Interim nuclear waste site mulled

[jpak]

Bush may ask for temporary dump in State of Union tonight

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-wh/2006/jan/31/520053218.html

WASHINGTON -- President Bush likely will propose that the government establish an above-ground facility for temporary storage of highly radioactive waste while Yucca Mountain is under construction, an energy trade publication said Monday.

An Energy Department spokesman would not confirm that report, which appeared in Energy Daily.

Department spokesman Craig Stevens said only that it is "certainly possible" that Bush will take steps to create an interim site.

"As we move forward with expanding nuclear power in this country, we're going to have to be creative, yet safe, in how we deal with spent nuclear fuel," Stevens said.

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[Vincardog]

1. I know a Pig Ranch in Crawford TX that would be the perfect temp. site

[megatherium]

2. I didn't know that was a pig farm. Figures, that swine!

(No offense to pig farmers!)

[NNadir]

3. I read the transcript. (I certainly didn't watch the thing.

He mentioned nuclear power once, in the same sentence with solar and wind.

So tonight I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative -- a 22 percent increase in clean-energy research at the Department of Energy to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants; revolutionary solar and wind technologies; and clean, safe nuclear energy.

(APPLAUSE)

BUSH: We must also change how we power our automobiles.

We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen.

We will also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switch grass.

Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years.

It is, of course, all nonsense, but the nonsense is pretty broad.

[phantom power]

4. The old theme continues.

For BushCo, alternatives to fossil fuels must always be in the future. Climate change is always in the future.

[NNadir]

5. I wish that this sort of thinking was unique to Bush among Americans.

But it is not. As always, Bush represents the worst of our country. Everything is lackadaisical and half assed with no real action, just words.

I think that the energy strategies of President Carter were the wrong strategies, but President Carter at least was interested as much in doing as he was in talking. He sought to act.

Carter epitomizes the Presidential quotation which I often repeat on DU:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."


Theodore Roosevelt "Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Carter at least, spent himself for a worthy cause.

[phantom power]

6. Leadership matters.

One reason that Americans don't take this seriously, is because they see that the administration, and Congress, don't take it seriously. On the other hand, we supposedly have a government of the people, so it's equally valid to say that our elected officials would take it seriously if we the people did too.

On almost every issue of importance, I get the feeling that Congress is afraid to lead, because they don't think enough Americans support them, and Americans don't lead, because Congress doesn't ask it of them, nor does it explain the true importance of various problems.

Meanwhile, the neocons and religious nutcases have happily stepped into this self-reinforcing power vacuum. They know exactly what they want, and in the absense of any other ideas, they're getting it.

[NNadir]

7. It's a chicken and egg problem.

Do we have a chicken shit leadership because we are bad eggs, or are the eggs bad because the hens are bad. No one here voted for Bush, but let's face it, too many Americans did.

I don't buy into all of those silly "greatest generation" platitudes, but it does seem to me that Americans of the mid-twentieth century were courageous in many ways, and I suspect that it did not arise out them being innately different - we are, of course their genetic heirs. What they did know that we don't, is what it means to suffer, what it means to be deprived. When I tell my children about their grandfather's life, they simply cannot believe it, and, of course, it is nothing I have known myself.

We may all find out very soon.

What I fear, of course, is that my children's greatness may come from much the same - a rise out of hopelessness and almost irredeemable deprivation. The troubling thing is whether or not I can, or should, really put the word "almost" in that sentence. Maybe realism should compel me to leave it out.

[phantom power]

8. A buddy of mine advocates a 75-year cyclic theory.

He read it in a book, whose title I don't remember. But the gist is that history tends to move in cycles of about 75 years or so. Each cycle has four phases.

(1) Spring (rising fortunes, bold leaders, etc. The New-Deal era),
(2) Summer (post-WWII. The rise of the consumer society).
(3) Harvest (an age of economic bubbles. Everybody cashes in, or "harvests." Work ethic declines. People read Wired Magazine,and believe it)
(4) Winter (economic crash, devastation, poverty, disaster, etc)

I think it's no coincidence that these cycles are about 75 years. That's just long enough for a generation of people to be born, who don't remember the last Winter. People like me, or younger. We can be told, but we don't really believe it. Not in our gut, which is the wellspring of motivation and action.

Like you say, we're all going to learn. Because Winter is coming.