Since Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy plant has reportedly released 20 times the radiation contamination amount of the Hiroshima bomb, and its molten core is sinking through the Earth’s crust, it appears to be in early stages of a “total China Syndrome meltdown” according to a Russia Today report Thursday during which Beyond Nuclear’s Paul Gunter answered why media is blacking out the catastrophe, as noted by numerous scientists, and he revealed the increasing threat of a nuclear explosion.
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Fukushima early stage China Syndrome ‘clearly a concern’: Expert – National Human Rights | Examiner.com
21 AugRadiation Discovered in Rice Near Tokyo – NYTimes.com
20 AugThe Agriculture Ministry said it was the first time that more than trace levels of cesium had been found in rice, though it said there was no health risk. Still, the discovery won wide attention here. Rice is a staple in most Japanese dishes and holds a place in the collective national heart that exceeds that of apple pie for Americans or baguettes for the French.
Report gives tar sands pipeline opposition ammunition – KYTX CBS 19 Tyler Longview News Weather Sports
19 AugFrom five months ago:
Now, for the first time, four major groups have come together to issue a joint report. The Natural Resources Defense Council joined forces with the National Wildlife Federation, the Pipeline Safety Trust and the Sierra Club. … It says tar sands, also called dil-bit, is 3 to 13 times more acidic than conventional crude with six to 10 times the sulfur content.
New Rules and Old Plants May Strain Summer Energy Supplies – NYTimes.com
12 AugThe E.P.A. estimates that a rule on air toxins and mercury that it expects to complete in November will result in a loss of 10,000 megawatts — or almost 1 percent of the generating capacity in the United States. Electricity experts, however, say that rule, combined with forthcoming ones on coal ash and cooling water, will have a much greater effect — from 48,000 megawatts to 80,000 megawatts, or 3.5 to 7 percent.
… The most likely replacement for the coal plants is new natural gas-powered generators. But PJM and others are complaining that if the E.P.A. follows its intended schedule, utilities will not have much time to decide whether to close or upgrade their old plants, and no one will have time to build new ones.
… The new peaks will shape the planning of the grid. In the eastern United States, electricity is mostly generated near where it is consumed, and if some producers disappear, someone will have to build new generation or new transmission to supply the area from a distant source.
“You always manage toward the peak, and have a reserve margin based on your latest peak,” said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy, which does business in areas that experienced a new peak.
Peak supply is also becoming a vexing problem because so much of the generating capacity added around the country lately is wind power, which is almost useless on the hot, still days when air-conditioning drives up demand.
via New Rules and Old Plants May Strain Summer Energy Supplies – NYTimes.com.
Open Letter to a Mutant Ninja Senator
11 AugFrom Charlie Keil:
"In his January 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama also called for building a new generous of safe, clean nuclear power plants as a vital component of his national clean energy program." from Sen. Joe Lieberman's letter to me of April 29th, 2011 wonder how 'generous' came to replace 'generation' at the center of this lie-packed satanic sentence what "Union" could we possibly be talking about what "safe" when any one person can mortar a nukeplant into powdered poison can put a garden hose siphon into the fuel pool can fall asleep at the switch or twist x instead of y can have sex with a bored co-worker while the core melts down or the aging pipes leak more and more count the human errors that could occur much more probable than earthquakes what "clean" list the half-lives that cut our lives in half the daily eco-devastation of overheated waters again the dirty list is long what "vital" when death dealing radiation lasts for thousands upon thousands of years "energy" in this form is pure ENTROPY destroying the speciation before our eyes only the complete failure of the US schools can account for this letter this death sentence
Will North America Be the New Middle East? | The Nation
10 AugThere’s an even bigger reason to oppose the pipeline, one that should be on the minds of even those of us who live thousands of miles away: Alberta’s tar sands are the continent’s biggest carbon bomb. Indeed, they’re the second largest pool of carbon on planet Earth, following only Saudi Arabia’s slowly dwindling oilfields.
If you could burn all the oil in those tar sands, you’d run the atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide from its current 390 parts per million (enough to cause the climate havoc we’re currently seeing) to nearly 600 parts per million, which would mean if not hell, then at least a world with a similar temperature.
via Will North America Be the New Middle East? | The Nation.
Anger in Japan Over Withheld Radiation Forecasts – NYTimes.com
9 AugSuch is the way of governments, no? A protective lie here, another there, and pretty soon even the bureaucrats and politicians forget they are insulating themselves from the world through lies.
“From the 12th to the 15th we were in a location with one of the highest levels of radiation,” said Tamotsu Baba, the mayor of Namie, which is about five miles from the nuclear plant. He and thousands from Namie now live in temporary housing in another town, Nihonmatsu. “We are extremely worried about internal exposure to radiation.”
The withholding of information, he said, was akin to “murder.”
In interviews and public statements, some current and former government officials have admitted that Japanese authorities engaged in a pattern of withholding damaging information and denying facts of the nuclear disaster — in order, some of them said, to limit the size of costly and disruptive evacuations in land-scarce Japan and to avoid public questioning of the politically powerful nuclear industry.
via Anger in Japan Over Withheld Radiation Forecasts – NYTimes.com.
In Japan, A-Bomb Survivors Join Opposition to Nuclear Power – NYTimes.com
6 AugAghast at the catastrophic failure of nuclear technology, and outraged by recent revelations that the government and power industry had planted nuclear proponents at town hall-style meetings, the elderly atomic bomb survivors, dwindling in numbers, have begun stepping forward for the first time to oppose nuclear power.
Now, as both Hiroshima and Nagasaki observe the 66th anniversary of the twin American atomic attacks at the end of World War II, the survivors are hoping that they can use their unique moral standing, as the only victims of nuclear bombings, to wean both Japan and the world from what they see as mankind’s tragedy-prone efforts to tap the atom.
via In Japan, A-Bomb Survivors Join Opposition to Nuclear Power – NYTimes.com.
Peak oil was thirty years ago — and civilization still perks along
5 AugRead the stuff I’ve put in BOLD at the end, then read the rest of it, or just click through to the original post, in full.
The Oil Peak that actually mattered was the peak in consumption per person, which took place back in 1980 at 5.3 barrels per person per year. Since then, consumption per person has dropped to 4.4 barrels per person per year. Given the growth of demand in Asia, consumption per person in the countries that were already rich in 1980 has fallen much faster. Meanwhile living standards have risen substantially[2], unconstrained by declining consumption per person of oil, and of energy more generally.
Oddly enough, most people who worry about Peak Oil are also environmentalists concerned about climate change. From this viewpoint, which I share, Peak Oil looks like good news rather than bad. But the optimistic interpretation is trumped by the spurious idea that there is a 1-1 relationship between oil (or energy) and economic activity. This fallacious idea is held both by Peak Oil fans and by the rightwing doomsayers who suggest that reducing emissions of CO2 will destroy the economy.
A particularly interesting subgroup of Peak Oil fans are those who see nuclear energy as the only possible solution, a view that was mooted by Hubbert himself. This part of the discussion is dominated by a belief in something called ‘baseload power demand’ which must be met at all times if disaster is to be avoided. The idea that demand responds to prices and market structures seems entirely foreign to this discussion.
One of the few upsides of the disastrous Fukushima meltdown is that it has allowed a perfect test of this theory. Following the meltdown, Japan has taken 38 of its 54 reactors offline. It’s now midsummer there, and the blackouts predicted by the scaremongers have not occurred. Instead, the reduction in supply has been handled by (mostly voluntary) efficiency measures.
Truth and Traditions 