Earthquake rattles nuclear reactor

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!

More of the same

We saw another signal that Osama bin Laden's apparent assassination is not going to change much of anything this morning. Both ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today show, neither of which we watch frequently, went directly from stories about bin Laden's death to commercials featuring the chairman of Exxon Mobil.

Aren't those two on the same side, trying to bleed America to death?

Not what you want to hear

Storms raged across the American South last night leaving death and destruction in their wake. (Notice how no one jokes about 2012 and Mayans any more? We have been through a lot of late.) Reports indicate 170 souls lost their lives last night across several states.

And in a phrase that may sound all too eerily familiar from Japan, the storms knocked out power to three nuclear reactors, all located in Alabama and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Fortunately, unlike Japan, there was no damage to back-up systems. Diesel generators kicked in, cooling systems were maintained and core temperatures never moved. But don't let any of these nuclear power apologists tell you, "It could never happen here."

Bullsh*t. We are one unforeseen natural disaster away from sharing Japan's circumstances. America must move away from, not toward, nuclear energy.

Drill, Alaska? A reality check.

The U.S. Geological Survey issued a reality check to those who think that United States can get by without foreign oil. Mind you, those who think U.S. oil resources are/were sufficient are in a special minority of dreamers, right there with those who still think the Earth is the center of the universe and the tooth fairy is real.

Despite the fact that these folks aren't the sort to be swayed by facts or numbers, it cannot help their cause that the U.S. Geological Survey revised the amount of untapped oil reserves that it estimates are in Alaska and its waters down by 90% this week.

The Survey group's new estimate is 896 million barrels of oil are in the reserve, approximately 90% less than a 2002 estimate of 10.6 billion barrels. The good news natural gas reserve estimates were revised upward from 8 trillion cubic feet of gas to 61 trillion cubic feet gas.

Side note, the United States desperately needs more liquefied natural gas terminals. Imagine an America willing to invest in its infrastructure. Too bad, it is a dream, not a reality.

Clunker Bill clears the House

The United States House of Representatives passed a bill that would give consumers vouchers to turn in gas guzzling vehicles and buy new cars that are more fuel efficient. Clunkers eligible for the program must get 18 miles per gallon, or less, in combined city/highway mileage. There are $3,500 subsidies that can be used toward purchasing cars and vans that are more fuel efficient than the older clunkers by four miles per gallon. There is a bigger $4,500 subsidy that can be used toward purchasing vehicles that are more fuel efficient than the older car by 10 miles per gallon. However, cars that are older than 25 years are not eligible to be traded in for credit. The bill supported by President Obama faces an uphill battle to pass in the United States Senate.

Read more here at CNN Money.

Russians buying a car company

Putin and Schroeder share an awkward hug

The German government announced yesterday that it had picked a partnership led by Magna International Inc., a Canadian auto-parts supplier, Russia’s biggest bank, OAO Sberbank, and Russian carmaker OAO GAZ as the buyer for Opel, the European division of GM. This augurs ever closer ties between Russia and Germany, which in turns stokes the fears of every Eastern European living between the two states.

The last premier of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, was hired by Russian state gas export monopoly, Gazprom OAO, months after he left office in 2005 to spearhead the construction of the Nord Stream pipeline that will provide Russian gas to Germany (while circumventing Eastern Europe).

As the Polish opposition noted in a comment to Bloomberg news services, “Nothing’s ever purely economic with the Russians, there’s always political interest involved.” No doubt.

The Clarion Content finds the arguments in favor of Russian ownership specious. Firstly, there is no indication that the rule of law as yet reigns supreme in Russia. Nothing exists that would stop the Russian state from outright confiscation of the company and/or its assets. Secondly, as the Poles know well, Russia always has ulterior power projection motives in mind, take a look at their natural gas blackmail of the Ukraine! Which incidentally still simmers and could explode at any time, likely taking down the democratically elected government of the Ukraine with it. The Germans, always suckers for authoritarianism, probably secretly sympathize with the style and manner of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The laughable suggestion made by a German professor in the Bloomberg article that Russia is poised to become Europe's biggest car market ignores the reality of Russia's plummeting population decline and massive income inequality.

Fact is, if this is a legal acquisition, it is hard to oppose as a libertarian. The Clarion Content decried the ludicrous Senate maneuvering that blocked the Chinese state owned oil monopoly's purchase of Conoco, same for the jingoistic blocking of the sale of American ports to the state of Dubai. We do not actually oppose the Russians purchase of G.M.'s Opel. We just want to sound the horn of caution about what it says for erstwhile United States ally, Germany.

Mitch McConnell is a hateful human being

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican from Kentucky is a particularly disgusting and hateful human being. His malice and willingness to lie are unlimited. He is anti-American. The basis for this invective, well, study the man's career it is filled with dastardly misdeeds.

He is the sort who was opposed to health care for indigent children, but in favor of the continued use of land mines and cluster bombs. The sort who wanted to keep terminally ill patients alive against their will and torture untried non-combatants. He is at the level of vile-ness of a Dick Cheney.

His latest cause; supporting the continued use of inefficient and wasteful federal vehicles, while deriding the purchase of newer more energy efficient vehicles as pork. His methodology is the usual double speak and lies.

If the Republicans keep pushing people like this into limelight and leadership they are headed the way of the Whigs. How stupid do they think the American people are?

The President fortunately, hopefully will continue to call out this deceit wherever he sees it. Obama replied to McConnell's distorted critique offered Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation, today, in a speech at the Department of Energy,

"Critics of this plan ridiculed our notion that we should use part of the money to modernize the entire fleet of federal vehicles to take advantage of state of the art fuel efficiency. This is what they call pork. You know the truth. It will not only save the government significant money over time, it will not only create manufacturing jobs for folks who are making these cars, it will set a standard for private industry to match. When you hear these attacks deriding something of such obvious importance as this, you have to ask yourself -- are these folks serious? Is it any wonder that we haven't had a real energy policy in this country?"

What do you think the rest of the world is doing?

Another Bush II criminal

The Clarion Content has caught wind of another criminal in King George the II's administration, Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne.

Now you may be thinking of the nineteen former and current employees of the Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service that handled billions of dollars in oil royalties paid to the government. The Associated Press has reported (<---a shocking read) that these folks allegedly rigged contracts, accepted gifts and engaged in sexual relations with oil company employees in exchange for governmental favoritism. This criminality you may have already been aware of, but though it occurred on his watch, former Governor Kempthorne was not personally implicated.

The Clarion Content is referring to the recent stunning news that the Interior Secretary, Mr. Kempthorne, had a $235,000 bathroom built in his office, at taxpayers expense, after mid-2006 as the American economy was cratering and the federal deficit was exploding. The Secretary's sumptuous executive bathroom was furnished with a refrigerator and freezer hidden recessed behind lavish wood paneling, as well as a shower complete with monogrammed towels.

Guess it should come as no surprise that a guy who used to own a baseball team and hobnob with scumbag executive's like Enron's Chairman Kenneth Lay (who wiped out more than 5,000 jobs and $1 billion in employee retirement funds) has an Interior Secretary that is blowing $235 large on an executive bathroom while his employees are blowing big oil executives.

Go, Air New Zealand, go!

Air New Zealand made a successful two hour test flight yesterday with a Boeing 747 powered by a jatropha, a very hardy plant native to warm dry climes. This groundbreaking test was important for several reasons. Previous tests of airplane powering biofuel had been dismissed as publicity stunts because engines were fueled by products that could not be mass produced for the commercial aviation market. Other biofuels also carried the disadvantage of not being significantly more environmentally clean than conventional kerosene based jet fuels. The jatropha blend, on the other hand, produces 25% less of a carbon footprint than standard jet fuel according to Air New Zealand. Even better unlike many alternative fuels, jatropha is not a dietary staple, and therefore would not have the negative knock-on effects of fuels like ethanol, which has contributed to rising food prices across the globe.

Go, Air New Zealand, go, a bio fuel that is environmentally sound, not a food and can be mass produced, we love it. Air New Zealand hopes that by 2013, 10 percent of its flights will be powered, at least in part, by biofuels. The experimental flight was a joint venture by Air New Zealand, Boeing, engine maker Rolls Royce (yes, that Rolls Royce, formerly,) and biofuel specialist, UOP, a unit of Honeywell International. Read more here.

Waxman takes over

The Clarion Content has long considered Representative Henry Waxman the kind of self-aggrandizing, self-promoting, a-hole Congressperson that makes us loathe the institution. The guy never met a hearing or a publicity opportunity that he didn't like, and didn't attempt to exploit to the fullest. (steroids, tobacco, the NFL Network...) He has long been in bed with the trial lawyers and promoters of the exploitation of tort law and the lawsuit. Waxman first came to our notice when he sided with the wealthy homeowners in his district helping squash the expansion of the Los Angeles city subway system. His efforts were ground in ugly racial politics rooted in his constituents' fear that expanding the subway might allow minorities easier access to their neighborhoods.

But while Congressman Waxman has been an awful grandstander, he has been on the right side of several big issues in the last few decades. (He has served in Congress for 33 years.) He was on the right side of defending and expanding the Clean Air Act more than once. He was one of the first to press evil Vice-President Dick Cheney to name the names of those advising him privately on energy policy. Waxman was also behind the official condemnation of the Bush II administration for the prejudicing and politicization of governmental science it sponsored. Congressman Waxman also help lead the push for the expansion of the availability of cheap generic drugs in America.

He is in the news, and the Clarion Content is forced to celebrate his triumph as the lesser of two evils. In a rare break from the seniority rules method of selecting Congressional Committee Chairpersons, Congressman Waxman wrested the chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee from Michigan Representative John D. Dingell this week. Congressman Dingell, an a-hole of the first order, is literally married to a General Motors senior executive and former lobbyist, who is descended from the founding family of G.M. No surprise then, Dingell has been a total shill for the automakers for his whole career. He has on more than one occasion helped them fight off environmental regulation. He supported them strongly in their fight to stop gas mileage standards from being raised and to keep SUVs considered as trucks instead of cars. (Again, in an effort to ward off being forced to accept higher fuel efficiency standards.) He has also fought against demands that Detroit raise vehicle safety standards.

The Clarion Content is happy to see Dingell's head roll. He should retire. He has been in Congress far too long, like so many of these octogenarian power mongers. Dingell is as bad as any, having inherited his seat when his father died in office in 1955.

The Clarion's hope as that as the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Chairperson, Congressman Waxman, presses United States automakers to join the 21st century environmentally.

Auto industry bailout follow up

If you read the Clarion Content's screed earlier this week about the auto industry bailout then you will know where we stand. If you didn't, in brief, we are opposed to any further money heading to Detroit's big three automakers, absent it being expressly tied to conversion of their existing product line to hybrid, flex fuel or natural gas vehicles. At the suggestion of one of our local Durhamanian readers, we proposed that the federal government could offer Detroit a subsidy project of converting all the vehicles owned by the federal government to run as hybrids, or on flex fuel and/or natural gas.

This would have the knock-on benefits of vastly reduced oil consumption by the American government, as well as setting up Detroit to head this same direction with consumer vehicles posthaste.

In a New York Times Op-Ed piece contributor Robert Goodman hearkens back to the brilliant Stuart Udall, Kennedy's Interior Secretary and a visionary ecological thinker. Udall, ahead of his time, pressed for the federal government to invest in high speed trains and other forms of public transit. The Clarion Content certainly considers this a far more worthy way to go with the federal bailout money than to hand it over to a backward thinking Detroit that has spent the last twenty years pushing SUVs and pick-up trucks on the American consumer, while fighting tooth and nail against raising gas mileage standards.

One last chance to screw the Earth

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.

87 cents a gallon?!?

That's right folks, that is what they are paying to fuel up on natural gas in Utah.

Read more about it here, in the NY Times.

Utah is the first state to have large consumer surge in natural gas driving, though Oklahoma is experiencing something of one, too, and large has to be qualified because even by the highest estimates there are 20,000 natural gas vehicles on the road out of 2.7 million vehicles registered in Utah.

Still there are signs of significance, perhaps even a local tipping point, there is substantial backlog on orders for the Honda Civic GX, the only car powered by natural gas made by a major automaker in the America. People are paying to convert their SUVs to run on natural gas. There is a gray market for conversion.

Interesting.

Paris Hilton is running for President

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Guerilla Signage

GB II says, "Don't worry."

George Bush the II says (we're paraphrasing here) "Rich people are doing fine so why should you worry." This would be the briefest summary the Clarion could offer of the President's weekly radio address to the country today.

More highlights include...(again paraphrasing,) "If you and Congress will just agree to let the oil companies do what they will to America's beaches and coastal preserves, I can guarantee you we will have at least an extra two years' worth of oil on hand, and the price of gas won't go down at all."

He continued...(again paraphrasing,) "Meanwhile former Goldman Sachs investment banker and extraordinarily rich guy, Hank Paulson, I like to call him Hankie; Hankie and I have figured out a way to bail out the rich guys who have made so much money off of the government's implicit guarantee of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now this probably won't make wit of difference to the hard working, middle class Americans who pay the bulk of this country's taxes, but at least our fat cat, insider friends will be insured they won't lose their custom made shirts, yachts, or villas in the Caymans."

He concluded, "Thank you for listening." And the sound of retching echoed across this great land.

Read the full transcript here.

The Lie we don't believe any more

The Clarion has heard from many continued supporters of the invasion of Iraq.

"It didn't matter that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction."

"It didn't matter that Iraq didn't have ballistic missiles with the range to reach North America."

"It didn't matter that (this time) Iraq had not attacked any of its sovereign neighbors."

"It didn't matter that the United Nations didn't support the invasion."

"It didn't matter than many of America's allies from the first Gulf War, didn't support the invasion."

"It didn't matter that Iraq was in no way connected with the attacks of September 11, 2001."

"It didn't matter that Iraq was not allied with Al-Qeda."

"It didn't matter Iraq was not harboring any Al-Qeda operatives."

Why didn't it matter? What is the rationale? (ex post facto, of course.)

"Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. The man was unfairly imprisoning, torturing, mass murdering his own people. Such evil had to go. It was America's duty and right, alone, if necessary."

Where are these supporters of the Iraq invasion today? Why are they not clamoring for an American invasion of Zimbabwe? Robert Mugabe is an evil dictator. He is imprisoning, toruring and mass murdering his own people in an effort to maintain his personal power. His exploitation of the country has been without limits, almost without parallel, this side of Kim Jong-il.

Where is the outrage? Where is hue and cry for the imminent invasion of Zimbabwe on behalf of its suffering people? Does the color of the skin of most of Zimbabwe's citizens somehow make them less valuable to America? Is it their country's lack of fossil fuels? Pre-Mugabe, Zimbabwe was once the "Breadbasket of Africa."

Why is it less valued?

King George?

Viceroy Cheney?

Senator Lieberman?

Senator McCain?

Senator Obama? (Who opposing the Iraq invasion, from the beginning, has an opportunity to weigh in differently...)

The Clarion's view, on both Iraq and Zimbabwe, war is admission of failure. Victory is peace.

Oil Drilling

Our friends Duck & Cover are all over it again...

The Clarion was disappointed to read about a flip-flop on offshore drilling from a Democrat we respect, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia. Webb, a former Marine, and Secretary of the Navy, is being touted as a possible Obama running mate. But when we looked into it further, we found that Webb had not reversed course on offshore oil drilling. He had, rather, advocated drilling for natural gas be allowed 50 miles offshore. Natural gas is a better option than oil for a panoply of reasons.



Read Duck and Cover
at the Blue Pyramid.