Much to do has been made of the fact that the majority of nuclear plants in the United States are scheduled to operate beyond the initial operating period that was estimated when they were first constructed. This all seems to have started when the Associated Press “broke” the story, despite the fact that it had never actually been a secret at all. None the less, many followed reporting how plants were being stretched far beyond the expectations of what their designers had intended, exposing the public to untold risks as they rust and fall apart.

Of course, this is not really the case. The plants have undergone numerous upgrades and refits over the years and continue to be upgraded and inspected to maintain high levels of safety. New procedures and new systems retrofitted to older reactors have improved their efficiency and safety beyond what it was originally. Of course, even with improvements, the older Generation II reactors still are not as good as new Generation III+ designs, but none the less, they are perfectly safe and reliable sources of power.

The primary reason why the designs have outlasted what was assumed to be their design life comes down to economics. While it has become cheaper and easier to extend the life of reactors, it has also become much more difficult to build new ones. The original designers might have presumed that after twenty or thirty years, their designs would have been so far surpassed that new power plants would have made them obsolete and redundant.

Unfortunately, they had not counted on just how difficult it has become to build a new reactor.  Just getting the permits to build a new nuclear reactor can take upwards of a decade, and a combination of political lobbying, lawsuits and other tactics by special interest groups meets a potential reactor operator at every step of the way, possibly even derailing plans completely before construction is completed but after billions have been spent.   There exists no other facility whose construction will be opposed by so many with so much effort at so many levels.   Paperwork costs alone can top the hundreds of millions, and final costs for construction have skyrocketed since the 1970’s.

Thus we have what we have and their life is extended to the maximum possible since replacements remain so difficult and expensive to built.

This does not mean that they are unsafe.  In fact, there are many examples of technology lasting far longer than its designers had anticipated.

Reasons why something may outlast its original design life:

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Via the Courthouse News Service:

Plant Must Disclose Data to Fight Cancer Lawsuit

CHICAGO (CN) – The parents of a girl who developed brain cancer can access over a decade of data on an Exelon power plant they claim discharged harmful radiation, a federal judge ruled, but the energy giant can withhold certain other information.
Joseph and Cynthia Sauer say their daughter, Sarah, was diagnosed with a medulloblastoma, a highly malignant brain tumor, roughly three years after the family moved to Grundy County, where Exelon operates the Dresden Generating Station and Unitech Services Group has a nuclear facility.
They claim that radioactive discharges from the plants traveled through the groundwater, causing Sarah’s cancer.
After receiving the Sauers’ lawsuit, Exelon and Unitech said Sarah’s diagnosis should frame the discovery period, which it proposed to run between 1996 and 2004, two years before and three years after.
The Sauers countered with a motion to access Exelon’s historical data going back to the early 1990s, which they said their expert witness need to determine the impact of the facility on Sarah, since radioactive materials persist for long periods of time in groundwater.
The plaintiffs also moved to compel Exelon to produce documents related to three similar lawsuits filed in 2006.
Meanwhile, Unitech filed a motion to compel the plaintiffs to provide specific facts underlying their claims against Unitech and to provide a damages disclosure statement.
The court partially granted the Sauers’ motion against Exelon, but also directed them to clarify and substantiate their claims against Unitech.
Exelon’s objections to the requested time frame are premature, U.S. Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan found. “Given plaintiffs’ expert’s statement that contamination from the Dresden facility can persist for long periods of time, releases dating back to the early 1990s could be relevant to Plaintiffs’ claims or could lead to the discovery of admissible evidence,” she wrote.

It’s impossible not to feel sympathy for someone like Sarah Sauer. She’s a completely innocent child who did nothing wrong and is faced with a life or death battle with cancer. It must be terrifying for her and her family. I’m sure all readers wish her nothing but the best in beating this cancer and going on to live a long, happy life.

But it was not caused by Dresden Generating Station. It’s impossible to say what caused a given incident of cancer, of course, but in this case, the circumstances are such that the probability of this case of cancer being related to the nearby nuclear plant is so astronomically low that I’m willing to just say that it’s not related.

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It seems every time there is any development in nuclear technology, the media immediately starts equating it with weapons and assumes that it will be used for such. Not only that, but it also seems that the prevailing belief is that the only way to keep the world safe is to assure the United States does not engage in the new technology, because, if we don’t, well then obviously nobody else will, right?

Via the New York Times:

Scientists have long sought easier ways to make the costly material known as enriched uranium — the fuel of nuclear reactors and bombs, now produced only in giant industrial plants.

One idea, a half-century old, has been to do it with nothing more substantial than lasers and their rays of concentrated light. This futuristic approach has always proved too expensive and difficult for anything but laboratory experimentation.

Until now.

In a little-known effort, General Electric has successfully tested laser enrichment for two years and is seeking federal permission to build a $1 billion plant that would make reactor fuel by the ton.

That might be good news for the nuclear industry. But critics fear that if the work succeeds and the secret gets out, rogue states and terrorists could make bomb fuel in much smaller plants that are difficult to detect.

Iran has already succeeded with laser enrichment in the lab, and nuclear experts worry that G.E.’s accomplishment might inspire Tehran to build a plant easily hidden from the world’s eyes.

Backers of the laser plan call those fears unwarranted and praise the technology as a windfall for a world increasingly leery of fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases.

But critics want a detailed risk assessment. Recently, they petitioned Washington for a formal evaluation of whether the laser initiative could backfire and speed the global spread of nuclear arms.

“We’re on the verge of a new route to the bomb,” said Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist who advised President Bill Clinton and now teaches at Princeton. “We should have learned enough by now to do an assessment before we let this kind of thing out.”

New varieties of enrichment are considered potentially dangerous because they can simplify the hardest part of building a bomb — obtaining the fuel.

General Electric, an atomic pioneer and one of the world’s largest companies, says its initial success began in July 2009 at a facility just north of Wilmington, N.C., that is jointly owned with Hitachi. It is impossible to independently verify that claim because the federal government has classified the laser technology as top secret. But G.E. officials say that the achievement is genuine and that they are accelerating plans for a larger complex at the Wilmington site.

“We are currently optimizing the design,” Christopher J. Monetta, president of Global Laser Enrichment, a subsidiary of G.E. and Hitachi, said in an interview.

The company foresees “substantial demand for nuclear fuel,” he added, while conceding that global jitters from the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan “do create some uncertainty.” G.E. made those reactors.

Donald M. Kerr, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons lab who was recently briefed on G.E.’s advance, said in an interview that it looked like a breakthrough after decades of exaggerated claims.

Laser enrichment, he said, has gone from “an oversold, overpromised set of technologies” to what “appears to be close to a real industrial process.”

…

The plan was to exploit the extraordinary purity of laser light to selectively excite uranium’s rare form. In theory, the resulting agitation would ease identification of the precious isotope and aid its extraction.

At least 20 countries and many companies raced to investigate the idea. Scientists built hundreds of lasers.

Ray E. Kidder, a laser pioneer at the Livermore nuclear arms lab, estimated that the overall number of scientists involved globally ran to several thousand.

“It was a big deal,” he said in an interview. “If you could enrich with lasers, you could cut the cost by a factor of 10.”

The fervor cooled by the 1990s as laser separation turned out to be extremely hard to make economically feasible.

Not everyone gave up. Twenty miles southwest of Sydney, in a wooded region, Horst Struve and Michael Goldsworthy kept tinkering with the idea at a government institute. Finally, around 1994, the two men judged that they had a major advance.

The inventors called their idea Silex, for separation of isotopes by laser excitation. “Our approach is completely different,” Dr. Goldsworthy, a physicist, told a Parliamentary hearing.

….

In May 2006, G.E. bought the rights to Silex. Andrew C. White, the president of the company’s nuclear business, hailed the technology as “game-changing.”

Mr. Monetta of Global Laser Enrichment, the G.E.-Hitachi subsidiary, said the envisioned plant would enrich enough uranium annually to fuel up to 60 large reactors. In theory, that could power more than 42 million homes — about a third of all housing units in the United States.

The laser advance, he added, will promote energy security “since it is a domestic source.”

In late 2009, as G.E. experimented with its trial laser, supporters of arms control wrote Congress and the regulatory commission. The technology, they warned, posed a danger of quickening the spread of nuclear weapons because of the likely difficulty of detecting clandestine plants.

Experts called for a federal review of the risks. In early 2010, the commission resisted.

Late last year, the American Physical Society — the nation’s largest group of physicists, with headquarters in Washington — submitted a formal petition to the commission for a rule change that would compel such risk assessments as a condition of licensing.

“The issue is too big” to leave to the federal status quo, Francis Slakey, a physicist at Georgetown University and the society official who drafted the petition, said in an interview. He added that Mr. Obama or Congress might eventually have to get involved.

This year, thousands of citizens, supporters of arms control, nuclear experts and members of Congress wrote the commission to back the society’s effort. Many of them cited well-known failures in safeguarding secrets and detecting atomic plants.

But the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group in Washington, objected. It said new precautions were unnecessary because of voluntary plans for “additional measures” to safeguard secrets.

A commission spokesman said the petition would be considered next year. In theory, the risk-assessment plan, if adopted, could slow or stop the granting of a commercial license for the proposed laser plant or could result in design improvements.

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I find it absolutely stunning that there are groups today who use violence and blatant disregard for the law in an attempt to stop technological advancements.   It’s an almost religious fury that labels certain fields of science and technology as evil and so dangerous that they must be stopped by any means necessary.  It’s as if they are cursed or embodied with black magic and for those who are so fearful, no action to stop them is too extreme.

It ranges from weedwackering the genetically engineered crops they fear so deeply to sending bombs to terrorize, injure  or kill.

Via the Miami Herald:

Mexico: Anti-technology group sent college bomb

MEXICO CITY — An anti-technology group calling itself “Individuals Tending to Savagery” was responsible for a package bomb that injured two university professors just outside Mexico City, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

The explosion at the Monterrey Technological Institute’s campus in the State of Mexico on the outskirts of the capital Monday injured two professors, one of whom was involved in robotics research. Neither suffered life-threatening injuries.

Mexico State Attorney General Alfredo Castillo said at a news conference that the group’s involvement was identified from a partially destroyed note found at the scene.

Castillo said the group opposes experiments with nanotechnology and has staged attacks on academics before.

“The ITS is a movement that, in accordance with its ideals, opposes any development of neo- or nanotechnology anywhere in the world, and they are linked to attacks in several different countries of Europe, including Spain and France,” Castillo said.

He confirmed that the package had been disguised with labels from a well-known express package service, but did not say which one.

A manifesto signed by the group and posted on a radical website said: “We have no remorse, our aim was precisely for the guards to deliver the package to the intended professor,” who it identified as Oscar Camacho.

…

The ITS statement said Camacho’s “police impluses” to inspect the package triggered the detonator, adding that “there is no doubt that curiosity killed the human.”

The statement said nanotechnology and other technologies damage nature and native species and contribute to natural disasters.

It appears that the group in question is a kind of anti-industrialization movement with similar beliefs to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. Essentially, such groups believe that mankind is best left in a primitive tribal state, living off the land in a hunter-gatherer or subsistence lifestyle. While such societies do tend to result in very low life expectancy and high infant, maternal and childhood mentality, this is not necessarily seen as being negative by members of such movements, as humanity is usually seen as being a problem in and of itself, one which is best kept in check through such attrition. The philosophy also takes a page from Amory Lovins, seeing low technology and primitive, tribal lifestyles as somehow being more honorable or honest than modern technological societies.

Of course, this philosophy does have a major problem: given the choice, humans will generally tend to prefer a safer, easier lifestyle and given the option for leisure or comfort will take it. Not only this, but humans tend to be inventive and will develop new ways of doing things, including tools and technologies and refine and improve those technologies. Even if you took all technology away from human kind, we’d start to invent it again. Hence, the use of violence and intimidation to try to stop this from happening.

Such groups tend to be especially fearful and intolerant of any technology that they see as especially unnatural or which ignorance has bread fear over.

Sound familiar?

Nanotechnology is an especially exciting area of science which also has a number of anti-technology and green groups scared. It combines aspects of chemistry, materials sciences and computer and mechanical engineering. It may also include aspects of biology and atomic physics.

Basically, nanotechnology is the use of atoms and molecules to construct nanoscopic structures capable of acting as machines or of presenting useful physical properties by virtue of their structure. The push to nano-scale structures came in part from the desire of computer chip designers to push technology to creating the smallest possible functional electrical circuits. It also grew out of the availability of technologies like the scanning-tunneling electron microscope.

Of course, such concepts are not entirely new either. Chemists and materials scientists have long understood the importance of molecular structure in determining the properties of a material. Nanoscopic “machines” already exist in nature in the form of proteins and enzymes. The semiconductor industry has also long used molecule-level engineering to produce special materials for use in electronics.

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You may have read a couple of weeks ago about Greenpeace attempting to halt research by CSIRO on genetically modified wheat, which had been engineered to produce end products with a lower glycaemic index.    They did this by writing a letter which they then sent out to be signed by a number of “prominent” scientists, who weren’t all that prominent and not all of whom were really scientists.  They didn’t actually mention that Greenpeace was behind the letter but it ended up coming out anyway.

Not surprisingly, the letter didn’t end up stopping the research nor did subsequent attempts to seed the press with fear-mongering reports of dangers of genetic engineering.

It should be noted that the project they were trying to stop was pure research and not actually aimed at producing products for human consumption, at least not in the near term.   The wheat had been grown experimentally for a few years and is currently undergoing study in laboratory animals.   This is expected to eventually lead to human trails, but that’s not something that CSIRO has immediate plans for.

The wheat was being grown in relatively small and isolated patches on test fields that are some distance away from other wheat crops and in fields that are partially enclosed by a plastic barrier.   Some anti-GMO activists have claimed that the very existence of such crops endangers the world food supply, since rogue genes could be carried away as pollen to fertilize other crops.    CSIRO does take precautions against this, despite the fact that it’s not a very realistic fear.  Most wheat is grown from new seed, not from seed produced by the previous seasons crop, so even if it had been fertilized by pollen from the test fields, it would not actually result in the genes being brought into new crops.    Also, considering the general distribution and distances, it’s just not a very likely thing to happen.  Nor would it really make much difference even if it did.

Most Australians seemed to understand that CSIRO was proceeding with an abundance of caution and that the wheat was being grown as part of a scientific study with the aim being to better understand the potential of genetic engineering of this type with the potential that it could be applied to future food crops – assuming it is safe, which all current research would indicate it is.    After all, who could possibly oppose scientific research on such an important area of study?

With the public and politicians unwilling to buy into Greenpeace’s fear-mongering, they went to plan B:  weedwacker the whole damn crop.

Yes, that’s exactly what they did.

And if that’s not bad enough, in complete defiance of what they apparently stand for, they used a two-stroke gasoline powered weedwacker.   They could have used one powered by electricity and charged by solar cells or a wind turbine.   They could have dispensed with the weed wacker and used a human-driven sickle.   But no, they used one that runs on gasoline and produces smog.   Who woulda thunk???

In broad daylight and with no attempt to hide their destruction, Greenpeace proclaimed they were standing up against the evil scientists and doing the right thing for humanity and mother nature.   They broke into the research compound, destroyed the entire crop and then had the audacity to post pictures of it on their blog.   Apparently they felt their crimes were so noble and justified that nobody would dare call them on it and actually prosecute the organization for these acts of vandalism.

They were wrong.

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A few months ago, a law requiring cell phones sold in San Fransisco to carry a warning label failed to pass the city council. Now it seems they are trying again. It may sound a bit odd that a city would require this – things like product safety are usually legislated on the national level. This is, however, San Fransisco, and so they’re a lot better than everyone else and want us to all know that they’re much more progressive and special, and also, their farts don’t smell. (that was sarcasm, in case you didn’t catch that)

This time the law is likely to pass, because everyone supports it, since if they don’t, it proves that they are just a shill for the evil big corporations that want to eat your children.

Via PC Magazine:

San Francisco Gives Cell-Phone Radiation Law Another Try

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has approved a bill that would require a warning at stores that sell cell phones about the possible hazards of cell-phone radiation.

Last June, the City of San Francisco tentatively approved a bill that would have required merchants who sold cell phones within the city of San Francisco to display the “Specific Absorption Rate,” an FCC-mandated specification of radiation, next to the phones. Failure to comply would result in fines of between $100 to $300.

The bill approved this week would amend that bill with new provisions. Interim Mayor Ed Lee must still sign it into law.

In July 2010, however, the CTIA filed suit against the city, arguing that officials had no right to hand down regulations on an issue already addressed by the Federal Communications Commission.

There has been no definitive link that scientists have found linking the radiation emitted by cell phones to cancer. In late May, the World Health Organization classified mobile phones as a possible risk for a specific type of cancer in humans.

….

The new bill would mitigate the 2010 bill by proposing instead that customers would be notified of the dangers of cell-phone radiation, which would represent a strengthening of the law, as it includes an educational component, said Supervisor John Avalos.

“We are amending this ordinance…that would instead of having a rating per make and model of cell phone at point of sale, we would have a sign that merchants would provide in the stores close to the cell phones,” Avalos said. “I would say that cell phone emit radio frequencies and that they would also have to provide at the point of sale — they would have to provide at the point of sale a document sharing — to share with buyers on how to protect themselves from radiofrequency emissions.

“Those measures you can take to protect yourself, include using a headset instead of having the phone next to your ear, or keeping the cell phone in a casing that is less conductive of radiofrequency and there are other measures as well,” Avalos said.

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Yet again, a story about what can only be described as obsolete, inferior and downright dangerous transportation is receiving a lot of attention. It would seem to be describing some kind of future where common people have taken up the challenge of making sustainable transportation. In reality, this is no future any sane person would want.

Via the New York Times Blog:

People-Powered

Can’t get there from here? “Transport: A Survival Guide,” the summer 2011 issue of Colors, the magazine published by Benetton, asks us to imagine the day when the planet’s oil supply finally runs out. Vividly photographed and accented with fact-rich footnotes, it offers alternatives that are largely grass-roots and low tech: a boat made of Styrofoam and plastic bottles or tricked-out bicycle taxis (complete with radios) from Kenya, or the profusely decorated, three-wheeled motorcycle carts called chakdas (complete with instructions on how to make them) from Gujarat, India, that can carry up to 15 passengers. But there are also rickshaw-pulling robots made by a farmer who lives in a village outside Beijing and a solar-powered car designed by an inventor in Jiangjiang, China. The car may look like a tin can covered with solar panels, but when the inventor took it out for its first test drive in 2008, he passed a line over a mile long of drivers waiting to get into a gas station.

Lets take a closer look at what the actual “alternative” transportation proposed:

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The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation or CSIRO is the primary national body for scientific research in Australia. CSIRO is involved in a diverse range of scientific endeavors ranging from astronomy to particle physics to medical, environmental and biological research.

CSIRO has also been involved in agricultural experiments including those which involve genetically modified crops. As might be imagined, this has some people very very angry. A story has recently been making the rounds about how a group of “prominent scientists” are urging CSIRO to end what they call dangerous experiments with genetically modified food crops.

Via the Sydney Morning Herald:

Scientists reject human trials of GM wheat
A group of prominent scientists and researchers from around the world has urged Australia not to go ahead with human trials of genetically modified (GM) wheat.

The CSIRO is carrying out a study of feeding GM wheat grown in the ACT to rats and pigs and could extend the trial to humans.

The modified wheat has been altered to lower its glycaemic index in an attempt to see if the grain could have health benefits such as improving blood glucose control and lowering cholesterol levels.

But eight scientists and academics from Britain, the US, India, Argentina and Australia believe not enough studies have been done on the effects of GM wheat on animals to warrant human trials.
…
In a letter to the CSIRO’s chief executive Megan Clark, the scientists expressed their “unequivocal denunciation” of the experiments.

“The use of human subjects for these GM feeding experiments is completely unacceptable,” the letter said.

“The experiments may be used to dispense with concerns about the health impacts of consuming GM plants, but will not in fact address the health risks GM plants raise.

“The feeding trials should not be conducted until long-term impact assessments have been undertaken and appropriate information released to enable the scientific community to determine the value of such research, as against the risks.”

…

Greenpeace food campaigner Laura Kelly said GM experts recommended that long-term animal feeding studies of two years should be carried out before human testing to evaluate any carcinogenic, developmental, hormonal, neural and reproductive dysfunctions.

“This is the first generation of Australian children that will be exposed to GM in food for a lifetime,” she said.

“If Julia Gillard doesn’t stand up to foreign biotech companies, soon they’ll be eating it in their sandwiches and pasta, even though it has never been proven safe to eat.”

Sounds scary, doesn’t it? In fact, truth about what is being done at CSIRO is not quite as terrifying as all that.

The particular breed of wheat which is being researched was modified in a manner that alters the structure of starches, reducing the rate at which they are absorbed into the body. This has the effect of reducing the glycaemic index. It’s an important consideration because the glycaemic index of foods is directly related to the stability of blood sugar levels. Grains with a lower glycaemic index could therefore be an important part of managing diabetes and may have other dietary benefits. As with some other genetically modified organisms, the goal is not so much to improve crop yield or economics but rather to provide desirable nutritional characteristics.

Research on the breed of rice in question has been going on for more than six years. There have been no human trials and there are no immediate plans for human trials, but the grain has been fed to rats and more recently pigs. Most of the large scale feeding experiments have been fairly limited in duration, but have generally had positive results, showing that the modified starch does indeed reduce the glycaemic index of the foods.

Of course, the intention is that these crops will eventually be grown for human consumption and as such, there will be human trails at some point in the future. And that is what has a few all hot and bothered.

Despite the news being rather common, the actual names of the scientists involved and the content of the letter have not been as widely published. Thankfully, Karl Haro von Mogel of Biofortfied did some digging and discovered things to be a bit different than they were portrayed.

First, it turns out the letter was not written by a group of concerned scientists at all. It was written by Greenpeace. Greenpeace put together the letter and then went out looking for scientists to sign it. They must have searched nearly the entire world, because in the end they had to cast their net as far and wide as India, the United States, Argentina, Australia and the United Kingdom. And in this worldwide search for scientists to sign on they managed to find a whopping… eight. Yes, eight. Eight signatures is all they could manage to get, and they’re not even from what would generally be regarded as “prominent” scientists either. Not only that, but three are not really scientists at all.

So for those keeping score: In the entire world there were five real scientists and three resume-padders willing to sign Greenpeace’s letter. Most of whom, by the way, are already fixtures in the anti-GM movement.

Von Mogel also attempted to track down the contents of the letter, which did not seem to be published anywhere. Curious, it would seem, since it is supposed to be an “Open Letter.” He contacted one of the individuals listed in news items, who dismissed him as “pro-GM” and would not provide the text of the letter. He then contacted Greenpeace, who would also not provide the text of the open letter.

Finally, he contacted CSIRO, who were more than willing to provide a copy of the letter they received.

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It seems now Australia is in on the action, after South Korea, Russia and a few others stated that they would preform “tests for radiation” on major imports from Japan such as automobiles.
Via Fox News:

SYDNEY — A boatload of 800 cars arriving Down Under from Japan will be tested for radiation by Australia’s nuclear watchdog after other Japanese vehicles were found to be radioactive, The (Sydney) Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday.

The move is the first Australian test of non-food exports from the fallout-ravaged Asian nation, and marks a turnaround in position for the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).

Officials from ARPANSA will board the cargo ship Trans Future 7 when it docks at Port Kembla, south of Sydney, on Thursday, after picking up 700 Toyotas and 100 other cars from the Japanese port of Yokohama.

Thirty of those vehicles are used cars, which the maritime union fears could have been in areas affected by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged nuclear reactors along the Japanese east coast.

The officials will use hand-held radiation detectors and will also take surface samples from spots where people in Japan could have touched the vehicles.

Previously, the agency had said such tests were unnecessary. However, after intense pressure from dock workers and the discovery in Chile of low levels of radioactivity in cars shipped from Yokohama, ARPANSA said it will conduct the tests to reassure stevedores.

The Maritime Union of Australia said the decision was a win for both workers and the general public.

Well, it sure seems clear to me that this is not just a case of dock workers who know nothing about radiation pressuring the government to do silly and unnecessary tests.

As such, I am offering my services in this area. If any radiation is detected anywhere near the vicinity of a brand new car, I will accept the responsibility for properly disposing of said vehicle. I will do so free of charge, except, of course, for the cost of shipping the car to me. Once I have received the car I can assure any party that sends it that it will not pose a radiological hazard to anyone.   It will be dealt with accordingly.

Please note: I am especially experienced in the radiological remediation and disposal of high end and luxury vehicles. It should be noted that vehicles which contain materials such as top grain leather or have large high-performance engines could pose a special challenge – one which I am more than willing to take on.

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I predict we’re going to see a lot more of this:  Fossil fuel power plants providing the actual energy but with some wind and solar window dressing to make it seem like it’s something it is not.

Via Bloomberg:

GE Wins First Solar-Gas Hybrid Plant From Turkey’s MetCap

General Electric Co. (GE) said its new turbine designed to pair gas and renewable-power generation was chosen by Turkey’s MetCap Energy Investments for the first combination solar-natural gas plant.

The site will use technology from closely held eSolar Inc., wind and the “FlexEfficiency” gas turbine GE announced last week. The combination will be able to operate at a fuel- efficiency rate of more than 70 percent, greater than the rate of 61 percent for the combined-cycle turbine alone, GE said. It also makes solar more cost-efficient.

“This will be a power plant that combines wind, natural gas and integrated combined technology under one roof,” Paul Browning, who runs thermal products at GE Energy, the world’s biggest maker of power-generation equipment, said at a Milan press conference.

The plant, to be located in Karaman, Turkey, will have a capacity of about 530 megawatts, enough to power more than 600,000 homes, MetCap Chairman Celal Metin said at the conference.

“We have worked with every single party in industry who has something to offer in state-of-art, in gas turbines, steam turbines, solar sites and wind,” Metin said. “We did not give it to them. They earned it.”
Gas, Steam, Wind

The plant will integrate GE’s 9FB gas turbine, which has a capacity of 510 megawatts and a frequency of 50 hertz; a steam turbine; a generator; GE wind-turbine power; and power from eSolar-concentrated thermal tower technology, according to a statement from the companies.

“Solar-thermal with combined-cycle power plant are the most economic there is,” Browning said in an interview. He said Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE expects more order announcements in the “weeks and months ahead.”

So lets call this what it is: This is an entirely off the shelf combined cycle gas-fired power plant – nothing special about it. It does achieve pretty good efficiency, although that’s just because GE has been refining their turbine designs a lot in the past few years to squeeze out some additional thermal efficiency from these types of power plants. The combined cycle gas plant is not there to augment the wind and solar power systems or to be used when it’s cloudy and the wind is not blowing – the gas burner *is* the power plant and the wind and solar systems are suck on there to make it look like something it is not.

A few wind turbines have been added. They’re not even really part of the power plant. They’re just some wind turbines. If the wind is blowing continuously at a high rate of speed, it’s possible that a small amount less gas will be burned. The wind farm only has a net nameplate capacity of about 22 megawatts. During normal operations, the best one might hope to get for any period of time is going to be less than ten megawatts, and even that will only be during reasonably good conditions. Compared to the capacity of the gas-fired unit that’s not much at all. Considering that some of the capacity will need to be maintained as fast-dispatch reserve when the wind is blowing, the resulting savings in gas will be very very modest.

The solar thermal “power tower” is yet another example of window dressing. These kind of installations are supposed to eliminate the intermittent nature of solar power by providing thermal mass for energy storage. Yet it seems that here again, it has proven incapable of pulling its own weight as a power generator. Instead it will add a modest amount of extra thermal energy to the plant’s conventional power recovery boiler system. Like the wind system, it will rarely, if ever, actually reach nameplate output levels.

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