popular logistics

Some people are saying ‘We need nuclear because we can’t burn coal or oil.’

That’s like smoking cigars or a pipe or chewing tobacco because you don’t want to smoke cigarettes, because cigarettes cause cancer. We all know cigarettes that cause cancer, and smokers “should” quit or cut down. But pipes, cigars, and chewing tobacco are still tobacco. “Quitting cigarettes and smoking cigars is like going from crack cocaine to powdered cocaine or heroin. Which is a better way to die? Lung cancer from smoking cigarettes or lung cancer from smoking cigars?

Der Speigel, May, 1986.

Der Speigel published Looking Back at Chernobyl, beginning April 19, 2006.

One fact jumps out - the accident at Three Mile Island (Wikipedia) which the NRC describes as “serious,” is said to have released 15 curies of radioactive material. The explosion at Chernobyl disbursed “roughly 80 million curies of iodine 131 and 6 million curies of caesium 137, a “large part” of which was released into the atmosphere.”

Joni Mitchell once sang “Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please.”

You can see her recorded live on You Tube

Solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, oceanic hydro - these are available, and much more cost effective. They are the technologies of the future, available today.

Despite the fact that 40% of Americans - about 120 million people - believe that plastic is biodegradable, there are no organisms in the biosphere that eat plastic, no metabolic pathways that break it down. Plastic isn’t biodegradable. It just gets torn into smaller and smaller pieces.

The volume of plastic is growing, probably exponentially, each year. It’s like the character said in “The Graduate” “Plastics – There’s a great future in plastic.” Much of this garbage winds up in the oceans. There is a large nexus of plastic swirling around the Pacific, called and the so-called “Great Pacific Garbage Dump,” in the vicinity of the ‘Horse Latitudes.’ (Click here for the Green Peace report on the extent of the problem. Click Here, Here, Here or Google ‘Plastic debris in the oceans’). By “Large” I mean 10 million square miles - about the size of Africa - and about 100 feet thick. Captain Charles Moore, of the ORV Alguita, has been exploring the dump click here or here.

The theory of evolution would suggest that eventually a denizen of the gyre, be it bacterial, plankton, or jellyfish, will evolve a metabolic pathway such that this organism will be able to eat, that is degrade, the plastic. It will eat, gorge itself, and reproduce. And then there will be 2 organisms that can eat plastic. Then 4, 8, 16, 32, … 1,024, 2,048, … and then millions and millions. This could start tomorrow, or in 10,000 years.

Scientists could kick start this process. Take some bacteria, plastics and mutagenic agents, put them together in salt water – and wait. Or better yet use genetic engineering and biochemistry to engineer metabolic pathways to biodegrade, i.e., “eat” plastic.

Or, if I may be permitted to wax sarcastic, dump radioactive wastes into this plastic soup. The radioactive wastes may eventually trigger the mutations that create the required metabolic pathways.

(Also posted on Orion Magazine on the discussion of Rebecca Solnit’s Reasons Not to Glow, LF)

Orion Magazine - Reasons Not to Glow

Last summer’s energy bills were not good for the environment.

Yes, both houses of Congress passed energy bills “oriented toward increasing energy efficiency and boosting renewable power and biofuels.” But the House version had no Corporate Average Fuel Economy program (CAFE) car mileage mandate, thanks to the shortsightedness of Michigan Rep. John Dingell, (who believes himself to be an auto industry champion, but is killing the patient), and the Senate version had no Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) due to strong opposition from Senate Republicans. People who think about sustainable economies and environmentalists wanted both mandates in a final bill.

The final bill now includes a 35 mpg CAFE standard, an Renewable Electricity Standard of 15 percent, and 21 billion dollars of investment in the renewable energy economy.

Among other things, the 21 billion dollars will fund production tax credits for solar and wind power over a four-year period; it will fund research and development programs for renewable energy and job training programs for solar power installers; and it will fund individual tax credits for solar energy, home weatherization and purchase of fuel efficient vehicles like plug-in hybrid cars.

And 50 billion dollars in loan guarantees for new nuclear plants were dropped from the Senate version. (They were in the summer’s version.

While the Republicans like subsidizing the nuclear industry, and they like subsidizing the oil industry, they don’t like the Renewable Electricity Standard and the $21 billion tax package that will fund the bill, especially the $13.5 billion in higher taxes on oil companies. President Bush warned that he is likely to veto the bill if it passes the Senate. Sen. Pete Domenici said, “If it comes over here, we have no alternative but … war.” One sardonic environmentalist said “This war is as well thought out as the War in Iraq. Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who put a hold on the bill back in October, called the tax increase “discrimination against one industry.” (Please note that Hutchison received $284,000 in contributions from the oil and gas industries in 2005 and 2006, (click here) and a total of$1.3 million as of May, 2001 (click here).

The Republicans will fall on their swords. Then they will return as lobbyists. Truthout. Houston Chronicle. Washington Post. LA Times.

Peach Bottom is a nuclear power installation about 90 miles from Philadelphia, less than 100 miles from Washington, D.C., and less than 200 miles from New York City:

[singlepic=163,320,240,,left] “Parts of York County are within the ten mile Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ) of two nuclear power plants-Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station and Three Mile Island (TMI) Nuclear Power Plant. ” ((From the York County Emergency Preparedness website. )) That’s a lot of risk for one community; let’s hope their evacuation planning and preparedness are in good shape. (Link to Acrobat/.pdf file on York County website).

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reported, on October 31: (updates to follow):

Washington, DC - Kerry Beal, a whistleblower who exposed overworked and exhausted guards at the Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant, was notified this week by owner Exelon Nuclear that he “did not meet the selection criteria” for continuing to work at the plant.

Beal filmed guards sleeping at the plant only after his efforts to notify Wackenhut (Exelon’s Peach Bottom security contractor) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of the regular occurrence of sleeping guards were met with inaction. Wackenhut Corporation lost its contract to provide security to the Peach Bottom nuclear plant because of the resulting publicity surrounding the sleeping guards.

“This is the stupidest thing they could have done. Now, they’ll ensure no one else will be brave enough to come forward and try to fix problems” said Danielle Brian, Executive Director, Project On Government Oversight.
Mr. Beal’s whistle-blowing prompted USA Today to editorialize: “The Peach Bottom case is a stark example of what has to go right in the crucial effort to keep nuclear plants safe. In this case, the plant owner, the security company and the NRC all failed. It shouldn’t take a hidden camera to make them do their jobs.”

An internal Wackenhut email released by POGO today shows that up until a few weeks ago, guards were still being forced to work more than 60 hours per week. The October 16, 2007 email from Wackenhut manager David Draghi notes: “I have revised the shift schedule…If you can afford to start giving your team members a break from 60 hours please do so.”

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission Order from 2003 sought to reign in the problem of overworked guards. But industry efforts to weaken the Order prevailed, resulting in the current situation where security officers can work up to 72 hours per week. POGO issued a letter to NRC Chairman Klein today pointing out that pending efforts at the NRC to strengthen the rules are being dragged out for another two years.

Where do we go from here? How can we transition from fuel based energy systems to sustainable 21st Century technologies?

Where do we install various systems? How much they cost? How quickly do they pay for themselves? How might the technology evolve? And what are the logistical challenges of nuclear power? How do we manage radioactive waste? What about evacuation plans for the areas near nuclear power plants? A large percentage of the US population lives within 100 miles of the Indian Point reactor - everyone in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx. Everyone in Northern NJ and Westchester. If nuclear power is so great, why then have no new nuclear power plants been built since the early 1980’s? Why are we so upset about Iran’s plans to build a nuclear facility? Why do nuclear plants require tremendous government subsidies?

What do we do next? Solar? Wind? Nuclear? Coal? Oil? Negawatts?

Burning coal and oil create greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Nuclear power produces radioactive waste and a prodigious amount of heat pollution. Nuclear and fossil fuels require mines, mills or wells, and they are really bad for the environment, causing everything from pollution to global warming.

Negawatts makes sense. Hybrid cars get great gas mileage and offer a smooth, quiet, comfort. Every barrel of oil we don’t burn is better for our economy. Every barrel of oil we don’t buy from Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela is $80 or $90 or $100 that doesn’t go into the hands of people like Achmadinejad, Bandar, or Chavez. That’s good for us and bad for the terrorists.

Solar and Wind are not perfect. People complain that they don’t look pretty. But they create jobs not pollution. They help our national security infrastructure. And they look fine to me. I’d rather see solar panels on my roof and wind turbines on my horizon then global warming and my money going to thugs like Achmadinejad.

Mike Mercurio understands national security and knows the way to energy independence. He feels it with the cool breezes and the warm light of the sun outside his Long Beach Island, NJ home. He knows that clean energy stops global warming, enhances national security, and provides jobs.

He sees it on his electric bills – $9.50 per month – $114 per year – which reflect the clean power generated by the photovoltaic solar array on his roof. Without them the bill would be $150 in the winter, $350 in the summer - about $3,000 per year.

His neighbors can’t feel it, can’t see it, and have sued to stop him alleging that it is slightly louder than an air conditioner. What are they thinking? (Not in my backyard. Give me nuclear and give me death. Rad-Waste makes Teeth Shine.)

A photo essay on the children of Chernobyl at Slate.

We’ll not reproduce them here; those who need reminding that nuclear power - and other complex systems - are accompanied by increased risk where increases in complexity are not accompanied by off-sets in safety - especially where the basic materials are inherently dangerous - should, of course, make a point of taking a look.

We suspect, however, that at firms which operate nuclear power plants - the link to this photo essay - if anyone is aware of it - is not being circulated to all employees with an admonition that they redouble their efforts to keep things safe.

Via Monkeyfilter.

Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, lives in a solar powered and super-insulated home in Colorado. He coined the term “Negawatts” for energy saved via conservation and has been working for the last 30 / 35 years for sustainable and intelligent energy policy.

I met Lovins 31 years ago, in Albany, NY, in 1976. I was an energy intern for the New York Public Interest Research Group, NYPIRG, studying nuclear power, nuclear economics, and clean energy alternatives under Dr. Marvin Resnikoff at SUNY - Buffalo.

We were in Albany to testify before the New York State Legislature’s Committee on Energy, the Economy, and the Environment. And argue:

1. Their priorities were wrong. As shown by their title, they put energy first, the economy second, and the environment came last.
2. Rather than nuclear power, we should be looking at clean renewable energy. “Theoretically,” we argued, “we could power the New York City Subways with wind turbines positioned off-shore of Long Island.

Little has changed. However, I wouldn’t use the term “Theoretically” today. Look at the Arklow Bank wind farm, (built by GE and Airtricity) and the 11.6 gigawatt of wind power generating capacity in the United States today.

We can power our cities, towns, suburbs with solar panels on the roofs, geothermal in the basement or the backyard, and wind turbines on the mountains and off-shore. The people / nations / economies who do this first will leap far beyond those who try to play catch-up.

Sunpower Corp, which trades using the symbol SPWR, makes photovoltaic “modules” that turn sunlight into electricity. These can be small enough to power a calculator and large enough, when linked together, to power homes, stores, warehouses and office buildings. Johnson & Johnson uses solar power at its Cordis facility in Warren, NJ. As does Whole Foods in Princeton, NJ. and Timberland in various factories around the world.

Sunpower, through its Powerlight subsidiary ‘designs, deploys, operates and maintains the largest solar power systems in the world.’ Other publicly traded solar energy companies include Akeena, Evergreen Solar, First Solar, World Water and Power. They compete with BP Solar, a subsidiary of British Petroleum, Kyocera, Nanosolar, Sanyo, Sharp. Home Depot sells BP Solar’s best panels.

Microsoft Corp, which trades using the symbol MSFT, is a software company. It writes computer programs such as Microsoft Windows, Office, Exchange, SQL Server, etc.

The question is not will Sunpower start writing software, but will Sunpower’s stock price, or that of any of their competitors, follow a tragectory like Microsoft’s. What trajectory? A $3 Thousand investment in Microsoft stock at their IPO March 1986, would be worth something like $1 Million today. Each share of stock purchased in 1986 is worth 288 shares today, after splitting 9 times. (Click Here and Here) Because Microsoft, along with Intel, Apple, Sun, Oracle, Compaq, and other companies, changed the way we work, play, learn, and, think. They shifted the paridigm.
Solar panels turn sunlight into electricity without pollution, toxic wastes, radioactive wastes, mercury, greenhouse gases. There is no fuel, so there are no fuel costs, fuel spills, etc. There are no greenhouse gases as there are with fossil fuels and no security ramifications, as with nuclear power.
And Clean Energy costs less. Solar power costs about $7 per watt not counting any tax breaks or government subsidies. Wind is $3 per watt for offshore turbines, less for land based turbines, altho the maintenance costs are higher. Nuclear is hard to price because it relies so heavily on government subisdies. When you factor in the “externalities,” the time required to build, the fuel costs, nuclear power is probably on the order of $20 to $50 per watt.

So as Otis said, ‘Sittin in the mornin’ sun. …’ I can feel the paradigm shifting.

*
In the intrests of disclosure,. I am not a licensed financial advisor and I do not currently work in the financial industry. I do, however, own stock in some of these and other companies.

For those not familiar with the New York City area, “Indian Point” is not a rhetorical conclusion of Native Americans, but the name of a nuclear power plant.

Another week, another set of challenges for Indian Point - first, problems with a siren test Monday and then an unplanned reactor shutdown yesterday.

The nuclear plants ran into what Indian Point officials hope was a glitch when 123 of the new 150 emergency sirens failed to successfully complete an operational test.

The sirens are required to be ready to go by a week from Sunday, and county emergency officials said they hadn’t expected to see a step backward so close to the deadline.

“This test was clearly disappointing,” Anthony Sutton, Westchester County commissioner of emergency services, said of the Monday morning test. “We expected it to go in a positive direction, and it went in a negative direction.”

Then about 4:15 a.m. yesterday, Indian Point 3 workers shut down that nuclear reactor as it was going back to full power from a 24-day refueling outage.

There were low water levels in the plant’s steam generators, where steam is used to help produce electricity.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission and local emergency officials commended nuclear workers for their quick action, noting that unplanned shutdowns occur more frequently when plants go back online than during routine operation.

Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which has owned and operated Indian Point since 2001, said the shutdown went smoothly and the appropriate notifications were made to the NRC and county officials, but that there were no safety concerns.

- snip -

“We don’t think this is a matter of the sirens not activating,” said Steets. “We think that it was largely about polling.”

The sirens must communicate with a central point to let county officials know they’ve sounded. Without that polling from the 150 locations, police and fire officials can’t be sure if the sirens alerted residents about an emergency at the nuclear plant.

“If it comes up red on the computer screen, that means it didn’t sound as far as we’re concerned,” said Sutton, the commissioner. “That was the biggest trouble we had with the old system. We don’t want to be in that same place with the new system.”

The nuclear plant operator seems to be arguing that - it’s not that the siren’s didn’t work - it’s that in polls, people didn’t admit to hearing them. It’s a polling problem. If that’s true -is the implication that there’s no accurate way to tell whether or not the sirens work?

From Lower Hudson Online.  

Nuclear power plant operator does poorly on NRC drill - complains to NRC, wants grade revised upwards. There are a number of interesting issues here. For the moment, we’ll focus on one:

Matthew Wald of the Times reports that David Lochbaum, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, points out that since the reactor has a water sensor nine inches off the floor, a leak of 150 gallons per minute would take 90 minutes to be detected by the sensor.

Lochbaum has been with UCS since 1996 - but spent 17 years working in nuclear power plants.

Background information on Lochbaum via UCS here.Â

Matthew Wald’s NYT article here.