Fracking Radiation

Where Does It Go?

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 ~ Hazardous waste requires proper disposal so the hazard doesn't do damage, but what happens when no one is paying attention to the waste?

The Marcellus shale has a lot of radioactive uranium and radium-226 in it. As a result, the large volume of wastewater created by fracking is highly radioactive.

[U.S. Geological Survey research geologist Mark] Engle co-authored a USGS report that found that millions of barrels of wastewater from unconventional (fracked) wells in Pennsylvania and vertical wells in New York were 3,609 times more radioactive than the federal limit for drinking water and 300 times more radioactive than a Nuclear Regulatory Commission limit for industrial discharges to water.

Nuke Waste, Guns & Plastic Bags

Digital Mosaics

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 ~ There's more here than initially meets the eye.

Click on the image to go to artist Chris Jordan's site to find that the image is composed of 67,000 photos of mushroom clouds.

Dinosaur Fossils

Are Investors Paleontologists?

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 ~ Hey! Turn around and check out the view...

Timing Scrutiny

Fukushima Lessons

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 ~ Why are extensive hearings and deep scrutiny only practiced after a disaster?

An inquiry into Japan's worst nuclear accident reveals deeper problems:

[The] nuclear crisis was a preventable disaster resulting from “collusion” among the government, regulators and the plant operator, an expert panel said on Thursday, wrapping up an inquiry into the worst nuclear accident in 25 years.

The Job Creators—IV

By Industry

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 ~ Public transit just makes sense in so many ways.

Oh, and where is Big Oil which the API keeps telling us is such a wonderful job creator? The original study suggests combined oil and gas is 5.18 jobs per $1M investment, but that is, well, all gas. If oil were broken out in this chart, their number would be negative. The oil industry has been shedding jobs for years and pales as a job creator to the renewable energy industry.

Others of interest: roads and bridges repair (20), conservation (20), water infrastructure (20), school buildings (19), financial industry (7), nuclear industry (4). Study details here.

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Cross-posted to the Fare-Free Northwest blog.

Energy Downsides

On Toxic Wind Events

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 ~ Um, there aren't any.

Also: who provides the guarantees against the financial fallout of these events?

The Nuclear Age

Time Lapse Graphic of All Detonations 1945-1998

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 ~ This captures the reality of 50+ years of nuclear weapons development, and its spread to a growing number of countries.

It is a shame that it ends in 1998 rather than going through the present day, but the graphic is dependent on the data source (described at the end of the video.) It does include the tests by both India and Pakistan, as well as the "traditional" nuclear powers, the US, Russia, the UK, France, and China (not coincidentally the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council.) The data also does not include any indication that Israel has a nuclear capability, although that is widely considered certain.

Skip forward to about 12:10 to see a two minute summary by country.

Some interesting data (from 1998) on the US nuclear weapons program:

• Through 1990 the US built more than 70,000 warheads of 65 different kinds
• Land area used for nuclear weapons and facilities is larger than that of DC, Massachusetts and New Jersey combined
• There are more than 75 secret Presidential Emergency Centers for use during and after a nuclear war
• There is 104 million cubic meters of high level nuclear waste
• 11 nuclear weapons have been lost in accidents and never recovered

Energy Subsidies

Buying Winners

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 ~ I'll write much more about Solyndra another day, but one meme heard currently is the undue influence supposedly exerted by renewable energy companies in their quest for subsidization and financial risk mitigation. A new report from DBL Investors is timely, especially its lead quotation which sets the tone of the report:

Some argue that the consumer can purchase warmth or work or mobility at less cost by means of coal or oil or nuclear energy than by means of sunshine or wind or biomass. The argument concludes that this fact, in and of itself, relegates renewable energy resources to a small place in the national energy budget. The argument would be valid if energy prices were set in perfectly competitive markets. They are not. The costs of energy production have been underwritten unevenly among energy resources by the Federal Government.

—August 1981 report of the DOE
Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

The report shows government subsidy support for different forms of energy over time, with a focus on the earliest stages of each energy industry's growth. Thus, it shows the extent to which subsidies were provided to different energy technologies when each of those technologies were as yet new and unproven, lacking infrastructure and market adoption.

With differing periods and different eras, comparisons are difficult. But the report calculates that nuclear subsidies came to more than 1 percent of the federal budget in their first 15 years, and that oil and gas subsidies made up one-half of 1 percent of the total budget in their first 15 years. “Renewables have constituted only about a tenth of a percent," the report says.

The money graph, in more ways than one:

The Wingnut Wurlitzer

Same Old Song Not Even Worth a Dance

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~ Congressman Jay Inslee will announce a run for Governor in Washington, and, on cue, the usual suspects strike their tuneless and discordant notes.

One of the first with his kazoo is Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center with a vacuous bit of fluff astonishing for its intellectual laziness.

Myers starts by lifting one paragraph out of Inslee's book (Apollo's Fire, which he doesn't bother to cite):

Those ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ will constantly point out irrelevant facts about how expensive alternatives are compared to fossil fuels, how inconvenient they are, and how undeveloped they are. Those unfortunate victims of the tyranny of the present cannot envision the inevitable growth in efficiency, declining costs, and ever increasing accessibility of clean and renewable energy.”

Myers then claims to "understand" the point, and proceeds to write in a way that shows he doesn't get it at all. Like all good wingnuts with an ideological axe to grind he starts out with a broad, unreferenced fiction that he labels as "fact", claiming that "solar panels, and other green energy technologies, are extremely expensive, unusable and undeveloped." The facts, for anyone with a few minutes to spend looking, are that renewable energy technologies are increasingly used and well-developed. Furthermore, the expense continues to decline. Land-based wind power is now very close to the cost of coal generation, and solar modules are on the verge of breaking the $1 per watt threshold. Compare to nuclear at $10-12 per watt.

Too Much Wind Power

What If We Had More Than We Could Use?

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~ What indeed?

Our overly damp spring weather has provided an abundance of hydropower. There's so much that the creaky and antiquated electrical grid cannot take all the power wind turbines are now poised to generate. So the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) which manages the grid, is shutting down wind turbines. If the turbines don't operate, they don't produce the power that in turn generates the income that pays for their financing.

Thus, wind is made less feasible because of a surfeit of hydro.

Priorities

The Deficit Scold Agenda

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~ For two years we've been hearing from many quarters about the urgent need to cut government spending to bring down the deficit. Some of the rationales may have merit, but what passes for debate on the subject is deeply unserious.

For proof, one need look no further than subsidies to oil and gas.

President Obama wants Congress to chop $3.6 billion in 2012 oil and gas tax breaks for a total of $46.2 billion over the next decade. Among Mr. Obama’s targets: a nearly century-old oil and gas industry tax deduction for the costs of preparing drill sites and a manufacturer's tax break granted the oil industry in 2004.

The number is significant, but still little more than one-tenth of the federal subsidies that oil and gas companies might receive over 10 years. Adjusted for inflation, they currently receive about $41 billion in annual subsidies annually. That amounts to more than half – 52 percent – of total benefits distributed to energy sectors by the federal government.