Cocoposts

Rocky Flats Editorial

Flats Secrecy Taken Too Far By The Denver Post

(...) The U.S. Department of Energy's recently announced plans to digitally copy — then destroy — 500 boxes of records pertaining to the plant will only make matters worse. Legitimate arguments can be made about how cutting-edge advances in software and hardware quickly become outdated, making it very possible that future access to the digitally copied records would be difficult.

More important, though, is how the public perceives the trustworthiness of the DOE.  (...)

The now-infamous Rocky Flats special grand jury is a 16-year-old wound that has never healed. The grand jury investigated environmental crimes at the plant for 2-1/2 years, sifting through hundreds of boxes of evidence and testimony from more than 100 witnesses. Grand jurors were discharged in 1992, days before federal prosecutors crafted a plea agreement with Rockwell International Corporation, one of the contractors that operated the plant.

The jurors have been struggling to be heard ever since, filing federal actions in an effort to get permission to release publicly their allegations and beliefs about what went on at the plant.  A decision last week by Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch to keep much of the jury's contentions under wraps only deepens the air of mystery surrounding Rocky Flats.

The Strangelovian concept is:  the less information made public about what went on, the greater the public perception of trustworthiness.  I'd say that is still working pretty well for DOE.  After all, what could possibly go wrong with production at Los Alamos?   Trust them.   

Smart Grid May Reduce Peak Demand

Reducing peak electric power loads is critical to reducing the possibility that we'll rationalize using nuclear power to meet those demands. 

News from the Denver Post that consumers may get important feedback on home electricity use -  in Canada and Boulder anyway. 

MILTON, Ontario — The glowing amber dot on a light switch in the entryway of George Tsapoitis' house offers a clue about the future of electricity.  A few times this summer, when millions of air conditioners strain the Toronto region's power grid, that pencil-tip-size amber dot will blink. It will be asking Tsapoitis to turn the switch off — unless he's already programmed his house to make that move for him.

This is the beginning of a new way of thinking about electricity, and the biggest change in how we get power since wires began veining the landscape a century ago.  Smart-grid technologies have gotten small tests throughout North America, as utilities and regulators scout how to coax people to reduce their demand for power. But there's little doubt it's coming.

Xcel Energy plans to soon begin a $100 million smart-grid project reaching 100,000 homes in Boulder. The grid will create a two-way communication between Xcel and its customers, allowing them to determine peak usage hours and change rates and consumption habits accordingly.

For example, Xcel would be able to charge higher rates during peak hours and lower rates during off-peak hours. Consumers could lower their monthly bills by performing power-consuming tasks, such as running the dishwasher, during off-peak hours.

No Tolls I-70

The Colorado Legislature dumped the idea of congestion pricing, in the form of a $5 toll, for I-70.  Truckers, skiers and ski resorts hated the idea  - the trucking industry, especially.  So the recommendation is now for a rail system.   GLWT.

The Denver-Glenwood Springs I-70 section is on the truck route between Chicago and Los Angeles and  the main artery to Aspen, Vail and old mining towns turned to casinos.  It is also the "steepest longest-steep"  freeway anywhere ever.   

From the Denver Post:

(T)he plan to put tolls on I-70 collapsed into a heap of chuckles.  Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, a Colorado Springs Republican who sponsored the plan to charge $5 tolls near the Eisenhower Tunnel, laid over his bill until May 26 — Memorial Day. That effectively killed it because the legislature will be adjourned by then.

"When you're sitting in the traffic jams that day," McElhany said to his colleagues with a mischievous smile, "just think about the $5 you could have paid to be out of it."

From an earlier piece of optimism from Toll Roads News:

Tolls were used in the mid-1950s to build the Denver-Boulder Turnpike, now de-tolled US-36. The traffic crisis on the Denver-Glenwood Springs segment of I-70 is caused principally by high-income vacationers and recreationists, so the equity argument for financing improvements with tolls seems strong.

Image from the I-70 Coalition.

Rust, Sun, New Urbanists

Title of James Howard Kunstler's excellent post this week contrasting Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania with Austin, Texas: Rust and Sun. 

In Austin -where he attended the conference of the Congress for the New Urbanism:

The convention center itself was a thing built to such a pharoanic scale that Rameses the Great might have commissioned it for his villa in Easthampton. It was a quarter-mile walk from the front of the ballroom to the coffee set-up in the rear -- and this was one of the smaller ballrooms. The larger ones were occupied by some kind of intramural sports association convention full of people wearing sideways hats and weird, calf-length athletic shorts. The Sunbelt is all about sports, where the social aggression seething below the surface has been channeled.

All this was hardly the fault of the New Urbanists, who came there mostly to look and learn, and continue the process of refining their agenda for the years ahead. More and more they are coming to recognize the discontinuities we face in the form of peak oil and climate change. On these points, the leadership may be even more radically active than the membership. The ideas from meetings they held in Austin about how to meet these problems will continue to radiate through the country. 

They are probably the only group of professionals in America that I know of -- including the professional environmentalists -- who have a coherent vision of how America might physically arrange daily life in the terrible aftermath of the fossil fuel fiasco. Their ideas have the power to galvanize our otherwise lame political debates of the season. Nobody else in America is really thinking about what we'll do when the cardboard signs appear on the convenience store pump racks saying "out of gas...."

WIPP Giddyup

So there is not enough money to clean up Los Alamos.  Story in the Albuquerque Journal.

But that's apparently a separate issue entirely from those of expanding nuclear waste dump sites in New Mexico.  The more the merrier.  From the Las Vegas Sun:

“Senator Domenici today dropped a bombshell on the DOE when he said we should be looking at New Mexico as an alternative to Nevada for high level nuclear waste disposal,” Berkley said in a statement. Domenici suggested the type of geography found in his home state could be considered for a repository of waste from utility plants alongside.

Oh yeah, and don't worry about the waste because we're going to recycle now. How happy and green is that?

Those who comment about how great nukes are over at NEI Nuclear Notes now spin-on about recycling for all that clean energy and this bit about how New Mexicans loved the idea of WIPP all along.  It was much desired pork - just like prisons. 

There was a time when if a state needed to build a new prison that communities would fight tooth and nail not to get picked to host it out of concerns over the city's image (in the form of lower property values) and public safety (what would happen if a vicious cat molester were to escape?). Nowadays municipalities bite and scratch to get chosen because of the jobs and business they bring in. Somehow the process of choosing a spent fuel repository became structured to guarantee state opposition. On the other hand, to my knowledge WIPP was built with a minimum of state fuss. I wonder if the difference is that Pete Domenici was familiar with Tom Sawyer and his picket fence and packaged WIPP as an opportunity (read "pork barrel project") rather than as something that was going to be foisted on them.

All in the packaging. 
 

Home Energy and Deep Peak Oil

Salon has interesting story and letter exchange about Peak Oil.   A commenter notes the story's focus on the transportation sector and throws out some numbers on potential for energy savings in buildings.   

Homes are such an easy target that it is sad higher energy efficiency standards were not adopted long ago. A 50% decrease in home energy use is easy, and is almost a cost wash between increased mortgage cost and energy savings per month. For the cost of going from granite to corian in the kitchen, or cutting one stall from the garage of a new home, home energy use could be cut 70%. With 1.8 million homes/yr expected to be built over the next 10 years, and with 250,000 homes replaced per year, huge cuts in home energy use are possible in the next 30 years. And the homes will look identical to how they do today! If homeowners can accept some changes in appearance, even bigger savings are possible.

Another gets far-out about how maybe the planet needs oil and mineral resources in the ground for some  purpose.   

... As a long ago hitch-hiking teenager, I posed such questions to a lift-providing, newly retired Colorado School of Mines Dean. 

I saw that old miner park that vintage Mercedes right there on Loveland Pass, extinguish his cigar, roll the convertible top down, remove his gold rim glasses and stare out into space as traffic crawled past us. He sat and thought for several moments amid timberline stillness and traffic swoosh and then he told me that in over 45 years of teaching how to remove natural resources and make money with the stuff, he had never once even considered the fact that the Earth may just have some unknown use for her black bounties and cash-ready ores.    

Colorado Rally for Oil and Gas

Denver Post - Politics West, John Ingold has news of "rallies" against  new environmental regulations that haven't even been drafted yet. 

The $23-billion-a-year Colorado oil and gas industry flexed its considerable muscle today, turning out hundreds of people for a rally at the state Capitol. The event coincided with similar rallies in Greeley, Grand Junction and Trinidad, according to the Colorado Oil and Gas association, which organized the rallies. And it served as a preview to the coming smackdown over proposed new regulations on the industry that are expected to be released later this month.

Bold bits mine.  Shouldn't that be smackdown of ?

“We come here with a simple, important and final ask of our state government , ‘Please don’t rule us out,’” Meg Collins, the president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said in echoing the rally’s theme. Industry advocates have said the new rules, which seek to impose greater protections for the environment, could drive up the cost of doing business in the state and force companies to leave.

  If they leave, they'll be back because the oil and gas will still be there. 

The oil and gas industry employs 70,000 people in Colorado, and a grim state economic forecast on Thursday noted that the oil and gas industry helped keep the news from being grimmer. “We cannot afford to kick the state economic leader out of the state,” said Rep. Cory Gardner, a Yuma Republican who was one of several lawmakers to attend the rally. “We will protect our air, our land and our water, and we will do it be (sic) working with the people of Colorado instead of hurting them.”

Funny how this is posed as all about Colorado.  It is almost like pretending energy companies are sports teams threatening to move away if they don't get what they want.  Only this is bigger.  Go Colorado!

Proponents of the new rule-making process called the rally rhetoric hogwash. “I don’t think they get hurt; I think that is baloney,” said House Majority Leader Alice Madden, D-Boulder. “They can say whatever they want, but factually I don’t think there’s any substance to what they say.”

Madden pointed to a recent announcement by energy giant Chevron that it will invest $7.3 billion in Colorado over the next decade, as well as a $1 billion investment by a smaller company. “That’s not a sign of an industry getting ready to leave,” said TJ Brown, the Front Range field director for the Colorado Environmental Coalition. “There’s no indication they're going to be going anywhere.”

Which is sort of sad too.   "He can't take it with him and God's not making any more."   

Mining in Town

From the Santa Fe New Mexican and AP is news of Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearings about 1872 Mining Law changes and a new report by the Pew Campaign for Responsible Mining.   

... The Pew Campaign for Responsible Mining and the Environmental Working Group said in a report released Tuesday that active mining claims on federal land near Western cities and towns increased almost 50 percent since 2003, to more than 50,000 claims....

The National Mining Association says the increase in claims is driven by a surging worldwide demand for raw materials. The association's Luke Popovich said 5 percent or less of claims are actually mined and added the industry is working to lessen the amount of pollution it creates.

Tuesday's report, Popovich said, shows environmentalists are "against those communities that depend on mines for their livelihood."

The federal government reported last month that the metal mining industry disposed of or released 1.2 billion tons of toxic chemicals in 2006 — more than any other industry.

There is little difference, in practice, between community livelihood and community environmental health.  The National Mining Association and others benefit from weak public memory in obscuring this truth.

It is an uranium "renaissance" because we've forgotten what a bad idea it was. 

 

Areva in New Mexico

From the Las Cruces Sun-News

...The proposed factory would enrich uranium provided by utilities to fuel their commercial nuclear reactors, said Nancy Lang, external communications manager of Areva Inc., based in Bethesda, Md. Areva Inc., a subsidiary of Paris-based Areva, also is mulling possible sites in Idaho, Ohio, Texas and Washington state, she said Friday.

The company hopes to select a site "in the coming weeks," said Lang, who declined to pinpoint the New Mexico site under consideration.  Areva Inc. would employ about 1,000 people during the factory's construction and about 250 people when the facility is in regular operation, she said. ...

Gee, the new Wal-Mart in Edgewood employs 450 - without the nuke waste. 

Bob Poyser, vice president of Areva Inc., said his company has not hired lobbyists or an outside counsel in New Mexico.  We're getting excellent cooperation from the individuals interested in the project in southern New Mexico," he said. "It's allowed us to work without lobbyists or outside counsel."

Notice he says this twice - sort of threat-like.  Like without the excellent cooperation, there will be lobbyists and more lawyers.  Ugh.  Please, no.   

Lang said Areva Inc. is judging each site on geological, environmental, economic, social and public acceptance factors. We consider that public acceptance is at least as important as any of the technical criteria," she said."...

Eunice says a pleasing personality is more points than the bathing suit competition. 

Palo Verde Puppet Show

From the Arizona Republic we hear about Arizona State University engineering students at work on a marvelous scale model of the nuke plant.   The project is an excellent vehicle for promotion of the technology among the fluid-dynamics students at ASU, at least.  But that is only coincidental,  I'm so sure.   

Can ASU  fix Palo Verde? APS hopes school's scale model solves cooling-water problem

Arizona State University scientists are building in a basement of the Tempe campus a huge scale model of a nuclear reactor - minus the nuclear. The goal is to help Arizona Public Service Co. engineers investigate minor pressure fluctuations in the water system that cools Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station's reactors. ...

After the tests the ASU drama department will be use the model for a puppet show as part of an improved training program.  Kidding. More likely a video game.

A parallel press release must have come out for this story in the same paper the same day:

Palo Verde Efforts Please Regulators

The chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is pleased with efforts to improve performance at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station following a tour of the plant Friday. The plant 50 miles west of Phoenix fell into "Category 4," one level from being shut down, following mechanical problems dating to 2003.

Palo Verde provides a huge chunk of power to the western U.S., including nearly a third of the electricity delivered by its operator, Arizona Public Service Co. 
NRC Chairman Dale Klein said he asked the plant's Chief Nuclear Officer Randy Edington when he thought the plant could move out of the category, and Edington said by mid-2009.  "The NRC doesn't want to see plants in Category 4," Klein said. "But they have to demonstrate stable performance. They won't move out . . . just because they say they are ready."

The NRC won't simply take their word for it.  But then, they really don't want to see Category 4's.  And he's pleased as punch.   So expect more press releases heralding Category 3 soon and that video game.

The comments section contains the range of nuke views.  On one hand:

Nuclear power is one part of the growing energy portfolio that we must build to insulate our economic independence from foreign oil. Were exporting 1 billion USD per day in cash to the middle east, this must stop now. We need more nuclear, solar, gas, biomass and clean coal plants constructed in a US energy portfolio fashion to move us away from the carbon based fuels we are importing.

On the other hand:

Nuclear power generation is a flawed, dangerous, expensive and fraudulently represented technology.    It sets off a vastly imprudent risk for horrendous, almost incalculable, regional disaster against the desire for abundant electric power -- power which is fraudulently represented as being cheap, but which in fact only appears to be so because of its enormous hidden public subsidies, payable now and continuously into the remote future long after the plant is gone.