Japan's Nuclear Crisis

For those following the unfolding crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, here are some helpful graphics from the Washington Post.

M.A.

The World Watches Fukushima in fear

the recent earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan recently is causing concern in Japan and abroad. the 6 nuclear reactors at Fukushima have been badly damaged, strangely enough the crises is not because the tsunami damaged the nuclear reactors, which it did. But because as the reactors went offline, the backup generators used to cool the reactors were disabled by the tsunami. resulting in overheating and fears of a meltdown.

even though radiation levels in neighbouring areas tested higher than the normal levels, Japanese officials are claiming that the situation is improving and that 2 out of 6 reactors are now stable.

this crisis seems to have caught the world's attention as developed countries including France, U.S.A and Russia including others are running tests on all of their nuclear facilities, especially the facilities that have been built in similar design and that use similar equipment like the Fukushima plant which was built in part by the American company; GE, which has also served in the construction of dozens of nuclear reactors in America.

with this crises at hand, it is time think hard about nuclear power and how the reactors can be built to with stand such catastrophes in the future.

K.K.

Ex-EPA Administrators Voice Their Opinion

Two former EPA administrators, William Ruckleshaus and Christine Todd Whitman, defend the EPA in a Washington Post editorial. Their sharpest comment against House Republican proposals to cut the EPA budget by a whopping one-third:

It has taken four decades to put in place the infrastructure to ensure that pollution is controlled through limitations on corporate, municipal and individual conduct. Dismantle that infrastructure today, and a new one would have to be created tomorrow at great expense and at great sacrifice to America’s public health and environment.

Some House Republicans are motivated by the conviction that the scientific findings linking greenhouse gas emissions to global warming are wrong, or, more to point, wrong and deliberately so, and thus a conspiracy against industry and the American Way of Life. Others are simply caught up in a rather mindless wave of deregulation. As Ruckleshaus and Whitman note, should we just take them back to 1970? To note: the two both served under Republican presidents.

M.A.

The Environment, Grilled by Congress

Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator, has appeared seven times before the House of Representatives this month. The GOP is determined to interrogate her and other Obama administration officials involved in environmental policy. But why?

Part of the answer is constitutional. Congress has the perfect right to oversee the Executive branch, and any opposition party worth its salt would do well to systematically follow presidential policy, in every branch of the Executive bureaucracy. The Democrats did this after they swept into power in the Congress in 2006. Now the Republicans have their turn. The Obama administration should know its coming.

Part of the answer, however, is political, and in the view of this writer, perfectly cynical. Hearings involving Jackson, Ken Salazar, etc., have little to do with environmental policy, and next to nothing to do with a concern for the environment. They should be seen instead as a complement to the Republican strategy to emphasize the budget deficit and the need for budget cuts in order to do what really interests the GOP: cut what they regard as liberal programs, ease regulations that arguably limit business profits, and maintain tax cuts that benefit the very richest slice of Americans. Practically speaking, cutting the budget means nothing: why else would the GOP care to keep the Bush era tax cuts? Why would they leave Social Security and Medicare untouched?

Another question while the GOP tosses the blame for job losses to environmental protection: do the Republicans practically speaking care any more about jobs than they do about the budget deficit? Not with a straight face: while the National Association of Manufacturers claims rather ludicrously that ozone regulation will cost America 7 million (!) jobs, the Republicans don't flinch when they learn that their proposed budget would cost 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to Moody's Analytics.

Environmental policy indeed merits consensus between Congress and the President; the most effective such policies of the last 40 years have had this. Was the Obama administration ever interested in such consensus? Perhaps so, perhaps not. Another question now arises, however: are House Republicans interested in environmental protection at all?

M.A.

Al Gore's “An Inconvenient Truth” an Oscar documentary!

“Chicken Little was in the woods one day when an corn fell on her head. It scared her so much she trembled all over. She shook so hard, half her feathers fell out. “Help! Help!” she cried. “The sky is falling! I have to go tell the king!”
The chicken story turned into Hollywood blockbuster movie by Al Gore`s “An Inconvenient Truth”.
Most of us do not understand the relations between global warming, and its uncertain etiology, while they blame our way of living as a cause of it, and the unrealistic result will be that if we don’t take a mission to protect our planet now, the sky will fall and our will collapse!
Fluctuating weather patterns have been with us forever, but our ability to study them is only quite recent. Even if a significant warming is actually happening, but by Nature, not us humans, then there is no point to throw the world’s economy down.
Global warming by its believers is a theory that burning fossil fuels like oil and coal (hydrocarbons) releases gases like Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Methane into the atmosphere in such large amounts that the planet is warming up uncontrollably.
Al Gore has some valid points in his provoking documentary, for example that temperatures are actually rising, the adverse effects of CO2 for our health and environment, and that global warming will cause serious damage if left unchecked, and that there are many things governments and people can do to reduce its impact.
Nine inconvenient untruths were found in his documentary by the judge in the High Court of London, saying that some of the claims were wrong and had emerged “in the context of alarmism and exaggeration”.

I believe the fact that we humans are polluting the earth, but I do not believe and accept the fact that climate change is totally anthropogenic. I agree with the fact that we should protect our planet, and our environment from CO2 together with any other harmful gases, in order to live in a cleaner and healthier environment.
At the same time I believe than many like Mr. Gore are not lying, they are just exaggerating facts like the chicken Little story for their on benefits, or because they really believe it.

I’m not discussing whether global warming exists or not, but rather that the facts are exaggerated and we humans do not have to go back to riding camels to save the world, and make wealthy the initiators of all this. If global warming is true, then it is one of the biggest crisis mankind has faced, however there are good reasons to believe it is utterly wrong and thus swallowing the lie that global warming is totally anthropogenic and in the near future our world will collapse will cost each of us thousands of dollars a year and cause the collapse of western civilization.


A.K

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article2633838.ece

Can small nuclear reactors really be the green way forward?

in a world where nuclear power is a very controversial issue, it seems that having nuclear powered cars, planes and even freezers might be the right way forward.
Hyperion Power Generation Inc. has developed a small and portable nuclear reactor that can fit on the back of a pick up truck, this might be a nightmare scenario for some who envision terrorists easily stealing those reactors and using them to spread death and destruction, but not according to John Deal, the CEO of Hyperion Power, who claims that these reactors would be smarter, more environmentally friendly and against conventional thinking, that these reactors would be used in the third world more than the first.
seeing as how that most of the third world don't have the infrastructure to handle to immense output of a regular nuclear reactor, these smaller reactors would be very convenient for micro-grid solutions.
the company is still gathering funds and doesn't have the permission to begin development on the 100 million dollar reactors.
as rough as the debate over these nuclear reactors will probably get in the future, the portable reactors should not be dismissed right off the bat, they might be the way forward on supplying abundant energy to power starved countries without the release of the dangerous pollutants released into the air by fossil fuels.
K.K.

Time Magazine, February 28th, 2011, page 43; "Nuclear Reactors, by Eben Harrell.

Extinct in 2011: Eastern Cougar

By March 5th, 2011, the US Fish and Wildlife Service finished its research in North America concerning the Eastern Cougar.
The conclusion of their research was quite worrying: the Eastern Cougar became extinct.Not even in the present, but more than 60 decades ago. Before that, Eastern Cougars were common mammals: there were large numbers of them living from Canada to South America. However, people started to hunt them in large numbers and now, according to the research, there is none. There are some people who contradict the results and say that they have in fact seen a cougar, but there is no firm evidence.
What will happen to the 'circle of life' if all of the predators are hunted down in the future (just like the Eastern Cougar)? Will it stop, is there a limit?
http://greenanswers.com/news/224556/eastern-cougar-extinct-north-america

VT

If we go nuclear we may have a chance...

It appears that NASA scientists have came up with a new solution to global warming...a nuclear war!

http://gawker.com/#!5771929/global-warming-can-be-cured-by-small-nuclear-war

Looking forward to hearing your views on this one :)

JSC