Fukushima Friday

The Washington Post reports that nuclear fuel began melting at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi just five hours after the earthquake.

About 11 hours later, all of the uranium fuel in the facility’s unit 1 reactor had slumped to the bottom of its inner containment vessel, boring a hole through a thick steel lining, the University of Tokyo’s Naoto Sekimura told a committee of the National Academy of Sciences.

Here in the US the NRC concluded this fact early on and recommended American citizens evacuate to a 50 mile radius compared to the Japanese government recommended 12.5 mile zone.

The future of the site: Making nuclear lemonade?
One plan under consideration would be convert Fukushima Dai-Ichi into a nuclear waste storage site. This means permanently storing the nuclear waste at the site of the damaged reactors.

The Atomic Energy Society of Japan is studying the proposal, which would cost tens of billions of dollars, Muneo Morokuzu, a professor of energy and environmental public policy at the University of Tokyo, said in an interview yesterday. The society makes policy recommendations to the government.
“We are involved in intense talks on the cleanup of the Dai-Ichi plant and construction of nuclear waste storage facilities at the site is one option,” said Morokuzu.

Charting Bush’s deficit financed tax cuts

Here is an updated version of a CBPP(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) chart that was circulating a while back.

…simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule (or paying for any portions that policymakers decide to extend) would stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio for the next decade. While we’d have to do much more to keep the debt stable over the longer run, that would be a huge accomplishment.

But you know it’s just like a family budget. Yup, after a family member gives away a large portion of your income you tighten your belt, cut expenses but never reestablish the lost revenue source.

Is Vermont Auditor Tom Salmon channeling Alan Simpson?

Did Vermont’s frequently tongue tied state auditor Tom Salmon borrow and awkwardly Salmon-ize a “folksy” themed comment made last August by former Sen. Alan Simpson co-chair of the White House's Commission on Fiscal Reform?
Simpson said this regarding recipients of Social Security benefits: “We've reached a point now where it's like a milk cow with 310 million tits!”

This recent remark by Salmon appears to feed off of Simpson’s theme and original quip.

In a recent “Barre-Montpelier Times Argus” article, Salmon said the following about Governor Shumlin’s election to office in 2010, ‘“Peter Shumlin promised everything to everybody in the primary and he was ultimately elected because there are a large number of people who live off the government milk,” Salmon said. “They in some way, whether it’s a school district or nonprofit, they feed off the cow. And the cow is a Democratic cow. And, unfortunately, too many people are feeding off the Democratic cow to vote for Republicans at this point.”’

A pocket history of end of the World[ers]

I have no special plans tomorrow but at least it’s not supposed to rain.
I found a partial list herewith a sampling of 23 times the world was supposed to end but of course didn’t. Surprisingly four different dates are from the same group, The Millerites in the early 1800’s kept reworking or fine tuning the date and each time the end failed to happen. They ultimately disbanded many becoming Seventh Day Adventists.
In Russia 1900 one horribly aggressive group, The Brothers and Sisters of the Red Death believing the end was near had 100 members sacrifice themselves before authorities intervened.This group also forbid marriage but allowed intercourse if the sinners immediately suffocated themselves with a large red cushion.
Here is one more recent example that apparently had no serious consequences or did it?

OCTOBER 23, 1976—GEORGE KING
One day in 1954, taxi driver George King was drying dishes in his Maida Vale flat in London when he suddenly received a message from Mars that the world would end twenty-two years hence. Fortunately, King and his followers, organized as the Aetherius Society, were able to avert the catastrophe by concentrating 700 hours of prayer energy into a prayer book and releasing it in forty-eight minutes on the appointed day.

Monetizing Ted Kaczynski’s hoodie

August 2006 a Federal Judge ordered Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s personal belongings from his wilderness cabin auctioned off online in what he stipulated as "reasonably advertised Internet auction.” After years of challenges in court by lawyers for Kaczynski the online auction will be held this week.

There is his diploma from Harvard University, where he enrolled at 16, and his master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan. Unabomb44 shows a photo of a clean-cut Kaczynski standing proudly in a forest. Another snapshot captures Kaczynski with his father and brother, David, who later turned him in to the FBI.

But there are also the bow and arrows he used to hunt as he withdrew from society. There are axes and other tools he fashioned himself. Mostly there are papers — 20,000 pages of loose-leaf and notebooks filled with his slanting cursive that describe what he saw as a broken structure of power that Kaczynski took it upon himself to fix.

Between 1978 and 1995 Unabomber Kaczynski injured 23 and killed three people he was captured in 1996. Millions of dollars in court ordered victim restitution is owed by him and this week’s auction proceeds will go toward that debt after 10% for the auction house. No estimate of the value was offered but one US Marshal observed the ironic revenge aspect of the online auction: “We will use the technology that Kaczynski railed against in his various manifestos to sell artifacts of his life”.

Who buys this stuff? It is anticipated that the manuscripts (with all references to victims removed) might be purchased by museums or universities. Wonder if there isn’t a different way to fund compensation for victims of violent crime other than monetizing a madmen’s ephemeral as trophies and investments.

Starving in the Fukushima no-go zone

Several days ago the AP reported as if the all clear had been sounded, nuclear power could dust itself off and get back to work. Initial fears that erupted in the wake of the crisis, threatening to derail the nuclear renaissance of the last several years, have largely subsided.

Emergency. There's an emergency going on. It's still going on. ...

Meltdown TEPCO has been able to explore the damaged plant they discovered

…that No. 1's containment vessel has been leaking water and today discovered a sizeable hole they believe was created by fallen fuel pellets. The water leakage not only indicates that the clean up efforts will take longer than originally expected but also that the worst case scenario was already underway when TEPCO said it had been avoided.

In addition to everything else Japanese authorities are also dealing with what is left in the expansion of the 20 kilometer exclusion area to a zone of no entry. In scenes likely as eerie as a disaster movie, farm livestock and dogs left in the no-go zone have been filmed scavenging for food. Many animals died in their cages from starvation.

Farmers living inside the evacuation zone had no choice but to abandon their pigs, chickens, beef cattle and dairy cows when they were ordered out by the government.
Recent footage taken inside the no-go zone shows cows running in herds across empty roads and dogs left behind by their owners prowling for food.

The area is estimated to have about 3,400 cows, 31,500 pigs and 630,000 chickens. Of these officials guess 1,300 cows and 200 pigs remain alive. Officials have been killing livestock for health reasons and will start to cull the remaining animals.

Permanent War?

Thirty two House Democrats have signed a letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. to the House Armed Services Committee Chairman Republican Buck McKeon. They are protesting language in Detainee Security Act bill and asking for hearings. The language, Democrats say would amount to a permanent declaration of war against the Taliban, al Qaeda and associates.
The letter says in part:

"By declaring a global war against nameless individuals, organizations and nations 'associated' with the Taliban and al Qaeda, as well as those playing a supporting role in their efforts, the Detainee Security Act would appear to grant the president near unfettered authority to initiate military action around the world without further congressional approval," Democrats wrote. "Such authority must not be ceded to the president without careful deliberation from Congress."

The Democrats also expresses concern with provisions in the bill regarding conflicts between civilian and military terrorist prisoner trials.

The Detainee Security Act in effect requires that terrorism suspects be tried in military commissions, thereby cutting out Article III federal courts from conducting terrorism trials.

According to The Hill online Chairman McKeon is not expected to consider the Democrats requests and the bill will move forward.

Cheney on the dark side, if you will

Dick Cheney is worried and wants his waterboard back. "I'm still concerned that a lot of the techniques we used to keep the country safe for seven years have been taken off the table," Cheney said. "It's not clear to me today that we have an interrogation program that we could put a high-value terrorist through."

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, never one to miss an opportunity to lobby for the dark side* and suffering no moral qualms made an appearance on Fox News Sunday to support and promote torture or as he prefers “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Obama’s NSA advisor says these methods are "not consistent with our values, not consistent and not necessary in terms of getting the kind of intelligence that we need."

However Cheney claims waterboarding and harsh methods of interrogating played a role in capturing Osama bin Laden two years since Obama banned the use of waterboarding and tens years after 9/11.

Asked whether the methods should be reinstated if the United States were to capture a new value target, Cheney replied: "I certainly would advocate it. I'd be a strong supporter of it."

It’s not torture and beside Bush/Cheney claim they made it legal:
Cheney also dismissed the notion that waterboarding, or simulated drowning, amounted to torture, saying he and the rest of the Bush team had gone to great lengths to ensure what they did was legal.

* Sept. 16 2001 interviewed by NBC’s Tim Russert,
Cheney: We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective. (Emphasis in original.)

Entergy CEO’s report “By the way, we’re all gonna die,”

An Entergy spokesman explains CEO Wayne Leonard is a movie “buff”

Leonard “is a movie buff and often uses movies in his presentations to help deliver the message” during shareholder and earnings meetings

reports Politico.com.

Entergy’s 111 page Analyst Conference presentation is aided by images and quotes from The Hangover a recent drunken buddy comedy set in Las Vegas. CEO Leonard, the owner of Vermont Yankee thinks relevant quotes from The Hangover such as “By the way, we’re all gonna die,” found on the second page will help wow analysts. Other slides feature a discussion of how to pronounce “retard” and the question, “Would you please put some pants on? I feel weird having to ask you twice.”

In this same prepared Entergy presentation Republican Sen. Randy Brock who normally isn’t considered a Vermont Yankee foe has fell in with a crowd of incorrigible Vermont Yankee critics including Rep. Tony Klein, Peter Shumlin, Vermont Law School Prof Patrick Parenteau. All of them including Brock are quoted under the caption Why the hostility? Senator Brock’s offending utterance from November 2011 “Moe, Curly and Larry are more creditable then Entergy Louisiana in the [Vermont] Senate”

This past week even though he voted for a lengthy state senate bill which included giving Vermont the power to charge Entergy for the legal fees incurred as it fights Entergy’s VY lawsuit Sen. Randy Brock made some apologetic noises for the ears of Vermont Yankee crowd to hear. Brock said he doesn’t feel right about it.The provision makes the causer the entity that caused the suit liable for the costs. “It just appears to me to be somewhat vindictive,” Guess in spite of his vote he doesn’t want to appear hostile.