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Good news! .... And, what goes around...

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 03:42
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Friday, August 10, 2012 1:37 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


NUCLEAR
The NRC has suspended the re-licensing process for 19 nuclear power plants because the US Court of Appeals has ruled that the risks of on-site storage of spent fuel has not been fully addressed. (Ya think???)
Quote:

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission suspended final decisions on licenses for power plants until it completes a reassessment of risks related to storing spent atomic fuel ordered by a federal court in June. ... Entergy Corp. (ETR)’s Indian Point power plant north of New York City is “next in line’” for renewal of its U.S. license, while Duke Energy Corp. (DUK)’s application is close to getting a license for construction and operation of reactors in Levy County, Florida, Burnell said.

“They weren’t expected to reach final decisions until well into 2013,” Burnell said in the e-mail.

The NRC’s rules on permanent storage of nuclear waste failed to fully evaluate risks and new standards must be drafted, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington ruled on June 8 in throwing out the agency’s regulations.

The NRC action freezes nine construction and operating licenses, eight renewals, an operating license and an early site permit, according to a statement from 24 groups led by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League in Knoxville, Tennessee, that asked the NRC to halt the process.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-07/nrc-suspends-final-licenses-t
o-reassess-risks-of-storing-waste.html


CYBER WARFARE
Quote:

Kaspersky security analysts have identified another cyber-threat (PDF) targeting the Middle East as part of ongoing research into Flame. Named Gauss, it displays all the hallmarks of being part of the same family as Flame (Stuxnet, Duqu) and is compromising financial account and log in information from computer users accessing Lebanese banks, as well as reporting hardware configurations to its creators.

"Gauss is a nation state sponsored banking Trojan which carries a warhead of unknown designation. Besides stealing various kinds of data from infected Windows machines, it also includes an unknown, encrypted payload which is activated on certain specific system configurations," said Kaspersky.

The USA and Israel wrote Stuxnet and Flame. There was a "deactivation" code embedded in Flame which the Israelis supposedly eliminated, which is how the Flame virus got into the wild. Banking seems to be the next target.

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Friday, August 10, 2012 2:28 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Block off shore drilling..

Bankrupt the coal industry...

Shut down nuclear power...

Block the Keystone pipeline...


Yep. Barry's plan to strangle this country's power supply is working just fine.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen
" We're all just folk. " - Mal

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Friday, August 10, 2012 3:26 PM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.


Natural gas? His plan is very incomplete at the moment...

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Friday, August 10, 2012 4:04 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)


Who blocked offshore drilling?

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Friday, August 10, 2012 4:58 PM

FREMDFIRMA


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The USA and Israel wrote Stuxnet and Flame. There was a "deactivation" code embedded in Flame which the Israelis supposedly eliminated, which is how the Flame virus got into the wild. Banking seems to be the next target.


Toldja thay chicken would come home to roost, although much faster than expected, it seems.

This still makes me wonder if perhaps Chernobyl mighta had something to do with us deliberately dumping sabotaged components and software on the black market, cause as I recall that was responsible for at least one major pipeline event as well.

Oh, and remember what I said about how in the end, TPTB will more or less hand out on a plate the very weapons which eventually destroy them ?
Wellll....

-Frem

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Sunday, August 12, 2012 7:05 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Little bitty, teeny weeny

It's a start, anyway...

As to the idiocy posted by "someone":

Offshore drilling: "President Obama said Tuesday that he will open more than 75% of potential offshore oil and gas resources to exploration"...

"Shaking up years of energy policy and his own environmental backers, President Barack Obama threw open a huge swath of East Coast waters and other protected areas in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico to drilling Wednesday, widening the politically explosive hunt for more homegrown oil and gas."

The Party of No, as usual, rejected it: "In an election-year swipe at President Barack Obama's energy policies, the Republican-led House on Wednesday voted to revoke Obama's five-year plan for offshore drilling."

Coal: "As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above approach to American energy, the Energy Department announced that nine universities have won awards for research projects that will continue to support innovation and development of clean coal technologies. The awards, which will leverage student-led teams across the country as they continue research and development of new technologies and materials that will advance clean coal energy production, are part of the Administration’s focus on ensuring we can rely on a broad range of energy sources as we move towards a clean energy economy.

“Advancing the development of clean coal technologies is an important part of President Obama’s strategy to develop every source of American energy and ensure the United States leads the world in the global clean energy race and continues to take advantage of domestic resources here at home,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “These university research projects will help build on extensive progressive made by this Administration to promote innovative technologies that help make coal-fired energy cleaner and more cost-competitive, while training the next generation of scientists and engineers in cutting-edge clean coal technologies.”

Today’s awards are part of a more than $5 billion investment strategy by the Obama Administration in clean coal technologies and R&D. This strategy, which has attracted over $10 billion in additional private capital investment, is designed to accelerate commercial deployment of clean coal technologies – particularly carbon capture and storage (CCS) – and to position the United States as a leader in the global clean energy race."

Keystone Pipeline: "President Obama visited an oil repository in the solidly red state of Oklahoma today to announce plans to fast-track the southern leg of the controversial Keystone pipeline. '“I am directing my administration to cut through red tape, break through bureaucratic hurdles and make this project a priority,' the president said. Obama announced a new Executive Order that would make permitting the southern leg of the pipeline a top priority."

So much for that bullshit.


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Sunday, August 12, 2012 12:16 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:

Originally posted by Niki2:

As to the idiocy posted by "someone":

Offshore drilling: "President Obama said Tuesday that he will open more than 75% of potential offshore oil and gas resources to exploration"...



Because his administration had shut it off in the first place.

Quote:



Coal: "As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above approach to American energy, the Energy Department announced that nine universities have won awards for research projects that will continue to support innovation and development of clean coal technologies. The awards, which will leverage student-led teams across the country as they continue research and development of new technologies and materials that will advance clean coal energy production, are part of the Administration’s focus on ensuring we can rely on a broad range of energy sources as we move towards a clean energy economy.



Yeah, if you open a coal plant, I'll punish you by regulating you to the hilt, and and you'll go bankrupt.

Quote:


Keystone Pipeline: "President Obama visited an oil repository in the solidly red state of Oklahoma today to announce plans to fast-track the southern leg of the controversial Keystone pipeline. '“I am directing my administration to cut through red tape, break through bureaucratic hurdles and make this project a priority,' the president said. Obama announced a new Executive Order that would make permitting the southern leg of the pipeline a top priority."

So much for that bullshit.




Meaningless political move. The 'southern leg' does essentially nothing w/ out the oil coming from Canada.

It's so cute to see Niki do her best Jay Carney impression.



Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen
" We're all just folk. " - Mal

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Sunday, August 12, 2012 12:35 PM

JONGSSTRAW


When I saw the movie The China Syndrome just a short time before the Three Mile Island disaster, I remember thinking that was an incredibly prophetic and very freaky thing. And the portrayals of the management dolts there was spot on with what subsequently occured in reality. Since then I've never liked or fully trusted nuclear power plants. I think we must drill in ANWR as soon as possible. I think the enviromentalists' resistance to this is absurd and dangerous. We only need 1% of that vast acreage to drill on, leaving 99% for the wildlife to prance and roam on. We'd all be so much better off economically with all that oil available for consumption in America, and our Presidents wouldn't have to bow to or kiss some degenirate sex-slave peddler Saudi King.

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Monday, August 13, 2012 2:29 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

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Monday, August 13, 2012 2:47 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


That chart would look quite a bit different the minute something massive happens, and everyone knows it. One of the things I marched against back in the '60s was nuclear...we've got one down South--hopefully far enough away that WE're safe at least. But the concept, especially as we've still found no way to dispose of the waste, is something that makes me shudder. Considering how old our plants are, and how little I trust companies to do things right or spend the money necessary on REAL upkeep, to me they're just disasters waiting to happen. Chernobyl was too far away and we knew too little about it, but Fukishima was, to me, a pretty predictabale outcome as the first lesson somewhere in the world.

Hell, ours sits RIGHT on the Coast, so it's only a matter of time. I mean RIGHT on the coast, the freeway runs between its boundaries and the beach!

Amusing to hear Raptor spout the party line word for word without knowing a thing about it. Boring, but mildly amusing. If I weren't waiting for Jim to get ready to take the dogs out (sulkying at dawn, FUN!), I'd repeat some actual FACTS about Keystone and those "dread restrictions" on coal. I had a friend on my site who lives out there, and the horror stories I could pass on would curl your hair. But then, it would only be repeating what the intelligent people here already know, so why bother?


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Monday, August 13, 2012 3:13 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Originally posted by Niki2:
That chart would look quite a bit different the minute something massive happens, and everyone knows it.



And that "something massive" has been going to happen any minute...for the past fifty years. So far, the only really large death toll event hasn't been at the hands of the business men you so distrust. It was caused by a government-constructed and run plant.

And while you continue to worry about massive numbers of folks being killed by the nuclear accident that hasn't happened in fifty years, anywhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 (depending on who you ask) folks die each year from the effects of coal-fired plants.

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Monday, August 13, 2012 4:20 AM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!


Quote:

Originally posted by Niki2:
That chart would look quite a bit different the minute something massive happens, and everyone knows it.



Chernobyl and Fukushima are about as massive as you get. A nuclear power plant is not going to explode like an atomic bomb.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Monday, August 13, 2012 7:37 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


The worst nuclear disaster to date is Fukishima, run by private enterprise, I believe? And they lied a LOT about what happened. And a lot of people will die because they didn't tell people what they knew and had too small a "safe zone" around it after the accident. So much for "businessmen".

I never argued coal over nuclear, or gas over coal or anything else. I don't want ANY of them, and in the long term neither coal nor gas is viable, something many tend to stick their fingers in their ears and go "nanananana" to avoid hearing.

...and we'll have to wait decades, at least, to know what the death toll from Fukishima turns out to be. What's interesting in that chart is that I'm pretty sure how they count "deaths", which I'm guessing doesn't include all the actual deaths involved in nuclear energy.

Yup: If you got that chart from the same place I found, you left out the text:
Quote:

His post is actually focused on the triumph of coal marketing, that we are surprised at what this data shows. How come many of us didn’t already know this? I think it is fair to say that most people don’t think coal is that much of a killer, but there you have it.

Many of us even know that we consume mercury from deep-sea species of fish, yet many of us still don’t connect the dots back to coal – at least not consciously.

Having said that, it should also be acknowledged that the number of deaths attributed to nuclear accidents is a source of serious contention. For instance, this recent take-down of the nuclear power industry raises the possibility that the Chernobyl death toll was grossly underestimated by the Soviets and even the international community. Alternatively, there are also reports claiming the death toll from Chernobyl was over-estimated. It’s all quite confusing isn’t it? How are we to know how accurate the data is?

Personally, as well as other renewables, I’m becoming a bigger and bigger fan of solar technology, and the potential it holds for us all.

I agree with the author.

I guess I also don't trust humans to be responsible, for the reason I mentioned before.


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Monday, August 13, 2012 8:56 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Originally posted by Niki2:
The worst nuclear disaster to date is Fukishima, run by private enterprise, I believe?



I would have thought Chernobyl, run by the Commies. More damage. More dead. And not even a tsunami to blame it on.

Quote:

And they lied a LOT about what happened. And a lot of people will die because they didn't tell people what they knew and had too small a "safe zone" around it after the accident.


In China, around 5,000 people die a year, just MINING coal. More than that?


Quote:

I never argued coal over nuclear, or gas over coal or anything else. I don't want ANY of them...


But you're stuck with them. Solar and wind are gonna be limited until a way of storing electrical energy cheaply and in massive amounts becomes available, which isn't much out of the concept stage now. Even then, the amount of solar, wind, and storage installations necessary to provide sufficient power will probably have environmental impacts of their own.

Coal use kills, conservatively, half a million people every year - It just does it quietly, one at a time. Even if we had a Fukushima every year, the toll wouldn't be near that high, but it'd be all over the media.

All you can really do right now is make the best of bad choices.

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Monday, August 13, 2012 1:21 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


"Fukushima ranked Level 8 on newly developed nuclear scale, above Chernobyl"

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Monday, August 13, 2012 3:55 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Quote:

Originally posted by Geezer:
But you're stuck with them. Solar and wind are gonna be limited until a way of storing electrical energy cheaply and in massive amounts becomes available, which isn't much out of the concept stage now.



And then there's conservation:

"If every American home replaced just one light bulb with a light bulb that's earned the ENERGY STAR, we would save enough energy to light 3 million homes for a year, save about $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to those from about 800,000 cars."

""Vampire" appliances use electricity even when they are turned off, because they go into a standby mode rather than fully powering down. According to the Department of Energy, vampire appliances and electronics use about 4% or 5% of the energy in an average home. When you include all homes in the U.S., that totals about 52 billion kWh per year or about 26 average-size power plants."


Now WAAAaaayyyy back in 2007 a study was done that concluded we already have the technology we need to stop global warming - we just have to use it.

"Global climate change experts will this week lay out a detailed plan to save the planet from the catastrophic effects of rising temperatures. Climate change could be stopped in its tracks using existing technology, but only if politicians do more to force businesses and individuals to take action.

The UN study will conclude that mankind has the knowhow to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 26bn tonnes by 2030 - more than enough to limit the expected temperature rise across the planet to 2-3C."


Not only could we slow our energy consumption, we could actually reverse our demand and our greenhouse gas emissions too.

Now Geezer, I have argued these EXACT SAME POINTS with you twice before. Please don't bring this up again. Yanno, it's one of those rules for a good discussion ...







SignyM: I swear, if we really knew what was being decided about us in our absence, and how hosed the government is prepared to let us be, we would string them up.

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Monday, August 13, 2012 7:55 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


And then there are institutional investments, like amorphous metal. Very hard to make, in quantity, but able to reduce transformer losses by 80%. WE (the USA) aren't doing much with it. Can't even FIND it here. But CHINA, on the other hand...
Quote:

An amorphous metal transformer (AMT) is a type of energy efficient transformer found on electric grids.[1] The magnetic core of this transformer is made with an amorphous metal (e.g. Metglas), containing ferromagnetic elements such as iron, or cobalt alloyed with a glass former such as of boron, silicon, or phosphorus. These materials have high magnetic susceptibility, with low coercivity and high electrical resistance. The high resistance leads to low losses by eddy currents when subjected to alternating magnetic fields, a property particularly useful in transformers. Typically, core loss can be 70–80% less than with traditional crystalline materials. This leads to a reduction of generation requirement and, when using electric power generated from fossil fuels, less CO2 emissions.It has been widely adopted by large developing countries such as China and India where energy conservation and CO2 emission reduction have been put on priority. These two countries can potentially save 25–30 TWh electricity annually, eliminate 6-8 GW generation investment, and reduce 20–30 million tons of CO2 emission by fully utilizing this technology.

As one of the major programs to improve grid efficiency, China has started to install amorphous metal transformers in a number of energy intensive provinces since 2005. Over 20,000 MVA of such transformers are installed every year. This movement has also led to the successful development and production of amorphous metal ribbon in China


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Tuesday, August 14, 2012 3:42 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:

And then there's conservation:


Conservation is a good thing. We replace incandescent with CFL when they burn out, picked Energy Star approved appliances for our kitchen, and are adding insulation.

But even the Energy Star site, where you got the light bulb quote, says "Energy efficient choices can save families about a third on their energy bill with similar savings of greenhouse gas emissions, without sacrificing features, style or comfort.", and you know they're citing best-case figures. Also, that's total energy, not just electricity. Electricity makes up 50% to 80% of total residential energy usage in the U.S., depending on region, so lets average at 70%. So 70% of 1/3 + 23%. That's the amount of residential electricity that could be saved if every residence in the U.S. followed all the Energy Star guidelines.

Now, residences use about 1/3 of all electricity generated, so, even if you could get 100% of residences to do the Energy Star maximum, that 33% x 23% is only about 7.6% of total electricity usage. If all commercial property also made all efforts to conserve electricity, it'd get maybe another 7.6%. So best-case, with every home and every business doing all they can to reduce electricity use, we could cut around 15%.

That's still a lot more energy demand than renewables could meet, considering that all renewables - Hydro, geothermal, wind, solar, wood, and biofuels - produce only 10% of U.S. electricity.

Data I used is from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Consumption_b
y_sector



Quote:

Now WAAAaaayyyy back in 2007 a study was done that concluded we already have the technology we need to stop global warming - we just have to use it.


You mean this one?

http://www.ipcc-wg3.de/publications/assessment-reports/ar4

Yep. If absolutely everyone plays along, and there's somewhere the money it'll take to do all this, and politicians stop being politicians...



Kiki.

I'm not disagreeing that there's a need for conservation, or a need for reduction in energy consumption, or in greenhouse gasses and other pollutants.

But for the present and the foreseeable future, we're going to be getting most of our electricity, both in the U.S. and worldwide, from either fossil fuels or nuclear plants.

Pollution from fossil fuels, mostly from the generation of electricity, kills half a million folks a year.

The worst nuclear accident, at Chernobyl, may eventually cause between 4,000 and 100,000 deaths, depending on who you ask.

So why are folks so much more scared of nuclear energy than coal?

That's what I'm wondering.


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