A “Lib Dem” minister just told Sky News he was approving new nuclear power stations to promote green jobs. If anybody ever votes for these lying bastards again I shall be disconsolate.
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John Goss, it could be that the early reports of contamination after Chernobyl came from sites that were already being monitored, and were thus the places that the extra contamination was first noticed.
a more immediate UK energy problem http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/9707/actualstoragestock21032.jpg – UK gas storage is running on fumes.
From http://marketinformation.natgrid.co.uk/gas/frmPrevalingView.aspx
I strongly suggest people look at the chart from National Grid (first link) with more data at second link.
It needs to warm up fast. Any major failure on the unreliable Langeled pipeline from Norway and we are in deep shit instantly as opposed to soon.
Hi Clark. Yes, that could be so, that they were already being monitored. But why? And why have they stopped monitoring now? Do you know if other countries had the same problem with radioactive sheep? Sorry, the terminology is not even layman’s terminology, but I think you know what I mean.
Craig,
it is nowadays rather trendy and “progressive”, whatever it might mean in the circumstances, to oppose nuclear power. I was somewhat surprised by your statement as I considered you as not being a trendy individual. I predict that most people would eventually wake up to see through the subsidy scam of the so called renewables after their energy bills have tripled or quadrupled. The energy companies just have to find new reasons for hiking up their prices, thus constantly inventing new rules of the game that they play with their foolish consumers.
Hmm, National Grid have also replaced the “safety level” displays on the detailed UK gas storage report with blanks. “Days left” has also been blanked out. They used to call it “Days to breach” but that was thought to be too scary. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY YOU FUCKING CLOWNS.
Current Nat Gas bulk price has shot up to £1/therm.
This article by Duncan is great, such a breath of fresh air after the regurgitations of the same old twaddle in the media.
Iraq’s invasion was not justified and Saddam was our plaything, from day one. Well worth a read
http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/why-sanctions-on-iraq-could-have-been.html
And here we have ten lessons from ‘America’s dumb war’.
Trust the Germans to reconcile our dumb idiots who provided the pre text to this dumb war.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ten-lessons-america-learned-from-the-2003-iraq-war-a-890066.html
As you were saying Doug Scorgie
March 19, 2013
A Do-Nothing Agenda
Obama in the West Bank
by RUTH MICHAELSON
[..]
Israeli citizens have just elected a coalition in the hope that fresh faces from the Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party would provide a “middle way”, preventing a hard-right government. Except the process of coalition building has trampled what little of this idea was realisable, with ministers such as the newly elected Deputy Minister of Defence Danny Dayon and MK for Housing Uri Ariel lining up earlier this week to declare that Israeli settlement policy will continue exactly as it did under the previous government. Settler leader Gershon Mesika, speaking to the Israeli news site Ynet, labelled the new coalition “a wet dream”. Dayon even went as far as to say he intends to encourage a growth in the Jewish population in areas in Israel’s far northern and southern areas, which normally house vast numbers of Israel’s Palestinian, Druze or migrants from Africa, from places such as Eritrea.
Moreover, there is the post-coalition resurrection of “Basic Law”, originally crafted as a private members bill by Kadima MK Avi Dichter in August 2011. “Basic Law” is essentially designed to give supremacy to the idea of Israel as a Jewish, rather than democratic, state. It would strike Arabic from the list of official languages and allow “the state [to] invest resources in promoting Jewish settlement but would not commit itself to building for other national groups” according to a Ha’aretz article published on the 15th March. The idea, which would present increased challenges to minorities within Israel, has seen the light of political day once again due to the allegiance between Netanyahu’s Likud party, and the right-wing Jewish Home party. Were Obama’s visit not happening, it is entirely possible that the media would be tearing open the potential affects of this coalition. Yet while Obama arrives to congratulate Netanyahu on having formed a new coalition, he is essentially rubber-stamping his quiet approval on a government that deliberately and openly states it intends to make life within Israel-held territory as difficult for non-Jews as possible.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/19/obama-in-the-west-bank/
OT-One for Craig!The tab running on BBC news at the moment is saying that the referendum on Scotland’s independence will be on 18th Sept. 2014.
“ITER is expected to break through that barrier and generate 500 megawatts from a 50 MW input for periods lasting a few minutes. But it will be only a scientific demonstration; ITER won’t generate any electricity. That job will be left for its successor, the prototype power plant DEMO. Fusion researchers are just starting to think about designs for DEMO but it is looking increasingly likely that it won’t be a global collaboration like ITER, whose members are China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States.”
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/01/after-iter-many-other-obstacles-.html
The timing for funding from various gov’ts couldn’t be worse. Just as the EU is struggling to keep the boat baled, the Sequestration in the US(who only recently joined the funding) is making it difficult to see this through at a critical time.
In case it is not clear, THE UK is 6-10 DAYS FROM RUNNING OUT OF GAS at current usage rates. Any journalists awake?
It looks more like 4 weeks away to me Anon. Maybe the newspeople are waiting for it get closer for the headline to reach its optimum value.
Crab,
They need to maintain flow rates and pressure so all storage can’t be drawn down to zero. They must maintain some Long, Short and Medium storage.
Detailed report at http://marketinformation.natgrid.co.uk/gas/frmReportViewer.aspx?reportid=81&fromdate=21/03/2013%2000:00:00&todate=21/03/2013%2000:00:00&applicableat=N&applicablefor=Y&gasday=Y&dsr=yes
Note that “Safety Monitor GWh” and “Days Left” have been blanked. We have already breached the blanked safety levels and days left is between 6 and 10 days for Long Range Storage.
Should any one of a number of major infrastructure points fail right now and take even a week to repair we would have rolling blackouts by Monday morning. If the Langeled pipeline from Norway were to fail, we might not even get to Monday.
Nevermind,
Sebastian Fischer in Speigel online said, “The hawks surrounding Bush viewed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as legitimizing an attack on Iraq — despite the fact that there was no connection between Hussein’s regime and al-Qaida.”
Sadly Sebastian did not have the fortitude to express the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as ‘permitted to proceed’ by certain people in positions of power and control.
That global realization is foremost in the demise of trust and the principle reason the American image has evaporated on the world stage.
Obama is being a good boy and toeing the AIPAC line. If he’s not careful, he will set off another Intifada. The nerve of it!
Obama urges end to settlement demand
(US President Barack Obama (left) with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, 21 March)
President Barack Obama urges Palestinians to drop their demands for a freeze in Israeli settlement building, as he visits the West Bank.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21872408
RUTH MICHAELSON is a prodigious and astute journalist
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/author/ruth-michaelson
Many thanks Mary for the reference emphasizing the ‘do nothing agenda’ of this new coalition government of Eretz Yisrael.
I agree with you Mark, der Spiegel is well past its best and the skewing of the real time line of events will keep us busy for years, here and in many other places.
Would be handy to have a Wikileaks timeline, all the information, going back to however long, in one place.
In order to push his mortgage guarantee scheme in yesterday’s budget (is it a scheme for millionaires to buy second homes is one of the questions being asked) Gideon was visiting a building site today. It was one of Berkeley’s whose name can be found in this list of donors to the Tory party.
http://www.gmb.org.uk/pdf/Posh%20Dosh%20for%20Posh%20Boys%20Comp.pdf
John Goss, 12:59 pm, I’d have to check Busby’s book more closely, but I seem to remember that there were various surveys for radioactivity around nuclear power stations, maybe even regular, scheduled monitoring, which I suppose would be in order to detect leaks etc.. And I’m pretty sure that other countries have had nuclear contamination of meat and milk. Have a look on Wikipedia; I don’t have time at present.
The Chernobyl cloud followed a particular route, and fall-out was washed to the ground in places where it happened to rain. Again, see if Wikipedia has anything.
isn’t the fact that we are so reliant on imported gas a good reason to look at either how we consume energy or alternative reliable sources. we can say for sure that there will not be any more coal fired power stations built and the ones we have will struggle to meet the next 25 years emmissions targets. Gas Fired stations are ok (in my view) but we will need to be in control of our own supply. Nuclear gives good solid power to the grid but comes with way too much baggage to be acceptable.
The main concern is Wind. It’s a very clean source of power and it’s currently supplying about 4 – 5 Gwts of power with about an additional 1Gw added every 10 months, which is all fine and dandy but England is very Anti onshore wind so the vast majority is being produced in Scotland and being exported down to English grids.
If Scotland take it’s independance where will the English buy their power from then, especially if all the bridges to coal / nuclear / Shale / onshore wind have been burned.
Anon, thanks for the alert. Not much I can do about it; I’d start saving up farts in carrier bags, but they’ve all got pre-made holes in these days.
@ Mary, who says :
“In order to push his mortgage guarantee scheme in yesterday’s budget (is it a scheme for millionaires to buy second homes is one of the questions being asked)…”
And it has been made clear today that the answer to that question is NO.
**********
La vita è bella, life is good (help people get on the housing ladder)
Michio Kaku: Climate and Energy Issues
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt4up9QRLGI
Wiki–Economics
While fusion power is still in early stages of development, substantial sums have been and continue to be invested in research. In the EU almost €10 billion was spent on fusion research up to the end of the 1990s, and the new ITER reactor alone is budgeted at €10 billion. This is less than the cost of the 2012 Olympics.
It is estimated that up to the point of possible implementation of electricity generation by nuclear fusion, R&D will need further promotion totalling around €60-80 billion over a period of 50 years or so (of which €20-30 billion within the EU) based on a report from 2002.[46] Nuclear fusion research receives €750 million (excluding ITER funding), compared with €810 million for all non-nuclear energy research combined,[47] putting research into fusion power well ahead of that of any single rivaling technology.”
More from Kaku (who’s kind of like the antithesis to our Ineffectual Firegeezer):
“Berkeley astronomer Don Goldsmith reminds us that the earth receives about one billionth of the suns energy, and that humans utilize about one millionth of that. So we consume about one million billionth of the suns total energy. At present, our entire planetary energy production is about 10 billion billion ergs per second. But our energy growth is rising exponentially, and hence we can calculate how long it will take to rise to Type II or III status.
Goldsmith says, “Look how far we have come in energy uses once we figured out how to manipulate energy, how to get fossil fuels really going, and how to create electrical power from hydropower, and so forth; we’ve come up in energy uses in a remarkable amount in just a couple of centuries compared to billions of years our planet has been here … and this same sort of thing may apply to other civilizations.”
Physicist Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study estimates that, within 200 years or so, we should attain Type I status. In fact, growing at a modest rate of 1% per year, Kardashev estimated that it would take only 3,200 years to reach Type II status, and 5,800 years to reach Type III status. Living in a Type I,II, or III civilization
For example, a Type I civilization is a truly planetary one, which has mastered most forms of planetary energy. Their energy output may be on the order of thousands to millions of times our current planetary output. Mark Twain once said, ”Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it.“ This may change with a Type I civilization, which has enough energy to modify the weather. They also have enough energy to alter the course of earthquakes, volcanoes, and build cities on their oceans.
Currently, our energy output qualifies us for Type 0 status. We derive our energy not from harnessing global forces, but by burning dead plants (e.g. oil and coal). But already, we can see the seeds of a Type I civilization. We see the beginning of a planetary language (English), a planetary communication system (the Internet), a planetary economy (the forging of the European Union), and even the beginnings of a planetary culture (via mass media, TV, rock music, and Hollywood films).”
http://www.mkaku.org
We’re living in a medieval world!
Failure of the Tories, from the 1980s onwards, and then latterly by the New Labour opportunists -the fake opposition, to correct the wrong-headed dash-for-gas (sprint for quick profits too) have lead to our over-dependence on gas. Study after study found that burning gas directly in our homes, for heating in our homes, was far more energy-efficient use of that excellent fuel, than burning that same gas in far away power stations, to produce electricity. The ‘market’ once again got things so wrong and corporate and political greed abused it, now the invisible-hand delivers mortal blows, with consumers the punchbag.
Thanks for the info about the latest spasms of the disintegrating zionazi state of israel, the world is watching as ever, the sooner they go for the Samson option the better.
What a pathetic worm Obama is, yet another war criminal destined for the gallows.
“If Scotland take it’s independance where will the English buy their power from then, especially if all the bridges to coal / nuclear / Shale / onshore wind have been burned.”
Scotland doesn’t export that much electricity to England, there aren’t sufficient cross border lines. England will be on the European super grid, they have HVDC lines to France and Holland so far.
Mark Golding Thanks for that link about Ruth Michaelson. I was speaking of a third intifada starting following Obama’s instruction to the Palestinians to forget about settlement building. I see she asks if one has already begun.
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/has-the-third-palestinian-intifada-already-begun
~~
On the BBC 6 O’clock News, they were reporting the very opinion that Gideon’s mortgage guarantee plan will a) enable the rich to buy second properties and b) that although house prices are already overvalued, a property boom will be set off, that being the last thing that is needed. Two experts vouched for these opinions.
Houses are over-priced by about 20% and the government’s ‘help to Buy’ mortgage guarantee plan will try to inject the stimulus to create more highway robbery debt at a time when most sensible people are trying to reduce money owed to others.
Arithmetic flunker and subsequent hotel towel folder Mr George Osborne fails to understand productivity is down by 20% compared to pre-crisis levels and that obviously affects supply.
A puzzle for Osborne – yes —– Predictable – yes.
We are not only witnessing technological unemployment we are also witnessing the demise of a corrupt, greedy and outmoded fiat money system.
Time to get self-sufficient.
hey! I’ll barter my fresh free range eggs for a small selection of your home grown vegetables. Now that makes perfect sense; productivity will take off at grass roots.
The BBC have just shown a DEC appeal for Syria. Remember the one for Gaza after Cast Lead that they refused to air and the radio play Seven Jewish Children by Caryl Churchill that they also banned?
DEC appeal for Gaza that the BBC won’t broadcast
The DEC Gaza appeal, was broadcast on ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five, in full
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/4355405/DEC-appeal-for-Gaza-that-the-BBC-wont-broadcast.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Jewish_Children
Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza is a controversial six-page, 10-minute play by British playwright Caryl Churchill, written in response to the 2008-2009 Israel military strike on Gaza, and first performed at London’s Royal Court Theatre on 6 February 2009. Churchill, a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has said that anyone wishing to produce it may do so gratis, so long as they hold a collection for the people of Gaza at the end.
A copy of the play was sent to the BBC. Jeremy Howe, the commissioning drama editor for Radio 4, said that both he and Mark Damazer, the channel’s controller, considered the play a “brilliant piece”, but agreed that it could not be broadcast because of the BBC’s policy of editorial impartiality.[39]
Lilian.el-doufani
19 Mar, 2013 – 4:31 pm
“So who do we vote for? There is no decent option. They’re all rubbish. Might go green but even then they’re not strong enough. My vote will be lost. And one vote every four years is all the say we seem to have.”
It’s every five years now.
Democracy in the USA the UK and the EU is an illusion.
Your right that Scotland has restricted power lines across the border and also from the highlands downwards, but once these grids are in place the wind farm outputs will expand to meet grid capacity. That work has already started and the 5, 10, 15 & 20 year power growth plans are well embedded.
Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany are all looking for upwards of 70% of renewable power by 2030.
We could end up being in the dirty man in Europe if we do not make tough decisions now. Not very people in this country can remember or will tolerate regular power cuts, which will happen sooner than people think.
We need a balanced approach and we need it now.