Sunday, May 31, 2009
Valerie Sings Billy Joel's And So It Goes
And So It Goes by Billy Joel
In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along
I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense
And every time I've held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose
But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break
And this is why my eyes are closed
It's just as well for all I've seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows
So I would choose to be with you
That's if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Everyone Should See "Torturing Democracy"
by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all.
During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week - immediately on the heels of President Obama's address at the National Archives - former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism "enhanced interrogation" a full dozen times.
Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism, of course, has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a "wedge issue," as noted on the front page of Sunday's New York Times.
According to the Times, "Armed with polling data that show a narrow majority of support for keeping the prison open and deep fear about the detainees, Republicans in Congress started laying plans even before the inauguration to make the debate over Guantanamo Bay a question of local community safety instead of one about national character and principles."
No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we forget, we're not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning.
If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That's just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does. "Torturing Democracy" was written and produced by one of America's outstanding documentary reporters, Sherry Jones. (Excerpts from the film are being shown on the current edition of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS - check local listings, or go to the program's web site at www.pbs.org/moyers, where you can be linked to the entire 90-minute documentary.)
Sherry Jones, a longtime colleague, and the film were honored this week with the prestigious RFK Journalism Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. "Torturing Democracy" was cited for its "meticulous reporting," and described as "the definitive broadcast account of a deeply troubling chapter in recent American history."
Unfortunately, as events demonstrate, the story is not yet history; the early chapters aren't even closed. Torture still is being defended as a matter of national security, although by law it is a war crime, with those who authorized and executed it liable for prosecution as war criminals. The war on terror sparked impatience with the rule of law - and fostered the belief within our government that the commander-in-chief had the right to ignore it.
"Torturing Democracy" begins at 9/11 and recounts how the Bush White House and the Pentagon decided to make coercive detention and abusive interrogation the official US policy in the war on terror. In sometimes graphic detail, the documentary describes the experiences of several men who were held in custody, including Shafiq Rasul, Moazzam Begg and Bisher al-Rawi, all of whom eventually were released. Charges never were filed against them and no reason was ever given for their years in custody.
The documentary traces how tactics meant to train American troops to survive enemy interrogations - the famous SERE program ("Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape") - became the basis for many of the methods employed by the CIA and by interrogators at Guantanamo and in Iraq, including waterboarding (which inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death), sleep and sensory deprivation, shackling, caging, painful stress positions and sexual humiliation.
"We have re-created our enemy's methodologies in Guantanamo," Malcolm Nance, former head of the Navy's SERE training program, says in "Torturing Democracy." He adds, "It will hurt us for decades to come. Decades. Our people will all be subjected to these tactics, because we have authorized them for the world now. How it got to Guantanamo is a crime and somebody needs to figure out who did it, how they did it, who authorized them to do it ... Because our servicemen will suffer for years."
In addition to its depiction of brutality, "Torturing Democracy" also credits the brave few who stood up to those in power and said, "No." In Washington, there were officials of conviction horrified by unfolding events, including Alberto Mora, the Navy's top civilian lawyer, Maj. Gen. Thomas Romig, who served as judge advocate general of the US Army from 2001 to 2005 and Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a former senior prosecutor with the Office of Military Commissions.
Much has happened since the film's initial telecast on some public television stations last fall. Once-classified memos from the Bush administration have been released that reveal more details of the harsh techniques used against detainees whose guilt or innocence is still to be decided.
President Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo by next January, with the specifics to come later in the summer. That was enough to set off hysteria among Democrats and Republicans alike who don't want the remaining 240 detainees on American soil - even in a super-maximum-security prison, the kind already holding hundreds of terrorist suspects. The president also triggered criticism from constitutional and civil liberties lawyers when he suggested that some detainees may be held indefinitely, without due process.
But in an interview with Radio Free Europe this week, Gen. David Petraeus, the man in charge of the military's Central Command, praised the Guantanamo closing, saying it "sends an important message to the world" and will help advance America's strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In another revealing and disturbing development, the former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, has suggested what is possibly as scandalous a deception as the false case Bush and Cheney made for invading Iraq. Colonel Wilkerson writes that in their zeal to prove a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein during the months leading up to the Iraq war, one suspect held in Egypt, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was water tortured until he falsely told the interrogators what they wanted to hear.
That phony confession, which Wilkerson says was wrung from a broken man who simply wanted the torture to stop, was then used as evidence in Colin Powell's infamous address to the United Nations shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Powell says that everything in his speech was vetted by the CIA and that Wilkerson's allegation is only speculation. We'll never know the full story - al-Libi died three weeks ago in a Libyan prison. A suicide.
Or so they say.
No wonder so many Americans clamor for a truth commission that will get the facts and put them on the record, just as "Torturing Democracy" has done. Then we can judge for ourselves.
As the editors of The Christian Century magazine wrote this week, "Convening a truth commission on torture would be embarrassing to the US in the short term, but in the long run it would demonstrate the strength of American democracy and confirm the nation's adherence to the rule of law.... Understandably, [the president] wants to turn the page on torture. But Americans should not turn the page until they know what is written on it."
------------
Watch "Torturing Democracy" here.
Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all.During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week - immediately on the heels of President Obama's address at the National Archives - former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism "enhanced interrogation" a full dozen times.
Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism, of course, has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a "wedge issue," as noted on the front page of Sunday's New York Times.
According to the Times, "Armed with polling data that show a narrow majority of support for keeping the prison open and deep fear about the detainees, Republicans in Congress started laying plans even before the inauguration to make the debate over Guantanamo Bay a question of local community safety instead of one about national character and principles."
No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we forget, we're not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning.
If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That's just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does. "Torturing Democracy" was written and produced by one of America's outstanding documentary reporters, Sherry Jones. (Excerpts from the film are being shown on the current edition of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS - check local listings, or go to the program's web site at www.pbs.org/moyers, where you can be linked to the entire 90-minute documentary.)
Sherry Jones, a longtime colleague, and the film were honored this week with the prestigious RFK Journalism Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. "Torturing Democracy" was cited for its "meticulous reporting," and described as "the definitive broadcast account of a deeply troubling chapter in recent American history."
Unfortunately, as events demonstrate, the story is not yet history; the early chapters aren't even closed. Torture still is being defended as a matter of national security, although by law it is a war crime, with those who authorized and executed it liable for prosecution as war criminals. The war on terror sparked impatience with the rule of law - and fostered the belief within our government that the commander-in-chief had the right to ignore it.
"Torturing Democracy" begins at 9/11 and recounts how the Bush White House and the Pentagon decided to make coercive detention and abusive interrogation the official US policy in the war on terror. In sometimes graphic detail, the documentary describes the experiences of several men who were held in custody, including Shafiq Rasul, Moazzam Begg and Bisher al-Rawi, all of whom eventually were released. Charges never were filed against them and no reason was ever given for their years in custody.
The documentary traces how tactics meant to train American troops to survive enemy interrogations - the famous SERE program ("Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape") - became the basis for many of the methods employed by the CIA and by interrogators at Guantanamo and in Iraq, including waterboarding (which inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death), sleep and sensory deprivation, shackling, caging, painful stress positions and sexual humiliation.
"We have re-created our enemy's methodologies in Guantanamo," Malcolm Nance, former head of the Navy's SERE training program, says in "Torturing Democracy." He adds, "It will hurt us for decades to come. Decades. Our people will all be subjected to these tactics, because we have authorized them for the world now. How it got to Guantanamo is a crime and somebody needs to figure out who did it, how they did it, who authorized them to do it ... Because our servicemen will suffer for years."
In addition to its depiction of brutality, "Torturing Democracy" also credits the brave few who stood up to those in power and said, "No." In Washington, there were officials of conviction horrified by unfolding events, including Alberto Mora, the Navy's top civilian lawyer, Maj. Gen. Thomas Romig, who served as judge advocate general of the US Army from 2001 to 2005 and Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a former senior prosecutor with the Office of Military Commissions.
Much has happened since the film's initial telecast on some public television stations last fall. Once-classified memos from the Bush administration have been released that reveal more details of the harsh techniques used against detainees whose guilt or innocence is still to be decided.
President Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo by next January, with the specifics to come later in the summer. That was enough to set off hysteria among Democrats and Republicans alike who don't want the remaining 240 detainees on American soil - even in a super-maximum-security prison, the kind already holding hundreds of terrorist suspects. The president also triggered criticism from constitutional and civil liberties lawyers when he suggested that some detainees may be held indefinitely, without due process.
But in an interview with Radio Free Europe this week, Gen. David Petraeus, the man in charge of the military's Central Command, praised the Guantanamo closing, saying it "sends an important message to the world" and will help advance America's strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In another revealing and disturbing development, the former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, has suggested what is possibly as scandalous a deception as the false case Bush and Cheney made for invading Iraq. Colonel Wilkerson writes that in their zeal to prove a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein during the months leading up to the Iraq war, one suspect held in Egypt, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was water tortured until he falsely told the interrogators what they wanted to hear.
That phony confession, which Wilkerson says was wrung from a broken man who simply wanted the torture to stop, was then used as evidence in Colin Powell's infamous address to the United Nations shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Powell says that everything in his speech was vetted by the CIA and that Wilkerson's allegation is only speculation. We'll never know the full story - al-Libi died three weeks ago in a Libyan prison. A suicide.
Or so they say.
No wonder so many Americans clamor for a truth commission that will get the facts and put them on the record, just as "Torturing Democracy" has done. Then we can judge for ourselves.
As the editors of The Christian Century magazine wrote this week, "Convening a truth commission on torture would be embarrassing to the US in the short term, but in the long run it would demonstrate the strength of American democracy and confirm the nation's adherence to the rule of law.... Understandably, [the president] wants to turn the page on torture. But Americans should not turn the page until they know what is written on it."
------------
Watch "Torturing Democracy" here.
Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
The Reality of a Nuclear Fueled Economy
by Donnie Safer
Chairman of the Tennessee Environmental Council
First Published in the Green Living Journal | May 22, 2008
Why bring “low-level” nuclear waste all the way from Italy to Oak Ridge for processing? Why dispose of domestic nuclear waste from states like Michigan and California in landfills across Tennessee? What about TVA receiving four million dollars from the U.S. Dept. of Energy to design a small scale nuclear waste reprocessing plant as part of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)? And if the proposed two unit TVA nuclear power plant is built at Bellefonte, Alabama did you know the Tennessee River will be used to cool nine reactors from Watts Bar to Brown’s Ferry?
Tennessee has had a special role in the birth, growth and development of the nuclear industry since the “Secret City” of Oak Ridge was born to help create the world’s first nuclear bomb. The nuclear industry has found fertile ground in the Tennessee Valley and we figure prominently in its current efforts to revive and grow to monstrous proportions.
Long lasting, incredibly toxic mutation and cancer inducing waste has been the nuclear industry’s legacy and conundrum since Madame Curie first started fooling around with radioactive elements. She ended up dying of radiation induced anemia. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) study “Out of Control - On Purpose” identifies Tennessee as a national leader in nuclear waste processing and disposal. The study says: “Tennessee is one of the few states to license the commercial incineration and thermal treatment of nuclear waste. It is the only state in which DOE is burning radioactive waste.”
Tennessee’s Bulk Survey for Release program has permitted the disposal of low level nuclear waste in up to five landfills in Tennessee. This program provides a relatively low cost but high risk solution which attracts the waste from great distances. Middle Point, near Murfreesboro along the Stone’s River, no longer accepts this waste, but this landfill designed for home garbage accepted large quantities of radioactive materials without the knowledge of local residents until the shroud of secrecy on this practice was lifted and public outrage followed.
We are on the verge of becoming a world-wide, international leader in a dubious category if we continue down our current path. Many of the players in Tennessee’s nuclear waste industry are international companies looking for the lowest cost ways to dispose of their problems. EnergySolutions has applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to bring 20,000 tons of nuclear waste from Italy to Oak Ridge for processing. The waste will be burned, melted or otherwise magically reduced to a projected 1600 tons. Processing is the trickiest part, with the most risk of unplanned radioactive releases. The original plan was for the 1600 tons to be shipped for disposal in Utah, but they don’t want it and are refusing to take it. Do they know something we don’t? Representative Bart Gordon is co-sponsoring a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to ban the importation of this waste.
GNEP is a proposal to reprocess spent nuclear fuel from all over the world into plutonium fuel for use in new generation reactors still in development. Oak Ridge is one of about eleven sites in the U.S. being considered for the first full-sized plant. TVA’s announcement of a $4 million DOE grant to design a small pilot plant to do this in Oak Ridge is a possible indication of front runner status in the GNEP decision. The spent fuel is insanely radioactive and very tricky to handle. The resulting plutonium is incredibly toxic, long lasting and is easily fashioned into nuclear weapons.
TVA has made the decision that nuclear power is the biggest part (in sheer dollar investment) of their response to carbon induced climate change with virtually no public debate or input. Out of the frying pan and into the fire! This is astonishing when you consider the costs: they (we) still owe $25 BILLION for the first go-round of nuclear construction in the 1970’s and 80’s. The bill for the proposed 2,000 mega-watts at Bellefonte is currently estimated at between 14 and 16 BILLION.
Nuclear power offers unique challenges to all who are working toward a clean, sustainable energy future on a healthy planet earth. The reality of a nuclear fueled economy is totally inconsistent with that vision. The legacy of nuclear power is waste remaining dangerous for 100,000 or more years, a world with widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons and a biosphere increasingly contaminated with dangerous radiation. It is crucial to create the green alternative but unfortunately we have to directly confront the beast that is the nuclear industry before it renders all our efforts futile.
Chairman of the Tennessee Environmental Council
First Published in the Green Living Journal | May 22, 2008
Why bring “low-level” nuclear waste all the way from Italy to Oak Ridge for processing? Why dispose of domestic nuclear waste from states like Michigan and California in landfills across Tennessee? What about TVA receiving four million dollars from the U.S. Dept. of Energy to design a small scale nuclear waste reprocessing plant as part of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)? And if the proposed two unit TVA nuclear power plant is built at Bellefonte, Alabama did you know the Tennessee River will be used to cool nine reactors from Watts Bar to Brown’s Ferry?
Tennessee has had a special role in the birth, growth and development of the nuclear industry since the “Secret City” of Oak Ridge was born to help create the world’s first nuclear bomb. The nuclear industry has found fertile ground in the Tennessee Valley and we figure prominently in its current efforts to revive and grow to monstrous proportions.
Long lasting, incredibly toxic mutation and cancer inducing waste has been the nuclear industry’s legacy and conundrum since Madame Curie first started fooling around with radioactive elements. She ended up dying of radiation induced anemia. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) study “Out of Control - On Purpose” identifies Tennessee as a national leader in nuclear waste processing and disposal. The study says: “Tennessee is one of the few states to license the commercial incineration and thermal treatment of nuclear waste. It is the only state in which DOE is burning radioactive waste.”
Tennessee’s Bulk Survey for Release program has permitted the disposal of low level nuclear waste in up to five landfills in Tennessee. This program provides a relatively low cost but high risk solution which attracts the waste from great distances. Middle Point, near Murfreesboro along the Stone’s River, no longer accepts this waste, but this landfill designed for home garbage accepted large quantities of radioactive materials without the knowledge of local residents until the shroud of secrecy on this practice was lifted and public outrage followed.
We are on the verge of becoming a world-wide, international leader in a dubious category if we continue down our current path. Many of the players in Tennessee’s nuclear waste industry are international companies looking for the lowest cost ways to dispose of their problems. EnergySolutions has applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to bring 20,000 tons of nuclear waste from Italy to Oak Ridge for processing. The waste will be burned, melted or otherwise magically reduced to a projected 1600 tons. Processing is the trickiest part, with the most risk of unplanned radioactive releases. The original plan was for the 1600 tons to be shipped for disposal in Utah, but they don’t want it and are refusing to take it. Do they know something we don’t? Representative Bart Gordon is co-sponsoring a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to ban the importation of this waste.
GNEP is a proposal to reprocess spent nuclear fuel from all over the world into plutonium fuel for use in new generation reactors still in development. Oak Ridge is one of about eleven sites in the U.S. being considered for the first full-sized plant. TVA’s announcement of a $4 million DOE grant to design a small pilot plant to do this in Oak Ridge is a possible indication of front runner status in the GNEP decision. The spent fuel is insanely radioactive and very tricky to handle. The resulting plutonium is incredibly toxic, long lasting and is easily fashioned into nuclear weapons.
TVA has made the decision that nuclear power is the biggest part (in sheer dollar investment) of their response to carbon induced climate change with virtually no public debate or input. Out of the frying pan and into the fire! This is astonishing when you consider the costs: they (we) still owe $25 BILLION for the first go-round of nuclear construction in the 1970’s and 80’s. The bill for the proposed 2,000 mega-watts at Bellefonte is currently estimated at between 14 and 16 BILLION.
Nuclear power offers unique challenges to all who are working toward a clean, sustainable energy future on a healthy planet earth. The reality of a nuclear fueled economy is totally inconsistent with that vision. The legacy of nuclear power is waste remaining dangerous for 100,000 or more years, a world with widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons and a biosphere increasingly contaminated with dangerous radiation. It is crucial to create the green alternative but unfortunately we have to directly confront the beast that is the nuclear industry before it renders all our efforts futile.
The NYTimes Finally Reports the Economic Disaster of New Nukes
by Harvey Wasserman
This article was first published by The Free Press.
In a devastating pair of financial reports that might be called "The Emperor Has No Pressure Vessel," the New York Times has blazed new light on the catastrophic economics of atomic power.
The two Business Section specials cover the fiasco of new French construction at Okiluoto, Finland, and the virtual collapse of Atomic Energy of Canada. In a sane world they could comprise an epitaph for the "Peaceful Atom". But they come simultaneous with Republican demands for up to $700 billion or more in new reactor construction.
The Times's "In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs Into Trouble" by James Kanter is a "cautionary tale" about the "most powerful reactor ever built" whose modular design "was supposed to make it faster and cheaper to build" as well as safer to operate.
But four years into a construction process that was scheduled to end about now, the plant's $4.2 billion price tag has soared by 50% or more. Areva, the French government's front group, won't predict when the reactor will open. Finnish utilities have stopped trying to guess.
Finnish inspectors say Areva allowed "inexperienced subcontractors to drill holes in the wrong places on a vast steel container that seals the reactor." The Finns have also cited Areva for "the attitude or lack of professional knowledge of some persons."
Areva hopes to build similar reactors in the US. Its boosters have promised cheaper, cleaner, faster nuke construction with standardized designs like the one at Okiluoto. But "early experience suggests these new reactors will be no easier or cheaper to build than the ones a generation ago" whose price tags soared by 700% and more, and whose completion schedules ran into the decades.
Areva's second "new generation" project at Flamanville, France, is also over budget and behind schedule. Cracks have turned up in critical steel and concrete components, along with revelations that critical work has been done by unqualified welders.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not approved the Areva design in use at Okiluoto and Flamanville. Four other designs under consideration are also mired in process. Some are still being altered. A post 9/11 issue is their ability to withstand a jet crash, which the 104 US reactors currently licensed to operate were not forced to consider.
The fiascos in Finland and Flamanville have thrown Areva into economic chaos now being mirrored at the Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited. Once touted as a global flagship, AECL sucked up 1.74 billion Canadian dollars in subsidies last year and has been a long-term money loser which the government has now announced it wants to sell.
AECL's natural uranium/heavy water design has flopped in the world market. "Design issues" with its installed plants require heavy maintenance. AECL's Chalk River research facility, which suffered a major accident in 1952 (in which former President Jimmy Carter served as a "jumper") needs 7 billion Canadian dollars for clean-up work. Its 51-year-old medical isotope facility recently popped a major leak that may close it forever.
The Paris-based energy expert Mycle Schneider reports that of 45 reactors being built worldwide, 22 are behind schedule and nine have no official ignition schedules.
Despite the torrent of bad economic indicators, Republicans like Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) continue to demand massive government funding for new reactor construction. Alexander says he wants the US to build as many as 100 new reactors here, even though the private sector won't finance or insure them. The media is citing the idea as a $700 billion package, but in fact the project price of building new reactors is on the rise, and by some estimates has already exceeded $10 billion each. The Department of Energy has cited four finalists for $18.5 billion in loan guarantees voted in with the 2005 Bush Energy Plan. Florida and Georgia have raised rates to pre-pay proposed new reactors.
But Missouri has turned down a proposed rate hike for a new Areva project. And green activists have three times beaten proposed $50 billion federal loan guarantee packages to fund "new generation" construction. Grassroots battles are now raging to prevent the re-licensing of aging reactors like Vermont Yankee and New York's Indian Point.
As Congress deals with a wide range of energy-related legislation, the nuclear industry is desperately grabbing for any federal money it can get. One bill after another has been floated with nuclear hand-outs hidden in various nooks and crannies.
As the comparative price of efficiency and renewables plummets, the window may be closing fast on the possibility of building new nukes in the US, raising the industry's desparation level.
This battle will certainly rage for years to come. But the appearance of such brutally bad news from Finland and Canada in the Business Section of the New York Times bodes ill for an industry that, after fifty years, cannot get private funding or liability insurance, cannot deal with its wastes, and now cannot demonstrate the ability to produce new product anywhere near on time or budget.
At very least, Paul Joskow of MIT tells the Times, the rollout of new nukes may be "a good deal slower than a lot of people were assuming."
___________
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org.
This article was first published by The Free Press.
In a devastating pair of financial reports that might be called "The Emperor Has No Pressure Vessel," the New York Times has blazed new light on the catastrophic economics of atomic power. The two Business Section specials cover the fiasco of new French construction at Okiluoto, Finland, and the virtual collapse of Atomic Energy of Canada. In a sane world they could comprise an epitaph for the "Peaceful Atom". But they come simultaneous with Republican demands for up to $700 billion or more in new reactor construction.
The Times's "In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs Into Trouble" by James Kanter is a "cautionary tale" about the "most powerful reactor ever built" whose modular design "was supposed to make it faster and cheaper to build" as well as safer to operate.
But four years into a construction process that was scheduled to end about now, the plant's $4.2 billion price tag has soared by 50% or more. Areva, the French government's front group, won't predict when the reactor will open. Finnish utilities have stopped trying to guess.
Finnish inspectors say Areva allowed "inexperienced subcontractors to drill holes in the wrong places on a vast steel container that seals the reactor." The Finns have also cited Areva for "the attitude or lack of professional knowledge of some persons."
Areva hopes to build similar reactors in the US. Its boosters have promised cheaper, cleaner, faster nuke construction with standardized designs like the one at Okiluoto. But "early experience suggests these new reactors will be no easier or cheaper to build than the ones a generation ago" whose price tags soared by 700% and more, and whose completion schedules ran into the decades.
Areva's second "new generation" project at Flamanville, France, is also over budget and behind schedule. Cracks have turned up in critical steel and concrete components, along with revelations that critical work has been done by unqualified welders.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not approved the Areva design in use at Okiluoto and Flamanville. Four other designs under consideration are also mired in process. Some are still being altered. A post 9/11 issue is their ability to withstand a jet crash, which the 104 US reactors currently licensed to operate were not forced to consider.
The fiascos in Finland and Flamanville have thrown Areva into economic chaos now being mirrored at the Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited. Once touted as a global flagship, AECL sucked up 1.74 billion Canadian dollars in subsidies last year and has been a long-term money loser which the government has now announced it wants to sell.
AECL's natural uranium/heavy water design has flopped in the world market. "Design issues" with its installed plants require heavy maintenance. AECL's Chalk River research facility, which suffered a major accident in 1952 (in which former President Jimmy Carter served as a "jumper") needs 7 billion Canadian dollars for clean-up work. Its 51-year-old medical isotope facility recently popped a major leak that may close it forever.
The Paris-based energy expert Mycle Schneider reports that of 45 reactors being built worldwide, 22 are behind schedule and nine have no official ignition schedules.
Despite the torrent of bad economic indicators, Republicans like Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) continue to demand massive government funding for new reactor construction. Alexander says he wants the US to build as many as 100 new reactors here, even though the private sector won't finance or insure them. The media is citing the idea as a $700 billion package, but in fact the project price of building new reactors is on the rise, and by some estimates has already exceeded $10 billion each. The Department of Energy has cited four finalists for $18.5 billion in loan guarantees voted in with the 2005 Bush Energy Plan. Florida and Georgia have raised rates to pre-pay proposed new reactors.
But Missouri has turned down a proposed rate hike for a new Areva project. And green activists have three times beaten proposed $50 billion federal loan guarantee packages to fund "new generation" construction. Grassroots battles are now raging to prevent the re-licensing of aging reactors like Vermont Yankee and New York's Indian Point.
As Congress deals with a wide range of energy-related legislation, the nuclear industry is desperately grabbing for any federal money it can get. One bill after another has been floated with nuclear hand-outs hidden in various nooks and crannies.
As the comparative price of efficiency and renewables plummets, the window may be closing fast on the possibility of building new nukes in the US, raising the industry's desparation level.
This battle will certainly rage for years to come. But the appearance of such brutally bad news from Finland and Canada in the Business Section of the New York Times bodes ill for an industry that, after fifty years, cannot get private funding or liability insurance, cannot deal with its wastes, and now cannot demonstrate the ability to produce new product anywhere near on time or budget.
At very least, Paul Joskow of MIT tells the Times, the rollout of new nukes may be "a good deal slower than a lot of people were assuming."
___________
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Valerie Sings Blue Bird
Here is another video recording of Valerie singing. The song was written by her aunt, Sydney.
Even Severed Heads Can Bite
by Dee Newman
For those of you who do not know, I live atop a narrow ridge over-looking the Harpeth River valley in middle Tennessee in a hand-hewn log house I designed and helped construct.
Early, one spring morning, I was reconnecting the hot and cold waterlines that lead to the old claw-foot-bathtub and shower that sits on the deck just outside my kitchen window. To reach the lines I had to prop-up and climb a ladder against the house.
As I backed down the ladder, after completing the connections, I was surprised by something that I had not initially seen coiled-up at the foot of the ladder – a very large copperhead.
Fortunately, it had been a cool night and the morning sun had not, as yet, awakened the snake’s metabolism. With a great deal of care and caution, I slowly stepped off the ladder and backed away from the unconscious copperhead.
Standing there contemplating the situation, I soon realized that the snake needed to be moved to a new location and that the longer I waited the more difficult the removal would be.
Thinking logically (?), I reasoned that as long as it remained in a lethargic state, it might be possible to simply scoop it up and carry it off to the nearby woods.
Looking to my right, I noticed my long-handle hoe hanging on the side of the house. It was not ideal for the operation but I thought it might be sufficient.
With a great deal of care and dexterity, I slowly moved the working-end of the hoe beneath the snake. To my surprise, it remained unresponsive (as if it were dead), which, I must confess, provided me the necessary motivation to go on with the mission.
Gradually, I began to lift the coiled-creature from its resting place. Though the snake’s body began to slowly rap-around the hoe handle, it remained relatively relaxed.
It was not until I was about halfway to the edge of the woods that the cold-blooded creature’s temperature warmed sufficiently enough to revive its survival instincts and aggressive character.
Instead of dropping off the end of the hoe and slithering away, the four-foot-long pit viper began to move up the hoe-handle towards me. Suddenly, my survival instincts kicked-in and using the hoe-handle as a catapult, I flung the large reptile into the air. It landed a good fifteen feet from me.
Now, I realize that what I am about to tell you will be difficult for many of you to believe. For some reason beyond my understanding that snake decided that it wanted a piece of me. With the speed of a blue-tail-skink, the likes of which I had never before or since witnessed from any snake, that damn copperhead came at me with a vengeance. I did not have time to even blink, let alone, turn and run.
My reaction was purely defensive. I had no desire to harm the copperhead. I had risked my life and limb, by trying to transport that dangerous and venomous reptile to another location.
So, when I swung the hoe that was still clutched in my hands at the snake to defensively ward off its attack, it was purely an accident that I severed its head from its body.
In fact, if I had been truly trying to accomplish such a feat, I would have, most likely, missed the snake entirely.
Nevertheless, though it was neither my motive nor my intent, I must confess, I did kill the copperhead. I am guilty of taking the life of another living sentient creature. And, for that, I am deeply sorry.
The moral to this story may seem evident to many of you. But, if it is not, please allow me to offer my observations.
No matter how pure your motives may be, actions always have consequences. So, before you act, take some time to ponder the possible ramifications of your deeds, whether your motives are bad or good. And remember, there’s no telling how others may react to your kindness. Not even you best friend can truly know what is in your heart and vice versa.
There is a postscript: Bites from any pit viper may prove to be fatal; even severed heads can bite.
So remember, consequences can last a long time. What you believe to be dead and gone may come back to bite you when you least expect it.
For those of you who do not know, I live atop a narrow ridge over-looking the Harpeth River valley in middle Tennessee in a hand-hewn log house I designed and helped construct. Early, one spring morning, I was reconnecting the hot and cold waterlines that lead to the old claw-foot-bathtub and shower that sits on the deck just outside my kitchen window. To reach the lines I had to prop-up and climb a ladder against the house.
As I backed down the ladder, after completing the connections, I was surprised by something that I had not initially seen coiled-up at the foot of the ladder – a very large copperhead.
Fortunately, it had been a cool night and the morning sun had not, as yet, awakened the snake’s metabolism. With a great deal of care and caution, I slowly stepped off the ladder and backed away from the unconscious copperhead.
Standing there contemplating the situation, I soon realized that the snake needed to be moved to a new location and that the longer I waited the more difficult the removal would be.
Thinking logically (?), I reasoned that as long as it remained in a lethargic state, it might be possible to simply scoop it up and carry it off to the nearby woods.
Looking to my right, I noticed my long-handle hoe hanging on the side of the house. It was not ideal for the operation but I thought it might be sufficient.
With a great deal of care and dexterity, I slowly moved the working-end of the hoe beneath the snake. To my surprise, it remained unresponsive (as if it were dead), which, I must confess, provided me the necessary motivation to go on with the mission.
Gradually, I began to lift the coiled-creature from its resting place. Though the snake’s body began to slowly rap-around the hoe handle, it remained relatively relaxed.
It was not until I was about halfway to the edge of the woods that the cold-blooded creature’s temperature warmed sufficiently enough to revive its survival instincts and aggressive character.
Instead of dropping off the end of the hoe and slithering away, the four-foot-long pit viper began to move up the hoe-handle towards me. Suddenly, my survival instincts kicked-in and using the hoe-handle as a catapult, I flung the large reptile into the air. It landed a good fifteen feet from me.
Now, I realize that what I am about to tell you will be difficult for many of you to believe. For some reason beyond my understanding that snake decided that it wanted a piece of me. With the speed of a blue-tail-skink, the likes of which I had never before or since witnessed from any snake, that damn copperhead came at me with a vengeance. I did not have time to even blink, let alone, turn and run.
My reaction was purely defensive. I had no desire to harm the copperhead. I had risked my life and limb, by trying to transport that dangerous and venomous reptile to another location.
So, when I swung the hoe that was still clutched in my hands at the snake to defensively ward off its attack, it was purely an accident that I severed its head from its body.
In fact, if I had been truly trying to accomplish such a feat, I would have, most likely, missed the snake entirely.
Nevertheless, though it was neither my motive nor my intent, I must confess, I did kill the copperhead. I am guilty of taking the life of another living sentient creature. And, for that, I am deeply sorry.
The moral to this story may seem evident to many of you. But, if it is not, please allow me to offer my observations.
No matter how pure your motives may be, actions always have consequences. So, before you act, take some time to ponder the possible ramifications of your deeds, whether your motives are bad or good. And remember, there’s no telling how others may react to your kindness. Not even you best friend can truly know what is in your heart and vice versa.
There is a postscript: Bites from any pit viper may prove to be fatal; even severed heads can bite.
So remember, consequences can last a long time. What you believe to be dead and gone may come back to bite you when you least expect it.
Life Lines
by Jack Reeves
"Life is difficult.... Once we truly understand and accept it, then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters."--Dr. M. Scott Peck
"Everybody hurts sometime," the song says. It's the human condition. We get differing advice on how to deal with difficulty and hurt in life: "Forget about it," or "Get over it," or "Get on with it."
But we can't always forget life's hurts and crises. They can be caused by relationships, traumas, tragedies. Many are indelible, enduring, and profound; they can't be forgotten.
"Get over it" is tough. A severe wound to the body scars; to the self, it can leave lasting moral or emotional injury. To get over it--beyond it--is equally hard.
"Get on with it" seems best. We can get on with life when we accept that wrongs, suffering, and difficulties are part of life. Then we move from life as problem to life as possibility.
Continually viewing life as a problem is a mindset for disappointment.
"We must...appreciate the truth that often 'Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.'"--Dr. M. Scott Peck
"Life is difficult.... Once we truly understand and accept it, then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters."--Dr. M. Scott Peck"Everybody hurts sometime," the song says. It's the human condition. We get differing advice on how to deal with difficulty and hurt in life: "Forget about it," or "Get over it," or "Get on with it."
But we can't always forget life's hurts and crises. They can be caused by relationships, traumas, tragedies. Many are indelible, enduring, and profound; they can't be forgotten.
"Get over it" is tough. A severe wound to the body scars; to the self, it can leave lasting moral or emotional injury. To get over it--beyond it--is equally hard.
"Get on with it" seems best. We can get on with life when we accept that wrongs, suffering, and difficulties are part of life. Then we move from life as problem to life as possibility.
Continually viewing life as a problem is a mindset for disappointment.
"We must...appreciate the truth that often 'Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.'"--Dr. M. Scott Peck
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Valerie Sings O Mio Babbino Caro
I discovered this week the talent of a young woman I have known since her birth. She is the niece of one of my closest and dearest friends. I know you will enjoy listening to Valerie sing as much as I enjoyed recording her.
I will be posting two other recordings of Valerie singing in the near future.
I will be posting two other recordings of Valerie singing in the near future.
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