self hate. It is not done flirting with doomism, defeatism, less-ism, choking NIMBYism, and the intellectual detritus of a long leftist opposition history, here near Peekskill.

Answer me this.

If Paul Robeson strode the streets of Peekskill in 2007, as he once did in the riot days, would he tell his people: "Fear your future"? Would he say to them (and to us): "Let these wealthy folks have their pristine condo landscape, free of us blue collar trash"? Would he say: "Forget moving up. What you got now, is good enough".? Is that what he would say?

Or would he say: "These folks from New Orleans want to serve YOU!" Wouldn't he say: "Take what they offer you!" Take prosperity. Take jobs. Take low taxes. Take Low electric bills. Take development, and new places of work. Take a land in which people not endowed with trust funds can hold their heads up and say "I work"..... "I pay my taxes"..... "I'm as equal as any man.".....and make it stick, by not hunkering down to wealthist myths of white-water-rafting as a life endeavor. Because I truly believe the great man would see through the charades, and reach out his hands, and tear down their tissue paper lies and sing out: "Let my (working class) people go"

Anybody see it any different?

If so, we are gonna have a talk, I guarantee it!

tag: Indian Point

GENESIS OF TRIBAL MYTH --1997

2007-03-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

In shaping a picture of the NRC for Congress, the General Accounting Office, in its 1997 report: GAO/RCED-97-145, May 30, 1997, stated: Determining the safety of plants is difficult because NRC does not precisely define it. Instead, NRC presumes that nuclear plants are safe if they operate within their approved designs (design basis) and meet NRC's regulations. However, NRC's regulations and other guidance do not provide either the licensees or the public with the specific definitions and conditions that define the safety of a plant. As a result, NRC does not have an effective way to quantify the safety of plants that deviate from their approved designs or violate regulations. Determining a plant's safety condition is, therefore, a subjective judgment.

The GAO's 1997 statement about NRC and the definition of safety is off the mark, because it ignores the very basis of safety in the nuclear industry.

Rather than embody safety in the agency, or in a single static model imposed upon 103 plants, the licensing system has imposed a vast creative task individually on each licensee, prior to the granting of each license. The task involves the writing of a detailed Safety Analysis Report. The definition of safety, for that plant, is embodied in the Safety Analysis Report, a huge document running to ten or more volumes, with internal references to thousands of calculations stored elsewhere, and hundreds (if not thousands) of detailed design drawings, also stored elsewhere.It is known as the SAR, or (final) FSAR. So, defacto, the engineering designers who wrote the FSARs and the technical specifications have also written the safety standards, 103 differing safety standards for 103 plants. Each standard is extremely concrete, there is no vagueness. However each standard is huge, and there are 103 separate versions.

This kind of a document cannot be inspected casually, or cursorily by GAO, nor can operator compliance with it be casually determined by observing the NRC. To wrongly imply that NRC methods were lax, or "subjective" is a misleading and self serving statement, designed to lift the onus of comprehending the FSAR system, off the shoulders of the GAO team, and deposit GAO's unreadiness to prepare its inspectors onto NRC's doorstep, as a vague accusation of "subjectivity". With 103 versions of law, residing in 103 FSARs at 103 Nuclear plants, the amount and difficulty of material is just too great for GAO to assess, much less sum up. GAO failed to adequately comprehend this system, and wrongly reported it to Congress as an NRC shortfall. It is in point of fact, the defacto status of present regulatory law. As law, as a sitting legal structure, it ought not be mischaracterized as an administrative shortfall.

Perhaps if it understood its intended mission more completely, GAO might have proposed a new legal structure, complete with a general unified FSAR, but of course, it lacked the technical competency to even determine the nature of what it was assessing, and so could not have successfully replaced it with a more comprehensive upgrade. As it is, GAO has shuffled its feet unknowingly, at the periphery, accusing NRC of not safeguarding the public, when in fact it was GAO failing its mission, the mission to understand just where the concrete jot and tittle of nuclear safety was embodied--- in the FSARs and the tech specs, and not within NRC. This kind of a safety standard demands the dedication of a qualified set of resident inspectors, tasked with climbing the extremely steep learning curve in each FSAR, as a preparation for understanding how each individual plant is fulfilling its specific commitments to each FSAR. Once the subject matter is mastered, then the individual inspector, be he an NRC resident inspector, or a GAO inspector, can be ready to realistically compare plant performance parameters to the mammonth compendium of promised performance parameters, that is the FASR and The Technical Specifications. With such knowlege in hand, the judgement is not subjective. It is extremely objective. Meet tech specs=pass. Not meet tech specs= fail.

This is the American system. If it is monumentally complex, and thus not amenable to easy GAO mastery, that fact just makes any casual GAO suggestions made after a cursory look-see a lot less than enlightening. Therefore must Congress remain in the dark, and simply trust NRC? Perhaps, but better that they understand their own inpectors' blind spots. Therefore allow me to analyze the GAO assertion,line by line, in the light of what I've revealed above.

Determining the safety of plants is difficult because NRC does not precisely define it.
This is not true. Determining plant safety is difficult, because it is precisely defined 103 separate ways in 103 FSARs, and because each FSAR , with its accompanying references may take a year or more for a talented individual to comprehend.

NRC presumes that nuclear plants are safe if they operate within their approved designs and meet NRC's regulations.
This is true, but is not a shortfall. The vast system of redundant safeguards embodied in each FSAR provides large margins of safety, and its initial approval came only after detailed critical evaluation to the best scientific/engineering standards. Such trust is not ill-founded trust.

However, NRC's regulations and other guidance do not provide either the licensees or the public with the specific definitions and conditions that define the safety of a plant.
This is not true. The Technical specifications provide an absolutely precise and objective standard to the licensees, and to NRC. Perhaps GAO is suggesting a tech spec primer series be prepared for public consumption along the lines of "A nuclear plant is safe, when its tech specs are met", with explanations. I doubt if the public would be interested. GAO, on a mission to find the tech specs, missed them entirely, and now it reports that NRC has none. Would the public do any better?

As a result, NRC does not have an effective way to quantify the safety of plants that deviate from their approved designs or violate regulations.
This might have been germaine in 1997. In 2007 it is not true. The Reactor Oversight Process is now in place, giving objective banded scoring to each plant, in all major areas. Note that this statement is not about safety per se, but rather it is about the reporting of safety conditions to the general public.

Determining a plant's safety condition is, therefore, a subjective judgment.
This was not true in 1997, and it is most certainly nonsense in 2007.

In missing the absolute inflexibility of the tech specs, and by looking in the wrong place for the exactitude (looking within NRC, rather than in the license), GAO overlooked the very concrete methodology for maintaining plant safety, as being non-existent. This failure has now propagated itself outward through the Congress, and the public, as a tribal myth, wrongly accusing NRC of laxity.

UBERDOG AND THE WATCHPUPPIES

2007-03-05T12:21:00.001-08:00

UBERDOG AND THE WATCHPUPPIES

How absolutely deceptive, in its very conception. A small cozy meet-up, no different from 100 other meetups done every day for party politics, or cigar smoking, or charity. A simple meetup NOT sponsored by any official agency, or governmental department, ....AND YET ... the deceptive PR copy distributed in announcements & blogs promised "High Level Scientific Seminar---- Major Figures From The Govermental, Environmental, and Scientific World to appear"..... but read a bit further and we begin to see the disclaimers: "John Hall (invited)"...... "Charles Schumer (invited)"..... That little bracket, with the word "invited" says more than volumes of spin from me.

I once invited Paul McCartney up to my recording studio to jam. My wife had a bake sale once, and invited Martha Stewart. Did they show up? I'm not gonna tell ya, folks, but Hall & Schumer didn't show at Pace last Friday. Nor did NRC, nor did Entergy. Why? Because they had correctly identified the event as a highly spun smalltime anti-Indian Point worry-fest, tricked out to seem like something it was not.

I'm not going to rail on about the meeting's content in this blog. Read my old posts for that. All I wish to point out is the blowfish-type self puffery indulged , seemingly in every breath in, and every breath out, by the tiny hard core "Lets be afraid of Indian Point, regardless" clique. Who was it said "If her lips are moving, she's lying"?

If we listen to a single sentence from this arrogant, deceptive, self-inflating anti-people, anti-work, anti-blue collar, anti-normalcy crowd, we are forced to go home, get deep into Wikipedia for an hour or two, and take notes in a stenographer's notepad, to separate the exaggeration from the known fact, the pretense from the actuality. And it is always so, so, prophetically knowing! So, so dire, so, so urgent, so concerned, serious, so frowning and so, so precious. It's kind of a "Me-as-Potential-Mass-Victim" passion play, for the electric rate payer.

But answer me this--- What if it's 100% histrionics?

What if the few "concerned" souls who showed up to hear about how long it takes a thimble full of water to sink into the Ramapo fault are not representative of anything real? What if their entire area of focus is trivial , even neurotic---- self importance gone wild? A fantasy club? Why do our media outlets have to play along, and announce "High Level Scientific Inquiry at Pace next Friday", when in fact it was 5 local activists, one paid antinuke harrassment agent from Washington DC, and a doctor from NYS DEC-- a doctor who, by the way, disagreed with the other panelists, and said not to worry?

I agree with their right to meet up. I even agree with their right to try to seem much more authoritative than they actually are.

I do not agree that their attempts to speak for the populace are ethical, and I insist absolutely on MY right to debunk their endless charade, in public forums such as this.

I also promise them, and you, that I will be watching these autoinfatuated watchpuppies, as a kind of Uberdog commentor, conscience, and debunking machine.

It ought to be real fun.

100 PEOPLE IS NOT A QUORUM

2007-03-03T13:39:00.001-08:00

Inept Quislings, and Contempt for John Q

What,... a day without Indian Point to talk about?

Whatever will Manna Jo Greene and Paul Gunter do with themselves? Will they go back to their homes lighted by Indian Point, and rest secure under the local emergency services upheld by Indian Point ? Will they perhaps notice the new arrivals whose upward aspirations will be prevented by closing Indian Point? Will they return to the Washington DC area (Gunter) knowing he has once more misrepresented local realities to unsuspecting local people, in one more agent provocateur action in a decades long subversion of the local American political process, by an agency (WISE/NIRS) spawned in Europe, and supported by "Big Oil" (Rockefeller) money? Will Phil Musegaas own up to his connection with the Tamarind foundation, the recently renamed private social engineering experiment of billionairess Helaine Heilbrunn Lerner? Or will he try to pass himself off as "just one more Riverkeeper activist", even though Ms. Heilbrunn pays his salary to sit within Riverkeeper and uphold her personal antinuclear campaign at all cost, even after Robert F Kennedy jr has realized the duplicity, and moved on (along with Kyle Rabin?) Do Hinchey, Lowey, Spano, Hall , and Clinton know they are inept Quislings dancing to the agitprop tune of antinuke Tamarind Fund choreographer Alice Slater? Do all of the self-serving manipulators of fact above care a whit about the common man, in this area?

You instinctively know the answer.
Need I say it for you?
Ok, allow me then...... NO THEY DO NOT!!

People!! Beware!!

Fact is being spun, by well-heeled and deeply entrenched oligarchs. They aim to make you uneasy. They wish you to doubt your own civilization. Why? Simple......... vanity, and a pre-arranged agenda, where they end up manipulating the populace via paid (albeit earnest) middlemen, to make you tear down the system in which you live, so that their experimental greenist paradise can take its place. Please note: Ginsburg development is seeking to buy the Hudson itself, from Haverstraw to Tompkins cove, even as I speak! (Yes... Its all a real estate thing).

And what is your place, or my place, in this new Armageddon, this Millennial antinuke paradise? EASY: to huddle in our houses without heat, whilst Heilbrunn, & Slater travel first class to Geneva confabs. To watch illegal immigrants starve in shacks along the Mamaroneck river, whilst Mr. Kennedy spends roughly $2500 per day flying from $20,000 speaking engagement to $20,000 speaking engagement. To give up our TV sets, and our entertainments, whilst Al Gore spends $6000 per month to light up just ONE of his five houses. AND.... on top of it all..... to be told that WE are guilty, for wanting to have what our parents had, a job, a house, a car, security, stability, and love for our country. You see, these simple pleasures are NOW FORBIDDEN!! We must be satisfied with less ! You, me , Kennedy, Al Gore, Clinton, Heilbrunn, and Slater. For THEM,...." less" means a carbon footprint conveniently offset by diverting foundation contributions to a green fund (it does NOT mean traveling in coach). To them,.... "less" means giving up the fifth white water vacation in Peru this year, poor dears, the other four white water vacations HAVE JUST WORN THEM OUT! For us, everything is to be different! We must now suspect everything that helps us, embrace everything that impedes us, and hate each other!..only this one way will we be allowed as peons, into the great celebractivist religion of antinuclear anarchy. (And oh yes, we must send in contributions!)

But I ask you---- ARE YOUR LIGHTS ON?
Yes they are.
That simple fact might just mean that I am right, and they are wrong.
their "conclave" was a crock. Their agenda is a crock.
They are careerist troublemakers with contempt for our local lives.

And if your lights stay on tonight, I advise you, in all sincerity:
COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS, PEOPLE,
AND FIND OUT JUST WHO YOUR SUPPOSED "SAVIORS" REALLY ARE!
Note: I am well prepared to help you in this area. Just stay tuned!

Tags: Indian Point Hudson River Antinuclear Agents Provocateur WISE NIRS

THE KNOLLSFISH THEOREM

2007-03-01T12:12:00.001-08:00

The Knollsfish Theorem

Four Hudson River fish testing strontium-positive were caught 30 miles north of Indian Point. What's up there, to make fish contaminated ? A man named Jack Shannon has a lot to say about corruption at the Navy's Knolls Atomic Power Lab, directly on the Erie Canal at West Milton New York. Check out http://www.mindspring.com/~kapl/index.html. He even gives a telephone number 518-587-3245. Another Knolls website is: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/knolls_k.htm.

One surmise I make is that work done under military aegis, can legally omit safeguards, under the rubric of national security. Shannon says much about this. Apparently Knolls dumped a lot of stuff, willy-nilly. Shannon was pursued, and fired from the Knolls Kesselring installation for blowing the whistle on it. Most likely, compared to Knolls, Indian Point is a virgin, pure as the driven snow. Most likely, estuarian damage from Kesselring far outstrips any imagined damage from the beseiged and minutely-watched Indian Point.

Very possibly, Entergy's mysterious fish test has outed the Hudson's covert radioactive polluter, Bechtel, operators of Knolls/Kesselring. The location of the 4 "hot" fish would strongly suggest this. If true, the green community would owe a strong debt of gratitude to the proactive Entergy corporation, instigators of the fish test, for bringing this abuse to light.

It is interesting to note that Knolls is not mentioned by congress people stridently demanding various concessions from Indian Point. Knolls is well upstream of Indian Point, and if Mr. Shannon's very detailed laundry list of dumped carcinogens, actinides, and radioactive junk at Knolls is even remotely accurate, Knolls and its leach fields are non-point-sourcing a heady weapons-of-mass-destruction cocktail directly into America's first river in full view of a silent John Hall, Maurice Hinchey, Nita Lowey, and Hillary Clinton.

What gives, honorable representatives?

How about an Independent Safety Assessment of Kesselring?

VRROOOMMM !.. ANOTHER ROCKET LAUNCHED !

2007-02-28T10:10:00.000-08:00

WHY FLY THE NUCLEAR ROCKET?

I recall in 2001, doing a quickie, informal internet count to see who was big, and who was not. When I googled the words "Indian Point" I got about 89,000 hits. When I googled the word "Riverkeeper" I got only about 150 hits.Likewise, googling the monikers "Alex Matthiessen" and "Robert F Kennedy jr" got each only about 80 hits. But that condition was not to last.

You see, throughout late 2001 and all of 2002 we had the big press agent's foodfight, lasting roughly three years, resulting in the hit count I got this morning: Check it out:

Indian Point............461,000
RFK jr......................260,000
Riverkeeper.............202,000
A. Matthiessen..............1,250
Rep. John Hall.................314

Wrestling with the huge attention-grabber Indian Point, has been extremely beneficial for both Kennedy, and Riverkeeper. Although environmental purists might consider their struggle to close Indian Point to have been a failure, that is not exactly true. The old Riverkeeper pre- 2001, with a tiny mailing list, just six volunteers, and a mission many people considered over and done with, only pulled 150 internet hits.

Riverkeeper of 2007, with 23+ workers, 202,000 internet hits, and a specially created office of institutional collections, geared to pulling in the big moneys available from foundations, colleges, and trust funds, is firmly nestled in the pantheon of big charities, along with United Way and the Sierra Club. Congratulations, Riverkeeper! Talk about using nuclear power !! It seems like your organization found out just how to utilize the "nuclear rocket" that the Air Force never got the hang of, to orbit yourselves into a permanent cushy gig, being mildly offended and accepting checks (in between charity balls).

Since the middle aged Riverkeeper no longer depends completely on Indian Point, I've included the next Greenworlder to discover the star power of Indian Point's nuclear rocketry, Representative John Hall, as harbinger of the next generation of press-hungry wannabe's "Mounting The Nuke-Rocket", for the wonderful ride to stardom, and fat retirement. Although he just garners 314 hits currently, I'm sure that if he sticks with Indian Point as his ride, his numbers will balloon. Besides, doesn't he look GREAT in that silver suit?

(Oh, by the way,...Indian Point gets no bonus from the quintupling of their fame, you buy their electricity regardless)

Addicted to Human Destiny

2007-02-27T03:39:00.000-08:00

Poor nUkeSLaYer... can't even spell his own moniker! Perhaps that's 'cause he's been addicted to alcohol, paranoia, and hemp powder for 30 years. It makes him see existence itself , as a long series of addictions. If that is true ,(even in just HIS life), perhaps he ought to ponder this:

Addicted to the Sky Again

In the beginning was no element, just pregnant vacuum. No life, but potential for every life ever to be lived. It arose. Hurtling across eons like a god of old, vacuum energy unleashing elemental ash, until the planets formed and deep within, a heart. A beating white hot heart, alive as you and me, alive for you and me, and holding up the life sphere of our birth, the goddess Gaia in her elemental form, the goddess uranium, source of all volcanoes, source of earth-fire, source of nourishing warmth, the goddess Kali in her robes of blood and fire, unbounded, swirling ,making death and life together so that all might live--Uranium--the planet fire. Uranium--the one living metal--Uranium, the heart of living Gaia.Beautiful, and white, and giving.Addicted as we were to living, addicted as we were to breath, to life, to feeding at a mother's breast, addicted as we were to destinies like god-men all on high, the future, the human race exalted all on science and the craving deep within to know the all--- the all that stirs the fire in the heart of planets underneath our feet today. Addict me more to sky, to heaven, to spirit and the cosmic all, ennoble me o cosmic mother of my race, and make us soar like gods--addict me to uranium, my gaian fire deep within!

When monkeys crawled, and no addiction loomed , it was so simple. When man arose from monkey, addicted to thought, addicted to gold, to iron, to houses, to cities, to art, to music , to history, o the addictions that came then. For those not addicted never rose, and lie there waiting for the headsman's axe, mere food, a meal for Gaia's children, man addicted to mankind, all ennobled by the rising, and the future's heady ride! Addict for the tools, addict for the song, addict for the mathematics, addicts for the flying, and the dreaming, addicts for the pieta, the ninth symphony, the hajj, addicts for the meccan prayers, addicts for the christ-on-cross, addicts for the wooden ships, and mayan gold, addicts to the astrolabe, the telescope , to enniac, and univac, and cadillac, and common hope of better times. Addicted to the chisel, and the painter's brush, to cell phone, and the heady rush of flying with a parachute all unknown, unheard, unseen, uncontemplated till the great addiction came, and now we stand, the planet--ours. The heavens--ours. The future-- ours, because addiction moves the monkey men and makes them gods again.

Written with a clear head, Buchanan , 2007
tags: indian point uranium Gaia humankind evolution science paradise

NUCLEAR IS NOT THE QUESTION, EITHER

2007-02-26T01:02:00.000-08:00

PEPE LA GAI REBUTS HELEN CALDICOTT

Dear ex-Doctor Caldicott.

Congratulations on a long profitable career overexaggerating these issues. May you have success with each new book, and its associated flogging tour. It is your right to maintain yourself in upper middle class fashion, tossing non-facts around, that is true---BUT--- since the earth's core itself is heated by U235 decay, the simple realization of ways to use this natural Gaian gift-power cannot be evil, and certainly not in an anti-Gaian sense. Perhaps if you were to ponder how many farmers have been gored, keeping cattle, how many goldsmiths have been burned, smelting ore, perhaps you will begin to see that we never approach Gaia without danger. (The Hindu goddess Kali, is also the goddess of destruction & blood). The price mankind pays to live in a manner superior to a grazing animal (or a plant) is fraught with danger. Houses are invented, they do not grow. Trees must be cut, to fashion them. In just such a way, the use of terran core-power, the natural gifted planet-heat, U235 decay, can be dangerous.

Thanks for reminding the cooks not to stick their hands into the fire while using that power.

As far as NOT using it?

What alternative universe do YOU propose we live in, Narnia perhaps?

A word, dear ex-doctor. Narnia is a fiction, as are all your desperate evasions, in all your books.

Have a nice rest-of-your-life

Pepe la Gai

Tags: nuclear indian point entergy helen caldicott Pepe La Gai

NUCLEAR INQUISITION BEGINS !

2007-02-24T10:19:00.001-08:00

ANGEL MORONI REVEALING TO JOHN HALL THAT INDIAN POINT NEEDS AN INDEPENDENT SAFETY ASSESSMENT

After a long Orleans road trip in 1978, John was awakened from his cannabis dream by a piercing white light, and a heavenly voice saying to him in ethereal tones: "G e t _ a _ b e t t e r _ g i g !"......"J o h n !"........"G e t_ a _ b e t t e r _ g i g !"..... "D o_ s o m e _ a n t i-s o m e t h i n g_ c o n c e r t s_ ,_ J o h n !" It was the middle aged angel of middle aged rockers (Bony) Moroni.

JOHN KNEW IMMEDIATELY HE WOULD FORVER BE "ANTI" --It was just against WHAT that troubled him!

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ENTERGY HAVING ITS POCKETS EMPTIED BY SPITZER INQUISITORS
Governor Spitzer today vowed to make electricity rates "As high as the people can stand"... by raising the anti on national guard troops sent to Indian Point to do guard duty. Despite the fact that these servicemen are paid from the Federal dime, Spitzer wishes to monetize this function, because attacking Indian Point seems to be in vogue with New York left leaning dilletantes having more than 3 million in the bank---Like Spitzer! Next Spitzer intends to impose a "Voting Booth Fee"--- of $50, not imposed since Jim Crow in the South 60 years ago. "We have to get money somewhere" Spitzer quipped, while eating escargot, and sipping chardonnay.

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WESTCHESTER BOARD OF LEGISLATORS LISTENING TO A LONG MIKE KAPLOWITZ HARANGUE, URGING AN ISA
The spineless "legislators" (here seen in the dunce caps), are being trained by Mike "Kapo" Kaplowitz to respond to verbal stimuli, kind of like Pavlov's dogs. His "dog trainer" , Tom Abinanti, is seen holding the punishment stick, on the left. The legislators are being forced to vote in a bloc on a series of nonsense issues, to demonstrate their Kapo's herding abilities. The rest of the people in the hall are disgruntled real estate clients that Kaplowitz has bilked, waiting for a chance at the mike to complain.
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STRINGENT TEST OF ROTATING MACHINERY AT INDIAN POINT INDEPENDENT SAFETY ASSESSMENT.
A rotating "nuclear Strapado" device is tested out by Hillary Clinton minions, on an NRC worker, seen bound and disrobed. The worker will be roasted above the fire, until a false confession is elicited, which will be written down and immediately sent to all progressive news outlets. This will form the basis of Hillary's new legislation, a call for an "Independent Spanish Inquisiition" , a stringent, piercing test, to be applied to any victim Hil thinks she can get away with it on, and besides Bill used to LOVE watching these kinds of S/M tapes while governor of Arkansas!
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NEW AG CUOMO PRACTICES HIS NEW ETHICAL METHODS--- HERE SEEN INTERROGATING A KENNEDY LACKEY, ON CUOMO JUNIOR'S EX-WIFE'S CURRENT WHEREABOUTS

The angry Attorney General is seen hanging Patrick J. O'McGillicutty, Hyannisport whiskey-butler and Kennedy party-girl procurer, thought to know just why the Kennedy-Cuomo liaison never worked. O' McGillicutty is seen exhausted , just after screaming out in pain "Bejeezus man, I can't help the wench if she can't cook friggin macaroni!"

NEVER RELY ON "ACTIVISTS" FOR STRAIGHT ANSWERS

2007-02-23T03:54:00.000-08:00

The Independent Safety Assessment Entourage

In 1996, a marginally acceptable nuclear plant- the Maine Yankee plant-was a hotbed of unfinished work orders, unfollowed procedures, shoddy work practices, dozens of "workarounds" where some jury-rigged gilhooley wangdoodle of a home made temporary solution was left in place on a semi-permanent basis... extension cords ran through the control room powering items that had been designed to have their own power supply-but didn't. This plant requested a power uprate from NRC, and received it, even though a calculation proving its ability to withstand a small loss of coolant accident, had been kluged by simply referring to another calc, the case of a large coolant break, and the slipshod workaround of simply saying "Oh, if it withstands the large coolant break, it oughtta withstand the small break, right?"

Amazingly, this slipshod evasion of a true calculation was allowed to stand as "engineering judgement" by NRC, even though the plant's Final Safety Analysis Report-its FSAR-(part of its license) had promised to calculate the loss of coolant break in all sizes, from smallest to largest, in ten percent increments. A whistle blower went public with the evaded calculation, and two organizations were in deep, deep trouble.

Maine Yankee was in trouble because, short of staff, and money-starved, it had trained itself to skate on the edge of failure, and talk its way past the resident NRC inspectors.

NRC was in trouble, because it had failed to enforce a written committment for Maine Yankee to do ten calculations, and had accepted a single "one size fits all" safety calc in its place. Internally, NRC groused about just how bad, bad was, and just how good a plant needed to be, to be acceptable. It knew someone had messed up.

In a desperate bid to salvage its credibility, NRC devised a special emergency administrative tactic, a one time only self-reinvestigation, by way of bringing in 25 new inspectors to do a "vertical slice" inspection at Maine Yankee. At the end of the exercise, in November 1996, the 25 new inspectors had developed a laundry list of bad conditions found in a 3 month period,the worst being a safety injection pump that would not have functioned when needed, because its starting wire was not connected, and a set of several hundred meaningless valve tests , done religiously by the plant's test group, but so ineptly designed, that the tests as performed did not really test for anything, thus calling in to question the ability of almost every valve in the plant to perform its function when called upon, and a control room air conditioning system, which was allowed to ice up and fail repeatedly for years, without ever being permanently fixed.

The Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company was not a real corporation with a credo, or a corporate identity, it was a consortium of ten local power companies kicking in 10% each, to start a nuclear plant, and who then simply milked the plant from day one, doing everything the most evasive way possible to save cash, never hiring enough staff to do upkeep work, and simply riding the nuclear tiger for profit, almost like a band of strict Maine preachers of old , buying a ten percent interest in a brothel somewhere, forced to never own up to any responsibilities, because it was, well, a damned nuclear brothel, right?

NRC had been flim flammed by the preachers, and had bigtime egg on its face. Good will, or trust, had not been enough, and NRC needed more penetrating inspection methods, and a rating system, able to tell shoddy from bad, and unacceptable from acceptable. Out of the experience, NRC crafted its Reactor Oversight Process-- a system of constant inspections, with ratings given to each category in each plant. The one-time Independent Safety Assessment was made an every-week occurrence, and forms the backbone of NRC's working method today-- (Incidentally, the period when the ROP has been enforced is also the period when nuclear plants went from 30% efficiency to 99% efficiency).

So--- was the Maine Yankee Independent Safety Assessment successful? Yes, in that it upped the standards for every plant, and formed the kernel of a new ongoing set of high inspection standards, universally enforced.

Should it be done once more, in 2007?

The Maine Yankee situation was unique. Indian Point, and its corporate mentor Entergy bear no resemblance to Maine Yankee whatsoever, and ten years of NRC test results are in the public domain to prove it. That is ten years of tests identical to Maine Yankee's ISA, done on a constant rotating basis (aside from the resident inspectors at the plant permanently), and therefore a call for a new ISA, shows either an absolute ignorance of the nuclear industry, the ROP, and the rigid recurrent ISA's always going on at Indian Point, or else is simply a cynical stunt, done for political purposes. If NRC even were to comply, and hold a new "ISA", it would be forced to interrupt its own series of ongoing ISA's at the plant to do so.

So, was Hillary Clinton's staff misled by some antinuke activist, a Ray Shadis maybe, someone who had heard about Maine Yankee, but who suppressed the facts of the new constant ISA regime brought in afterwards? I suspect this is exactly what happened.

Is there a debt to pay, in using sliphsod "activist movement" reporting tactics, as a basis for making real world governmental policy? Bigtime. It puts egg on John Hall's face, Hillary's face, and incidentally on the faces of Westchester's 17 county legislators, although their faces have very little room for more egg, being sloppily smeared with a veritable Western Omelette of shame for their sycophantic obeisance to personalities like user Mike "The Kapo" Kaplowitz, who trots them around at will, kind of like Britney Spears' entourage.

And that's why an Independent Safety Assessment at Indian Point is not needed. Indian Point is already doing it.

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WHY HALL IS WRONG

2007-02-21T16:21:00.000-08:00

After ignoring 35 years of NRC inspections, not even claiming they were deficient in some way, but simply cherry picking opposing urban-myth misinterpretations from the antinuke concert street, and taking THEM as having more gravitas, and more probative value somehow, than the efforts of America's best experts in the field,.... how is it that now John Hall expects the public to take it on faith that he will accept and abide by a positive outcome if NRC even does his vaunted "Independent Safety Analysis" at Indian Point?

If he runs true to form, he will ignore and/or misinterpret THIS inspection, like he did to all the widely available data from every inspection at Indian Point previous, and will turn to "movement" myth-spinners, to skew, twist, and lead astray the very investigation he claims to honestly want. What would happen to his power base, should the inspection give Indian Point all "Green" findings? Surely Entergy, 7 years in, and hundreds of millions in, to its improvement plans at the plant, can certainly "Bone Up & Shape Up" to the max for the exercise, and it is almost certain the investigation will not go Hall's way--if, (and this is a very large "IF"), ---if it were to be done honestly, not derailed, and not misinterpreted afterwards.

The extra-legal wider considerations that Hall's cadre wish to have included in the ISA, are not currently legal mandates for Entergy to consider, or NRC to inspect for. You cannot in all fairness, change the Spanish Test to an Ancient Greek test, the morning of the final exam, and expect anyone to pass. You also cannot overcome the "Ex-Post-Facto" clause of the constitution, and the "due process" clause, which states things to be tried for, must be clearly either legal or illegal, before the test is given, and a due process must be developed, written into the law, and followed over time in the case of any ISA, to give the inspected party time to understand the requirements, comply in good faith using best due diligence, and then and ONLY then, be fairly tested. If ex-post facto, and due process are short circuited, we are left with a bill-of-attainder, specifically forbidden by the constitution (A "vendetta" law to legally encumber a single person or entity, with no wider application).

NRC's current best practice (it's ROP) has been developed since 1997, and so Hall's new mandates, should they actually become administrative law under NRC's ALJ guise, could take a similar decade to mature, be proposed in NRC's ALJ forums, be commented upon, and then be disseminated to all 103 nuclear plants, as binding ALJ rulings. At that point, the ISA encompassing the new criteria may be held. Until then it cannot legally be held. Therefore, Hall's legislated proposal that an ISA be held in 6 months, encompassing new criteria, is baldly and transparently unconstitutional on its face, and NRC has a duty to reject it out of hand, even should a miracle occur, and the bill get passed. ( and overcome the inevitable veto).....Moreover the legislative branch cannot usurp the judicial, by writing an attainder law dictating Administrative Law Court behavior. That in itself is wildly, and grotesquely unconstitutional, (not to say ethically un-American). It is an attempted takeover of the judicial branch, by the legislative branch. It must be resisted utterly, if we are to continue to live in a nation of law.

Hall, as a songwriter, may actually be personally unaware of all this. His staff certainly ought not be ignorant of it. Being an Administrative Court, NRC's rulings are not subject to further judicial tampering. In the case of ex-post-facto, due process, and the maturation of the new criteria, NRC stands in as exalted a position as America's Supreme Court. As Hall's bill stands, with all its crippling constitutional illegalities, this rogue bill can be considered nothing more than one more hollow publicity stunt, to mislead Hall's following. NRC ought not allow itself to be intimidated by these congresspersons-as-brownshirts. Our constitutional government depends on their resistance to this press-mediated legislative insurrectionism.

Question: Does Hall's antinuclear cadre stand ready to end America's constitutional rule of law under 3 separated powers, simply to kill off Indian Point by attainder? Bad enough we're headed to a nanny-state, but one stripped free of modernity, amenties, and electricity would be disastrous for us, and our posterity. The vast majority, who are not rich, who have no second or third homes, record royalties, or congressional salary, have rights in this matter also. I aim to keep teaching them.

We have more than just the legislature in this republic.

PUBLIC CONCERN MUSTBE ANSWERED !

2007-02-20T15:27:00.000-08:00

Truth or Dare in Public Affairs... The "IDK"

What we need is good old keelhauling.

As long as the "Gang-of-Democrats" is proposing obsolete "Trial-by-Combat" methods of finding out whether their staffs have been lying to them for years, I suggest we reach back into the American Nautical past, and revive another obsolete method of examination, the good old keelhaul. (no- not the "Independent Safety Assessment"---sorry!)

If John Hall's chief of staff can be tied to a rope, and dragged beneath the intake ports of Indian Point at high tide, he can undoubtedly either uncover whatever hidden evils are down there with the zebra mussels, or , if he finds just Hudson River Goodyears down below, perhaps the time "below the surface" can motivate him to own up to not really believing 100% of the exaggerated scare stories about Indian Point, after all.

Either way, the public can be reassured, and widespread public concern that they were being shined-on by professional Chicken Little-ists can be finally and definitively be proven either right or wrong, by a different examination crew, and a different method, much deeper and more stringent than is habitually applied to political press agents.

Therefore it is with great solicitude for public sensibilities, and the expressed wishes of millions that their electric bills not be arbitrarily tripled, that I declare a RISING TIDE OF MOMENTUM for an Independent Democratic Keelhauling, ( ..an IDK...) to be held each week at the Indian Point dock, until the truth is finally brought to light (or all the Anti-Nuclear Democratic politicians quit, and go to live in Bahamas, near Anna Nicole's old place).

At any rate , tapes of the "IDK" will become collector's items, as well known demi-celebrity press-hacks puke, and grovel, admitting they had contempt for the American public for decades---( until the definitive "IDK").

WHY NOT ONE BIG LAST DICE ROLL?

2007-02-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

Shady Croupiers

A concerted effort is underway, by the public relations arm of all the local Democrats, to make the notion of an Independent Safety Assessment seem inocuous, and helpful in the matter of the Democrats' obsession with Indian Point. This is just a step or two less malicious than a campaign of outright lies. It is, in fact, a seemingly earnest, but manipulative misuse of an established body of existing PR lies, now referred to as "public concern".

The Democratic officials have not concocted new lies about Indian Point, but they never critically investigated exaggerations served up to them by their staff, and paid fear-creators in the big-charity foundation-funded "movement". The paid PR perpetrators acted at one remove, calling themselves "watchdogs", but in reality sowing mistrust, smearing people of good will, misleading thousands with junkscience misinterpretations, and the staff people of all major Democratic figures worked closely with them, to pull in whatever votes could be gleaned from their impressive set of mailing lists.

The collective set of lies is now misnomered as "public concern". It is not public, and it is not concern. It is the private skewing of facts by professional PR people planted in the green movement by big oil foundations, specifically targeting all things nuclear. I have made an effort to identify and name the main operatives, and they number no more than 50-75 people nationwide. This is the single source of 99% of so-called "public concern". In point of fact the public is apathetic or uncommitted to these mock-issues, as a quick glance at local chatrooms will show. The public cares about taxes, illegal immigration, bad roads, schools, and half a dozen other topics, with Indian Point seldom mentioned.

But..... it is a way for unconnected Democratic rivals to connect with each other, garner bootstrapping momentum against Nancy Pelosi and others within the Democratic ranks, and to begin the 2008 campaign on an aggressive PR note.

Now let me explain what is so ludicrous about an Independent Safety Assessment. It is a duplication of ongoing inspections already underway at Indian Point. In a series of 100 inspections, specifically demanding inspection number 101 simply shows that the requestors are obviously not reading the results of all the other inspections. A further inspection on top of the last 100 inspections can not turn up anything, good or bad, that the other inspections have not looked at. So no new data will come from a special new inspection.

Then why not do it as a reassurance to the public? To that I say: Why not compile and broadcast the results of the existing 100 inspections to reassure the public? To that Democrats will say "But the public does not care about or trust the other 100 inspections".... To which I reply "It was you, who acted as if mistrust was warranted, and who so browbeat the issue that the public ceased to care.... so it might as well be you, the perpetrators, who remedy that".

And..... once the logical fallacy of ignoring 100 inspections, and all their confirmed data, and rolling the public's dice on a single inspection, (with doubtful data) is clearly pointed out...... there still remains the distinct possibility of hidden malice, and hidden malicious agendas, buried within the seemingly inocuous call for one more inspection.

What do I mean?

It just may be, that someone on the staff of the hand picked new inspection team will have been delegated as "Hit Person"..... assigned the task of skewing results, creating a bogus problem so as to close Indian Point, and thus deprive 20 million people of a rightful service on the whim of 4 congresspeople, a dozen staff members, and a single malicious antinuke mole, outside any public deliberative process.

We have learned how Jamie Garelik was planted on the 9-11 commission staff to quash Clinton mistakes along with national archives vandal Sandy Berger , and therefore we know that the capability of hatching a malicious plot to sabotage a public investigation is well within the capabilities of the Democratic party.

Should we risk regional viablility and affordability, along with future prosperity and security on a dice-roll?
A dice roll by croupiers already implicated in past skulduggery?

MUDWRESTLING FOR AMERICA....

2007-02-19T07:25:00.000-08:00

A revealing statement was made the other day, by Westchester County exec Andrew Spano, waiting in the icy cold of the Annsville Creek kayak club, for John Hall's press conference. The outdoor location is a popular one for such events about Indian Point, because its domes are beautifully visible from the spot, and can form a backdrop for whatever pol is adding his particular genius to the mix that day. Commenting on the uncomfortable temperature, Andy quipped that they should have held it indoors "and used a picture" instead.

Last week, a local blog claimed that a Papier Mache' Indian Point was obscuring the real Indian Point in the press. linkAndy Spano says they should "Use a picture instead". Was Andy finally on to something?

After years of malicious exaggeration for effect, and microscopic overconcern about ephemeral minutiae at the stalwart old plant, those in opposition to its existence have painted themselves into a corner. Having created a fictional Indian Point to swear at, and toss pebbles at like hajj pilgrims in Mecca, they were finally coming to grips with the fact that as much as they despised the false Indian Point, their constituents needed the real Indian Point, and needed it desperately. As the icy 17 degree winds whipped in off the Hudson like a blast of reality, Spano was chilled into the realization that he'd rather be indoors, where Indian Point could keep him warm, shaking his fist at a picture, than experiencing reality. Quite an admission, Mr. County Executive! Perhaps your singlemost instant of pure insight!

Executives and Congresspeople, along with Senators, and even Presidents, are often lied to. Seeking causes to champion, they stand there stymied in their white knight outfits, clueless, until a staffer (or Jack Abramoff) hands them a briefing paper, containing news of whatever "evil" they are to vanquish today. If the briefing paper contains nonsense, the county, the congressional district, or the entire country can be led down the shining path to destruction, and I think we are all very familiar with THAT. I've not decided just yet, that our senatorial/congressional system is broken beyond repair, but hearing of Nancy Pelosi's new 757 commuting jet, and John Hall's rehash of a rejected Maurice Hinchey bill proposing we officially return to an obsolete, long superseded, archaic and unrevealing "Independent Safety Assessment" to tell us whether the fictional Indian Point is as bad as they themselves have been saying, I am being edged closer and closer to a final decision that unrealistic camera-seeking faux leadership is leaving us all in the lurch, screwing the common man royally, for the sake of pictures and celebrity pride.

Because their own staff cherry picked lurid untruths about Indian Point, to provide them a fictional electoral theme, now they band together proposing a fictional solution to their self-induced fictional problems, an ISA. Don't they understand that the only time an ISA was ever held, in 1996, the NRC leveraged the concept into an entire new way of doing business, one that NRC now follows daily, the ROP- or Reactor Oversight Process. The ISA itself was hurriedly and somewhat badly done, serving as a kind of sketch pad for NRC to write a new policy on. After 1996, they amplified those notes, wrote that new policy, and have perfected it daily ever since. Asking NRC to return to the sketch pad now, is like asking the NASA moonshot engineers to return to some scribbled hand calcs on a tablecloth, and ignore the carefully programmed computer guidance system that eventually was crafted from those scribbles.

But Hall, Spano, Hinchey, Lowey et al have a paper problem to fix, and a paper solution to do it with! So we get press releases, meetings on the frozen shore, planted articles about "momentum", and absolutely no buy-in by the public. What gives? It seems John Q realizes our power brokers are having a private little tempest in an exclusive Democratic teapot, and that it won't raise the temperature above 17 degrees, or intercept the wind that Andy so despised. The one thing it might do, if we insist on humoring these camera hounds, is take away the power the region requires, so that Andy can go indoors, and warm his hands up, and shake his fist at that picture, for all to see on channel 12!

The oh-so-bracing paper momentum that Greg Clary wrote about 5 days ago is spent now, lasting only about as long as paper momentum ever does, as we all sit indoors, grateful for our heat, our lighting, our news , entertainment and our realworld work, all brought to us courtesy of the real Indian Point, as Andy 'n' Hall mudwrestle with that slippery faux Indian Point all over again, knowing that another election is coming soon, to your area...

NOT TO EMBARRASS ANYBODY....

2007-02-18T15:25:00.000-08:00

Interested readers can link to: THE NRC REJECTION STATEMENT

To see why there is no "momentum" for a so-called "Independent Safety Assessment" at Indian Point power plant. The very idea of an ISA is obsolete, having been replaced in 1997 with NRC's much improved ROP-(reactor oversight process.) Do the authors of this request realize that their anti-nuclear biased staff has handed them a major embarrassment in having them ask for a decades-outdated event to re-happen in 2007? Probably not. Their "advocacy" is mainly fly-by-wire, mediated by staff, and handed up to the unconcerned elected officials as their latest sop to a rapidly aging, (and dwindling) "movement."

White Nuclear Snowflake has been trying to alert the poor duped congresspeople, but I bet their staff doesn't hand them the latest WNS post every day, do they?

Asking for an ISA in 2007 is like asking for an exorcism, a land grant from the King of Spain, an application of leeches for gout, or a cranial trepanning for a headache. Very, very out of date. Humiliating that they would even mention it.
Read WNS back posts, should you want to learn more.

In my opinion, commissioner Klein was very courteous in not highlighting their mistake.
He's a more kindly type than I am, I guess.

"PUBLIC SAVIOR" ?.. OR PARTISAN HIT MAN ?

2007-02-18T04:25:00.000-08:00

Do we really need another O.J. Simpson trial?

Suppose I was an honest lawmaker (or a citizen), with concerns about the accuracy, the honesty, or the stringency of previous NRC inspections at Indian Point? Would I be out in the cold, stonewalled by some NRC "omerta" system?.

Would I have no help , in my quest to understand the truth? Would there be no way to judge whether NRC performed as promised, or slacked off, allowing unseen dangers into our world? Would I be faced with complacent NRC inspectors, not aware of the needed depth, completeness, or stringency of NRC's relations with Indian Point ? Would I have nowhere to turn? Nowhere but writing new targeted one-of-a-kind legislation? Oddball, biased legislation amounting to a bill of attainder against a legally licensed functioning business? (a targeted bill in the National Socialist mold, un-American to the Nth degree, a partisan vendetta masked as "law"?)

Some might say yes. But if there were no alternative, it might be necessary, right?

What if there were an existing group, doing that job already? An official group unknown, or overlooked by the freshman lawmaker? Well, yes, actually, there always has been. You see, NRC has an "Internal Affairs" department, just like any police force, and it's called the ACRS.

Woops!

Link to : http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/brochures/br0286/br0286.pdf "ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS"

This committee, a high level expert committee completely separate from the day-to-day routine of NRC inspections, exists under law to provide, amazingly enough, exactly the function John Hall and Chris Shays claim to be implementing with their punitive new bill-of-attainder, and does it long term, as a devil's advocate within NRC, to ensure the NRC process is sound, that its implementation is strict, and that its basis is purely scientific (not political). It's mission for 2005-2008 can be found at the link given above, and I'm happy to say that Dr. Bill Shack has just become its chairman, after a 25+ year career in aging degradation analysis, (allow me to quote): "His work has included measurement and modeling of residual stresses, fracture mechanics analyses of stress corrosion crack growth, assessment of leak-before-break behavior in piping systems, and fatigue of reactor materials. He was appointed to the ACRS in 1993." If anybody in the world can tell us that Indian Point is too old, and gonna blow, it ought to be Dr. Bill Shack, right?

But Does Dr. Bill think it's his mission to keep NRC honest on this ?...(I quote yet again): "The ACRS advises the Commission independently from the NRC staff on the safety and safeguards aspects of nuclear facilities and the adequacy of safety inspections. ACRS reviews and advises the Commission with regard to safety issues, the adequacy of proposed reactor safety standards, technical issues related to the licensing of plant designs, and other matters referred to it by the Commission. On its own initiative, may conduct reviews of specific safety-related items. Submits an annual report to the Commission commenting on NRC Safety Research Programs." Well, geeze, Louise, it seems that Dr. Bill and his oversight committee, are ALREADY DOING every single thing Shays, Hall, and the other newbies want to tell the public is not being done!!! Amazing!!!

Maybe Hall, had he known anything about the NRC, could have simply written Dr Shack a congressional request to check into the inspections done at Indian Point. Maybe he could have called him up. or visited his office. What could POSSIBLY ever be a motive for the "Dance with Me" author to ignore Dr. Bill Shack, and ACRS, and "Go Public" with a new vendetta bill, to pretend ACRS never existed??

Alas, dear readers, I have to let YOU decide that. I cannot read Chris Shays' mind, or John Hall's either. Could press coverage have played a part? Could one sided (anti-nuclear) staff research have blinded the honorable Congressmembers to what already was routinely tackling these problems?

Could a trumped up adversarial stance, used to garner anti-nuke votes have crippled the perpetrators, so that they ignored, bypassed, and suppressed information about an existing non-confrontational way to protect the public, or pretended it does not exist, and went on their own merry inexpert way to re-invent the wheel, with many many glorious sound bites, and headlines, so they can seem like heroes on the news, while really, all they were doing was ignoring the highly qualified people (Dr. Bill Shack) who were actually doing the job, without consulting newly elected ex-musicians who needed to look good to their fringe anarchist support base?

Or maybe there's some other explanation?
Well,,,, if there is.... We're waiting!

And tell me this: Does a one time only ISA, with non-expert members in it, stand a better chance of understanding the reality in 3 weeks, or does Dr Bill Shack's permanent expert office , with his 30 years of expertise, and their 30 years of expertise, and a mandate to look into the matter in an ongoing manner, with no cutoff point , stand a better chance of finding the truth, without an O.J. Simpson trial type media feeding frenzy clouding all the issues?

How did that O.J. Simpson trial turn out, anyway?
Think that it uncovered the truth?

Could it be that a "new O.J. Simpson trial" effect is exactly what Hall , Shays & the others are after?

PSST: REP HALL: LOOK LIKE YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING !!

2007-02-16T15:11:00.001-08:00

PSST: REP HALL: LOOK LIKE YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING !!

NRC just finished a CDBI vertical slice inspection of Indian Point on Thursday of this week. What that means, is NRC arrived, and demanded to see several systems, from the topmost FSAR description, all the way down through the most lowly switch, screw, nut and bolt, in excruciating detail, examining whether the safety functionality promised to the public in the FSAR, was indeed implemented by every single component in the system, 100% top to bottom, no substitutions, no "forgotten details" , no excuses, or "we were going to fix that up later" put-offs.

(The FSAR, or Final Safety Analysis Report, is part of a nuke plant's license. In it the operator explains just what he intends to do, in every single particular way, to keep the public safe. It is a ten volume set of very extensive and detailed promises. It took me about three months to read, and understand it...... any promise made, but not kept, means NRC can shut you down, no questions asked, no appeals, no supreme court to bail you out).

This vertical slice method was one third of the Independent Safety Assessment conducted by NRC on Maine Yankee plant in 1996 (which they just barely passed with a D-minus grade).
So.... one-third of the vaunted "Indian Point Independent Safety Assessment" was just completed on Thursday, and can either be believed, and used by John Hall, Maurice Hinchey, et al. to decide what they think about Indian Point, OR-- they can ignore it, get a lot more press time, and pass a law to ask NRC to do it again in 6 months.

The other parts of the Maine Yankee ISA, general operational compliance, and computer code compliance, have also been routinely tested at Indian Point, and if John Hall's research arm is a bit weak, or one-sided, all the Honorable Rep. needs to do , is post online that he would like me to point him to the existing test results, and I'll be happy to.

But he won't.

Why?

He is preaching to his old choir.
The skeptical-towards-government, but gullible-towards-urban-myths Jeff Rense anti-nuke crowd, all full of themselves with exaggerated factoid on exaggerated mythoid, proton-rays-from-your-lightbulb Helen Caldicott generation.
He needs to impress them with his strength, sternness, independence, and lack of co-optation by what they tell themselves is a corrupt electrical industry watched by a corrupt NRC. I have personally never ever seen a single hint of corruption in the NRC, who scare the living bejabers out of me with their stern professional demeanor, accurate penetrating questions, and willingness to follow the evidence where ever it goes, far beyond my usual comfort level. Entergy, the operator, is falling all over itself lately to be pro-people, pro-safety, pro-environment, and pro just about everything the enviro-anarchists used to claim as their own territory, even to the point where blogs have been seen, accusing Entergy of "stealing the green movement". These claims are 100% true. Entergy, with its expertise, its billion dollar financial clout, and its proactive longterm vision, has positioned itself to carry on the torch, just as Dr Caldicott & her "Anti" generation fall into paranoid babbling, and senile repetition, AND WHO BETTER TO DO IT?

Can Robert F. Kennedy jr light your houses for you? Short answer = NO.
Can 100,000 non-expert bloggers save the Hudson? Maybe--- given time (and Entergy finances).
Can Entergy act to save the Hudson? YOU BETCHA!
Has Entergy acted to save the Hudson? YEP, IN SPADES.
Question: If Entergy is not fooling, and really means it...WHY REJECT THE MOST POWERFUL AVATAR THE MOVEMENT HAS EVER HAD?
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.
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( This quiet time is intentionally injected, to allow contemplation of the preceding sentence.)
.
.
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Which prompts my next proposition.
Go ahead. Chase Entergy away. Take your Hudson, with a closed, useless Indian Point STILL THERE, and ask Hall, Hinchey , Spano, and Cuomo-the-lesser to craft your 21st century lifescape for you.

Sound scary?
I'm getting "lousy future coming" goose bumps , even as I write!

And just in case I'm "spinning you up".... contemplate this: Name for me, a single instance of Hall, Hinchey, Spano, Lowey or Cuomo junior proposing a bond issue FOR A NEW POWER PLANT?

But what the hell, Honda makes a great gasoline powered generator for about $3000. Of course, your house power panel will have to be rewired (about $6000), and YOU provide the gasoline, the testing, the maintenance, etc., etc.

SO WHAT IS REALITY HERE ??

Well, my lights, and my oil burner are on right now!
and I haven't done a thing! ....(It's 17 degrees outside)

Pretending that THEIR mission, is HIS mission

2007-02-15T14:54:00.000-08:00

Recognize the Song?
(Let me tell you why you do)

It astounds me how blithely a politician can ignore other peoples' efforts, and successes, and then attach their work to his own resume', as if they had never existed. John Hall, ignoring years of stringent NRC inspections of Indian Point, now regales his followers (and the news media) with what, pray tell? He proposes that NRC must inspect Indian Point, saying it is "crucial". Come again honorable congressperson?

Has not NRC been inspecting the self-same Indian Point for 35 years, telling you & me that it was safe enough? What part of "Safe Enough" is it that you misunderstand? The American national repository of safety expertise in the nuclear field--the NRC , repeatedly gave Indian Point suggestions on how to clean up their act, even shutting them down for 2 years in the 1990's to learn how to run safely. Indian Point complied, and NRC told them "OK , you are once again safe enough".

This is an ongoing work, with the needs of the American public in mind, making nuclear plants safer, chiding them, fining them, learning all their secrets, and John Hall had nothing to do with it. NRC is quite capable of finding out just what is right, or wrong about Indian Point, minus any piggy-back grandstanding by ex rock musicians with an old anti-nuke concert axe to grind.

Tell us, John, just how will your bill for one additional inspection change the ongoing process, 35 years on, that has been made up of several hundred inspections to date? Will your bill give new eyes to the NRC inspectors? New hands? New science, new intelligence? Have they not had their intelligence, their science, and their dedication all along? What an insult your bill is, to all the expert people of good will who have been actually doing the work that you now propose, as if new, as if every single victory they crafted in their careers, is nothing but a PR opportunity, for a newbie congressperson, only because the one time your name is on it, somehow this one last time, its gonna be the big one, the right one, the crucial one, the indispensable one, the one that America demands or else?

Maybe to journalists this is true. NRC just doing the real work, week after week, for decades, is not news. Indian Point, making our lives comfortable and safe, month after month, for decades, seems to be no story at all. But somehow, when 3 Democrats meet at a frozen kayak club, and say "We will force NRC to inspect Indian Point", somehow, this rises to the level of a mall shooting, or a celebrity divorce, and now all of us are told how "crucial" the activity is.

Well, yes. It is crucial. So crucial in fact, that NRC has dedicated itself to it for 30 years, and will continue doing it long after Mr. Hall returns to songwriting.

But this week, all that work is not theirs. Their part in it doesn't count, can't be believed, and is no news. This week all that work is suddenly John Hall's claim to fame. They say that 95% of new songs are somebody else's song, rewritten a little, and offererd up as new work. I say Mr. Hall is just lip-synching NRC's tune, and calling it "Dance With Me". It's not Hall's song, It's not Hall's life's work, it's NRC's work, and he has simply plagiarized it, and added his own sour notes, I might add.

Meanwhile kayaks or no kayaks, over at NRC, the long slow original song plays on.... ensuring that we are all safe, that Entergy toes the line, and that we have the electricity we need , also. That kind of harmony, blending reality, public safety, and public needs, is perhaps too sophisticated a symphony for Hall to comprehend. Perhaps novice music student Hall should book a few lessons with the concertmasters--- NRC.

Or perhaps a dozen anti-nuke Dr Jabberwockies would be best to do the job, misunderstanding 100% of what they see, full of hate and paranoia, deciding just how much electricity you and I , and our children may utilize, for the next 30 years? Perhaps we could all just camp out together, until 2040?

JOHN HALL: "I sang about it,.... so you'll do without it"

2007-02-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

Who said there would be lifeboats?

The 20-odd million people living in the soon-to-be-unaffordable Hudson Valley region need more than empty stunts, cooked up by devious and overanxious "activist advocates'" (paid press agents), in the pay of big charity, big oil, and antinuclear lobbyist foundations, and in turn, foisted on clueless Democratic electees as panaceas, without understanding, without any need, and in the end, without any possible viable result.

It seems that the paid antinuke lobby has settled on the "Independent Safety Assessment" as the next in a line of ostensibly serious proposals that all end up useless exercises in partisan attack futility. It is one thing to oppose policy from the sidelines, but it is quite another to be elected, and have the responsibility of making livable lives for your constituents, outside of any one-sided expectations on the part of the far right, the far left, or the far anti-nuclear fringe.

Just as bungled electric service negotiations are turning into major permanent rate hikes and tax hikes for the unfortunates living in Rockland county, are we to stand by mesmerized, while the same electoral stupidity begins to destroy infrastructure on the east shore, in attacking Indian Point power plant for no demonstrable reason, except that certain fringe political groups voted a "no nukes" line?

The no-nukes cadre was but a small minority in a fairly close majority voting Sue Kelly into retirement in favor of John Hall, and Hall made much of declaring he was "everyone's congressman"---- so now we demand to hear exactly what cause there is to begin to harrass Indian Point, and its mentor, Entergy, aside from promises perhaps rashly made at fuzzy-logic no-nukes concerts over twenty years, by a man who does not understand the area's big cities, the inner suburbs, the local job markets, the local near-suburban housing crunch, the need for blue collar work, and the urgency of the viable absorption of unknown tens of thousands of new arrivals, who are here for the long haul, and who cannot survive integration into American life as penniless marginalized peons, prevented from participation by ill-thought-out infrastructure-burning rampages, hatched in the name of 1980's rock'n'roll concert talk.

In the only other "Independent Safety Assessment" ever held, (Maine Yankee 1996) there seemed to be a glaring proximate cause---a smoking gun--- in an employee allegation of criminal wrongdoing. Without that allegation, which also implicated the NRC, no ISA ever would have happened a decade ago. Where is today's smoking gun? Where is the specific wrongdoing. It is much more than claiming Indian Point could be "Guilty until proven innocent", ..... it is a case in which our freshman congressrocker cannot even say WHAT Indian Point might be guilty of!

In the Maine case, in 1996, even the smoking gun claims were later found to be not true--- it just so happened that Maine Yankee was decrepit, understaffed, lax in almost every way, ignored by its corporate owners, and so it was put to a just and deserving death. And in the irony of ironies, the savior corporation called upon to send knowledgeable experts to Maine to complete the burial arrangements, was you guessed it--ENTERGY!! Entergy uncovered a host of FURTHER bad stuff at Maine Yankee, and correctly advised them to stay closed, and give up their license (which they eventually did).

At least in part from the glaring lessons learned in doing away with Maine Yankee, Entergy entered New York in 2000 with a healthy skepticism toward Indian Point, and began a long 7 year improvement plan, one still being followed today. Almost every area concentrated on by Entergy at Indian Point harks back at least in part to some laxity found at Maine Yankee, and therefore has been specifically targeted now for at least 7 years of ISA remediation at the New York plants, whether they needed it or not.

All this info is available to Hall, and tells him not only could nothing bad be found by an Indian Point ISA, but that it is at root a deception of the public, to act as if an ISA could do the public any good . It cannot. But it can help Hall, and a few other complicit cross-burners, because professionally organized antinuke fakery contributed at least some votes to all of them.

Bread & Circuses is, I'm afraid not enough here. What we need, all us 20 million forgotten souls (all of us who didn't meet at the concerts)-- what we need, is a concrete plan to build energy centers. Not study centers, actual viable electricity-producing power plants, to replace Indian Point's 2000+ megawatts, get them built, set up, and pumping on the grid--so that we can live here---- and I will be the first one to say , at that point, to Indian Point :....."Goodnight old gal, thanks for a fine half-century"

If nobody builds those plants, every single swipe at Indian Point , is a hatchet swipe on at least 15 million of us being able to afford to live here.
Mark my words. Its smoke and mirrors. Its bread & circuses. It's screw-your brother for a soundbite, but it is NOT responsible leadership.

It's like blowing up the Titanic first, so it won't hit an iceberg, and,
once in the icy water saying: "Lifeboats?"
"Who said there would be lifeboats?"

"HALL GATE" SCANDAL BEGINS ?

2007-02-10T06:03:00.000-08:00

John Hall disgraces his new office

The so-called "return of ethics" principle, upon which the new Democratic majority was elected, will be seriously challenged by the attempt of long-time antinuclear celebrity turned congress member John Hall to launch a private legislative vendetta, calling for an obviously unneeded independent safety assessment of Indian Point power plant, to satisfy the wishes of old adherents.

Modeling itself on the only other such inspection ever held, one at Maine Yankee in 1996, this bill would propose a pointless search for some unknown and unspecified "wrong" ---which is at root, an undoable task. (Maine Yankee's inspection grew from a specific whistle blower complaint in a declining and below average plant.)

Hall's bill would target no specific wrongdoing (no whistleblower has complained), in a vastly improved, previously inspected smoothly functioning above average plant, run by a corporation that offers to manage poorly run plants for other utilities, and bring them up to par.

Hall must know this, and so the motive for this inspection cannot be valid, as was the reason for Maine Yankee's inspection. The motive must be sought in Hall's antinuclear past, and antinuclear following, and washes out as pure legislative harrassment of a well run, and widely accepted business, simply because it is "nuclear".

A Bisconti research poll recently showed that 80% of people living within ten miles of nuclear plants favored the plants, and Hall has access to this poll. So that pushes the status of his antinuclear harrassment bill down another notch, to that of a vanity bill, one concocted with no hope of success, to make him look good to old supporters.

And this is supposedly "a new ethics"?
This might more accurately be termed a corrupt misuse of a newly won office, to punish an old enemy, via legislative harrassment, against the will of the people, to gain press time.

We might even term it "Hallgate".

Why so quiet?

2007-02-09T07:37:00.000-08:00

In 1995 a whistle blower wrote to the Union of Concerned Scientists, alleging that he had participated in the falsification of computer code at Maine Yankee atomic power plant, in order to gain an undeserved power uprate at that plant. The utmost seriousness of the crime he alleged, and the lack of its detection by the NRC (who had granted the uprate), called into question the honesty and/or criminality of Maine Yankee's management, and the competency and/or complicity of the NRC as an organization, and did it all very credibly, from inside the fence.

A public allegation of a specific criminal act so serious had to be addressed, quickly, and in the most high-level fashion.That is why NRC immediately revoked Maine Yankee's uprate, and did an Independent Safety Assessment there.

The inspection done was a duplicate of NRC's usual inspections, and was "independent" only in the fact that inspectors from other NRC regions made up the team of 25 inspectors (not the previous Maine Yankee residents), and a small group of state inspectors sat in with the NRC team.

Unfortunately for Maine Yankee, and its ultra-thrifty parent company, a host of unacceptable conditions, and license deviations was found by the team, which would have challenged the plant's parent company to spend a lot of cash to fix things up. Two months after the report was issued Maine Yankee ceased operation.

After reading the report, and a host of other documents about the ISA, I have concluded that Maine Yankee, as a situation, and as a plant, bears no resemblance whatsoever to Entergy's Indian Point plant in Buchanan New York.

Maine Atomic corporation was cheap, ignored the plant, held back needed funds, never fixed anything, was short of staff, allowed fakery and evasion in its codes, as long as profits were made. Long-term bad conditions were tolerated so long they were forgotten, and when NRC came in, they were glaringly easily found. The Maine Yankee ISA was needed, and did a decent job. Maine Yankee should have been radically fixed, or shut down. In keeping with its cheapness and lack of faith in itself, Maine Atomic chose to fold.

On the other hand......
Entergy corporation, an organization suffused with belief in America's nuclear future, has undergone a steady series of improvements at Indian Point since 2001, improving not only items that Maine Yankee forgot about, but many others, also.Most importantly, no whistleblower allegation similar to the Maine Yankee false-computer-code allegation, has ever been made at Indian Point, and so...... no immediate prima facia reason, or rationale exists for an independent safety assessment in New York. Entergy's Buchanan plant is not understaffed, as was Maine Yankee, Entergy is not intent only on bleeding profits, as was Maine Atomic, Indian Point's design basis has just undergone a five year $40 million dollar revamp, its testing program is fully certified, its material condition is excellent, there are a minimum of operator burdens and workarounds, backlogs are way down, and the plant has a full complement of system engineers (Maine atomic did not believe in system engineers, never hired any, and so no individual champions ever existed for out of whack plant systems). Entergy has a full complement of system engineers. Every single thing that was bad at Maine Yankee, is exceptionally good at Indian Point. Indian Point's Cable separation and Reactor Protection systems have just undergone exhaustive five year detailed inspections, leading to major upgrades.-- these areas were ignored and completely deficient in Maine. Inspectors in Maine found a wire to start its safety pumps was glaringly not even attached. All these systems are newly inspected at Buchanan.

Researching all this has only reinforced how little our politicians know about today's nuclear power industry, especially the Entergy fleet, which in almost every way is the exact opposite of Maine Yankee, and an exemplar of every good quality Maine Atomic Corporation never bothered to achieve. Almost every single shortfall in the Maine Yankee Independent Safety Inspection is in some area that Entergy has addressed previously and vigorously at its Indian Point plant, and thus pre-improved to far beyond what Maine Yankee could have attained, even if its corporation had stayed the course.

It's more than apples and oranges.
It's worm-eaten rotten Maine apples versus fresh golden Indian Point Oranges.

Anti-nuclear press agentry shops have hung their hat on the supposition that something must be wrong at Indian Point, because they want something to be wrong. Unfortunately for that supposition, Entergy got there the firstest, with the mostest, and more or less started their own, internally motivated Independent Safety Assessment in concert with their purchase, beginning over 7 long years ago. The sum total of the very exhaustive, near-complete round of multimillion dollar improvements adds up to a firm, valuable local infrastructure resource, a gem in New York State's energy crown, and a wanted, valued business linchpin, upholding the local area's wellbeing, in ways that talking head activism cannot ever replace, and does not intend to.

Those calling for an independent assessment might more productively assess the source of their negatively-spun misinformation, and the self-inflating claims of those who stand to gain from the notoriety attached to false accusation. That way at least, they will have something to find, and our lights can stay on.

Why so quiet?
Nothing's wrong.

THE MORAL IMPERATIVE OF NUCLEAR

2007-02-05T07:40:00.000-08:00

The Moral Imperative of Nuclear

I always knew the earth's core was hot, but It was unclear to me exactly why. On some astronomical bodies, such as Jupiter's moon Io , it's flexing due to Jupiter's gravity that causes purely mechanical rubbing heat. In some white stars, it's nuclear fusion. Guess what the earth's internal heat comes from? Good old U235 decay. In the earth's core, the exact, self-same process that runs every nuclear reactor in the world, is the ancient historical process causing earth's volcanoes, and thus all the geothermal power anywhere on the planet. Thus, ...U235 CAUSES our environment. The scope of this news is staggering, in its philosophical implications for environmentalists. It makes environmentalist opposition to human use of U235 fission into a backward cult of avoidance, a kind of meaningless earth-hating tabu, pure superstition, not tied to science, or love of the planet.

It's implication for those who love the planet, and are truly willing to act on that love outside narrow energy politics, is that just as Watson & Crick outed the double helix of DNA as the essence of biological life, Earth-Philosophers must now accept that U235 fission is in point of fact, the white-hot beating heart of Gaia.

Where does that place the American Nuclear Industry, and all it's spokespeople? It places them firmly in the right. Overwhelmingly on the side of the planet. Undeniably historical. Absolutely ethical. Backed up in all their assertions by both of Stephen J. Gould's "Two Magisteria"-- Science, and Religion (both capitalized).

The powerful arguments deriving from nuclear power being what the planet itself does, easily smash all pseudoscience attacks on nuclear as sophistry,... at their widest scope,... nothing but quibbling over means and methods.
Any argument over merest means and methods can be countered by engineering. Engineering can always find new means, new methods. All that is required is optimism, expertise, and funding.

The knowledge that we are right to use U235 is founded on the broadest philosophical stepping stone, a tacit license to proceed, given by the planet itself. Any person then arguing otherwise, is placed in the unenviable debating stance, of claiming that mankind as a race does not deserve to occupy the earth. That assertion is tantamount to a Lemming's call for mass suicide, and is evil nonsense, closely approaching Hitlerian angst in its self-hate, and its Faustian deathwish.

People at large emotionally recognize this Dr. Strangelove inversion displayed by anti-nukes, but cannot easily pin it down. I hereby share it with the U235 outreach community, exposed in all its magnificent simplicity.

Why nuclear? Because Gaia tells us so.
Enjoy

Gaia is Nuclear

2007-02-02T07:58:00.001-08:00

Nuclear power is the gift of Gaia’s long past
The heat given in ancient times
By Gaia to her progeny
at Oklo then
At Peekskill now
One and the same
heart of matter
heart of gaia
warmth without fire
spontaneous living metals
warmed by history
to give us life

This planet, called Earth, or Terra, which has awakened as the living being known as Gaia has assembled itself over eons , eons in which examples were layed down for the wise to ponder and learn from. What better way to solve some modern day problem, than to observe what the planet or its life forms has done in the past, under similar circumstances.This outlook might be termed biomimetics, or Gaiamimetics, and its lessons ought to help avoid plans or agendae too uninformed, too unconnected to Gaian reality to succeed.

One incident that happened spontaneously 2 billion years ago, was the formation of the mats of Oklo. Bacterial beings, the earliest known life forms, have formed
mats or nodules around the globe, similar to coral reefs, as both their living homes, and as the historical record of their having existed. In Australia, the nodules of their habitations still exist,in coastal waters, and are known as stromatolites. At Oklo, in Gabon, Africa, similar creatures have left not only mats, but a mineralized historical record of the most surprising kind, a record only decipherable recently, using physical knowlege not available until late in the twentieth century. At Oklo, a deposit of heavy minerals existed in a wet environment, perhaps a stream. For 12 billion years or so, nothing notable occurred, until micro-organisms occupied the inner spaces between grains of this mineral deposit, using it as their home, but also inadvertently acting as a living moderator for certain chemical reactions now enabled to occur within the mineral itself.
On a steady basis, interludes of wetting, drying, growing, and changing occurred, completely altering the raw minerals, to suit the needs of the stromatolite population living within the grains, and leaving (as in Australia) , a permanent record of their having lived. Microbiotic symbiosis between bacteria and an inorganic chemical reaction had created the special conditions required to permanently alter the mineral, and thus write the record of the Oklo mats, in stone, or rather, in metal.The stone, a uraninite oxide, now contains an imbalance of its U238 and U235 metals which is easily recognizable to scientists, as the result of a biological nuclear reactor. The depletion in its 235 species of metal can’t be attributed to any other cause, and could not have happened any other way. The Oklo bacteria created their own living Indian Point. Without the bacteria –unmoderated– the reaction could not have occurred (and did not for 12 billion years before they arrived). Without the warmth of the reactor surrounding them, the bacteria could not have flourished as they did, for an estimated billion years, living high on the hog in their self-heating apartment house, their own self-warming coral reef in a river in Africa, a successful nuclearbiotic symbiosis of the first magnitude, teaching us how to use what Gaia provides– the spontaneous warmth of her own body, contained in her own mineral gift, used locally, in full biomimetic respectfulness,
and Gaiamimetic gratitude, only at the Indian Point Energy Center, our own biomimetic triumph on the Hudson. Far from being an interloper, invading a pristine shore, IPEC is seen in this light to be an environmental savior, using its biomimetics to gather Gaia’s gift, her self warming mineral deposits, cleanly, silently, and naturally, to warm & sustain us like the bacteria at Oklo, rather than burning up the dwindling atmosphere as other power plants, on coal, oil, or gas, will surely do.

You enjoy life.
We all, each & every one of us, sleep,
with a chunk of uranium beneath us.
That chunk is known as “Terra” or “Earth” Without the radiating core, Earth would be cold. Therefore we may look on Earth's uranium core as its heart, its "Life", or personalizing a bit, as Gaia herself. The heat of uranium makes the hot volcanic lava beneath us. Would you plunge your hand into the lava?…. Of course not.

HOWEVER …
All these powerful Gaian outpourings are GIFTS!!
Gaia gives, and we are allowed to accept, and use, or die out
and become mere food for whatever creature accepts the gifts.
(Gaia’s first Law).
Neither volcanoes nor uranium are evil,
they are both natural, even supernatural, gifts.
The greenest gifts ever given our humble monkeyrace.
We ought to use them.
Hope to meet you all someday,
and hoist a brandy (organic of course)
to our momma,
Goddess Gaia!

Now, to the Protection of Mother Earth’s Daughters!
6000 Chinese coal miners die on average each year, mining the coal used to create the permanent east Asian atmospheric disturbance which has been visible from outer space for the last decade, the brown death-smog which now grows increasingly worse each year. Not only do the massive mining operations mar the breast of mother earth, causing acid runoffs into streams, killing fish, deforesting entire provinces with irreparable open scars, but the impoverishment & lung disease following stunt the lives of millions, to place the sleeping giant, China, at the forefront of the fossil burning nations. The single technology most protective of mother earth, of the miners, of the atmosphere, of the steams, their fish, their trees, and all the poor people dependent on them, is the gift of the Earth itself, giving heat without burning anything, vastly reducing mining operations by a thousand, or ten thousand orders of magnitude for the same power (thus saving 6000 lives directly),
the minerals used by bacteria ages ago, and used today in the biomimetic triumph on the Hudson, Indian Point.

Closing Indian Point would necessitate the burning of oil, or coal in the USA, on the same scale as in China, shooting us backwards 200 years in one fell swoop, back to the age of “Black Birmingham”, when 100,000 people per year would die of lung disease in England, from the soot clouds of Birmingham’s factories. Mother Earth has given us a way out. Are we to deny its existence out of malicious self pride? Gaia’s self warming minerals are here whether we use them or not. You don’t burn them. You need not even mine any more of them (simply use what we already possess). Simply acknowlege the purity, the pristine invisibility of the Indian Point process, which makes no smoke, buries its own waste in its own casks, emits no greenhouse gas, and asks only to be allowed to continue to protect our mother earth with her own gift.

This is the moral fact of it.
This is the one ethical solution to it.
This is the scientific reality of it.
Any denial of this, is malicious self promotion,
based on malicious misinformation,
and is, in fact,
the knowing promotion of intentional death.

PAPIER MACHE' PANDERING ?

2007-02-01T05:45:00.001-08:00

There's a papier-mache' mockup of Indian Point, faithful in many details to the real original Indian Point, and it lives in journalist's communal psyche as a dependable knock. Write a few words about aging, ailing, leaking, distressed, woeful, etc., and you've got yourself a story. It's not even required to leave one's chair to investigate,.... all the needed parameters spring right to hand, out of communal memory of a nice hot purple flashing story angle, and blink on the page, obligingly, for our journalist, drawing attention, readership, and the satisfaction of having served up a palatable piece of work.

The only drawback, is that the leaking purple papier mache' model is not the real Indian Point.
The real Indian Point is apparently wearing a cloak of journalistic invisibility, kind of like Harry Potter.
Who built the cloaking device? I must state out front, that I don't believe journalists began the deception on their own... (except for one poor schmuck, who was fired for it). The list of perps is short, 2 organizations, and maybe 8 or 10 individuals, but buoyed by internet chumminess, and the active trading of techniques for capturing press attention, they hovered around their phones, and their letters-to-editors keyboards, and carefully applied papier mache',-- bit by bit, slopping on the bogus concern, the overdrawn and bathetic complaints, until the purple model of the domes rose high enough to obscure the real place ,and a journalistic staple, a dependable hot-button brouhaha, was hatched out of thin air, and activist chutzpah.

Do away with Indian Point? I can't wait! I am sick to death of the lurid claims, the carefully posed mock concern, the politician's sanctimonious puppet acts, mouthing less-than-credible complaints hatched for them by deluded and pushy place-grabbers, the kind of people who sneak to the front of democracy's feeding-line, and eat up all the deliberative attention for their own bogus complaints, leaving the rest of us screwed, annoyed, and without effective politicians, since ours are all tied up mired chin-deep in papier-mache'.

Yes, let us do away with Indian Point immediately--- the papier mache' version, that is.
While the Axis-Of-Anxiety (journalists, politicoes, and activists) fritters away weeks and months in their cute glue-spattered artist's smocks, carefully placing little Al Qaeda action figures on their toy domes, and making "brrrrrr---brrrrr" lip noises, while holding little model airplanes aloft above their papier mache masterpiece, the rest of us have to live here, and not get screwed.

We need an affordable Hudson Valley. That need, slipping ever so steadily out of our grasp, ought not be forgotten by our oh-so-ethical (they say) new Democratic administration, despite Riverkeeper's 5000 name mailing list,....... 5,000,000 of the rest of us need to hold the line, AND DO THEY CARE? Maybe not... you see, we are not pre-captured for them into a convenient voting bloc, like those 5000.

We need the power that the real Indian Point provides us, and I hear no construction plans coming out of Cuomo junior's lips, or new Governor Spitzer's planning office, so I know they have no plans for new power plants.Tell me--- HOW DO YOU ETHICALLY PROPOSE CLOSING INDIAN POINT WITHOUT BUILDING NEW PLANTS?

Short answer--you don't.

Even the National Academy of Scientists told us just that last year,.... but this new administration can only deal with papier mache', and so Cuomo jr. is hell-bent on ignoring both NAS, and us. So...... sadly, indeed, .....that makes new AG Cuomo's latest press-blast against Indian Point into a pandering exercise. Pandering to papier-mache', and a mailing list, while the real Indian Point hums away quietly, powering the last days of Hudson affordability.

If we stripped away the papier mache'---what would we see? We would see an environmentally proactive Entergy Corporation, remaking, improving, and cleaning up the mess Con Ed left here, gathering their national expertise to provide us what we have almost forgotten that we need, helping our communities with charity, volunteers, and positive interaction, maximizing power, minimizing damage, maximizing security, minimizing hype, maximizing value, minimizing loss..... in short..... doing a lot of the functions local and state government might be doing for us---IF THEY WERN'T POSING IN THEIR CUTE LITTLE BERETS AND ARTIST SMOCKS, in front of the big purple papier mache horror castle, for a vid byte to be shown to Riverkeeper's 5000 name mailing list, because Cuomo junior's political ambitions don't end with the state attorney general position!

Therefore, Let us all consider this question:

IS CUOMO JUNIOR'S POLITICAL FUTURE IMPORTANT ENOUGH , TO LET HIM SACRIFICE YOUR FUTURE FOR HIS?

Here, learn some truths about nuclear power

2007-01-31T03:48:00.001-08:00

As the U.S. Congress debates energy policy, White Nuclear Snowflake provides this summary review of the answers to frequently raised (false) objections to the only feasible solution to the U.S. and worldwide power shortage, nuclear energy.
Q: Aren't nuclear power plants dangerous to public health?
A: In fact, there has never been any nuclear accident in the United States that has endangered the health or welfare of the public. The worst American accident, at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, in 1979, injured no one.
Q: What about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine in 1986?
A: The severity of that accident was a function of a poor reactor design, and inadequate training of plant personnel. In the United States, oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission provides the standards for reactor design and plant operation, which has contributed to our excellent nuclear power plant safety record.
The new generation of nuclear power plant designs, already being built internationally, feature passive safety systems, which simply shut the plant down if there is an operator error or equipment failure.
By comparison, during 2006, more than 5,000 miners died in China, during the production of the more than 1 billion tons of coal that power its economy. The health of the public in China's cities is also endangered, by the pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
As far as vulnerability to "terrorist" attacks is concerned, there is no public infrastructure that is as well protected as nuclear power plants. There is no scenario under which a release of radiation (which effect in low dosages is, in any case, completely exaggerated), would significantly affect public health.
Q: What do we do with the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants?
A: There is no such thing as nuclear "waste." This is a term used in popular parlance by anti-nuclear ideologues to frighten the public, and its elected representatives. More than 95% of the fission products created in commercial power plants can be reprocessed and recycled. The spent fuel from a typical 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant, which has operated over 40 years, can produce energy equal to 130 million barrels of oil, or 37 million tons of coal.
In reprocessing, fissionable uranium-235 and plutonium are separated from the high-level fission products. The plutonium can be used to make mixed-oxide fuel, which is currently used to produce electrical power in 35 European nuclear reactors. The fissionable uranium in the spent fuel can also be reused. From the remaining 3% of high-level radioactive products, valuable medical and other isotopes can be extracted.
Q: What about the stalemate over burying radioactive spent fuel in the Yucca Mountain geological depository in Nevada?
A: This is an irrational program which is a result of the success of the anti-nuclear nonproliferation lobby in the 1970s. The Department of Energy's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership proposes to spend billions of dollars, and more than a decade in research and development, to develop new, "proliferation proof," reprocessing technologies, under the guise of preventing the spread of plutonium and nuclear weapons, and bury the spent fuel at Yucca Mountain, in the meantime. This delay is unnecessary. Today, Britain, France, Russia, India, Japan, and China reprocess spent nuclear fuel, and technology today can be used here in the U.S. to eliminate the "nuclear waste" problem, in the short term.
Q: But if the United States goes ahead now with reprocessing, doesn't making this technology available increase the risk that other nations will develop nuclear weapons?
A: No nation has ever developed a nuclear weapon from a civilian nuclear power plant. If a nation has the intention to develop nuclear weapons, it must obtain the specific technology to do so. Israel is an example of a nation that has no civilian nuclear power plants, but has developed nuclear weapons.
The nonproliferation argument—that controlling technology will reduce the risk of weapons proliferation—is an historically demonstrable false one. Nations make decisions based on their security and military requirements, not on which technologies are available.
Q: Isn't it the case that nuclear energy is more expensive than fossil, or "alternative" fuels?
A: The radical escalation in the cost of building nuclear power plants in the late 1970s and 1980s was the result of political actions, not economics. Some plants projected to cost less than $1 billion ended up costing ten times that amount, because anti-nuclear "environmentalists," and legal intervenors were given free rein, using specious and ideological arguments, to delay plant construction for years, sometimes, for decades. Where there has been no political interference, new nuclear power plants have been built in 38 months, on schedule, and on budget, such as in Japan.
While it does require less up-front capital investment to build a gas-fired power plant than a nuclear plant, the operational cost over the 30-or-more-year lifetime of the gas plant swings heavily in favor of nuclear power. And compared to coal, the overall economy is not taxed to transport millions of tons of fuel.
In 2002, faced with increasing demand, and after careful economic analysis, the Tennessee Valley Authority decided that it was more economical to spend $1.8 billion to refurbish its Browns Ferry nuclear plant, which had been shut down since 1986, than build a gas-fired unit.
So-called renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are not only inefficient because their energy is so dispersed, (see EIR Jan. 19) for discussion of energy flux density), they are so unreliable that back-up power supplies (fossil or nuclear) must be available for any time it is not sunny or windy. So, not only do consumers bear the expense of inefficiency, the entire electric grid system pays the price of having to provide stand-by redundant power-generating capacity to ensure grid reliability.
It was determined in the 1970s, that alternative, "soft" energy sources would only be competitive with fossil and nuclear plants, when energy costs reached a $100/barrel oil-equivalent price. To bring these uneconomical sources on line before then, political decisions were made to spend $20 billion in Federal subsidies for alternative energy, while Federal expenditures for advanced nuclear technologies came to a screeching halt. It has been this irrational investment policy that has made nuclear power "expensive."
Q: How can the large capital cost of new nuclear power plants be financed?
A: There must be a sea-change in economic policy, where the reconceptualization of the Federal budget on the basis of needed capital investment, are the guidelines.
The provision of reliable and affordable electricity, as recognized by President Franklin Roosevelt more than 50 years ago, is not a luxury, but a necessity. For this reason, in the 1930s, the electric utility industry was regulated by Federal and state governments, to protect consumers from financial manipulation and fraud, and to ensure that affordable power would be available to every home, farm, and factory.
The deregulation of the U.S. utility industry, beginning in the early 1990s, has nearly destroyed an electrical energy system that was the envy of the world. Utility companies must have access to low-interest, long-term credit, assurance from government regulators and policy-makers that "environmental" sabotage and delay will not be tolerated; and that a crash effort will be made to rebuild the nuclear manufacturing industry, which has nearly disappeared. These must be approached as a national policy, not dependent upon Wall Street financiers, but by directing resources into infrastructure through fiscal policy.
Q: But the immediate energy crisis is our dependence upon petroleum. How does nuclear energy alleviate that problem?
A: In two ways. In the long term, the only sensible and renewable replacement for petroleum-based liquid fuels is hydrogen. When next-generation, high-temperature nuclear fission reactors (which are under development now in South Africa and China) come on line, splitting water into its constituents elements will make hydrogen available as a versatile and universally available transportation fuel.
In the near term, petroleum consumption could be dramatically reduced through large-scale investment in mass transit and rail. Our decrepit diesel-fueled rail system should be electrified. Half of the nation's truck-hauled freight should be taken off the road and put on the rails. Millions of miles, and hours, of commuters driving automobiles should be eliminated, by using public transportation. A crash program to build conventional intra-city commuter trains, and magnetic levitation (maglev) systems for inter-city transport, would replace finite and polluting fossil fuel-based transport with nuclear power.
Q: But isn't it the case that there is broad opposition to new nuclear plants, and that citizens do not want plants built in "their backyard?"
A: The opposite is the case. Over the past two years, as utilities have indicated they will be applying to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for licenses to build new nuclear plants, communities have been competing with each other, to offer attractive packages to companies, in order to encourage them to build plants in their "backyard."
Last year, resolutions were passed by communities in Louisiana; Oswego, New York; and Fort Gibson, Mississippi, to support the addition of new nuclear reactors to existing nuclear sites. The states of Georgia, Utah, South Carolina, and South Dakota have passed resolutions supporting the building of new nuclear power plants.
At the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, just a stone's throw from Washington, D.C., the Board of County Commissioners voted last August to offer $300 million in tax breaks to the Constellation Energy Group to add a third reactor at the Calvert Cliffs site. The plant is the largest employer in that Maryland county, and the $16 million it pays in taxes each year contributes 9% of the county's total tax revenue.
In September 2006, Bisconti Research Inc. released the results of a telephone survey, of a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults, about nuclear energy. The survey found that nearly 70% of those queried support nuclear power, and 68% of those who live near an operating plant, support building a new nuclear reactor at the existing site.
In point of fact, the aging and off-base anti nuclear movement is dwindling fast, most of its heroes now well past retirement age, not in touch with the true wishes of the new, 300,000,000-strong US population, and spouting myths so ludicrous, that many just shrug, and consider them an annoyance to all. However, because a media anxious for controversy always gives them inordinate coverage, they try to maintain an illusion of still being as strong as they were in the 1970's. Except among celebrities, they are not. Celebrities use them as a convenient way to get in front of cameras.Behind the cameras, no "movement" exists.

A NOTE ON PETITIONS

2007-01-25T12:26:00.001-08:00

Do we need a new petition, asking us to shut down our infrastructure?

In 2002, when Indian Point discussion was current, and relevant to ongoing public events, Mr. Ross Weale jr. started a "Close Indian Point" petition. With great effort, utilizing every associated activist group then in operation, teams of canvassers were sent out with clipboards, through the entire region , in a maximum signup effort, with over 100 core canvassers gaining about 8000 signatures. This was the high tide of anti Indian Point concern, and the high tide of activist cross-cooperation, and it garnered 8000 signatures. Never closed, that petition sits online with about 10,000 signatures, the last 2000 having dribbled in, in the intervening 5 years, through the few web activism sites still remaining, the response diminishing steadily over time.

Simultaneously with Mr Weale's creation, a pro-Indian Point petition was begun by those friendly to Indian point. That petition quickly and easily garnered 13,000 signatures, thanks to the efforts of town residents, friends, and workers at or around the plant. It too sits online today, now abandoned, after the 13,000 to 8,000 drubbing given to the supposed "widespread anti coalition" at its own high point in early 2003. There was no further need to demonstrate that the greatest possible efforts of the naysayers, had met up with an almost casual landslide from the silent majority, had definitively lost, and had walked away, sadder but wiser.

What has changed?

The isolated gaggle of bloggers now proposing a new petition, is obviously unaware of this minor piece of local history, and that is sad. However, general feelings in the populace are moving away from nuclear jitters, and swinging toward taxation anxiety, and lifestyle anxiety , in the tough years after Iraq, and into 2007, when what had seemed assured previously, now looks to evaporate in a tide of lost Mirant tax suits, skyrocketing school taxes, a broken housing bubble, and a massive campesino invasion from central America, putting the very stability & viability of the region at risk.

Who is it, that is asking us to revisit the worst months of our lives, the months after September 2001, for strategies on living in 2007 and beyond? We need NEW strategies, ones that ought to be looking to better lives ahead, putting all the shibboleths of the discredited Bush regime behind us forever, especially any false terror fear, or malicious faux "activism", abused covertly for personal power, or gain.(or for no good reason at all).

The monumental impossibility of ever building new infrastructure is becoming more and more clear, as the TZ bridge sits crumbling, route 9 remains a relic of the 1920's, routes 119 and 35 are totally overwhelmed with no enlargements in sight, and White Plains itself sinks slowly into semi-permanent ghetto-hood, despite "renewal" after "renewal", and the jewel in Westchester's crown, the Southern Westchester Children's hospital, gets spun off, simply because it was planned in an earlier, more deep-pocketed time, and we simply can no longer afford it, or anything else like it.

So let us not be so anxious to dig ourselves into a bond-issue hole, inside a lost-electricity trench,
holding a still-radioactive non-producing Indian Point, while new avalanches still unseen, of the 2010's, and the 2020's bury us, and all our future hopes.

We must use what we have to survive. We must manage it , use it, and protect it. To do otherwise would be foolhardy at best, and criminal at worst. Let Indian Point be.

INDIAN POINT- ASSESSED BY HISTORY

2007-01-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

It is truly wonderful that the Westchester board of legislators has the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to petition for an Independent Safety Assessment of Indian Point, and they certainly have the right to express their wishes, even if it is more a matter of being politicked from above by Mike Kaplowitz, rather than asked from below (by their constituents) to do so.

However,... I believe what is at question here, can only be answered in part by NRC, even if they double the size of their agency,.. and move the entire NRC staff up to Buchanan to boot for ten or more years to do so.

What is NOT being assessed, is the credibility of promoters' claims (Mr. Kaplowitz among them) that there is actually any useful result for such an ISA, no matter which way it turns out. Sending the same inspectors back to Indian Point one more time, after they leave later this week, can turn up nothing they have not found yet, in some 50 years of inspecting the place. Sending new or unfamiliar inspectors to try to learn 50 years worth of engineering in six months is an invitation to a boondoggle, and a nonsense result. What is being ignored, the huge stinking purple elephant in Mr. Kaplowitz' living room, is the 50 years' worth of evidence that Indian Point is already safe, already up to code, already well inspected, and that inspecting it further does not therefore arise from any real world evidence. Reality has assessed Indian Point since 1955, and found it up to providing clean silent energy safely and without incident. Can politician Kaplowitz, angling for a Spitzer appointment, assess Indian Point any better than the 20 million ratepayers who have happily paid their bills since Eisenhower was our president? I truly doubt it, polymath that Mike K. might be--- real estate mogul, Westchester County whip, and now self-convinced safety & security genius for the northeast region. In fact, I think Mr. K. might just be spreading his talents a bit thin here, and that of late, his interest pretty clearly diverges from the public interest in this (meaning the peoples' interest).

So where do our county legislators turn, for an Independent Sincerity Assessment, of Mr. Kaplowitz' motives, and judgement? Unfortunately, there exists no NRC to regulate overeager personalities, whose command of a board room may just equate to a monster pillaging of the region's affordability--- to pay for a golden-tongued ego's rise to state office. Where do our legislators turn for an Independent Credibility Assessment of dangers that never seem to materialize? To whom can they turn for an Independent Viability Assessment of Westchester's tax rate, and electricity rate structure, once they pull the plug on the common man, for the sake of well-dressed "angry angels" in five years happily dividing up the Hudson shore for more sterile condo projects, while the blackouts multiply, and the stable core of Westchester's population empties out into the south, and the midwest?

In these areas of inquiry, an independent assessment is sorely needed.

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THE GHOST IN THE FISHES

2007-01-22T07:17:00.000-08:00

Why would strontium be found in 4 fish, and not found in 8 other fish? Why would a reputable lab find 7 times less (or more) strontium, than another reputable lab? Is there a conspiracy, with Doctor Strangelove secretly irradiating some fish in his underground lair, and then releasing them in the Hudson at Troy, to mislead us all, for political purposes? Are the strontium tests themselves unreliable as performed, and should we not take their results as "scientific proof" of anything?

To educate myself, I googled "Strontium test protocols" , and waded in, reading half a dozen DOE documents so dense, that 3 or 4 cups of coffee are definitely recommended for anybody else so inclined.One document is Sr-03-RC, Vol.1, HASL-300, 28th edition "Strontium 90 in Environmental Matrices".

This is DOE's own short description:
Strontium is separated from calcium, other fission products, and other natural radioactive elements.Fuming HNO3 (fuming nitric acid >86% pure) separations are used to remove the calcium and most of the other interfering ions.Radium, lead and barium are removed with BACRO4, (barium chromate).Traces of other fission products are scavenged with iron hydroxide adsorbent. The sample is isolated and Yttrium ingrowth is allowed to occur, 97% ingrowth taking place in 14 days. After ingrowth Yttrium/Strontium equilibrium has been attained, the yttrium 90 is precipitated as a hydroxide and then converted to an oxylate for counting on a low background gas proportional beta counter. Chemical yield is determined with a strontium 85 tracer by counting in a gamma well detector.

Got all that?

This being a Department of Energy test procedure, it is geared to gross amounts of strontium, in such places as the Hanford atom bomb plant in Washington. The procedure for testing soil states: "Weigh out enough soil to generate an activity at least 10 times background (ideally 100 times) into an appropriate container....."

In order to get a good test run, the technician is being advised to use enough sample, to have 100 times the background radiation, just to begin. No Hudson river fish ever had anywhere near this level, in fact by this warning alone, the test ought not to have been run. (background is the level a geiger counter reads, when it is nowhere near any radiation). As a matter of fact, by geiger counter alone, the Hudson fish had NO DETECTABLE ACTIVITY. (When frisked, the fish were clean).

So was there ever strontium in any fish to begin with?
Maybe not.

The ground beneath Indian Point is not soil, not aggregate gravel, It is solid ancient rock, straight down to China, rock with no interstices, except from fracture cracks induced by the blasting to build Indian Point. The fracture cracks, not being geological in origin, do not go anywhere, but exist in a small circle around each blast location, So, rather than some "pool" existing, or some "groundwater" (as you might find in some midwestern area, like the oglala aquifer) there actually is no pool, and there is no groundwater (no aquifer-- All drinking water in the area is piped in from upstate reservoirs.)
What does sit beneath Indian Point is a solid rock mass, with microscopic fracture cracks of very short length, centered on the Indian Point excavation profile. Water from plant activities over the last 50 years has entered the fracture cracks, and now exists within tiny feathered spaces inside solid rock, kind of the way your 3 fingers exist in the holes in a bowling ball, but just imagine the solid part of the bowling ball being 1000 feet across, and 1000 feet deep, and imagine the finger holes shrunk down to a millionth of an inch in diameter. The trapped water is not going anywhere, is not free, and is not connected (as far as anyone knows) with any geological flow channel able to move it anywhere.THAT'S why it was able to collect, and be found. It's in a jar.
Looking globally at the 3 dimensional outline of the "jar" (the part of the bowling ball that's drilled out) you get the misnomered "plume" of some 350 feet, a non-plume because it is just a virtual object, an autocad outline of those drill samples where microscopic water is trapped within rock. Actually, the whole thing, plume, and non-plume are all solid rock.
"Cleaning the Rocks"
Right now Entergy, using the virtual "plume" as a drilling guide, is emptying the "plume" with suction shafts, and reverse pumping these shafts, to draw whatever is in the feathered cracks BACK UP to a treatment station, and to draw whatever is seeping down toward the feathered cracks OUT through the suction shafts. Meanwhile, at the top, in the old Con Edison fuel pool where the original leak happened in 1996, Entergy has set up a cleaning station to remove all radioactive stuff from the water by chemical absorption means, thus removing any potential future leaks, and when they are done, the entire fuel pool will be dried, hermetically sealed, emptied, epoxied, fitted with permanent sensors to note any recurrances, and retired, empty of any fuel, with the fuel going to dry casks, or Yucca mountain. Finito, strontium leak.
If and/or when Entergy leaves, this cleaning operation will cease. It is not mandated by law, and Entergy is doing it to be a good enough neighbor to be able to run their revenue making units a few more years for us....NRC has not ruled on these leak issues elsewhere, and is actually looking to Entergy to invent the new technological framework right here, in their proactive and environmentally helpful suction & cleanout routine. If NRC likes it, they may make all the other nuke plants do it too. If Entergy is politically prevented from finishing it, no nuke plant anywhere will be forced to do it, and NRC will probably drop it, and not return to it. So everybody better let their single environmental hero in this--Entergy-- do its job, or misguided activism will have had the effect of crapping up the environment permanently, around EVERY nuclear plant. So, that kinda covers the "strontium plume" issue.There actually IS no water plume. It's solid rock, with water trapped inside in micro-cracks.

Now on to the issue of maybe-there-is and maybe-there-isn't strontium in Hudson river fish. The world was blanketed in strontium from 1945 through 1995, when all the nuclear powers tested atom bombs above ground.Future archeologists will date the earth by its pre-strontium, and post strontium layers, just like the pre and post Santorini layers, or the 65 million year ago asteroid hit. It is everywhere, including in Andrew Spano's molars. If Mr. Spano was chopped up and ground to a mush, centrifuged to a paste, cleansed with 8 successive baths of nitric acid, re-centrifuged to a crystalline residue, which was then mixed with ion-free distilled water, boiled for 8 hours, put through a barium chromate reduction, re-centrifuged, dried, and then put through a set of iron hydroxide scavenging runs, and cooked onto the surface of a special stainless steel disk, which was then heat-dried for 2 days, before being isolated in a sealed flask for a month, and then unsealed, and run through a geiger counter looking for a tell tale 20,000 decays per minute beta particle profile, specific to Yttrium, and those Yttrium radiations extrapolated backwards by a very nebulous calculus computation , inferring the PREVIOUS presence of Strontium, from the current presence of its daughter product Yttrium 90, then, depending on whether the lab tech had cleansed and calibrated every solution correctly, run every reaction exactly the right time, not contaminated any step of the 238 steps, and had then computed the back-track correctly, we would get EITHER just background levels OR a level just a wee bit above background. Taking into account the fact that bone & tooth COLLECT strontium, concentrating it by about 5.7 times over background, it means that any ground-up-tooth reading near or just above background actually implies an environmental level BELOW background (by a factor of 5.7), Knowing that any detection of Strontium is by inference, by circumstantial evidence only, and that the minimum detectable level is not friendly to the tester, we now have an explanation of why different labs get different readings. Without the advised "100 times background" sample size, mentioned above, the test is so nebulous, so easy to do "wrong", and so tied to background, that it can't be believed, unless you set up a program of constant fish collection, and constant testing, to generate a body of samples that would screen out individually unsatisfactory test runs..... AND you would need to compare this to a CONTROL COHORT , of "definitely-non-strontium" fish, and run each one of those tests at the same time as each of the "strontium-fish" tests, doing it under the typical double blind protocol, in order to determine where MDL lies (Minimum Detectable Level). Our challenge as a scientific community is to find a control cohort anywhere on the planet. There just might not BE one....Maybe cave fish from deep underground somewhere (provided no strontium rain ever penetrated their cave). The test protocols are tough, making up about a 160 page document altogether.. One surprising and dismaying thing I found was the test procedure for finding strontium in Bikini Atoll fish, was double the length of the test used for finding strontium in freshwater fish. the "Marine Protocol" is much longer and more rigorous, because the dissolved residual actinides in the high mineral content of seawater causes false positives, and must be religiously screened out, by an additional 175 steps not done in the non-marine protocol. Once a person has read up on the marine protocol the fact will hit you, that THE HUDSON RIVER IS BRACKISH! Did the test lab use the Marine Protocol, or the freshwater protocol? Since the Hudson salt line moves up and down river with the tides and the rains, unless a separate "Semi-Marine-Protocol" were devised (AND CORRECTLY APPLIED), a large error trap, one might even say a GAPING ERROR TRAP yawns beneath a single test run, on a much-too-small sample of 12 Hudson fish, done only once and with no control cohort , and a deceptive well-nigh impossible to determine MDL level, depending on just how salty each fish was.

Conclusion? Almost all of these tests so far have been reading technician errors, and mistaken MDL computations, and reporting them out as the possible existence of non-existent strontium. THAT'S why the levels vary, and THAT'S why its supposedly in some fish but not in others. We are reading the technician's inability to validly run the test, on such tiny non-radioactive samples.

Greenpeace....WHERE ARE YOU ?

2007-01-18T10:49:00.001-08:00

Much was made of NYC banning transfats in restaurants, a groundbreaking intrusion of dietism into the free enterprise world. The banning of smoking in public went over rather easily a decade ago, its negative impact more or less proven by assent, (and a successful near-billion dollar class action suit). We await the next lifestyle pogrom, and earnestly hope it bans only those activities we ourselves avoid. Seeing as all the broken limbs, fostbitten extremities, and a gaggle of participant deaths recently, have set the stage for "A Perfect Banning", it remains only for the Pelosista hordes to caucus, and rid America of the scourge of mountain climbing. Mountain climbing, mountain biking, mountain skiing, mountain leveling, and mountain-purchasing ought to be thrown in the pot, too.

Thus can we save the mountains.

See how it works? We ban, we save. It's easy. Mindless, even. The banning of alcohol would be a good second-next, if it wasn't for the fact that it was tried, and made things worse. What a fine world it could be without all the nasty drunks beating spouses, and killing innocents on the roads. I guess we're kinda stuck with the drunks, the DWI events, the endless rehab costs, and even the liver surgery bills, which come into play only at the endstage.

Funny thing about banning. The Islamics banned alcohol 1000 years ago, and made it stick. (except for during Ramadan, and only after sundown). So you never get 100% from a good banning, I suppose. You see, its the escape clause that makes it workable, and aiming for 1000% would have ruined everything. Deuced clever, those Muslim rulemakers, truly cognizant of human limitations! When 'Greenpeace Incorporated' sends its attack boats up the Hudson to ban our local power plant,(Indian Point) I'm hoping they recall the "Ramadan Exclusion", and let us use nuclear power for at least the sweltering July-August dog days, and maybe for the December blow-up-yard-decoration fest, a simple-minded but happy aberration, somewhat beloved of non-Marxists, and now attracting world interest in its various guises as Chanukka, Kwanzaa, and even the agnostic "Festivus".

Yes, a few simple exclusions, like for instance, maybe allowing Hudson Valley Hospital Emergency Room to continue to use nuclear power, (seeing as Entergy donated the place to us 2 years ago) might make the "No Nukes" pill go down a little easier! I hope the "Masters of Banning" remember to keep Valhalla prison on good steady nuke power, seeing as a blackout there might release a horde of banned individuals back out among us, unwanted. We definitely would not want THAT!

With all the right exclusions in place (let's say--- RFK jr's manse at Howland's Lake, Andy Spano's digs, and sloop Clearwater's dock burglar alarm), the stage could be set for Westchesterites to "bite the bullet" and go non-nuclear at last!

I can't wait!

Greenpeace..... WHERE ARE YOU?

Alert!... Alert!... Fish are in the River !

2007-01-17T12:43:00.000-08:00

Magnet on the Hudson

Sited as it is 100 yards south of the Buchanan town sewage outlet, half a mile south of the Annsville sewage treatment plant, and two miles south of Anthony's nose, site of a partially exposed uraninite vein, & 1950's-era uranium mine tailings, directly across the river from the coal burning Lovett plant (coal contains 1% uranium, 3% thorium) Indian Point has sat for all its history in a raging stream of pollution not of its own making.

It came to the river in an era when Anaconda was turning the river green with copper sulfate, and the upstream dye factories turned it any color that commerce demanded, some weeks orange, others purple, and in the face of common industrial culture at the time, Indian Point funded Riverkeeper with its founding $12 million grant, and independently began the fish farm that repopulated the Hudson bass to its current bumper crop levels.

Strontium from U.S. Navy experimental reactors near Troy, fallout from Chernobyl, a downed Russian satellite, and above ground bomb tests had historically salted Hudson fish with a miniscule strontium dose common in the northern hemisphere, not unique to the Hudson, and certainly not stemming from Indian Point. General Electric's PCB's had always made Hudson fish unpalatable, and still lie there in wait today on the Hudson's floor for remediation. The PCB's resulted in a legal prohibition on eating Hudson fish in the 1970's, even the new hatchlings spawned for us by the Indian Point fish farm in the 1980's & 1990's. Entergy's new re-test finds the same old strontium levels 30 miles upstream, in a place any effluent from Peekskill would never reach, more or less confirming that the Hudson is still dirty, but proving nothing at all about Indian Point, except that Indian Point independently tests, and publicizes its results.

However, after being stripped of everything, in readiness for its new role as Ginsburg Development's gated 300-mile-long Luxury Condo Corridor, The Hudson River no longer has any viable whipping boy, target, or supposed evildoer on its shores to act as modern-day lightning rod for an entire 200 years of Hudson use & misuse, (and a geriatric generation of aging activists). None, that is, except Indian Point, probably the cleanest installation ever to be built along the old industrial corridor. Far from being the target of foreign terrorists, Indian Point now serves as media magnet for dozens of local wannabe issue makers (and issue mongers), and all the while keeps pumping nearly a billion dollars a year into local coffers, and billions of kilowatt hours of life, safety, enjoyment and security into all of its neighboring (and very lucky) communities.

Fish will come, and fish will go. The African American anglers at China Bay will keep on eating the Indian-Point-hatched river bass descendants, and media opponents will keep sensationalizing every last crumb of info about routine tests. Meanwhile life goes on, unchanged.