Borked Code

The 5.8 quake that hit the East Coast of the US this morning (happy homecoming, Todd!) was, thankfully, not a cause of major disaster.

However, it very well could have been.  How so?

The North Anna nuclear reactor, 50 miles East of Charlottesville (and generally upwind), 50 miles NW of Richmond (and somewhat downwind), and 90 miles SW of Washington DC (which is definitely downwind), is located about eight miles to the West and four miles above the epicenter of yesterday’s earthquake.

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The North Anna plant was only built to withstand a quake of approximately 5.9-6.1 scale.  It has two reactors.  A third was planned and committed to construction in February.

During the 1990s, all seismographs were taken offline at the North Anna plant in response to budget cuts.

What’s most alarming, however, is that it possesses a “hot” spent-fuel pool (hot fuel is stored in water for 5-10 years until it is cool enough to be kept dry without melting) suspended several stories above ground, in the same manner as the Fukushima reactor.  North Anna is considered the seventh most likely plant in the United States to suffer core damage as a result of an earthquake.

During the quake, the plant lost all external power and was forced to go to its backup diesel generators.  Of the four, one failed at startup.  Not to be too much of a nit-picker, but a harsher earthquake would very likely have damaged or destroyed diesel generators.

Do I really need to spell out the potential disaster of a core meltdown or spent-fuel meltdown and the resulting contamination of the entirety of the Richmond-DC corridor?  Were you aware that the government of Japan has determined that every child under 18 living within about a 25-mile radius of Fukushima is going to be tested for thyroid cancer regularly for the rest of their natural lives?

Pardon me for pointing this out, but am I the only one who sees an opportunity here for well-paid jobs in the construction and renewal of reactor facilities, testing, and maintenance at the nuclear reactors in all fifty states?  A little job-creation, anyone?

Or are we still too concerned about the Republican-manufactured crisis of the debt ceiling?

UPDATE: I hate being right sometimes.  Seems the waste tanks were rattled quite a bit in their container – as much as 4.5 inches each.  4.5 inches toward one another could have been…disastrous.

An unrecognized link needs to be brought to light with regard to Libya.  Bear with me, we’ll get there.

During the summer of 2010, an unprecedented drought and heat wave cruised across the Russian bread-basket.  That drought and heat wave were a result of climate change.  It also sent wheat yields plummeting – and drove the global price of wheat, a common commodity, way up.

Approximately 70% of the diet in North Africa consists of bread.

Food insecurity is a common cause of conflicts, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff recognized this several years ago.  They even spoke out about it last year.

The Libyan rebellion – and many of the others that have rocked the region these last few months – began with food protests and riots.

In the case of Libya, there was also another problem – water insecurity.  Libya has been drying out, giving more ground to desert, and this has knock-on effects in food insecurity and causes localities to suffer friction against one another (a fact that Quaddafi has taken advantage of, playing tribes off against one another for decades).

When Tunisia blew, it sparked Cairo, which sparked Libya.

This is exactly the socio-political outcome predicted by climate change scientists more than 30 years ago.

So all you folks who love to think that climate change is just some big hoax that puts money in the pockets of scientists, I got a couple points for you:

• Scientists get paid, regardless of their findings.  Pro or con, they get paid for research, not outcomes.
• Scientists care about what happens to their kids*.  As a result, they prefer to see the world become a better place.
• It should follow for even the most addle-brained fool that when scientists sound an alarm bell about something, it’s probably because of the second point.

This set of events should be viewed with severe alarm by everyone who connects these dots.  Because the winds of climate change haven’t finished blowing.  India and Pakistan could just as easily been part of all this.

And unlike these North African nations, both of them hate one another already.  Both of them have fought wars over contested territory (Kashmir).

And both of them have nukes.

(*contrary to the average Red-stater or his/her congressional mouthpiece, who seem to think “it’s not happening” or “la la la” are appropriate responses, or at best who want to have things just stay the same as they are.)

As usual, Neil DeGrasse Tyson puts it far more eloquently than I could in a momentary burst.  I hold forth that the Tea Party is not only a pack of traitors, but they are short-sighted, worthless for the future of any country, much less ours.  

Tyson sums it up very well.

Just in case anyone forgot what that means, here’s a snapshot from Superman – ca. 1952:

The Abstruse Goose does a really nice job of bringing perspective to ancestors – two thumbs up from me!

Sorry about the width, it’s a little large for my format.