NY Times Special (Business As Usual) Energy Section Clifford Krauss’ “Can We Do Without the Mideast?” sets the tone for the “Special Energy Section” in the NY Times, March 31, 2011. “The path to independence – or at least an end to dependence on the Mideast – could well be dirty, expensive and politically explosive.” [...]
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Sustainable Investing is a subset of Value Investing. A Sustainable Investor might pass up a bargain on an unsustainable company or a well run company in an unsustainable sector, but will do well long term and sleep well at night.
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Asking a nuclear engineering professor “Is radiation bad?” is like asking Charlie Sheen “Is cocaine bad?” Wind and water turbines, geothermal systems, and photovoltaic solar modules produce power without burning fuel. While there are resource footprints in the manufacture, installation, and maintenance of these facilities, there are no mines, no wells, no wastes to manage in their ongoing operation. Shouldn’t we be asking “How do we get utility scale base load power from wind and sun?” Shouldn’t we be figuring out “How to shift from a fuel-based energy paradigm to a sustainable paradigm?”
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Excerpted from Michael Cooper of The New York Times, “Michigan Cuts Jobless Benefit by 6 Weeks,” Michigan, whose unemployment rate has topped 10 percent longer than that of any other state, is about to set another record: its new Republican governor, Rick Snyder, signed a law Monday that will lead the state to pay fewer [...]
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After Fukushima, the question is not: “Can we meet our needs with renewable, sustainable energy systems?” but rather it is “How can we meet our needs with renewable, sustainable energy systems?”
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Oil companies and other businesses helped pay Qaddafi’s $1.5 billion settlement for terrorist attacks. Should it matter that third parties paid the bill – or does that make them morally complicit?
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By Peter Grier, CSMonitor.com, dated March 22, 2011. Japan nuclear crisis: Why are the spent-fuel pools so hard to control? – CSMonitor.com: As workers struggle to bring the Fukushima I nuclear plant back under full control, spent-fuel pools appear to be a source of continuing problems. On Tuesday morning, one pool was so hot that [...]
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“Several weeks after the extension was granted, the company admitted that it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment related to the cooling systems, including water pumps and diesel generators, at the power station’s six reactors, according to findings published on the agency’s Web site shortly before the earthquake.
Regulators said that “maintenance management was inadequate” and that the “quality of inspection was insufficient.”
Less than two weeks later, the earthquake and tsunami set off the crisis at the power station.”
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Geiger counter and dosimeter manufacturers will eventually catch up with the current spike in demand. Radiation detection should be ubiquitous, understood, cheap, and, where possible, with their own I.P. addresses. The secret is – with certain goods – there is no “correct” inventory. Only “not enough” and “too many,” in varying degrees. “Too many,” of course, is in the end, much safer than “not enough.”
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Radiation information seems best managed by outsourcing; radiation detection equipment, like other disaster-response equipment, can’t be expected to be available for purchase during nuclear dispersion events.
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Are there differences between Fukushima Dai-ichi and Chernobyl? And is Fukushima worse than Chernobyl? A teenager might say “Du-uh!” My friends from Brooklyn might ask “Is the Pope Catholic?” Even “Snooki” and “The Situation” might ask “Are you stoopid or what?” But the people at CNN, ProPublica and the NY Times are asking nuclear power [...]
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In Sustainability by Design, John Ehrenfeld defines sustainable design as “That which allows for and even stimulates flourishing forever. ” Nuclear plants are, according to Ehrenfeld’s definition, Unsustainable by design!” Washington, 1972: “If the cooling systems fails at a ‘Mark 1′ nuclear reactor, the primary containment vessel surrounding the reactor will probably burst as the [...]
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This seems to be worse than Chernobyl. Chernobyl was a meltdown at one reactor. There are reports of “partial melt-downs” at three reactors at Fukushima Dai-Ichi and “States of Emergency” at 9 out of 17 reactors at three sites northeast of Tokyo: 3 at Fukushima Dai-ichi, 3 at Fukushima Daini and 3 at Onagawa. I [...]
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(Second in a series on the ecological economics, financial ramifications, logistics, and systems dynamics of nuclear power in the light of the ongoing catastrophe at Fukushima.) Cary Krosinsky, VP at Trucost, is once again teaching a course on Sustainable Investing at the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, CERC, at Columbia University. At the March [...]
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First in a series on the earthquake, tsunami, aftershocks and partial meltdown in Japan
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The same messages can be communicated by signalling the letter "K" in Morse code via signal lamp. (While a proper signal lamp may be ideal, a flashlight, probably best employing red LEDs, will certainly fit the bill).
In Morse, the letter "K" is represent as Dash - Dot -- Dash.
The ICS also has a subset, the Medical Signal Code, which uses three-character phrases to communicate brief medical messages.