Tag Archives: Energy

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Nuke News You’ve Never Heard

A GLOWING REPORT ON RADIATION

The Chief has actually seen some other peer-reviewed scientific papers about low level radiation being beneficial to living cells and organisms. Like water, sodium, zinc, copper, and many other substances, some is helpful (and in some cases even ESSENTIAL), while too much of the same thing can be harmful, up to the level of fatality.

With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer.

This only seems counterintuitive because of media hysteria for the past 20 years trying to convince Americans that radiation at any dose is bad. There is, however, burgeoning evidence that excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.

As The New York Times science section reported in 2001, an increasing number of scientists believe that at some level — much higher than the minimums set by the U.S. government — radiation is good for you. “They theorize,” the Times said, that “these doses protect against cancer by activating cells’ natural defense mechanisms.”

Among the studies mentioned by the Times was one in Canada finding that tuberculosis patients subjected to multiple chest X-rays had much lower rates of breast cancer than the general population.

And there are lots more!

Take away message: without absolute evidence, don’t sweat the small stuff!

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B.O. Pro-Arab Energy Policy

Interior appeals oil drilling ruling

B. Hussein Obama’s Interior Department is pursuing policies that are greatly benefiting mid-east oil suppliers, and that will conincidently and inevitably result in continuting increasees in the prices that will be paid by Americans for any and all poil-based commodities, starting with gasoline, and including all plastics, synthetic fibers, and most chemical and pharmaceutical feed stocks. But hey, it’s for your own good…and too bad if you’re too stupid to appreciate the favor. (F— you if you can’t take a joke!)

The Obama administration late Friday appealed a judge’s orders directing the Interior Department to act on several Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling permits.

The appeal is the latest salvo in the ongoing fight over the speed with which Interior is – or isn’t – letting oil drillers get back to work after last year’s BP oil spill.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had hinted the appeal was coming at a Senate hearing Wednesday. “The judge in this particular case in my view is wrong,” Salazar said. “And we will argue the case because I don’t believe that the court has the jurisdiction to basically tell the Department of Interior what my administrative responsibilities are.”

He added, “the policy we have in mind is unmistakingly [sic] clear: We are moving forward with the development of oil and gas” production.”

BS! Total BS!

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THIS is Change that we can REALLY use!

As usual…another case of the London Telegraph going where no US mainstream media has dared to venture.

Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium

If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years.

What’s not to like about this one? Well, it IS kind of disconcerting to be in a position to [potentially] supporting an Obama initiative…but then again, it hasn’t happened yet, and since it depends on the other (technological) n-word (nuclear), the Chief is willing to be that B.O. will be no more likely to adopt this than he would be to embrace the original n-word.

There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power.

Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor’s day or Thursday – produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.

Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. “It’s the Big One,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering.

“Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels,” he said.

Ooops. What would happen to the “uranium cartels”, to say nothing of the vast, wealthy, and dare one say influential oil iindustry? Anyone else think there may just be a BIT of opposition to this from those locations? (I’m just saying…you know?) As an object lesson in support of this observation:

You might have thought that thorium reactors were the answer to every dream but when CERN went to the European Commission for development funds in 1999-2000, they were rebuffed.

Brussels turned to its technical experts, who happened to be French because the French dominate the EU’s nuclear industry. “They didn’t want competition because they had made a huge investment in the old technology,” he said.

C’est la vie.

After explaining some of the technical aspects of thorium energy, and the prospects of at least one privately financed effort underway (in Norway), the piece from the Telegraph concludes:

Nuclear power could become routine and unthreatening. But first there is the barrier of establishment prejudice.

When Hungarian scientists led by Leo Szilard tried to alert Washington in late 1939 that the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, they were brushed off with disbelief. Albert Einstein interceded through the Belgian queen mother, eventually getting a personal envoy into the Oval Office.

Roosevelt initially fobbed him off. He listened more closely at a second meeting over breakfast the next day, then made up his mind within minutes. “This needs action,” he told his military aide. It was the birth of the Manhattan Project. As a result, the US had an atomic weapon early enough to deter Stalin from going too far in Europe.

The global energy crunch needs equal “action”. If it works, Manhattan II could restore American optimism and strategic leadership at a stroke: if not, it is a boost for US science and surely a more fruitful way to pull the US out of perma-slump than scattershot stimulus.[Emphasis added]

Even better, team up with China and do it together, for all our sakes.

The Chief concurs.

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B.O. & Fed Land Scheme

White House land grab
Proposal to seize land would favor animals over Americans

You’d think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they’re planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West.

A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job- creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that’s essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers.

President Obama could enact the plans in this memo with just the stroke of a pen, without any input from the communities affected by it.

At a time when our national unemployment rate is 9.7 percent, it is unbelievable anyone would be looking to stop job-creating energy enterprises, yet that’s exactly what’s happening.

We’ve been there, done that, under Carter and Clinton. B.O. seems inclined to follow their evil example.

Hopefully there’s enough gumption out there to stop him from doing this.

Locking up lands with energy resources? What’s THAT about?

Hmmmm. After spending us into international bankruptcy we’ll need to do SOMETHING to re-boot the dollar…auctions of mineral and energy rights could be a way to do it. Now, who has a lot of cash and a high demand for more energy to drive a forced industrial expansion?

China.  Not a nice thought, but there it is.

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B.O. Seeks The Dark Side

Obama climate plan: Blot out the sun

Even for the B.O. administration, at first this looked like a joke…but sadly, it’s not.

President Obama’s science advisor John Holdren has suggested that we consider blotting out sunlight to reduce global warming, according to an Associated Press report.

Holdren would shoot particles into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays back into space– I sure hope plants and people don’t need those rays for say, photosynthesis or vitamin D production, respectively. And what would be the other unintended consequences?

What IF this really was done, and really screwed things up…how would they undo it? Remember all the concern about a possible “nuclear winter”? This is exactly the same thing…(supposedly) without the war. You don’t want to imagine the results….worse than Bismarck, ND in January!

Holdren, of course, is a people-hating population control fanatic, anyway, so perhaps he’s hoping to killing two birds (or half the population) with one stone.

Oh… and what about all those solar power projects Obama keeps talking about? Don’t they need as much sunlight as they can get?

So many questions, so few brain cells for Holdren to work with.

The arrogant hubris here is breathtaking.

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Cold War In Europe

Europe faces energy crisis as Vladimir Putin cuts Russian gas supply

As temperatures dropped below zero across much of Europe, the Russian prime minister instructed the head of Gazprom: “Cut it – starting today.”

The cut was ordered to punish neighbouring Ukraine, which Russia accuses of topping up its own gas supply by siphoning off energy meant for European consumers and sent through its pipelines.

But Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-run gas company, said that it was European Union countries, including Britain, that would feel the effects of an increasingly bitter East-West energy row.

Not exactly too cooperative of Russia, but they sure got some attention from the Euros.

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Steam Driven Fusion Reactor?

Maybe so…

STEAMPUNK FUSION

The picture you see above is a steam driven fusion reactor. I know what you are thinking. This is some kind of joke. It is no joke. General Fusion has a design that I think has an outside chance of working.

A lot more information on this here, in a PopSci article.

This is an elegant idea. The Chief hopes it works, and wishes he had some serious money to invest in it.

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Getting Some More Nukie?

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The Chief wants some…right in his own backyard!

Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. ‘Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,’ said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. ‘They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.’

This is the sort of thing that can really go a long way toward solving the energy problem. Even electric cars (for those in areas where long distance driving is not required) can become practical with this sort of thing.

Now, if we can only get a Manhatten Project style program going for fusion power…(sigh).

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Congressional Donks Get Drilled!

Democrats to let offshore drilling ban expire

Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election.

While this isn’t a total surrender…the Donks promise continued opposition in the future…it IS a major slap upside the head for Reid, Pelosi, and the rest of their ilk. Looks to the Chief like they are scenting the cold breezes of November, and are reaching for some heat to warm up their electoral prospects.

SD Politics

Thune Catches RINO-virus With anti-Drilling Bill

Senate “Gang” (Including Thune) Sells out to Donks on Drilling

Not-So-Slick Oil Bill

Intro to Article: Some GOP senators allied with Democrats are peddling a “drilling” bill that actually adds exploration restrictions, raises taxes and may even end up meaning no new domestic oil. Some Republicans never learn.

Does this ever nail it! It’s even worse than Charlie Brown trying to kick the football!

Whenever the nation is faced with a big problem that the people demand be solved, we can always be sure of one thing: A group of Republican senators will scramble away from their party’s principles to join Democrats in some grand “compromise” scheme.

This kind of stuff just drives me nuts! What’s wrong with showing some cojones for a change instead of falling for the false belief that a “Republican” compromise gesture gets us ANYTHING, except farther away from where we really need to be going.

Unfortunately SD’s lone GOP Senator John Thune has bought into (or been bought into) this display of political pusillanimity.  Or maybe the RINO (Republicans In Name Only) virus in in the CapitolHill water.

The bipartisan “Gang of 10,” led by Republican Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota has grown into a “Gang of 16,” with GOP Sens. John Warner of Virginia, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and John Sununu of New Hampshire the newest misguided Republicans. A more apt nickname would be “The Gang That Couldn’t Think Straight.”

The “comprehensive” bill that these four, plus fellow Republicans Bob Corker of Tennessee, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Johnny Isakson of Georgia and John Thune of South Dakota are joining with Democrats to push would exclude — permanently — the entire Pacific Coast from drilling. It would also limit a lot of the Atlantic Coast, and ban drilling anywhere within 50 miles of shore.(Emphasis added.)

Hey, Senator…if EVERY ACRE in the country was planted to ethanolic corn crops, it STILL wouldn’t be enough to maintain our fuel supplies…we need to drill wherever there’s oil – and the recent experience of the Gulf production platforms in the face of repeated hurricanes, shows that this can be done with extremely minimal environmental risk.

It’s almost enough to make a life-long (the Chief started his involvement with Youth for Goldwater before he could even vote) Republican activist give up on the once Grand Old Party…but for what alternative? Maybe it’s time to revive the Whigs or something, since The Libertarians, and other minor parties are fatally flawed at present by their hopelessly blind situational awareness concerning the national security problems we have with Islamofascism, and the resurgent Soviet Union Russia and Putin’s Cold War II.

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The Answer Isn’t Blowin’ in the Wind

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Yeah, but NOT the way you might think it is! The Chief just HATES to throw mudballs at popular ideas, but this one is just too irresistable. First, Momentous Pronouncements from the Argus’ esteemed (satire alert!) paragon of political and ideological objectivity:

Kranz: Pickens plan has promise for S.D

If they haven’t heard much about him, South Dakotans will certainly know soon enough about T. Boone Pickens. His message on the future of energy is resonating loudly enough, and that has created some interest.

Hey, isn’t it AMAZING what a multi-million dollar multimedia ad campaign can accomplish in this day and age?

A Sioux Falls man, Lee Brown, a consultant, already was working on some unrelated projects with people connected with Pickens. “They in turn recommended me to help in this effort since I am once again located in South Dakota,” Brown said. He now is state director for activities promoting the Pickens Plan in the state – a plan to change how energy is used in this nation.

From what the Chief has seen, Pickens’ plan has more to do with how energy is PRODUCED, not how it’s USED… but I quibble.

Brown says South Dakota is already ahead of the game. He knows the importance of alternative energy, particularly wind energy, as well as the benefits from its use. Brown is a political consultant by trade, but he now has taken on an additional project.

Hello? As if this ISN’T political?

“Wind has been on the radar screen for three years, and projects are being funded, looking at anything in renewable fuels,” she said. “The Pickens Plan is a positive step, putting a national focus on the idea that we need to quit sending money to people who really don’t like us. His plan has huge potential….Downside? “There is no downside,” she said.”

No downside? And what’s the bit about where the money is going to go? Uh…read on, and follow the money.  IMHO the following piece has some real deal-busters.

Continue reading →

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Dubya: Drill Away!

President Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling

President Bush today lifted a presidential ban on offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf that was implemented by his father, escalating a confrontation with Democrats in Congress over how to cope with soaring gasoline prices.

Although it’s a gesture in the right direction, it doesn’t quite get anything going…yet.

Lifting the executive moratorium has no immediate practical effect, because Congress enacted its own prohibition on offshore drilling in 1981. It would have to be rescinded for exploration to proceed.

At least it turns the heat up on the do-nothing Donk Congresscritters.

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House Democrats Proclaim Socialist Goal

House Democrats call for nationalization of refineries

The Democrats in the House are showing their true colors: Red!

House Democrats responded to President’s Bush’s call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. Among other things, the Democrats called for the government to own refineries so it could better control the flow of the oil supply.

They also reasserted that the reason the Appropriations Committee markup (where the vote on the amendment to lift the ban) was cancelled so they could focus on preparing the supplemental Iraq spending bill for tomorrow.

At an off-camera briefing, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said the same. And a senior Republican House Appropriations Committee aide adds that “there were multiple reasons for the postponement” including discussion on the supplemental. But the aide said there was the thought that Democrats may wish to avoid a debate today on energy amendments.

Here are the highlights from briefing.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), member of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the most-ardent opponents of off-shore drilling: “We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.”

…no doubt in accordance with their Soviet style “First 5-Year Plan”

HUH? Like we want the GOVERNMENT to control “how much gets into the market”??? This from the folks who say we need to cut back on our use of automotive transportation, and limit the use of petroleum in the name of the quasi-religious myth of human-mediated glowbull warming? The same government that has the pattern of spending more for less results on a habitual basis?

G-d help us all if they pull this one off!

China Watch, National Insecurity

ChiCom Notes

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A couple of relevant items pertaining to recent doings of the Comrades of Beijing.

Lawmaker says Chinese hacked Capitol computers

A Virginia congressman says the FBI has found that four of his government computers have been hacked by sources working out of China. In remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Frank Wolf says he has been told by the FBI that four computers in his personal office were compromised.

The Virginia Republican says that similar incidents – also originating from China – have taken place on computers of other members of Congress and at least one House committee.

Why would they be so uncollegial as to do this?

A spokesman for Wolf says the four computers were being used by staff members working on human rights issues. Wolf is a longtime critic of the Chinese government’s human rights record.

Dang! That pesky old “human rights” again. Unlike the ACLU’s version of human rights issues, like being offended by someone peacefully praying, for example, ChiCom human rights problems often involve the injection of a 9 mm bullet to the back of the head…with the cost of said bullet being billed to the victim’s family.

…meanwhile, on a different note highlighting something that’s more of a problem with Washington than Beijing:

China’s Drilling for Oil in America’s Backyard

House Republicans want the American people to know that right now — around 60 miles off the coast of Key West, Fla. — China is drilling for oil, thanks to a lease issued by Cuba.

But 1,200 miles north of Key West, Democrats in Washington are blocking the United States from conducting its own environmentally-safe oil and gas exploration in similar U.S. coastal areas, said a news release from House Republican leader John Boehner’s office.

Democrat Congresscritters, wooden rail, hot tar, feathers. Some assembly required.

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Drill Here & Now!

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The Bakken oil formation and national security

Here’s some more on the Bakken formation…previously noted here…which potentially has more oil than Saudi Arabia under the northern plains.

Yesterday, Bloomberg News published a story about some young oil developers and their rush to bring the Bakken oil formation, located in eastern Montana and western North Dakota, into major production.

The Bakken formation has been a minor producer of crude oil for over a half century. What has increased this formation’s potential is the arrival of mature horizontal drilling technology, now combined with water fractionating recovery techniques. These techniques could turn the Bakken formation from an inconsequential dud into perhaps the largest oil field on the planet.

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BIG Dakotas, Montana Oil Find

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500 Billion Barrels Possible in Bakken Formation?

The potential to develop a HUGE oil find in the northern plains through the use of advanced (slant-horizontal) drilling is being reported on the Coast-to-Coast AM radio program. (Betcha this looks a lot more attractive with $100/bbl oil.)

While the Coast show is admittedly a somewhat edgy source (noted for UFO reports, etc.), this paper by the North Dakota Geological Survey is much harder data to give an idea of what’s potentially there: 200-300B barrels IN NORTH DAKOTA…remember, this formation also extends into Montana, South Dakota, and Canada!

Folks, that’s a LOT of oil…hmmmm…not for nothing is Texas-based Hyperion Energy moving toward construction of the first new US refinery in 25+ years -  in South Dakota.

UFF DA!