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Corporate Gusher, Public Sun
BP's apocalyptic Gulf gusher has put our ability to survive in serious doubt.
We have no reason to believe an end to the crisis is near---or even in sight. Nor can we begin to calculate the damage to our Mother Earth...to her oceans, to the core of her being...and to each of us as individual organisms.
Only one thing IS clear: we cannot ultimately survive without a rapid conversion to a Solartopian economy that is totally green-powered. That transformation will be forced by biological imperatives, not money or markets.
The powers that be studiously avoid the core reality that this disaster stems from the ability of large corporations to make all of us pay for their irresponsible greed.
The black poisons killing our global body gush from a system that grants corporations human rights but does not demand human responsibility.
It is suicidal to allow corporations to deploy technologies they cannot mange or insure and then make us pay for their greed.
From banking to industry to energy, the system privatizes profits and socializes disaster. It is the essence of what Mussolini called "corporate control of the state."
Liability at the Deepwater Horizon was set at a paltry $75 million. Had BP been forced to account beforehand for the scale of harm now being done, that well would never have been drilled.
The $20 billion Obama wants BP to ante up won't cover a fraction of the damages. In fact, BP does not have sufficient assets to pay for what it has done, any more than any owner of any nuclear power plant could cover the downwind horrors of a major meltdown.
The liability pool for an atomic reactor disaster stands at a scant $11 billion. These reactor pushers all claim such an accident is virtually impossible. Just like BP.
The Obama Administration supports these nuclear loan guarantees. But it could no more meet the monetary and logistic challenges of a melt down than it's done at Deepwater Horizon.
As always, society as a whole, not the corporate perps, would be forced to pay.
For us to survive, technologies that can't be insured must be replaced with ones that can. That means wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, sustainable biofuels, wave energy, current energy and a massive push for increased efficiency and conservation, including a restoration of mass transit.
All the above bear risks of some sort. But all can get liability insurance. None threaten our survival.
Fossil/nukers say such technologies are years away from meeting our needs.
But the barriers are not primarily technological---they are defined by the corporate-run world of money, markets and bureaucratic corruption.
Remove socialized risk while taxing ecological impacts and Solartopian technologies would eventually force fossil/nuclear fuels to extinction.
But could the market make that happen before we terminally pollute our planet?
The BP gusher says: not likely.
After Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt set completely "undoable" goals for armaments production. All defied a market economy and sober assessments of what we could actually accomplish. And all were met.
In crisis, we've conjured military mobilizations, the New Deal, Manhattan Project, Marshall Plan, stimulus package, bank bailouts, public works projects and whatever else it took to survive.
Now energy consumption must plummet as efficiency and green production rise to supplant the fossil/nuclear technologies that are killing us. Our basic biology demands the twain meet before BP and its buddies kill us all.
The Solartopian scenario requires not just a shift in energy production and consumption. It means an end to war, which is not sustainable anywhere, for any alleged cause. Real peace in turn demands social justice, which can come only with true democracy---paper ballots and all. Our food needs to be raised organically. Our numbers can only be controlled by freely educated, empowered women in bio-conspiracy with our Mother Earth.
Above all, the corporate structure that rules our world must be replaced with a means of organization that serves people and the planet, not the reverse. BP's black death pouring through our oceans says we cannot afford the free market illusions of a corporate-sponsored apocalypse.
A system that is peaceful, just and totally green-powered is the only way we survive.
Let's hope we have the time, wisdom and will to get there.
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59 Comments so far
Show Allharvey wasserman
thank you, CommonDreams, for publishing this! NO NUKES!! harveyw
The whole world uses 13 tetra watts.
There are over 100 reliable consistant tetra watts available from tethered high altitude kite turbines.
To say nothing of the power available from the temperature differential in all tropical waters.
You said it right Harry! Can GreenPeace find a way to place itself in the middle of the World Cup?
Give it a try Harry; You have some Power: May you expand it faster than the Black Blop of Death!
Peace , love drop acid and drop out...blah blah blah.. Come on Harvey whose going to stop the BP's and the Lockheeds and the GEs and the Fords and the Krupps and the Chinese Fascists? YOU? Get real dude they'll kill all of us before they'll do a thing differently. The OILY gang and their bankster buddies on Wall st. own everyone and everything. Everyone they value that is. If they don't own you or u don't work for one of their Corps. your the enemy.
Seaglass, I'm afraid I have to agree with you. Who's going to turn off the mindless entertainment on TeeVee, get up off the sofa--and GET INVOLVED?
It's really frustrating. I'm involved with two local progressive "activist" groups, and no matter how much I talk up the other group when I'm attending either one, I still can't get any crossovers. I'm still the only one showing up at both groups (that are only about 5 miles apart).
There are a few rare individuals who show some initiative, but it seems like most progressives just want to hang out in their own familiar gatherings and chit-chat about what needs to be done, like it's some kind of cocktail party. Meanwhile, the well-financed wingnuts keep marching in lockstep, determined to rule (or ruin) the world.
Harvey my man, how many people are listening? Check the traffic congestion in your area. Has it gone up or down since the BP mess started? My area has worsened with very high traffic jams at 1 AM ! I've seen horrible days on the road and metro from Fairfax to Washington but not this bad.
I should also point out that even the metro advocates here tell me that we should be happy with our shitty metro system forcing delays and chugging our money and doing no real repairs or maintenance with it. To them, I should be grateful that increases in metro fares are going towards painting a few trash cans and switching the carpet floors to ceramic. There will be no changes to improve bus or metro schedules. Tell me, how do you like it when a bus is late to your stop and then skips it? How do you like it when there are more metro buses with "Not in Service" flicker signs hogging the roads? Harvey my man, we are a nation of proud morons !
"Realistic" or not, Harvey is right. When obama was confronted with the crimes of the Bush administration he said he wants to look forward, not backward. Yet this country is not moving forward-- we are resting on the achievements of the past in technology and energy production and not adapting.
Is there anyone who can dig up information on exactly what the industry is currently doing to stop that leak? I'd really like to know. I believe we have the technology to plug it. And, yes, let's hurry on down with the alternate sources.
Elisabet
We could make another containment! The broken riser has been cut and this time the dome can lack the igloo entrance that saddled the riser.
This dome would need two of those $500,000 Valves on top each other concreted into this dome ceiling.
The containment dome lowers onto the gusher with valves both open.
A barge of concrete is then deisel pumped around this base designed for this concrete.
Fill the entire area. Wait 3 days then slowly close first valve. Another barge of concrete continually pours all the time.
I think this is purposeful. Why is there no discussion?
The talk now is that the well casing is falling apart, with leaks a thousand feet in the sea bed. If the casing keeps falling apart and the sea bed keeps eroding, more than just some leaks from the sea bed - which is what is happening now - will occur. Everything holding up the massive blowout preventor would collapse, including the seabed. The well casing and pipes could just get blown out as the sea bed around the well erodes and we would have a direct, unstoppable hole from the reservoir to the sea bed. This worst-case scenario is what some people suspect the government and BP arent telling us.
From http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593/648967
"All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of" The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all."
Send suggestions to:
oilspillsolutions@hq.doe.gov
I just submitted a device that I think should close off the well. It would take a few days to build the device and it would require a barge full of gravel to force the device's business end 100 meters down the well, but it's a straightforward solution and it 100% plugs the well.
(In response to Kitaj's information posted below, I'd say that my device's business end now needs to be forced at least 300 meters down the well. We'll only need to add a little more steel.)
But can the well be plugged ?
Top-Fill stopped quickly, and lots of people saw what looked to be massive gushing directly from the ocean floor, separate from the gushing oil from the pipe. They may not be able to try to stop the well, because it could blow out the rock around the well and create an even worse scenario.
My device is sort of like a 1500 foot nail.
In stage 1, the nail is just an I-beam with Teflon sides and a sharpened front end, for minimal drag. The whole nail weighs a few hundred tons. Its weight pushes the nail down the well against the oil's upward pressure for perhaps 100 feet. Now the nail will stay straight.
In stage 2, a floating barge dumps gravel or sand down through a pipe into a huge barge-sized container welded to the head of the nail. The extra weight pushes the nail farther down the hole. The second section of the nail has no Teflon and it has bumps that cause turbulence. The upward oil flow's pressure, now 6800 psi, is reduced against the bumps, without complete impedence of the flow.
In stage 3, 1500 tons of gravel, a barge full, is in the container on the nail's head and the nail goes all the way down. Cut away the blowout preventer with a saw between stages 2 and 3.
This solid plug closes off the well to a depth of perhaps 1000 feet, or deeper if the engineers would prefer 1200 feet of plug. The rock directly around the well won't blow out if the plug is 1000 feet deep. Nor will the rock be damaged as the nail sinks progressively down the hole, progressively inhibiting the oil's upward pressure within the well.
I suppose you know this site, one that managed to scare me in its description of likely scenarios:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593/648967
Top-kill failed; the leak is further down the pipe than we thought; the entire system is compromised and due to fail any time; a catastrophic collapse is not out of the question; the relief wells may not be successful at all. This is playing out as the worst environmental catastrophe ever. The effects will extend even outside the Caribbean quite possibly.
Hubris is the word that comes to mind. Hubris--from Greek drama, the stepping forward of short-sighted men into places they had no business going and their subsequent downfall. That is what we are experiencing here. Maybe Barry's invocation of the Deity will provide us with a Deus ex Machina--maybe the machine is an oil platform!--but I doubt it.
I too believe that fully stopping this gusher is still very possible.. look at it from the angle of stopping the gush from under the seafloor.. There is over 3 1/2 miles of vertical earth and concrete piping to work with on stopping the flow upwards..read on, friends..
Idea to stop spill______________Why would this not work??
Underneath the ocean, on the seafloor:
Drill another well, parallel to the gusher now, and take down in it a "man-hole cover" like metal object to the appropriate depth(1/4, 1/2, 1, or 2 miles down), then move it sideways (parallel to the ocean floor) until this metal object lodges and cuts off the flow of the oil upwards, underneath the seafloor..You have over 3 miles off earth to try and cut off this upwards flow.. 3 miles to stop the gush!! Why is this not being tried or discussed or, even not possible?? Could this work?? Let us know what you think..
Harveyman
Do not ditch the market man!
Look at all the electric cars and trucks that are Being made NOW this year.
Policy is killin us!
Look nuclear needs an Act of Congress, ya know the Price/Anderson Act?
Freaky crony CAPITALIZM!
Oil Policy-Coal Policy-NUKE
How to change policy is my question?
Let us level the playing field like this summer!
Check out the ZENN electric capacitor drive train.
Recharges in 4 to 8 minutes.
Next up to the plate is the Magnetic Air Car !!!!!!!!
One way to change policy - BOYCOTT purchase clothes used same with tools. I plan to piece me an electric vehicle.
Growin a beautiful garden this year.
I be buying local and salvaging all around!
Harvey I think we need to ridicule these fools who be out of control!
BOYCOTT gone swimming adois
Thank you, Mr. Wasserman.
One of my concerns is that the Gulf keeps heating up. Satellite-recorded sea surface temperatures, available at
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/RT/sst-atl-loop.html
show that the northern and eastern Gulf is the hottest place in the Atlantic Ocean. A pretty big swath of the Gulf is now over 86 degrees Fahrenheit, with indications that temperatures are even a bit higher toward the coast. An oil sheen can cause this spiking of sea surface temperatures. This is terrible news now that a bad hurricane season is approaching.
- - - - -
And now for an explanation to newcomers:
At least one person somewhere in a boiler room, paid ultimately by an oil transmission line company and by Exxon/Mobil through an ad agency, is writing eight hours a day under many pseudonyms. The bloggers are financially obligated to write snide and somewhat hurtful things about anyone who opposes climate change, such as our reporter Mr. Wasserman. In another boiler room, the same types of employees are hired by nuclear companies to write the same somewhat mean-spirited things about any and all anti-nuclear activists, such as Mr. Wasserman. Coming soon, I'm sure that we'll have various Republican candidate boiler rooms by September. People who want to be activists should learn that these hirelings exist. They pollute good sites. Sometimes these employees tell all and apologize to us, after they leave these jobs.
harvey wasserman
thanks for the heads-up on that. esp on dailykos there are some pretty nasty bloggers out there. tnen you add in tom friedman, chuck krauthammer & the crazies on the right, it's quote a crew....
good post...thank you!
"The powers that be studiously avoid the core reality that this disaster stems from the ability of large corporations to make all of us pay for their irresponsible greed." -- Harvey Wasserman
Taxes subsidize the oil industries, and other energy industries. It's just a looping circle isn't it? BP is described as being the worst of the oil companies, but then, ask Bolivia and Nigeria which is worst. The list is long!
I'm recalling something written by the Italian writer Ignazio Silone (although I realize that he is a controversial figure to many people), in his 1937 book, Bread and Wine, "The government has two arms of varying length. The long one is for taking -- it reaches everywhere. The short one is for giving -- it reaches only to those nearest."
While I agree with most of the article, one thing that I am not sure is true:
"...In fact, BP does not have sufficient assets to pay for what it has done..."
I am not sure about that, the company (like other Big Oil firms) has made over 37 billion in profit in just the last 2 years. If the company was seized and placed under Federal receivership it could very likely be made to pay fully for what it has done. However, it is true that the company, nor anyone else can fully restore the Gulf to what it was before.
harvey wasserman
i think any current estimation that BP's assets could cover this is wildly optimistic. the gusher isn't done yet & will go worldwide. i can't imagine it won't ultimately be in the trillions if we take truly full account of the long-term damage.
I see what you mean there Harvey, and as each day goes by it does seem like a worst case scenario will unfold: the oil hits the Gulf Stream and is transported up the Atlantic Coast and all the way across the Atalantic Ocean to Western Europe and further. We can only hope for a best case scenario which is still very depressing and disturbing.
harvey wasserman
right, socialist...these poisons will encircle us FOREVER! what price could possibly be set on such a horror?
Their a British based multi-national, they own nearly nothing in the US we could put our hands on.. We could declare war on Britan I guess,, if you want?
Thats the beauty of Corporations, "They have no soul to dam, and no neck to strech" Andrew Jackson
>^^<
The Brits have a "special relationship" with us. Just as we supplied Saddams WMD, we supply Britain's nukes. Essentially, we tell them what to do, and they do it. When we told them to claim that Iraq is threatening the world with WMD, they did. When we told them to send troops, they did. If we tell them to claim Iran is threatening the world with WMD, they will. Tony Blair bent right over. Gordon Brown did, and the next guy will too. Its up to the Prez whether or not he force BP to pay. I would say if he doesnt, then he has been bought.
harvey wasserman
the scariest thing i've seen is this recurring scenario from kitaj about the whole Gulf floor exploding in a bubble of gas & oil. sounds like the apocalypse to me. sure hope it doesn't happen.
as for beating the corporations---what choice to we have. our species has overcome dictators, chieftains, lords, dukes, popes, etc. corps are big & tough....and the ultimate enem of all life. if we don't beat them we die, it's that simple.
so....do we have a survival instinct or don't we?
Ask an Afghani.
So don't have a disaster, Rickover did it with the Navy Reactors for over 60 years so far. It's not that it can't be done it just requires care and more care.
>^^<
"So don't have a disaster". [Forehead smack]...Well, why didn't *we* think of that?!
I could not get this .mov file to post. Go here:
http://www.curseoftheblackgoldbook.com/
and open the movie at the bottom of the page. This is about 50 years of Shell oil in the Niger Delta. Things can get so much worse!
Try googleing the Urals in Soviet Russia and oil. see what a mess can be truly made.
>^^<
P.S. There is no safe anything when it comes to energy. Windmills kill birds, Solar messes up Tortise breeding grounds, Every alternate fuel tried so far seems to have more down consiquences than up, Look at Ethnyol for instince lots of left over contaminated corn-sludge, too much energy required to cook it, so only the Rich can Drive? not on my America.
deleted duplicate, sorry
"P.S. There is no safe anything when it comes to energy. Windmills kill birds, Solar messes up Tortise breeding grounds, Every alternate fuel tried so far seems to have more down consiquences than up"
Tortoises? I find this difficult to believe. Are there tortoises on the top of your roof? Solar cells on top of residential rooftops could supply the whole US augmented by Natural Gas at night. And not one of them (Solar panels) has ever blown up. Not EVer! And there's no clean up cost or disposal problem or mining problems. Of course, the Nuclear Mafia will object to losing their illegal nuclear ocean disposal business in Somalia, but somebody has to quit fouling the ocean before it fouls us.
You can't start and stop a nuke plant daily. It's too dangerous. But gas can, and it could cover when transmission strategies to the dark North Falter.
Who cares what it costs? We subsidize War at a trillion dollars total a year to the Pentagon don't we? If we're smart we'll change it into the Solargon! Its new mission would be take out internal combustion engines and anybody cutting down a rain forest. I mean the Pentagons' job is to kill people, right? Let's get them killing the right people. Penthouses were the CEO/Dr Evils live, War criminals hiding out in Dubai (like Dick Cheney and Eric Prince), and anybody who uses a private tail pipe. If you don't take bus.... Bang.. Collateral Justice.
Look we are facing global extinction here. The old non-radical ideas are not going to cut it.
TJ
Thanks Bill,
So it's "Load Following" by Natural Gas fired generators. In my 100 percent residential solar solution, nuke and coal would be decommissioned as too dirty and too dangerous. Night time base load would be "load followed" by Natural Gas Plants that fire up in the evening on a nightly basis, or fire up quickly to augment weather systems, long-range transmission problems.
You said it yourself: The current 104 nuclear plants are of base-load design, and are not designed to be shut down daily. A specific sequence has to occur, to bring them up to speed right? Required stabilization and time consuming safety checks, presumably, makes them unsuitable for a nightly Load Following role since to safely put them on line requires two days of procedures. Right?
We don't know about the very different Navy Reactor Safety, since most incidents and accidents are classified. We do know what happened to a number of nuclear platforms however:
Nuclear powered submarines have suffered a number of accidents (not all related to the power supply).
K-19, 1961, the reactor almost had a meltdown and exploded. Several of the crew died of radiation exposure. The events on board the submarine are dramatized by the film K-19: The Widowmaker.
USS Thresher (SSN-593), 1963, was lost during deep diving tests and later investigation concluded that failure of a brazed pipe joint and ice formation in the ballast blow valves prevented surfacing. The accident motivated a number of safety changes to the US fleet.
USS Scorpion (SSN-589), 1968, lost.
K-27, 1968, experienced a near meltdown of one of its liquid metal (lead-bismuth) cooled VT-1 reactors, causing the ship to be deactivated by 20 July 1968.
K-219, 1986, the reactor almost had a meltdown. Sergei Preminin died after he manually lowered the control rods, and stopped the explosion. The submarine sank three days later.
K-141 Kursk, 2000, the generally accepted theory is that a leak of hydrogen peroxide in the forward torpedo room led to the detonation of a torpedo warhead, which in turn triggered the explosion of half a dozen other warheads about two minutes later.
USS San Francisco (SSN-711), 2005, collided with a seamount in the Pacific Ocean.
HMS Vanguard & Le Triomphant, February 2009, the French and British submarines collided in the Atlantic while on routine patrols. There were no injuries among the crews, but both ships were damaged during the collision. The chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Kate Hudson, said "the dents reportedly visible on the British sub show the boats were no more than a couple of seconds away from total catastrophe."[10]
So is a reactor rapid throttle up or down in a boat safe as it was marketed to military forces? Maybe. Before the trend of outsourcing work to unaccountable subcontractors. Maybe. Three partial meltdowns have happened in the US compliment of reactors haven't they? Fermi Lab, San Susana, , and Three Mile Island. Right? What is that? Almost a three percent failure rate? It's gotta be worse for Nuclear powered warships. Ask the people swimming in Guam Bay about that one. 10/??/1975. USS Proteus, submarine tender, at Apra Harbor, Guam. Reactor wastewater dumped into the bay, resulting in background radiation levels of 0.1 rem/hr (50 times the permissible dose) on two local beaches. No fatalities. Ref: Lutin.
Your opinion that nuclear power is not a dangerous practice when three of the 104 reactors used: have had out of control partial meltdowns and dozens have dumped waste water into rivers is most curious. Perhaps the engineering term MTBF (Mean time between Failures) is a more accurate gauge of whether something is safe or not for the public. Murphy's Law says we are due for another bad meltdown soon. As the greed for profits increases and sees no sanction against CEO's who harm the public, I can not see how something as complex and hazardous as nuclear power can even be fathomed by a logical mind.
In this business climate, it's a recipe for disaster, imho.
TJ
deleted prox server double post.
Not sure why it does that.
Thanks Bill, that was indeed, interesting.
The Russian losses were frequently the lack of funding for safety equipment and preventative maintenance. Any industry or branch of service in the USA could conceivably run into similar funding problems.
Your comment:
"(The cause of the Thresher accident is, at least in the unclassified press, still unknown.)"
You might be right. All we have is the public domain speculation. I suspect you have a TS and are privy to interesting info about that. The wikipedia list cited the 1975 book The Thresher Disaster by John Bentley.[8]
07:47: Thresher begins its descent to the test depth of 1,000 ft (300 m).
07:52: Thresher levels off at 400 ft (120 m), contacts the surface, and the crew inspects the ship for leaks. None are found.
08:09: Commander Harvey reports reaching half the test depth.
08:25: Thresher reaches 1,000 ft (300 m).
09:02: Thresher is cruising at just a few knots (subs normally moved slowly and cautiously at great depths, lest a sudden jam of the diving planes send the ship below test depth in a matter of seconds.) The boat is descending in slow circles, and announces to Skylark she is turning to "Corpen [course] 090." At this point, transmission quality from Thresher begins to noticeably degrade, possibly as a result of thermoclines.
09:09: It is believed a brazed pipe-joint ruptures in the engine room. The crew would have attempted to stop the leak; at the same time, the engine room would be filling with a cloud of mist. Under the circumstances, Commander Harvey's likely decision would have been to order full speed, full rise on the fairwater planes, and blowing main ballast in order to surface. Due to the Joule-Thomson effect, the pressurized air rapidly expanding in the pipes cools down, condensing moisture and depositing it on strainers installed in the system to protect the moving parts of the valves; in only a few seconds the moisture freezes, clogging the strainers and blocking the air flow, halting the effort to blow ballast. Water leaking from the broken pipe most likely causes short circuits leading to an automatic shutdown of the ship's reactor, causing a loss of propulsion. The logical action at this point would have been for Harvey to order propulsion shifted to a battery-powered backup system. As soon as the flooding was contained, the engine room crew would have begun to restart the reactor, an operation that would be expected to take at least 7 minutes.
09:12: Skylark pages Thresher on the underwater telephone: "Gertrude check, K [over]." With no immediate response (although Skylark is still unaware of the conditions aboard Thresher), the signal "K" is repeated twice.
09:13: Harvey reports status via underwater telephone. The transmission is garbled, though some words are recognizable: "[We are] experiencing minor difficulty, have positive up-angle, attempting to blow." The submarine, growing heavier from water flooding the engine room, continues its descent, probably tail-first. Another attempt to empty the ballast tanks is performed, again failing due to the formation of ice. Officers on Skylark could hear the hiss of compressed air over the loudspeaker at this point.
09:14: Skylark acknowledges with a brisk, "Roger, out," awaiting further updates from the SSN. A follow-up message, "No contacts in area," is sent to reassure Thresher she can surface quickly, without fear of collision, if required.
09:15: Skylark queries Thresher about her intentions: "My course 270 degrees. Interrogative range and bearing from you." There is no response, and Skylark's captain, Lieutenant Commander Hecker, sends his own gertrude message to the submarine, "Are you in control?"
09:16: Skylark picks up a garbled transmission from Thresher, transcribed in the ship's log as "900 N." [The meaning of this message is unclear, and was not discussed at the enquiry; it may have indicated the submarine's depth and course, or it may have referred to a Navy "event number" (1000 indicating loss of submarine), with the "N" signifying a negative response to the query from Skylark, "Are you in control?"]
09:17: A second transmission is received, with the partially recognizable phrase "exceeding test depth...." The leak from the broken pipe grows with increased pressure.
09:18: Skylark detects a high-energy low-frequency noise with characteristics of an implosion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593)
So here's a situation where it took seven minutes to bring the reactor up to speed, and rushing it might have lead to a botch job and a reactor problem. It seems certain from the excerpts of the transcript that they lost all propulsion and were unable to re-establish it, trying a last ditch blow, which also failed.
Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were both throttle up mistakes via defective design/hardware if I remember correctly. The experiment in Russia and the TMi disaster were both compounded by "Operator Error" AFAIK.
I have read that we have so many different designs that it's next to impossible to standardize procedures between plants. The aviation industry went through a series of mergers where so many differences between B-727's existed that it took long delays to answer ATC because there were about five different audio panel configurations and in the dark, you had to grope the ceiling the center consol, under the side window and on the power quadrant to get the mic configured so that you could respond. Before deregulation, fleets were standardized, a very expensive retrofit. After deregulation switches showed up all over the place. The FAA would claim one license was good for all stretch versions which all flew and behaved very differently.
It was a noticeable degradation in safety which was very distracting and led to a lot of unknown close calls in the industry. It probably led to a lot of bald ATC controllers and early heart attacks and rehab. But any whistleblowers were promptly railroaded at dawn.
Let's just hope the nuclear industry doesn't get deregulated any more than it is.
TJ
In fact, Thom, yes. Republicans and several of the estimated 172 actual members of the Tea party have reported sightings of flying tortoises dead under the solar panels of people who cared enough about the world, and saving money, to put them up. No confirmation has been obtained from anyone not a far rightwinger, though, so some suspect that drugs or possibly lies are involved. Just like the windmill bird thing and 20 or so other conservative arguments against renewables.
Harvey, I am always pleased to read your columns.
Thank you.
harvey wasserman
thank YOU, lily. it's an honor & a privilege....no nukes/4 solartopia...harveyw
When I try to go to www.solartopia.com I get a warning, "Unable to verify www.me.com as a trusted site". Should I ignore this warning?
harvey wasserman
so sorry....it's www.solartopia.org not .com.
when i filed for solartopia, .com was already taken by a computer supply corp. i haven't visited their site since.
let me know what you get when you try .org.
in the upper right is a wonderful dance done by my daughter, shoshanna, to a song sung by the great dana lyons.
in the upper left is an array of stuff from pete seeger. ENJOY!!! no nukes/4 solartopia....
Harvey -- My mistake in my post saying www.solartopia.com.
I was using the link at the bottom of your article. Whether I use the link or just open the location (www.solartopia.org) from my browser, the message comes up.
I may just ignore it, but I'm not savvy enough to know whether or not I'm doing the right thing.
I'm eager to look at your site.
I guess it's fixed. The message doesn't come up now. (I noticed that one of your links reveals a "Not Found" page of MobileME...which is the www.me.com thing in the warning.)
Nice appropriately sunny-looking site. If we don't accomplish something of the sort suggested by 2030 or earlier, I doubt if we'll make it at all. Nevertheless, I hope we can all do a little dance of joy in 2030. I'll be 80 but, by god, I'll give it a try.
Misplaced post. Deleted by author.
SILVER LINING
As for 9/11, it requires calamities such as the BP gusher, to force measures that were so obviously needed beforehand.
This event underscores the crucial need to reduce our dangerous fossil fuel dependency through conservation and renewable energy development, as well as to enforce drilling safety--both of which the industry has obstructed through decades of lobbying, misinformation, & fabricated science with help from cooperative administrations, defaulting legislators, and an apathetic populace.
This environmental disaster provides our president with a special opportunity to detooth the energy cartels, and enact these vital reform measures.
If he defaults this mandate, history will judge him harshly
The previous largest "Blowout" in the United States of America was the Lucas well .
On land it released an estimated 100,000 barrels a day and took 10 days to cap.
This was seen as a great success and the drilling of Oil wells in the region exploded after the Lucas well.
Given THIS well is likely dumping more barrels per day into the sea then the Lucas well dumped on the ground, the tragic fact of the matter is the "Free Market system" sees this as a great success .(JP Morgan even stated it would be GOOD for the economy and lead to GDP growth).
Capitalism in action.
Harvey Wasserman---
If you're still reading this, there are better ways of collecting oil from the sea surface, whether it be 50 miles from shore, or in the bayous...see
http://tinyurl.com/CEA-CREATURE
Also, the least expensive technology for converting (residual) solar energy into electricity is the Atmospheric Vortex Engine, (AVE) which is extensively documented at:
http://vortexengine.ca
May the AVE-Force be with us!
The technical side of the solution is practically done, with a good majority of sustainable methods having been demonstrated over a century ago. The political side is the hard part. The siren songs of the elites draw the people to crash on the rocks, and they crash over and over. Should we be dealing directly with the people? With the elites? Both?
The base has to be the people, IMO, but it has to be a distinct *movement*. There is a great localization, post-petroleum organization where I live, but the general view of those involved seems to be to focus on their own area, let others focus on theirs, and, presto, the world will be changed. Obviously, they are correct on one count. It is necessary for inhabitants to have a living relationship with their bioregions and communities.
But a vital, integral movement is required.
I have been mulling the idea of traveling around the country interviewing folks involved in local efforts, looking at things first hand, writing a book and injecting a unifying principle and spark of a movement. (I'll need some funding for the project, however...a major obstacle right now.)
There has to be certain underlying principles and understandings. For example, it won't work without an awareness of the political necessity of non-cooperation with corporatism and of confronting the beast.
We need to talk about these things within the framework of a movement so that our ideas don't just fly off into the ether.