One Washington

I said from the beginning that we are one Washington, and we’ve torn down the Cascade Curtain.

- Queen Christine, "Major strides have been made in economy, education, health care," Tacoma News-Tribune, June 29, 2008

A collection of environmental groups is asking its supporters to thank Gov. Chris Gregoire "for standing up for our health, safety and our environment by raising concerns over nuclear wastes from a uranium enrichment plant," once proposed for Richland.

- "Environmentalists praise Gregoire for raising concerns about Areva plant," Tri-City Herald, July 17, 2008

Now we know which "one" the Queen was talking about.

Eastern Washington and the Queen: Myth and Reality

MYTH:

As the members of the [Eastern Washington Advisory] council and I discussed today, it is vitally important to Washington that the unique issues facing central and eastern Washington be addressed through state government.

- Queen Christine, press release, November 16, 2007

REALITY:

But rather than champion a project she feared would be controversial in some environmental circles, Gregoire deployed a "balanced approach" of not publicly promoting or opposing the project.

Gregoire repeatedly was invited by Areva supporters and her staff to consider an agreement with the company to restrict in-state storage of the plant's low-level waste of depleted uranium.

But that wasn't enough assurance for her to woo the company personally - as backers had hoped.

And while Areva, through the Tri-City Development Council, repeatedly sought Gregoire's personal engagement, the governor's office offered "a professional approach, not a political approach" that minimized her involvement.

The governor's office also refused to believe intelligence indicating the plant could be Washington's if Gregoire would embrace it.

[snip]

Gregoire's unwillingness to play a more active role in recruiting what would have been a major economic development score for the state, Eastern Washington and the Tri-Cities has left even some of her strongest supporters shaken.

- "Herald investigates: How Washington lost the $2 billion Areva plant and at least 400 jobs to Idaho, Tri-City Herald, June 29, 2008

Tri-Cities residents are worried, justifiably, that the loss of this plant will cost more jobs. Herald political reporter Chris Mulick has more on his blog (a regular stop of mine.)

That's right, in an election year, the Queen ignored the needs of Eastern Washington to kow-tow to the radical Seattle environmentalists clad in birkenstocks and frayed "No Nukes" t-shirts. Is there any chance we'll get our stormwater burden lifted with her in office? Only with Dino Rossi as governor do we have a chance of that.

Obama may not have known where Hanford was, but the Queen won't be able to forget.

Junk Science in America leads to Hunger and Human Trafficking in Asia

Sometimes the news just doesn’t keep up. Here is a letter I just received from people I work with in Thailand. I’ve mentioned before that the use of food for energy is such a bad idea (or at least poorly thought out.) What an incredible strain high food prices will have on the poorer countries of the world. Just for reference we Americans spend about 10% of our income on food. The ‘green revolution’ has succeeded wonderfully for us and now Thailand. But neighboring communist dictatorships just have not caught on. My man in Burma (pastor ‘P’, sorry I can’t mention his name for fear of him getting in trouble) purchased a rice field to help make his missionary services more self-sustaining. But it really didn’t work out so well – at first - then he got help from an American who did soil tests and bought the needed fertilizer. Now he is self sufficient in rice production.

HUNGER
Food prices are skyrocketing in Thailand. The price of rice alone has risen over 30% in the past month. The average worker spends over 70% of his income on food alone. With the price of rice and other necessities going up, the average lower income Thai has to choose between eating
and not eating. It’s becoming a crisis situation.

Thailand has put an emphasis on being self-sufficient in rice so we have not suffered the severe
shortages that other countries have faced. The situation is much worse in Burma and Cambodia. But the crisis is growing for the poor. Please keep Thailand and all of Asia in your prayers. We are focusing on providing rice to our homes for at Risk Children and orphans. But the frustration grows as there is not much we can do to solve this growing economic crisis without God.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING
At least 54 Burmese died in the South while being moved by human traffickers in a broken refrigerated container usually used to haul seafood. More than 100 people were packed into the truck and the 54 died of suffocation. Burmese, Laotians and Cambodians continue to be smuggled into Thailand in order to find jobs. With the food crisis growing so will the problem of Human Trafficking.

Please keep us in prayer as we start churches to minister to these workers in Thailand. We really need your prayers for our main Burmese Pastor. He is still trapped in Burma. He cannot get a visa to reenter Thailand and rejoin his family. We are trying every possible way to get him
back. Pastor Tommy is the man responsible for starting most of our Burmese churches in Thailand and those that minister to victims of human trafficking and abuse.

"Nuclear power will be a necessity in the future"

Semiretired WSU Chemistry professor Don Matteson wrote a Town Crier column that appeared in today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News that actually made sense for a change. The last few, it seems, have been monotonously left-wing pie-in-the-sky. If global warming is a real threat, then going nuclear is the only answer,

Would you want to live within 20 miles of a nuclear reactor?

I hope this doesn't come as a shock, but if you live in Pullman or Moscow, you already do.

Washington State University has had a research reactor in operation since the early 1960s. It has recently been named for Harold W. Dodgen, the physical chemistry professor who started it. The Department of Chemistry hosted a lunch for Harold, his family, and his friends last October, where I learned a number of facts about the reactor that I had not known or had forgotten.

This is a small reactor, maximum power one megawatt. Its design does not allow the possibility of a meltdown or explosion for any reason. If all control systems fail, the fuel rods will get hot and expand, leaving more empty space between uranium atoms. Then more neutrons escape from the fuel rods. When too few neutrons collide with uranium atoms, the chain reaction dies out and the rods quit getting any hotter.

A quarter century ago, most university reactors were shut down to save money. WSU could not afford the short-term cost of decommissioning, and the defenders of the reactor prevailed by default. Ironically, we are now left with a unique and valuable facility.

The reactor has helped WSU to attract outstanding faculty who are working on ways to clean up the Hanford mess left over from atomic bomb manufacture. With the looming global warming problem, for which the scientific evidence is very strong whether you believe it or not, nuclear power will be a future necessity. WSU is uniquely positioned to train people to understand nuclear chemistry and how reactors work.

Aren't nuclear plants dangerous?

Nobody died at Three Mile Island, and there is no evidence for the speculation that there might be one extra cancer case within 50 miles of the accident. Chernobyl was a bad design run by Soviet cowboys and has no relevance to American safety.

The risks of radiation are grossly overestimated by alarmist organizations that depend on contributions for their existence and peddle irrational pseudoscience to scare people into giving. People really have died from coal smoke pollution. No deaths are attributable to the operation of more than 100 nuclear power plants during the last 45 years in the United States. Nuclear is in fact safer.

Isn't the solution solar power?

In the January 2008 issue of Scientific American magazine a scheme is suggested for covering 30,000 square miles of our Southwest deserts with solar collectors to produce 69 percent of our electricity, 35 percent of our total energy, by 2050. That area equals all of the state of Washington east of Vantage. The endangered pink spotted cactus beetle hasn't been discovered yet, but figure it would be.

Solar power can help a little. Chemists at WSU and elsewhere are working on it, but progress is slow.

Biofuels? Forget it.

Corn ethanol is popular with farmers, but evidence whether it produces a small net energy gain or loss is ambiguous. All large-scale biofuels have bad environmental effects. Conservation? Windmills? Sure, but these solve small parts of the problem, and windmills kill birds. When scientists who understand the physics crunch the numbers, they conclude that we will either need to burn an awful lot of environmentally damaging coal or go nuclear.

A typical nuclear power reactor produces about 1,500 megawatts, roughly equivalent to a hydropower dam. Physicists already know how to design them so that a runaway nuclear reaction is physically impossible. Advanced nuclear power plants can directly produce hydrogen for clean fuel from water. With abundant power we can desalt sea water to make up for shortages of natural fresh water.

The waste problem is mainly political. A typical nuclear power plant generates only about six cubic yards of high level waste a year. Besides, known technology can reduce the long-lived waste 20-fold in breeder reactors that recycle plutonium, a valuable nuclear fuel that should not be dumped.

We now get 20 percent of U.S. electricity from nuclear power. If we imitate France and increase that to 80 percent, we will be a long way toward solving our future energy problems in a safe and environmentally benign way.

Go Green, Destroy the Earth

Green techonologies promoted by greenies would despoil the earth. Nothing left to do but go nuclear.

[I]n order to meet the 2005 electricity demand for the United States, an area the size of Texas would need to be covered with wind structures running round the clock to extract, store and transport the energy.


New York City would require the entire area of Connecticut to become a wind farm to fully power all its electrical equipment and gadgets.


You can convert every kilowatt generated directly into land area disturbed, Ausubel said. “The biomass or wind will produce one or two watts per square meter. So every watt or kilowatt you want for light bulbs in your house can be translated into your hand reaching out into nature taking land.”