Back to something like normal

[altivo]

The irritating WinXP box is running again, from an alternate HD. Got enough stuff reinstalled to get the network running normally again, gateway to 3G modem working, wireless back online.

Learned that an acquaintance (not a close friend, but someone I knew online to some extent) died last night. He had been ill for some time with pneumonia or flu-like symptoms and also some migraine issues, but had no insurance and couldn't pay for medical care so he was left to his own devices. This sort of thing happens all the time in the US, and no one seems to care. As long as rich people get what they want, the rest of us can have nothing. Trying to change it is hopeless because they just come back and snatch away any crumb you can find. The union-busting efforts in Wisconsin and Michigan, the "balancing" of budgets by cutting off any privileges of the elderly or poor (and now even the middle class, what's left of it) in order to make the wealthy even more wealthy than they already were, all of this is symptomatic of where the US is heading. Soon the only way out will be by complete resistance, as has been demonstrated in numerous Arab dictatorships recently. If that happens, you can bet the government here will forget about all its admonitions to others telling them to "listen to the people" and not use force against them. It will be bloody and vicious, the rich against the poor.

I'm sick too of hearing so-called "experts" telling us that nuclear power stations in the US "are safe" and that "nothing like what happened in Japan could happen here." Of course it could. Just like Japan, those reactors are owned and controlled by cost-cutting, uncaring megacorporations. Government inspection and regulation is lax and has grown more weak and ineffectual all the time. The active installations here are similar in design to those at Fukushima, and in many cases, built by the same corporations using the same blueprints. Sure, we can't have a Chernobyl, but that's mostly because we don't use that type of reactor. But you can count on it that we can have a Fukushima or another Three Mile Island incident, and are probably overdue for one in fact.

For the moment, moratoria are appearing all over the world to hold back further nuclear power development, but you know that won't last long. It's just an appeasement effort that will wait until everyone goes back to watching talking heads on television who assure them that "everything will be all right." Then back to business as usual. Who cares if thousands are endangered, or if the environment is damaged? As long as the corporate bottom line looks good, it doesn't matter.

Comments

[avon_deer.livejournal.com]

Soon the only way out will be by complete resistance,

Every time *I* suggest that this is the logical conclusion of the "reballancing" that we're seeing, I am told I am a fantasist.

[altivo]

I don't have enough information to say anything for the UK, but in the US, that seems to be the direction without question. As long as voters continue to be swayed by scare tactics and emotional appeals to racism, sexism, etc. the Republicans are going to be able to retain control or regain it quickly. In the past 50 years they have consistently pressed toward cancelling social goals and entitlements, removing environmental safeguards, and deregulating corporate activities, including banking and financial markets. In the same period, we have seen an ever widening gap between wealthy and poor, in which the middle class has nearly disappeared and the vast majority of income and assets are controlled by only a tenth of the population. These are the very conditions that have led to rioting and rebellion in many other nations, and when they grow bad enough it will happen here as well.

[avon_deer.livejournal.com]

I don't think my countrymen have the balls personally.

[avon_deer.livejournal.com]

I am sorry to hear about your friend though. No one deserves to be just left to die in pain as if they are beyond being useful. Or worse, given the option of life saving medicine if they put their home and life savings up as collateral. It totally demeans human life. I really wish I could change things for my friends if no one else. :(

Things are not that much better here either. The latest attack has been on the pensions of people like me. I am now faced with an uncertain retirement, which will probably be postponed until I am in my 70s anyway. I might have to get a part time job. The ones that are usually done by students, which means students in the 2050s will probably not be able to get such jobs as they will be full of pensioners supplementing the meagre income on which they are expected to exist. :(

We are constantly told that we “cannot afford” retirement provision at “overly generous”(1) levels anymore. I’d probably have more sympathy for that position were my government to admit that they also have no money for the Trident renewal that is going ahead. And of course seeing headlines like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12691377

and this (remember this all happening during a period of recession):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12663730

Basically whenever I hear the “we’ve got no money” excuse, I smell nothing but bullshit.

The situation is just messed up.

(1) As it stands now, the “overly generous” public service pension is about £7k a year, and THAT is assuming you’ve been sticking 10% of your salary in the scheme for at least 40 years!

[altivo]

That's about twice the "pension" I'll receive as a public employee, and they're claiming that mine is "overly generous" as well. Of course, the same people making that claim also want to eliminate my social security pension from the federal government, into which I've made payments (and my employers matched them) ever since my first part time job back in the 1960s.

There are abuses, of course, and most of what I've seen seems to happen in police agencies. Teachers, librarians, and other civil service jobs are not robbing anyone, despite the shrieks of anguish from the neoconservatives.

[avon_deer.livejournal.com]

That is totally shocking. O.O

[schnee]

Wow, that's horrible about your acquaintance. I really hope things will change for the better in the USA, somehow, although I don't really see how that would happen.

Yeah, there's quite a bit of discussion in Germany about nuclear power again, too, and 7 older reactors have been shut down for now, for safety reasons. It does make you wonder, though: the previous government (social democrats and greens) had already started the process to phase out nuclear power over the next couple of years/decades, and the current one (conservatives and economic libertarians), as one of its first actions in office, reversed that decision. Now the same government has decided that several reactors are unsafe (makes you wonder if they weren't last week, or a few years ago when they decided to let them continue running!), and there's debate in the government over whether it's more important to give gifts to "big energy" or to fish for votes from people who're more concerned about nuclear power again now.

[avon_deer.livejournal.com]

I should imagine Merkel and co are also accutely aware of the upcoming states elections too. The Landtagers are up in September of this year, are they not?

[altivo]

No, I see no change for the better on the horizon. The health care reform that passed last year is not a real reform and does little or nothing to improve the situation. In any case, it gets phased in over a period of several years. And meanwhile, the newly-elected Republicans are out to destroy it before it even begins.

[deffox]

Last year was such a wasted opportunity for health reform.

I actually wish they would have kept up in building new reactors in the US. On condition that old plants would never be run past their original 40 year licenses. Each generation has a design criteria to be ten times less likely to meltdown than the previous generation.

Right now the US is full of reactors that I'd describe as old crap rather than a mix of new and old designs. The big trend is to not only grant them 20 year extensions to their licenses, but to allow rating increases. So we have 40 year old plants with significant wear and tear suddenly running harder than ever. While they do inspections, they keep getting caught off guard by wear and tear items like tritium leaking through cracks that develop over the decades.

When they first allowed the obsolete Quad Cities plant to increase to 117.8% output, the place started shaking so hard pipes were ripping off the walls. It's another Mark-1 design that hits 40 next year and should be shut down.

Of course old and new plant safety is only on paper until tested with real incidents. There is always some risk of unforeseen scenarios, plus human factors increase risk from ideal operation.

Though any industrial place has risk. Chemical plants have caused mass death. And any power plant all the way down to wind turbines have had worker accidents.

[altivo]

While safe nuclear power might be technologically feasible, safe nuclear power that is economically feasible is more open to debate. I believe that nuclear power operated and managed by profit-making corporations is doomed to repeated disasters. Just as the airlines have postponed their maintenance until planes started crashing, auto manufacturers have resisted safer designs until they were forced by law to install them, and energy corporations continue to pollute everything they can get away with (and much that they can't,) so the companies that operate reactors are bound to cut corners, reduce staffing, and delay maintenance until something goes wrong. It's an inevitable consequence of capitalist thinking. Government operation of reactors is just as likely to go wrong, but for different reasons.

Consequently, I am opposed to the expansion of nuclear power generation. We have seen time and time again that it will not be treated responsibly. Doing it right costs money, reducing the profit margin or perhaps eliminating it.

The only real approach to energy is to change our use patterns. The amount wasted in unnecessary lighting that pollutes the dark sky at night or serves unnecessary purposes such as advertising that is largely ignored is simply unforgiveable. Likewise, we could have much more efficient and sustainable means of transportation, but that industry continues to give in to someone's notion of what is "sexy" or "exciting" rather than what is best for the long term or safest for the travelers.

Health care suffers from the same problems. If it is run for profit it will cater to the rich, as it does in the US. If it is run as a government service that treats everyone equally, as in the UK, it becomes unwieldy and inefficient. I'm sure there is a way to do better than either of these, and quite sure that it will not involve handing huge windfall profits to drug manufacturers and insurance companies. But achieving that in the face of the lobbying and bribery capabilities of those giant corporations is nearly impossible. Hence the ridiculous Obama health care reform that reforms nothing and gives those corporations even more power rather than less.

[deffox]

Crud. I read an article that greatly lowered my opinion of nuclear power.

I made the assumption that because new plant designs are 100 times safer on paper, that they were the ones being built.

According to the link below, out of the 65 plants being built in the world, only four use the current generation 3 plus designs. Fourteen use generation 3, while the other 47 being built use the same garbage designs as the meltdown specials. There is some lip service to the new generation 2 plants having more reinforcements, but that is hollow when they choose to use a design that is 100 times more likely to meltdown.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/03/110323-fukushima-japan-new-nuclear-plant-design/

[altivo]

New designs cost more to build. As long as the older ones are still permitted, that's what most of them will be. Remember, once again, that these things are largely built and owned by capitalist corporations. Such organizations have one goal: maximize profit, minimize expense. They have no long term concerns about the environment or waste or even risks. It goes into a spreadsheet, and is counted off as "an acceptable risk" as long as the profit is higher than it would be for the reduced risk.

Consequently, we get commercial airlines flying with cracks in the engine mounts, nuclear reactors running above rated design loads with obsolete and inadequate safety features, and high risk oil drilling operations that poison the entire ocean when they go bad.