Nuclear Waste

I've always believed that we as a race are not equipped to plan for events that exceed our civilization's existence many times over in duration.    Yet the quest for massive amounts of centralized (read billable) electrical production, encouraged by government demand for access for enough bomb building plutonium to destroy all life on earth many times over, drove us to build many nuclear power plants that are now operating beyond their design life.  Even more foolishly, the incredibly deadly waste they turn out by the ton "every four to six years", in the form of "spent" fuel rods that must be kept in deep pools of cooling water for years before they can be moved to a long term waste depository, has been allowed to build up in those pools with no long term storage in sight.  There, at the generator sites, they are more accessible to terrorists and to natural disasters such as befell the Fukashima Daiichi reactors which are still leaking cooling water into the Pacific Ocean and will never be fully "cleaned up" in our lifetime.
For years our nation had a plan to store waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada and we spent probably a billion dollars preparing the site.  When it was almost ready in Obama's first year, he keep a promise to Senator Harry Reid  and stopped the whole project.  Did this stop the nuclear power industry from continuing to produce waste?  Do we have a new waste depository plan?  No and no!  In 2010 they got a Nuclear Regulatory Commission extension of 60 years for the time they could store waste on site ( http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2012/2012-06-11-092.html).   Now I ask you what for profit corporation, that undoubtedly has a holding company insulated it from possible losses by separately incorporating each nuclear power plant, could be trusted to care for money loosing waste storage and processing for 60 years AFTER that plant is decommissioned as these aging plants soon will be?  The linked E.N.S.  article discusses the federal appeals case of that NRC ruling but not the long tern implications.  Clearly the industry plans to stick the tax payers with ALL the waste costs as soon as they stop making a generating profit just as they have always done for most of the insurance costs and most of the cost of preparing Yucca Mountain Repository.

So just one more reminder and I promise no more till next year, we don't need to build more Nukes!  The means to survive on all clean renewables is here if we just put all our resources that we are currently spending on fossil fuel subsidies, defense of our access to other countries fossil fuels, world domination, farm subsidies to millionaires and the clean up of future obsolete  waste.
Next I hope to be writing about our life with our electric car that should be arriving soon.

SPRINGTIME 2012

Springtime is almost over and although I've not done anything real important it has been busy and interesting.  In many small ways we have become more comfortable and more integrated into our community here in Hakalau and East Hawaii in general.  I continue to work most Friday mornings with the all volunteer community park maintenance crew.  We continue to enjoy swimming at several different places and a couple weeks ago I added (at 67 years old) jumping 21' off the old county road bridge into the Hakalau river.   Here is a video of others doing the jump from the top of the rail (23.5') where I will jump next time. http://hxcmusic.me/video/EqeFAAga1Vw/Hakalau%20bridge%20jump

I attended the Hawaii County Democratic Convention last month.  Until he arrived himself at about 11:00 I was distributing fliers for my choice for congress from our district, Bob Marx.  He is a Hilo attorney of 30 years who has represented a lot of public interest matters.  The "grandson  of plantation workers" on Oahu, he graduated from Law School in Portland then served tree terms in the Oregon State Legislature before returning to Hawaii to set up practice in Hilo.

I worked pre-convention on the resolutions committee and spoke on two resolutions.  One that I wrote was poorly received and I'm afraid it illustrates how little people understand or are willing to take ownership for environmental destruction.  It was to give polluting bio-mass burners no state or county support and to encourage geothermal and other clean renewables instead.  People are desperate for jobs that the average person can aspire to and that will reduce our dependence on oil imports that they are willing to overlook the pollution of bio-mass burning.  About 1/3 of the attendees oppose geothermal because either they believe Pele will be offended, and we are not talking about natives in particular, or because the only currently operating geothermal facility has had a few leaks and not enough buffer zone around it.  I think very few people have any understanding of how much energy they waste and they are not willing to give up commuting in their monster trucks that undoubtedly produce in aggregate 1,000's of times the pollution that a few geothermal leaks let out.  Regarding surplus geothermal power going to free cars of gasoline, they've never seen it so they don't believe it.  They have seen successful use of solar here and don't see why we can't just put a solar panel on the car's roof because they refuse to learn about the amount of energy required to move their monster truck or SUV.

There are a few early adopters on this island driving electric cars now, Leafs, Mitshubishi "i cars", and one Tesla, and sometime next week we will receive the Th!nk City that my wife Myrna test drove on a family reunion trip to Chicago.  Yes a long way to ship a car but as none of the electric brands are carried by a dealer here we would have needed to ship from Oahu at least.  This car was a European brand that has had a long history of struggle and ownership changes.  Our's was assembled in Elkhart , Indiana then the company went through another of its bankruptcy/re-organizations resulting in closure of the Elkhart plant.  About 100 cars remain to be sold at discounted prices and they have longer range than the Leaf or the i (100 miles city, 85 miles highway).   They have light weight, large battery, no-rust recycled ABS plastic body panels and will require about twice the electricity as our whole house uses per commute day.  And yes, we do have enough room left on the roof for that many more solar panels --- when we can afford them.  Follow the link to the web site for Th!nk.

http://thinkev.leftbankcompanies.com/why-think-city/exterior-gallery/