The weapon design and arms control communities agree that it is not the capability to design a nuclear device that determines the pace of a country’s acquisition of a first weapon, but, rather, the availability of nuclear weapons materials that can be turned to weapons purposes. For a nation-state, the material for weapons can come from uranium enrichment plants (highly enriched uranium), or reactors and nuclear fuel reprocessing plants (plutonium), or both.
Regardless of its isotopic composition, the minimum amount of plutonium required to make a pure fission nuclear explosive, with a yield equivalent to one to 25 kilotons of chemical high explosives, is quite small, on the order of 1 to 3 kilograms (kg), with the exact amount depending on the level of design expertise and the desired nuclear explosive yield. The minimum amount of highly enriched uranium required is a few times larger—5 to 10kg.
While far from ideal for military applications, the isotopic composition of the plutonium typically produced in civil power reactors does not pose a serious obstacle to fabricating efficient and powerful weapons, as well as crude terrorist devices.
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/power/power.pdf
The proliferation of nuclear weapons is inextricably linked to nuclear power by a shared need for enriched uranium, and through the generation of plutonium as a by-product of spent nuclear fuel. The two industries have been linked since the very beginning and a nuclear weapons free world requires a non-nuclear energy policy. http://www.cnduk.org/index.php/information/info-sheets/briefings.html#nuclearpower
HOPE AND HYPE VS. REALITY IN NUCLEAR REACTOR COST
THE ECONOMICS OF NUCLEAR REACTORS:http://www.vermontlaw.edu/Documents/Cooper%20Report%20on%20Nuclear%20Economics%20FINAL%5B1%5D.pdf
I manage the following blogs:
1. Alex Rozko Portfolio [RD+A]
- This is my architectural design portfolio created to illustrate my proficiencies and contribution to society.
2. We Kill Design
- We Kill Design is a blog dedicated to elements of (or related to) architecture, design, social and environmental issues.
For several years, I have been trying to build up momentum for a program that would educate and encourage people to Take Care of Their Share of the environment.
The central focus for this initiative would be a central (federal) website that provides information for any citizen that wants to learn how to Take Care of Their Share of the environment. This federal site would contain links to federal organizations that provide this information, such as the DEP and NRDC. This site would also have links to similar pages for every state government, that would list resources within that state that teach citizens how to Take Care of Their Share of the environment.
I think this is of critical importance for several reasons. First, there is just too much information out there and it is spread so thin that it is virtually impossible to locate. And when you do locate it, you have no way of knowing how accurate or verifiable the information is.
The federal and state governments have access to scientists and other experts in the fields of environmental health.
Second, President Obama is the perfect president to implement this. He is all about rallying the people to do their part, and his inspirational messages have the power to encourage them.
Third, President Obama wants to help support green collar jobs and I feel that it is important to recognize that green writers and green web designers need to be included in this initiative.
Now the question is, how does one going about trying to push through something like this?
I started contacting state governments back in 2007 about this idea and I have gotten very little support. I think it needs to come from the top but how does someone get the ball rolling on something like this?
***Now, before anyone visits the website and gets turned off by the advertisements, keep in mind that I have been working on this project for over 5 years (started locally and moved nationally) and have received no pay other than minimal MINIMAL donations from my friends. The ads were recently added to try to support the costs of the website.
As the recent trend towards environmental stewardship has begun to bring more visitors to the site, I have revamped my efforts to update the pages, listing groups within each state that provide environmental information to their citizens.
On Tuesday, February 3rd, I sent email messages to contacts from every state government asking them for assistance in gathering information for their state.
Only three states have responded so far. Delaware was the most diligent. A representative from the Delaware Department of Natural Resources sent a very long list of organizations within the state that provide environmental information.
http://www.takecareofyourshare.com/states/delaware.shtml
Kind regards,Betsy S. Franzwww.naturesdetails.net
I work with the Hope Now Project for free voluntary global birth control. You can find out more about this at: www.mundomio.org/hopenow.html. This incredible program can dramatically reduce environmental pressure in ONE DECADE, while simultaneously transferring wealth from the "haves" to the "have-nots" in a voluntary and managed way.
I seek to get rid of the "soft corruption" that is ubiquitous in the U.S.: cronyism, partiality to wealth and influence, bureacratic fear to engage politically powerful perpetrators.
I also seek a society that is high-tech/low-consumption/low-waste/low-exploitation (see: www.mundomio.org).
Lastly, I have an amazing sensing technology that promises to revolutionize how we interact with each other...think the next generation of the Internet, immersion virtual travel (see: www.prv.com).
Leon Wieseltier has an interesting perspective on environmentalism in a recent edition of The New Republic:
A week after the Russian invasion of Georgia, I was present at a conversation about whether the crisis around Russia's borders could be relieved in part by the greening of Poland. ...I averred that even if Poland found a way to emancipate itself from foreign fuel, so that every one of its schools was powered by the sun and every one of its cafes by the wind, there would still be a foundation in reality for the anxiety about Russia. The new Russian imperialism is animated by more than the new prices of commodities. Chávez does not owe his socialism to his petroleum. And the horror in Sudan has not been perpetrated by the weather. The verdure of the Democratic foreign-policy discussion is a proper retort to George W. Bush's astounding delinquency about climate change; but energy does not explain everything.
Full article at http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=eda292db-2a6a-4b29-9459-683dc17b3604&p=1
I am proud to say that I have always worked in the service industry. I have washed other people's dishes, cared for adolescents who were homeless, educated children about their environment, and most recently encouraged college students to get involved in their community.
I am amazed by the impact that one person can have, and I hope that my efforts are creating ripples in the communities I have lived and worked in.
From the first - I knew that Obama was going to be my candidate. I had always loved Hilary for her intelligence and what she represented as a strong woman, but it was Barack's statements about national service that sealed the deal.
It has been so frustrating to try to explain to family members from another generation about what I do and why I do it. It paralleled my frustration at knowing that for at least 8 years, the administration in Washington had no idea either and could care less. Finally, I had found my champion. Someone who will uphold my values and speak out for what I believe in.
I know millions of other people in America right now are feeling the same way I do, for a variety of reasons, and I am so excited to meet with them to help President Elect Obama fulfill his mission to bring change to the people in this amazing country.
Let me know if you are excited too and let's start the movement right here in Boston!
Greetings Everyone,
Because the agencies whose missions have been to protect us and our interests as citizens of this country have allowed themselves to be dictated to by political interests rather than there assigned duties as directed by their mission statements, we find our health & well-being, our environment, and our federal and local budgets are in jeopardy.
I am not just referring to the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but I am also talking about agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission.
The nuclear power industry has been allowed to tell the American public that it provides safe and clean energy to our country. Though nuclear power is neither safe nor clean, it has been allowed to do this by the FCC and the FTC and SEC when it engages in its advertising and when it engages in its business activities. The nuclear power/energy industry has been allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, the Department Of Energy, and state public service commissions to be heavily involved in setting the standards and regulations that govern it. Those standards and regulations, for the most part, do not protect human health or the environment.
The current as well as previous administrations have allowed these regulatory agencies to be run by, and in most cases rendered impotent by having them run with, political appointments and agendas. This has been unfortunate, because now we have an American public who is working from a well ingrained position of ignorance when it has been led to believe that nuclear power is clean, safe, less expensive, and needs to remain 'on the table' as part of our energy solution.
These agencies that were designed to protect us have allowed the nuclear power/energy industry to get away with false advertising in its commercials and publications, they have been allowed to misinform investors with this same false and incomplete information.
A nuclear power reactor/plant is not a stand-alone entity that acts as the sole source provider of nuclear power. It is only one segment of the process of getting nuclear power generated electricity to the public. It is only one link in the fuel chain.
We have to face that we are being led down a path that is false from it beginning. Nuclear energy is one of the most egregious emitters of CO2, toxic heavy metals, and other poisonous emissions and we have to stop being led by the nuclear industry to believe that nuclear power is clean, safe energy.
The electricity produced by nuclear power in and of itself is relatively benign, however the waste, including high levels of CO2, which has been created to get us to the production of that electricity will harm you, your children, your grandchildren, and generations after them.
You should also always keep in mind that CO2 is not the only toxin that we have to deal with or be worried about.
The nuclear industry itself uses enormous amounts of electricity in their gaseous diffusion plants, (created by coal-fired power plants). Enormous amounts of cooling water are needed and used, and the highly corrosive and radioactive uranium hexafluoride gas is produced. All have adverse human health and environmental impacts. The waste is pervasive in its movements through our earth, air, and water. It has proven itself to be more than difficult to contain. It has proven itself deadly. Sometimes it will kill you slowly; sometimes it will kill you quickly. The nuclear power/energy industry has of course chosen to do its damage primarily on Native American lands as well as in poor and minority communities. The people who until now had no voice, no say.
But don't be fooled. Nuclear waste is not just a byproduct created at the end of the nuclear weapons, nuclear fuel, or nuclear energy production cycle. The ugliness begins at the beginning and it's not all radioactive. The Uranium ore needed to produce nuclear power or nuclear energy has to be mined. Uranium is both radioactive and a chemical toxin. Part of the uranium mining process is milling which consists of chemically separating uranium from other ore. The waste produced is known as milling tailings. In some cases these highly radioactive tailings are left on and near the land surrounding the mines creating another legacy of dangerous waste. For typical uranium concentrations, the tailings contain an extremely high percentage of the radioactivity in the original ore, along with toxic chemicals and heavy metals, such as lead and arsenic which adversely affect the environment and human health. After being converted to uranium hexafluoride it is further enriched through the process of gaseous diffusion. Enrichment is required to increase the percentage of Uranium-235 (half-life of 700 million years). Considered to be the "product", it's the isotope needed for nuclear power and weapons. Uranium-238, aka depleted uranium, another byproduct of gaseous diffusion, is a heavy metal and radioactive. Uranium-238 can be used to breed plutonium-239. These radioactive and toxic wastes are process and production outcomes. Remember, all of this and we haven't even gotten to the nuclear reactor for the production of the first nuclear energy generated kilowatt.
We really have to let our representatives know that we are not going to continue to allow this industry to control our conversation on our energy needs and our national security. We can look forward to being carbon free and nuclear free if we make that commitment to ourselves, our families, and our environment.
We have to start now to look toward a new type of future, a future that considers all of us, not just one group of people. We have to stop this unsafe practice of giving quick money more importance than sound judgment and survival.
It is time to change how we live in this world, we have to start somewhere, at some point in time. Now is that time.
Peace,
Dianne
When Refusing to Kill Has a Higher Sentence Than Murder
9-20-08
by Ann Wright
Ann Wright is a retired US Army Reserves colonel with 29 years of military service. She also was a US diplomat who served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in December 2001. She resigned from the US diplomatic corps in March 2003 in opposition to the Bush administration's decision to invade and occupy Iraq. She is the co-author of "Dissent: Voices of Conscience," profiles of government insiders who have spoken and acted on their concerns of their governments' policies.
http://www.truthout.org/article/when-refusing-kill-has-a-higher-sentence-than-murder
Meanwhile:
It's bad enough that my fiancee's father disowned her because she supports Barack Obama for president and attended his rallies here in town, among other reasons; these things happen all the time in racist America. But now she is being persecuted at work by a Romney bully. What makes this especially perplexing is that she works her heart out for a famous Minnesota company in the personal care products marketplace that has a reputation for being "green." Maybe somebody should tell Billy Lauder that intolerance and greed has run amuck in one of his prized holdings?
Anybody else having these kinds of problems, plausibly deniable or otherwise?
McCain's Nuclear Waste: How the Arizona senator doomed his own global warming legislation with billions in nuclear subsidies
On January 9, 2003—five years before he would become the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee—Senator John McCain strode to the Senate floor and began a speech by citing the National Academy of Sciences: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." He then pointed to a host of scientific studies that had outlined the negative consequences of global warming. "The United States must do something," he proclaimed, announcing that he and Senator Joseph Lieberman were introducing legislation that day to establish mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and set up a system for the trading of emissions credits.
Environmental groups endorsed the McCain-Lieberman bill, which compelled major industries to reduce greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. The League of Conservation Voters called it "a relatively modest reduction" but an "important first step" that would "send an important signal to the global community." It was indeed the first serious attempt in the Senate to impose a cap on global warming emissions.
Ten months later, the bill was defeated by a relatively close margin, 55 to 43. (Then-Senator John Edwards, who missed the vote, had indicated he supported the bill.) Environmental advocates in Washington considered this a decent start considering that six years earlier the Senate had voted unanimously for a nonbinding resolution that signaled opposition to the Kyoto global warming treaty. With this bill, McCain established himself as the undisputed Republican leader on climate change. Convinced that global warming had already led to more droughts and wildfires in his home state of Arizona, McCain vowed to keep fighting for the measure. But within a year and a half, McCain would lose ground and set back the effort to reduce emissions because of a profound political miscalculation, his own stubbornness, and, most of all, his deep attachment to nuclear power.
About a year after their bill was defeated, McCain and Lieberman began drafting a new version. It was close to the original, but with one significant addition: billions of dollars in tax subsidies for the nuclear energy industry.
McCain had long been an advocate of nuclear power. "He feels strongly that nuclear power will be one of the keys to reducing emissions," says Heather Wicke, who was his environmental legislative aide at the time. But environmentalists who had worked with McCain and Lieberman on the first bill were stunned. In one meeting, lobbyists for environmental groups attempted to persuade McCain not to attach nuclear subsidies to the legislation, arguing that doing so would weaken support for the bill. "He shook his finger at us and scolded us," says one participant at the meeting, who recalls McCain saying, "You're wrong and I'm right." Wicke, now the director of policy for the Piedmont Environmental Council, notes that McCain had already made up his mind and that the session was "testy."
In meetings with McCain's staff, environmental lobbyists argued the obvious points, according to Karen Wayland, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council: what to do with nuclear waste, the need to prevent nuclear proliferation, the problem with security at nuclear facilities. They noted that legislation restricting greenhouse emissions in and of itself would create a competitive advantage for nuclear energy companies. They made no headway, so the enviros appealed to Lieberman and his staff. "Lieberman didn't seem to care for this provision," one of the green lobbyists remembers, "but he needed McCain, and McCain was pushing hard" for the nuclear subsidies.
Part of McCain's motivation was political. According to Wicke, he and his aides figured that these subsidies could attract several pro-nuclear Republicans, and they had their eyes on Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Senator Liddy Dole of North Carolina. Wicke was concerned at the time that the nuclear subsidies would cost the measure support and that a bill loaded with money for the nuclear energy industry would contradict McCain's high-profile opposition to subsidies—which was partly responsible for his reputation as a fiscal conservative and a maverick. In June 2003, McCain had joined 47 other senators to vote for an amendment stripping an energy bill of up to $16 billion in subsidies for the nuclear power industry. (The amendment lost by a two-vote margin.)
Wicke heard from staffers for several senators who had supported McCain and Lieberman's original bill that these senators might oppose the measure if the new version contained nuclear subsidies. "It made me nervous," she recalls. But McCain remained firm in his belief that the billions for nuclear power would draw in more Republicans.
In May 2005, McCain and Lieberman reintroduced their climate change bill—with the subsidies. McCain acknowledged that "friends" in the environmental movement were opposed to the nuclear provision. He spoke at length in the Senate to defend this part of the bill: "The idea that nuclear power should play no role in our energy mix is an unsustainable position.... I, for one, believe it can and should play an even greater role, not because I have some inordinate love affair with splitting the atom, but for the very simple reason that we must support sustainable, zero-emission alternatives such as nuclear if we are serious about addressing the problem of global warming.... I am a green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy."
His friends were not persuaded. While the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation continued to support McCain, the Natural Resource Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and others mounted a fierce campaign against the new bill. On June 22, 2005, it came up for a vote and was defeated 60 to 38. Several Democratic senators who had backed McCain's original legislation—Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)—defected, and McCain picked up no new Republicans. (Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both voted for it.) "The staff didn't fully appreciate how much opposition there would be to the nuclear provision," Wicke says, adding, "I could say it was a bit of miscalculation.... It did stymie this climate change legislation." After collecting 44 supporters for the first bill, McCain had lost ground.
Sometime after the vote, the NRDC's Wayland attended a meeting McCain held with representatives of environmental organizations. McCain was unapologetic about his decision to tie his climate change measure to nuclear power subsidies. "He said that environmentalists had lost power and influence because they did not support nuclear power," Wayland recalls, "and that renewables would never be more than 1 or 2 percent of the active energy supplies. I tried to argue with him and got nowhere. It was hard to a get a word in edgewise." After the meeting an upset Wayland, engaging in retail therapy, headed to a store and bought several pairs of shoes.
In January 2007, McCain and Lieberman again introduced their climate change bill, and the nuclear subsidies remained in the bill. (Public Citizen estimated the subsidies would run to at least $3.7 billion.) But in fall of 2007, the McCain-Lieberman bill was eclipsed by legislation introduced by Lieberman and Republican Senator John Warner. This bill called for deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions—though not as great as many scientists advocated—and it contained no special subsidies for nuclear power. The Lieberman-Warner measure immediately became the major piece of pending climate change legislation in the Senate. McCain and his bill were essentially out of the picture. He was, at the time, busy campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination.
"To his credit, he was a leader in the Republican Party on climate change," Wayland says. But by pushing breaks for nuclear power, McCain damaged a cause he had been passionately advocating for, leaving this particular battlefield with self-inflicted wounds.
http://motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-nuclear-waste.html
Video: Al Gore's endorsement of Barack Obama (15:02) (short commercial at start)
John McCain is being advised to follow the lead of the UK Tory party and re-invent himself as a "Green Candidate". I hope Senator Obama beats him to be punch and steps un his environmental game because that would draw a stark contrast between himself, The Clintons and McCain.
This whole business about John McCain being respectable and honorable is utter rubbish and I'm so weary of Democratic candidates propogating that myth. His sychophantic behavior with George W.Bush alone dispells any such notions. After the way his party treated Max Cleland and John Kerry (who also served and sacrificed for our country) why on God's green earth are we supposed to kowtow to McCain who sings the praises of a president as morally bankrupt as George Bush - a man who has almost single-handedly destroyed the American democracy? Muck FcCain!
so i am really excited about obama, and the difference i already feel just in campaigning strategy. i am definitely ready for a change. i feel a wonderful sense of hope when i hear him speak and i can say for sure that i will be furious if he turn out to be another bum candidate (the fear that our current administration, and surrounding politics has burned into me). but for now i am only hopeful.
i was checking out the products that you can purchase - shirts, stickers, etc. and i thought, wouldn't it be amazing if he would make the shirts with organic cotton.
WHY: check out this site:http://www.planetinkcompany.com/why.htm (also has tshirts in bulk for sale along with soy/vegetable based printing)...
i just did a quick search and found this: http://www.customink.com/t-shirts/organic-cotton-t-shirts.htm
just in case any of the campaign managers are reading, which i think some might be.
maybe they would be a little more expensive, but i'll tell you right now, i won't buy one of these tshirt on the site (or make some re-usable grocery bags with your logo, etc.. organic cotton, hemp, etc of course) because they are not made in a sustainable fashion.
kudos for the shirts being made in the usa... good first step. but take it one step further. and i sure hope things are being printed on recycled paper... etc. these are obvious changes, and easy ones. i want to know you're doing it.
this is my feedback. and please understand, that for the past 8-10 years, i have not felt like participating in anything that has to do with my gov't because i did not feel like my voice mattered. and not only that, i did not feel like any of my representatives WANTED to hear my voice. this does not mean that i didn't participate (thank goodness for moveon.org), if nothing else to maintain my right to complain about the current administration... haha. but at this time, i feel excited. i feel i am not the only one which makes me even more excited.
this feedback is a representation of my belief/hope that maybe my voice will matter again.
