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Friday, April 01, 2011

Safe Nuclear Does Exist, and China Is Leading the Way With Thorium

AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD - The Telegraph (U.K.)

Although my views on nuclear power are well-known in fairness I must report that an alternative nuclear technology is arising in China; one that does not have at least some of the many drawbacks that plague the American, French, and Japanese reactors.Thanks to Kolber.

A few weeks before the tsunami struck Fukushima's uranium reactors and shattered public faith in nuclear power, China revealed that it was launching a rival technology to build a safer, cleaner, and ultimately cheaper network of reactors based on thorium. This passed unnoticed –except by a small of band of thorium enthusiasts – but it may mark the passage of strategic leadership in energy policy from an inert and status-quo West to a rising technological power willing to break the mould.If China's dash for thorium power succeeds, it will vastly alter the global energy landscape and may avert a calamitous conflict over resources as Asia's industrial revolutions clash head-on with the West's entrenched consumption.China's Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a 'thorium-based molten salt reactor system". The liquid fuel idea was pioneered by US physicists at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s, but the US has long since dropped the ball. Further evidence of Barack `Obama's 'Sputnik moment", you could say.Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium. The system is inherently less prone to disaster.'The reactor has an amazing safety feature," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA engineer at Teledyne Brown and a thorium expert.Japan crisis forces rethink on the nuclear option 'If it begins to overheat, a little plug melts and the salts drain into a pan. There is no need for computers, or the sort of electrical pumps that were crippled by the tsunami. The reactor saves itself," he said.'They operate at atmospheric pressure so you don't have the sort of hydrogen explosions we've seen in Japan. One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release."Thorium is a silvery metal named after the Norse god of thunder. The metal has its own 'issues" but no thorium reactor could easily spin out of control in the manner of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or now Fukushima.Professor Cywinksi from Huddersfield University said thorium must be bombarded with neutrons to drive the fission process. 'There is no chain reaction. Fission dies the moment you switch off the photon beam. There are not enough neutrons for it continue of its own accord," he said.Dr Cywinski, who anchors a UK-wide thorium team, said the residual heat left behind in a crisis would be 'orders of magnitude less" than in a uranium reactor.The earth's crust holds 80 years of uranium at expected usage rates, he said. Thorium is as common as lead. America has buried tons as a by-product of rare earth metals mining. Norway has so much that Oslo is planning a post-oil era where thorium might drive the country's next great phase of wealth. Even Britain has seams in Wales and in the granite cliffs of Cornwall. Almost all the mineral is usable as fuel, compared to 0.7pc of uranium. There is enough to power civilization for thousands of years.I write before knowing the outcome of the Fukushima drama, but as yet none of 15,000 deaths are linked to nuclear failure. Indeed, there has never been a verified death from nuclear power in the West in half a century. Perspective is in order.We cannot avoid the fact that two to three billion extra people now expect – and will obtain – a western lifestyle. China alone plans to produce 100m cars and buses every year by 2020.The International Atomic Energy Agency said the world currently has 442 nuclear reactors. They generate 372 gigawatts of power, providing 14pc of global electricity. Nuclear output must double over twenty years just to keep pace with the rise of the China and India.If a string of countries cancel or cut back future reactors, let alone follow Germany's Merkel in shutting some down, they shift the strain onto gas, oil, and coal. Since the West is also cutting solar subsidies, they can hardly expect the solar industry to plug the gap.BP's disaster at Macondo should teach us not to expect too much from oil reserves deep below the oceans, beneath layers of blinding salt. Meanwhile, we rely uneasily on Wahabi repression to crush dissent in the Gulf and keep Arabian crude flowing our way. So where can we turn, unless we revert to coal and give up on the ice caps altogether? That would be courting fate.US physicists in the late 1940s explored thorium fuel for power. It has a higher neutron yield than uranium, a better fission rating, longer fuel cycles, and does not require the extra cost of isotope separation.The plans were shelved because thorium does not produce plutonium for bombs. As a happy bonus, it can burn up plutonium and toxic waste from old reactors, reducing radio-toxicity and acting as an eco-cleaner.Dr Cywinski is developing an accelerator driven sub-critical reactor for thorium, a cutting-edge project worldwide. It needs to £300m of public money for the next phase, and £1.5bn of commercial investment to produce the first working plant. Thereafter, economies of scale kick in fast. The idea is to make pint-size 600MW reactors.Yet any hope of state support seems to have died with the Coalition budget cuts, and with it hopes that Britain could take a lead in the energy revolution. It is understandable, of course. Funds are scarce. The UK has already put its efforts into the next generation of uranium reactors. Yet critics say vested interests with sunk costs in uranium technology succeeded in chilling enthusiasm.The same happened a decade ago to a parallel project by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). France's nuclear industry killed proposals for funding from Brussels, though a French group is now working on thorium in Grenoble.Norway's Aker Solution has bought Professor Rubbia's patent. It had hoped to build the first sub-critical reactor in the UK, but seems to be giving up on Britain and locking up a deal to build it in China instead, where minds and wallets are more open.So the Chinese will soon lead on this thorium technology as well as molten-salts. Good luck to them. They are doing Mankind a favour. We may get through the century without tearing each other apart over scarce energy and wrecking the planet.

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Group Warns EPA Ready to Increase Radioactive Release Guidelines

ANNE PAINE - The Tennessean

To the nuclear industry killing people with their technology is just unavoidable collateral damage. To be regretted, but not sufficiently to allow it to effect profits.

The EPA is preparing to dramatically increase permissible radioactive releases in drinking water, food and soil after 'radiological incidents," according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.What is termed a guidance that EPA is considering - as opposed to a regulation - does not require public airing before it's decided upon.EPA officials contacted today in the Atlanta and D.C. offices had no response on the issue as of 6 p.m.The radiation guides called Protective Action Guides or PAGs are protocols for responding to radiological events ranging from nuclear power-plant accidents to dirty bombs.Drinking water, for example, would have a huge increase in allowable public exposure to radioactivity, the group says, that would include:A nearly 1000-fold increase in strontium-90A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for iodine-131An almost 25,000 rise for nickel-63The new radiation guidance would also allow long-term cleanup standards thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted, permitting doses to the public that EPA itself estimates would cause a cancer in as much as every fourth person exposed, the group says.These relaxed standards are opposed by public health professionals inside EPA, according to documents PEER said it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.PEER is a national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals

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British Government Asked to Investigate new Pesticide Link to Bee Decline

MICHAEL MCCARTHY, Environment Editor - The Independent (U.K.)

The issue of the bees does not merit the attention of mainstream media; they are too focused on Trump's verbal farts for bees to command their attention.But of the 100 crops humanity lives on 70 exist only because bees pollinate them. Both honey and bumble bees are in precipitous decline; if this continues the health or you and your family are going to be catastrophically affected.However, there are powerful corporate special interests working against humanity's self-interest, and the sheeple are passive, so I don't anticipate a happy outcome.

The Government is being asked to investigate a possible link between a new generation of pesticides and the decline of honey bees. It is suspected that the chemicals may be impairing the insects' ability to defend themselves against harmful parasites through grooming.The Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, will have to answer a question in the Commons from the former Home Office minister Hanson about whether the Government will investigate if the effect of neonicotinoids on the grooming behaviour of bees is similar to its effect on termites.The pesticides, neonicotinoids, made by the German agribusiness giant Bayer and rapidly spreading in use, are known to be fatal to termites by damaging their ability to groom themselves and thus remove the spores of harmful fungi.In a leaflet promoting an anti-termite insecticide, Premise 200SC, sold in Asia, the company says it is the direct effect on the insects' grooming abilities of the neonicotinoid active ingredient, imidacloprid, which eventually kills them. Now bee campaigners in Britain want to know if this mechanism could also be at work on European honey bees and other pollinating insects which are rapidly declining in numbers."Grooming protects insects from all kinds of pests and viruses, while helping to maintain general health and functioning," Ms said yesterday. "A defence for honey bees against the varroa mite [a parasite causing colonies to decline] is to groom the mites away from the body. Do we know for sure that neonicotinoids do not hamper the ability of honey bees to deal with varroa?"Matt Shardlow, chief executive of Buglife, the invertebrate conservation charity, said: "Scientific studies have shown that neonicotinoids significantly reduce the activity of honey bees, and it is highly likely that this would include a reduction in the amount of grooming that they do."Hence there is a clear potential mechanism for these pesticides to damage the first line of defence that insects have against disease. Again it seems clear that insecticides are linked to sickness in bees and impairment to pollination services."The possibility fits in with what has already been discovered about the harmful effects of neonicotinoids – in that bees treated with imidacloprid, which is Bayer's biggest-selling insecticide worth £500m a year in sales to the company – are far more susceptible to disease, even at microscopic doses. This has been shown by two independent studies carried out in the past two years.In its publicity material for Premise 200SC, Bayer says: "The termites are susceptible to disease caused by micro-organisms or fungi found in soil."A principal part of their defence system is their grooming habits, which allow the termites to get rid of the fungal spores before these spores germinate and cause disease or death. Premise 200SC interferes with this natural process by lowering defences to nature's own weaponry."Dr n Little, Bayer's UK spokesman, said: "We do a lot of tests of the effects of insecticides on bees, and impairment of grooming has never shown up."Specific tests to see whether or not bees' grooming ability was impaired by neonicotinoids had not been carried out, he added.

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Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, Nobel Laureate Economist - Vanity Fair

This is one of the main reasons America is coming apart.

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income-an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.The fat and the furious. The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says the author, but 'their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live."It's no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation's income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous-12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades-and more-has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, os! sified Europe that President W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century-inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called 'marginal-productivity theory." In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years-whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative-went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards 'performance bonuses" that they felt compelled to change the name to 'retention bonuses" (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innova! tions to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year-an economy like America's-is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets-our people-in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality-such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests-undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires 'collective action"-it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.None of this should come as a surprise-it is simply what happens when a society's wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don't need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security-they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government-one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.Economists are not sure how to fully explain the growing inequality in America. The ordinary dynamics of supply and demand have certainly played a role: laborsaving technologies have reduced the demand for many 'good" middle-class, blue-collar jobs. Globalization has created a worldwide marketplace, pitting expensive unskilled workers in America against cheap unskilled workers overseas. Social changes have also played a role-for instance, the decline of unions, which once represented a third of American workers and now represent about 12 percent.But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power-from D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws, especially during Republican administrations, has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today's inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself-one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to! a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest.When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it's tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement-we started way behind the pack, but now we're doing inequality on a world-class level. And it looks as if we'll be building on this achievement for years to come, because what made it possible is self-reinforcing. Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth. During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s-a scandal whose dimensions, by today's standards, seem almost quaint-the banker Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. 'I certainly hope so," he replied. The Supreme Court, in its recent Citizens United case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government, by removing limitations on campaign spending. The personal and the political are today in perfect ! alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift-through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price-it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.America's inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect-people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military-the reality is that the 'all-volunteer" army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The rules of economic gl! obalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the 'core" labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for workers. Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment-things workers care about. But the top 1 percent don't need to care.Or, more accurately, they think they don't. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six Americans desiring a full-time jo! b not able to get one; with one out of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering from 'food insecurity")-given all this, there is ample evidence that something has blocked the vaunted 'trickling down" from the top 1 percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation-voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses-will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population-less than 1 percent-controls the lion's share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.is de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society-something he called 'self-interest properly understood." The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what's good for me right now! Self-interest 'properly understood" is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else's self-interest-in other words, the common welfare-is in fact a precondition for one's own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook-in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn't just good for the soul-it's good for business.The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

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One Third of Americans Are Lacking Vitamin D

MARY BROPHY MARCUS - USA Today

This is something you can easily fix. Get your doctor to test you then, if you are deficient, take remedial steps. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I can tell you it makes a big difference.

The report, out Wednesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), parallels what many other studies have suggested in recent years: that a large chunk of the population is at risk for low vitamin D levels.About two-thirds had sufficient levels, but about a third were in ranges suggesting risk of either inadequate or deficient levels, says report author Anne Looker, a research scientist with the CDC.Late last year, the Institute of Medicine recommended new daily intakes for calcium and vitamin D when it comes to bone health. They also defined four categories based on results from a common vitamin D blood test, called a serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, or 25OHD. Looker applied the institute's four categories (vitamin D sufficiency, risk of deficiency, risk of inadequacy, and levels that are possibly too high) to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to get the figures.Sufficient levels are 20 to 50 nanograms per milliliter. Inadequate (unhealthy) levels are 12 to 19 ng/ml. Below 12 ng/ml flags a deficiency; bones are at risk for disease.The results aren't surprising, says vitamin D researcher n Evatt, assistant professor of neurology at the VA Medical Center and Emory University in Atlanta.Good sources of vitamin DFew foods are naturally vitamin D-rich; fortified dairy and cereal products often are your best bets. The Institute of Medicine recommends 600 International Units (IUs)a day for adults:Foods and IUs per serving• Cod liver oil (1 Tbsp.), 1,360• Salmon (3.5 oz., cooked), 360• Mackerel (3.5 oz., cooked), 345• Sardines (1.75 oz., cannedin oil, drained), 250• Tuna (3 oz., canned in oil), 200• Milk (1 cup vitamin D-fortified), 98• Margarine (1 Tbsp. fortified), 60• Egg (1 whole), 20• Liver, beef (3.5 oz. cooked), 15• Swiss cheese (1 oz.), 12Source: National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements"The known risk factors for having low vitamin D levels include getting older, being overweight, and having chronic conditions. We're an aging, increasing-girth demographic," she says.Numerous health problems have been linked with low vitamin D levels, including bone fractures, Parkinson's disease, diabetes and certain cardiovascular outcomes, cancers and autoimmune conditions, Evatt says.Foods rich in vitamin D include fortified orange juice, cereals and milk, as well as salmon and eggs, says Holly Clegg, author of the Trim & Terrific cookbook series. Also, exposure to sunlight triggers the body's production of vitamin D, Evatt says.Looker says the report shows the risk of vitamin D deficiency differs by age, sex, race and ethnicity."Deficiency was lower in people who were younger, male, or non-Hispanic white, and in pregnant or lactating women," she says.

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