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Local Notes
My Nuke
I’m by no means an expert on nuclear power plants and their safety. But I
live about 9 miles from one. From my third floor you can see the lights
and roof of the containment dome. So if this one melts, I ‘m toast. If
it blows up, I probably won’t hear the noise….
Doesn’t phase me a bit. My number is much more likely to come up from something other than a nuke.
I am bothered by the sirens. They test them every couple of
months. All the dogs go crazy for 10 minutes. The birds just leave. Most
kids under 5 start crying. It’s a noise you can’t escape. Other than
the sirens there have been some plans to evacuate folks like me. The
local joke is this sign:
When Indian Point blows up we’re supposed to go to this location and
wait for a bus. Like some poor bus driver will really show up when the
radiation is falling. It’s not a joke, but it is a joke.
Indian Point is 24 miles north of NYC, right at sea level on the Hudson
River. It was built in 1962. The original reactor has been
decommissioned. In 1974 IP 2&3 were brought on line. The
water-cooled reactors are pushing 40 years old. Indian Point is one mile
from a fault-line. The facility was designed to withstand an earthquake
of 6.1 (5.1 is estimated to be the highest).
You tell me. What’s so different between Indian Point and those in Japan that are now melting down?
A coalition of people have been trying to shut IP down for as long as I
can remember. In 2008 I thought it would happen. Governor Elliot Spitzer
and the County Exec, Andy Spano, publicly promised that the operating
license for IP would not be renewed. But Spitzer got caught with his
pants down and Spano got cremated in an election. So nothing happened
with IP. Some recent developments:
•
On January 7, 2010, NRC inspectors reported that an estimated 600,000
gallons of mildly radioactive steam was intentionally vented after an
automatic shutdown of Unit 2. The levels of tritium in the steam were
below those allowable by NRC safety standards.•
On November 7, 2010, an explosion occurred in the main transformer for
Indian Point 2. The accident is still being investigated.
My bet? Indian Point will be closed in less than a year.
One thing about this? IP (when it's running) provides 30% of
Westchester/NYC power needs. Electric rates have nowhere to go but up. Big time.
Potholes
I was driving around this weekend. Unbelievable how bad the roads are.
I’ve not seen them like this before. The tough winter is the culprit.
The potholes are just exploding now that it is warm and wet.
I was cruising on the elevated section of the Bruckner Expressway. This
road alternates between being a parking lot and a racetrack, depending
on traffic. I was travelling at 60 doing my best to dodge potholes when I
fell into a big one. Sidewall blowout. And I’m on a four-lane highway
in the South Bronx, wearing a suit. So I swerve off the road and join
the other losers who have busted tires.
In my stupid car you can’t replace one tire. Apparently the slightly
different road-wear eats up the transmission. So I just got two new
tires. Big bucks. I checked with my guy. The same tires are up 30% in
price in just the past year. They are going up 3-5 % a month of late:
Yokahama Tire ^ 8% 4/1/2011
Michelin ^ 12% 3/1/2011
Hanook ^ 9% 3/5/2011
Cooper ^ 12% 2/6/2011
Bridgestone ^ 12% 3/1/2011
We’re going to get it both ways on this. In the years to
come our roads will be deteriorating. Every budget, from the smallest
town to the Federal government, will be cutting back on maintenance. We
will blow out more tires as a result. The price of those tires is rising
about 15 times faster than the CPI. But actually this will not show up
in the CPI that Bernanke is looking at. The end result will be that we
will all be a bit poorer. And we will continue to follow a misguided
monetary policy. We can’t eat an IPod. And it won’t work as a spare.
»
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You tell me. What’s so different between Indian Point and those in Japan that are now melting down?
Well for one thing it may have a passive water cooling system (as opposed to one powered by electric pumps - like the damaged reactors in Japan). In the event of an electrical failure there should be a greater chance of keeping the fuel cool as that system more or less runs itself.
what a great page this is! bruce, yer mo is gonna withhold the snickerdoodles from you for missing this: the reason for the potholes is: PIRATES!!! yesundeedee! PIRATES, dammit, janet!!!
a roadbed in the NE US needs about 3 feet of proper subsurface engineering to withstand the expando-contracto of the freeze-thaw crapitola correctly. between/among the goobermints, the transportation authorities, the contractors, the unions, the mafia, the jewish mafia, and the irish mob, about one foot of the road beds get "pocketed" during construction.
obviously, in france, they over-design the roads by one-third, allowing 4/3 of a roadbed. when the french steal the required "vig" the roadbed is still built to withstand the winter. this, however, is "bad" for these bidnesses b/c they do NOT get to re-build the whole fuking road every fuking year at public fuking expense!!! there is nothing funnier than watching the whole fuking mass turnpike nearly shut down completely every spring and summer so they can do this, again. rinse, repeat.
my gf's dad, may he RIP, was a highly esteemed state road engineer. they had the nicest house in town, and when he died, the hiway thru the town was re-dedicated with his name. irish, too!
now, who built that nuculer plant??? huh? of course, no one skimmed the cement outa the concrete, and of all the inspectors who tested the concrete as it cured, rest assured that not ONE was "on the take".
the potholes are the Intended Consequences of "bidness as usual".
Hi BigDuke! you said it pretty well yerself, there, 6: ours is not to question why; ours is but to do, or die! you missed a heluva big wave in the pacific last week! it may break 30 ways in 30 daze!
i don't think we're gonna get dosed too bad if the stuff doesn't get into the jet stream. the surface winds, for the time being, seem to be due from the N to NNE and are driving the low-atmosphere stuff tokyo-way, it seems.
the jet stream is way up there, 5 mi or so, i think zeroH had something like that up, earlier. still, it will come via that stream of fluidity, but we may get lucky and not get a big dose.YouTube - Byrds - Eight Miles High (RARE 1967 clip)
no one has said much about the japan current: {paste}
Japan CurrentJapan Current or Kuroshio (koor?sh?'?) [key][Jap.,=black stream], warm ocean current of the Pacific Ocean, off E Asia. A northward flowing branch of the North Equatorial Current, it runs E of Taiwan and Japan; the Tsushima Current separates from the main current and flows into the Sea of Japan. At about lat. 35°N it divides to form an eastern branch flowing nearly to the Hawaiian Islands and a northern branch that skirts the coast of Asia and merges with the waters of the cold Oyashio Current to form the North Pacific Current. Dense fogs develop along the boundary between the Japan and Oyashio currents. Air moving over the warm Japan Current becomes more temperate and acts to moderate the climate of Taiwan and Japan. Read more: Japan Current — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0825982.html#ixzz1GfXdxfJS
these currents involve truly enormous volumes of water travelling right along, too! these currents will directly enter all the fisheries from alaska to baja along the pacific coast, and then some.
in the local Spaceway, this week, Gulf Shrimp are just as cheap as the farmed stuff from asia, and bigger, too!
Yep, thinking of the weekend already... gonna hunker in the bunker with the high grade home grown atmosphere away from those toxic smokes coming our way from nippon.
maybe talk 2 u then and things could get really nuclear wasted.. ;)
Slewie the chief has said it all, i thought in my pi-eyed state that the thread was aboot nukes not potholes...
remember before u complain the biggest potholes are made by nukes.
Good on ya slewie
i dont see your point.
you want a big population/economy ever growing bullshit then thats thirsty on energy.
its oil,coal or nuclear. no choice.
so stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.
and get some freedom fires down your neck, 'if the nuclear boys say its safe to surf this beach, then its safe to surf this toxic beach!'
Welcome back to reality!
Here in Cambodia that's the way it is.
You always think twice before you drive.
I am a Barefooted_Tramp.
If 911 was a real terrorist event carried out by real terrorists, i.e., the garden variety found around the world that likes to blow up people and infrastructure (how many terrorist events have they used airplanes to fly into buildings?), they would have picked Indian Point. Because any nuclear accident or incident involving Indian Point could literally wipe out the entire U.S. eastern seaboard.
Now, something to consider and maybe as a warning:
If they are going to do another 911 false flag event to help Americans "rally around the flag" as it were while the U.S.S. Economy sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, they may consider doing such a terrible thing.
I am certain that that would go over like a lead zepellin. We're on to their game already and they know it.
They've booked themselves right into the box and will come out either squealing like canaries or in a pine box.
Bruce, you should buy some Road Hazard Protection with your new tires! (Available from a lot of tire makers, but not all.)
Well, move.
Street. Legal. Dirtbike.
POT HOLES = job security for the Public Union people, and they are like ASSHOLES, they are everywhere......
used to live on a ranch in nowhere Tx. lots of little counties. Tell you what to do: you and the boys get together and get yourselves elected on the county board, majority of seats. Immediately after taxes come in, take all of the budget and do a bang up full fledge job on the roads - just make them totally right. Then quit. Not joking. Had 2 places in counties next to each other. 1st county roads were horrid. The other roads were excellent. I asked a local in the good road county how they did it -- he told me that's what they did.
And you belived him? Or, are you makin' that shit up?
When a small farm along the river was divided up and sold in lots of 5 and 10 acres, my brother-in-law bought one, got a modest loan, put in sweat equity. When it came time to build a decent two lane road through the new area, he and his neighbors somehow got a grader, a tamper, and an asphalt spreader. Don't remember who owned the equipment or how they got it legally, but they poured asphalt, raked it, through every weekend one summer. I visited recently; the road is as smooth as glass.
If I showed him this whining about potholes, he'd think "new york, finance, dumb f*ck" and fall out of his chair laughing.
Sounds nice. Doesn't help much on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway...
Just reminds me of that one Seinfeld episode where Kramer owns a part of the highway.
Bruce, you haven't seen nothin' yet. Wait til half of south Yonkers comes knocking on your door, pissed that their welfare checks have stopped and they couldn't afford to buy food even if they had them. They just cut the food stamp allowance in Weschester, the first of many i'm sure. Potholes? you'll look back on that day with a nostalgic tear in your eye when you're trying to figure out how to get to the city without being killed...
Prof. Callenbach spoke about this in 2007. Well, it was a fascinating lecture about the future of the United States.
But they don't kill you. It is more likely that you will be taken as a hostage, if you have some wealth. If not, you might be killed or robbed, yes. Women and girls will need to protect themselves, because there will also be a lot of rapists.
So how long until we get a major Federal "Roads to Repair" initiative? Sounds like a good way to expand the deficit and provide some jobs. Book it.
People get together,anyone who cares about basic problem of our existance FED invited to vote in our poll and read out latest comments on yahoo FED article about QE3:
http://trendybull777.blog.com/2011/02/21/hello-world/
Voting poll is waiting for you click,take 5sec to make your choice,we must to reach critical level to be recognised by others to tove too!Thank you and keep all us together regardless government effords,we appreciate if you link us to other polls,blogs,sites to let people or your friiends to vote FED existence
Yeah, but look at all the money you save by assuming a little more risk in where you live and commute.
don't worry, privatized roadways soon.. with auto toll debit devices built in.
Potholes will stay though...
Japan and elsewhere you have nuclear plants to worry. Well, a nuclear plant will not survive an earthquake, but you actually don't get poisoned until an earthquake takes place.
Here in Malaysia, we are going to get poisoned daily by the opening of world's biggest rare-earth metal refinery to be built by Lynas of Australia, its opening soon but the locals are protesting and asking why rare-earth rocks dug out in western australia are being refined in thrid world Malayisa? Lynas says it's cheaper to do it in Malaysia even after paying for the transport two-ways, but they don't say that the aussie government would not grant them the environmental permits and that the plant will only hire 200 people. They also sais the posionous by-products would be stored safely (in Malaysia of course) is really much safer than the last one in Perak/Malaysia which poisoned vast stretches of perfectly fertile farmland (now still being rehabilitated by Mitsubish, the operator of the contaminated plant - they even uilt a golf course on fringes but no one would play there, not even japanese).
You see, those greenies who advocate environmentally safe solar and wind power, they don't tell you that the processing of the rare earth elements needed to make you solar panels and electronic drives for wind turbines will posion people and land wherever they are refined. They are quite happy to let some thrid world countries do the dirty jobs which posion people living around the refineries and farmland on which they depend for their livelihood.
Great info. Thanks. You should write about this.
bkrasting@gmail.com
Hey Bruce, next time you're on your third floor veranda, and you look in the direction of the Indian Point containment dome you may want to ask yourself if it's a good idea to research their safety record, or you can stay in denial.
http://www.ipsecinfo.org/1952.htm
Look at the schedule. I moved to the area in September 1980. I was having a child and moved to the burbs. A month later there was a leak. The first of many panic attacks over this disaster. No question in my mind, if this nuke were in Japan it would have been closed twenty years ago. As you point out the safety problems have been non stop.
Not in denial. A fatalist maybe. No veranda in that attic...
The future is fast approaching where the need to commute is diminishing.
Particularly with video conferencing evolving into mainstream, most need not worry about that 1-2 hour drive each way to fog a mirror in a particular building. Video calls completely change the communication dynamics of calls, in a good way.
Vehicle travel is among the biggest wastes of energy there is, millions of cars idling on freeways. Even timing traffic signals around traffic patterns would go a long way but none as much as removing the human from the accelerator.
Potholes are just the beginning of the itch for more efficient travel/public transit,etc.
An automobile is a luxury most forget. Try being a single mom and not having enough spare savings to procure one tire in a month without shortage repercussions elsewhere in their lives. The reality is this type of individual is increasing exponentially compared to those who's cars are so stylin' that treads only come in pairs (which I believe is absolutely over-engineered bullshit).
Best car I've owned is my wife's 1997 BMW 328is. I spin all the wrenches on it, and believe me, something changed in the euro-trash lines right afterword where I won't touch another. Last thing to go out was a reclining seat gear - $40 and 4 beers.
I do miss my old 1973 Ford F250 though... it would be pricing fuel around $100/week in the current oil racket.
+1, but plenty of BMW owners tell different stories about their reliability. Agree that German accountants started taking over their automakers in the late 90's, but I wouldn't turn down a new M3.
might I suggest a Range Rover and a radiation suit....
All at the same time demand goes higher from electric/hybrid cars. Reading that nationwide sales of hybrids are what's keeping the automakers in the game - up 40+% YOY.
I also think this is one of the many arguments for NG especially.
Once was to be My Nuke.
About 1200 jobs evaporated when the construction of this facility was suspended.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellefonte_Nuclear_Generating_Station
"On September 22, 2005 it was announced that Bellefonte was also selected as the site for one or two AP1000 pressurized water reactors to be called Units 3 and 4. TVA filed the necessary applications in November 2007 to begin the design and construction process. For details, see Nuclear Power 2010 Program.
In August 2009, the Tennessee Valley Authority, faced with "falling electric sales and rising costs from cleaning up a massive coal ash spill in Tennessee", trimmed plans for the potential four-unit Bellefonte nuclear plant to one reactor."
TVA cannot even manage to safely handle coal ash, which contains high levels of uranium and thorium.
Interesting to note that the AP1000 reactor design could not have an issue as is now taking place in Japan. The pressurized water is designed to circulate by convection, no pumps, so no loss of power or failure of water pumps would cause an emergency.
Bruce,
Would say the difference between the IP reactor and the ones in Japan is about 8.9 on the Richter scale. Yes, New York experiences earthquakes but they are tiny in comparison. Could that change? Maybe when we see a volcano erupt in the Adirondacks ...
Not to deny your actual proximity, but nine miles is far from where I'm sitting. I'm already paying more in electric bills than I thought possible, so when IP goes (gently into the night I hope), I will be waxing my own candles and riding a bicycle generator a la Gilligan's Island in order to post my underwhelming retorts.
At any rate, no worries since the BLS will be applying hedonics to the next radiation leak, whereby more is less ...
I think the Japanese nukes were rated for an 8.0. They got 9.0.
IP is rated 6.1. Are you saying the odds of a 7.1 are zero?
Anyway, this beast is 30 miles from mid-town. It's one in a million that something goes wrong. But there a million things that can go wrong....Dumb odds with 10mm nearby.
No, odds should never be zero, but I would still say very small for seismic activity sufficient to cause an accident. But look at the pacific plate. In geological time all but simultaneous : Indo. Chile. New Zealand. Now Japan. I would say Cali is poised precipitously and they have reactors near active faults. That is a great concern.
Homer Simpson and Murphy's Law combined with evacuation plans which are simply in denial are what really worry me. And not necessarily a full blown core melt, but those occasional releases of radioactive steam as well.
Distance wise, this would be my own "three mile" island. Extra gas, a functioning chain saw, all wheel drive and ample stocks of lead are part of my attempt at coming to grips with a bad outcome in a fat tail. Maybe I'm kidding myself. Living in VT would be smarter on that account.
The towers coming down in Manhattan are vividly etched in my mind, so never say zero. Zero does not exist.
Yes, that the IP plant was built in the first place is disturbing. And I read that the Japanese reactors (or one of them) was rated for 7.6, which is light years behind the actual 9.0 which is now the agreed upon number. The entire country moved 4 meters.
That pothole is the shape of Kentucky, and nearly as big. And it is just like a Tennessean to fish in the road.
bruce, you have a great seat, and hat tip.
i ran into a small pothole going up the pass one day. i called Cdot, and told them i wanted them to pay for my tire, cause it should of been filled. he told me they only pay up, if that particular pothole had previously been reported. mine hadn't been reported. plus i was up at 10,000 feet. by myself. so i take pothole avoidance very very seriously. you should see what they can do to bicycle tires. blow out†
hope those damn sirens stop for you buddy, they are worst then train whistles.
I thought the saying was
"You don't know shit from Shinola"
As in the old shoe polish brand "Shineola"
My dad...being the hater of all things realating to big business or corporations just shortened this phrase down to- "Son...you don't know shit from shoe-polish" (Probably because he didn't like mentioning a companies name - maybe he thought it was free advertising or something?) hahaha
Anyway, I don't mean to nit-pick at you like some middle-aged woman...but it just caught my attention.
(I know...this statement is truly worthy of being "junked"...so have at it)
Blowing tires is good for the economy as per Keynsianism, get it they Want you to blow them higher GDP and more low skilled jobs for the Mexicans
sorta' like the updated version of the "broken window" theory! BRILLIANT! </sarc> - Ned
We need to consult best practices for our infrastructure. I suggest we consult with countries in a similar economic situation to our own who have the same infrastructure problems. How do they manage their infrastructure on a small budget? I'm thinking Honduras, Guatamala, Surinam, maybe Paraguay. If necessary we could look further afield--maybe look at Botswana or Cote d'Ivoire, for example.
In the near future tires wont be made of rubber but polyurethane .
http://www.amerityre.com/index.cfm?action=technology
http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/tires-of-the-future
AS for potholes ,police,roads, education, sewer service,bridge repair etc you can forget about it .Medicare and SS will take all of that money shortly . World Peace is the only thing that can save us .
Nice fishin' hole. I'm no nuclear expert either "but when the US Navy shows up in a day" you know "this is super important place" and "this is the Big One" to boot. Lot of other markers that say "meltdown" of course but the only question is as always "why do we have to wade through the lies in order to invest a stinkin' penny." What possible reason is their to fear "the truth" since it is so God-awful and obvious? More to the point "what is wrong with God" period? He's giving us "the excuse" of telling the truth no less! But of course "I must read the Wall Street Journal to tell me these are mere acts of nature." Oh, just "mere" acts of nature and not of man at all. OF COURSE! How "non-believing" of me!
marry me you brute. (disabledvet)
Maybe that rumoured "earthquake machine" was used to put the Volt's primary competitors out of business.
Could it be that France gets something like 70% of its' energy from nuclear power (catastrophe free) and having met such energy concerns more attention can be paid to infrastructure?