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Nuclear Capitalism [VIDEO]

Posted by Adam Howard, AlterNet at 6:23 AM on February 12, 2008.


While most Americans aren't paying attention, the US, France and Russia are selling nuclear technology to the highest bidders.
Nuclear Capitalism

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France, the U.S. and Russia are selling nuclear technology to an energy-hungry world. It's part diplomacy, part brinksmanship - and good for business. Iran, India, Libya and Saudi Arabia are buying it. But who sells to who, and why, is partly a political calculation. Check out the Link TV produced video to your right for more.

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Tagged as: bush, france, russia, india, iran, nuclear weapons, nuclear technology

Adam Howard is the editor of PEEK.


The GOP, McCain Fall Flat Online
So, instead of mocking them, perhaps I should be worried about their growing online activist army. Just kidding.
Post by Chris Bowers. August 8, 2008.
Ending the Iraq War Today on Meet the Bloggers (1pm ET/10am PT)
With special guest Darcy Burner, co-author of "A Responsible Plan to End the War"
Post by ZP Heller. August 8, 2008.
Paris, Tire Gauges, and Illegal Contributions: McCain's Bad Week
"The tenor of this race, aided by events, has changed. McCain is on the defensive."
Post by Digby. August 7, 2008.

Comments Turn comments off sitewide Give us feedback »
Comments closed.
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.
View:
hurting US sales of power plants, hmm?
Posted by: luzmejor on Feb 12, 2008 7:20 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
What a pity Basil! Someone else is selling before our own irresponsible pollution merchants can get a better price... boo hoo.

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American reactors are the safest ever
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Feb 12, 2008 8:29 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Hydrogen Sulfide gas will Kill all people. Homo Sap will go
EXTINCT unless drastic action is taken.

October 2006 Scientific American

"EARTH SCIENCE
Impact from the Deep
Strangling heat and gases emanating from the earth and sea, not
asteroids, most likely caused several ancient mass extinctions.
Could the same killer-greenhouse conditions build once again?
By Peter D. Ward
downloaded from:
http://www.sciam.com/
article.cfm?articleID=
00037A5D-A938-150E-
A93883414B7F0000&
sc=I100322
....................Most of the article omitted......................
But with atmospheric carbon climbing at an annual rate of 2 ppm
and expected to accelerate to 3 ppm, levels could approach 900
ppm by the end of the next century, and conditions that bring
about the beginnings of ocean anoxia may be in place. How soon
after that could there be a new greenhouse extinction? That is
something our society should never find out."

Press Release
Pennsylvania State University
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, Nov. 3, 2003
downloaded from:
http://www.geosociety.org/meetings/2003/prPennStateKump.htm
"In the end-Permian, as the levels of atmospheric oxygen fell and
the levels of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide rose, the upper
levels of the oceans could have become rich in hydrogen sulfide
catastrophically. This would kill most of the oceanic plants and
animals. The hydrogen sulfide dispersing in the atmosphere would
kill most terrestrial life."

www.astrobio.net is a NASA web zine. See:

http://www.astrobio.net/
news/modules.php?op=
modload&name=News&
file=article&sid=672

http://www.astrobio.net/
news/modules.php?op=
modload&name=News&
file=article&sid=1535

http://www.astrobio.net/
news/article2509.html

http://astrobio.net/news/
modules.php?op=modload
&name=News&file=article
&sid=2429&mode=thread
&order=0&thold=0

These articles agree with the first 2. They all say 6 degrees C or
1000 parts per million CO2 is the extinction point.

The global warming is already 1 degree Farenheit. 11 degrees
Farenheit is about 6 degrees Celsius. The book "Six Degrees" by
Mark Lynas agrees. If the global warming is 6 degrees
centigrade, we humans go extinct. See:
http://www.marklynas.org/
2007/4/23/six-steps-to-hell-
summary-of-six-degrees-as-
published-in-the-guardian

"Under a Green Sky" by Peter D. Ward, Ph.D., 2007.
Paleontologist discusses mass extinctions of the past and the one
we are doing to ourselves.

ALL COAL FIRED POWER PLANTS MUST BE
CONVERTED TO NUCLEAR IMMEDIATELY TO AVOID
THE EXTINCTION OF US HUMANS. 32 countries have
nuclear power plants. Only 9 have the bomb. The top 3
producers of CO2 all have nuclear power plants, coal fired power
plants and nuclear bombs. They are the USA, China and India.
Reducing CO2 production by 90% by 2050 requires drastic action
in the USA, China and India. King Coal has to be demoted to a
commoner. Coal must be left in the earth. If you own any coal
stock, NOW is the time to dump it, regardless of loss, because it
will soon be worthless.

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Reducing CO2 production by 90% by 2050 requires drastic action
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Feb 12, 2008 8:41 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
http://www.salon.com/news
/feature/2008/02/08/
mccain_global_warming
/index_np.html
No climate for old men

Why John McCain is not the candidate to stop global warming.

By Joseph Romm

Sen. John McCain is the only GOP candidate who believes in the
science of global warming and who has proposed specific
legislation that mandates a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions, especially carbon dioxide. That said, a President
McCain would not be the climate leader that America and the
world requires.

As increasingly desperate climate scientists have been telling us,
the effects of global warming are occurring faster than anyone had
thought possible.

The next president must make reducing GHG emissions a central
focus of his or her administration if we want to avoid the worst
impacts of global warming: catastrophic sea level rise, widespread
drought and desertification, and loss of up to 70 percent of all
species. [INCLUDING HOMO SAP]

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ONLY nuclear power can save us
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Feb 12, 2008 8:47 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/
environment/76461/?
comments=view&cID=831018
Why John McCain Isn't the Candidate to Stop Climate Change
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress at 12:10 PM on
February 8, 2008.

While he may be better than Bush, that is not nearly as good as we
need right now.

McCain's astonishing doubletalk on climate in the Florida GOP
debate -- denying that a cap and trade system is a mandate -- made
me start rethinking what a McCain presidency would mean for the
fight to prevent catastrophic global warming. The more I
researched McCain's views, the more I talked to others, the more I
felt forced to change my previous view.

Salon has just published my long analysis, which concludes that
while he would be vastly superior to Bush on climate,

... a President McCain would not be the climate leader that
America and the world requires. He is a conservative who
happens to be on the only intellectually defensible side of the
climate change debate. But he is still a conservative, and the vast
majority of the solutions to global warming are progressive in
nature -- they require strong government action, including major
federal efforts to spur clean technology.

Of course, as I argue in my book, it is precisely because they
know that the solutions to global warming are mostly progressive
in nature that most conservatives are so close-minded on the
subject. My basic argument is:

As increasingly desperate climate scientists have been telling us,
the effects of global warming are occurring faster than anyone had
thought possible.

The next president must make reducing GHG emissions a central
focus of his or her administration if we want to avoid the worst
impacts of global warming: catastrophic sea level rise, widespread
drought and desertification, and loss of up to 70 percent of all
species. [INCLUDING HOMO SAP]

While McCain may understand the scale of the climate problem,
he does not appear to understand the scale of the solution. He
understands the country needs to put in place a mandatory cap on
GHG emissions and a trading system to energize American
innovation. But in a recent Republican debate, he denied that a
cap and trade system is a mandate, even though it would arguably
be the most far-reaching government mandate ever legislated.

Moreover, like most conservatives, he doesn't understand or
accept the critical role government must play to make that system
succeed. Besides initiating a cap-and-trade system, the next
president must:

1. Appoint judges who won't gut climate change efforts.

2. Appoint leaders and staff of key federal agencies who take
climate change seriously and believe in the necessary solutions.

3. Embrace an aggressive and broad-based technology
deployment strategy to keep the cost of the cap and trade system
as low as possible.

4. Lead a change in utility regulations to encourage, rather than
discourage, energy efficiency and clean energy.

5. Offer strong public advocacy to reverse the years of muzzling
and misinformation of the Bush administration.

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Solar power doesn't work at night.
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Feb 12, 2008 8:53 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Great damage has been done, but we still have 8 years before natural positive
feedbacks lead to our EXTINCTION. Sea level will continue to rise even if we
disappear right now, but that is "minor" compared to poison gas bubbling out of
the ocean and killing almost everything including all of the people.
See the chart on page 274 of "Six Degrees" by Mark Lynas. We have until 2015
to BEGIN REDUCING our total CO2 output and we have until 2050 to actually
reduce our CO2 output by 90%. The curve has to start down by 2015, not we
have to think about it by then. The peak of our CO2 production has to happen in
the next 8 years. That means stopping the building of coal fired power plants
world wide immediately. It means replacing coal fired power plants with nuclear
power plants world wide with ZERO interference from paranoid protesters.

How are YOU going to do it? Go ahead and invest YOUR money if your answer
is anything other than nuclear power. I don't want to waste my money on pie in
the sky like wind, solar, bio and geothermal. Too much research is still needed.
If we don't follow the schedule in Six Degrees, we will encounter positive
feedbacks which will take the control of the climate out of our hands.
Civilization may fall anyway well before 2050, but we can avoid going extinct by
2100. We have to hold the CO2 level to 400 parts per million to have a 75%
chance of avoiding the positive feedbacks. The natural positive feedbacks are
explained in Six Degrees.

I have zero financial interest in nuclear power, and I never have had a financial
interest in nuclear power. My sole motivation in writing this is to avoid extinction
by H2S gas.

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Nuclear power is the cleanest
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Feb 12, 2008 8:57 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The complete list of impurities in coal includes every element in
the periodic table. The important impurities are: URANIUM,
ARSENIC, LEAD, MERCURY, Antimony, Cobalt, Nickel,
Copper, Selenium, Barium, Fluorine, Silver, Beryllium, Iron,
Sulfur, Boron, Titanium, Cadmium, Magnesium, Thorium,
Calcium, Manganese, Vanadium, Chlorine, Aluminum,
Chromium, Molybdenum and Zinc. There is so much of these
elements in coal that cinders and coal smoke are actually valuable
ores. We should be able to get all the uranium and thorium we
need to fuel nuclear power plants for centuries by using cinders
and smoke as ore. Remember that, to get a given amount of
energy, you need about 100 MILLION TIMES as much coal as
uranium. That means the coal mine has to be 100 million times
larger than the uranium mine, not counting the recycling of
nuclear fuel. We can keep our mountains and forests and our
health by switching from coal to nuclear power.

Chinese industrial grade coal is sometimes stolen by
peasants for cooking. The result is that the whole family
dies of arsenic poisoning because Chinese industrial grade
coal contains large amounts of arsenic.

I have zero financial interest in nuclear power, and I never have
had a financial interest in nuclear power. My sole motivation in
writing this is to avoid death by H2S gas.

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Recycling nuclear fuel
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Feb 12, 2008 9:00 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
With a new interest from much of the world in global warming, the nuclear
industry is making a comeback, because nuclear is a clean, safe, plentiful and
renewable source of energy.

Everything, including yourself, is made of atoms. All atoms have nuclei. You
have many atomic nuclei inside yourself since you are made of atoms. The
simplest nucleus is one proton. That would be a hydrogen atom. An oxygen
atom has 8 protons and either 8, 9 or 10 neutrons in its nucleus. All other nuclei
also have neutrons. Uranium has 92 protons and either 143 or 146 neutrons. If it
has 143 neutrons it is U235. If it has 146 neutrons, it is U238. Nuclear fuel is
only 2% to 8% U235, the kind that fissions/divides, providing energy. The rest is
U238 that doesn't fission. A nuclear reaction happens when a neutron is captured
by a nucleus. If a U235 nucleus captures a neutron, the nucleus and the atom split
approximately in half and 3 more neutrons are released because the 2 smaller
nuclei don't need so many neutrons. If a U238 nucleus captures a neutron, it
ejects an electron and the neutron becomes a proton. The U238 thus becomes
Plutonium 239. Plutonium is fissionable, which means that plutonium is a good
fuel. If you add Thorium to the fuel, you can make more fissionable uranium. If
a Thorium atom nucleus captures a neutron, it ejects an electron and the neutron
becomes a proton. The Thorium atom thus becomes U233. U233 is fissionable.

Depending on the design of the reactor and the mix of the fuel, the fuel % in the
reactor can either grow or shrink. It is kind of like the fuel gauge can go either up
or down, but it is more like the reactor can run hotter or cooler over time. The
temperature is kept constant by adjusting the control rods. A breeder reactor is a
reactor designed to make the fissionable part of the fuel load grow rapidly.
Normally, fuel is left in the reactor for about 10 years, or 10% of the fuel is
replaced each year. The reprocessing step sorts out the fuel and puts the
percentage of fissionable fuel back to the starting percentage. In the process,
plutonium may be removed and either wasted or used as fuel. If we add thorium
to the fuel, we can make more uranium than we put in. Since the earth contains
more than twice as much thorium as uranium, it would be wise to make thorium
into uranium. By reprocessing nuclear fuel, we get an enormous, many centuries
long fuel supply. The products of fission are also removed when fuel is
reprocessed. These are just other ordinary atoms that are no longer useful as fuel.
The quantity is very small. We should reprocess fuel to keep the fuel load at the
correct percentage of fissionable fuel for the particular reactor design. Instead, we
go through the expensive process of making more "virgin" fuel for each new fuel
load. This greatly increases the price you pay for electricity. We are not
reprocessing nuclear fuel for political reasons.

I have zero financial interest in nuclear power, and I never have had a financial
interest in nuclear power. My sole motivation in writing this is to avoid extinction
by H2S gas. H2S is how global warming kills everybody if we don't act.

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Nuclear battery for heart pacemaker
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Feb 12, 2008 9:07 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
See "The Long Summer" by Brian Fagan. Climate change has caused the collapse
of dozens of civilizations, and is well on the way to causing the collapse of our
civilization. See: "Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared
Diamond. "Collapse" extends and amplifies what was said in "The Long
Summer." No government be able to prevent the collapse of world
civilization if global warming continues. In the US, the problem is that the
population has been thoroughly propagandized by the coal industry and is now
paranoid of all things nuclear. The building of coal fired power plants continues.

We don't recycle nuclear fuel because spent fuel is valuable and people steal it.
The place it went that it wasn't supposed to go to is Israel. This happened in a
small town near Pittsburgh, PA circa 1970. A company called Numec was in the
business of reprocessing nuclear fuel. I almost took a job there, designing a
nuclear battery for a heart pacemaker. [A nuclear battery would have the
advantage of lasting many times as long as any other battery, eliminating many
surgeries to replace batteries.] Numec did NOT have a reactor. Numec "lost"
a large amount of enriched uranium. I don't believe it was bomb grade as the
newspaper report below claimed because Numec was not in that business and
because the US has no reason to have bomb grade uranium. All of our bombs
are now plutonium bombs. Uranium bombs are too heavy and ineffective. It
was reactor grade high level "waste" probably with the plutonium still intact. It
wound up in Israel. The Israelis have fueled both their nuclear power plants and
their nuclear weapons by stealing nuclear "waste." It could work for any other
country, such as Iran or the United States. It is only when you don't have access
to nuclear "waste" that you have to do the difficult process of enriching uranium,
unless you have a Canadian "Candu" reactor that runs on unenriched uranium.

Numec is no longer in business. The reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the US
stopped. That was the only politically possible solution at that time, given that
private corporations did the reprocessing. My solution would be to reprocess the
fuel at a Government Owned Government Operated [GOGO] facility. At a
GOGO plant, bureaucracy and the multiplicity of ethnicity and religion would
disable the transportation of uranium to Israel or to any unauthorized place.
Nothing heavier than a secret would get out.
See for more on Numec:
http://www.pittsburghlive.
com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/
specialreports/buriedlegacy
/s_87948.html
Government agencies investigated missing uranium, NUMEC
By Mary Ann Thomas and Ramesh Santanam
VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Editor's note: This the first of three parts on the history of the Nuclear Materials
and Equipment Corp.

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COAL=14.7Million tons of CO2 per 1000 megawatts
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Feb 12, 2008 9:13 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Coal fired power plants that put 14.7 MILLION TONS of CO2 into the air every
year for each 1000 Megawatts generated for one year. Nuclear plants put ZERO
CO2 into the air. The CO2 cost of building coal vs. nuclear is the same and
negligible. The CO2 cost of mining and transporting coal is large and not
included in the 14.7 MILLION TONS of CO2. The mining and transportation
cost of nuclear fuel is zero since Yucca Mountain is full of fuel that needs to be
reprocessed and put back into reactors. Each 1000 Megawatts of nuclear power
needs so little uranium that you could easily carry an equal weight in a suitcase.
Burning 4 MILLION TONS of coal makes 14.7 MILLION TONS of CO2. As I
have pointed out many times, burning 4 MILLION TONS of coal puts enough
U235 into the air and cinders to fuel a nuclear plant, or enough uranium +
thorium to fuel hundreds of nuclear plants if breeding is allowed. There is no
way to get there from here without nuclear power, like it or not.

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