The Raging Grannies’ protest song about Indian Point

September

18

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 4:29 pm by Greg Clary.
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20 Responses to “The Raging Grannies’ protest song about Indian Point”

1. John S. September 19th, 2007 at 7:05 am

   OK Greg, I think I’ll give it a shot:

   I see that you don’t know who lives here
   I see that you live in a dream
   The people who need all the power
   Are not so secure as you seem

   You don’t look around you in Yonkers
   You don’t see the thousands who came
   From dozens of far away cultures
   Their thousands of lives are no game

   Bring back…. bring back….
   Oh bring back the promise to me, to me
   bring back bring back
   My civilization to me

   You ignore the gas fumes and carbon
   you ignore the blackouts and crime
   You’ve suffered from living in Croton
   Where all are secure all the time

   What you might prefer is no matter
   what you focus on is so small
   you end up as mad as a hatter
   you fiddle as everything falls

   Bring back…bring back
   a world with full power to me, to me
   bring back bring back
   America as it should be

   You don’t see the mountains of garbage
   You ignore the cruel foreign wars
   all fought so that we can make carbon
   and now you urge making much more

   You urge us to give up our secret
   our God given way to succeed
   you pretend there isn’t an atom
   inside every flower and seed.

   You pretend that man in his knowledge
   is evil by nature or worse
   you try to negate all our hist’ry
   by singing your old lady’s verse

   You forget that God gave us orders
   to make things the best that we can
   to use evry ploughshare and atom
   to nurture and fulfill our land

   Bring Back Bring Back
   My strong vibrant country to me, to me
   take back, take back
   the evil delusion you see

   Give back Give back
   the nature of nature to God, to God
   atoms are real
   for you to accept them is hard

   False pride does hide
   the nature of nature from you, from you
   what you wish for
   is some other world that’s not true.

   Win back Win back
   a world that’s full powered and free, so free
   Bring Back Bring Back
   the power of atoms to me!

2. John S September 19th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

   This second song tonight, is to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, and it tries to speak to the delusions of grandeur that come from joining a protest movement….. any protest movement.

   Not that I would advise people to NOT join a protest movement….. its just to warn them not to let it go to their head…...

   Here Goes:

   Mine eyes have seen the fooling of the public by a few
   With their prefrences all urging us with foolish things to do
   As they march ‘n shout ‘n mill about with hate and ballyhoo
   Their Ego marches on.

   Glory glory we’re a movement
   We have claims but we can’t prove it.
   We don’t need no stinking facts, as we swing our battle axe
   Our Ego Marches on.

   I have woken up on Saturdays with nothing much to do
   I hate my world and I must say I don’t know what is true.
   But marching round and making sounds with folks I never knew
   Feels good while marching on.

   Glory glory we’re a cause now
   Get the bandages and gauze now
   It’s our bloody fight if we’re wrong or if we’re right
   Our egos marching on.

   I have felt the heady thrill that comes from marching in the street
   With TV crews and local news all grov’ling at our feet
   Our neighbors just might see me here and tell me its so neat
   My Ego Marching on.

   I pretend I’m old Pete Seeger and I’m Woody Guthrie too
   I’m Zimmerman againts the klan, and Jesse Jackson too
   If I sang like old Paul Robeson I’d be Old Man River, too
   Pure Ego Marches on

   Glory glory we’re the chosen
   With our attitudes all frozen
   We just like to pose a lot ‘n act up in the street
   Our Ego’s Marching on.

3. John S September 19th, 2007 at 12:57 pm

   And just a personal note to Greg Clary.

   I’m not “the other side”.

   It’s one of the biggest downfalls of all adversarial movements to cast everyone in the “For me or against me” mold. That kind of thinking infects many Islamic lands now, more or less silencing the voices of moderate Islam. The artificial stridency of Republican & Democratic bloggers in the last two elections has driven a wedge straight through our society, erasing the middle ground everyone craves.It’s a recipe for eternal strife. It’s an evocation of vendetta, tit-for-tat, one-upsmanship, and an attitude of “never forget”.It also turns its back on the great wisdom of western philosophies and religions, which all preach the finding of common ground.

   So jazzing up the ladies to stand on Pete Seeger’s street corner with him each Saturday may be good for him, but not so good for them. (Pete likes to have drivers honk against the war each Saturday). Pete is in it fulltime, a pro for life. He has nowhere else to go EXCEPT to that street corner. The ladies, The Journal News, and G. Clary might think a bit, before trying to imitate the man. After all, he’s lived through the complete failure of his first great cause. The rest of us might not live long enough to find a second one, like Pete did. He still won’t admit he was wrong, that first time. Damn shame for the man’s soul.

   Could he be wrong twice?

   It’s altogether possible.

4. Sunny Armer September 19th, 2007 at 2:26 pm

   Hi, John. I must praise your creative powers. I want to make it clear that I am not speaking here for all the Raging Grannies, only for myself, and here’s what I think of the content. It’s nice that you know so much about God’s plans for the world. I have no special hotline to Him, and I get my facts from science, including the findings of the Union of Concerned Scientists and my own humane values. I do believe God gave us sun, wind, and water to use as fuel, not just atomic power. I can’t say I’m flattered that you say I’m as mad as a hatter and have false pride and evil delusions, but I don’t take that personally.

   You are wrong, however, about my attitude regarding workers. Did you read my verse about them?

   This plant is unsafe for employees
   But we don’t want anyone fired.
   Retrain them for alternate energy
   And make sure that they get rehired.

   I am certainly not against the workers, with the possible exception of the security guard who was found sleeping so soundly that an NRC official had to shake him for two minutes to waken him. (That’s what I meant in the lines about his coffee break.) Even he, I believe, has been overworked and underpaid by Entergy, perhaps having to hold another job and not getting enough sleep. What about the nuclear engineer who killed his daughter, his wife and himself? Too much stress at work, perhaps? At least one worker was exposed to radiation during a repair of the nuclear reactor? And several workers voiced concerns to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about potential retaliation for pointing out safety concerns.

   You write:
   You don’t see the thousands who came
   From dozens of far away cultures
   Their thousands of lives are no game

   You are right! Their lives are no game. Do you really believe the plant is safe for Westchester? In spite of all the things that have been found out about Indian Point? The children of those thousands may be drinking water contaminated with strontium 90 and tritium. If there’s a major accident, an earthquake (like the one in Japan), or a plane crashes into the dome on purpose, the evacuation plan has been proven not to work by a study commissioned by Governor Pataki, who never spoke against Indian Point. Did you know that you can’t buy insurance for the value of any property of yours that will be contaminated by radiation? That Entergy is immune from lawsuits? That you may never be able to return to your home, as the population of Chernobyl learned?

   You write:
   You ignore the gas fumes and carbon
   you ignore the blackouts and crime
   You’ve suffered from living in Croton
   Where all are secure all the time.

   Alternate energy sources, much more efficient and available than most people have been led to believe, will create fewer gas fumes (which mostly come from cars, and cars don’t run on nuclear power) than you imagine. Blackouts are caused by failures in the grid, not in the source of power. You are probably unaware of the environmental damage caused by nuclear power. Greenhouse gases are released by the coal-fired plants used in the enrichment of uranium for power plant, as well as in the production of fuel rods

   Thanks for your charming words about Croton. Everyone here I know works for a living, including me. Croton is within the danger zone resulting from any meltdown at Indian Point. I will not be able to evacuate, neither will my neighbors’ children. We will die immediately or later (painfully) from the effects of a meltdown. For as long as we survive, we’ll lose the value of our homes and their nice, secure contents, and probably wind up on welfare and Medicare, draining the taxes of anyone left alive to pay them.

   You write:
   You don’t see the mountains of garbage
   You ignore the cruel foreign wars
   all fought so that we can make carbon
   and now you urge making much more

   The foreign wars are fought over oil, which isn’t used to generate electricity. As for garbage, what about the mountains of nuclear waste? One thousand five hundred tons of irradiated fuel are stored in nuclear waste pools at the Indian Point plants. The buildings they’re in weren’t built to repel a terrorist attack. Entergy promised four years ago that it would build on-site storage facilities by the end of this year. Where are they? Besides, the more nuclear materials lying around available to be stolen, the more danger of terrorists making dirty bombs right here in the homeland.

   You write:
   Bring back…bring back
   a world with full power to me

   Indian Point generates only 10% of the power used in the state of New York. Do you really think we can’t replace that 10% when we already use 90% of other sources that, however unpleasant some may be, will never cause permanent contamination of every living creature and inanimate object they touch?

   I’ll get to your second song later, if I haven’t got anything more important to do, such as mill around with “hate and ballyhoo.� (Who, exactly, is it I’m supposed to hate?)

   Sunny Armer (not afraid to use my full name, John S.)

5. newvoice September 21st, 2007 at 6:52 am

   Dear Ms. Armer

   You cannot remove my creative license, all creative licenses are absolute.
   I don’t have much time to respond, because I’m leaving for work in ten minutes. Thanks for actually reading, and responding.

   I have no special hot line to God, but neither do antinuclear propagandists. Much of what you bring to bear against particular verses in my song, is not true, except in the very narrow and legalistic manner of an anti-something lawyer, writing a brief.

   The Union of Concerned Scientists is not a scientific organization, it is a socioploitical write-in club, accepting dues checks from about 60,000 people, very few of whom are actually practicing scientists. It’s authors, editors, and operators are public relations people, and the two employees assigned to their nuclear desk are not paid out of UCS general funds, but are financed each year by a recurring grant from a single interested grantor, thought to be the Rockefeller (Oil) Foundation.

   Getting your facts from a sociopolitical agitprop scare house, with a pro-oil (and thus antinuclear) axe to grind is not conducive to a full humane understanding of the issues. But I’m sure you have other resources.

   My “Hotline” such as it has been, has been a lifetime of religious and philosophical study, beginning with the Judeo-Christian Bible, moving on through the Earth-loving insights of Teilhard de Chardin, rejecting the flawed and narrow Marxist fantasy, and moving forward through a lifetime of true scientific study, and its realworld applications, to my comprehensive life’s work——the fighting of agendist agitprop in our once-noble society.

   Those taken in by a narrow legalistic vision, believing it to be a comprehensive philosophy , are indeed mad as hatters. If you fall within that group, I’m sorry, I can’t absolve you out of simple courtesy. If not, then its not a worry now, is it?

   Any delusion resulting in harm to others is defacto evil. Nothing personal.
   Yes, those few who fight our society’s mainstream improvement efforts, with non-viable fringe suggestions often sustain their organizations by deeming themselves “the chosen”. “Chosen” to “do the work”, and a certain hubris applies to those who would impoverish others, remove power, jobs, and infrastructure, without having either very good reason to, the mandate of the majority, or facts on their side.

   I know many Indian Point employees, and none of them are harmed in any way by their work. The river towns surrounding Indian Point are extremely pro-nuclear (80%+), and we must move geographically south past Croton’s Red Hill, before finding oppositionist sentiment. My own belief is that the long tradition started by John Reed and Max Eastman has as much to to with Croton’s “anti” proclivities, than any factual need for any revolution, opposition, marching , or singing. I hear you spoke to Pete Seeger about your song. Ask Pete about the Lamonts, about Reed, and about Eastman. He knows all the old stories.

   As far as workers being overworked, rules in place since Indian Point workers lobbied for them a decade ago , now mandate no long overtime hours (NRC rules).

   The thousands who came here from elsewhere have luckily not been reduced to grovelling for drinking water 250 below Indian Point in the bedrock, (which is where the tritium and strontium is). Thanks to a large infrastructure project of the 1890’s they, and we, have pure water piped in from reservoirs upstate, and do not have to dig personal wells on restricted company properties.

   If there’s an earthquake as in Japan, the results will be the same here- no harm will befall Indian Point, because it is built to be earthquake resistant.

   If a plane dives into the dome, the plant will shut down as it is set up to do, and no harm will befall anyone but a few workers, and the plane passengers. If you want a copy of the study that determined this, let me know, and I’ll send you the link.

   Mr. Witt and his organization are fighting big credibility issues, having penned the disastrous New Orleans disaster response, and many now believe his NYS report to have been ghostwritten, incompetent, dishonest, and self serving.
   So don’t hang your hat on it. Look up the word Missasauga. They had a very successful evac there. These things DO work.

   Is the plant not safe for Westchester? Have 35 years not demonstrated it is safe? If reality is not to be our guide, then what? Is unreality to then be our guide? Or perhaps politically motivated agendist propagandist unreality? Would it be “humane” to fall prey to politically engineered unreal propaganda? Or is it a high ethical state to credulously follow every strained antinuke argument?

   And tell me this….. if a total of 31 people were harmed by Chernobyl, why do you think more would be harmed by IPEC, which is built like TMI, which harmed nobody?

   Any small fossil power contribution to nuclear power is totally insignificant, look up the Extern-E report done for the European Parliament, it explains how carbon free nuclear is (About on a par with Windmills).

   There will be no meltdown, and in the only recorded case of a meltdown nobody was harmed (TMI) so where do you get off exaggerating for effect, when peoples’ lives are at stake? Is it part of humanism to always exaggerate?

   Draining taxes and welfare? Just close down our local infrastructure, thus inducing a huge self-induced disaster,
   and you will see people living in tent cities at the Valhalla dam, Westchester airport, and Van Cortlandt park.

   As far as wanting to know my name. Using my full name, I’ve been editorially deleted, harrassed, and banned, not for cause, but for simply not following a preset editorially approved PC line. My effort for truth requires I get over myself, and not become the issue. I am definitely not the issue

   Nice talking with you

   Off to work now…....

6. newvoice September 21st, 2007 at 5:27 pm

   I hate long boring posts, going over ground everyone has already covered years ago, but the resurgence of hate propaganda necessitates we revisit truth every so often, so as to be able to recognize it, should we encounter it.

   In that vein, since I short changed Ms. Armer with a quickie post this morning, here is some background material.

   (Those who embrace a covert hate of nuclear technology, or Indian Point, or mankind’s belief in a prosperous well powered future, often deny that they harbor hatred. But if the reality that the majority of the universe is smaller than a grain of sand is to be denied, if the nuclear basis of the planetary life process is falsely denied, then we are headed into a miasma of non-belief, of non-reality, of alternative universes, a witch’s world of magick, spells, and delusion. When the best is required of all of us, every day, to allow oneself to fall into this miasma is a sin. A secular, scientific sin against all your human brothers, those who need you to not oppose the living of their lives, prosperous, with hope, free of your curses and spells. Give up the hatred you deny.)

   Kashiwazaki:

   To an extent far beyond almost any other structure that’s been designed by human beings, a typical nuclear power plant is designed from the subfoundation up, in every particular, to be specifically resistant to earthquakes. The recent Japanese lesson, of a major earthquake destroying thousands of buildings whole cloth, cutting roads in two, cutting water, communications, sewer and gas services, and yet only affecting the Kashiwazaki plant to the extent of starting a trivial overhead transformer fire, and splashing some radwaste out of 30 barrels, ought to teach the open minded researcher what I am suggesting to you in this letter.

   Earthquakes and human existence do not mix. To that extent earthquakes and nuclear plants do not mix. Beyond that inclusion, nuclear plants are immune to earthquakes, having been fashioned to be immune. A major part of the engineering work at every nuclear plant is ensuring the seismic acceptability of every brace, door jamb, wall, window, valve, equipment stand, control panel, pipe, wireway and building. I’ve cataloged the thousands of calculations, drawings, and design decisions ensuring the seismic adequacy of such a plant. It’s hard work, taking hundreds of trained professionals entire careers to complete.

   You will kindly note that no major equipment at the Kashiwazaki plant was harmed, that the process followed its automatic programming to protect itself by shutting down, that no major building or machinery was affected, that no worker was harmed, and that only a small transformer fire ensued.

   Let me put that transformer fire in perspective. Over 1000 of such fires happen yearly in the United States. They are a common triviality of electrical distribution, and are thought of as an unavoidable annoyance in the trade. Transformers by their nature run hot, and they contain flammable oils. If there existed some magical alternative, transformer fires could be avoided. But there is not. As it is, they are not a public concern, being routinely handled by power companies the world over.

   As far as “low level waste” entering the sea…. barrels of such items as soiled protective clothing, contaminated washwater, etc. are often staged at a nuclear plant before final shipment to a waste disposal facility. Aside from the fact that they have measurable activity on a geiger counter, they are generally innocuous garbage, only administratively termed “radwaste” to be assiduously compliant with nuclear sequestration rules.

   Note this: No active fluids from the Kashiwazaki plant escaped from the process piping, no high level (fuel) materials escaped, and…. across the affected region, tons of asbestos, gasoline, diesel fuel, chemicals, construction materials, rotted food stocks, human waste, and other noxious substances were released into the environment…. but not thought newsworthy enough to report. All that was eclipsed by “nuclear reportage” about Kashiwazaki’s 300 gallons of washwater.

   I often read history, and writing dealing with man’s prehistory, early precivilizations, archeology, etc. I wonder, in total, how many potentially harmful technologies were discovered by man, or pre-man, and then intentionally undiscovered. None, I would warrant. When one ponders how many deaths occurred due to stone axes, copper spear points, fire, bronze weapons, and the mightiest annihilator—steel, the numbers add up to staggering heights. How many have been killed by lead, by gunpowder, by steam power (exploding boilers), and in our very own time, by the burning of fossil fuels, and the great assassin, the motorcar? The atmospheric degradation from hydrocarbon combustion is said to kill a million per year, worldwide. A World Bank report recently censored by Beijing accuses China alone of killing over 750,000 per year of its own citizens via bad atmospheric stewardship. Because the deaths are dispersed, and not directly traceable to their cause does not grant the rest of us any ethical license to ignore the carnage.The rise of human civilization was a worthwhile endeavor. It did, however, result in the usage of many, many dangerous and potentially harmful technologies. Are we to toss Baby out with the bathwater, and return to being grazers in the Rift Valley? I myself reject such a choice.

   So it is with mindless opposition to the use of the nuclear technology , discovered a mere 70 years ago. The genie will not re-enter the bottle. The cat is out of the bag.World reserves of uranium and thorium are immense, common seawater containing 3 grams per cubic meter.It is now thought by some scientists that the earth’s core itself is a uranium reactor. Were that to be true, how could man logically procscribe for his own use, the very process which causes our sustaining Gaian envelope?

   I’ve not thought it necessary to concoct 437 reasons to accept nuclear energy. To me, it is an obvious physical gift, a discovery awaiting mankind’s rise to a certain awareness before any possibility of its discovery, no more inimical than any other scientific fact. If it contains within its reality any ability to save those doomed one million souls, it ought to be at least explored, managed, and used.

   As far as its being accepted, do you accept gravity ?

   A POST-FOSSIL MANIFESTO:

   Now that half the planet’s petroleum supply has been exhausted giving us WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, and the travesties in Africa, we see an undeserving Humankind craving a fossil-fuel-driven wealth economy, at the very moment when it is to become forever unattainable. There is no room for choice. Mechanized automobile-based lifeways will be obsolete within 100 years. Can current-day planners avert disaster, at crunch time? I seriously doubt it. The phenomenon of Pakistani warlords importing prefab modular houses from Pennsylvania, to live like Americans in the heart of Punjab, of Somalis buying Chinese bicycles , clothing, radios, cell phones, etc., in an imitation of urban wealth, points out just how deep the craving for easy living runs in the human soul. We all want the good life, and, miserably, tragically, we cannot all have it. I have posited a dictum, which I believe to be normative: Mankind requires poverty.

   Just as absolute purity of soul, acuity of mind, and societal scope for great accomplishment is given to but a few, wealth and ease are not native to the vast bulk of human beings. Forget the intentional enslavement and povertization of enemy populations, by conquering nations, the ethics confuses the anthropology in such cases. Focus on the huge numbers of marginal people who were born, lived without much, and died young through no specific fault or insult, simply cursed with a wretched destiny. Who is at fault? There is no fault. It is the way of the Human.

   The religious figure Jesus Christ is said to have enunciated a similar phrase in :” The poor are always with us”. Many ascetics from all cultures have practiced self denial, self denial leading (they imagined) to higher states of being. Why throw these wisdoms away? A kernel of truth exists within them. Mahatma Gandhi turning his spinning wheel dressed only in a rude cloth speaks in stark terms to modern society. Ethnicity, self-possession, freedom from wealth, knowledge of self, are the top targets, the most worthy icons. Teilhard de Chardin predicted a great struggle, as a noosphere of instant world communication brought on a world crisis of unimaginable proportions… a crisis to be welcomed, a transformative great leap into the inevitable. The dawn of a new age. The post-fossil human race.

   When stone tools were discovered, millennia ago, was there room to say no to stone? Were there proto-vegan ethical holdouts, refusing to use clovis points? When copper, bronze, and iron in turn were discovered, .... were there purists who foresaw the great upheavals to come, because steel would bring weapons, and lead would bring bullets?

   Standing as we do, at the fall of fossil, and at the dawn of nuclear, how can anyone morally avoid using the next great enabler? The next great enhancer, uplifter, free power from hot stone, forever. The planet is suffused with plentiful uranium, thorium, and other naturally self-heating minerals. Will mankind sit stupidly starving, while the potential for hundreds of power stations lies unmined in Canada, Africa, Russia, Australia and the American West? Again, ..I seriously doubt it.

   So it will happen, despite any ascetic dreaming by “progressive” cults, espousing “a higher path”. The higher path is wonderful, and is always with us, because it exists only in imagination. Like Gandhi’s unused cotton cloth, spun only to make a point, never worn by the man, and abandoned in the end, a great lie. The great lie of the antinuclearists, is to confound mankind’s eternal desire to fight, to make weapons, to rule others by force, with mankind’s absolute need to survive and prosper , now that the planet is filled up, and we are everywhere. No more than we would reject stone, because Cain slew Abel with a stone, no more than we would reject steel, because a steel blade chopped off heads in the French revolution, no more than we would ban rope, because of American southern lynchings, why deny the human race its own survival, because of Hiroshima? Why deny that man can take a substance once used for harm, and use it for good? Are you absolutely sure that mankind lacks the capacity to do good? If so, does that mean that you are a believer in evil?

   The capacity to do evil, must be blamed on the human soul, not on a mute uranium mineral, which has no ethics, just physical existence. It is the next in line after stone, steel, and fossil fuels, as a great savior and aid to humankind. Let it now be aggressively used, to its full potential for good.

   MAD HATTERS?

   It’s truly amazing how adult, enfranchised, educated people allow others to shape their view of the world. Once, before the commercial aspect of life became the all of life, a persuader was supposed to be vetted with some preparation, be it a divinity degree, or a philosophy degree, or at least an uncanny wisdom, like a Lincoln or a Sam Clemens, before leading large groups of fellow citizens down the garden path to the ridiculous.

   Because a son of a brother of a dead president sought a work release job, to complete a drug arrest parole, we now have an alternative sour view of American life, screaming at the impressionable that beautiful people are ANGRY people….. that everything is suspect, and we all need to find the scheming culprits behind each national ill….. provided they’re not part of Camelot, who are, of course not only sinless, but totally exempt from judgement.

   If it were not the favorite “I’m Alright..You’re Alright” stroke these days among celebractivist royals, it would clearly be a misanthropic pathology, suitable for curing by psychoanalysis.

   This upside down backwards view has been the only lens applied to Indian Point for some six long years now. We have all suffered from its cramped and sour vision, and blinded to what we have in our very hands. We have smokeless, carbonless, noiseless, invisible major local power, equivalent to our own Hoover Dam in Briarcliff, but not drowning Yorktown, Peekskill, Somers, Bedford, Ossining, and White Plains in some 150 mile lake to do so.

   We have the capacity to expand, to have malls, to have townhouse complexes on the river, to have easy electrically powered commutes to the world’s biggest financial center, and we are able to sell our homes for five times what we bought them for, under pristine Hudson Valley skies, skies filling up with eagles and hawks above woods filled with deer, turkey, and possum, with no soot on our automobiles, no airbone dioxins to kill the eagle chicks, no nasty coal trains rumbling by in the night, and no vast caravan of diesel tank trucks greasing up our roadways firing up grungy “alternative power” sources, like neighborhood diesel generators. (which will become a reality, as soon as windmills become more than 10% of the mix).

   Due to Indian Point’s monster baseload capacity, we can indulge our penchant for the beautiful, without sin. We can try a solar panel or two, a windmill or two, knowing that on dark days, or calm days, we don’t have to fire up a nasty hydrocarbon-belching monstrosity to take up the slack….. because we have Indian Point.

   Indian Point, hated by a few, it is true, but nevertheless the engine behind Hudson Valley Greenness, behind Hudson Valley prosperity, and behind the wonderful local lifestyle, of which I have been proud to be a working part for some 6 decades.

   Of course, we can tear it all down, and haul in some diesels. While we breathe their fumes, our “royalty” will be cavorting with comedians and starlets in Peru, or Bannff, deciding who the sinners are. I’m sure they will decide it’s us,.... you, and me, and sternly admonish us to do better.

   We are doing better. We have Indian Point.

   IS IT WISE TO TRASH OUR FATHERS’ ACCOMPLISHMENTS?
   (WE OUGHT TO COUNT OUR BLESSINGS, AND USE WHAT’S BEEN PROVIDED BY OTHERS IN THE PAST)

   The amount of available untapped energy is orders-of-magnitude greater than the amount of energy put to use by the human race. Among the largest sources nearby, are wind, & solar energy, and a bit further away and thus harder to access, we have tide energy and geothermal (volcanic) energy. In a vastly more complicated, but far less energetic scheme, we buy cars, and gasoline to gain personal transport.

   The historical motivation for bringing energy to people, involves them paying for electricity to be wired up to their houses. The payment motive also drives the use of automobiles. The level of complexity involved precludes doing these activities privately, or individually, except in very exceptional cases. For a short time, between 1880 and 1980, government monopolies provided power stations, and public transport, but commercial interests wrested that production away, in the global privatization/deregulation movement begun in the Thatcher & Reagan regimes.

   For any new or revolutionary way of bringing power to people, great consideration must be given to how capital will be obtained to actually produce the machinery, do the research , design, and construction, and to how the service will be provided…. a national utility?....regional utility?..... a corporate merchant utility?...... an international (U.N.) global public service?...... a multinational corporate service?...imagination will not suffice. Licenses, rights-of-way, franchises, tax structures, and legal charters must be negotiated in the face of deeply entrenched vested interests, so the difficulty on the legal/political side far outstrips the difficulties on the technological side, and the difficulties on the techno side are vast.

   De facto, many doable technologies lay fallow, because discouraging realities prevent investor confidence, which in turn holds back research & design to crude beginner levels, small inventor prototypes, and laboratory demonstrations. Were some vast convincing scheme to make startups more desirable….. let’s say a war, a famine, the collapse of our economies, or even a vast advertising and promotional effort by some well heeled entity totally dedicated to “new technology”—- only in this case will a departure from currently installed technology happen, and even then, the tried and true older ways will retain great power to convince people away from the new. The glacially slow start of the wind/solar industry, and its embarrassing dependence on government coercion for its implementation point this fact out very clearly.

   Therefore, the value of existing power sources is multiplied far beyond their intrinsic value, by virtue of their being already allowed, already legal, already negotiated, already in possession of plant, people, and market, and this fact cannot be overemphasized. Human society is just not going to be transformed…...no great religious or political leader, or system exists, even in the wings, capable of bringing in a new paradigm. To dream of these things is entertaining, great science fiction, great fun and learning combined in dreams of what a far future could hold, but looking at a website like http://www.industcards.com/top-100-pt-1.htm and seeing the huge installed investment base around the world in conventional power technology gives a refreshing counterbalance to rather fanciful arguments, easily written in some blog, about mankind returning to Eden, or existing on windpower.

   Even in what we would consider the most godforsaken backwaters…..Burundi, let’s say, or Zaire, or Guyana, huge installed oil and coal burning power plants provide the only modernity available to these populations, populations who have abandoned and forgotten tribal ways, and who will therefore starve should these monster smokers cease operation. George Soros makes much of giving $50 million to the Millennium Village project, completely ignoring the fact that once his primitive villagers are raised above a starvation level, and educated above pure illiteracy, they will inevitably, and immediately, abandon their “improved” agrarian lives for the nearest metropolis, in a very understandable attempt to live like you and I.

   It is happening worldwide, and it cannot be stopped. It is the greatest migration the human race has ever experienced, and it is directed exactly at the items greenist and millennialists wish to end——metro life, electricity use, television, store-bought food, Chinese-crafted clothing, mass entertainment, crime, prostitution, small scale private capitalism, a tarpaper shack in some reeking Favela seeming immeasurably more desirable, on the ground, to the actual people involved , compared to the farm life Mr. Soros so sentimentally wishes to resurrect.

   That farm life, fallen into by neolithic hominids by cruel default only when hunting stocks disappeared, and hated always, is now suited only to machines, the ignorant, and/or those transitioning to the global metropolitan reality which is twenty first century humankind. There is no tribal world. There are no farming villages. Give them a tractor, and they’ll sell it, and move to central Nairobi, and hawk postcards on the streetcorner. The facts support me on this.

   Therefore….. existing technology’s value is once again multiplied versus visionary schemes , because of the almost infinite capital of human desire attached to it. The people want it. They do not want better. They do not want cleaner, or new, or more noble. They want what IS, and they want it now.

   Solar Power Satellites?
   Really now…... perhaps if you write up your proposal, and submit it to Kofi Annan’s organization, he may get back to you as soon as his oil-for-food payoff money is depleted. Otherwise he will inevitably opt for conventional fossil power.

   No…. the single godlike, resurrectional technology already existing and in place to save the human race, is sitting quietly over in Buchanan, weathering the slings and arrows of fanciful and self indulgent “anti” zealots, patiently waiting its moment to save the human race.

   That time is coming, sooner than you think.

   FIGHTING THE EVIL P.R. SHIBBOLETH
   (AN UNTRUE NOTION HAS BEEN SKILLFULLY PLANTED)

   Scientist Herschel Specter announced that a recent hard science study by his group found that if the Indian Point dome were destroyed, and the reactor melted down completely, AND no official took any emergency action at all for 6 hours, so that the public was not told of the event, that 28 fatalities would result, all within 2 miles of the plant. (In point of fact, 31 fatalities occurred at Chernobyl, where people were NOT told).

   He then wrote, in the same N.Y. Times article, that by simply going in your basement, and waiting, those 28 fatalities would be prevented. He then advised of another choice for those within 2 miles of Indian Point, that of simply walking away. Specter stated that if a person began walking away within an hour and a half, that the 3 mile per hour speed of a walker was sufficient to take one out of any danger zone.

   This is the scientist most familiar with these calculations, having pioneered their use in 1973.

   What it says, is that the drive-away evac plan now in place under FEMA, may be absolute overkill, and that although it ought to be improved, that it is not the easiest or best means for those within 2 miles of the plant to protect themselves, even in the worst possible scenario.

   Specter states that those further away than 2 miles have little to worry about, but that they can also simply go indoors, and wait for any plume to dissipate. He advises those outdoors to cover skin, and to breathe through a wet handkerchief or facemask.

   Compare this, the best opinion available, with Riverkeeper’s supposed 50 mile circle of death, their famed “peak fatality zone”, and their estimate of 44,000 deaths, and your head spins a bit.

   Who is lying? Herschel Specter, or Riverkeeper?
   You have to think why either would lie.

   Specter has been paid already, to do the study. Therefore he gains nothing from his statements. Activist orgs require continued public fear, for their notoriety, and their contributions to continue. Specter would be professionally disgraced, and evicted from the science community, were he to be caught lying. Nobody at various activism sites would suffer any consequence of any kind, were they to lie, and be caught at it. In fact, they might be acclaimed as “going the extra mile” by lying on behalf of a favorite topic within “the movement”.

   Many in the intellectual community have already come to this conclusion.

   OUTSIDE RESEARCHERS DENY THAT NUCLEAR
   HAS ANY CARBON FOOTPRINT AT ALL:

   The Vattenberg Forsmark “product description” report has been submitted by owners of a Swedish Nuke plant to the Euro Parliament, describing all external costs associated with the plant, including its total carbon footprint. That footprint is very small, on a par with wind power. Read it at:

   http://www.environdec.com/page.asp?id=130%26epdId=24
   http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/8/7/195721/3132

   The economic and carbon footprint of all modes of power production were studied in detail by 51 separate teams from the European Community, to produce the reports of the ExternE project. The ExternE project put the footprint of nuclear, on a par with wind power. Read it at:

   http://www.externe.info/

   All carbon debts incurred by nuclear are simply the residue of NOT having a 100% nuclear infrastructure. When a majority of a nation’s power is nuclear generated, and cars, and heavy mining machinery are battery powered, or hydrogen powered via nuke-based hydrogen conversion, then nuclear’s carbon debt will be truly zero. So the residual carbon debt you falsely attribute to current nuclear generation is in reality the general carbon debt from this society not yet embracing nuclear. You yourself are responsible in part for this debt, with your antinuclear propaganda efforts. Congratulations.

   A MERE LINE IN A SONG CANNOT UNDO BLATANT CLASSISM
   AND ELITISM

   Yes, American blue collar workers are annoying. Often members of unions, they demand hearing on all sorts of lifestyle issues, and because of their differential zietgeist—devoted to job, community, and country (as they see it)...often at odds with left-liberal dogma, as taught in academia. But just who are they? Are they retrograde nativist reactionary pigs? Or are they a shrinking core of federalist true believers, the last uninfected cohort untouched by the banal internationalist miasma of the George Soros borderless-future movement, the movement that gave Albania its arbitrage remittance pyramid scheme collapse, China its anti-police riots, and Kenya its Mungiki gangs?

   They man your volunteer fire departments, your national guard, your volunteer corps, your churches, and your political parties. They speak the national Lingua Franca, and they remit no money payments offshore. They populate your surrounding buffer towns, with a polity that believes as you do, that does not view your good fortune as a kidnap/extortion opportunity or a revenge object (as is the norm in Mexico), and they are the modern North American descendants of the English yeomanry who swore by Magna Carta and the common law, to uphold god and country. Having them watch our back has been very convenient for all of us, and despite wage demands, their comforting presence has created the stability that gave America 240 years of growth whilst poor Mexico had a revolution on average every eighteen months for five centuries.

   Shall we now enthusiastically eliminate this cohort as a recognizable part of our society? Will we declare their working places “not green”, and yet simultaneously ignore the fly-by-night sweatshops employing the undocumented transient labor that replaces them, so that we become addicted to yet one more offshore commodity: the unwitting slave labor of impoverished foreign transients?

   Can this by any stretch of the word, be called “Progressive”? In truth, it is regressive in the extreme, harking back to the days of the Spanish rape of Central and South America, which netted them ample slaves for their mines and sugar plantations, the only difference being that Cortez & Pizzarro traveled to their slaves, and now our slaves travel here to us.

7. newvoice September 22nd, 2007 at 4:02 pm

   I don’t know if it’s really germaine, when people of conscience are freely expressing their humane convictions in public forums, about local infrastructure security issues, but we do find listed a local Croton-on-Hudson consulting business, “EnergyWiz”, soliciting customers, and offering to guide retail purchasers of electrical power in making money-saving contract negotiations in the deregulated electricity marketplace. (One offering: How to Make Money in the Deregulated Power Market).

   Were a major provider of dependable base load power to be removed from this area, (let’s say, Indian Point) , resulting in a mad scramble for renegotiated power contracts, a firm like EnergyWiz would profit immensely, from the confused and inadequate market conditions which would follow such a shutdown.

   Quite incidentally, the vice president of EnergyWiz is listed as one Sondra A. Armer. ...................Lyricist Sonny Armer ? So perhaps Granny has a purely financial impetus for her “rage”?(Aside from her purely “humane” considerations)?

   Tell me It’s not so.

8. newvoice September 23rd, 2007 at 7:08 am

   It’s difficult to talk about this brassy PR caper in a non-aggressive, purely humane manner. But in all courtesy, I guess I have to try.The level of self serving displayed by such a devious public relations maneuver is distasteful, but admirable in a way, on account of its boldness. First, one would set up a hopeful new business, ready to convince people to change their electricity providers. Next, that business would languish a bit, because people are coping, and their electricity bills are generally acceptable, under the status quo.

   A bit of looking around would reveal an easy way to upset the apple cart, so as to grab a few of the apples. Poor old Pete Seeger, already duped by lies (and a bit of personal hubris) into opposition to Indian Point, would be an obvious first exploitation target. Seek out Pete, to do a cameo in a little papier mache’ scam, lending it cachet and his own credibility. Hide any connections with EnergyWiz, and dupe a few movement buddies into posing as “Raging Grannies”. Dupe TJN and Greg Clary, so as to gain free advertising space in the Gannett local press. Exploit the witless NRC, by advertising yourself at their very own public outreach meeting. Get people to smile a bit, get them to close Indian Point, and wait for the phone to ring over at 228 Cleveland street. Magnificent!

   As the blackouts, the brownouts, and energy-contract-chaos ensues, watch proudly as EnergyWiz becomes almost as much of a needed infrastructure fixture as Entergy had been, before the shutdown. It’s a straightforward matter of replacing a huge heartless corporate entity, with a tiny heartless chaos-exploitation brokerage shop. I guess you could call it: “Making a Place for Yourself”. The more complete description might be : “Making a Place for Yourself, by intentionally Screwing everybody Else, and Wrecking the Status Quo”. To paraphrase the EnergyWiz blurb “How to Make Money in the Deregulated Electricity Market” with the phrase: “How to Make Money by Closing Indian Point” is so easy as to be actually embarrassing. I hope nobody thinks it inhumane of me to follow this obvious line of thinking. After all, those who refuse to think, often get duped, exploited, and ultimately screwed.

   But the talented Ms. Armer HAS taught me a lesson. With certain preparation, and adept personal positioning, chaos can be profitable. Lenin would be proud, indeed!

9. newvoice September 24th, 2007 at 5:14 pm

   My apologies for the non functional Forsmark link. The letter as written was from last year.
   Here is a new link, for those interested in an unbiased report, peer checked, about how low nuclear power’s carbon externalities are.

   http://www.vattenfall.com/www/vf_com/vf_com/Gemeinsame_Inhalte/DOCUMENT/360168vatt/386246envi/2005-EPD-FKA.pdf

10. newvoice September 28th, 2007 at 8:39 pm

    In the forlorn hope that Ms. Armer ever returns to this forum, I’m posting this item of interest. She probably is aware of this, being CIO of an Energy Brokerage/Consultaion House, but I thought we might discuss this, rather than just repeat “My Bonnie Lies Over the Hudson” ad infinitum.

    The Nation’s Pulse

    The Nuclear Renaissance Begins
    By William Tucker
    Published 9/27/2007 12:08:15 AM

    http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12079

    If you’re tracking the nuclear power revival in America, last Tuesday, September 25, was a milestone. For the first time since 1973, a new application for building a reactor was placed before the federal government.

    The applicant was NRG Energy, Inc., an 18-year-old “merchant” corporation headquartered in New Jersey’s Princeton Corridor. A one-story steel-and-glass structure in the Carnegie Industrial Park, NRG has the look of a West Coast firm. The 300-or-so employees work in one vast room sectioned by neat rows of parallel workstations. The place could be a fine arts classroom, with employees casually strolling past each other’s computer screens and kibitzing over their work. “This place has a collegial atmosphere,” says Lori Neuman, communications manager at NRG. “It’s very conductive to getting things done.”

    David Crane, the 45-year-old CEO, is a cultured Princeton graduate who looks like he would be at home on the squash courts. “We’re the new breed of energy company,” he says. “We’re not a utility, we don’t sell to retail companies, we just generate energy. We’ve got everything in our portfolio—base load, intermediate, peaking and cogeneration. We use oil, coal, gas and nuclear. We’re looking at windmills and even exploring an algae system that recycles carbon dioxide into a renewable fuel. We’re going to need all these things to meet the future demand in this country.”

    The proposal submitted Tuesday is to build two new reactors with a total capacity of 2,700 megawatts at the South Texas Project site in Matagorda County, where two nuclear units have already operated for 25 years. The size of the reactors is unprecedented—the biggest American plants generally produce about 1,200 MW.

    “This is a historical event,” said Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, long the Senate’s strongest supporter of nuclear. “Consumers around the world are benefiting from clean nuclear power. Finally our nation is on the verge of taking greater advantage of this technology. I hope it is the first of many.”

    The statement has its irony. Nuclear technology, of course, was invented in this country. In the 1980s we gave it up for fear of accidents, which caused endless regulatory delays. One common argument among nuclear opponents at the time was that nuclear energy was only an illegitimate offspring of nuclear bomb technology cooked up by scientists who felt guilty about building the atomic bomb. Over the last two decades, Japan (along with France) has become the world’s technological leader. Toshiba, which enhanced its nuclear technology by buying Westinghouse, will build NRG’s new reactors. The vessel heads will be manufactured by Japan Steel Works, the only forge in the world now capable of casting these huge structures. America is playing catch-up on our own technology.

    NRG’s choice of Texas is also a bit of a surprise. For years, industry analysts have predicted the first new reactors would be built in the South, where the Progressive tradition continues of regulating utilities while guaranteeing them a return on their investment. The argument was that nuclear would need this regulatory protection in order to attract money from Wall Street. In Texas, NRG will be entering a freewheeling deregulated market where the South Texas Project will have to stand and fall on its own. “We’re confident these projects can be built on schedule and on budget,” says Crane. “With natural gas prices rising and coal being pressured to reduce its carbon emissions, nuclear is going to be competitive.”

    Nuclear power has gone through an extraordinary renaissance over the past decade after the abyss of Three Mile Island. In 1997 the Clinton Administration’s Department of Energy zeroed out nuclear research for the first time since World War II. The Federal Energy Information Administration confidently predicted that existing plants would phase out over the next three decades. That same year, however, Entergy Corp. of Jackson, Mississippi, became the first merchant energy company to purchase one of the supposed white elephants from a utility company. Exelon, spun out of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, and several merchant companies from the South (Dominion Resources, Constellation Energy, Southern, and Florida Power and Light) followed suit. Soon these new owners—heavily staffed with veterans from the nuclear Navy—were revitalizing the industry.

    The results have been stunning. Whereas power plants traditionally ran at a “capacity factor” of 60 percent—meaning they are up and running 60 percent of the time—the nation’s 104 reactors now run at a previously unimaginable capacity of 90 percent. (In South Korea, where nuclear provides half the electricity, the figure is 95 percent.) The average nuclear plant now runs uninterrupted for nearly two years before shutting down for refueling. Safety improvements have been spectacular. While there were 26 shutdowns of more than a year for safety reasons from 1987 to 1997 and 21 in the decade before, there has only been one over the past decade.

    “The utility companies didn’t really understand what kind of resource they had,” says Gary Taylor, president of Entergy, which now owns eleven reactors and operates one other for Nebraska Public Power. “These plants had far more potential than they realized.” Almost half the reactors in the country have now successfully applied for twenty-year extensions on their original operating licenses and many more are standing in line. Meanwhile, reactors are making money hand-over-fist. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has become so exercised at the success of Dominion’s Millstone 2 and 3 that he has proposed a windfall profits tax on reactors.

    And so the question becomes, will the anti-nuclear forces—Greenpeace, Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and so forth—be able to mount one last-ditch campaign against the nuclear revival?

    While continuing to play brazenly on public fears (NRDC’s latest position paper has the word “Radioactive” emblazoned across the top), environmental groups have also become more circumspect in their arguments. Rather than conjuring up “silent bombs” and nuclear holocausts, they now make the following arguments:

    1. Nuclear is too expensive. Investors will never go for it.

    2. The money would be much better invested in conservation and solar energy.

    3. Nuclear power is not carbon-free. The mining, processing and transportation of uranium consume vast amounts of energy supplied by fossil fuels.

    Nuclear reactors are indeed expensive to construct. NRG is projecting $3 to $5 billion with cost overruns likely. But coal plants currently cost $1 billion and that’s without the least effort at controlling carbon emissions. If “carbon sequestration”—essentially digging a hole a few miles deep and pumping the exhaust into it—becomes a reality, coal plants will become equally if not more expensive. (The technology is completely unproven anyway.) In any case, when did environmental groups become so frugal about protecting the environment?

    Energy conservation, on the other hand, has great potential that is just being fathomed. Last May, Progress Energy of North Carolina announced it would delay the projected opening of two proposed reactors from 2016 to 2018 because of more success than anticipated in conservation efforts. Yet even the best conservation scenarios only stabilize current consumption. (California has been able to accomplish this.) That still leaves us producing for 50 percent of our electricity with coal—a billion tons a year that put three billions tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s 40 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gases and 20 percent of the world’s. “When it comes to providing our baseload electricity, the only choice is between coal and nuclear,” says David Crane, of NRG. “You simply can’t be serious about global warming and against nuclear power.”

    Finally, the argument that nuclear is not completely carbon-free is puerile. Nothing is completely carbon-free, not windmills, not solar collectors, not even conservation devices. All involve capital investment that consumes energy. If the uranium enrichment plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, consumes the output of two large, polluting coal plants (a favorite environmental citation), then the solution is to replace those coal plants with nuclear reactors.

    NRG’s courageous proposal is the opening gong for what should be the most passionate debate of the rest of the decade—can nuclear power prevent global warming? As Al Gore would say, the fate of the planet may depend on it.

11. Sunny Armer September 29th, 2007 at 4:10 pm

    I am, indeed, the Vice President of Energywiz, Inc. Our clients are major corporations (like Entergy) and government agencies (like the NRC), as well as nonprofit hospitals and universities. As an officer of my business, I do not discourage my clients from using nuclear power. I do encourage them to conserve energy before doing anything else.
    Reasons to conserve:

    – to put all types of power plants under less of a strain
    – to protect our energy grid
    – to prevent blackouts
    We also advise clients how to protect themselves from blackouts and the effects of blackouts, and we offer this advice for free on another website. I won’t give you that URL, which you can find for yourself and then proceed to cherry-pick it for “facts� to distort.
    We have no influence on the deregulated energy market. We encourage intelligent use of it so that clients don’t get burned by it. The only place it went insane was California, a few years ago, and that had a lot to do with Enron (to the profit of President Bush, among others), and nothing to do with nuclear power. Let me repeat that my writing on this blog is my own voice, and not the voice of the Raging Grannies, who are not duped into posing as anything. And, by the way, I didn’t try to “remove� your creative license. In fact I praised your creativity. If your license means you can pretend to have facts that you don’t have, I guess mine gives me the same right.

12. newvoice September 30th, 2007 at 9:28 am

    Good to hear from you again!

    Sitting here in my living room, in my pajamas, I can make educated connections, and be sometimes a hair’s breadth off the mark, without intentionally doing harm to anything or anyone, providing uncommitted readers with adjunct information, which they are absolutely free to confirm for themselves.

    Standing there at NRC singing for the camera, or sending out emails seeking press coverage, probably from the CIO’s chair at 221 Cleveland in COH, as a mere “Granny” can be looked at as deceptive, when your business would stand to profit from a chaotic situation riddled with blackouts, brownouts, or administrative power rationing (if ever imposed).....

    Campaigning to end the main power source for a 20 million person strong isolated power pocket is unwise, even delinquent. I note Mr. Audin’s association with NIRS since the 1980’s, so I suspect your personal attitudes may be colored by his preferences.

    I myself prefer a fully powered pocket, since we are isolated by the absence of new transmission lines into the region, and other clean local sources. I myself prefer a carbonless, sootless, non-emitting extant power source to delinquent Kyoto-breaking alternatives, or impotent low capability factor green dilletante sources.

    I assert, without exaggeration (as best I can manage) that the source you campaigned against is a harmless technological marvel, the product of purely American cohesiveness in the WWII forward leap, and it ought to be the pride of our nation, not mocked by grannies who act from agitprop distortion.

    I assert , from long research, that the Connie Hogarth/Pete Seeger/Richard Brodsky nexus has misinformed itself about the matter, and out of that misinformation, has participated in an intermittent anti-America techno-pogrom, baseless, disloyal, and anarchistic at root, a continuation of the failed marxist impetus, but without its redeeming social promise.

    Of course, I was not present when you ran this notion past Pete, or the other Grannies. If I extrapolated conscious motive a bit too far, you have my apology.

    Likewise, you may have extrapolated a bit too far, in assuming what you’ve been told about IPEC was gospel. It just sits there and powers our civilization. Nothing more. No devils. No spells or curses. No specific credible danger. And it enables. And, not incidentally…. dozens of imitators on the international scene are struggling mightily to craft their own version of the plant, very close to where they themselves live, in hopes of uplifting their populace, as IPEC has uplifted ours.

    My educated surmise, after looking into these issues fairly deeply now for years, is that IPEC has uplifted Westchester to the point where Westchester is too wealthy, too secure, too serene, unrealistically smug and self aggrandized enough to forget where the power has been coming from, for all those 8000 square foot mock victorian behemoth-homes. For a moment, bear with me, and just envision the more well heeled among us installing backup diesels, as the well heeled are doing right now in Iraq. The very presence of IPEC, all else aside, is a firm assurance that will not be necessary.

    Otherwise, in a social-justice aside, where do you propose to build your replacement installations? Not in hispanic Yonkers I hope. Not in blue collar Buchanan, I hope. Not in the depressed African American Mt Vernon/Pelham industrial strip, I hope. Indian Point, riding on the heels of the well accepted Fleischman’s yeast factory, and in the wake of over 60 historic brickyards, gave employment to the blue collar cohort on the industrial Hudson, and uplifted them, through the saving power of unionism, to the central status they now enjoy in these towns, on this river, and in this region. Is it your conscious intention to reduce this community to peonage, for the sake of half digested agitprop you’ve swallowed? Where’s the justice, Ms. Armer? John Reed and Max Eastman would rail at you in righteous rage! “The Masses” indeed!

    We are the masses!... And you are wrong!

    P.S…. you’ve not critiqued my “Battle Hymn of the Republic” reprise.

13. Sunny Armer September 30th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

    I’m flattered that you value my abilities as a literary critic by asking me to critique of your second song. I did write that if I had nothing more important to do, such as mill around with “hate and ballyhoo,� I’d finish up. I asked: “Who, exactly, is it I’m supposed to hate?�

    You complain that my “business would stand to profit.â€? You rail against Communism, but you criticize me for being in business for profit? A little consistency please. I’m a small businesswoman, and Entergy is a giant conglomerate. By comparison, I’m one of the masses—wait, wasn’t it the masses that Karl Marx claimed to represent? What’s more, I’m a local business, too, whereas Entergy is spread out over the whole country, or did you not know that? Your song assumes that I wake up “on Saturdays with nothing much to do.â€? As an officer in a small business, as you should know, I have no weekends or holidays. How many hours do you work?

    Aside from that, in no particular order:

    I am impressed by your wide-ranging vocabulary. You are obviously an intelligent man. It’s too bad you have fallen for the propaganda of the pro-nuclear energy activists. You wrote, “If there’s an earthquake as in Japan, the results will be the same here—no harm will befall Indian Point, because it is built to be earthquake resistant.â€? The plant in Japan was built later than Indian Point and made to be more resistant to earthquakes because the location was known to be prone to them. Nevertheless, the quake caused a fire and a release of radiation into the ocean, which turned out to be more than originally reported. Japan has concealed nuclear accidents and their actual consequences even more than has Russia/the Soviet Union in connection with Chernobyl. People there are still suffering and dying from the Chernobyl event all these years later.

    You write: “If a plane dives into the dome, the plant will shut down as it is set up to do, and no harm will befall anyone but a few workers, and the plane passengers. If you want a copy of the study that determined this, let me know, and I’ll send you the link.� Please do. If it’s not from a profit-making pro-nuclear interest group, I’ll be very surprised. On the other hand, it might just have been written by a kook.

    When I looked up Mississauga, I found an account of a train derailment in Mississauga, Ontario, in 1979. “As a result of the derailment, over 200,000 people were evacuated in what was then the largest peacetime evacuation in North America up until the New Orleans evacuation of 2005.� This is in no way comparable to the millions of people in range of Indian Point in an area of extreme traffic congestion. (Have you ever gotten stuck on the Tappan Zee Bridge?) And, by the way, how successful was the evacuation of New Orleans, in much more recent history, in the US, under our current administration? The Canadian train was carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals, none of which would contaminate a region for decades the way radiation does.

    Yes, Mr. Audin has an association with NIRS. He has worked hard to stop the unsafe plan to transport nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. But you have no need for Yucca Mountain, because you believe storing spent fuel at Indian Point is okay. Lucky, you. Mr. Audin cannot harm you by preventing the spent fuel from being carried away. He has also worked for the US government, for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the subject of energy conservation. Is the EPA a dupe of . . . oh, I don’t know. Whoever you think all environmental activists are dupes of.

    You write: “I myself prefer a fully powered pocket, since we are isolated by the absence of new transmission lines into the region, and other clean local sources.� Well, me too. Why are there no new transmission lines? Utilities like Entergy refuse to pay for them because they have a nice monopoly here.

    I have to go back to work now, because it’s Sunday and I have no more time to waste on this useless dispute. Those who choose one set of sources to trust for “facts� will never be convinced by those who choose another set of sources. I sincerely hope that, unlike me, you will never suffer from cancer as I have, after moving from Brooklyn to this area blessed by Indian Point. Twenty years after moving here, with no history of cancer in my family (who stayed in Brooklyn), I’m recovering from surgery and chemotherapy. Coincidence? Perhaps. Despite these hardships, I was willing drive to the public meeting on the relicensing issue, to bask in the glory of the media (who, with the exception of this blog, totally ignored anti-nuclear protesters, as I knew they would, as they always do). So much for my quest for fame and fortune. Perhaps, in my leisure time, I’ll do more milling around spreading hate and ballyhoo, like you.

    Sunny (aka Sondra) Armer, Vice President of the infamous, pro-energy-independence small business, Energywiz, Inc.

    P.S.

    I didn’t have time (being a working girl) to read the whole “unbiased report, peer checked, about how low nuclear power’s carbon externalities are.� This is a Swedish study is written by the manufacturer of a proposed nuclear power plant for Sweden. It lists all the mining operations that have to be conducted before you can get fuel to the plant. It admits that, in this speculative document, “generic data can be used when specific data is lacking.� It gives this example: “The enrichment facilities in Russia have not reported their energy consumption.� The proposed (nonexistent) plant is planned for an isolated area of a thinly populated country. The report also admits that nuclear power differs from other power systems “in that, ionizing radiation can neither be seen, heard nor felt.�

14. newvoice September 30th, 2007 at 5:18 pm

    A very animated post indeed.
    You force me to me answer a lot of points.
    Let me get started, taking them one by one.

    I say “business would stand to profit” as a revelation of an alterior motive, not as a thing that is inherently bad. I’m not anti-capitalist.

    I do not rail against communism. Marx had a very perceptive analysis of the ills of his day, but unfortunately created no viable lifeways from his understandings. I merely mention the historical fact of communism’s demise. I’m not anti-communist.

    Your hate? Your hate is displaced. You displace various emotional streams, probably quite unconsciously , onto a scapegoat provided by exaggerated agitprop myths about Indian Point. It provides release, and a feeling of validation, to have some identifiable evil in your life, against which to campaign. Good for you, bad for society. In Islam, at Mecca, they throw pebbles at Satan’s column. That’s less secular, and more neutral, not likely to cause unintended collateral damage.

    I am not by any stretch, Entergy.
    If Entergy sins, by all means, blame Entergy.

    Did I accuse you of being idle on Saturdays? I apologize. There you have me cold. I was in the throes of creative license. Sorry about that. I myself work constantly. Not having ever been trained to the extracurriculars of the leisured class, I work all the time. When off, I work at home, on my own projects. I am in the truest sense of the word “working class”.

    If Japan, as an entity, has concealed wrongdoings, argue with Japan. The building suffering the least damage of all in the recent earthquake, was the Kashiwazaki nuke plant. El Baradei’s IAEA inspection team affirmed on the ground, that the plant suffered no undue harm. If we can’t trust Nobel laureate El Baradei, we are beyond redemption, in a void filled with paranoia and insanity. (Without trust, no civilization is possible, all is chaos.)

    OK , the report about the adequacy of the dome was commissioned by NEI. Hold on there. It was commissioned only, by NEI. It was performed by reputable Civil engineering firms, firms whose main business is NOT from nuclear. I lack that link at my home computer, but I WILL get it to you. I promise.

    Missasauga was a successful ad lib evacuation. The major islands in Hawaii conduct tsunami evacs regularly. Everyone complies, they go off like clockwork. The nine county area surrounding San Francisco commissioned their OWN municipal evac plan, with a grant from the federal government, and I suggest those who find fault with Entergy’s plan ought to lobby for the same here. It works fine. If New Orleans’ plan was lacking, blame Innovative Energy Management, a James Lee Witt protege’ firm, the self same entity that wrote his ghostwitten, flawed and self serving NYS report (which I believe you quoted). You cant have cake and eat it too. Either Witt is competent, or he is not. Stuck on the Tappan Zee? I intentionally moved near my work to reduce my carbon footprint. I never use the TZ. But it is not a worry. Mind you, the expert I believe (and upon whom I am banking for my family’s safety) tells us that 2 miles away, nobody has anything to worry about from IP. Do not believe Rory Kennedy under any circumstances. She has been misled.

    Entergy is a merchant energy provider seeking wholesale contracts. They are not in the infrastructure business. Thanks to Greenist NIMBYism, nobody, it seems, is in the infrastructure business. Entergy has no effect on the presence of a local load pocket, except to fill it, with 95% capability factor baseload local (high power factor) energy. If they have a defacto local merchant monopoly, its not because they schemed to engineer it. Thank deregulation and NIMBY for that .

    I’m sorry you have had to suffer from cancer. Almost exactly 24 months ago my son, who decided not to move to the vicinity of Indian Point when the rest of the family moved up here (he was in love with a lady in Rye N.Y.) passed away from astrocytoma type IV , gioblastoma multiforme, a brain cancer. How ironic that the rest of us are fine, up near IP, and he got sick, over near Playland. I suspect cell phone use. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’m not angry over it all the time. My wife has not recovered as quickly. However, in between arthritis, COPD, cardiac arrythmia, fibromyalgia, and lumbar radiculopathy, we manage to enjoy our garden, our views of the Hudson, our grandchildren, and our hopes for a viable retirement (which of course depends on my job still being in existence).

    Yes the Vattenfall Forsmark report was by a plant owner. However, it was peer checked for veracity before being submitted as a legal document to the European Parliament. Fudging such a document has criminal penalties. The Forsmark plant is very much in existence. It even made the news recently.The Extern-E report on the other hand is a team effort of the Euro Parliament itself. 51 teams came up with conclusions essentially the same as Vattenfall Forsmark. Nuclear’s footprint is identical to windpower’s footprint. All others do much worse. Even Hydropower forms methane by damming once-flowing streams.

    As far as my being fooled by propaganda experts, I research everything, all the time. Far from being taken in by propagandists, I could provide them with great written copy, were I so inclined. (I am not). I have seen everything, believe me. I just found a lot of hooey on both sides, and decided to cut through it, irregardless. I really think local residents have been fed a lot of alarmist, agendist nonsense. It annoys me, and so I challenge it. I have that right . You seem like a sincere person, I’m sorry we met as debaters.

    Nice little stunt, that. (singing to NRC.) You probably wasted your efforts, though. They seem like a damned humorless bunch.

15. newvoice October 1st, 2007 at 11:01 am

    Nei makes the report available at:

    http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/safetyandsecurity/reports/epriplantstructuralstudy/

16. newvoice October 1st, 2007 at 7:24 pm

    Here is a recent minority voice on these issues:

    http://www.nypost.com/seven/10012007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/indian_points_gift_to_greens.htm

    INDIAN POINT’S GIFT TO GREENS
    By NORRIS McDONALD

    October 1, 2007—RISING worries over global warming have brought renewed attention to nuclear en ergy, whose plants don’t emit the green house gases linked to global warming. But here in New York, the day-to-day environmental benefits of nuclear power are at least as important.

    Fossil-fuel power plants emit “old-fashioned” pollution, too. And sulfur dioxide (SOx) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) kill people, especially the poor and the elderly.
    In that light, nuclear plants like Indian Point (which powers up to 38 percent of New York City and the downstate region with negligible emissions) have never been more important. There’s no way around the fact that, if you get rid of Indian Point, the region will need to burn more fossil fuels to generate the electricity New York needs.

    New York already has some of the worst air quality in the country, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Gov. Spitzer cites the EPA data on his Web site, pointing out: “In New York, pollution from coal power plants shortens the lives of 1,212 citizens annually, causes 164,612 lost work days, 1,191 hospitalizations and 28,665 asthma attacks.”

    Westchester and all five boroughs of New York City are in violation of EPA standards for ozone and particulate-matter pollution, which largely emanate from fossil-fuel plants.
    Regarding ozone, the EPA points out, “Children and adults of all ages who are active outdoors are at risk from ozone exposure. It can affect health by: irritating the respiratory system; reducing lung function; aggravating asthma; inflaming and damaging cells that line the lungs; aggravating chronic lung diseases.”

    On particulates, the EPA notes, “Numerous scientific studies have linked particle pollution exposure to a variety of problems, including: increased respiratory symptoms, such as irritation of the airways, coughing, or difficulty breathing; decreased lung functions; aggravated asthma; development of chronic bronchitis; irregular heartbeat; nonfatal heart attacks; and premature death in people with heart or lung disease.”

    The nuclear-power opponents pushing to close Indian Point consistently fail to address these health issues. For too long, they have been able to get the politicians on their side – even though there is strong support in Westchester for Indian Point. A recent poll by the Manhattanville College found that, by 67 percent to 33 percent, the population favors continued operation of Indian Point.

    The critics do make an environmental argument – claiming that Indian Point is bad for the Hudson. Yet the river was a sewer when the plants were built; now it’s of the most pristine waterways in the region and is a model for environmental-restoration projects. Indian Point didn’t cause the restoration – but it’s plainly been no drag on it.

    And the alternative would be far worse: To replace Indian Point’s energy output, the region would need to build four to five coal- or natural-gas powered plants. That would be a major step in the wrong direction, especially for folks in poor communities where such facilities are so often sited. The effect on air quality would be bad, to put it mildly.
    It’s time for the responsible policymakers to join the majority that supports the plants’ continued operation. Renewing Indian Point’s operating license is the right thing to do for the environment and the right thing to do for public health.

    Norris McDonald is the president of the African American Environmentalist Association.

17. Sunny Armer October 6th, 2007 at 2:30 pm

    Thank you for your civil reply. I feel no need to comment, except to express my sympathy for the loss of your son. I have a grown-up daughter, and I can hardly bear to imagine losing her.

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