Environment
BANGKOK, Thailand -- A $49 million U.S. government effort begins on Thursday (August 9) to cleanse deadly Agent Orange herbicide from a former air base in Danang, central Vietnam, where Americans stored, loaded and washed chemical weapons while spraying the country during the Vietnam War.
"I am going to Danang for a historic opportunity," said Charles R. Bailey, director of the Washington-based Aspen Institute's Agent Orange in Vietnam Program.
"It's a ground-breaking, between the governments of the U.S. and Vietnam, for a project which will clean up all the dioxin at the [Danang] airport remaining from the use of Agent Orange," Mr. Bailey said in an interview on July 31 during a Bangkok stopover.
He will attend Thursday's launch in Danang of the project headed by Vietnam's Defense Ministry and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
"At Danang, there are some 70,000 cubic meters (2,472,027 cubic feet) of contaminated soil that, over the next three years, will be cleaned up," Mr. Bailey said.
That amount of dirt is almost twice the size of the Washington Monument, he said.
"I am going to Danang for a historic opportunity," said Charles R. Bailey, director of the Washington-based Aspen Institute's Agent Orange in Vietnam Program.
"It's a ground-breaking, between the governments of the U.S. and Vietnam, for a project which will clean up all the dioxin at the [Danang] airport remaining from the use of Agent Orange," Mr. Bailey said in an interview on July 31 during a Bangkok stopover.
He will attend Thursday's launch in Danang of the project headed by Vietnam's Defense Ministry and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
"At Danang, there are some 70,000 cubic meters (2,472,027 cubic feet) of contaminated soil that, over the next three years, will be cleaned up," Mr. Bailey said.
That amount of dirt is almost twice the size of the Washington Monument, he said.
Our lives still hang by a Devil’s thread at Fukushima.
The molten cores at Units 1, 2 & 3 have threatened all life on Earth. The flood of liquid radiation has poisoned the Pacific. Fukushima’s cesium and other airborne emissions have already dwarfed Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and all nuclear explosions including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Children throughout Japan carry radioactive burdens in their thyroids and throughout their bodies. Hot spots in Tokyo demand evacuation. Radioactive tuna has been caught off San Diego. Fallout carried across the Pacific may have caused spikes in cancer and infant mortality rates here in the United States.
And yet, 16 months later, the worst may be yet to come. No matter where we are on this planet, our lives are still threatened every day by a Unit 4 fuel pool left hanging 100 feet in the air. At any moment, an earthquake we all know is coming could send that pool crashing to the ground.
The molten cores at Units 1, 2 & 3 have threatened all life on Earth. The flood of liquid radiation has poisoned the Pacific. Fukushima’s cesium and other airborne emissions have already dwarfed Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and all nuclear explosions including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Children throughout Japan carry radioactive burdens in their thyroids and throughout their bodies. Hot spots in Tokyo demand evacuation. Radioactive tuna has been caught off San Diego. Fallout carried across the Pacific may have caused spikes in cancer and infant mortality rates here in the United States.
And yet, 16 months later, the worst may be yet to come. No matter where we are on this planet, our lives are still threatened every day by a Unit 4 fuel pool left hanging 100 feet in the air. At any moment, an earthquake we all know is coming could send that pool crashing to the ground.
Our electric from American Electric Power came back on Thursday (July 5th) about 8 p.m. So we and our neighbors were about six days without power. We have been learned from the media that hundreds of thousands of households in AEP’s region of responsibility were without power following the big storm. The power outage coincided with a record-breaking heat wave that covered the mid-west.
Needless to say, we felt great relief when the air-conditioners and lights came back on. This catastrophic event, alas, is not the last of such severe weather events.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies monitors global surface temperatures on a continuing basis. In a report made available in January of this year, Goddard Institute scientists found that the year 2011 was the ninth hottest year on record, that is, since 1880. Nine of the ten hottest years have occurred since the year 2000. According to an article by Douglas Main for the Christian Science Monitor (July 3), "the first five months of 2012 have been the hottest on record in the contiguous United States." Temperatures in June and July are surely going to buttress this warming trend.
Needless to say, we felt great relief when the air-conditioners and lights came back on. This catastrophic event, alas, is not the last of such severe weather events.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies monitors global surface temperatures on a continuing basis. In a report made available in January of this year, Goddard Institute scientists found that the year 2011 was the ninth hottest year on record, that is, since 1880. Nine of the ten hottest years have occurred since the year 2000. According to an article by Douglas Main for the Christian Science Monitor (July 3), "the first five months of 2012 have been the hottest on record in the contiguous United States." Temperatures in June and July are surely going to buttress this warming trend.
The Department of Energy wants to give the Southern Company a nuclear power loan guarantee at better interest rates than you can get on a student loan. And unlike a home mortgage, there may be no down payment.
Why?
The terms DOE is offering the builders of the Vogtle atomic reactors have only become partially public through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
We still may not know all the details.
SACE has challenged the $8.33 billion loan guarantee package announced by President Obama in 2010.
The documents show the DOE has intended to charge the Southern a credit subsidy fee of one to 1.5%, far below the rates you would be required to pay for buying a house or financing an education.
Why?
The terms DOE is offering the builders of the Vogtle atomic reactors have only become partially public through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
We still may not know all the details.
SACE has challenged the $8.33 billion loan guarantee package announced by President Obama in 2010.
The documents show the DOE has intended to charge the Southern a credit subsidy fee of one to 1.5%, far below the rates you would be required to pay for buying a house or financing an education.
Sierra Club No Nukes Summit
The Sierra Club No Nukes Summit was held May 4-7 in Washington, DC. Four members of our committee joined 80 other activists from 19 states and Canada. On Friday and Saturday we heard keynote speakers; Sunday was strategic planning; Monday we met with Sierra staff at the Club’s downtown office and activists visited legislative offices. Ohioans met with Jonathan McCracken and Ben Cohen at Sherrod Brown’s office.
In our strategic work, separate groups outlined outcomes for 1) stopping new reactors; 2) phasing out and shutting down old reactors; 3) ending “front end” nuclear processes including uranium mining and enrichment while promoting cleanup of toxic mining sites and enrichment sites; and 4) ending a legacy of irresponsible handling and disposal practices for low level nuclear waste and opposing consolidated storage of high level irradiated spent nuclear fuel.
The national No Nukes Team is currently in the process of forming 4 Working Groups, each dealing with one of the 4 strategic areas, with the goal of launching our Nuclear Free Campaign in the near future.
The Sierra Club No Nukes Summit was held May 4-7 in Washington, DC. Four members of our committee joined 80 other activists from 19 states and Canada. On Friday and Saturday we heard keynote speakers; Sunday was strategic planning; Monday we met with Sierra staff at the Club’s downtown office and activists visited legislative offices. Ohioans met with Jonathan McCracken and Ben Cohen at Sherrod Brown’s office.
In our strategic work, separate groups outlined outcomes for 1) stopping new reactors; 2) phasing out and shutting down old reactors; 3) ending “front end” nuclear processes including uranium mining and enrichment while promoting cleanup of toxic mining sites and enrichment sites; and 4) ending a legacy of irresponsible handling and disposal practices for low level nuclear waste and opposing consolidated storage of high level irradiated spent nuclear fuel.
The national No Nukes Team is currently in the process of forming 4 Working Groups, each dealing with one of the 4 strategic areas, with the goal of launching our Nuclear Free Campaign in the near future.
Japanese officials have failed to justify why it took them over a month to disclose large-scale releases of radioactive material in mid-March at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
A special government tool had been producing critical maps, and other data, hourly since the first hours after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, some of the maps clearly showed a plume of nuclear contamination extending to the northwest of the plant, beyond the areas that were initially evacuated.
Japan’s nuclear safety agency and the science ministry had data on the spread of radioactive materials that could have prevented unnecessary radiation exposure, but decided to sit on it instead of reporting it to the crisis management center at the prime minister’s office.
Accurate or Not?
The ministry has argued that the data was only predictions and releasing it could have caused unnecessary public disorder, and since the tsunami had knocked out sensors at the plant: without measurements of how much radiation was actually being released by the plant, it was impossible to measure how far the radioactive plume was stretching.
A special government tool had been producing critical maps, and other data, hourly since the first hours after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, some of the maps clearly showed a plume of nuclear contamination extending to the northwest of the plant, beyond the areas that were initially evacuated.
Japan’s nuclear safety agency and the science ministry had data on the spread of radioactive materials that could have prevented unnecessary radiation exposure, but decided to sit on it instead of reporting it to the crisis management center at the prime minister’s office.
Accurate or Not?
The ministry has argued that the data was only predictions and releasing it could have caused unnecessary public disorder, and since the tsunami had knocked out sensors at the plant: without measurements of how much radiation was actually being released by the plant, it was impossible to measure how far the radioactive plume was stretching.
Note that in this hot, never-ebbing, electoral season, global warming is not among the issues given much attention. This is the case despite the fact that the trend in rising temperatures and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to rise at crisis levels, and that 97% of all climate scientists have been persuaded by the best scientific evidence that global warming is having increasingly deleterious and disruptive effects on the climate. Recent polls find that an increasing percentage of respondents agree that global warming is occurring, that it is caused by human activities, most notably by the burning of fossil fuels for energy, and that the government should take actions that would reduce the problem.
If we lived in a more politically responsive time, government would pass and enforce a carbon tax and undertake massive support for renewable energy, conservation, and efficiency policies. As the matter stands, the Republicans in the U.S. Congress oppose and would surely stop any such legislative initiatives and the Democrats with other priorities have not pressed the issue.
If we lived in a more politically responsive time, government would pass and enforce a carbon tax and undertake massive support for renewable energy, conservation, and efficiency policies. As the matter stands, the Republicans in the U.S. Congress oppose and would surely stop any such legislative initiatives and the Democrats with other priorities have not pressed the issue.
Mr. Thomas E Stewart, lobbyist for the Oil and Gas industry and executive director of Ohio Oil and Gas Association based out Granville Ohio, testified before the House Public Utilities Commission on May 22nd, 2012 concerning Governor Kasich’s ‘Energy Bill’, SB 315. Many amendments were offered to SB 315 concerning full chemical disclosure, dye tracers, fresh water well testing, local decision making on well placement and background checks for well operators, that would have added much needed protection for Ohioans, but these were disregarded for the most part in favor of a ‘gag’ rule which ties the hands of first responders and doctors in treating anyone affected by a toxic spill or drill site accident.
We all knew it was coming.
Radioactive tuna has been caught off the coast of California. The fingerprint of cesium 137 is unmistakably from the exploded reactors at Fukushima.
But Fukushima's hot hands are also on a very welcome debate still stalemating China's plans to build more than 30 new reactors. Fierce No Nukes opposition continues to escalate in India. Reactor cancellations have spread throughout Europe.
And the $8.33 billion loan guarantee for Georgia's Vogtle double-reactor project has still not been finalized. After just five months construction is $1 billion over budget and falling ever further behind schedule. There is no firm price tag. Substandard concrete and rebar steel that doesn't meet official specifications are just the beginning of the nightmare.
Radioactive tuna has been caught off the coast of California. The fingerprint of cesium 137 is unmistakably from the exploded reactors at Fukushima.
But Fukushima's hot hands are also on a very welcome debate still stalemating China's plans to build more than 30 new reactors. Fierce No Nukes opposition continues to escalate in India. Reactor cancellations have spread throughout Europe.
And the $8.33 billion loan guarantee for Georgia's Vogtle double-reactor project has still not been finalized. After just five months construction is $1 billion over budget and falling ever further behind schedule. There is no firm price tag. Substandard concrete and rebar steel that doesn't meet official specifications are just the beginning of the nightmare.
This week's NATO summit on the future of the war in Afghanistan probably did not get to the matter of burn pits or abandoned latrines.
These are the details of hell. They are also our legacy, in Afghanistan, in Iraq... wherever we employ our military to pursue our geopolitical self-interest. Strip away the propaganda, strip away the politics and the pursuit of strategic advantage, and what American/NATO policy amounts to is burned, buried, dumped and abandoned waste, some of it radioactive, most of it toxic.
"My nephew went in the military healthy," wrote a woman named Patsy on the website Burn Pits ActionCenter. This is one story out of hundreds that are now surfacing, about American vets poisoned by American war waste that was discharged into the environment of the countries we occupy with no regard for international law or, my God, sanity.
These are the details of hell. They are also our legacy, in Afghanistan, in Iraq... wherever we employ our military to pursue our geopolitical self-interest. Strip away the propaganda, strip away the politics and the pursuit of strategic advantage, and what American/NATO policy amounts to is burned, buried, dumped and abandoned waste, some of it radioactive, most of it toxic.
"My nephew went in the military healthy," wrote a woman named Patsy on the website Burn Pits ActionCenter. This is one story out of hundreds that are now surfacing, about American vets poisoned by American war waste that was discharged into the environment of the countries we occupy with no regard for international law or, my God, sanity.