Clarion Content

Opponents of nuclear power, like the Clarion Content, have to be cheered by the sentiments of General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt as expressed in the Financial Times on Monday.



The FT reports, "Nuclear power is so expensive¹ compared with other forms of energy that it has become 'really hard' to justify...according to the chief executive of GE one of the world's largest suppliers of atomic equipment."

He went on to say, "It's really a gas and wind world today." The FT says GE and Immelt see the shift to wind and natural gas energy sources as permanent, mostly because they are cheaper.²



Notes
¹The Clarion Content is opposed to nuclear power because of nuclear waste disposal and the downside risk of accidents, not because of cost.

²The FT notes this is especially bad news for the U.K. which is trying to get nuclear power plants built without public subsidy.

Labels: energy policy, nuclear issues

North Anna Power Station



Among the scariest elements of yesterday's East Coast earthquake, which was felt from Durham, NC to Boston, Mass., was how closely it occurred to the North Anna Power Station, a nuclear reactor complex, located about 10 miles from the quake's epicenter. As yet, the facility's reactors show no signs of cracks in their concrete containment centers. The nuclear facility is located 92 miles southwest of downtown Washington, D.C. An estimated 1.9 million people live within 50 miles of the plant's nuclear reactors.



The quake knocked out the plant's off-site power source. One of the four back-up diesel generators powering the auxiliary safety systems died within hours of the quake. Sound like Japan anyone?



The North Anna Power Station is designed to withstand quakes of a maximum of 5.9 to 6.1 on the infamous Richter Scale. Yesterday's quake was a 5.9. The North Anna power plant is notorious already. It has accumulated one of the largest concentrations of radioactivity in the United States. The L.A. Times reports that Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former assistant Energy secretary during the Clinton administration noted, the plant’s spent fuel pools contain four to five times more radioactive material than their original designs intended. The plant's reactors are thirty-one and thirty-three years old respectively.



Ahhh, nuclear power. What a country!

Labels: energy policy, infrastructure, nuclear issues

There is probably still not enough concern out there about the massive and deteriorating stocks of weapons in the former Eastern Bloc; the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries. For years, Senator Sam Nunn has been raising consciousness about loose nukes in those places. For the Clarion Content, those nuclear weapons are probably the single biggest risk to global political stability. Securing them must be a priority. However, Russians, Eastern Europeans and Americans alike also have to recognize the threat posed by stockpiles of conventional weapons in these states, too.

Theft and black market sales of such weapons were the main manner of supply of anti-imperial Chechen rebels. A massive series explosions at weapons depot, deep inside the former Soviet Union brought this threat back to the forefront of the conscious again this weekend. The Associated Press reported, huge explosions and fire ripped through a Russian military arsenal at a naval munitions facility in the Ulyanovsk province, killing two firefighters and prompting the evacuation of thousands of civilians nearby. The AP quoted locals saying the secondary explosions went on interminably, "There was a loud bang, then there was silence and then there were explosions, explosions, explosions, like fireworks on New Year's."

It is essential to world peace and security that the Russians keep tight control of their arms supplies. Read the whole story here.

Labels: nuclear issues, Politics

The BBC reports that a shipwreck (not pictured) potentially containing toxic waste is being investigated by Italian authorities amidst claims that it was deliberately sunk by the Mafia. The story caught the Clarion Content's eye because we have heard rumblings about the Mafia dumping chemical and nuclear waste in connection with East African piracy. This is a slightly different tale because according to the BBC the sunken ship was found 18 miles off of the southwestern coast of Italy.

Apparently, this is but the tip of the iceberg of what may have happened. The BBC says, "An informant from the Calabrian Mafia said the ship was one of a number he blew up as part of an illegal operation to bypass laws on toxic waste disposal." Italian officials said there may be as many as thirty other scuttled vessels.

Read the whole story here.

Labels: ecology, nuclear issues, pirates, Politics

The Clarion Content ran across an amazing story in the BBC News that we had never heard preciously. A fifty-one year old nuclear bomb dropped in shallow waters of the coast of Georgia remains missing. Somewhere near Savannah and Tybee Island there is a 7,500 lbs nuclear bomb buried. The United States government despite numerous attempts has never been able to find it. The Air Force now insists it is safest to leave it where it is, claiming according to the BBC, that it is incapable of a nuclear explosion because it lacks the vital plutonium trigger.

The Clarion Content once detailed for you the amazing story of the only nuclear bomb every dropped on the Continental United States, but we had never heard this one. Read the whole article, the details of the mid-air collision and the heroism of Colonel Howard Richardson, DFC, who insured the bomb did not crash to earth with his near crippled plane, here.

Labels: nuclear issues

Whether it was strictly a photo-op or something actually came of last month's meeting between President Obama and two former Secretaries of State, Republicans George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Democratic senator and defense wonk Sam Nunn, and William Perry, a former Secretary of Defense about the issue of the control and security of the world's existing supply of nuclear weapons, it was a Presidential bully pulpit moment and we were glad to see it happen. Even if all Obama is able to accomplish this early in his presidency is raising the volume on the subject, we are glad to see he is at least doing that. The Clarion Content believes loose nuclear weapons are probably the single greatest short-term threat to humanity.

Securing these existing nuclear weapons as tightly as possible is an extremely high priority, revitalizing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a far more specious and far less worthy goal.

Labels: media, nuclear issues

Ten days ago on his first trip to Europe as America's leader, President Obama gave a speech in Prague to a cheering crowd of more than 20,000 in the city's historic Hradcany Square. In this speech he took a line on nuclear weapons that the Clarion Content largely agrees with. He desperately needed to make this speech to lay out America's stance and mindset after the era of a Bush Doctrine that endorsed preemptive strikes. It was (is) essential that the United States communicate to its allies and enemies alike that if that policy is not fully repudiated, it is at least far from the way America thinks about nukes. Some of the most dangerous potential blowback scenarios created by the disastrous attack on Saddam's regime involve Iran and North Korea lashing out in fear of being preemptively struck first.

To children and policymakers of the 1980 preemptive strikes were the stuff of nightmares. We went to bed praying the Russians loved their children too, at least enough not to unilaterally first strike. President Obama leads America in a different era but as he noted in his speech, "the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. Today, the Cold War has disappeared, but thousands of those weapons have not." He continued making a point the Clarion Content heartily agrees with and has long espoused, "as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act."

After nearly a decade of ignorance and failure to focus on the real threats, President Obama is leading those actions. In his speech, Obama promised to negotiate a strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia by the end of the year that will significantly reduce the number of nuclear warheads. Earlier in his European trip in London, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to produce a new arms control treaty to replace the current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, (START II) that expires in December.

Read more here in the LA Times.

Labels: nuclear issues, Politics, technology, thought, war

Some links to things we have been following, reading on, or just happened across recently...



Custom Made Cop Cars
Read here about the E7 from Carbon Motors. The first custom made for the cops, cop car. No modified, retrofitted Crown Victorias, Tauruses or Impalas here, no Mustangs either, this baby has more in common with the recently revived Knight Rider car or the Batmobile. As the company's CEO says, "You would never send a pickup truck to go put out a fire. Why would you send a family sedan to go take care of a homeland-security issue?"

Bill Richardson facing objections
High profile Chinese-American activists are opposing President-elect Barack Obama's nomination of Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary. Richardson was famously involved during his tenure as Bill Clinton's Energy Secretary with the high profile spying case against Taiwanese-American Wen Ho Lee. Lee worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and was investigated for passing nuclear secrets to China. He always denied the charges, and although the man wouldn't let him off completely, obliging him to plead guilty to one felony count of downloading sensitive material, the presiding judge at his trial said 99 percent of what he was accused of passing was in the public domain. Richardson led what felt like a witch hunt at the time. He fired Lee and was the first to publicly name Lee as being under suspicion of espionage. Richardson has, "acknowledged the government made "some mistakes" in the Lee case," read more here in the San Jose Mercury News, incidentally a brilliant newspaper.

Get your surgery done in India
This one we saw in the New York Time's Health section a while back, talk about globalization. The health insurance company Wellpoint is trying out a pilot project at Serigraph, a huge printing company in Wisconsin. The program offers insured members the option of flying to India for elective surgery, with no out-of-pocket medical costs and free travel for both the patient and a plus one. Serigraph also has offices in India and the Times says, many of its employees are familiar with India. It quotes Dr. Razia Hashmi, chief medical officer for national accounts for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which is affiliated with Wellpoint, "Knee surgery that costs $70,000 to $80,000 in the United States can be performed in India for $8,000 to $10,000, including follow-up care and rehabilitation. The quality is comparable to care provided in the United States, Dr. Hashmi said. All the physicians speak English, and patients can share their medical records and consult with a surgeon in India before making the trip." Read the original article here.

Labels: economics, facing race, nuclear issues, Politics, technology

Mountain top coal mining (note the huge swath of
gray, dead area in the middle of otherwise green forest lands.)


One last chance to do something bad to the Earth or its inhabitants, and well you know the George the II is going to dive in head first. The lame duck and widely loathed Bush the II administration moved this week to destroy the environment any way it can before it leaves office.

Bush II officials are going to relax environmental-protection rules on power plants near national parks and on uranium mining near the Grand Canyon. Once again Bush-Cheney will put the interest of big energy companies ahead of our (collective) ecology. Once again, sustainability is pushed to the rear in a greedy rush for profits. This is only further underlined by the limited time the President has remaining in office and the near certainty that an Obama administration will reverse these rules. The evil Bush the II cares not that the rules will be reversed as soon as he leaves office. "Mine now!" "Degrade the environment as fast as you can," is his administration's mantra.

How long before he and Dick "Friend of Satan" Cheney are collecting fat fees for serving on the boards of multi-national energy companies? Weeks after leaving office? Days?

Bush the II also plans to make it easier to wreak environmental havoc in the Appalachians by removing limits on mountaintop-removal coal mining.

He is also moving to relax limits placed on development by the Endangered Species Act.

There is warm cell in hell waiting for this demon! The sooner he is inhabiting it, the better.

Uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, in addition to scarring one of America's most beautiful national landmarks, raises the risk of uranium leaching into the Colorado River, a source of drinking water and crop irrigation supply for several western states.

Mountain top removal coal mining devastates whole ecosystems. It has been called mountain top strip mining. The Bush the II administration wants to relax rules that prohibit mining companies from dumping mining waste over the top of streams, because ruining the top of the mountain isn't enough when you can kill that what lives in the valleys, too.

Special thanks to one of our Los Angeles area readers for being the first to bring this issue to the Clarion Content's attention.

Labels: ecology, energy policy, nuclear issues, Politics

While the eyes of many newswatchers are on one pirate captured ship, the Russian frigate Neustrashimy, a vessel that has been seized off of the coast of Somalia, that contains scads of small arms, munitions and up to 33 Ukranian tanks, destined for the government of Kenya, the Clarion's veteran pirate watchers have spotted something that appears far more diabolical.

Certainly, it is bad news to hear about the Russian flagged vessel that has been seized, and it is worse news to hear local warlords were doing everything they could to offload the small arms from the ship before it was surround by United States and Russian naval vessels. The Clarion's sources report that another act of piracy may have resulted in the capture of something far more dangerous. Read more here. The speculation raised about the cargo of this other pirate-seized ship ranges from nuclear waste to nerve gas and beyond. All that has been reported so far is that several of the pirates got sick, lost their hair and died within days of seizing this Iranian ship and busting open sealed containers in the cargo hold in an attempt to determine what their booty was. The ship has not been recaptured by authorities, nor have the pirates demands for ransom been met.

Labels: Africa, nuclear issues, pirates

Map close up here.


Not content with having strengthened the hand of the hardest of the hardliners in Iran, the Bush administration is intent on turning the only nuclear armed, Muslim majority county, Pakistan, into a virulent enemy of the United States.

To the crusaders and born-agains in the Bush administration this conflict is viewed as part of an inevitable continuum of struggle. Good vs. Evil is the code. They aren’t worried about being left behind, in their apocalyptic world view, nuclear conflagration will only wipe out sinners, Jews and other apostates. Thus, when an Israeli cabinet minister says an attack on Iran is inevitable, the Bush team is silent. When Obama says he might speak directly to the government of Iran, he is an appeaser (of Evil.)

Unfortunately, for those who don't support that view, the United States military has been active in Pakistan, and on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Much like Iraq, the Bush administration is attempting to win hearts and minds with bombs. Also much like Iraq, this conflict is embedded in nation vs. nation battles for control of borders delineated by Western mapmakers and the accompanying state coffers.

This week saw eleven Pakistani soldiers, ostensibly American allies, killed by United States bombing. The Bush team has gone with its standard response, deny, deny, deny. It wasn’t our fault. They fired first. They were working with insurgents in the area. Unfortunately, American credibility in the region is abysmal. So even when American military commanders and institutions are telling the truth, they are not believed. This is not in the least because the faux-supporters of democracy in the Bush regime, have actually supported and continue to support the rule of Pakistan dictator Perez Musharraf to the tune of billions of American taxpayer dollars against the will of the Pakistani people. Sadly, a leader who initially offered hope, Afghanistan’s Hamed Karzai is being stained with same taint of American stooge-dom, co-option and corruption.

(In this incident the facts and circumstances are unclear.)

Labels: Central Asia, nuclear issues, Politics

In a what we hope is the final follow up to a story the Clarion originally reported last summer, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has asked Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne to resign by the end of the day. The story which Fox News broke a few hours ago cited numerous issues and concerns SecDef Gates had with the Air Force leadership. The biggest individual incident was the accidental flight of live nuclear weapons over the continental United States last August. The Clarion was outraged at the time and is happy to see senior leadership's heads roll. Mosley had also been implicated in shady dealing surrounding Air Force contracts.

Labels: nuclear issues, Politics