None
Monthly Archives: December 2007
Chernobyl, 20 Years Later – Part Beta
We found out about Chernobyl because nuclear power plant operators in Sweden noticed their geiger counters indicating radiation – outside the reactor … From Der Speigel
Murderous Atoms
The Geiger counters continued to tick away for days as much as 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) away from the disaster zone, as air masses contaminated with radiation pushed across Europe. Many fears are justified. The major disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant proved the prophets wrong who underestimated the “residual risk” of nuclear energy. A look back from the archives of DER SPIEGEL.
The following article appeared in the May 5, 1986 issue of DER SPIEGEL:
The staff at Sweden’s Forsmark nuclear power plant, located on the Baltic coast north of Stockholm, was just changing shifts. It was 7:00 a.m. last Monday when workers passing through a routine check in the security sluice at the entrance to the plant’s reactor building set off warning signals.
Chernobyl, 20 Years Later – Part Gamma
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.
Effect Measure: Primer on Bisphenol-A controversy
Effect Measure has a good explanation of what’s dangerous about Bisphenol-A. Because it’s so important – and outside of our expertise to paraphrase and summarize – and already so well-written – we’re going to, with apologies to Revere at Effect Measure – reproduce it in its entirety:
You’re in a crowded bar near the airport and your co-worker is trying to tell you something important. She wants you to do something before you drive her car to the garage for her. She is heading out of town. But you can’t hear her over the din from the crowd. It’s too noisy, too much cross talk. Later you discover she was telling you the gas gauge is broken and the tank almost empty. But you know that. After you ran out of gas on the freeway. Now imagine you are a developing fetus. Genes in your nervous system are turning on and off in a precise sequence in response to what’s going on in your developing brain. Your neurons are growing, making new connections, responding to the cues from other parts of the system that are also developing. The signals that coordinate this involve very tiny amounts of chemicals coursing through the blood stream. Hormones, like the the estrogens. But there’s a lot of noise from artificial chemicals that also stimulate cells, but not in response to a coordinated development plan. Chemical noise from the environment. Continue reading
Law of Diminishing Returns, Teddy Bear Corollary
None
Plastic Debris in the Oceans, and RadioActive Waste
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)
CBS News: $1 billion in equipment missing in Iraq, according to IG Report
Laura Strickler of the CBS News Investigative Unitreports on CBSNews.com that the Pentagon’s Inspector General has found that a great deal of equipment in Iraq is unaccounted for:
Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades are just a sampling of more than $1 billion in unaccounted for military equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces, according to a new report issued today by the Pentagon Inspector General and obtained exclusively by the CBS News
investigative unit. Auditors for the Inspector General reviewed equipment contracts totaling $643 million but could only find an audit trail for $83 million.
The report details a massive failure in government procurement revealing little accountability for the billions of dollars spent purchasing military hardware for the Iraqi security forces. For example, according to the report, the military could not account for 12,712 out of 13,508 weapons, including pistols, assault rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers and machine guns.
The report comes on the same day that Army procurement officials will face tough questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding their procurement policies. One official, Claude Bolton, assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology has already announced his resignation on the heels of sharp criticism of army contracting. Bolton’s resignation is effective Jan. 2, 2008. The Army has significantly expanded its fraud investigations in recent months.
Energy Bills – Good for the Environment and the Economy.
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.
What Mexico can teach Japan
Three Friends
Image Copyright (C) 2007, Delfiniti. Used with permission.
Eco-Tourism is becoming big in Mexico. Delfiniti
, attracts hundreds of visitors each week to spend an hour swimming with, playing with, feeding, and getting to know dolphins. In Mexico and California, people have also realized that whales are worth more alive than dead. Whale watching tours make more money than whaling ships could – and the apparently sentient whales like to ‘hang out’ with the people in the whale watching ships. They know the people aren’t predators; they don’t try to capsize the ships.
More details to follow.
Saving the California Tiger Salamander
Why did the salamander cross the road?
To get to it’s habitat on the other side.
Gerald and Buff Corsi © 1999 California Academy of Sciences,Manzanita Image Project
Environmentalists in California help endangered Tiger Salamanders cross the road that divides their habitat by catching them, picking them up, and carrying them across the street. Why not lay pipes under the roads for the salamanders to cross thru? and then induce them to enter the channels by something that smells good or tastes good? The same for turtles, and other things that go ‘squish’ under cars in the night.
Celeste Monforton/Pump Handle: Crandall Canyon Disaster: Four Months Later
Celeste Monforton of The Pump Handle has a disturbing account of the current status of the Crandall Canyon disaster: Congress has cancelled scheduled hearings; even more disturbing, there’s an emerging record of failure(s) to report hazards as required – and what appears to have been the willful destruction of evidence.
Disturbing any way you look at it – assuming that you think workplaces ought to be safe. (If you don’t think that, I’m afraid my advocacy skills may not be up to the challenge).
Link to Dr. Monforton’s piece at The Pump Handle. We’ll try to follow up.
Zooillogix animals of the week
Zooillogix, one of the large fact-farm which is ScienceBlogs, publishes a weekly readers’ poll of favorite animals
. It’s bad enough to ask science types what they think – always bound to start trouble. But to ask them what they like? Here are some of the recent submissions. Res ipsa loquitur.
[photopress:ZooillogixThree_Toed_Sloth.jpg,full,centered]
[photopress:ZooillogixJaguarundi.jpg,full,pp_image]
[photopress:Zoo_illogix_Puffin.jpg,full,pp_image]
See the rest here at Zooillogix.
For those of you complaining that this is off-topic – you’re right. Sue me.
Leatherman Skeletool: 5 ounces (142 grams)
Leatherman has introduced the Skeletool and skeletool CX:
[singlepic=173,480,412,,left] The Skeletool has a removable
pocket clip – so it can be used with or without a sheath.
[singlepic=172,320,240,,right]
The Skeletool CX has carbon-fiber handles; Erik Sofge, in his Popular Mechanics review (link below) says that it’s got a particularly comfortable grip – no small asset for a tool that, almost by definition, one uses in less-than-ideal conditions. The CX also has some attachable bits stored inside the tool. (I’m not entirely sure how they both end up the same weight – this may be the result of my misreading the specs )
Tyler Hicks
None
Rats attempt to climb social ladder; seek parity with squirrels, lobby City Hall
Thomas J. Lueck (copy) and Tyler Hicks (images) of my hometown paper have reported that in the most prominent, and well-kept, public park in New York City, rats play as though they were squirrels. Notwithstanding municipal efforts to persuade them to relocate. From November 10, 2007, “Where the Rats Come Out to Play”:
The rat that was circling André Thomas’s feet was big and brazen, measuring more than a foot from the tip of its tail to a pointed snout that arched upward to the aroma of Mr. Thomas’s ham and cheese sandwich.
[singlepic=170,320,240,,]
The encounter might not have seemed all that unusual to many New Yorkers, who have become wearily accustomed to rats bounding along subway tracks or lurking about garbage bins, usually after dark.
But this rat sighting came as a shock to Mr. Thomas because of when and, especially, where it took place — 2 p.m. on a brilliant fall afternoon while he sat on a bench in City Hall Park, a nine-acre jewel of the municipal park system that underwent a $30 million renovation in 1999. The park is a cornerstone of the city’s efforts to revive Lower Manhattan.
“At first I thought it was a squirrel,” Mr. Thomas said as he strode away. “Isn’t this where the mayor works?”
Mr. Thomas’s rodent experience was hardly unusual. If he had looked under the park’s benches and around its meticulously cropped foliage, he would have spotted at least six other rats scurrying around, unconcerned about the humans all around.
[singlepic=171,320,240,,left]
The infestation of rats in City Hall Park, clearly an embarrassment to the city, was acknowledged in interviews by senior officials of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the city’s lead agency for rodent control, and the Department of Parks and Recreation.
“It’s just a big issue down there and we all recognize it,” said Jessica Leighton, the health department’s deputy commissioner for environmental health. Adrian Benepe
, the commissioner of parks and recreation, said that City Hall Park provided “a perfect set of circumstances for rats.” Continue reading