Flood Berm Collapses at Nebraska Nuclear Plant
June 27th, 2011Via: AP:
A berm holding the flooded Missouri River back from a Nebraska nuclear power station collapsed early Sunday, but federal regulators said they were monitoring the situation and there was no danger.
The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station shut down in early April for refueling, and there is no water inside the plant, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. Also, the river is not expected to rise higher than the level the plant was designed to handle. NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said the plant remains safe.
The federal commission had inspectors at the plant 20 miles north of Omaha when the 2,000-foot berm collapsed about 1:30 a.m. Sunday. Water surrounded the auxiliary and containment buildings at the plant, it said in a statement.
The Omaha Public Power District has said the complex will not be reactivated until the flooding subsides. Its spokesman, Jeff Hanson, said the berm wasn’t critical to protecting the plant but a crew will look at whether it can be patched.
Greece: ‘A Sovereign Debt Crisis of Sophoclean Dimensions’
June 27th, 2011Via: Telegraph:
The essence of ancient Greek tragedy is that the audience knows it will end in disaster, but feels compelled to watch the horror unfold. And so it is with the modern version, a sovereign debt crisis of Sophoclean dimensions. Themes of the great dramatist’s finer works are all there: how arrogance, pride and deception result in unbearable pain; the inevitability of retribution and (not yet witnessed in Athens or Brussels) the arrival of wisdom through suffering.
Tomorrow, Greek MPs are scheduled to vote on a fresh austerity package. If it’s passed, the country will receive the next 12 billion euros of a 110 billion euro bail-out. Sadly, this is little more than a financial hors d’oeuvre. Still required is an additional 100 billion euro deal if Greece is to remain solvent until 2013. In effect, the country is borrowing enormous sums to service existing debts, which it cannot afford to repay. As Sophocles reminds us, when divine and human purposes conflict, the gods will always prevail. In this case, Athena, the deity of endeavour and reason, is deeply offended by Olympian self-indulgence. The upshot will not be a miraculous economic recovery, but a spectacular flame-out. As far as Greece is concerned, there is no deus ex machina. The tragic denouement will involve its default or withdrawal from the single currency, perhaps both.
Greece is bust; it already owes 160 per cent of its GDP. Its economy is staggeringly inefficient. Many in the public sector enjoy retirement at 50 and pensions close to full final salary. The private sector is blighted by corruption. The tax-collecting system operates on the basis of a tips box, with only 5,000 Greeks admitting to an income of more than 100,000 euros. When in January 2001 the country flagged its intention to ditch the drachma for the euro, the then prime minister, Costas Simitis, promised: “Our inclusion [in the eurozone] ensures for us greater stability and opens up new horizons”. That was the comedy.
Now for the tragedy. Greece’s entry was based on a false prospectus, as the European Commission admitted in 2004: “It is clear Greece would not have joined the euro with the figures we have now.” Greece hid massive budget deficits between 1997 and 2003 by understating military spending, exaggerating VAT receipts and overestimating social security surpluses. Thereafter, while the Brussels elite was suspending disbelief, the Greeks were borrowing cheaply, paying themselves lavishly and spending uncontrollably. The state became a vehicle for pillage and patronage. Dionysos, god of parties and pleasure, had his day.
Threat of $100 Billion Hit if U.S. Top Rating Lost
June 27th, 2011I definitely wouldn’t assume that the impact of a credit rating cut would be limited to $100 billion. I doubt there is any way to know what the impact will be because so many derivatives have been struck off the underlying debt. In other words, this $100 billion number may be just the tip of the iceberg.
Via: Financial Times:
Investors in the US government bond market could face losses of up to $100bn if the largest economy loses its triple A rating, according to a research arm of McGraw-Hill, the parent of Standard & Poor’s.
A ratings downgrade that results in higher bond yields and lower prices could also mean the US Treasury paying $2.3bn-$3.75bn a year more in interest on financing a $1,000bn annual budget deficit.
“If Standard & Poor’s or any of the other major rating agencies downgrade the US, Treasuries would likely drop in value, possibly by as much as $100bn,” said analysts at S&P Valuation and Risk Strategies, a research team separate from the agency.
Fukushima Residents’ Urine Now Radioactive
June 27th, 2011Via: Japan Times:
More than 3 millisieverts of radiation has been measured in the urine of 15 Fukushima residents of the village of Iitate and the town of Kawamata, confirming internal radiation exposure, it was learned Sunday.
Both are about 30 to 40 km from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which has been releasing radioactive material into the environment since the week of March 11, when the quake and tsunami caused core meltdowns.
“This won’t be a problem if they don’t eat vegetables or other products that are contaminated,” said Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University. “But it will be difficult for people to continue living in these areas.”
Kamada teamed up with doctors including Osamu Saito of Watari Hospital in the city of Fukushima to conduct two rounds of tests on each resident in early and late May, taking urine samples from 15 people between 4 and 77.
Radioactive cesium was found both times in each resident.
Radioactive iodine was logged as high as 3.2 millisieverts in six people in the first survey, but none was found in the second survey.
The data indicate accumulated external exposure was between 4.9 and 13.5 millisieverts, putting the grand total between 4.9 to 14.2 millisieverts over about two months, they said.
“The figures did not exceed the maximum of 20 millisieverts a year, but we want residents to use these results to make decisions (to move),” said Kamada.
Friend of British Prime Minister Found Dead in Toilet at Music Festival
June 27th, 2011Via: Belfast Telegraph:
Detectives are hoping toxicology results will shed light on the death riddle of a senior Tory in a Glastonbury Festival VIP toilet.
Christopher Shale, 56, a close friend of David Cameron, was discovered slumped in a cubicle in the backstage area on Sunday morning. The Prime Minister’s constituency chairman had been reported as missing by worried family members at 900-acre Worthy Farm on Saturday.
It is feared his body may have lain undiscovered for up to 10 hours.
Police found his body as he was quoted in the Mail on Sunday bemoaning difficulties his party faced in recruiting new members. He was reported to have written: “No reason to join. Lots of reasons not to.”
Downing Street was understood to have contacted Mr Shale on Saturday to warn him that the note he had written had been leaked to the newspaper.
Mr Cameron said he was “devastated” as he described Mr Shale as a valued friend and a “big rock” in his life.
Confusion reigned at the site after Michael Eavis said the wealthy businessman’s death could be a “suicide situation”. But police dismissed the claim, with sources saying he was thought to have suffered a heart attack.
Research Credit: AC
Google Gets Driverless Car Law Passed in Nevada
June 26th, 2011Via: PhysOrg:
The savvy among you may remember that back in May we told you about Google’s attempts to get the Nevada state legislature to consider allowing users to driver UGV, or unmanned ground vehicles, that are more popularly know as self-driving cars on the states roads. At the time it seemed like an interesting notion and a bit of a pipe dream.
As it turns out dreams become real for the search giant quickly. The Nevada state legislature has just passed has just passed a bill, Assembly Bill No. 511, that does two things. First, the law allows the Nevada Department of Transportation to create rules and regulations regarding the use of self-driving cars, so that they can be used legally on the road. The second part of the law requires the Nevada state Department of Transportation to designate areas in which these vehicles can be tested.
Power-Grid Experiment
June 26th, 2011Via: AP:
A yearlong experiment with America’s electric grid could mess up traffic lights, security systems and some computers — and make plug-in clocks and appliances like programmable coffeemakers run up to 20 minutes fast.
“A lot of people are going to have things break and they’re not going to know why,” said Demetrios Matsakis, head of the time service department at the U.S. Naval Observatory, one of two official timekeeping agencies in the federal government.
Since 1930, electric clocks have kept time based on the rate of the electrical current that powers them. If the current slips off its usual rate, clocks run a little fast or slow. Power companies now take steps to correct it and keep the frequency of the current — and the time — as precise as possible.
The group that oversees the U.S. power grid is proposing an experiment that would allow more frequency variation than it does now without corrections, according to a company presentation obtained by The Associated Press.
Officials say they want to try this to make the power supply more reliable, save money and reduce what may be needless efforts. The test is tentatively set to start in mid-July, but that could change.
Five Bushehr Experts Died in Russian Plane Crash
June 26th, 2011Via: AP:
Russia’s top nuclear agency says that five experts involved in the construction of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant have died in Monday’s plane crash in northeastern Russia.
Rosatom said Wednesday hat the five men were among 44 passengers of the Tu-134 plane that slammed into highway near the Petrozavodsk airport.
It said the experts were on their way from Moscow to a meeting at a Rosatom subsidiary that manufactures equipment for nuclear plants.
Research Credit: afterhours
Austrian Company Debuts Revolutionary Wingless Aircraft
June 24th, 2011Via: PhysOrg:
A firm from Austria, Austrian Innovative Aeronautical Technology (IAT21) has unveiled a new type of aircraft that flies without wings or rotors, at the Paris Air Show. Though not actually flown at the show, spokesmen for the new aircraft, named D-Dalus (no doubt after the tragic Greek figure Daedalus, who lost his son Icarus when his wings melted as he flew too close to the sun) claim the aircraft is capable of both hovering and flying forward as fast as a jet, all with very little noise.
U.S. Government Launching Antitrust Investigation of Google
June 24th, 2011Oh sure. I bet Google is quivering with fear.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
Federal regulators are poised to hit Google Inc. with subpoenas, launching a broad, formal investigation into whether the Internet giant has abused its dominance in Web-search advertising, people familiar with the matter said.
The civil probe, which has the potential to reshape how companies compete on the Internet, is the most serious legal threat yet to the 12-year-old company, though it wouldn’t necessarily lead to any federal allegations of wrongdoing against Google.
While Google has faced several antitrust probes in recent years, the U.S. has limited its investigations largely to reviews of the company’s mergers and acquisitions. The new inquiry, by contrast, will examine fundamental issues relating to Google’s core search-advertising business, its biggest money maker, said the people familiar with the matter.
