Local
It was one heck of a David and Goliath moment.
On October 10, 2011, news broke at Davis-Besse that cracking in the concrete containment shield building had been discovered, during breaching operations to install the third lid in a decade atop the problem-plagued reactor. As revealed much more clearly by a photo included in a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) report (but not until eight long months later!), that original cracking discovered was actually quite wide. The photo that NRC displayed prominently on its homepage, however, showed cracking that was more difficult to make out.
FirstEnergy and NRC have called such concrete containment cracking “unique OE [Operating Experience].” But at Crystal River, Florida, however, a “self-inflicted wound” proved fatal – containment cracking due to a botched steam generator replacement so severe, the only fix would have been a multi-billion dollar containment replacement. Crystal River was permanently shutdown.
As the world’s nuke reactors begin to fall, none crumbles faster than FirstEnergy’s infamous Davis-Besse, near Toledo. But Ohio citizens now have a good chance to shut it down---if we act quickly. You can start by contacting the PUCO directly, as below.
Those of you who want Davis-Besse shut can write the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio at docketing@puc.state.oh.us. Use this label in the subject line of the email, as well as the body of the email message, so PUCO can route the public comments to the correct proceeding: OPPOSITION COMMENT UNDER CASE # 14-1297-EL-SSO.
FirstEnergy wants the PUCO to rubber-stamp a $3 billion-plus bailout for Davis-Besse and a decrepit 50-year-old coal burner.
It’s a scam.
The company says DB is needed for “baseload” power. But it’s a nonsensical smokescreen rooted in obsolete models meant only to profit the utility.
Over fourteen hundred international election experts gathered data last year and pronounced the United States last in election integrity among long-standing democracies. On a 100-point scale, the U.S. received an integrity rating of 69.3 percent -- one notch ahead of the narco-drug state Colombia at 69.1 percent and just behind the nearly-narco-drug state of Mexico at 69.8 percent, neither country with a long-standing democracy.
The Ohio legislature knows that you're concerned about the algae blooms that threaten our state's drinking water sources, so they're rushing to pass legislation to address solutions. But until they recognize a major culprit to our water pollution — factory farms — and that drinking water all over the state is impacted, the Clean Dirty Lake Erie Bill will never achieve its supposed goals. Tell your state legislators that they must protect our drinking water by reining in factory farm pollution.
A couple of weeks ago, I asked you to take action on the Ohio Senate Bill that they're calling the "Clean Lake Erie Bill," meant to address the hazardous algae blooms that left half a million Toledoans without water last summer. The senate has since passed the bill without any significant improvements. Indeed, the bill got worse. And now the Ohio House has introduced their own legislation — but this bill is just as bad, so we're calling it the "Dirty Lake Erie Bill."
We're delighted that you have begun the long-awaited process of normalizing relations with Cuba, and we're anxious to see a US embassy open in Havana, but there is an action that you alone can take to further improve relations: take Cuba off the terrorist list!
Most people around the world would find it very strange that Cuba would be on a “terrorist list" with Sudan, Syria and Iran. Cuba is most known worldwide for exporting doctors, musicians, teachers, artists, and dancers–– not terrorists.
Cuban diplomats says they cannot conceive of re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States while Cuba continues to be considered a sponsor of international terrorism. President Obama, your next executive action should include removing Cuba from the list!
Signed, Your Name Click here to sign the petition
As the world’s nuke reactors begin to crumble and fall, the danger of a major disaster is escalating at the decrepit Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio.
Now the plant’s owners are asking the Ohio Public Utilities Commission to force the public to pay billions of dollars over the next 15 years to subsidize reactor operations.
The Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station near Toledo, Ohio.
But Davis-Besse’s astonishing history of near-miss disasters defies belief. Its shoddy construction, continual operator error and relentless owner incompetence would not be believed as fiction, let alone as the stark realities of a large commercial reactor operating in a heavily populated area.
According to the CIA Factbook – that’s right, the CIA – Cuba is a more literate society than the United States. Cuba is rated fifth in the world in literacy. The United States, a mere 22nd. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, confirms the CIA’s assessment of Cuban literacy.
Yet, what most U.S. citizens don’t know is how the Cuban went from being one of the least literate nations in the world in 1959 under the brutal dictator and mob-front Batista.
With Cuba’s literacy rate at a staggering low 23 percent in 1960, Castro appeared before the United Nations on September 20 and proclaimed the people of Cuba would eliminate illiteracy in a year. They succeeded.
I had the privilege of visiting Cuba’s National Literacy Museum on February 10th , 2015 as part of a Code Pink “To Cuba with Love” delegation. It is housed in an old military base, the one Batista fled Cuba from with the CIA and mob over New Year’s in 1959-1960. It is the only literacy museum in the world.
Glenn Brewer graduated with Honors and a BFA in Fine Arts from the Columbus College of Art and Design. He has created illustrations for numerous companies and publications including TSR, Inc., Visionary Entertainment Studios, The New Orleans Tribune, Frost Illustrated, Tygeron Graphics and Unchained Spirit Enterprises, a children’s book publisher. Brewer is best known for the six-part comic series Askari Hodari, which he wrote, illustrated and published. Askari Hodari was nominated twice and eventually won the Howard E. Day Prize. Brewer also was nominated for a Glyph Award in the Best Self-Publisher category for his Askari Hodari series.
1. Describe for our readers the most compelling art piece you have made?
The cover for the first issue of my Askari Hodari comic. It's an image of a man with his arms crossed on his chest holding two guns. Readers had different reactions to it. Some were disgusted while others got it. However the felt initially, the cover intrigued them enough to take a chance and give the book a read.
Sexual practices involving bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism are sometimes lumped together under the acronym BDSM. Whatever you call them, they’re all the rage at the multiplex.
It was just a week ago that Fifty Shades of Grey started steaming up movie screens nationwide. And now the Gateway Film Center is offering a curtain call in the form of The Duke of Burgundy.
The eccentric British film is about a lesbian couple whose sex life follows a rigid pattern of domination and punishment.
The pattern begins when Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) arrives to clean house for Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a scholar who specializes in the study of butterflies and moths. Evelyn appears to take her chores seriously, but the poor girl invariably leaves something undone, and Cynthia finds it necessary to punish her.
Though the pattern is cut-and-dried up until this point, what happens next isn’t—dried, I mean. Listening from the other side of the bedroom door, we realize that Cynthia is showering Evelyn with something, and it definitely isn’t praise.