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Nuclear weapons and nuclear power are in the same catagory, those two should be seperated ! We need clean Nuclear power if we are serious about reducing carbon emissions. More coal burning plants are in the works for California. On the one hand the Goveniator is proposing all of these penalties for you and me because we are guilty of driving our cars and at the same time the number of coal burning plants will make any reduction made by autos such a miniscul percentage of the pollution caused by coal and will erase any of the tiny gains realized by additional taxes imposed on us. If people are serious about cleaning up our environment why are we continuing to burn coal? We don't see it here in California but that doesn't make it any less our problem, we use the energy! It comes over the power lines. The polititians make it sound like they are so green by pushing new taxes on the working people of this country while meantime they are polluting the environment hundreds of times over by supporting coal plants.

well stated, Brian. i think (and i choose those words consciously) that nuclear power still has some significant issues, but i generally agree that nuclear weapons pose a much graver and potentially more immediate threat, and the two might do well to be separated.

where you and i are in complete agreement is on the issue of coal (and the political dancing-around thereof). i'd put coal under the "sustainable energies" catagory, meaning "coal is not one, and therefore should be moved away from, not towards".

Might I offer that there are many very smart people working on some very interesting clean renewable energy projects that have the ability to make us completely independent of foreign oil within 25 years, and even independent of oil in entirety.

Check out Vinod Khosla's article in Wired for some good reading on the subject, where he also dispels a lot of the myths out there surrounding ethanol, biohols and more.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/ethanol_pr.html

wow, Tyler...thanks! GREAT article, although i felt myself twinge at only one point:
"While corn yields will increase over time thanks to genetic modification (a new variety from Monsanto may yield 750 gallons per acre)..."
i dont want that to stand in the way of what seems like energetically pioneering ideas and plans, but Monsanto's out to do more than simply increase yield. if genetic modification is the only way to get the yield we need, then we'd better get familiar with Monsanto's logo. we'll be seeing it everywhere there's now a chevron or a shell.

John Roulac, firend and Hemp guru, just sent me this article http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/01/10/algae_mobile/

It begins "By the time Jon Meuser recounted his experiences salvaging an old hot water heater to use in his portable biodiesel distillery from a sorority whose building was being torn down, he had the audience in his pocket.

Fifty to 60 people packed themselves into a smallish room rented from Artists Television Access in the Mission District of San Francisco Tuesday night to hear a talk on the latest technical developments related to making biodiesel from algae."

Algae is a fast growing renewable bio-source for fuel. Interesting article.

I read the article on the ethanol and I think their claims of a 5 to 1 efficiancy rate using some new hybrid corn is BS. It is really just about a wash trying to make ethanol fuel. Biodiesel is ok, I guess, but do we really want to replace ag land that grows food for land to grow fuel for our cars? I can see it on a limited basis and as a suppliment to the whole energy picture however. Diablo Canyon nuke plant was designed to have an additional 2 more reactors, lets get those going so we don't have to build the coal plants they are planning for Montana and Wyoming. I will probably take 5 years to build them if we started right now.

Hey Brian -

Regarding your statement asserting that "their claims of a 5 to 1 efficiancy rate using some new hybrid corn is BS", that's a pretty vague statement meant to discredit the entire article.

C'mon, if what you "believe" based on a gut feeling is different than what they "believe" based on millions of venture capital dollars spent on research and development, then support your point.

Regarding "their" - the author is Vinod Khosla, you can read more about him at Wikipedia. Suffice it to say, he helped build Silicon Valley. He's not an idiot when it comes to where he puts his money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Khosla

best,
tyler

Fair enough, I should have known not to back that up a little better. But when you figure that hybrid corn has been tinkered with for the last 50 years or longer I have my doubts that a leap of that magnatude could be achieved. I do not think that thier claim has been proven so I do have a right to call BS on it. He can invest is own fortune in the venture if he is so confident in it. Let's see the proof before giving them millions of dollars. I suspect that he is fishing for investors, if they are private I have no problem with it, if he is getting it from the government then that would be money from our tax dollars. Also, there is no doubt they would be using a quite a bit of fertilizer, derived from fossil fuel.

Brian -

Regarding this: "I do not think that thier claim has been proven so I do have a right to call BS on it." I don't quite know where to start. I'll just let that statement speak for itself.

Regarding this: I suspect that he is fishing for investors, if they are private I have no problem with it, if he is getting it from the government then that would be money from our tax dollars.

You obviously didn't read Khosla's bio I linked to - he was general partner in perhaps the most successful venture capital firm in the history of Silicon Valley for like 20 years, then he started his own nine-figure VC fund.

Check out this article:
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/dealflow/archives/2005/05/catching_up_wit.html

Investing at the science-project stage is highly risky since the entrepreneur hasn't yet proven his or her technology can work, much less attract customers. But Khosla has experience with investing at that stage. Over half his investments at KPCB from 1996 to 2001 were infusions of $1 million or less into barely formed startups. That period was a golden era for him, giving rise to such hits as optical networking company Juniper Networks, which returned KPCB's invested capital over 1,000 times.

So to answer your observation: neither

Further, Khosla explicitly says in the article that ethanol can be profitable without subsidies, at costs to the consumer below gasoline, while the oil companies continue to get 10's of billions in subsidies.

So once again, you try to dismiss an entire article on a single point of your contention for which you have zero links or research or anything but a gut feeling.

It undermines the rest of your argument that we should pursue more nuclear power when you try but can't dismiss the validity of a renewable, alternative fuel that already has infrastructure in place and has the potential to be the next-gen transport fuel.

Why the absolute? Shouldn't we as a nation and planet be doing everything we can to change the way we consume resources, produce waste and plan for future generations, not just settle on one technology such as hydrogen or nuclear?

sheesh, it's little wonder we (the big WE, as in humanity) make such slow progress, when we have to dance around in circles just to defend the credibility of the author of an article! when, o when, will we ever get to talking intelligently and responsibly about the ISSUES?

great job, Tyler...your logic is sound. sorry Brian...seems like you're having an off day for making sense. i dont mean that as a personal attack...it's just a clear-as-day observation, and there's no shame in calling BS on yourself.

Tyler,
I never said don't persue the idea, if he is investing his own venture capital then that will be his risk. If it actually works then all the better. Regarding my statement where I'm poo pooing the premise of his claims, until something can be shown to work in the real world you can't say it will work with out a doubt. As you are aware the past few days farmers here in Ventura county lost millions of dollars worth of produce due to the freeze, an event that occurs every 20 or 30 years from time to time. What if this corn crop gets wiped out by a similar weather event, what then? Your cost for that ethanol just doubled or tripled. I just came back from a bee location over in Fillmore, where I have some bees in the avocados, about five acres completly wiped out! All the leaves completly burned, the avocados themselves were ruined. Not only is their crop ruined for this season but the kicker is the trees, the shape they're in now, will not bloom in the spring, those trees will not bloom again until NEXT spring and then it will take a whole year for that fruit to be ready. 2 years until any new crop ! Did you ever see the show Green Acres (no, I think you're too young,..he he !) but Mr. Douglas was a very sucessful lawyer, but not too good at farming!

But as long as we are being so non-absolute why can't we have a honest dicussion about nuclear power? If people understood the real risks involved and the amount of radiation that coal burning plants produce they would be amazed. There are siginficant amounts of radioactve particles that go up into the air and that are blowing in the wind from the slag heaps from coal burning plants, Thousands of times more than what is produces from nuclear plants, but what is produce by the nuclear plants is contained. The public gets all bent out of shape if a micro gram of spent fuel is detected near a nuclear plant, go take a gieger counter over to a coal slag heap and the thing will be bouncing all over the place! Uranium and thorium, and there are a lot of other bad substaces in coal as well like mercury. This stuff is going into the air we are breathing and is responsible for all kinds of medical problems.

Sorry, I get a little agitated about this subject! Maybe because it ties into all the other subjects.

Cheers,

Brian

Brian,

are you plugged into any action items or contacts where we could be sending letters or phone calls in opposition to these proposed coal plants?

Brian, You demonstrate an inability to admit you are completely and utterly wrong. You shift the discussion to coal. This thread is not about coal. Brasil is just one example of bio fuel working. 45% of their fuel for autos is coming from ethanol. The damged crops are a localized event. Corn can be grown everywhere.

Did you ever see the show Green Acres (no, I think you're too young,..he he !) but Mr. Douglas was a very sucessful lawyer, but not too good at farming!

persue is spelled pursue.

Maturity and intelligence has very little to do with age; as you have so soundly demonstrated.

I suggest you stick to beekeeping.

ok, ok...perhaps that's enough. i was never interested in a prolonged expose of Brian's faults.

Brian made his own bed on this thread which, to be fair, is also not necessarily about the advantages or viability of biofuels. it's fine if that's the direction it's taken, but please let it take one that's constructive. i'm getting weary of checking in on this thread only to find mudslinging.

Nuclear power from fission reactors is not the answer to our energy crisis. It is so not the answer that it boggles the mind. Sorry Brian, but anyone touting the benefits of nuclear fission reactors has very little understanding of nuclear physics and even less understanding of economics.

Has anyone ever heard the term "Sacrifice Zone"? It's an official term used by the Department of Energy(DOE). There are over 100 of them in the United States right now. A Sacrifice Zone is where an accident involving high level waste has essentially erased all potential human uses for an area of land for the rest of human history. Either it would be too costly to clean up the area or simply impossible to do so.

This is not hyperbole. For instance, the primary fuel for nuclear reactors, Uranium 235, has a half life of 713 million years. This is not a time span easily understandable on the human scale. One must go to the geologic scale to fully grasp it. 700 million years ago the Sturtian Ice Age was just ending and the first known supercontenent, Rodinia, had formed. The highest form of animal life on Earth was the sponge. Neptunium 237, a major component of high level waste from nuclear fission reactors, has a half life of 2 million years. 2 million years ago Homo Habilis, five steps down the evolutionary ladder from most of us, was new on the scene. Other transuranic waste products from nuclear power generation have half lives ranging as high as 4 billion years. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old!

High level nuclear waste and transuranic waste comes almost exclusively from nuclear fission power plants. According to the DOE there are thousands of tons of this crap being held all over this country. It is currently being stored on-site at every commercial nuclear reactor in America because they can't get settled on a place to put it, or even how to get it there. A federal judge has side lined the Yucca Mountain dump site because the Bush Administrations set an arbitrary time limit of ONLY 10,000 years for the Yucca Mountain site to "safely" contain the waste. Apparently the Bushies pulled this number out of their collective asses and the judge, correctly, called them on it. It's a very good thing for us that he did, because the people up at Brian's beloved Diablo Canyon had planned to first ship their tons of waste on a barge past the most expensive real estate in the country in Santa Barbara, dock at Port Hueneme and truck it all down the 126 to the Yucca Mountain site. That could certainly make the morning commute more interesting.

All this and I haven't even begun to talk about the military's nuclear waste problems. We don't even know how much there is because they don't have to tell us.

I agree that nuclear weapons and nuclear power (fission) should be separated on the survey. To me, nuclear power is way more dangerous than the missiles.

Thank you, SPK, for taking time to share your knowledge.

Hey, don't just take the word of a dumb ass beekeeper, This is from Patrick Moore the founder of Greenpeace:

Evan, I don't know of any action oriented groups specifically targeting coal.

The World's Foremost Environmentalist Weighs In On Nuclear Power
SOURCE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html

Going Nuclear
A Green Makes the Case

By Patrick Moore
Sunday, April 16, 2006; The Washington Post: Page B01

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

I say that guardedly, of course, just days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had enriched uranium. "The nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing else," he said. But there is widespread speculation that, even though the process is ostensibly dedicated to producing electricity, it is in fact a cover for building nuclear weapons.

And although I don't want to underestimate the very real dangers of nuclear technology in the hands of rogue states, we cannot simply ban every technology that is dangerous. That was the all-or-nothing mentality at the height of the Cold War, when anything nuclear seemed to spell doom for humanity and the environment. In 1979, Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon produced a frisson of fear with their starring roles in "The China Syndrome," a fictional evocation of nuclear disaster in which a reactor meltdown threatens a city's survival. Less than two weeks after the blockbuster film opened, a reactor core meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant sent shivers of very real anguish throughout the country.

What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do -- prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from further developing the technology: There hasn't been a nuclear plant ordered up since then.

Today, there are 103 nuclear reactors quietly delivering just 20 percent of America's electricity. Eighty percent of the people living within 10 miles of these plants approve of them (that's not including the nuclear workers). Although I don't live near a nuclear plant, I am now squarely in their camp.

And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog," says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group's board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.

There are signs of a new willingness to listen, though, even among the staunchest anti-nuclear campaigners. When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear. The Greenpeace spokesperson was first at the mike for the question period, and I expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, he began by saying he agreed with much of what I said -- not the nuclear bit, of course, but there was a clear feeling that all options must be explored.

Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple.

That's not to say that there aren't real problems -- as well as various myths -- associated with nuclear energy. Each concern deserves careful consideration:

· Nuclear energy is expensive. It is in fact one of the least expensive energy sources. In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. Advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future.

· Nuclear plants are not safe. Although Three Mile Island was a success story, the accident at Chernobyl, 20 years ago this month, was not. But Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up. The multi-agency U.N. Chernobyl Forum reported last year that 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident, most of those from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the more than 5,000 coal-mining deaths that occur worldwide every year. No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor program. (And although hundreds of uranium mine workers did die from radiation exposure underground in the early years of that industry, that problem was long ago corrected.)

· Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.

· Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack. The six-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects the contents from the outside as well as the inside. And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and numerous political targets.

· Nuclear fuel can be diverted to make nuclear weapons. This is the most serious issue associated with nuclear energy and the most difficult to address, as the example of Iran shows. But just because nuclear technology can be put to evil purposes is not an argument to ban its use.

Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools -- the machete -- has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.

The only practical approach to the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation is to put it higher on the international agenda and to use diplomacy and, where necessary, force to prevent countries or terrorists from using nuclear materials for destructive ends. And new technologies such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more difficult for terrorists or rogue states to use civilian materials to manufacture weapons.

The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles. In addition, the Clean Air Council reports that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. These pollutants are eroding the health of our environment, producing acid rain, smog, respiratory illness and mercury contamination.

Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.

pmoore@greenspirit.com

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. He and Christine Todd Whitman are co-chairs of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports increased use of nuclear energy.

Hey, I like bees. I like bee keepers. I think it's a really cool job, though I don't think I could handle all the bees crawling on me. I hope the vampire mite isn't causing you any trouble. Also, I certainly never called you a dumb ass.

I do mind shills and sell-outs like Patrick Moore. Anyone ever heard of Burson-Marsteller? They're the fine folk in the $3000 suits who big corporations run to when their ruthless profit-seeking causes huge disasters. They're the PR Firm that Union Carbide, now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company, called when they released 40 tons of methyl isocyanate in a gas cloud that killed 3000 people directly and as many as 20,000 more from related diseases in Bhopal India in 1984. Like Exxon after the Valdez disaster in 1989, Union Carbide hired Burson-Marsteller to fix it's image. In other words, they're professional liars and they are very good at it.

Say you want to pretend that global warming is NOT caused by human inputs even though all credible climate scientists worldwide say otherwise. Well, just hire Burson-Marsteller or a firm like them and they will seek out and target climate scientists who are vulnerable. By vulnerable they mean able to be bought. They'll book their "scientists" on radio shows, TV shows and especially print media like The Washington Post where they will pretend that there is actually two sides to the climate debate. Why would you want mislead the world about this really, really, really important issue? Why because you are the coal and oil industry of course. And that's just what they did over 15 years ago. It is entirely possible that during all that time, the Earth and the whole Human race sailed right past the tipping point on global warming due to the wind from the lies told by Burson-Marsteller and their shills.

Why do I bring all this up? Because Patrick Moore is one of their shills. His employer, the Forest Alliance of British Columbia, is an industry-front group set up by Burson-Marsteller and it is funded primarily by the following timber companies: INTERFOR, Doman, MacMillan Bloedel, Weyerhaeuser, TimberWest Forest, Canfor Corporation, Weldwood, Crestbrook Forest Industries, Riverside Forest Products, Skeena Cellulose and West Fraser Timber.

If that's not bad enough, there is even some question about the veracity of Moore's claim that he is a cofounder of Greenpeace. It is true that he was a director of Greenpeace. In that role he called a meeting to try and get a real cofounder of the organization, Paul Watson, expelled because Moore didn't like Watson's direct action strategies. The same strategies that made greenpeace a household word.

Just a couple more interesting facts about the shill Moore; he's said publicly that global warming is good because it will increase arable land(!), he's pro bio engineered crops and his new Clean and Safe Energy Coalition which he co-chairs with Christine Todd Whitman is funded by the nuclear energy industry and, yes, Burson-Marsteller.

Really the only thing I need to say about Christie Todd Whitman is that she worked directly under Rumsfeld in the Nixon Administration. She was Bush's first choice for EPA head. If that's not damning enough for you, she also told the people of New York, in her capacity as head of the EPA, that "their air is safe to breathe and the water is safe to drink." Scientists at the EPA have come out since and stated that they were told to keep quiet about the harmful conditions by higher ups in the agency(READ Whitman). One EPA scientist on CBS, Dr. Cate Jenkins, said that some of the dust was "as caustic and alkaline as Drano."

I'm not even going to bother going through Mr. Moore's bullet points from the article in The Washington Post. Suffice it to say he's lying, warping the facts and externalizing the vast majority of the costs associated with nuclear power. If you still wish to believe him, read this from the Center for Media and Democracy:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marsteller_Hires_a_Green_%27Cash_Cow%27

Sean, dude, you were ready for that one. This just ain't Brian's thread.

...which is not to degrade the position of Janitor, of course.

It means (to me) that you, Brian, have a very special role as a first-line steward over our precious planet! it's the job of you and your bees (though not alone, thankfully) to gauge our state of environmental disrepair and help us clean it up!

part of that job means knowing your tools and being real about what they can and cannot do. unclogging a toilet with Windex just isnt going to work. ever.

hey, where'd Mike's "nuclear bees" post go? now i look like i'm talking out of my ass about janitors.

evan - I don't know - i looked for it, as it perhaps got accidently flagged for junk, but its gone. sorry, man, i guess i killed the thread. :(

RADIOACTIVE HONEY BEES: TRACKING POLLUTION USING NATURE'S DUST MOP

According to the Albuquerque Journal, July 13, 1997, page B2, "Tim Haarmann's honeybees are full of the stuff of thermonuclear weapons. No surprise - the bees drink and cool their hives from a waste lagoon at one of Los Alamos National Laboratory's 'hottest' facilities. Plus they feed on pollen and nectar from nearby wildflowers...His hives at the lab appear as healthy as 'normal' hives he keeps at home near Jemez Springs. They're just radioactive. they could shed light on ways by products of nuclear of nuclear research travel through the environment. That makes the bees watchdogs for a larger family of plants and animals."
Humans have looked at honey bees as barometers of change for centuries, the article says. Calendars from the Middle Ages foretold war, pestilence and famine based on bee behavior, according to the article. Honey bees began signaling environmental problems as early as the 1800s, when farmers began spraying insecticides that contained trace metals. Accumulation of these has been the focus of much of Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk's work at the University of Montana (see May 1994 and 1995 APIS). Dr. Bromenshenk says honey bees pick up lots of stuff while foraging, then haul it back to the hive. They are covered in tiny, branched hairs, making them like airborne balls of Velcro. He calls them "Nature's dust mop," the article concludes.

Hmm, does that make beekeepers Nature's janitors?

Here's a good one:
Chemosphere ; Vol/Issue: 17:6
As a result of the Chernobyl accident on April 25, 1986, possible radioactive contamination of honey bees and cheese sampled in several areas of the United States were measured.^ Of bees collected in May and June of 1986 in both Oregon and New York, only those from Oregon showed detectable levels of cesium-134 (T1/2 = 2.05 years), a radionuclide which would have originated from the Chernobyl incident.^ Cheese produced in Oregon and New York before the accident showed only cesium-137 (T1/2 = 30.23 years) but cheese produced afterwards (May and September, 1986) in Oregon contained cesium-134.^ Cheese produced in Ohio and California at the time of the accident and thereafter contained only cesium-137.^ In general, the levels of radioactivity were higher in the West coast samples as compared to those taken in the East.^ The levels of radioactivity detected were considered to be toxicologically of no consequence.

yay! thanks, Mike.

here's a tidbit that Brian will like: nuclear power rennaisance

apparently, our corporate-run government thinks that if radiation is good enough for our troops and enemies abroad, it's damn well good enough to power our homes.

With all of the insults and snide remarks aside, I think that the majority of the American people will come to realize that nuclear power can be used safely and is a better alternative to coal. Corporations are not all bad, I don't think you would want a Mom and Pop run nuclear plant. Unfortunately all of the people who forced us to burn coal think that radiation is good for us because there are thousands of tons of radiation in the form of uranium and thorium coming out of coal plants every single day and there is zero radiation coming out of nuke plants.

Some people seem to be blinded by emotion and conspiracy theories, like the old saying goes, if you're a conservative and under 30 you have no heart, but if you're liberal and over 30 you have no head.

Like you said, its an old saying.

In my opinion, we have all seen a blatant example of: The Thinker Thinks and the Prover Proves. Robert Anton Wilson wrote a book called "Prometheus Rising" which goes into detail about this all too common human neurological dilema. Brian's dilema is that his need to be(e) right will not allow him to consider another position. He can only prove his own oversimplified point of view. He has taken a complex problem and makes it an either or. Anything outside these two options just does not register. I'd bet that he has not read any of the other comments and that is why he calls them all 'snide remarks and insults'. I wonder if bee stings can cause neurological damage?

PROMETHEUS RISING
by Robert Anton Wilson

The Thinker and The Prover

William James, father of American psychology, tells of meeting an old lady who told him the Earth rested on the back of a huge turtle.

"But, my dear lady," Professor James asked, as politely as possible, "what holds up the turtle?"

"Ah," she said, "that's easy. He is standing on the back of another turtle."

"Oh, I see," said Professor James, still being polite. "But would you be so good as to tell me what holds up the second turtle?"

"It's no use, Professor," said the old lady, realizing he was trying to lead her into a logical trap. "It's turtles-turtles-turtles, all the way!"

Don't be too quick to laugh at this little old lady. All human minds work on fundamentally similar principles. Her universe was a little bit weirder than most but it was built up on the same mental principles as every other universe people have believed in.

As Dr. Leonard Orr has noted, the human mind behaves as if it were divided into two parts, the Thinker and the Prover.

The Thinker can think about virtually anything. History shows that it can think the earth is suspended on the backs of infinite turtles or that the Earth is hollow, or that the Earth is floating in space; comparative religion and philosophy show that the Thinker can regard itself as mortal, as immortal, as both mortal and immortal (the reincarnation model) or even as non-existent (Buddhism). It can think itself into living in a Christian universe, a Marxist universe, a scientific-relativistic universe, or a Nazi universe---among many possibilities.

As psychiatrists and psychologists have often observed (much to the chagrin of their medical colleagues), the Thinker can think itself sick, and can even think itself well again.

The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.

To cite a notorious example which unleashed incredible horrors earlier in this century, if the Thinker thinks that all Jews are rich, the Prover will prove it. It will find evidence that the poorest Jew in the most run-down ghetto has hidden money somewhere. Similarly, Feminists are able to believe that all men, including the starving wretches who live and sleep on the streets, are exploiting all women, including the Queen of England.

If the Thinker thinks that the sun moves around the earth, the Prover will obligingly organize all perceptions to fit that thought; if the Thinker changes its mind and decides the earth moves around the sun, the Prover will reorganize the evidence.

If the Thinker thinks "holy water" from Lourdes will cure its lumbago, the Prover will skillfully orchestrate all signals from the glands, muscles, organs etc. until they have organized themselves into good health again.

Of course, it is fairly easy to see that other people's minds operate this way; it is comparatively much harder to become aware that one's own mind is working that way also.

It is believed, for instance, that some men are more "objective" than others. (One seldom hears this about women...) Businessmen are allegedly hard-nosed, pragmatic and "objective" in this sense. A brief examination of the dingbat politics most businessmen endorse will quickly correct that impression.

Scientists, however, are still believed to be objective. No study of the lives of the great scientists will confirm this. They were as passionate, and hence as prejudiced, as any assembly of great painters or great musicians. It was not just the Church but also the established astronomers of the time who condemned Galileo. The majority of physicists rejected Einstein's Special Relativity Theory in 1905. Einstein himself would not accept anything in quantum theory after 1920 no matter how many experiments supported it. Edison's commitment to direct current (DC) electrical generators led him to insist alternating current (AC) generators were unsafe for years after their safety had been proven to everyone else.

Science achieves, or approximates, objectivity not because the individual scientist is immune from the psychological laws that govern the rest of us, but because scientific method---a group creation---eventually overrides individual prejudices, in the long run.

To take a notorious example from the 1960s, there was a point when three research groups had "proven" that LSD causes chromosome damage, while three other groups had "proven" that LSD has no effect on the chromosomes. In each case, the Prover had proved what the Thinker thought. Right now, there are, in physics, 7 experiments that confirm a very controversial concept known as Bell's Theorem, and two experiments that refute Bell's Theorem. In the area of extra-sensory perception, the results are uniform after more than a century: everybody who sets out to prove that ESP exists succeeds, and everybody who sets out to prove that ESP does not exist also succeeds.

"Truth" or relative truth emerges only after decades of experiments by thousands of groups all over the world.

In the long run, we are hopefully approximating closer and closer to "objective Truth" over the centuries.

In the short run, Orr's law always holds:

Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove.

And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.

And here it is, the video to sum up where this thread is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leEsz9ci5XE&mode=related&search=

Brian,

Following this latest screed is a quote directly from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It's become clear that your position is intractable and immune to either facts or logic. Nevertheless, your assertion that reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods is either commercially viable or safe is flat wrong. It is worth noting that of the three reprocessing sites listed below by the NRC, two of them are currently classified as "sacrifice zones" by the DOE.

All of this has nothing whatever to do with being a liberal or a conservative. Though I lament the "snide" tone that may have arisen on this thread, I think that some good facts have come out. I urge you to go back and re-read some of the posts with a thicker skin and try to modify your position because it is demonstrably untenable. While it is true that not all corporations are "bad", it is equally true that many corporations have a long history of seeking short term profits at the expense of human lives. It is further true that a corporations ONLY responsibility is the generation of profit for its shareholders. This directive is enshrined in corporate law. There have countless examples where this profit seeking has run in direct opposition to the interests of the public. This is not a conspiracy theory and neither is the fact that there is a big PR push going on right now in favor of Nuclear Power(fission). This push is funded by the very same firms I've listed above using all of the usual tricks and lies. While it may be true, emphasis on MAY, that nuclear power(fission) plants can be run safely for a time, the cost benefit analysis used by the nuclear industry and its toadies NEVER includes the full coasts of that power. If one adds up the amount of public monies that have gone into the development of fission power. The sum of taxpayer dollars that have gone, in the form of subsidies, to the nuclear industry to develop, build and maintain existing nuclear plants. The amount of money, all of it public, that goes into storing the resultant nuclear waste. If all of this were added to the coast of nuclear power; in other words, if a real coast benefit analysis were done, Nuclear Power would be THE most expensive form of power generation.

Finally, your insistence on a coal or nuclear power choice is a canard. There are hundreds of other options to those two methods of power generation, not the least of which is increased efficiency and conservation. By some estimates, as much as 70% of current power generation nationwide is simply wasted. Your choice between coal or fission is akin to the choice of suicide using a Rugar Black Hawk, Single-Action, 9 1/2 inch barrel .44 or the Browning .50 Caliber machine gun with a pulley and string arrangement to pull the trigger. The only difference is how big a hole do you want to make in the wall behind you.

From the NRC:

High-Level Waste

High-level radioactive wastes are the highly radioactive materials produced as a byproduct of the reactions that occur inside nuclear reactors. High-level wastes take one of two forms:

Spent (used) reactor fuel when it is accepted for disposal
Waste materials remaining after spent fuel is reprocessed
Spent nuclear fuel is used fuel from a reactor that is no longer efficient in creating electricity, because its fission process has slowed. However, it is still thermally hot, highly radioactive, and potentially harmful. Until a permanent disposal repository for spent nuclear fuel is built, licensees must safely store this fuel at their reactors.

Reprocessing extracts isotopes from spent fuel that can be used again as reactor fuel. Commercial reprocessing is currently not practiced in the United States, although it has been allowed in the past. However, significant quantities of high-level radioactive waste are produced by the defense reprocessing programs at Department of Energy (DOE) facilities, such as Hanford, Washington, and Savannah River, South Carolina, and by commercial reprocessing operations at West Valley, New York. These wastes, which are generally managed by DOE, are not regulated by NRC. However they must be included in any high-level radioactive waste disposal plans, along with all high-level waste from spent reactor fuel.

Because of their highly radioactive fission products, high-level waste and spent fuel must be handled and stored with care. Since the only way radioactive waste finally becomes harmless is through decay, which for high-level wastes can take hundreds of thousands of years, the wastes must be stored and finally disposed of in a way that provides adequate protection of the public for a very long time.

Tyler, I think it might be a good idea to start a new thread just on our energy problem and encourage a discussion of all the possible remedies. I feel kind of badly that we sort of hijacked Evan's thread about the OPC's survey.

you continue to educate and inspire, Sean!

i considered at one time pushing this thread over to Michael Lind's energy thread (appearing right above this one on the home page), but simply let it continue based mostly on my new experience that this is the nature of open community blogs. it seems like pretty often the main thrust of a given discussion ends up having little connection with the original topic. this can sometimes be frustrating, but i'm allowing that to mean to me that this issue is "hotter", and clearly needs to be hashed out.

(although the survey results, which i'll start a new thread on later, are indicating that ending the war is by far the #1 priority for respondents on all three levels - local, national, global.)

at any rate, start a new thread or carry on...there's clearly plenty of fodder for discussion either way!

Sean, you are doing an awesome job. There is nothing to lament. This thread has many, many layers to learn from.

Thanks Evan, for letting the thread morph and grow.

Now here's some more dirt. I remembered hearing about this many years ago:

Contaminated [radioactive] Soil:

NRC has been holding closed-door meetings with US Department of Agriculture on reuses of recycled contaminated soil. Contaminated sludge may be allowed to be spread on farm fields, under regulations in an increasing number of states that encourage “beneficial uses” of contaminated wastes and materials. Potentially, even organic foods could be affected. It is not clear why NRC meetings with, they told us, USDA librarians were considered “proprietary” and therefore not open to the public.

The rest of this Dec. 1999 aritcle is on this link:
http://www.necnp.org/files/newsletters/otw1299.html

This article is from Mother Jones Jul/Aug 2002.
News: If the Department of Energy has its way, the nation's nuclear garbage could end up in everyday items like bicycles, frying pans, and baby strollers.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2002/07/radioactive_recycling.html

Mike,
I read everything, and the snide remarks I was referring to was the Janitor and the neurological damage crack. Though I do have less arthritis than the rest of you since I've been stung so many times! But I suppose I deserve it after all the grief I gave Tyler when I first came on this site.
Anyway you could say the same thing about your own "truth" with your story about the prover and thinker. We can go point by point on specific individual "truths" with respect to nuclear power and maybe that way we could agree if something is true or not. I don't mean who can out Google the other but rather things that can be measured. I'm going to try and put together a piece on nuclear power to explain why I think it is beneficial energy to pursue. (It might take a while because I'm starting to get busy.) Do you think there is any way to determine the truth? How can we possibly agree on any point? Certain basic numbers you would think would be able to reveal the truth about something. I've read some suggestions, on this site, that solar, wind, ethanol and bio-diesel can replace our oil dependence. I don't think the numbers show that. One thing I know for sure we are going to be in deep doo doo if we don't do something. We are too dependent on foreign oil.

One thing we all can agree on is that our 'government' does have one area that it excels at: Hiding the cost. Once we look at the true costs of nuclear power, it becomes obvous that it is not an option. Numbers do not lie.

This thread provides an excellent example of how the 'thinker and the prover' paradigm can be obvious when it is not our self as you so adroitly put. The idea is that when we become aware of this process in ourselves, we can nip it in the bud for it is our unconscious that leads us more often then not. This is one way to expand our 'reality tunnel'.

Sean's (spk) information seems to be bulletproof. In contrast, your 'spokesperson' has more holes in his sermon than 10 pounds of moldy swiss cheese.

The nuclear industry is having such a great deal of difficulty 'burying' its waste, that they've been trying to recylce it in ways that are unconscionable. They are desperate. This and this alone sinks the nuclear ship- add up all of it and it becomes ridiculous and ludicrous to pursue. It is just not an option. How about testing some of your honey for radiation? I am truly curious.

The more that gasolene actually reflects its true cost, the more motivated folks will be to explore alternatives.

The internet has been speeding up human intelligence and it is still in its infancy. It will help to make our leaders more accountable. We are now beginning to invest our resources in sustainable enterprises much more so than 10 years ago.

I surmise that we will not have just one source of energy. They will come from diverse areas depending on environment, politics and unforseeable developments.

I have faith that intelligence will prevail - no need to press the panic button.

As far as the snide remarks go, they were intended to lighten up a heavy conversation. As far as arthritis goes, I don't have any of that and if anyone does, take some omega 3.

peace

well said, Brian...and above the belt, too!

generally, i say we welcome the kind of quantifiable research you're talking about, and i'm grateful to you (in advance) for putting some energy toward producing that report.

thank you also for reminding us that at the VERY least, our common beliefs are that "we are going to be in deep doo doo if we don't do something. We are too dependent on foreign oil."

i urge us all to bear this common thread in mind as we proceed.

Here's a good place to begin:
Economics in one lesson
http://www.jim.com/econ/chap01p1.html

January 25, 2007

Blackwater, Inc. and the Privatization of the Bush War Machine
Our Mercenaries in Iraq
By JEREMY SCAHILL

As President Bush took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday, there were five American families receiving news that has become all too common: Their loved ones had been killed in Iraq. But in this case, the slain were neither "civilians," as the news reports proclaimed, nor were they U.S. soldiers. They were highly trained mercenaries deployed to Iraq by a secretive private military company based in North Carolina - Blackwater USA.

The company made headlines in early 2004 when four of its troops were ambushed and burned in the Sunni hotbed of Fallouja - two charred, lifeless bodies left to dangle for hours from a bridge. That incident marked a turning point in the war, sparked multiple U.S. sieges of Fallouja and helped fuel the Iraqi resistance that haunts the occupation to this day.

Now, Blackwater is back in the news, providing a reminder of just how privatized the war has become. On Tuesday, one of the company's helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad's most violent areas. The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater's $300-million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company's initial no-bid contract to guard administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Current U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is also protected by Blackwater, said he had gone to the morgue to view the men's bodies, asserting the circumstances of their deaths were unclear because of "the fog of war."

Bush made no mention of the downing of the helicopter during his State of the Union speech. But he did address the very issue that has made the war's privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy - the need for more troops. The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years. He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.

"Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them," Bush declared. This is precisely what the administration has already done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input, with its revolution in military affairs. Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory. Iraq is its Frankenstein monster.

Already, private contractors constitute the second-largest "force" in Iraq. At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation. Many of these contractors make up to $1,000 a day, far more than active-duty soldiers. What's more, these forces are politically expedient, as contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll.

The president's proposed Civilian Reserve Corps was not his idea alone. A privatized version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage mercenaries as legitimate forces. In early 2005, Prince - a major bankroller of the president and his allies - pitched the idea at a military conference of a "contractor brigade" to supplement the official military. "There's consternation in the [Pentagon] about increasing the permanent size of the Army," Prince declared. Officials "want to add 30,000 people, and they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier." He added: "We could do it certainly cheaper."

And Prince is not just a man with an idea; he is a man with his own army. Blackwater began in 1996 with a private military training camp "to fulfill the anticipated demand for government outsourcing." Today, its contacts run from deep inside the military and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House. It has secured a status as the elite Praetorian Guard for the global war on terror, with the largest private military base in the world, a fleet of 20 aircraft and 20,000 soldiers at the ready.

From Iraq and Afghanistan to the hurricane-ravaged streets of New Orleans to meetings with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger about responding to disasters in California, Blackwater now envisions itself as the FedEx of defense and homeland security operations. Such power in the hands of one company, run by a neo-crusader bankroller of the president, embodies the "military-industrial complex" President Eisenhower warned against in 1961.

Further privatizing the country's war machine - or inventing new back doors for military expansion with fancy names like the Civilian Reserve Corps - will represent a devastating blow to the future of American democracy.

Jeremy Scahill is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and the author of the forthcoming "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army." He can be reached at jeremy@democracynow.org.

Livermore Pro-Nukers Move to Kill More in San Francisco Area
by Bob Nichols

(San Francisco) In a truly bizarre development, the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, in Livermore, California, has gotten underway even larger nuclear radiation open air explosive detonations at "Site 300" near Tracy, California.

Tracy is on the South end of the Bay Area. The High Explosive detonations are to widely distribute radioactive poison gas [uranium oxide gas and aerosols] over the unsuspecting seven million residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, water supplies, buildings, animals, food crops and plants of every variety.

Bob Sarvey, Bay Area citizen/activist and businessman stated "The government has been using Site 300 as an explosives testing facility since the late 1950's. The site has been a toxic Superfund site since 1991 and contains a 2 mile tritium plume [radioactive hydrogen in water] with deposits of U-238 [radioactive uranium] in unlined pits. No one has paid much attention; but, now that the City of Tracy wants to build 5,500 homes in the shadow of the Site it's time to examine its radiological and noise impacts on Tracy and the radiological impacts on the rest of the Bay Area."

The great billion dollar foodstuff and veggie producing irrigated valleys of California are just a stones throw away. The Nation's food supply is in danger.

Normally the weaponized radioactive poison gas munitions are to be used on America's many "terrorists" enemies around the globe. The battlefield product has no "turn off" switch and is deadly forever.

Apparently the rogue Livermore Nuker Lab has declared war on San Francisco. The Nuclear Weapons Lab has been "managed" by UC-Berkeley for 61 years.

In a demonstration of supreme religious belief in war, Livermore Nuker Lab officials allude to a little fence around the huge 7,000 acre open air Radiation Bomb "Live" Detonation Area for protection.

It is as if the little fence is supposed to stop the radioactive gas in the wind. Needless to say, the rest of us know that it is not going to happen. Yet, Livermore Nuker Lab seems to believe the public will buy this lame defense.

Livermore Lab has continuously contaminated the region for decades. San Francisco residents are reporting the presence of cancer causing uranium in hair samples.

This is what regular non-psychotic, anti-nuclear radiation bomber humans, or, the rest of us, can do to STOP the RADIOACTIVE BOMBS' GAS ATTACK ON SAN FRANCISCO!

Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award winner. He is a newspaper correspondent and a frequent contributor to various online publications. Nichols is completing a book based on 15 years of nuclear radiation war in Central Asia. He is a former employee of the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. Nichols can be reached by email, and readers are encouraged to write to him at DUweapons@gmail.com