The US Department of Energy (DOE) will host a town hall meeting on March 6, 2014 at 5:30 PM (MT) at the Walter Gerrells Performing Arts Center in Carlsbad, NM. Representatives from the DOE headquarters and from the Carlsbad Field Office will provide an information update on recovery activities at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant….
One of the odd circumstances that arises out of extracting, transporting and marketing a commodity in high demand is that overall industry profits can increase as an indirect result of experiencing a scary accident that destroys a portion of a now infamous small town and kills nearly four dozen people. One predictable response to such…
Ben Heard at DecarboniseSA posted an article titled The Silent Fire that describes a fire in a worked-out portion of a coal mine just outside of Morwell, Victoria, Australia. That fire has been burning since Feb 9. The town near the mine has been blanketed by the ash and smoke produced by the fire. The…
On Monday, February 24, representatives of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center (CEMRC), and local officials will meet with the public. The planned purpose of the meeting is to provide a status report and answer questions about the airborne contamination detected in the facility and the trace contaminants…
Recent events at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) provide an opportunity to reinforce the need to practice good communication skills in order to improve the future response to a contamination event. Though there is no public hazard associated with airborne contamination levels of 0.64 Bq of Am-241 and 0.046 Bq of Pu-239/240, the New…
There is a good reason why life often imitates art in the form of fictional stories; good creative writing teachers emphasize the importance of research and a firm understanding of reality. Writers are taught — or learn on their own — that people prefer reading stories that are believable. Even fantasy or science fiction follows…
The first installment of this series, titled Sabotage may have started Three Mile Island accident, describes how a number of individually improbable equipment conditions came together at 4:00 am on March 28, 1979, one year — to the minute — after the start of commercial operation at Three Mile Island (TMI) unit 2. It also…
This is a difficult story to tell; it’s not easy to revise history. It’s even harder to it successfully when there is sure to be disbelief, dismissal, and efforts to discredit. I prefer being respected and strive to avoid the potential of being marginalized as a crackpot. However, I feel a strong inner push to…
One of my favorite pastimes is listening to Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak, who bill themselves as “media assassins”, on the No Agenda Show. On yesterday’s episode, number 580, John and Adam spent about 15 minutes (starting at about 1:44:00) discussing the absurd tales that are propagating around the web regarding USS Ronald Reagan…
There are a number of wacko sites trying their darnedest to stimulate fear and trembling about the events at Fukushima even though the reactors have been in a cold shutdown condition for two full years. As noted earlier this week, if you want to get information about Fukushima from a calmed, interested, and well informed…
Hiroshima Syndrome hosts the best source of compiled information about the status of activities and investigations related to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station’s accident recovery and clean-up effort. The author, Les Corrice, is a semi-retired nuclear energy professional who works diligently to post the Fukushima Accident Update page twice a week. He has been pursuing that self-assigned…
At 2:12 pm on December 30, 2013, a Burlington Northern (BNSF) train pulling more than 100 tanker cars full of of crude oil extracted from the Bakken formation in North Dakota collided with another BNSF train carrying grain outside of Casselton, ND. Apparently, one of the trains derailed before the collision, but there have been…