Dr Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, gives a lecture on the impact of the accident at Fukushima on nuclear safety and security at a luncheon seminar at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS – http://cns.miis.edu). He raises questions about the long-held belief that nuclear power is safe and reliable. For more nonproliferation seminars, visit the CNS NukeTube site at http:/nuketube.tv
Duration : 1:12:33
i’m typing a reso…what should i type? tips and pointers please. thanks 
Wow. Trying to skip all the research?
An individual has not started living until he or she can rise above the narrow confines of his or her individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”-Martin Luther King, Jr.
During the third week of May, in Washington D.C. over 1,200 patriotic Americans of all faiths and the spiritual but not religious came together for the second conference of The Network of Spiritual Progressives/NSP and to lobby Congress. The activists are challenging the misuse of religion, God and spirit by the Religious Right and the anti-religious and anti-spiritual biases within the Liberal Left.
Authentic spirituality will inevitably lead one to become political. The Network of Spiritual Progressives is a diverse community that is unified by one heart that is broken over the state of the world and our nation. These activists are willing to sacrifice their life, resources and time to the work of confronting the Old Bottom Line in America which is based on greed, materialism, selfishness, power and over consumption.
The New Bottom Line proposes that institutions and social practices should be based on the higher values of love, caring, generosity, and equal human rights. The NSP proposes that the well being of every American depends on the well being of everyone in the world and recognizes our interdependence with all people and Mother Earth.
On May 18th the activists visited their Congressional Representatives to present “A Spiritual Covenant with America.”
The eight point platform addresses individual, social and governmental responsibility for ethical behavior that honors the sacredness of all life. As the debate over immigration was going on in Congress many activists were promoting a rational approach to immigration through a strategy of non-violence and generosity that works to eliminate poverty not with a hand out but with furnishing the means and the support to enable the impoverished to attain a decent life.
The NSP supports a “Global Marshall Plan to use 5% of the GDP of the advanced industrial societies-each year for the next twenty years-to end global poverty, hunger, homelessness, inadequate education, and inadequate health care. This will do more for homeland security and military safety than does sinking trillions of dollars into wars and strategies of world domination that can never work and are immoral…not by dumping money into the hands of corrupt governments, but through cooperation with NGO’s committed to human rights, democracy, environmental sustainability and enhancement and respect for native cultures and traditions.” [Number 7 in The Spiritual Covenant with America]
Many will say the NSP members are all dreamers, but it was dreamers who imagined life without slavery, civil rights, and women’s rights and it was Rilke who first understood: “You must give birth to your dreams: they are the future waiting to be born.”
These ‘out-of-the-box’ thinkers and visionaries will not be satisfied with any short-term political gain. The task of transforming society requires commitment, persistence and a deep inner life. What progressive spiritual activists have in common is a broken heart united over the plight of the poor and oppressed, a commitment to total non-violent resistance no matter what the provocation, and sacrificial lives that offer time and resources to actualize the message Christ spoke of when he proclaimed on the Mount of The Beatitudes, that the reign and the kingdom of God is a kingdom where all beings are equal and valued just as they are.
In a country that possesses 11,000 nuclear weapons with many in excess of 20,000,000 tons of TNT [the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 12,000 tons] yet claims to be based on the Judeo-Christian ethic of thou shalt not kill, is staggering in it’s hypocrisy. The law of Karma is what goes around comes around and the fallout from one of these WMD will find its way back home through water and wind currents and the words of Pogo come to mind: “We have seen the enemy and he is us.”
Mankind is the only species that has the choice of annihilating itself. “Since the end of the Cold War, the world has spent more than $10 trillion on armaments. The Untied States alone spends approximately $100 million every day to keep its nuclear arsenal at the ready.” [Jonathon Granoff, TIKKUN Magazine 9/11/03]
American money proclaims “In God We Trust” but the facts on the ground are that we have become an empire of blasphemers.
Fundamentalist Christians rail against abortion yet are for capital punishment and war. They have narrowed morality down to abortion and same sex marriage and neglect that God is love and where ever there is love: God is there.
If we are serious about a peaceful world we must have a moral agenda that stands firmly against empire building and violence. John Dear, the Jesuit priest who has been arrested 75 times for his peace activism asked Cesar Chavez what he thought was the key to peace, and Chavez exclaimed: “Public Action! Public action! Public action!”
In the ’60’s we understood if one is not a part of the solution, one is part of the problem. Throughout America patriotic spiritual activists of all faith paths and the spiritual but not religious have found common ground and are doing something more than criticizing and whining. Chapters of The Network of Spiritual Progressives are forming from the New York Islands to the Gulf Stream waters for this world belongs to all human beings.
Eileen Fleming
http://www.articlesbase.com/education-articles/spiritual-progressives-unite-to-confront-the-religious-right-the-antireligious-left-and-the-empir-35543.html
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Japanese media have reported a nuclear reactor located on
the outskirts of Beijing had stopped running last October.
This was due to an accident in the generator building, but
was never announced by the CCP, who concealed the truth.
Civilians were panicked by the news, with many of them
calling for truth and refusing to be deceived any more.
Experts have commented that nuclear safety cannot be
guaranteed under the CCP’s dictatorship.
On Jan 25, Japanese media revealed that an experimental
nuclear reactor in Beijing stopped operation due to accident.
Japan News Network (JPN) cited Japan Atomic Energy
Agency (JAEA).
An experimental nuclear reactor, in a Beijing suburb, had
once stopped running due to an accident last October.
The CCP regime, however, had tried to hide the truth. JAEA
confirmed this news to be true after investigation.
The report said that, the malfunctioned nuclear power plant
first began generating power last July.
The nuclear reactor is a fast-breeder type that uses
enriched uranium as fuel.
The plant is the same as Japan’s Fukui nuclear plant, but
there’s no covering shield to stop leakage in Beijing’s reactor.
There are even beds in the central control room for people
to rest, evidence of a very bad level of safety management.
Such news has panicked Chinese netizens.
Some said that, on one hand authorities built nuclear plants
on a massive scale plants.
On the other hand, they were not capable of managing the
safety of those facilities.
Considering that these nuclear accidents had been
concealed, they could not help worrying.
Many Chinese also sharply criticized the CCP’s propaganda
strategy of “reporting only the positive, never the negative”.
Criticism is directed towards official media, which discards
professional integrity and public welfare to conceal the truth.
Some remarked that these media are extremely detestable,
since they helped the bad people.
The netizens also called for an immediate reply from the
government to relieve their panic.
In the evening of January 25th, some Chinese media cited
Wan Gang, Head of China’s Institute of Atomic Energy.
The nuclear plant in Beijing was not running at that time.
According to Oriental Daily News on Jan 26, the
malfunctioned plant was developed under the China
Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) project, which is subject
to the State High-Tech Development Plan (863 Program).
Chinese media reported that, the design, development,
building and operation of CEFT was carried out by China.
There was some technical cooperation with Russia.
Last July, the project managed to generate power for the first
time, which was also reported by some Russian media.
bbc.co.uk/Chinese reports that China Institute of Atomic
Energy is located in Fangshan district, southwest of Beijing.
This is 40 kilometers from downtown Beijing. The “Fast
Reactor” was built there, producing up to 20 MW of power.
Li Xutong, ex-professor of China’s Department of Nuclear
Safety, State Environmental Protection Administration, said
that 80% of nuclear accidents are man-induced; so human
factors are the most crucial in nuclear safety management.
Li Xutong:”What worries Chinese people, as well as the
global society is whether the CCP has enough qualified experts [to manage nuclear safety].
The national regime has been corrupted by the CCP to such
an extent that, you can hardly find any serious or scientific attitude towards real problems.
Any scientific standard can hardly survive under
the CCP’s dictatorship.”
Li Xutong believes that the CCP never reports any nuclear
Accidents.
This is not because they don’t happen, but because they
forbid such news to be reported to the public.
Li mentioned the Soviet Union as an example. All nuclear
accidents were never reported under its governing.
Nevertheless, they were all revealed after its dissolution.
Li Xuntong:”In USSR, there was once a most severe nuclear
accident near the Ural Mountains.
However, nobody knew about it for many years. Many
countries had suspicion about what happened.
However, they could not confirm it until dissolution of the
USSR.
It is after the dictatorship regime broke down that some
insiders told the whole world about truth of the accident.”
On Jan27, it is reported that Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency
(JAEA) issued an official statement on its website.
It states Sankei Shimbun ’s news on China’s Fast Neutron
Reactor accident was based on “unconfirmed and
inadequate” information. It said it “is extremely regrettable
that such unconfirmed information went out to news media.”
NTD reporters Zhao Xinzhi, Wu Wei and Ge Lei
《神韵》2011世界巡演新亮点
http://www.ShenYunPerformingArts.org/
Duration : 0:3:57
Bulldog, THe republicans also say coal is clean. Are you trying for best answer?
Simple….
We spend a ton-o-money to the arabs to buy their gas and borrow money because the Republicans have been proven wrong and there is nothing else we can do except let the Democrats borrow more money from China to support our lifestyle while they become the leading economic developed country in the world.
What else can we do?
Like the Democrats say:
It’s a hope and change thingy.
I hope things change but there’s nothing we can do since the Republicans have been proven wrong.
#Anon #Newz WikiLeaks cables reveal fears over China’s Nuclear Safety.Scary Stuff..
China has “vastly increased” the risk of a nuclear accident by opting for cheap technology that will be 100 years old by the time dozens of its reactors reach the end of their life spans, according to diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Beijing.
The warning comes weeks after the government in Beijing resumed its ambitious nuclear expansion programme, that was temporarily halted for safety inspections in the wake of the meltdown of three reactors in Fukushima, Japan.
Duration : 0:7:31
Can someone enlighten me upon the different parts located within a nuclear reactor along with details concerning the removal and treatment of wastes? One might possibly as well include the aspects involved in collecting energy.
I need to do a research project on this; any books or sites recommended would be of great help as well and even preferable.
I appreciate any guidance given to me, thank you.
That is a lot of ground you want to cover. Just addressing the safety aspects takes a book. Waste (spent fuel as well as lesser wastes such as derived from other materials and their irradiation) management would and does take up additional books.
Much of what you need to know about nuclear plant safety starts with the safety culture, which is addressed in some detail at my web site at http://technidigm.org/technuke/nuclear.htm .It will be a bit over your head, most likely, as it covers the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program nuclear safety culture more than the less focused culture found at most commercial nuclear plants.
There are also many websites to go to, such as that for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the one for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear utility sponsored organization that promotes the industry and also coordinates industry communications to a large degree. You can Google those sites yourself.
Overall, besides the culture and regulations, the safety of each nuclear plant depends on "inherent" safety features such as natural circulation of water through the reactor core to keep removing heat even when the reactor coolant water pumps lose electric power. Safety is also ensured by dedicated safety systems designed to automatically react to any conceivable malfunction that might cause the reactor core to overheat. There are many sensors, power supplies, pumps, and valves of various kinds that are installed in the nuclear power plant just to ensure safety. The systems are tested and inspected a lot to make sure that they work or would work under certain conditions.
Then we even assume that all that design effort, culture, and safety systems fail and put the reactor and the high pressure systems inside a containment building capable of preventing the release of radiation, something that the Chernobyl Reactor in the Soviet Union did not have. They also did not have an adequate safety culture, and their basic reactor design was even unstable in ways that require a degree in nuclear engineering to understand.
As to how the reactor works, it simply generates heat in a pressurized water environment so that the water does not turn into steam while it is in the reactor core area. That helps remove the heat from the reactor core’s heat transfer surfaces, a complex honeycomb of fuel tubes banded together to create a critical mass of fissile material but also a large heat transfer surface to allow easy removal of the fissile heat that comes out as heat to heat the reactor coolant water.
That pressurized hot water can be flashed into steam to drive a turbine generator to get a lot of electric power. That is called a boiling water reactor (BWR). Most nuclear power plants keep the water pressurized and pump it through a heat exchanger called a steam generator, which has thousands of heat transfer tubes that conduct the primary coolant water heat to the secondary system called the steam system. That steam then goes through the turbines to generate power.
All the turbine steam loses its energy passing through the turbines and has to be condensed using another tube and shell heat transfer component simply called the condenser. This exhaust steam is condensed to water so that it can be pumped back into the steam generator or reactor at high pressure for transferring heat again..
The condenser transfer the remaining heat to the environment such as a lake, river, bay, ocean, or one of those hyperbolic cooling towers that seem to be a nuclear plant icon these days. Coal fired plants use them too, sometimes, but no one pays much attention to coal fired plants, even though they released their waste directly into the air we breathe.
Nuclear plant waste is essentially metallic and can be recycled to recover extra uranium and the rest buried safely forever, as needed. Nuclear plant waste is only a problem in the minds of people who don’t understand it or simply don’t want to due to their need to grasp at anything to get the public’s attention and try to sway opinions against nuclear power, for no apparent reason as far as nuclear engineers can tell.
I have yet to meet an anti-nuke who understands the subject adequately to have an intelligent conversation on the subject, but that does not help you much with your research.
Green Web Hosting has become a major consideration over the last couple of years, and due to the already massive and still increasing global energy demands of the IT industry, green energy web hosting is here to stay.
Most web hosting as with other business is powered by electricity generated from the traditional power stations, running on coal, oil, gas and nuclear power. With the rising prices of these fossil fuels and growing concern about the safety of the nuclear industry many businesses are looking at ways to reduce their carbon footprint, the benefits of this are two fold:
1. PR, being seen to be actively trying to cut down on your emissions will ultimately win you more customers.
2. Economic Considerations, as the cost of producing fossil fuels increases so does the cost of powering your servers, in-addition it is anticipated that the worlds server farms will by the end of 2012 be creating a bigger impact on the environment than the airline industry. This will have a knock on effect as governments penalise companies not actively trying to reduce their carbon footprints.
So how do web hosting companies go green? Well there are several different methods, some produce their own electricity, using solar panels and wind turbines mounted at their server farms, some especially in Greenland use geo thermal energy or hydroelectricity. And at the other end of the spectrum some simply buy green energy credits to offset their carbon footprint.
Other ways that hosts reduce their carbon footprint is to use newer technology such as the AMD Opteron server which generates 50% less heat and therefore requires less energy to cool them, greener web hosts are also running entirely paperless offices and billing which reduces deforestation.
Which ever way you look at it green web hosting is here to stay and should be a factor in your next choice of web host.
For more information goto green web hosting
James Betchley
And how do we prevent it?
Other than not doing any fission 
:P
#
THANKS
First of all there are risks, safety concerns, with any energy resource. We in the nuclear industry have made safety our top priority. If you look at the statistics, nuclear has been one of the safest industries to work in over the last 40 years, not just safest power producers.
Dams break, ice falls from wind towers, heavy metals are used in solar panels, fossil fuels release byproducts to the environment.
Nuclear Safety Concerns:
1. Nuclear accident due to operator or maintenance error. Operators & maintenance personnel train incessantly to prevent and mitigate the occurrence, every US nuclear power site has a simulator. The nuclear industry takes a pro-active approach sharing any information learned from experience at sites across the world to minimize risk at nuclear facilities. (See INPO/WANO) A strong Safety Conscious Work Environment is fostered.
3. Nuclear accident due to sabotage/terrorism. Nuclear facilities are considered "hard" targets, with heavily armed and highly trained guards, response plans, fences, robust barriers to prevent unauthorized access to vital areas. Many of the same features designed to keep the primary plant safe in the event of an accident make it very difficult to attack (example 1 meter thick reinforced concrete containment structure) All personnel with access to vital areas have a FBI background check and psychological examination.
4. Release of radioactivity from used fuel, nuclear waste. Used fuel is in the same physical shape as new fuel, a ceramic pellet contained within a stainless steel tube formed into a fuel assembly. (most common design) this is not likely to release its contents very easily. We keep these fuel assemblies in a spent fuel pool safely under water and eventually place it into robust casks for storage, transportation and retrieval. Volume wise this is a fairly small amount of waste, we have all the fuel used in our 500 Mw plant’s 40 year life in a 40′x40′x40′ pool.
5. Nuclear proliferation by rogue nations terrorists from used fuel. There are much easier ways to obtain fissile material than taking it from used fuel from a Commercial nuclear power plant.
If you’ve been tasked with coming up with and implementing a green solution for your company’s exits signs and egress markings, then you need to take a long look into the new kid on the block—photoluminescent exit signs and egress markings. These next generation exit signs have become the best answer for saving not only energy, but also a considerable amount of money. In today’s cost-conscious climate, that is not only a good thing, it’s a matter or survival! Let’s examine how the use of photoluminescent materials in your building’s emergency exit sign strategy can be beneficial to you.
First of all, these photoluminescent exit signs are composed of a luminescent coating which collects and saves ambient light. They require no electricity or wiring, no batteries, and are simple and easy to install. They have no maintenance, except for the occasional cleaning that’s necessary due to the dust and grime associated with any building environment. They are 100% recyclable, and can simply be disposed of by tossing them into the nearest metal recycling container.
Compare this to the issues involved with either incandescent lighting or tritium ext signs. The bulbs constantly need replacement, the batteries die (meaning they’re unreliable), and the wiring can go bad and require attention. In other words, they involve a whole host of regular maintenance concerns. In the case of tritium exit signs, there are an entire other range of issues dealing with their radioactivity, including the mounds of paperwork required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission! They need to be disposed of by a licensed hazardous materials handler, which is another hassle to deal with. Who needs a headache like that?
These exit signs and egress markings are 100% reliable. You can be sure that they will be there and operate when they are needed. No worries about whether a backup generator will kick in, or if batteries are charged. They are designed to be visible to around 100 feet in a blackout or smoke-filled environments, and they are also rated bomb-proof for those building managers that need concern themselves with that classification.
Using photoluminescent materials in your building can save you a considerable amount of money. For a typical building, the replacement of their exits signs with photoluminescent materials can save an average of $3,500 a year in direct costs of energy, reduced maintenance, and materials. That savings will no doubt be increased in the future, as costs continue to rise. In today’s cost-cutting economic climate, this is a real no-brainer!
In addition, the use of photoluminescent materials in your building’s exit signs will reduce your carbon footprint by some half million tons of CO2 over the life of the products. That is a significant amount, and you’ll get a pat on the back for this accomplishment alone!
The best (and only) U.S. manufacturer of photoluminescent exit signs and egress markings is a company called Jessop Manufacturing, located in McHenry, Illinois. They offer a wide range of photoluminescent safety products, including exit signs, egress markings, fire signs, glow in the dark tape, and much more. Their products can be found at GloBriteSystem.com.
Alan King
http://www.articlesbase.com/home-security-articles/the-green-solution-for-your-buildings-exit-signs-and-egress-markings-721593.html