Saturday, Dec 06th
Last update10:33:53 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
Ft. Calhoun is the designated spent fuel storage facility for the entire state of Nebraska...and maybe for more than one state.
Calhoun stores its spent fuel in ground-level pools which are underwater anyway - but they are open at the top. When the Missouri river pours in there, it's going to make Fukushima look like an x-ray. But that's not all. There are a LOT of nuclear plants on both the Missouri and Mississippi and they can all go to hell fast.
In the desert of Nevada, a hundred miles from Las Vegas, engineers have drilled a tunnel through the heart of Yucca Mountain. The hole is 25 feet wide and five miles long. It’s dark in there. The light bulbs have been removed. The ventilation has been turned off. There’s nothing inside but some rusting rails that were supposed to carry 70,000 tons of nuclear waste to a permanent grave.
Outside, the gates are locked. When three members of Congress visited in March, the federal government spent $15,000 just to reopen the place for a few hours.
Recent readings taken roughly 19 miles out to sea from the Fukushima nuclear power facility in Japan have revealed radioisotope levels ten times higher than those measured in the Baltic and Black Seas after the massive Chernobyl disaster. Because Fukushima is much closer to water than the Chernobyl plant is, the ongoing fallout there is shaping up to be far worse than Chernobyl, at least as far as the world's oceans are concerned, and time will tell just how devastating this massive disaster will be on the entire world as radiation continues to circulate around the globe.
The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the Japanese government.
The radiation will also have contaminated the soil and plant and animal life around the facility, making the task of cleaning up more difficult and expensive, as well as taking longer.
The federal government usurped power over navigable water in the early 1800's by distorting the Commerce Clause listed in the Enumerated Powers (Article1, Section 8) of the Constitution, which says:
"To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
The Commerce Clause has been stretched far beyond federal regulations over trade transactions and taxes; it now extends to federal authority over the means of commerce (trucks, roads, telephones, etc) and almost anything that crosses state lines (industry, fish, pollution, etc). This is an illogical abuse of the Constitution, but it fits the plan for centralized control.
Environmentalists say ships traveling through California's marine sanctuaries should be required to slow down to avoid fatal collisions with whales.
Saying the problem has increased to "unsustainable levels," a coalition of environmental groups filed a petition Monday asking the U.S. Department of Commerce to establish a 10-knot limit for large commercial vessels transiting California's four National Marine Sanctuaries in the Channel Islands, Monterey Bay, Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Already under fire over perceived threats to local water sources, the natural gas industry is facing a new challenge: earthquakes.
A small energy company halted its shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing program in Britain after two mild earthquakes were recorded in the vicinity, an area where such tremors are rare.
Now, the controversial drilling activity is being linked to earthquakes – first in Arkansas, where companies are developing the prolific Fayetteville play, and now at Britain’s first shale gas exploration site, near Blackpool in northwest England.
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