Campaign trail will do that to a man.
"Obama defends multipronged energy policies; but says there is no quick fix for price surge" by Mark Landler | New York Times, February 24, 2012
MIAMI - President Obama’s aides contend that the public has grown accustomed to these price spikes and will credit him for speaking honestly about the underlying economic realities rather than offering “gimmicky’’ short-term fixes - something he also eschewed in 2008.
Then he's been sniffing too much gasoline fumes.
Still, with gas prices now about 12 percent higher than a year ago, the White House and Democratic political analysts believe Obama needs to get ahead of the issue quickly before his Republican opponents use it against him in the campaign.
I'm so sick of politics in my ga$ tank.
Related: Gas prices spur debate on US policy
Didn't we go through all this with Bush years back?
Curiously, gas prices did not figure prominently in the Republican debate Wednesday in Arizona.
Yeah, how curious.
As gas prices go up, so do the profits of the major oil companies....
They zoomed up another nickel today for the billions-in-profits-per-quarter oil companies.
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"NRC approves new nuclear reactor design" December 23, 2011|By Matthew L. Wald
WASHINGTON - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday unanimously approved a radical new reactor design, clearing the way for two US utilities that have broken ground on projects in South Carolina and Georgia.
The decision is a milestone in the much-delayed revival of nuclear plant construction sought by the industry.
The commission took the unusual step of waiving the 30-day waiting period to approve the reactor design, the Westinghouse AP1000, so its decision will be effective in about a week. That moves the utilities closer to the point where they can start pouring concrete for safety-related parts of the plant.
The decision also allows the commission’s staff to issue a new kind of license, a combined construction and operating license, for the four reactors, two at each site.
The two utilities, with their partners, have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars digging foundations for the two projects: the Southern Co.’s Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors near Augusta, Ga., and the South Carolina Electric and Gas company’s Summer 2 and 3 reactors, in Fairfield County.
Of the 104 operating power reactors in the United States, the youngest entered service in 1996. The four reactors to be built in Georgia and South Carolina are the survivors in what had been envisioned as a bigger field of new plants that narrowed over the past three years as investors ran into financial and other obstacles.
The Westinghouse AP1000, a 1,154-megawatt reactor, has what is called advanced passive design that relies more heavily on forces such as gravity and natural heat convection and less on pumps, valves, and operator actions than other reactors, in theory diminishing the probability of an accident.
For example, it is supposed to shut down safely if all electrical power is lost, which is what happened at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami in March.
With the new reactor, a massive tank on top of its cylindrical concrete-and-steel shielding building would release water, which would flow down and cool the steel container that holds critical parts of the reactor.
The regulatory commission approved an earlier version of the AP1000 in 2006, but the design was later ruled out for US utilities when the agency adopted a rule in 2008 requiring new reactors to be able to withstand the impact of a crashing aircraft.
Atlanta-based Southern Co. applied to build the first two AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta, Ga. The $14 billion effort is the pilot project for the new reactor and a major test of whether the industry can build nuclear plants without the endemic delays and cost overruns that plagued earlier rounds of building years ago. President Obama’s administration has offered the project $8 billion in federal loan guarantees as part of its pledge to expand nuclear power.
Opponents of the reactor, among them the North Carolina group NC Warn, have argued that no new designs should be certified until the lessons of the Fukushima accident have been fully absorbed. And Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and others have drawn attention to concerns raised by an engineer at the commission that a building surrounding the reactor containment might fail under some circumstances.
“They have fast-tracked construction of a reactor whose shield building could ‘shatter like a glass cup’ if impacted by an earthquake or other natural or man-made impact,’’ Markey said in a statement.
He was referring to the warnings of John Ma, who had said in NRC documents that design flaws could lead a containment shield to shatter if struck by a commercial aircraft or rattled by an earthquake.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear watchdog group, called the vote disappointing, saying the NRC should have done a new analysis following Japan’s crisis, which occurred after a March 11 tsunami sent three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant into meltdowns in the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.
And all but forgotten in my newspages.
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"US 13th in first-ever public report on nuclear security" January 12, 2012|By William J. Broad
NEW YORK - The 32 nations with materials that can fuel atom bombs are typically mum on security, which looks to the public like a closed world of barbed wire and armed guards. Behind the scenes, however, atomic insiders have long told horror stories of risky practices and security flaws that might let the crucial ingredients for nuclear weapons fall into the wrong hands.
Now, for the first time publicly, experts have surveyed the precautions each country has in place and ranked the nations from best to worst. The study is full of surprises and potential embarrassments. For instance, Australia takes first place in nuclear security, and Japan comes in at No. 23, behind nations like Kazakhstan and South Africa.
The United States ties for 13th place with Belgium. Last place goes to North Korea, a police state that the report finds to be seriously deficient on issues of atomic security; in next-to-last is Pakistan.
The ranking is a joint endeavor of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private advocacy group in Washington, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, a London company that does risk analyses. Their goals are to stir debate on how to promote security and to encourage governments to strengthen protections against atomic terrorism....
So when is Iran going to be framed, folks?
Ever notice wars always give presidents a gleam?
Sam Nunn, the former Democratic senator from Georgia and a founder of the threat initiative, said the study is not about congratulating some and chastising others.
Rather, Nunn said, its analyses and recommendations are meant to offer a resource for improvement.
Funders of the threat initiative and the study include the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Related: The Boston Globe's Stupid Ideas: Nuclear Disarmamement
The global assessment is an outgrowth of President Obama’s effort to get nations to take more responsibility in locking up bomb materials that are vulnerable to theft and covert sale.
Then please pledge, sir, to never, ever use them yourself.
In 2010, he held a security summit meeting in Washington that drew attention to the danger. Experts warned that terrorists could buy or steal the makings for nuclear arms from the world’s secretive maze of atomic storage and production sites, which are said to number in the thousands. A second summit meeting is scheduled for March in Seoul.
The new analysis centers on security precautions for the two main fuels of nuclear arms: plutonium and highly enriched uranium.
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Yeah, never mind that radiation leaking into the river:
Leak shuts down Pilgrim nuclear plant
A Judge Rules Vermont Can’t Shut Nuclear Plant
Court to Vermont: "Drop Dead"
Around New England: No Veracity in Vermont
Around New England: Vermont Votes Yankee Down
The Boston Globe Can Not Say a Lie
Georgia nuclear reactors win NRC license, first one granted in US since 1978
I'm not feeling very safe.
Also see: Solar Stimuloot Went to Goldman Sachs
Globe pulled the drapes on that.
