Back when I was more interested in this subject, I did check the French reactors. Some 70%-80% of French electricity comes from reactors - you can check the precise amount.
I am in some way responsible for American regulations? Wow! I didn't know I had so much influence. You are very good when you write - occasionally close to brilliant - but that's because you can declaim without interruption. When you must support you contentions you are less able. Perhaps that is why you resort to ad hominems. Harry ****************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** -----Original Message----- From: Ray Harrell [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 7:09 AM To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: RE: [Futurework] Question: You should check out the regulations on French Reactors. We can't even come close to that here because of people like yourself. REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Harry Pollard Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2011 5:30 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: Ray, 1. I fear that the TV news maxim "the bleeds lead" has become important. If you write a book saying all is well it won't sell. Predict unimaginable disaster and the book will hit the best seller lists. That's all. 2. I related nothing to the "grand scheme" - whatever that is. The two assumptions of human behavior are simply derived from observation of human behavior. People do have unlimited desires - even if many are seemingly unattainable - including you. People also seek to satisfy their desires with the least exertion - including you. It's the way people act. No big deal. You should check them out rather than just dictating from some book or messianic character. 3. Small or large, they are still nuclear reactors. The French do this very well. Whether large or small they build them all the same. They are standard constructions and they can use one, or 4 or 6 of them to produce a final plant. You appear to be saying that large reactors are more dangerous than small reactors. That would be an interesting direction to pursue, Harry ****************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2011 8:39 PM To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/business/20risk.html?hp This article basically hits all of the points I've been making over the last week. If you didn't understand me then just read this. It's basically what I was trying to say. Now Harry, you hit three points I want to answer: 1. Micheo Kaku: You obviously haven't seen much of or know much about this guy who is the most positive type of individual you could imagine. His book also got a review which called it too optimistic. You're just wrong. 2. Comment about your doing based upon belief and then checking to see if it was OK. I referred to you comments about the nature of human desire which you related to a grand scheme. I suggested you try it out in small groups working up to a town and see how it played out but you made fun of that several years ago when I suggested it. I made the suggestion because Cherokees traditionally have done some of the things that you advocate but have done them slowly and with great care for the whole. Checking them constantly rather than just dictating from some book or messianic character. That went nowhere and yes I did have something concrete in mind when I made the statement. 3. Nuclear Subs. This could relate to number 2. There is a far difference from a small motor in a sub compared to a reactor serving a city or a nation. There are many small reactors around the country that have functioned properly. Mostly, I understand, in academic study situations. But it's a long way from that to six large reactors in a metropolitan area of 45 million people. Even your friend Keith played Bill O'Riley to your Glen Beck on that one. Don't you think this is taking Frank Luntz's law about "it's not what you say but how you say it that matters" even further than Luntz himself would call practical? Further Question and Comment: Has anyone other than my people ever done any of the things that Henry George advocated and made work over more than a few years? OK I'll give you the Pueblos. They are still doing it. I find you very confusing in your conservative thinking while speaking of land held in common. Those people who held land in common also believed in the law of vendetta. If your beliefs and actions caused a death then you, your family or your clan owed a life in return and war ensued until the debt was settled. Your comment about three mile island was just plain wrong. I spent three horrible years with my adopted father struggling with the Colon Cancer from that. Did the authorities admit it? No but they paid for his earlier injuries and then wrote him off. You have you son'in law to justify Three Mile Island? But my personal experience is irrelevant? Were you ever there? Did you just read the spin? Natalya said it right. What you didn't say is that the military is a fascist/socialist organization. It's rules around those things are much more life and death and zero tolerance than the private sector or civilian life would even tolerate. Are you saying that Socialist Submariners could make Nuclear power work? The military is also the only organization that funds the Arts as a salaried position in every post and base around the world. The systems are different and the context is nothing like the requirements for the private cultural context of the market. REH PS: Your comment about insurance was something I never saw anything about. In fact I've read the opposite. What I was told and know about is what is in the NYTimes article around liability caps and the fact that the market won't insure it because the liabilities are so huge they can't figure how to calculate them. That's why we stopped LILCO and the Shoreham Plant cold even after they had invested six billion. It turned out that the company could imagine it killing LILCO just as TEPCO felt the same and tried to pass the buck to the Japanese military earlier this week but was refused. I'm going to bed. REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Harry Pollard Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2011 2:41 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: Ray, You don't sell a book by calming everyone's fears. You sell copies by frightening the socks off them. Of course, Kaku will make a better impression by doom saying than by saying things are difficult but we hope unlikely to get worse. Sensationalism is meat and drink to those opposed to nuclear power on ideological grounds. There are now 442 nuclear plants operating with 65 being constructed - 27 of those in China. It is likely that because of the fear whipped up in uneducated populations by people like yourself, that some of those will not finish construction - though I bet not in China. They are realistic. I can't begin to guess how many lives have been saved and how many illnesses have been averted by the use of US nuclear plants. Half our power stems from coal that kills people in mining and transportation and reduces lifespans for the rest of us. Solar and wind cannot possibly replace coal, but nuclear plants do, thereby saving lives. You say of me: " You always have been the kind of guy that says "do it first and then check out whether it was OK or not to do it." I don't know what you are talking about and I suspect you don't either. You ask "If you were talking to the public as a representative of the company or government in Japan, what would you tell them? 12 miles is just fine and stay indoors or would you say fifty miles and get pregnant women and children out?" I no doubt would tell them don't settle within 20 miles of the coastline. That would save lives at the next tsunami, perhaps 15,000 deaths - the estimate for this one. Instead of fantasizing about 40 million imaginary dead, you should perhaps give a thought to the 15,000 real deaths. But, ideology gets in the way of clear thinking. There were no nuclear casualties at Three Mile Island either among the workers or the surrounding civilians. The release from the plant was less than normal background radiation. If it had "ended up on Washington" it would probably have been immeasurable. But of course the conspiracy theorists and ideologues will have their say across the Internet. Incidentally, the problem with Internet information is that it is spread by people who have no responsibility for the "facts" they disseminate. Print journalists are bound by rules. Internet information providers are not. I get under your skin, Ray, because though I enjoy the way you write, I don't believe a lot of it. You often write artistically, but you seem to be the prey of inadequate information, or perhaps false information buttressed by political ideology. Modern reactors use most of the radioactivity in fuel, present reactors may use something like 25%. The latest reactors are fail-safe. Should things go wrong they shut down automatically without the need of power. I saw a funny television news story. A group of journalists were doing a story on a modern reactor. The technicians turned off the cooling water, then sat down and had lunch. The journalists got more and more alarmed to the amusement of the technicians. The reactor was safe even without cooling water. All sorts of improvements in reactors are possible, but the political labyrinth that surrounds them makes them a pretty unprofitable endeavor. With any other technical advance, we would now be into our 4th, 5th, or perhaps 6th generation of reactors. Instead, we are bumbling along with decades old reactors with lots of patched on improvements. New and better reactors are unlikely to be built in the US because of a mixture of ignorance, superstition, and political cowardice. We'll make do with the old plants until they have to be retired. And as they go, so will the chance of a clean, efficient, power supply in the future. However, the navies of various countries, who can't be superstitious, will continue to run their hundreds of nuclear ships and subs around the world. My son-in-law, who spent 20 year in nuclear subs, is now enjoying retirement without any health problem at all in spite of his close proximity to a hot nuclear furnace during much of his service. Doesn't that tell us something? Harry ****************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Friday, March 18, 2011 7:02 AM To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42143817#42143835 Check out physicist Michio Kaku's comments on the section titled "Has a Major Nuclear Meltdown Been Averted?" You might watch his "sync movements" very closely. He's a public persona who speaks a lot on these issues and he's never shown psycho-physically what he showed in this interview. I don't know why you get under my skin Harry. You always have been the kind of guy that says "do it first and then check out whether it was OK or not to do it." For as long as we've talked that has been your position on almost anything. If you can justify it just go ahead and do it. Let me ask you: "If you were talking to the public as a representative of the company or government in Japan, what would you tell them? 12 miles is just fine and stay indoors or would you say fifty miles and get pregnant women and children out?" As for 3 mile Island, from a distance you can say anything but the fact that there were heroes who were able to stop that meltdown has absolutely nothing to do with the safety of the process. If they had not endangered themselves and gotten cancer as a result, that radiation would have ended up in Washington, D.C. No one speaks of their deaths because it happened later but it happened and your comments are specious. My adopted father was a nuclear refrigeration engineer for Westinghouse and was called in to the emergency at three mile island and he never indicated that it was safe as you say. He was injured there and at a nuclear accident in Yugoslavia as well. I remember speaking with the head of nuclear reactor design at Los Alamos. I can't remember his name it was at a party, in 1980, at Fred's home thrown for us as guests. But he was obviously the big Kahuna as everyone deferred to him. He said that he could design a flawless, safe, nuclear power plant but he couldn't design the people to run it and that was the problem. Kerr-McGee found the same problem with their Gore, Oklahoma plants which gave us the Karen Silkwood movie with Cher. It would be four years later that I would meet the Cherokee High Priest, the Nuclear engineer, who would adopt me and apprentice me to the Priesthood. It was too bad because I learned a lot about what the Los Alamos Kahuna was talking about long after the conversation. That Kahuna asked what I, as a non-scientist civilian, thought would be the first result of a serious Nuclear accident to the general public. I told him that (in my experience) in Washington, D.C. the law of vendetta was still in effect. Especially with the lower classes and drew a parallel to a battle between two groups in the city that had caused serious deaths and were then at war with each other. Being young and foolish I said that I suspected it would not be a good thing to be a nuclear physicist, after a serious accident, because they would probably end up hanging from the lampposts as had happened the week before in the city with the members of one of the two groups. But then you will probably say I know nothing about Washington, the ghetto or the mentality of the folks who always balance the books when their relatives are abused. Even though I lived and worked there for six years during the height of Vietnam and yes I was in the military with a top secret security clearance. Singing in all of White House and Congressional parties and listening to all of the chatter about almost everything as the "fly on the wall." The government was so concerned about we "flies" that they made us sign documents that said that we would never talk about what we heard under threat of prison. I refused and there was a big problem until a lawyer assured me that their papers would not stand up in court. We have a phrase in the Cherokee community that illustrates our attitude towards such things. The phrase goes: "Tell them they lie!" According to Michio Kaku the chance of a dead zone and many casualties is not small. Now if you were planning for your family, as friends of mine are who are in Sendai, would you be preaching the same gospel? REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Harry Pollard Sent: Friday, March 18, 2011 4:26 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: Ray, If Japan loses 40,000 people from this incident, it will be the worst. But the chance of that is small. Instead, spare a tear for the thousands of Japanese already lost from the natural events. The workers in the plants are suffering and will suffer, but the chance of further serious contamination of the civilian population is not great. Anything might still happen, but the probability is that things will be soon under control and the main damage will be economic. I don't like the stories of spent fuel rods in temporary water tanks losing their water, but that's a continuing problem caused by various governments, including the US, fiddling around unable to provide them a permanent home. At least one nuclear plant got fed up with waiting and built above ground places (like a row of brick garages) for spent fuel rods. But, everywhere, in the absence of a safe place to get rid of them they sit in tanks of water. I would prefer them to be processed (against the law) and then suitably covered in concrete be dropped into the Pacific Trench Suggesting 40 million dead and a destroyed country is fantasy. It adds to the serious problem of the psychological effect on people who are ill-educated about radioactivity and nuclear plants. Just over 40 people died in the post-explosion at Chernobyl, from radioactivity burns and thermal burns - many of them firefighters. Some 500-600 children suffered thyroid problems but after 10 years only 3 had died. Yet, some 200,000 abortions were arranged by women who thought their babies would be affected by radiation, even though there seems to be no evidence of births being affected by radiation. But as the "radioactive cloud" drifted across Norway, Europeans were fearful. The governments provide money for people who have been adversely affected by Chernobyl radiation - a decided incentive for people to discover their health problems have a radioactive cause. Chernobyl released 7 million curies, Windscale in the UK may have released as much as 20,000 curies but maybe less.. Three-Mile Island released 15 curies. Both Chernobyl and Windscale produced plutonium for the military. Just as the two dangerous places you mentioned, Los Alamos and Fort Dix, were military. It's bad practice for you to mix into a discussion of nuclear power plants dangerous military installations as if they prove something about nuclear power. It's also bad practice for you to introduce bad analogies. The Little Dutch Boy has no connection with any aspect of nuclear power and neither do your other analogies. They prove nothing. I haven't counted the number of nuclear plants in the world for quite a while. Then, there were 462. Probably many more have been built since then - except in the US where they would save lives and illness. The new ones are much better than the ancient ones we have now - though they have been updated over the years. And the new ones are inherently safe. Harry ****************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:25 PM To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: As usual you didn't mention my point. If Japan loses forty million people from this accident it will be the worst ever in the world but if Japan is polluted as American industry polluted my home town, then Japan could be useless from decades to centuries to millennia with a dead countryside. That's the potential of nuclear power. I have no problem with toxic solutions as long as they are regulated and successfully controlled. But Harry, I've heard your statement about "inherently safe" so many times from American business that it seems it would be an embarrassment to use it. The little Dutch Boy was saying that lead paint was inherently safe for children's furniture when I was in high school. They said the mill ponds were inherently safe to swim in as well. The dust was fine and the lead didn't cause harm. Then it was the gasoline with lead and then it was the Fluorocarbons and the ozone and we need not worry about volcanoes, tornadoes or asteroids either and on and on. Business people just say things to make a sale. I do not share your seemed belief that private enterprise would allow the proper regulation for such toxicity to be rendered safe enough to boil water without an accident. I also don't share you myths about death and safety. I find your derisiveness about the military undeserved and far from my own experience in the military. And in the eighties I had a student, a tenor, who took me through the laboratory at Los Alamos, he was and is a civilian associated the Harvard physics department and lectured at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. He invented a whole new method of calculation that actually worked. At Los Alamos they told me that Nuclear Power had a 300 million dollar cap on liability or it could not be capitalized. The subsidy according to the news is larger today than it was then. The market will not sustain Nuclear Power without ample government subsidies. I spoke with the people who designed such things at Los Alamos and my Cherokee Priest teacher had been an engineer at Three Mile Island and died from a cancer that appeared suspiciously after that accident even though denied by the authorities, like agent Orange in Vietnam. The official story at TMI is that no one died. Of course they didn't count the accident where he fell thirty feet in the cooling tower and had to have his bone marrow replaced. You may feel safe in California but I think it's an atrocity that the artistic capital of America and one of the great treasures of the world is down river and wind from Indian Point, the number one hazardous reactor in America. REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Harry Pollard Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 2:46 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: The nuclear companies have paid out billions of dollars into the insurance fund, which has hardly been touched. This source of power is inherently safe. (I believe they are trying to get some of it back, but I doubt they'll succeed.) The two dangerous nuclear situations you mentioned in a previous post (but forgot to explain) - that is Los Alamos and Fort Dix - were military sites, not nuclear power plants. Coal, which supplies half our power and which we couldn't do without, is much more dangerous in actual yearly deaths (from rail transportation), from premature deaths from pollution, and from diseased miners. (Some time ago, their union chief said 500,000 miners suffer from black lung.) We need a lot more nuclear plants but superstition and ideology is stopping their construction. Small self-contained nuclear power plants are much in need and would be produced plentifully if politicians though more about what we need and less about what they need - re-election. Harry ****************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 9:51 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: By not contemplating the end of Japan, a nation of islands the size of California with 133 million souls, and what that would mean in the world, are we practicing the same kind of denial the builders of those reactors practiced? In America there is a 300 million dollar liability limit on all nuclear accidents built into the law. Otherwise no private company would build one. The Japanese have to stay indoors and avoid panic while Der Spiegal and the foreign embassies all relocate. We rarely speak of the implications and necessity of that 300 million dollar cap on liability. That's always ignored when discussing nuclear power. Could we call it the Joseph Goebbels/Frank Luntz theory of politics. It's not the reality that matters but "how you say it." "final solution" for example or all of those names on Republican bills that destroy culture, the environment and the middle class. If such an accident happened in America, would the upper 1% just relocate back to their ancestral home? REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 10:39 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: Some years ago I was in conversation with the head of Bell Northern Research. I said that isn't it odd that Silicon Valley and all the high tech activities and research was located along the San Andreas Fault. Aren't we taking chances? What will happen if we suddenly lose the people and research/manufacturing capacity when an earthquake hits, as it surely will one of these days or years. He said Yes, he thinks about it too. But you know the enormous investments are still there and the San Andreas Fault is still there and after it happens everyone will say: Why didn't we do something about it. Human nature and denial is the X factor in all of this. arthur -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 8:30 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: This might work for the folks in Japan, but what about for GE the designers/builders of the reactors? M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 8:56 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: this was how it was done in times past http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_hari_kari -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 12:14 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Question: Should officials who, out of greed and stupidity locate a nuclear plant with inadequate safety measures on a well-known earthquake fault line be tried for crimes against humanity? 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