Author Archives: L J Furman, MBA

About L J Furman, MBA

Analyst here and Director of Information Technology with an MBA in Managing for Sustainability.

Al Gore on Nuclear Power and Global Warming, 1992.

Al Gore

Al Gore, photographed for Time, earlier this year.

In Earth In The Balance, 1992, Plume Publishing, New York, Gore wrote:

“Almost every discussion of substitutes for fossil fuels includes an argument over the role of nuclear power in our energy future. In fact, some opponents of positive action to save the environment try to cut short discussions of global warming with a dismissive reference to the political difficulties involved in building new nuclear reactors and expressions of exaggerated frustration with envrionmentalists, who, they imply are the principal obstacles to adopting nuclear power as the obvious subsitute for coal and oil.

“Of course, uncertainties about future projections of energy demand and economic problems like cost overruns were the major causes of the cancellation of reactors by utilities, well before accidents like those at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl heightened public apprehension. Growing concern about our capacity to accept responsibility for the safety of storing nuclear waste products with extremely long lifetimes also adds to the resistance many feel to a dramatic increase in the use of nuclear power.

“In my own view, the present generation of nuclear technology, light water-pressureized reactors, seems now rather obviously at a technological dead end. The research and development of alternative approaches should focus on discovering, first, how to build a passively safe design (whose safety does not depend on the constant attention of bleary-eyed technicians) that eliminates the many risks of current reactors, and second, whether there is a scientifically and politically acceptable means for disposing of – in fact, isolating – nuclear waste.

“In any event, the proportion of world energy use that could practically be derived from nuclear is fairly small and is likely to remain so.”

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.

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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 Cover - On Chernobyl

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.”

Three Mile Island

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

Joni MitchellHits

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.

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)

 

Orion Magazine

Orion Magazine – Reasons Not to Glow

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
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.

Tiger Salamander, Copyright Gerald and Buff Corsi

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.

 

Tiger Salamander, Copyright David Rosen

Photo: © David Rosen/Wildside Photography

Jews, Moslems, and Humanity: A Christmas Story.

dervis_korkut11

This is the story of how Dervish Korkut, and his wife, Servet, Muslims of Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, saved the life of Mira Papo Solomanova, a young Jewish woman during World War II, how Mr. Korkut, the curator of the Sarajevo Museum, also saved the Sarajevo Haggada (click here), from the Nazis, and how Mira then saved Dervis and Servet’s daughter, Lamija and her family from the Serbs.  Click here for the details in the New Yorker, here,  here and here for other documentation on the Internet.

In 1942, Naza Commander Yohan Fortner arrived at the Bosnian National Museum in Sarajevo demanding the Sarajevo Hagadda. Dervish Korkut, Muslim, librarian, intellectual anti-fascist, and anti-communist, hid the book. He told Fortner that the book had already been taken by the Nazis. One way of looking at this is that Mr. Korkut risked his life to save a book. However, I would suggest that he devoted his life to saving books, ideas, culture, and humanity.

In April, 1942, Dervish protected a young Jewish woman, Mira Papo Solomanova, by bringing her home and passing her off as “Amira,” a Muslim servant, a cousin of his young wife, Servet, to help care for their infant son, Munib. They risked their lives to save another person.

In 1994, in a letter to the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem, Israel, Mira documented how Dervish and Servet saved her life.

Dervish passed away in 1969. (While we originally reported that Servet had passed away in 1998 we now know that) Servet lives in Sarajevo, and we hope, in good health. In 1999 their daughter Lamija evacuated her children in advance of the collapse of Kosovo. Lamija and her husband were sent by the Serbs to a refugee camp. Lamija went to the Jewish community in Kosovo with a photocopy of Mira’s testimony. Four days later she and her husband were flown to Tel Aviv and reunited with their children, and Mira’s Israeli son, Davor Bakovic.

If this story is filmed, Harrison Ford should play Dervish, to Angleina Jolie’s Mira, and Uma Thuman’s Servet. Robert DiNiro should direct and play both Munib Korkut, and Davor Balkovic.

Regardless of whether or not this story makes it to the silver screen, the world needs more Dervish Korkuts, more Servet Korkuts, more Mira Papo Salomanovas, and fewer Yohan Fortners.

"Presidential" – What Does it Mean?

Rule of Law? Rule of Man? Or Law of the Jungle?

You can take the pulse of a society by it’s infrastructure: it’s roads, schools, hospitals, courts, and leadership.

You can measure a society’s wealth. But the wealthy are a privileged class. Even in communist China, there are people who push around resources. They don’t use the term wealthy, at least not yet. But what else would you call it?

Looking at politicians, in office and running for office – ask yourself why are they there? Are they dictators, dupes, or democrats? Are they akin to gangsters taking what they can at gunpoint? Are they helping their friends at the expense of everyone else? Or are they building schools and hospitals (because children of the ghettos can grow up to be doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers and accountants).

Will they help everyone to a bigger slice of the pie by the ‘trickle-up theory’ making the pie bigger? Or will they help their friends to a bigger slice of the pie by making your slice of the pie smaller? Is this character a ‘yes-man’ or one who would surround himself or herself with yes-men? Does he/she value dissent? How does he/she react to criticism? Does he/she make decisions based on facts or make up the “facts” based on decisions?

Texas v Massachusetts & NJ. Go Texas.

Texas, with environmentalists like T. Boone Pickens (official site) is building wind turbines. Click Here. In Texas, when they find that they have wind in their backyard, they want to use it to make money. In Massachusetts and New Jersey, when someone finds wind in his backyard his neighbors say ‘Hold on there, Cowboy. What you think you’re doin? You think this is Texas or somethin?’ Just ask Mike Mercurio.

Massachusetts, with Environmentalist Liberals like Ted Kennedy, is not building wind turbines. Cape Wind is swinging like an albatross, like NJ’s Offshore Wind Farm. Maybe they are worried they’ll find Jimmy Hoffa’s body swinging from the nacelle.

I’m glad the Texans are doing something right. And I’m not proud of Kennedy or Jon Corzine.Makes me almost wish I was a Texan.

Questions on Energy

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 thelogistical 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?

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Green Light on Wind Farm in Maine

UPC Partners

of Newton Mass, is building the 57 MW Stetson Wind Project on Stetson Mountain in Washington County, Maine. Click Here or Here. They will be using 38 GE

turbines, of 1.5 mw each, producing enough electricity to power 27,500 homes. Project cost is expected to be $100 million, about $1.75 per watt. The capital costs for new coal plants are said to be about the same, perhaps a little cheaper. However, keep in mind:

  • No Fuel Cost associated with Wind, as with coal.
  • No Possibility of a catastrophic accident in a “Wind Mine” as happens with coal.
  • Wind workers don’t get ‘Black Lung.’
  • And of course, wind alleviates global warming. Coal causes it.

When you factor in fuel costs and environmental impact wind is cheaper. How much cheaper? I will try to find out.

I would rather have a wind farm in my backyard than a coal plant or a coal mine. (I just planted plum trees and cherry trees. A wind turbine turbine would look good.)