THE BLOG
Beyond 'Nice' - I want this guy's autograph!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/09/22/For-Whom-the-Trading-Bell-Tolls/
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND, 2009 AT 4:55 PM
For Whom the (Trading) Bell Tolls: Reforming Wall St. to Protect Main St.
Posted by Jared Bernstein
In the heat of the debate about the need to fundamentally reform the way financial markets operate, both here in America and abroad, one crucially important point risks getting lost: the stakes for the middle class.
Too often, debates like these end up with the regulators on one side and those whom they would regulate on the other. When the debate is focused on obscurities like over-the-counter derivatives and accounting standards, it becomes that much easier for the rest of us to tune out and let the vested interests fight it out among themselves.
But when it comes to reforming our financial system, sitting this one out would be a big mistake. If we get this wrong, the damage will reverberate far beyond Wall Street.
It's all too easy to see why failing to reform our financial system could be so devastating to the middle class. Just look around: the origins of this Great Recession were the unchecked excesses and reckless behavior in the financial industry, as easy money and flimsy underwriting gave rise to a massive housing bubble. When the bubble burst, the financial structure supporting this expansion turned out to be a house of cards, and as that house collapsed, the shock waves were felt not just on Wall Street, but around the world.
So how exactly do these troubles in our financial system affect middle-class families? Lots of ways—and none of them good.
Most immediately, there are tons of middle-class jobs associated with residential housing, from construction to furnishings to real estate, and many of these jobs have been lost. (Employment in residential construction and contracting, for example, is down one million jobs off of its peak). Next, most middle-class homeowners, for whom homes are their most valuable asset, have taken a big hit to their wealth, with home prices down over 30%. The huge spike in foreclosures—another symptom of the bust—is a major contributing factor here: studies show that when a home is foreclosed, the price of nearby homes can fall as much as 9%.
Then there's the impact of the credit crunch on business activity, on loans, and once again, on jobs. As much as it sometimes seems as if Wall Street and Main Street exist on different planets, they’re intimately connected. Whether it's a loan for a home, a car, or a college education—or just credit for a small business to keep its shelves stocked—the credit freeze born of the collapse of the housing bubble is a chill that continues to be felt throughout this nation. What starts as a risky derivatives trade in the boardroom of a New York skyscraper can all too easily end up as a distressed conversation around the kitchen table in a middle-class home in Wisconsin.
And there's another crucial piece of fallout from all of this bubble-driven speculation, one that has been particularly damaging to the middle class: financial bubbles are associated with income growth bypassing low- and middle-income families and accumulating at the very top of the income scale. Before the crash, in 2007, the wealthiest 1% of households received 23.5% of all income, the highest share on record going back to the early 1900s. But there was one ominous exception: 1928, the year before the crash that began the Great Depression, when 23.9% of the income went to the top 1%. That bubble didn’t end too well either, as you may have heard.
And while the top was surfing the big wave, the middle class was treading water and the poor were drowning. Despite years of economic growth and solid productivity in the last economic expansion, the median income went nowhere and poverty rose. Incredibly, according to Census Bureau data, real median household income in 2008 was about $1,000 lower—that's right, I said lower—than it was a decade before.
For all of these reasons, President Obama is proposing the most significant overhaul of the financial system since the 1930s. From the perspective of middle-class families, the reforms we've proposed have a clear mission: to create and enforce common-sense rules of the road that will ensure we're not back here again a few years from now.
For example, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency we've proposed would, if created, enforce fair rules to eliminate the misleading terms, hidden fees, and exploding interest rates that some banks use to pad their profit margins at the expense of ordinary Americans.
This kind of abuse is a big problem for middle-class families. During the housing bubble, banks and mortgage lenders routinely drew families into mortgages they didn’t understand and couldn’t afford. Some of these mortgages looked affordable at first, but their interest rates skyrocketed after a few years; others gave homeowners the option of interest-only payments for the first few years, without mentioning that this "option" had a good chance of leaving the homeowner with an underwater and unaffordable mortgage a few years down the road.
The Consumer Financial Protection Agency would also regulate the practice of charging exorbitant hidden fees on credit and debit cards. For years, rather than seeing genuinely transparent competition on price and service, we’ve seen banks seeking to profit from credit card lines by burying fees in the fine print. For example, banks will make $27 billion this year just from the overdraft fees they charge on debit cards. We want to stop the practice of charging misleading or abusive hidden fees so that consumers know what they’ll be paying and can choose the product that offers the best price and terms.
Another key aspect of reform is to prevent what's come to be known as "systemic risk." One reason we ended up in the mess we're in is that financial institutions around the world became tightly linked, owing huge sums to each other in contracts built on massive amounts of debt and supported largely by the assumption that home prices could defy gravity forever.
Those links meant that the failure of one financial institution could threaten the entire system. President Obama's reform plan puts regulation in place to oversee these linkages and to ensure that the financial system borrows and lends responsibly instead of relying on excessive leverage to take on huge risks in search of huge profits.
Still, even with these safeguards, it's important to be prepared in case we once again find a major financial institution on the brink of collapse. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, we faced a similar problem: when one bank failed, there were runs on other banks, creating a destructive domino effect. To deal with this problem, Congress created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And for years, the FDIC has successfully prevented bank runs by efficiently shutting down failed banks while guaranteeing that the customers' deposits (up to $250,000) will be safe even if the bank fails.
But in the case of today’s big "non-bank" financial institutions, like Lehman Brothers or AIG, we don't have these same options. Our reform plan introduces a crucial new function that would let regulators safely shut down troubled financial institutions without endangering the financial system, a function called "resolution authority." This proposal would help deal with the problem of financial institutions that are "too big to fail" by making sure that regulators can allow any institution to fail, but in a way that incurs minimal costs to taxpayers and doesn’t cripple the system.
The President summed this all up eloquently: "Though they were not the cause of the crisis, American taxpayers through their government took extraordinary action to stabilize the financial industry. They shouldered the burden of the bailout and they are still bearing the burden of the fallout – in lost jobs, lost homes and lost opportunities."
In other words, the debate over financial regulatory reform must not be an isolated debate solely involving regulators and traders. The outcome of these reforms must not be ceded to the lobbyists fighting for the status quo. These are kitchen table, wallet, pocketbook, and lunch-pail issues, directly linked to the prosperity of the middle class.
Every day that stock markets open for trading on Wall Street, they ring the opening bell. Remember this: when it comes to financial regulatory reform, ask not for whom that bell tolls. It tolls for thee.
Jared Bernstein is Chief Economist to Vice President Biden, and Executive Director of the Middle Class Task Force
Monday, October 12, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
HALF A CENTURY OF NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS
http://artspacetokyo.com/blog/
HALF A CENTURY OF NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS
Posted by Ashley on Monday, June 22nd 2009
Recently I came across this video artwork by Isao Hashimoto,
1945–1998.
It is a haunting visualization of the 2053 atomic explosions that occurred on this planet, from the “Trinity” test at Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1945, to the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests of 1998.
Using different sounds and colors to denote explosions—by the United States, the USSR, Britain, China, France, India and Pakistan—over 53 years, it is a haunting piece of minimal music that also visualizes the half-century of the nuclear arms race.
It is well worth watching the entire 14 minutes. As it says on the host site, it sounds eerily like a conversation.
Another video by Hashimoto, Overkilled, shows a hand dropping a single ball bearing to represent the Hiroshima bombing, which killed more than 140,000 people. A second ball bearing represents the death of 70,000 people from the Nagasaki bombing.
The remaining minute of the video shows a cascade of 20,590 ball bearings, representing total global nuclear weapons stockpiles (in June 2004).
Categories: Japan Art News
HALF A CENTURY OF NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS
Posted by Ashley on Monday, June 22nd 2009
Recently I came across this video artwork by Isao Hashimoto,
1945–1998.
It is a haunting visualization of the 2053 atomic explosions that occurred on this planet, from the “Trinity” test at Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1945, to the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests of 1998.
Using different sounds and colors to denote explosions—by the United States, the USSR, Britain, China, France, India and Pakistan—over 53 years, it is a haunting piece of minimal music that also visualizes the half-century of the nuclear arms race.
It is well worth watching the entire 14 minutes. As it says on the host site, it sounds eerily like a conversation.
Another video by Hashimoto, Overkilled, shows a hand dropping a single ball bearing to represent the Hiroshima bombing, which killed more than 140,000 people. A second ball bearing represents the death of 70,000 people from the Nagasaki bombing.
The remaining minute of the video shows a cascade of 20,590 ball bearings, representing total global nuclear weapons stockpiles (in June 2004).
Categories: Japan Art News
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Recruiter Confidence Climbs To Highest Level In Eleven Months
 |   |
|  | Contact: Troy Mayclim tmayclim@riverinc.com (914) 686-5599 | |
| Recruiter Confidence Climbs To Highest Level In Eleven Months | ||
| www.execunet.com — June 1, 2009 — ExecuNet's Recruiter Confidence Index (RCI) surged 16 points higher in May, as the executive search industry's outlook for the employment market improved for the third consecutive month amid signs that economic conditions are stabilizing. The RCI now stands at its highest level since June 2008. Introduced in May 2003, the Recruiter Confidence Index is based on a monthly survey of executive search firms conducted by ExecuNet (www.execunet.com), a private network for business leaders. Designed to forecast job growth at the executive level, a reading above 50 percent indicates recruiters expect the number of search assignments in the next six months will increase. Independent analysis of the RCI has confirmed it is a leading indicator for the executive employment market. According to May's survey of 143 executive recruiters, 57 percent are confident or very confident the executive employment market will improve in the next six months — up from 41 percent last month. During this period of time, 67 percent of all executive recruiters expect at least a 10% increase in search assignments received from corporate clients. Confidence in the Executive Employment Market "Conditions have clearly changed," says Mark Anderson, ExecuNet president and chief economist. "We can now see the first clear signs of a recovery indicated by responses that are similar to what we saw coming out of the last recession in the second quarter of 2003. Executive recruiters expect hiring to increase as we move toward the end of the year. For executives interested in making a change, now is the time to come off of the sidelines."Next Six Months  Recruiters' short-term confidence remained virtually unchanged in May, as 19 percent report being confident or very confident the executive employment market will improve during the next three months — up from 18 percent in April. "Recruiters who earlier this spring had a much more negative outlook, are now clearly seeing signs of new hiring from their client companies," Anderson says. "However, it is going to take a few months for those business plans to affect the demand for talent." Founded in 1988, ExecuNet is a private network for business leaders who believe that the right connections can produce extraordinary results in their careers and organizations. A recognized authority in executive recruiting and human capital, ExecuNet provides members access to confidential six-figure job opportunities, proprietary research, and pragmatic advice. For more information, visit www.execunet.com. | ||
 | |||
| Couldn't find what you were looking for? Contact us. 800-637-3126 or click | |||
Monday, May 11, 2009
How the U.S.-UAE nuclear deal could set off a Middle East arms race.
How the U.S.- UAE nuclear deal could set off a Middle East arms race
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4915
Chain Reaction
By Joseph Cirincione
Page 1 of 2
Posted May 2009
How the U.S.-UAE nuclear deal could set off a Middle East arms race.
KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images
Bad deal: The Bush administration's last-minute nuclear cooperation agreement with the UAE was rushed and irresponsible.
Most of my nonproliferation colleagues think that having the United States help build a nuclear power reactor for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a great idea. I think it is a big mistake.
The U.S.-UAE civilian nuclear cooperation agreement was signed in the closing days of the George W. Bush administration and praised by advocates as a "model" for future agreements with Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and other states. President Barack Obama will have to decide in the next few weeks whether to send the deal to Congress for final approval. Wary of a repeat of the Dubai Ports World fiasco, the emirates have launched a $1.6 million lobbying campaign to bring U.S. lawmakers on board. They've enlisted many of my friends in the effort.
One former colleague, now a consultant for the UAE, sends me regular updates filled with good news about this multibillion-dollar deal. Her latest e-mail quotes an op-ed by Elliott Abrams, deputy national security advisor during the Bush administration, promising that the deal "will show the way forward in responsible, transparent uses of nuclear energy -- at the very moment when the world must confront Iran's defiance." I remember Abrams's assurances about the invasion of Iraq and cringe.
Maybe I'm wrong. It may well be that the leaders of a country the size of Maine that holds 4.8 million people and 98 billion barrels of oil (the fifth-largest reserves in the world and projected to last another 100 years) are truly interested in diversifying energy production. But 10, 20, or 30 years from now will they, or the governments that replace them, still honor their promises not to engage in any nuclear-weapon-related activities, including producing reactor fuel? Or, after they have developed nuclear technologies, trained nuclear scientists and engineers, and plugged into global nuclear markets, will they go one step further and build uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing plants that could be used to make fuel -- or bombs?
I don't claim any in-depth knowledge of the UAE. I have never been there. But I am deeply disturbed by what is happening in the region. This is not an isolated case. Over the past three years, a dozen Middle East countries have declared their intent to pursue civilian nuclear programs, including Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey. Sixty years after the nuclear age began, these states have suddenly become interested in nuclear power. I have a hard time believing that Middle East leaders got together to watch Al Gore's movie and decided to reduce their carbon footprint. This is not about energy. It is about Iran.
Make no mistake: We are witnessing the beginning of a Middle East nuclear arms race. Iran's rivals do not want Tehran to gain the military, political, and diplomatic advantage that nuclear weapons convey. They are beginning the decades-long process of developing technologies to match Iran's capabilities. All of this is legal, by the way, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In fact, nuclear weapon states are obliged to sell non-weapon states nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. It is one of the two grand bargains in the treaty. And it could spell our doom.
Not all Middle East powers may see civilian nuclear programs as a hedge against Iran. But recent history is instructive. The burgeoning interest in nuclear energy perfectly coincided with a set of events in the summer of 2006. At that time Western efforts to rein in Iran's enrichment program began to fail. The United States was becoming further mired in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and appeared unable to stop an Iran now freed of its main regional rivals. Iran's leaders expanded their military influence through aid to Hezbollah in the Israeli-Lebanese war. Referring to the changing atmosphere in 2006, Jordan's King Abdullah II observed, "The rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region." My translation: "After this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs." Given the context, the connection to Iran's growing strength and spinning centrifuges is clear.
Now, instead of persuading Jordan and others to refrain from setting off a proliferation cascade in the Middle East, the United States is joining the Chinese, French, and Russian salesmen eagerly peddling the tools to do it.
At its core, this is a deeply flawed method for preventing proliferation. It continues the Bush approach of dealing with problems state by state, dividing them into good guys and bad guys, rewarding friends with nuclear treats and trying to deny them to enemies.
It does not work. The United States needs, instead, a comprehensive plan to deal with this global problem. It is ineffective and perhaps immoral to promote the sale of nuclear technologies for civilian uses without fundamentally reforming the fuel production process that could bring dozens of new states to the brink of nuclear weapons capability. No new reactors should be sold until countries provide a commitment to end state control of nuclear fuel facilities.
Chain Reaction
By Joseph Cirincione
Page 2 of 2
The U.S.-UAE 123 Agreement was thrown together hastily at the end of the Bush administration. Many praised it in Washington, with some adamant exceptions. Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) said, "The Middle East is the last place the United States should be seeking the expansion of nuclear technologies. We need to get serious about halting Iran's nuclear program, not helping its neighbors get in the nuclear club." He added, "In the Middle East, a nuclear energy race could be as perilous as a nuclear arms race," and urged then President-elect Obama to rethink the Bush policy.
Henry Sokolski, who heads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, found that the deal as written does not legally bind the UAE to many of its stated obligations. Instead, it "explicitly states that nothing in the agreement should be read to undermine the UAE's inalienable right to develop and produce 'peaceful nuclear energy' in conformity with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," Sokolski wrote, "a right that the U.S. State Department's legal division interprets to include (you guessed it) the right to make nuclear fuel if the fuel making is declared and inspected." Sokolski wisely counseled the United States to at the very least delay the deal while further review is conducted on the Hill and at Foggy Bottom.
(Here's something for the reviewers to consider: The United States is certainly not thinking about selling Syria a reactor, but the UAE has a less-than-stellar record on monitoring and disrupting nuclear proliferation. Pakistani nuclear scientist and infamous proliferator A.Q. Khan used Dubai (a member of the UAE) as a key transit point for his black-market operations. From the early 1990s until his supposed retirement, Khan used multiple front companies in Dubai to launder money and transport uranium centrifuge components to Libya and Iran.)
More broadly, it's time to slow down and ask: Is it smart to promote a 20th-century power source in a 21st-century world? Is it wise to rush in without a full plan, at least for the region?
The alluring nuclear advocacy Web site of the UAE maintains that the emirates' growing demand for electricity and aversion for energy sources with "poor environmental performance" are the sole reasons for the pursuit of nuclear energy. To its credit, the UAE is already investing billions of dollars in alternative energies such as wind and solar, energy sources for which these desert kingdoms seem ideally suited. Why not encourage them to double down on the future, instead of falling back on an expensive, messy, and dangerous old power source?
The United States cannot stop the UAE from pursuing civilian nuclear energy. Indeed, it is the UAE's right to do so. What the United States can do is avoid making deals that put industry above security. No matter how you try to sell it, nuclear power plants are, as energy guru Amory Lovins says, a "nuclear weapons starter kit."
Half-baked and hasty at best, foolhardy and dangerous at worst, the UAE deal should not be rushed through Congress, nor should its paper clauses obscure the real regional dynamics behind the rush to nuclear power. The United States should take a hard look at nuclear energy and think about the implications of correcting climate change by actively promoting an energy source that can be made into humankind's deadliest weapon.
Joseph Cirincione is the president of the Ploughshares Fund and the author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.
previous
1 of 2
FOREIGN POLICY welcomes letters to the editor.
Readers should address their comments to Letters@ForeignPolicy.com.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4915
Chain Reaction
By Joseph Cirincione
Page 1 of 2
Posted May 2009
How the U.S.-UAE nuclear deal could set off a Middle East arms race.
KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images
Bad deal: The Bush administration's last-minute nuclear cooperation agreement with the UAE was rushed and irresponsible.
Most of my nonproliferation colleagues think that having the United States help build a nuclear power reactor for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a great idea. I think it is a big mistake.
The U.S.-UAE civilian nuclear cooperation agreement was signed in the closing days of the George W. Bush administration and praised by advocates as a "model" for future agreements with Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and other states. President Barack Obama will have to decide in the next few weeks whether to send the deal to Congress for final approval. Wary of a repeat of the Dubai Ports World fiasco, the emirates have launched a $1.6 million lobbying campaign to bring U.S. lawmakers on board. They've enlisted many of my friends in the effort.
One former colleague, now a consultant for the UAE, sends me regular updates filled with good news about this multibillion-dollar deal. Her latest e-mail quotes an op-ed by Elliott Abrams, deputy national security advisor during the Bush administration, promising that the deal "will show the way forward in responsible, transparent uses of nuclear energy -- at the very moment when the world must confront Iran's defiance." I remember Abrams's assurances about the invasion of Iraq and cringe.
Maybe I'm wrong. It may well be that the leaders of a country the size of Maine that holds 4.8 million people and 98 billion barrels of oil (the fifth-largest reserves in the world and projected to last another 100 years) are truly interested in diversifying energy production. But 10, 20, or 30 years from now will they, or the governments that replace them, still honor their promises not to engage in any nuclear-weapon-related activities, including producing reactor fuel? Or, after they have developed nuclear technologies, trained nuclear scientists and engineers, and plugged into global nuclear markets, will they go one step further and build uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing plants that could be used to make fuel -- or bombs?
I don't claim any in-depth knowledge of the UAE. I have never been there. But I am deeply disturbed by what is happening in the region. This is not an isolated case. Over the past three years, a dozen Middle East countries have declared their intent to pursue civilian nuclear programs, including Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey. Sixty years after the nuclear age began, these states have suddenly become interested in nuclear power. I have a hard time believing that Middle East leaders got together to watch Al Gore's movie and decided to reduce their carbon footprint. This is not about energy. It is about Iran.
Make no mistake: We are witnessing the beginning of a Middle East nuclear arms race. Iran's rivals do not want Tehran to gain the military, political, and diplomatic advantage that nuclear weapons convey. They are beginning the decades-long process of developing technologies to match Iran's capabilities. All of this is legal, by the way, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In fact, nuclear weapon states are obliged to sell non-weapon states nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. It is one of the two grand bargains in the treaty. And it could spell our doom.
Not all Middle East powers may see civilian nuclear programs as a hedge against Iran. But recent history is instructive. The burgeoning interest in nuclear energy perfectly coincided with a set of events in the summer of 2006. At that time Western efforts to rein in Iran's enrichment program began to fail. The United States was becoming further mired in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and appeared unable to stop an Iran now freed of its main regional rivals. Iran's leaders expanded their military influence through aid to Hezbollah in the Israeli-Lebanese war. Referring to the changing atmosphere in 2006, Jordan's King Abdullah II observed, "The rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region." My translation: "After this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs." Given the context, the connection to Iran's growing strength and spinning centrifuges is clear.
Now, instead of persuading Jordan and others to refrain from setting off a proliferation cascade in the Middle East, the United States is joining the Chinese, French, and Russian salesmen eagerly peddling the tools to do it.
At its core, this is a deeply flawed method for preventing proliferation. It continues the Bush approach of dealing with problems state by state, dividing them into good guys and bad guys, rewarding friends with nuclear treats and trying to deny them to enemies.
It does not work. The United States needs, instead, a comprehensive plan to deal with this global problem. It is ineffective and perhaps immoral to promote the sale of nuclear technologies for civilian uses without fundamentally reforming the fuel production process that could bring dozens of new states to the brink of nuclear weapons capability. No new reactors should be sold until countries provide a commitment to end state control of nuclear fuel facilities.
Chain Reaction
By Joseph Cirincione
Page 2 of 2
The U.S.-UAE 123 Agreement was thrown together hastily at the end of the Bush administration. Many praised it in Washington, with some adamant exceptions. Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) said, "The Middle East is the last place the United States should be seeking the expansion of nuclear technologies. We need to get serious about halting Iran's nuclear program, not helping its neighbors get in the nuclear club." He added, "In the Middle East, a nuclear energy race could be as perilous as a nuclear arms race," and urged then President-elect Obama to rethink the Bush policy.
Henry Sokolski, who heads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, found that the deal as written does not legally bind the UAE to many of its stated obligations. Instead, it "explicitly states that nothing in the agreement should be read to undermine the UAE's inalienable right to develop and produce 'peaceful nuclear energy' in conformity with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," Sokolski wrote, "a right that the U.S. State Department's legal division interprets to include (you guessed it) the right to make nuclear fuel if the fuel making is declared and inspected." Sokolski wisely counseled the United States to at the very least delay the deal while further review is conducted on the Hill and at Foggy Bottom.
(Here's something for the reviewers to consider: The United States is certainly not thinking about selling Syria a reactor, but the UAE has a less-than-stellar record on monitoring and disrupting nuclear proliferation. Pakistani nuclear scientist and infamous proliferator A.Q. Khan used Dubai (a member of the UAE) as a key transit point for his black-market operations. From the early 1990s until his supposed retirement, Khan used multiple front companies in Dubai to launder money and transport uranium centrifuge components to Libya and Iran.)
More broadly, it's time to slow down and ask: Is it smart to promote a 20th-century power source in a 21st-century world? Is it wise to rush in without a full plan, at least for the region?
The alluring nuclear advocacy Web site of the UAE maintains that the emirates' growing demand for electricity and aversion for energy sources with "poor environmental performance" are the sole reasons for the pursuit of nuclear energy. To its credit, the UAE is already investing billions of dollars in alternative energies such as wind and solar, energy sources for which these desert kingdoms seem ideally suited. Why not encourage them to double down on the future, instead of falling back on an expensive, messy, and dangerous old power source?
The United States cannot stop the UAE from pursuing civilian nuclear energy. Indeed, it is the UAE's right to do so. What the United States can do is avoid making deals that put industry above security. No matter how you try to sell it, nuclear power plants are, as energy guru Amory Lovins says, a "nuclear weapons starter kit."
Half-baked and hasty at best, foolhardy and dangerous at worst, the UAE deal should not be rushed through Congress, nor should its paper clauses obscure the real regional dynamics behind the rush to nuclear power. The United States should take a hard look at nuclear energy and think about the implications of correcting climate change by actively promoting an energy source that can be made into humankind's deadliest weapon.
Joseph Cirincione is the president of the Ploughshares Fund and the author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.
previous
1 of 2
FOREIGN POLICY welcomes letters to the editor.
Readers should address their comments to Letters@ForeignPolicy.com.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Dear Mr. Presdient 4/22/09
http://design.caltech.edu/erik/Misc/Machiavelli.html
At least 500 years of commentary exist on the difficulty of innovation, starting with Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) in The Prince (1513), Chapter 6.
The Prince
N. H. Thomson, translator
Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1992, page 13.
Originally published by P. F. Collier & Son, New York, 1910.
The Prince
http://www.bibliomania.com, Chapter 6.
Dear Mr. President,
As we approach the end of the "First 100 days"...I want to commend you on your swift action, decisive decision making and the amount of energy applied to the many 'spiraling out-of-control' circumstances that you inherited in this new global environment, where the world's 'actors' and players are so closely linked.
I watched you address the C.I.A. folks on Monday 4/20/09 and it seemed that you were taking twice as long to convey ideas than your normal measured approach to communication. On Tuesday 4/22/09 It look as if fatigue practically had you 'slurring words'. May I make an urgent recommendation?
Sir - The Great Vince Lambardi once said "Fatigue Does make Cowards of us All...." Even the greatest men need time to rest, reflect and ponder. The pace of the new administration is enviable amongst past presidents and has accomplished more than many presidents have in a 4 or 8 year term.
Remember that you not only came from a grueling 2-year campaign trail, started this administration and its planning months before being elected [as a backup to be prepared and to hit the street 'running' - not out of hubris as your detractors said] and have been immersed in some of the most difficult times for our country since its inception.
Your "First 100 days..." have been about 850 days long so far (Jan 2007-present). When I read "The Audacity of Hope" the first thing that struck me wasn't your deep thought (which impressed me), your knowledge and insight of the 'Big Picture' of the world and politics (which I had recently discovered) or the breadth of your wisdom and understanding of "how things Work" (in the world).
What struck me is the amount of time it took to formulate the ideas, the amount of pondering, thinking and reflection this work took to grasp and put on paper. I saw a quote once attributed to Einstein that said something to the effect of "I often felt like a child who was allowed to dangle my feet in life's ocean and discover all of the wonderful sea shells that the universe contains.." and it was noted that Einstein napped daily to allow his mind to process information (like a computer CPU) so that in reflection comes innovation, in rest comes new context, and in refreshing comes the strength and courage to stand for your convictions.
On Tuesday a quagmire of press confusion was started by ex-vice-president Dick Cheney criticizing your foreign policy. Right behind that came Robert Gibbs, your press Secretary (Who greatly reflects your 'style' of communication and is perfect for the job in your administration) had to 'back peddle' and refer the press back to your statements earlier in the day to ensure congruent communication from your last update and spoken word earlier that day.
A couple of non-working 'Camp David" days are needed - the 'head winds' of change and innovation are coming hard and fast, You need time to THINK (not react) to all that is occurring - and the gueling schedule kept since Nov. 4 is not allowing you to shine at your BEST - or to keep the 'commanding Heights' of political power in your administration on your terms (not the past administration's).
As Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) in The Prince (1513), Chapter 6. said above - there are still 46% who did not vote for even though you are 'polling well', but even those forces within your own party that have ranges of liberal or conservative agendas and issues act in pulling the movement and direction of decision. To that, you need to to weigh, discern and lead (with energy, strength and courage) that rest gives. TNT.
At least 500 years of commentary exist on the difficulty of innovation, starting with Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) in The Prince (1513), Chapter 6.
``And let it be noted that there is no more delicate matter to take in hand, nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to set up as the leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new.''Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince
N. H. Thomson, translator
Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1992, page 13.
Originally published by P. F. Collier & Son, New York, 1910.
`` We must bear in mind, then, that there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things, whilst those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders. This indifference arises in part from fear of their adversaries who were favored by the existing laws, and partly from the incredulity of men who have no faith in anything new that is not the result of well-established experience. Hence it is that, whenever the opponents of the new order of things have the opportunity to attack it, they will do it with the zeal of partisans, whilst the others defend it but feebly, so that it is dangerous to rely upon the latter.''Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince
http://www.bibliomania.com, Chapter 6.
Dear Mr. President,
As we approach the end of the "First 100 days"...I want to commend you on your swift action, decisive decision making and the amount of energy applied to the many 'spiraling out-of-control' circumstances that you inherited in this new global environment, where the world's 'actors' and players are so closely linked.
I watched you address the C.I.A. folks on Monday 4/20/09 and it seemed that you were taking twice as long to convey ideas than your normal measured approach to communication. On Tuesday 4/22/09 It look as if fatigue practically had you 'slurring words'. May I make an urgent recommendation?
Sir - The Great Vince Lambardi once said "Fatigue Does make Cowards of us All...." Even the greatest men need time to rest, reflect and ponder. The pace of the new administration is enviable amongst past presidents and has accomplished more than many presidents have in a 4 or 8 year term.
Remember that you not only came from a grueling 2-year campaign trail, started this administration and its planning months before being elected [as a backup to be prepared and to hit the street 'running' - not out of hubris as your detractors said] and have been immersed in some of the most difficult times for our country since its inception.
Your "First 100 days..." have been about 850 days long so far (Jan 2007-present). When I read "The Audacity of Hope" the first thing that struck me wasn't your deep thought (which impressed me), your knowledge and insight of the 'Big Picture' of the world and politics (which I had recently discovered) or the breadth of your wisdom and understanding of "how things Work" (in the world).
What struck me is the amount of time it took to formulate the ideas, the amount of pondering, thinking and reflection this work took to grasp and put on paper. I saw a quote once attributed to Einstein that said something to the effect of "I often felt like a child who was allowed to dangle my feet in life's ocean and discover all of the wonderful sea shells that the universe contains.." and it was noted that Einstein napped daily to allow his mind to process information (like a computer CPU) so that in reflection comes innovation, in rest comes new context, and in refreshing comes the strength and courage to stand for your convictions.
On Tuesday a quagmire of press confusion was started by ex-vice-president Dick Cheney criticizing your foreign policy. Right behind that came Robert Gibbs, your press Secretary (Who greatly reflects your 'style' of communication and is perfect for the job in your administration) had to 'back peddle' and refer the press back to your statements earlier in the day to ensure congruent communication from your last update and spoken word earlier that day.
A couple of non-working 'Camp David" days are needed - the 'head winds' of change and innovation are coming hard and fast, You need time to THINK (not react) to all that is occurring - and the gueling schedule kept since Nov. 4 is not allowing you to shine at your BEST - or to keep the 'commanding Heights' of political power in your administration on your terms (not the past administration's).
As Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) in The Prince (1513), Chapter 6. said above - there are still 46% who did not vote for even though you are 'polling well', but even those forces within your own party that have ranges of liberal or conservative agendas and issues act in pulling the movement and direction of decision. To that, you need to to weigh, discern and lead (with energy, strength and courage) that rest gives. TNT.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
President Obama's News conference on 3/24/09
The news conference and Q & A session was 'flawless', but I would make a suggestion. I like how president Obama uses simple words, phrases and analogies and does not try to baffle with B.S. and over-show his brilliance in his communication style and content.
But for the business community, the age old term R.O.I. (Returnn-On-Investment) should be repeated like a mantra.
The concepts are simple enough; go as we have, never meeting the demands with the budget, and increasing in 'bad debt', OR SPEND OUR WAY OUT INTO 'GOOD DEBT' THAT BUILDS THE PATH TO better systems that benefit society in the long run.
Yes, short term $Pain = Long Term $Gain. Every company knows that in tough economic times if they 'sit still' and do not innovate, advertise and market their product(s) or services, they either decline, go out of business or try to spend and reorganize their way back to PROFITS.
The same is true with our economy - rather simple sounding, but there few alternatives that we haven't already tried and seen FAIL.
But for the business community, the age old term R.O.I. (Returnn-On-Investment) should be repeated like a mantra.
The concepts are simple enough; go as we have, never meeting the demands with the budget, and increasing in 'bad debt', OR SPEND OUR WAY OUT INTO 'GOOD DEBT' THAT BUILDS THE PATH TO better systems that benefit society in the long run.
Yes, short term $Pain = Long Term $Gain. Every company knows that in tough economic times if they 'sit still' and do not innovate, advertise and market their product(s) or services, they either decline, go out of business or try to spend and reorganize their way back to PROFITS.
The same is true with our economy - rather simple sounding, but there few alternatives that we haven't already tried and seen FAIL.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Schizophrenia delivered by Helicopter?
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Pentagon Investigated Lasers that put Voices in your Head
The full unclassified report, released under FOIA: Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons. (TY to Benjamin Parish for the lead)
February 18, 2008
Pentagon Report Investigated Lasers that put Voices in your Head
by Lisa Zyga
A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people's heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away.
A US citizen requested access to the document, entitled "Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons," under the Freedom of Information Act a little over a year ago. There is no evidence that any of the technologies mentioned in the 10-year-old report have been developed since the time it was written.
The report explained several types of non-lethal laser applications, including microwave hearing, disrupted neural control, and microwave heating. For the first type, short pulses of RF energy (2450 MHz) can generate a pressure wave in solids and liquids. When exposed to pulsed RF energy, humans experience the immediate sensation of "microwave hearing" - sounds that may include buzzing, ticking, hissing, or knocking that originate within the head.
Studies with guinea pigs and cats suggest that the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon is thermoelastic expansion. Exposure to the RF pulses doesn´t cause any permanent effects, as all effects cease almost immediately after exposure ceases. As the report explains, tuning microwave hearing could enable communicating with individuals from a distance of up to several hundred meters.
"The phenomenon is tunable in that the characteristic sounds and intensities of those sounds depend on the characteristics of the RF energy as delivered," the report explains. "Because the frequency of the sound heard is dependent on the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word, except that it could only be heard within a person´s head. In one experiment, communication of the words from one to ten using ´speech modulated´ microwave energy was successfully demonstrated. Microphones next to the person experiencing the voice could not pick up these sounds. Additional development of this would open up a wide range of possibilities."
The report predicts that communicating at longer distances would be possible with larger equipment, while shorter range signals could be generated with portable equipment. Putting voices in people´s heads could cause what the report calls "psychologically devastating" effects. The technology might even allow for communicating with an individual hostage surrounded by captors, although this would require "extreme directional specificity."
With another weapon, electromagnetic pulses could be used to disrupt the brain´s functioning, although this technology was still in the theoretical stages at the time.
Under normal conditions, all brain structures function with specific rhythmic activity depending on incoming sensory information. Sometimes, the brain synchronizes neuronal activity in order to focus on a specific task, but the degree of neuronal synchronization is highly controlled. However, under certain conditions (such as physical stress or heat stroke), more areas of the brain can fire in a highly synchronized manner, and may begin firing uncontrollably.
The report describes a method for replicating this highly synchronized neuron firing across distances of several hundred meters. High-voltage (100 kV/m) electromagnetic pulses lasting for one nanosecond could trigger neurons to fire, disrupting the body´s controlled firing activity. Short-term effects may include loss of consciousness, muscle spasms, muscle weakness, and seizures lasting for a couple minutes. These high-voltage pulsed sources, which would require an estimated frequency of 15 Hz, exist today.
Another form of non-lethal torture described in the report is microwave heating. By raising the temperature of the body to 41°C (105.8°F), humans can experience sensations such as memory loss and disorientation, and exhibit reduced aggression. According to the report, humans can survive temperatures up to 42°C (107.6°F), at which time prolonged exposure can result in permanent brain damage or death.
The microwave heating technique was tested on a Rhesus monkey, where a 225 MHz beam caused an increase in the animal´s body temperature. Depending on the dosage level, the temperature increase occurred within a time of 15 to 30 minutes. After the beam was removed, the animal´s body temperature decreased back to normal. The report suggests the technique could be useful for controlling crowds or in negotiations.
While the investigations reveal intriguing techniques for non-lethal torture, the report does not mention plans for carrying out specific experiments or studies in the future.
http://physorg.com/news122567894.html
Posted by Alex Constantine at 1:46 PM
Pentagon Investigated Lasers that put Voices in your Head
The full unclassified report, released under FOIA: Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons. (TY to Benjamin Parish for the lead)
February 18, 2008
Pentagon Report Investigated Lasers that put Voices in your Head
by Lisa Zyga
A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people's heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away.
A US citizen requested access to the document, entitled "Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons," under the Freedom of Information Act a little over a year ago. There is no evidence that any of the technologies mentioned in the 10-year-old report have been developed since the time it was written.
The report explained several types of non-lethal laser applications, including microwave hearing, disrupted neural control, and microwave heating. For the first type, short pulses of RF energy (2450 MHz) can generate a pressure wave in solids and liquids. When exposed to pulsed RF energy, humans experience the immediate sensation of "microwave hearing" - sounds that may include buzzing, ticking, hissing, or knocking that originate within the head.
Studies with guinea pigs and cats suggest that the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon is thermoelastic expansion. Exposure to the RF pulses doesn´t cause any permanent effects, as all effects cease almost immediately after exposure ceases. As the report explains, tuning microwave hearing could enable communicating with individuals from a distance of up to several hundred meters.
"The phenomenon is tunable in that the characteristic sounds and intensities of those sounds depend on the characteristics of the RF energy as delivered," the report explains. "Because the frequency of the sound heard is dependent on the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word, except that it could only be heard within a person´s head. In one experiment, communication of the words from one to ten using ´speech modulated´ microwave energy was successfully demonstrated. Microphones next to the person experiencing the voice could not pick up these sounds. Additional development of this would open up a wide range of possibilities."
The report predicts that communicating at longer distances would be possible with larger equipment, while shorter range signals could be generated with portable equipment. Putting voices in people´s heads could cause what the report calls "psychologically devastating" effects. The technology might even allow for communicating with an individual hostage surrounded by captors, although this would require "extreme directional specificity."
With another weapon, electromagnetic pulses could be used to disrupt the brain´s functioning, although this technology was still in the theoretical stages at the time.
Under normal conditions, all brain structures function with specific rhythmic activity depending on incoming sensory information. Sometimes, the brain synchronizes neuronal activity in order to focus on a specific task, but the degree of neuronal synchronization is highly controlled. However, under certain conditions (such as physical stress or heat stroke), more areas of the brain can fire in a highly synchronized manner, and may begin firing uncontrollably.
The report describes a method for replicating this highly synchronized neuron firing across distances of several hundred meters. High-voltage (100 kV/m) electromagnetic pulses lasting for one nanosecond could trigger neurons to fire, disrupting the body´s controlled firing activity. Short-term effects may include loss of consciousness, muscle spasms, muscle weakness, and seizures lasting for a couple minutes. These high-voltage pulsed sources, which would require an estimated frequency of 15 Hz, exist today.
Another form of non-lethal torture described in the report is microwave heating. By raising the temperature of the body to 41°C (105.8°F), humans can experience sensations such as memory loss and disorientation, and exhibit reduced aggression. According to the report, humans can survive temperatures up to 42°C (107.6°F), at which time prolonged exposure can result in permanent brain damage or death.
The microwave heating technique was tested on a Rhesus monkey, where a 225 MHz beam caused an increase in the animal´s body temperature. Depending on the dosage level, the temperature increase occurred within a time of 15 to 30 minutes. After the beam was removed, the animal´s body temperature decreased back to normal. The report suggests the technique could be useful for controlling crowds or in negotiations.
While the investigations reveal intriguing techniques for non-lethal torture, the report does not mention plans for carrying out specific experiments or studies in the future.
http://physorg.com/news122567894.html
Posted by Alex Constantine at 1:46 PM
Friday, February 27, 2009
Calif. Aquaduct: Peter Gleick: Deal With the Water Crisis Now!
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/16-10/sl_gleick
www.parade.com/intelligence
WIRED MAGAZINE: 16.10
Politics : Law RSS
Peter Gleick: Deal With the Water Crisis Now
By Matthew Power Email 09.22.08
Portrait: Mario Hugo
The 2008 Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To
1. Parag Khanna: Embrace the Post-American Age
2. David Laibson: Tweak Human Behavior to Fix the Economy
3. Carolyn Porco: Use Big Robots — and Big Rockets
4. Leroy Hood: Look to the Genome to Rebuild Health Care
5. Montgomery McFate: Use Anthropology in Military Planning
6. Peter Gleick: Deal With the Water Crisis Now
7. Jagdish Bhagwati: Keep Free Trade Free
8. Ellen Miller: Make Washington More Like the Web
9. Ram Shriram: Open Up the Airwaves
10. A.T. Ball: Wage Smarter War With Agile Army IT
11. Steve Rayner: Take Climate Change Seriously
12. Mitchell Joachim: Redesign Cities From Scratch
13. Mark Smolinski: Detect Epidemics Before They Start
14. Charles Ferguson: Beware of New, Easy-to-Make Nukes
15. Robert Dalrymple: Get Ready for Extreme Weather
Among the challenges facing the next president, few are more complex—scientifically, politically, and economically—than the unsustainable global demands on fresh water supplies. Sources are drying up in the US and worldwide, raising the specters of hunger, disease, and international conflict. No one has a clearer view of these issues than Peter Gleick, president and cofounder of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland, California-based environmental think tank. So what will the new president need to understand about water? Here are eight slides from Gleick's hypothetical PowerPoint presentation.
The US mismanages water at all levels. For instance, states compete for resources.
Proposal: Establish a non-partisan national water commission to recommend policy changes.
Drought costs $6-8 billion a year. Rivers are over-allocated. Reservoir levels are falling.
Proposal: Promote water conservation to reduce pressure on limited supplies.
Domestic water supplies and systems are vulnerable to multiple security threats.
Proposal: Improve monitoring. Hold water-security workshops at the US War Colleges, State Department, CIA, and DHS.
Water has profound implications for international security as well.
Proposal: Empower the US State Department to address global water-related disputes.
Nearly 1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water...
Proposal: Fund clean-water, sanitation, and hygiene projects in the developing world.
...leading to 2.5 million deaths annually from preventable illnesses and malnutrition.
Proposal: Take a leadership role in eliminating waterborne diseases.
Climate change will intensify flooding, storms, drought, and disease.
Proposal: Factor the effect of climate change on water supplies into all new infrastructure projects.
Taking water seriously is a no-brainer.
Proposal: Put water at the center of your administration's strategic agenda.
Peter Gleick is President of the Pacific Institute.
==================================================================
Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war: report
LONDON (AFP) Feb 22, 2004
A secret report prepared by the Pentagon warns that climate change may lead to global catastrophe costing millions of lives and is a far greater threat than terrorism, The Observer said on Sunday.
The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon advisor but was covered up by " US defense chiefs" for four months, until it was "obtained" by the British weekly.
The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and military policies, following Washington 's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and President George W. Bush's skepticism about global warning -- a stance that has stunned scientists worldwide.
The Pentagon report, commissioned by Andrew Marshall, predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies," The Observer reported.
The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."
Its authors -- Peter Schwartz, a CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of Global Business Network based in California -- said climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top political and military issue.
It "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", they were quoted as saying.
Some examples given of probable scenarios in the dramatic report include:
-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.
-- by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqua duct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California
-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made un-farmable by drought.
-- "catastrophic" shortages of portable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.
Randall, one of the authors, called his findings "depressing stuff" and warned that it might even be too late to prevent future disasters.
"We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years," he told the paper.
Experts familiar with the report told the newspaper that the threat to global stability "vastly eclipses that of terrorism".
Taking environmental pollution and climate change into account in political and military strategy is a new, complicated and necessary challenge for leaders, Randall said.
"It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat," he said.
Coming from the Pentagon, normally a bastion of conservative politics, the report is expected to bring environmental issues to the fore in the US presidential race.
Last week the Union of Concerned Scientists, an influential and non-partisan group that includes 20 Nobel laureates, accused the Bush administration of having deliberately distorted scientific fact to serve its policy agenda and having "misled the public".
Its 38-page report, which it said took over a year to prepare and was not time to coincide with the campaign season, details how Washington "systematically" skewed government scientific studies, suppressed others, stacked panels with political and unqualified appointees and often refused to seek independent expertise on issues.
Critics of the report quoted by the New York Times denied there was deliberate misrepresentation and called it politically motivated.
The person behind the leaked Pentagon report, Andrew Marsall, cannot be accused of the same partisan politicking.
Marsall, 82, has been an advisor for the defense department for decades, and was described by The Observer as the author of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plans for a major transformation of the US military.
All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.
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Search TerraDaily
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www.parade.com/intelligence
WIRED MAGAZINE: 16.10
Politics : Law RSS
Peter Gleick: Deal With the Water Crisis Now
By Matthew Power Email 09.22.08
Portrait: Mario Hugo
The 2008 Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To
1. Parag Khanna: Embrace the Post-American Age
2. David Laibson: Tweak Human Behavior to Fix the Economy
3. Carolyn Porco: Use Big Robots — and Big Rockets
4. Leroy Hood: Look to the Genome to Rebuild Health Care
5. Montgomery McFate: Use Anthropology in Military Planning
6. Peter Gleick: Deal With the Water Crisis Now
7. Jagdish Bhagwati: Keep Free Trade Free
8. Ellen Miller: Make Washington More Like the Web
9. Ram Shriram: Open Up the Airwaves
10. A.T. Ball: Wage Smarter War With Agile Army IT
11. Steve Rayner: Take Climate Change Seriously
12. Mitchell Joachim: Redesign Cities From Scratch
13. Mark Smolinski: Detect Epidemics Before They Start
14. Charles Ferguson: Beware of New, Easy-to-Make Nukes
15. Robert Dalrymple: Get Ready for Extreme Weather
Among the challenges facing the next president, few are more complex—scientifically, politically, and economically—than the unsustainable global demands on fresh water supplies. Sources are drying up in the US and worldwide, raising the specters of hunger, disease, and international conflict. No one has a clearer view of these issues than Peter Gleick, president and cofounder of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland, California-based environmental think tank. So what will the new president need to understand about water? Here are eight slides from Gleick's hypothetical PowerPoint presentation.
The US mismanages water at all levels. For instance, states compete for resources.
Proposal: Establish a non-partisan national water commission to recommend policy changes.
Drought costs $6-8 billion a year. Rivers are over-allocated. Reservoir levels are falling.
Proposal: Promote water conservation to reduce pressure on limited supplies.
Domestic water supplies and systems are vulnerable to multiple security threats.
Proposal: Improve monitoring. Hold water-security workshops at the US War Colleges, State Department, CIA, and DHS.
Water has profound implications for international security as well.
Proposal: Empower the US State Department to address global water-related disputes.
Nearly 1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water...
Proposal: Fund clean-water, sanitation, and hygiene projects in the developing world.
...leading to 2.5 million deaths annually from preventable illnesses and malnutrition.
Proposal: Take a leadership role in eliminating waterborne diseases.
Climate change will intensify flooding, storms, drought, and disease.
Proposal: Factor the effect of climate change on water supplies into all new infrastructure projects.
Taking water seriously is a no-brainer.
Proposal: Put water at the center of your administration's strategic agenda.
Peter Gleick is President of the Pacific Institute.
==================================================================
Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war: report
LONDON (AFP) Feb 22, 2004
A secret report prepared by the Pentagon warns that climate change may lead to global catastrophe costing millions of lives and is a far greater threat than terrorism, The Observer said on Sunday.
The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon advisor but was covered up by " US defense chiefs" for four months, until it was "obtained" by the British weekly.
The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and military policies, following Washington 's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and President George W. Bush's skepticism about global warning -- a stance that has stunned scientists worldwide.
The Pentagon report, commissioned by Andrew Marshall, predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies," The Observer reported.
The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."
Its authors -- Peter Schwartz, a CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of Global Business Network based in California -- said climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top political and military issue.
It "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", they were quoted as saying.
Some examples given of probable scenarios in the dramatic report include:
-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.
-- by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqua duct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California
-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made un-farmable by drought.
-- "catastrophic" shortages of portable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.
Randall, one of the authors, called his findings "depressing stuff" and warned that it might even be too late to prevent future disasters.
"We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years," he told the paper.
Experts familiar with the report told the newspaper that the threat to global stability "vastly eclipses that of terrorism".
Taking environmental pollution and climate change into account in political and military strategy is a new, complicated and necessary challenge for leaders, Randall said.
"It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat," he said.
Coming from the Pentagon, normally a bastion of conservative politics, the report is expected to bring environmental issues to the fore in the US presidential race.
Last week the Union of Concerned Scientists, an influential and non-partisan group that includes 20 Nobel laureates, accused the Bush administration of having deliberately distorted scientific fact to serve its policy agenda and having "misled the public".
Its 38-page report, which it said took over a year to prepare and was not time to coincide with the campaign season, details how Washington "systematically" skewed government scientific studies, suppressed others, stacked panels with political and unqualified appointees and often refused to seek independent expertise on issues.
Critics of the report quoted by the New York Times denied there was deliberate misrepresentation and called it politically motivated.
The person behind the leaked Pentagon report, Andrew Marsall, cannot be accused of the same partisan politicking.
Marsall, 82, has been an advisor for the defense department for decades, and was described by The Observer as the author of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plans for a major transformation of the US military.
All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.
Quick Links
TerraDaily
Search TerraDaily
Subscribe To TerraDaily Express
Top of Form
TerraDaily Search Engine
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
TED Conference 2009: Juan Enriquez: Beyond the crisis
Talks Juan Enriquez: Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis
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Discuss this talk: Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis ( Juan Enriquez )
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Discuss this talk: Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis ( Juan Enriquez )
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
$592 Trillion Phantom Economy Blows as Latest Demon Derivative Unwinds
$592 Trillion Phantom Economy Blows as Latest Demon Derivative Unwinds [see prior post from Sovereign Wealth Society Editor Bob [ex-Congressman]...
economist.com Nov29,2008 p.95 [paper edition] 'derivative watch - $9 trillion of CDS have run through the market knocking the Dow from 14,000 to 8,000 in one short year. with $580 Trillion outstanding and 15% growth of new CDS's being written on Treasury Bills [insurance policies written for the safest known entity for investors on the planet - 'unprecedented'].....
The worst demon derivative to date is about to whip down Wall Street…leveling what little is left!
- Over 700 banks (with trillions of dollars in assets) will come crashing to the ground.
- Hundreds of hedge funds will collapse.
- Corporate bankruptcies will soar.
- And another $20 trillion will be wiped off global stock markets.
- But this one bombed out investment will soar two to ten fold as the world comes undone.
- Find out the entire story from the investment group who eerily predicted the current crisis “to a T!”…
economist.com Nov29,2008 p.95 [paper edition] 'derivative watch - $9 trillion of CDS have run through the market knocking the Dow from 14,000 to 8,000 in one short year. with $580 Trillion outstanding and 15% growth of new CDS's being written on Treasury Bills [insurance policies written for the safest known entity for investors on the planet - 'unprecedented'].....
The worst demon derivative to date is about to whip down Wall Street…leveling what little is left!
- Over 700 banks (with trillions of dollars in assets) will come crashing to the ground.
- Hundreds of hedge funds will collapse.
- Corporate bankruptcies will soar.
- And another $20 trillion will be wiped off global stock markets.
- But this one bombed out investment will soar two to ten fold as the world comes undone.
- Find out the entire story from the investment group who eerily predicted the current crisis “to a T!”…
Monday, February 9, 2009
Gross: Trillions, Not Billions, Needed ($35 TR Global GDP on $580 Global Derivatives exposure)
Street Talk
http://moneynews.newsmax.com/streettalk/gross_depression/2009/02/09/179716.html?utm_medium=RSS
Einstein Quote:
"It is a scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult and the good easy."
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Gross: Trillions, Not Billions, Needed
Monday, February 9, 2009 9:52 AM
By: Julie Crawshaw Article Font Size
Forget bailout billions, says Pimco bond giant co-CEO Bill Gross. Preventing a “mini-depression” will cost taxpayers trillions.
"This economy needs support from the government, a check from the government in the trillions," Gross told Bloomberg.
"There is a potential catastrophe if the U.S. government continues to focus on billions of dollars."
Gross says the Fed need to buy Treasuries to keep long-term interest rates low while the U.S. increases its debt sales to pay for its huge budget deficit and stimulus programs.
“To the extent that the Chinese and others do not have the necessary funds, someone has to buy them,” Gross says.
“It is incumbent upon the Fed to step in. If they do, that will be a significant day in the bond market and the credit markets.”
General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, too, warns that the U.S. economy is suffering its steepest downturn since at least the 1970s and could descend into depression.
“Unlike the other downturns that I’ve been a part of, this one is faced with limited liquidity,” Immelt said at a recent conference.
“Once you break through ’74-’75, you don’t stop ’til you get to 1929,” adding that governments are doing all they can to stimulate economic growth and stabilize credit markets — and that the measures being taken should show results by early next year.
“Governments are all in,” Immelt says. “And in my view, government always wins.”
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
http://moneynews.newsmax.com/streettalk/gross_depression/2009/02/09/179716.html?utm_medium=RSS
Einstein Quote:
"It is a scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult and the good easy."
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Gross: Trillions, Not Billions, Needed
Monday, February 9, 2009 9:52 AM
By: Julie Crawshaw Article Font Size
Forget bailout billions, says Pimco bond giant co-CEO Bill Gross. Preventing a “mini-depression” will cost taxpayers trillions.
"This economy needs support from the government, a check from the government in the trillions," Gross told Bloomberg.
"There is a potential catastrophe if the U.S. government continues to focus on billions of dollars."
Gross says the Fed need to buy Treasuries to keep long-term interest rates low while the U.S. increases its debt sales to pay for its huge budget deficit and stimulus programs.
“To the extent that the Chinese and others do not have the necessary funds, someone has to buy them,” Gross says.
“It is incumbent upon the Fed to step in. If they do, that will be a significant day in the bond market and the credit markets.”
General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, too, warns that the U.S. economy is suffering its steepest downturn since at least the 1970s and could descend into depression.
“Unlike the other downturns that I’ve been a part of, this one is faced with limited liquidity,” Immelt said at a recent conference.
“Once you break through ’74-’75, you don’t stop ’til you get to 1929,” adding that governments are doing all they can to stimulate economic growth and stabilize credit markets — and that the measures being taken should show results by early next year.
“Governments are all in,” Immelt says. “And in my view, government always wins.”
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
The Internet for Activists
The Internet for Activists
Internet for Activists is a how-to-do-it guide to using websites and e-mail in grass roots politics. Leonard Kranser's unique book blends essential technical knowledge with lots of political and media savvy. The result is a practical handbook in layman's language for those who are not computer experts. It is easy reading, filled with interesting real-world examples.
Kranser shares what he learned field-testing Internet tactics in a successful six-year campaign to rally public opposition to his county government's multi-billion dollar El Toro airport plan. He writes for those who may need to carry on similar efforts "with hard work, clever tactics, and a miniscule budget."
His El Toro Info website won an Award of Excellence for Internet and On-Line Marketing from the Public Relations Society of America.
"Len Kranser's explanation of how the battle over El Toro was waged is a how-to manual for Web-based political activism . . . The relationship between ordinary citizens and their government will never be quite the same again."
- Stephen Burgard, Director, School of Journalism, Northeastern University
Formerly editorial writer, The Los Angeles Times Orange County
Internet for Activists is a how-to-do-it guide to using websites and e-mail in grass roots politics. Leonard Kranser's unique book blends essential technical knowledge with lots of political and media savvy. The result is a practical handbook in layman's language for those who are not computer experts. It is easy reading, filled with interesting real-world examples.
Kranser shares what he learned field-testing Internet tactics in a successful six-year campaign to rally public opposition to his county government's multi-billion dollar El Toro airport plan. He writes for those who may need to carry on similar efforts "with hard work, clever tactics, and a miniscule budget."
His El Toro Info website won an Award of Excellence for Internet and On-Line Marketing from the Public Relations Society of America.
"Len Kranser's explanation of how the battle over El Toro was waged is a how-to manual for Web-based political activism . . . The relationship between ordinary citizens and their government will never be quite the same again."
- Stephen Burgard, Director, School of Journalism, Northeastern University
Formerly editorial writer, The Los Angeles Times Orange County
Hanford Nuclerar Waste Site Washington
Hanford Nuclerar Waste Site Washington
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Nuclear reactors line the riverbank at the Hanford Site along the Columbia River in January 1960. The N Reactor is in the foreground, with the twin KE and KW Reactors in the immediate background. The historic B Reactor, the world's first plutonium production reactor, is visible in the distance.
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, operated by the United States federal government. The site has been known by many names, including;
- Hanford Works,
- Hanford Engineer Works,
- Hanford Nuclear Reservation or HNR,and the Hanford Project.
Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project in the town of Hanford in south-central Washington, the site was home to the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world.[1] Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first nuclear bomb, tested at the Trinity site, and in Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan.
During the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five massive plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.[2][3] Nuclear technology developed rapidly during this period, and Hanford scientists produced many notable technological achievements. However, many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate. Government documents have since confirmed that Hanford's operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the Columbia River, which threatened the health of residents and ecosystems.[4]
The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the manufacturing process left behind 53 million U.S. gallons (204,000 m³) of high-level radioactive waste that remains at the site.[5] This represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume.[6] Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States[7][8] and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup.[2] While most of the current activity at the site is related to the cleanup project, Hanford also hosts a commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station, and various centers for scientific research and development, such as the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the LIGO Hanford Observatory.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Geography
* 2 Early history
* 3 Manhattan Project
o 3.1 Site selection
o 3.2 Construction begins
o 3.3 Plutonium production
o 3.4 Technological innovations
* 4 Cold War expansion
o 4.1 Decommissioning
* 5 Contemporary Hanford
o 5.1 Site tours
* 6 Environmental concerns
* 7 Cleanup era
* 8 Historic photos
* 9 References
* 10 External links
[edit] Geography
A map shows the main areas of the Hanford Site, as well as the buffer zone that was turned over to the Hanford Reach National Monument in 2000. (See also this virtual tour of the site.)
The Hanford Site occupies 586 square miles (1,518 km2) in Benton County, Washington (centered on [show location on an interactive map] 46°30′N 119°30′W / 46.5°N 119.5°W / 46.5; -119.5Coordinates: [show location on an interactive map] 46°30′N 119°30′W / 46.5°N 119.5°W / 46.5; -119.5), roughly equivalent to half the total area of Rhode Island.[2] This land is currently uninhabited and is closed to the general public. It is a semi-desert environment, covered mostly by shrub-steppe vegetation. The Columbia River flows along the site for approximately 50 miles (80 km), forming its northern and eastern boundary.[9] The original site was 670 square miles (1,740 km2) and included buffer areas across the river in Grant and Franklin counties.[10] Some of this land has been returned to private use and is now covered with orchards and irrigated fields. In 2000, large portions of the site were turned over to the Hanford Reach National Monument.[11] The site is divided by function into three main areas. The nuclear reactors were located along the river in an area designated as the 100 Area; the chemical separations complexes were located inland in the Central Plateau, designated as the 200 Area; and various support facilities were located in the southeast corner of the site, designated as the 300 area.[12]
The site is bordered on the southeast by the Tri-Cities, a metropolitan area composed of Richland, Kennewick, Pasco, and smaller communities, and home to nearly 200,000 residents. Hanford is the primary economic base for these cities.[13]
[edit] Early history
The confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia rivers has been a meeting place for native peoples for centuries. The archaeological record of Native American habitation of this area stretches back over ten thousand years. Tribes and nations including the Yakama, Nez Perce, and Umatilla used the area for hunting, fishing, and gathering plant foods.[14] Hanford archaeologists have identified numerous Native American sites, including "pit house villages, open campsites, fishing sites, hunting/kill sites, game drive complexes, quarries, and spirit quest sites",[15] and two archaeological sites were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.[16] Native American use of the area continued into the 20th century, even as the tribes were relocated to reservations. The Wanapum people were never forced onto a reservation, and they lived along the Columbia River in the Priest Rapids Valley until 1943.[17] Euro-Americans began to settle the region in the 1860s, initially along the Columbia River south of Priest Rapids. They established farms and orchards supported by small-scale irrigation projects and railroad transportation, with small town centers at Hanford, White Bluffs, and Richland.[18]
[edit] Manhattan Project
Main article: Manhattan Project
During World War II, the Uranium Committee of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) sponsored an intensive research project on plutonium. The research contract was awarded to scientists at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab). At the time, plutonium was a rare element that had only recently been isolated in a University of California laboratory. The Met Lab researchers worked on producing chain-reacting "piles" of uranium to convert it to plutonium and finding ways to separate plutonium from uranium. The program was accelerated in 1942, as the United States government became concerned that scientists in Nazi Germany were developing a nuclear weapons program.[19]
[edit] Site selection
Hanford High School, shown before residents were displaced by the creation of the Hanford Site
Hanford High after abandonment
In September 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers placed the newly formed Manhattan Project under the command of General Leslie R. Groves, charging him with the construction of industrial-size plants for manufacturing plutonium and uranium.[20] Groves recruited the DuPont Company to be the prime contractor for the construction of the plutonium production complex. DuPont recommended that it be located far away from the existing uranium production facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The ideal site was described by these criteria:[21]
* A large and remote tract of land
* A "hazardous manufacturing area" of at least 12 by 16 miles (19 km × 26 km)
* Space for laboratory facilities at least 8 miles (13 km) from the nearest reactor or separations plant
* No towns of more than 1,000 people closer than 20 miles (32 km) from the hazardous rectangle
* No main highway, railway, or employee village closer than 10 miles (16 km) from the hazardous rectangle
* A clean and abundant water supply
* A large electric power supply
* Ground that could bear heavy loads.
In December 1942, Groves dispatched his assistant Colonel Franklin T. Matthias and DuPont engineers to scout potential sites. Matthias reported that Hanford was "ideal in virtually all respects," except for the farming towns of White Bluffs and Hanford.[22] General Groves visited the site in January and established the Hanford Engineer Works, codenamed "Site W". The federal government quickly acquired the land under its eminent domain authority and forcefully removed some 1,500 residents of Hanford, White Bluffs, and nearby settlements, as well as the Wanapum and other tribes using the area.[23]
[edit] Construction begins
B-Reactor construction (1944)
The Hanford Engineer Works (HEW) broke ground in March 1943 and immediately launched a massive and technically challenging construction project.[24] Nearly 50,000 workers lived in a construction camp near the old Hanford townsite, while administrators and engineers lived in the government town established at Richland Village.[25] Construction of the nuclear facilities proceeded rapidly. Before the end of the war in August 1945, the HEW built 554 buildings at Hanford, including three nuclear reactors (105-B, 105-D, and 105-F) and three plutonium processing canyons (221-T, 221-B, and 221-U), each 250 meters (820 ft) long.
To receive the radioactive wastes from the chemical separations process, the HEW built "tank farms" consisting of 64 single-shell underground waste tanks (241-B, 241-C, 241-T, and 241-U).[26] The project required 386 miles (621 km) of roads, 158 miles (254 km) of railway, and four electrical substations. The HEW used 780,000 cubic yards (600,000 m³) of concrete and 40,000 short tons (36,000 t) of structural steel and consumed $230 million between 1943 and 1946.[27]
[edit] Plutonium production
Further information: B-Reactor
The B-Reactor (105-B) at Hanford was the first large-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. It was designed and built by DuPont based on an experimental design by Enrico Fermi, and originally operated at 250 megawatts. The reactor was graphite moderated and water cooled. It consisted of a 28-by-36-foot (8.5 m × 11 m), 1,200-short-ton (1,100 t) graphite cylinder lying on its side, penetrated through its entire length horizontally by 2,004 aluminum tubes.[28] Two hundred short tons (180 t) of uranium slugs the size of rolls of quarters and sealed in aluminum cans went into the tubes. Cooling water was pumped through the aluminum tubes around the uranium slugs at the rate of 30,000 US gallons per minute (130 L/s).[28]
Front face of the B-Reactor
Construction on the B-Reactor began in August 1943 and was completed just over a year later, on September 13, 1944. The reactor went critical in late September and, after overcoming nuclear poisoning, produced its first plutonium on November 6, 1944.[29] Plutonium was produced in the Hanford reactors when a uranium-238 atom in a fuel slug absorbed a neutron to form uranium-239. U-239 rapidly undergoes beta decay to form neptunium-239, which rapidly undergoes a second beta decay to form plutonium-239. The irradiated fuel slugs were transported by rail to three huge remotely operated chemical separation plants called "canyons" that were located about 10 miles (16 km) away. A series of chemical processing steps separated the small amount of plutonium that was produced from the remaining uranium and the fission waste products. This first batch of plutonium was refined in the 221-T plant from December 26, 1944, to February 2, 1945, and delivered to the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico on February 5, 1945.[30]
Two identical reactors, the D-Reactor and the F-reactor, came online in December 1944 and February 1945, respectively. By April 1945, shipments of plutonium were headed to Los Alamos every five days, and Hanford soon provided enough material for the bombs tested at Trinity and dropped over Nagasaki.[31] Throughout this period, the Manhattan Project maintained a top secret classification. Until news arrived of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, fewer than one percent of Hanford's workers knew they were working on a nuclear weapons project.[32] General Groves noted in his memoirs that "We made certain that each member of the project thoroughly understood his part in the total effort; that, and nothing more."[33]
[edit] Technological innovations
In the short time frame of the Manhattan Project, Hanford engineers produced many significant technological advances. As no one had ever built an industrial-scale reactor before, scientists were unsure how much heat would be generated by fission during normal operations. Seeking the greatest margin of error, DuPont engineers installed ammonia-based refrigeration systems with the D and F reactors to further chill the river water before its use as reactor coolant.[34]
Another issue the engineers struggled with was how to deal with radioactive contamination. Once the canyons began processing irradiated slugs, the machinery would become so radioactive that it would be unsafe for humans ever to come in contact with it. The engineers therefore had to devise methods to allow for the replacement of any component via remote control. They came up with a modular cell concept, which allowed major components to be removed and replaced by an operator sitting in a heavily shielded overhead crane. This method required early practical application of two technologies that later gained widespread use: Teflon, used as a gasket material, and closed-circuit television, used to give the crane operator a better view of the process.[35]
[edit] Cold War expansion
Decommissioning the D-Reactor
In September 1946, the General Electric Company assumed management of the Hanford Works under the supervision of the newly created Atomic Energy Commission. As the Cold War began, the United States faced a new strategic threat in the rise of the Soviet nuclear weapons program. In August 1947, the Hanford Works announced funding for the construction of two new weapons reactors and research leading to the development of a new chemical separations process. With this announcement, Hanford entered a new phase of expansion.[36]
By 1963, the Hanford Site was home to nine nuclear reactors along the Columbia River, five reprocessing plants on the central plateau, and more than 900 support buildings and radiological laboratories around the site.[2] Extensive modifications and upgrades were made to the original three World War II reactors, and a total of 177 underground waste tanks were built.[2] Hanford was at its peak production from 1956 to 1965. Over the entire 40 years of operations, the site produced about 63 short tons (57 t) of plutonium, supplying the majority of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. arsenal.[2][3]
[edit] Decommissioning
Most of the reactors were shut down between 1964 and 1971, with an average individual life span of 22 years. The last reactor, the N-reactor, continued to operate as a dual-purpose reactor, being both a power reactor used to feed the civilian electrical grid via the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) and a plutonium production reactor for nuclear weapons. The N-Reactor operated until 1987. Since then, most of the Hanford reactors have been entombed ("cocooned") to allow the radioactive materials to decay, and the surrounding structures have been removed and buried.[37] The B-Reactor has not been cocooned and is accessible to the public on occasional guided tours. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992,[38] and some historians advocate converting it into a museum.[39][40] B reactor was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service on August 19, 2008.[41][42]
Weapons Production Reactors[43] Reactor name Start-up date Shutdown date Initial power
(MWt) Final power
(MWt)
B-Reactor Sep 1944 Feb 1968 250 2210
D-Reactor Dec 1944 Jun 1967 250 2165
F-Reactor Feb 1945 Jun 1965 250 2040
H-Reactor Oct 1949 Apr 1965 400 2140
DR-Reactor Oct 1950 Dec 1964 250 2015
C-Reactor Nov 1952 Apr 1969 650 2500
KW-Reactor Jan 1955 Feb 1970 1800 4400
KE-Reactor Apr 1955 Jan 1971 1800 4400
N-Reactor Dec 1963 Jan 1987 4000 4000
[edit] Contemporary Hanford
Highway sign on a road entering the Hanford Site
The United States Department of Energy assumed control of the Hanford Site in 1977. Although uranium enrichment and plutonium breeding were slowly phased out, the nuclear legacy left an indelible mark on the Tri-Cities. Since World War II, the area had developed from a small farming community to a booming "Atomic Frontier" to a powerhouse of the nuclear-industrial complex.[44] Decades of federal investment created a community of highly skilled scientists and engineers. As a result of this concentration of specialized skills, the Hanford Site was able to diversify its operations to include scientific research, test facilities, and commercial nuclear power production.
Some of the facilities currently located at the Hanford Site:
* The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, owned by the Department of Energy and operated by Battelle Memorial Institute
* The Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF), a national research facility in operation from 1980 to 1992 (in cold standby as of 2007[update])
* LIGO's Hanford Observatory, an interferometer searching for gravitational waves
* Columbia Generating Station, a commercial nuclear power plant operated by Energy Northwest.
[edit] Site tours
According to the Department of Energy website, there are tours of Hanford. Dates are posted on a website and are limited to U.S. citizens. Tours are expected to bring up to 2,000 people to the site. Many sites including Reactor B are visited during the tour.[45]
[edit] Environmental concerns
The Hanford Reach of the Columbia River, where radioactivity was released from 1944 to 1971
A huge volume of water from the Columbia River was required to dissipate the heat produced by Hanford's nuclear reactors. From 1944 to 1971, pump systems drew cooling water from the river and, after treating this water for use by the reactors, returned it to the river. Before being released back into the river, the used water was held in large tanks known as retention basins for up to six hours. Longer-lived isotopes were not affected by this retention, and several terabecquerels entered the river every day. By 1957, the eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford dumped a daily average of 50,000 curies (1,900 TBq) of radioactive material into the Columbia.[46] These releases were kept secret by the federal government.[4] Radiation was later measured downstream as far west as the Washington and Oregon coasts.[47]
The plutonium separation process also resulted in the release of radioactive isotopes into the air, which were carried by the wind throughout southeastern Washington and into parts of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and British Columbia.[4] Downwinders were exposed to radionuclides, particularly iodine-131, with the heaviest releases during the period from 1945 to 1951. These radionuclides filtered into the food chain via contaminated fields where dairy cows grazed; hazardous fallout was ingested by communities who consumed the radioactive food and drank the milk. Most of these airborne releases were a part of Hanford's routine operations, while a few of the larger releases occurred in isolated incidents. In 1949, an intentional release known as the "Green Run" released 8,000 curies of iodine-131 over two days.[48] Another source of contaminated food came from Columbia River fish, an impact felt disproportionately by Native American communities who depended on the river for their customary diets.[4]
Salmon spawning in the Hanford Reach near the H-Reactor
Beginning in the 1960s, scientists with the U.S. Public Health Service published reports about radioactivity released from Hanford, and there were protests from the health departments of Oregon and Washington. By February 1986, mounting citizen pressure forced the Department of Energy to release to the public 19,000 pages of previously unavailable historical documents about Hanford’s operations.[4] The Washington State Department of Health collaborated with the citizen-led Hanford Health Information Network (HHIN) to publicize data about the health effects of Hanford’s operations. HHIN reports concluded that residents who lived downwind from Hanford or who used the Columbia River downstream were exposed to elevated doses of radiation that placed them at increased risk for various cancers and other diseases.[4] A class-action lawsuit brought by two thousand Hanford downwinders against the federal government has been in the court system for many years.[49] The first six plaintiffs went to trial in 2005, in a bellwether trial to test the legal issues applying to the remaining plaintiffs in the suit.[50]
[edit] Cleanup era
Image of the surface of waste found inside double-shell tank 101-SY at the Hanford Site, April 1989
In 1989, the Washington Department of Ecology, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Energy entered into the Tri-Party Agreement, which provides a legal framework for environmental remediation at Hanford.[8] The agencies are currently engaged in the world's largest environmental cleanup, with many challenges to be resolved in the face of overlapping technical, political, regulatory, and cultural interests. The cleanup effort is focused on three outcomes: restoring the Columbia River corridor for other uses, converting the central plateau to long-term waste treatment and storage, and preparing for the future.[51] The cleanup effort is managed by the Department of Energy under the oversight of the two regulatory agencies. A citizen-led Hanford Advisory Board provides recommendations from community stakeholders, including local and state governments, regional environmental organizations, business interests, and Native American tribes.[52] In recent years, the federal government has spent about $2 billion annually on the Hanford project.[53] About 11,000 workers are on site to consolidate, clean up, and mitigate waste, contaminated buildings, and contaminated soil.[5] Originally scheduled to be complete within thirty years, the cleanup was less than half finished by 2008.[53]
Spent nuclear fuel stored underwater and uncapped in Hanford's K-East Basin
While major releases of radioactive material ended with the reactor shutdown in the 1970s, parts of the Hanford Site remain heavily contaminated. Many of the most dangerous wastes are contained, but there are concerns about contaminated groundwater headed toward the Columbia River. There are also continued concerns about workers' health and safety.[53]
The most significant challenge at Hanford is stabilizing the 53 million U.S. gallons (204,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks. About a third of these tanks have leaked waste into the soil and groundwater.[54] As of 2008[update], most of the liquid waste has been transferred to more secure double-shelled tanks; however, 2.8 million U.S. gallons (10,600 m3) of liquid waste, together with 27 million U.S. gallons (100,000 m3) of salt cake and sludge, remains in the single-shelled tanks.[5] That waste was originally scheduled to be removed by 2018. The revised deadline is 2040.[53] Nearby aquifers contain an estimated 270 billion U.S. gallons (1 billion m3) of contaminated groundwater as a result of the leaks.[55] As of 2008[update], 1 million U.S. gallons (4,000 m3) of highly radioactive waste is traveling through the groundwater toward the Columbia River. This waste is expected to reach the river in 12 to 50 years if cleanup does not proceed on schedule.[5] The site also includes 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste.[55]
Grand opening of the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF)
Under the Tri-Party Agreement, lower-level hazardous wastes are buried in huge lined pits that will be sealed and monitored with sophisticated instruments for many years. Disposal of plutonium and other high-level wastes is a more difficult problem that continues to be a subject of intense debate. As an example, plutonium has a half-life of 24,100 years, and a decay of ten half-lives is required before a sample is considered to be safe.[56][57] The Department of Energy is currently building a vitrification plant on the Hanford Site. Vitrification is a method designed to combine these dangerous wastes with glass to render them stable. Bechtel, the San Francisco based construction and engineering firm, has been hired to construct the vitrification plant, which is currently estimated to cost approximately $12 billion. Construction began in 2001. After some delays, the plant is now scheduled to be operational in 2019, with vitrification completed in 2047. It was originally scheduled to be operational by 2011, with vitrification completed by 2028.[53][58]
In May 2007, state and federal officials began closed-door negotiations about the possibility of extending legal cleanup deadlines for waste vitrification in exchange for shifting the focus of the cleanup to urgent priorities, such as groundwater remediation. Those talks stalled in October. In early 2008, a $600 million cut to the Hanford cleanup budget was proposed. Washington state officials expressed concern about the budget cuts, as well as missed deadlines and recent safety lapses at the site, and threatened to file a lawsuit alleging that the Department of Energy is in violation of environmental laws.[53] They appeared to step back from that threat in April after another meeting of federal and state officials resulted in progress toward a tentative agreement.[59]
[edit] Historic photos
Cooling water retention basins at the F-Reactor
Underground tank farm with 12 of the site's 177 waste storage tanks
Inside one of the waste storage tanks
Inside the PUREX facility
View of the central plateau from Rattlesnake Mountain
The government town of Richland in the early days of the site
Hanford workers lining up for paychecks
Hanford scientists feeding radioactive food to sheep
Testing a sheep's thyroid for radiation
Cold War-era billboard
"Atomic Frontier Days" parade in Richland
The Fast Flux Test Facility
[edit] References
1. ^ "B Reactor". United States Department of Energy. http://www.energy.gov/about/breactor.htm. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
2. ^ a b c d e f "Hanford Site: Hanford Overview". United States Department of Energy. http://www.hanford.gov/?page=215. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
3. ^ a b "Science Watch: Growing Nuclear Arsenal". The New York Times. April 28, 1987. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEFD71F38F93BA15757C0A961948260. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
4. ^ a b c d e f "An Overview of Hanford and Radiation Health Effects". Hanford Health Information Network. http://www.doh.wa.gov/hanford/publications/overview/overview.html. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
5. ^ a b c d "Hanford Quick Facts". Washington Department of Ecology. http://www.ecy.wa.gov/features/hanford/hanfordfacts.html. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
6. ^ Harden, Blaine; Dan Morgan (June 2, 2007). "Debate Intensifies on Nuclear Waste". Washington Post: p. A02. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7951-2004Jun1.html. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
7. ^ Dininny, Shannon (April 3, 2007). "U.S. to Assess the Harm from Hanford". Seattle Post-Intelligencer (The Associated Press). http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/310247_hanford04.html. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
8. ^ a b Schneider, Keith (February 28, 1989). "Agreement for a Cleanup at Nuclear Site". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE2DF1230F93BA15751C0A96F948260. Retrieved on 30 January 2008.
9. ^ "The Columbia River at Risk: Why Hanford Cleanup is Vital to Oregon". oregon.gov. 2007-08-01. http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/NUCSAF/HCleanup.shtml. Retrieved on 2008-03-31.
10. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.12. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
11. ^ Seelye, Katharine (June 10, 2000). "Gore Praises Move to Aid Salmon Run". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E7D61E3FF933A25755C0A9669C8B63. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
12. ^ "Site Map Area and Description". Columbia Riverkeepers. http://www.columbiariverkeeper.org/sitemap.htm. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
13. ^ Lewis, Mike (April 19, 2002). "In strange twist, Hanford cleanup creates latest boom". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/67172_boom19.shtml. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
14. ^ "Hanford Reach National Monument". HistoryLink.org: The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7438. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
15. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.12. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
16. ^ Hanford Island Archaeological Site (NRHP #76001870) and Hanford North Archaeological District (NHRP #76001871). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2007-01-23. http://www.nr.nps.gov/. (See also the commercial site National Register of Historic Places.)
17. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.12. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
18. ^ Gerber, Michele (2002). On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (2nd Ed. ed.). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. p. 16–22. ISBN 0803271018.
19. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.10. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
20. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.12. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
21. ^ Gerber, Michele (1992). Legend and Legacy: Fifty Years of Defense Production at the Hanford Site. Richland, Washington: Westinghouse Hanford Company. p. 6.
22. ^ Franklin, Matthias (January 14, 1987). "Hanford Engineer Works, Manhattan Engineer District: Early History". Speech to the Technical Exchange Program.
23. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.12. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
24. ^ Oldham, Kit (2003-03-05). "Construction of massive plutonium production complex at Hanford begins in March 1943". History Link. http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5363. Retrieved on 2008-04-06.
25. ^ Thayer, H. (1996). Management of the Hanford Engineer Works in World War II. New York, NY: American Society of Civil Engineers Press.
26. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.21–1.23. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
27. ^ Gerber, Michele (2002). On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (2nd Ed. ed.). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. p. 35–36. ISBN 0803271018.
28. ^ a b Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.15, 1.30. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
29. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.22–1.27. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
30. ^ Findlay, John; Bruce Hevly (1995). Nuclear Technologies and Nuclear Communities: A History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities, 1943-1993. Seattle, WA: Hanford History Project, Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington. p. 50.
31. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.27. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
32. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.22. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
33. ^ Groves, Leslie (1983). Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. New York, NY: Da Capo Press. p. xv.
34. ^ Sanger, S. L.. Working on the Bomb: an Oral History of WWII Hanford. Portland, Oregon: Continuing Education Press, Portland State University. p. 70.
35. ^ Sanger, S. L.. Working on the Bomb: an Oral History of WWII Hanford. Portland, Oregon: Continuing Education Press, Portland State University. interview with Generaux.
36. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.42–45. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
37. ^ "Cocooning Hanford Reactors". City of Richland. 2003-12-02. http://www.ci.richland.wa.us/richland/hanford/index.cfm?PageNum=12. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
38. ^ NRHP site #92000245. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2007-01-23. http://www.nr.nps.gov/. Retrieved on 2008-04-06. (See also the commercial site National Register of Historic Places.)
39. ^ "B-Reactor Museum Association". B Reactor Museum Association. January 2008. http://www.b-reactor.org. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
40. ^ "Big Step Toward B Reactor Preservation". KNDO/KNDU News. 2008-03-12. http://www.kndu.com/Global/story.asp?s=8007629. Retrieved on 6 April 2008.
41. ^ Chemical & Engineering News Vol. 86 No. 35, 1 Sept. 2008, "Hanford's B Reactor gets LANDMARK Status", p. 37
42. ^ "National Historic Landmarks Program - B Reactor". National Park Service. August 19, 2008. http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=1219850799&ResourceType=Structure. Retrieved on 2009-01-05.
43. ^ "Plutonium: the first 50 years: United States plutonium production, acquisition, and utilization from 1944 through 1994". U.S. Department of Energy. http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/pu50yc.html#ZZ16. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
44. ^ Hevly, Bruce; John Findlay (1998). The Atomic West. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
45. ^ Nuclear tourism: Hanford lures visitors - US and Canada - MSNBC.com
46. ^ "Hanford History". Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. http://www.wpsr.org/history/. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
47. ^ "Radiation Flowed 200 Miles to Sea, Study Finds". The New York Times. July 17, 1992. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE0D8173FF934A25754C0A964958260. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
48. ^ Gerber, Michele (2002). On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (2nd Ed. ed.). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. p. 78–80. ISBN 0803271018.
49. ^ Hanford Downwinders Litigation Website. Downwinders.com. Retrieved on 2008-04-06.
50. ^ McClure, Robert (May 21, 2005). "Downwinders' court win seen as 'great victory'". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/225306_downwinders21.html. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
51. ^ "Hanford Site Tour Script" (PDF). United States Department of Energy. October 2007. http://www.hanford.gov/hanford/files/PublicTourScript.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
52. ^ "Hanford Site: Hanford Advisory Board". United States Department of Energy. http://www.hanford.gov/?page=397. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
53. ^ a b c d e f Stiffler, Lisa (March 20, 2008). "Troubled Hanford cleanup has state mulling lawsuit". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/355924_hanford21.html. Retrieved on 8 May 2008.
54. ^ Wald, Matthew (January 16, 1998). "Panel Details Management Flaws at Hanford Nuclear Waste Site". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E3D71638F935A25752C0A96E958260. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
55. ^ a b Wolman, David (April 2007). "Fission Trip". Wired Magazine: p. 78.
56. ^ Hanson, Laura A. (November 2000). "Radioactive Waste Contamination of Soil and Groundwater at the Hanford Site" (PDF). University of Idaho. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
57. ^ Gephart, Roy (2003). Hanford: A Conversation About Nuclear Waste and Cleanup. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. ISBN 1-57477-134-5.
58. ^ Dininny, Shannon (September 8, 2006). "Hanford plant now $12.2 billion". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/284334_hanford08.html. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
59. ^ Stiffler, Lisa (April 3, 2008). "State steps back from brink of Hanford suit". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/environment/archives/135723.asp. Retrieved on 8 May 2008.
[edit] External links
Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hanford Site
* Official Hanford website Department of Energy.
* Hanford Challenge Hanford watchdog group, based in Seattle.
* Hanford News Current news from the Tri-City Herald.
* Hanford Site Environmental Report Detailed annual report on radioactive concentrations measured at the Hanford Site.
* Atomic Heritage Foundation Historic Preservation of Manhattan Project Sites at Hanford.
* B Reactor Museum Association A collection of Hanford-related documents from a group fighting to preserve the B-100 Reactor at Hanford.
* Contaminated US site faces 'catastrophic' nuclear leak 2008 New Scientist report.
* Heart of America Northwest Hanford watchdog group, based in Seattle.
* The Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Annotated bibliography for the Hanford Site.
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Nuclear reactors line the riverbank at the Hanford Site along the Columbia River in January 1960. The N Reactor is in the foreground, with the twin KE and KW Reactors in the immediate background. The historic B Reactor, the world's first plutonium production reactor, is visible in the distance.
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, operated by the United States federal government. The site has been known by many names, including;
- Hanford Works,
- Hanford Engineer Works,
- Hanford Nuclear Reservation or HNR,and the Hanford Project.
Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project in the town of Hanford in south-central Washington, the site was home to the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world.[1] Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first nuclear bomb, tested at the Trinity site, and in Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan.
During the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five massive plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.[2][3] Nuclear technology developed rapidly during this period, and Hanford scientists produced many notable technological achievements. However, many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate. Government documents have since confirmed that Hanford's operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the Columbia River, which threatened the health of residents and ecosystems.[4]
The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the manufacturing process left behind 53 million U.S. gallons (204,000 m³) of high-level radioactive waste that remains at the site.[5] This represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume.[6] Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States[7][8] and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup.[2] While most of the current activity at the site is related to the cleanup project, Hanford also hosts a commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station, and various centers for scientific research and development, such as the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the LIGO Hanford Observatory.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Geography
* 2 Early history
* 3 Manhattan Project
o 3.1 Site selection
o 3.2 Construction begins
o 3.3 Plutonium production
o 3.4 Technological innovations
* 4 Cold War expansion
o 4.1 Decommissioning
* 5 Contemporary Hanford
o 5.1 Site tours
* 6 Environmental concerns
* 7 Cleanup era
* 8 Historic photos
* 9 References
* 10 External links
[edit] Geography
A map shows the main areas of the Hanford Site, as well as the buffer zone that was turned over to the Hanford Reach National Monument in 2000. (See also this virtual tour of the site.)
The Hanford Site occupies 586 square miles (1,518 km2) in Benton County, Washington (centered on [show location on an interactive map] 46°30′N 119°30′W / 46.5°N 119.5°W / 46.5; -119.5Coordinates: [show location on an interactive map] 46°30′N 119°30′W / 46.5°N 119.5°W / 46.5; -119.5), roughly equivalent to half the total area of Rhode Island.[2] This land is currently uninhabited and is closed to the general public. It is a semi-desert environment, covered mostly by shrub-steppe vegetation. The Columbia River flows along the site for approximately 50 miles (80 km), forming its northern and eastern boundary.[9] The original site was 670 square miles (1,740 km2) and included buffer areas across the river in Grant and Franklin counties.[10] Some of this land has been returned to private use and is now covered with orchards and irrigated fields. In 2000, large portions of the site were turned over to the Hanford Reach National Monument.[11] The site is divided by function into three main areas. The nuclear reactors were located along the river in an area designated as the 100 Area; the chemical separations complexes were located inland in the Central Plateau, designated as the 200 Area; and various support facilities were located in the southeast corner of the site, designated as the 300 area.[12]
The site is bordered on the southeast by the Tri-Cities, a metropolitan area composed of Richland, Kennewick, Pasco, and smaller communities, and home to nearly 200,000 residents. Hanford is the primary economic base for these cities.[13]
[edit] Early history
The confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia rivers has been a meeting place for native peoples for centuries. The archaeological record of Native American habitation of this area stretches back over ten thousand years. Tribes and nations including the Yakama, Nez Perce, and Umatilla used the area for hunting, fishing, and gathering plant foods.[14] Hanford archaeologists have identified numerous Native American sites, including "pit house villages, open campsites, fishing sites, hunting/kill sites, game drive complexes, quarries, and spirit quest sites",[15] and two archaeological sites were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.[16] Native American use of the area continued into the 20th century, even as the tribes were relocated to reservations. The Wanapum people were never forced onto a reservation, and they lived along the Columbia River in the Priest Rapids Valley until 1943.[17] Euro-Americans began to settle the region in the 1860s, initially along the Columbia River south of Priest Rapids. They established farms and orchards supported by small-scale irrigation projects and railroad transportation, with small town centers at Hanford, White Bluffs, and Richland.[18]
[edit] Manhattan Project
Main article: Manhattan Project
During World War II, the Uranium Committee of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) sponsored an intensive research project on plutonium. The research contract was awarded to scientists at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab). At the time, plutonium was a rare element that had only recently been isolated in a University of California laboratory. The Met Lab researchers worked on producing chain-reacting "piles" of uranium to convert it to plutonium and finding ways to separate plutonium from uranium. The program was accelerated in 1942, as the United States government became concerned that scientists in Nazi Germany were developing a nuclear weapons program.[19]
[edit] Site selection
Hanford High School, shown before residents were displaced by the creation of the Hanford Site
Hanford High after abandonment
In September 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers placed the newly formed Manhattan Project under the command of General Leslie R. Groves, charging him with the construction of industrial-size plants for manufacturing plutonium and uranium.[20] Groves recruited the DuPont Company to be the prime contractor for the construction of the plutonium production complex. DuPont recommended that it be located far away from the existing uranium production facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The ideal site was described by these criteria:[21]
* A large and remote tract of land
* A "hazardous manufacturing area" of at least 12 by 16 miles (19 km × 26 km)
* Space for laboratory facilities at least 8 miles (13 km) from the nearest reactor or separations plant
* No towns of more than 1,000 people closer than 20 miles (32 km) from the hazardous rectangle
* No main highway, railway, or employee village closer than 10 miles (16 km) from the hazardous rectangle
* A clean and abundant water supply
* A large electric power supply
* Ground that could bear heavy loads.
In December 1942, Groves dispatched his assistant Colonel Franklin T. Matthias and DuPont engineers to scout potential sites. Matthias reported that Hanford was "ideal in virtually all respects," except for the farming towns of White Bluffs and Hanford.[22] General Groves visited the site in January and established the Hanford Engineer Works, codenamed "Site W". The federal government quickly acquired the land under its eminent domain authority and forcefully removed some 1,500 residents of Hanford, White Bluffs, and nearby settlements, as well as the Wanapum and other tribes using the area.[23]
[edit] Construction begins
B-Reactor construction (1944)
The Hanford Engineer Works (HEW) broke ground in March 1943 and immediately launched a massive and technically challenging construction project.[24] Nearly 50,000 workers lived in a construction camp near the old Hanford townsite, while administrators and engineers lived in the government town established at Richland Village.[25] Construction of the nuclear facilities proceeded rapidly. Before the end of the war in August 1945, the HEW built 554 buildings at Hanford, including three nuclear reactors (105-B, 105-D, and 105-F) and three plutonium processing canyons (221-T, 221-B, and 221-U), each 250 meters (820 ft) long.
To receive the radioactive wastes from the chemical separations process, the HEW built "tank farms" consisting of 64 single-shell underground waste tanks (241-B, 241-C, 241-T, and 241-U).[26] The project required 386 miles (621 km) of roads, 158 miles (254 km) of railway, and four electrical substations. The HEW used 780,000 cubic yards (600,000 m³) of concrete and 40,000 short tons (36,000 t) of structural steel and consumed $230 million between 1943 and 1946.[27]
[edit] Plutonium production
Further information: B-Reactor
The B-Reactor (105-B) at Hanford was the first large-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. It was designed and built by DuPont based on an experimental design by Enrico Fermi, and originally operated at 250 megawatts. The reactor was graphite moderated and water cooled. It consisted of a 28-by-36-foot (8.5 m × 11 m), 1,200-short-ton (1,100 t) graphite cylinder lying on its side, penetrated through its entire length horizontally by 2,004 aluminum tubes.[28] Two hundred short tons (180 t) of uranium slugs the size of rolls of quarters and sealed in aluminum cans went into the tubes. Cooling water was pumped through the aluminum tubes around the uranium slugs at the rate of 30,000 US gallons per minute (130 L/s).[28]
Front face of the B-Reactor
Construction on the B-Reactor began in August 1943 and was completed just over a year later, on September 13, 1944. The reactor went critical in late September and, after overcoming nuclear poisoning, produced its first plutonium on November 6, 1944.[29] Plutonium was produced in the Hanford reactors when a uranium-238 atom in a fuel slug absorbed a neutron to form uranium-239. U-239 rapidly undergoes beta decay to form neptunium-239, which rapidly undergoes a second beta decay to form plutonium-239. The irradiated fuel slugs were transported by rail to three huge remotely operated chemical separation plants called "canyons" that were located about 10 miles (16 km) away. A series of chemical processing steps separated the small amount of plutonium that was produced from the remaining uranium and the fission waste products. This first batch of plutonium was refined in the 221-T plant from December 26, 1944, to February 2, 1945, and delivered to the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico on February 5, 1945.[30]
Two identical reactors, the D-Reactor and the F-reactor, came online in December 1944 and February 1945, respectively. By April 1945, shipments of plutonium were headed to Los Alamos every five days, and Hanford soon provided enough material for the bombs tested at Trinity and dropped over Nagasaki.[31] Throughout this period, the Manhattan Project maintained a top secret classification. Until news arrived of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, fewer than one percent of Hanford's workers knew they were working on a nuclear weapons project.[32] General Groves noted in his memoirs that "We made certain that each member of the project thoroughly understood his part in the total effort; that, and nothing more."[33]
[edit] Technological innovations
In the short time frame of the Manhattan Project, Hanford engineers produced many significant technological advances. As no one had ever built an industrial-scale reactor before, scientists were unsure how much heat would be generated by fission during normal operations. Seeking the greatest margin of error, DuPont engineers installed ammonia-based refrigeration systems with the D and F reactors to further chill the river water before its use as reactor coolant.[34]
Another issue the engineers struggled with was how to deal with radioactive contamination. Once the canyons began processing irradiated slugs, the machinery would become so radioactive that it would be unsafe for humans ever to come in contact with it. The engineers therefore had to devise methods to allow for the replacement of any component via remote control. They came up with a modular cell concept, which allowed major components to be removed and replaced by an operator sitting in a heavily shielded overhead crane. This method required early practical application of two technologies that later gained widespread use: Teflon, used as a gasket material, and closed-circuit television, used to give the crane operator a better view of the process.[35]
[edit] Cold War expansion
Decommissioning the D-Reactor
In September 1946, the General Electric Company assumed management of the Hanford Works under the supervision of the newly created Atomic Energy Commission. As the Cold War began, the United States faced a new strategic threat in the rise of the Soviet nuclear weapons program. In August 1947, the Hanford Works announced funding for the construction of two new weapons reactors and research leading to the development of a new chemical separations process. With this announcement, Hanford entered a new phase of expansion.[36]
By 1963, the Hanford Site was home to nine nuclear reactors along the Columbia River, five reprocessing plants on the central plateau, and more than 900 support buildings and radiological laboratories around the site.[2] Extensive modifications and upgrades were made to the original three World War II reactors, and a total of 177 underground waste tanks were built.[2] Hanford was at its peak production from 1956 to 1965. Over the entire 40 years of operations, the site produced about 63 short tons (57 t) of plutonium, supplying the majority of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. arsenal.[2][3]
[edit] Decommissioning
Most of the reactors were shut down between 1964 and 1971, with an average individual life span of 22 years. The last reactor, the N-reactor, continued to operate as a dual-purpose reactor, being both a power reactor used to feed the civilian electrical grid via the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) and a plutonium production reactor for nuclear weapons. The N-Reactor operated until 1987. Since then, most of the Hanford reactors have been entombed ("cocooned") to allow the radioactive materials to decay, and the surrounding structures have been removed and buried.[37] The B-Reactor has not been cocooned and is accessible to the public on occasional guided tours. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992,[38] and some historians advocate converting it into a museum.[39][40] B reactor was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service on August 19, 2008.[41][42]
Weapons Production Reactors[43] Reactor name Start-up date Shutdown date Initial power
(MWt) Final power
(MWt)
B-Reactor Sep 1944 Feb 1968 250 2210
D-Reactor Dec 1944 Jun 1967 250 2165
F-Reactor Feb 1945 Jun 1965 250 2040
H-Reactor Oct 1949 Apr 1965 400 2140
DR-Reactor Oct 1950 Dec 1964 250 2015
C-Reactor Nov 1952 Apr 1969 650 2500
KW-Reactor Jan 1955 Feb 1970 1800 4400
KE-Reactor Apr 1955 Jan 1971 1800 4400
N-Reactor Dec 1963 Jan 1987 4000 4000
[edit] Contemporary Hanford
Highway sign on a road entering the Hanford Site
The United States Department of Energy assumed control of the Hanford Site in 1977. Although uranium enrichment and plutonium breeding were slowly phased out, the nuclear legacy left an indelible mark on the Tri-Cities. Since World War II, the area had developed from a small farming community to a booming "Atomic Frontier" to a powerhouse of the nuclear-industrial complex.[44] Decades of federal investment created a community of highly skilled scientists and engineers. As a result of this concentration of specialized skills, the Hanford Site was able to diversify its operations to include scientific research, test facilities, and commercial nuclear power production.
Some of the facilities currently located at the Hanford Site:
* The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, owned by the Department of Energy and operated by Battelle Memorial Institute
* The Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF), a national research facility in operation from 1980 to 1992 (in cold standby as of 2007[update])
* LIGO's Hanford Observatory, an interferometer searching for gravitational waves
* Columbia Generating Station, a commercial nuclear power plant operated by Energy Northwest.
[edit] Site tours
According to the Department of Energy website, there are tours of Hanford. Dates are posted on a website and are limited to U.S. citizens. Tours are expected to bring up to 2,000 people to the site. Many sites including Reactor B are visited during the tour.[45]
[edit] Environmental concerns
The Hanford Reach of the Columbia River, where radioactivity was released from 1944 to 1971
A huge volume of water from the Columbia River was required to dissipate the heat produced by Hanford's nuclear reactors. From 1944 to 1971, pump systems drew cooling water from the river and, after treating this water for use by the reactors, returned it to the river. Before being released back into the river, the used water was held in large tanks known as retention basins for up to six hours. Longer-lived isotopes were not affected by this retention, and several terabecquerels entered the river every day. By 1957, the eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford dumped a daily average of 50,000 curies (1,900 TBq) of radioactive material into the Columbia.[46] These releases were kept secret by the federal government.[4] Radiation was later measured downstream as far west as the Washington and Oregon coasts.[47]
The plutonium separation process also resulted in the release of radioactive isotopes into the air, which were carried by the wind throughout southeastern Washington and into parts of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and British Columbia.[4] Downwinders were exposed to radionuclides, particularly iodine-131, with the heaviest releases during the period from 1945 to 1951. These radionuclides filtered into the food chain via contaminated fields where dairy cows grazed; hazardous fallout was ingested by communities who consumed the radioactive food and drank the milk. Most of these airborne releases were a part of Hanford's routine operations, while a few of the larger releases occurred in isolated incidents. In 1949, an intentional release known as the "Green Run" released 8,000 curies of iodine-131 over two days.[48] Another source of contaminated food came from Columbia River fish, an impact felt disproportionately by Native American communities who depended on the river for their customary diets.[4]
Salmon spawning in the Hanford Reach near the H-Reactor
Beginning in the 1960s, scientists with the U.S. Public Health Service published reports about radioactivity released from Hanford, and there were protests from the health departments of Oregon and Washington. By February 1986, mounting citizen pressure forced the Department of Energy to release to the public 19,000 pages of previously unavailable historical documents about Hanford’s operations.[4] The Washington State Department of Health collaborated with the citizen-led Hanford Health Information Network (HHIN) to publicize data about the health effects of Hanford’s operations. HHIN reports concluded that residents who lived downwind from Hanford or who used the Columbia River downstream were exposed to elevated doses of radiation that placed them at increased risk for various cancers and other diseases.[4] A class-action lawsuit brought by two thousand Hanford downwinders against the federal government has been in the court system for many years.[49] The first six plaintiffs went to trial in 2005, in a bellwether trial to test the legal issues applying to the remaining plaintiffs in the suit.[50]
[edit] Cleanup era
Image of the surface of waste found inside double-shell tank 101-SY at the Hanford Site, April 1989
In 1989, the Washington Department of Ecology, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Energy entered into the Tri-Party Agreement, which provides a legal framework for environmental remediation at Hanford.[8] The agencies are currently engaged in the world's largest environmental cleanup, with many challenges to be resolved in the face of overlapping technical, political, regulatory, and cultural interests. The cleanup effort is focused on three outcomes: restoring the Columbia River corridor for other uses, converting the central plateau to long-term waste treatment and storage, and preparing for the future.[51] The cleanup effort is managed by the Department of Energy under the oversight of the two regulatory agencies. A citizen-led Hanford Advisory Board provides recommendations from community stakeholders, including local and state governments, regional environmental organizations, business interests, and Native American tribes.[52] In recent years, the federal government has spent about $2 billion annually on the Hanford project.[53] About 11,000 workers are on site to consolidate, clean up, and mitigate waste, contaminated buildings, and contaminated soil.[5] Originally scheduled to be complete within thirty years, the cleanup was less than half finished by 2008.[53]
Spent nuclear fuel stored underwater and uncapped in Hanford's K-East Basin
While major releases of radioactive material ended with the reactor shutdown in the 1970s, parts of the Hanford Site remain heavily contaminated. Many of the most dangerous wastes are contained, but there are concerns about contaminated groundwater headed toward the Columbia River. There are also continued concerns about workers' health and safety.[53]
The most significant challenge at Hanford is stabilizing the 53 million U.S. gallons (204,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks. About a third of these tanks have leaked waste into the soil and groundwater.[54] As of 2008[update], most of the liquid waste has been transferred to more secure double-shelled tanks; however, 2.8 million U.S. gallons (10,600 m3) of liquid waste, together with 27 million U.S. gallons (100,000 m3) of salt cake and sludge, remains in the single-shelled tanks.[5] That waste was originally scheduled to be removed by 2018. The revised deadline is 2040.[53] Nearby aquifers contain an estimated 270 billion U.S. gallons (1 billion m3) of contaminated groundwater as a result of the leaks.[55] As of 2008[update], 1 million U.S. gallons (4,000 m3) of highly radioactive waste is traveling through the groundwater toward the Columbia River. This waste is expected to reach the river in 12 to 50 years if cleanup does not proceed on schedule.[5] The site also includes 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste.[55]
Grand opening of the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF)
Under the Tri-Party Agreement, lower-level hazardous wastes are buried in huge lined pits that will be sealed and monitored with sophisticated instruments for many years. Disposal of plutonium and other high-level wastes is a more difficult problem that continues to be a subject of intense debate. As an example, plutonium has a half-life of 24,100 years, and a decay of ten half-lives is required before a sample is considered to be safe.[56][57] The Department of Energy is currently building a vitrification plant on the Hanford Site. Vitrification is a method designed to combine these dangerous wastes with glass to render them stable. Bechtel, the San Francisco based construction and engineering firm, has been hired to construct the vitrification plant, which is currently estimated to cost approximately $12 billion. Construction began in 2001. After some delays, the plant is now scheduled to be operational in 2019, with vitrification completed in 2047. It was originally scheduled to be operational by 2011, with vitrification completed by 2028.[53][58]
In May 2007, state and federal officials began closed-door negotiations about the possibility of extending legal cleanup deadlines for waste vitrification in exchange for shifting the focus of the cleanup to urgent priorities, such as groundwater remediation. Those talks stalled in October. In early 2008, a $600 million cut to the Hanford cleanup budget was proposed. Washington state officials expressed concern about the budget cuts, as well as missed deadlines and recent safety lapses at the site, and threatened to file a lawsuit alleging that the Department of Energy is in violation of environmental laws.[53] They appeared to step back from that threat in April after another meeting of federal and state officials resulted in progress toward a tentative agreement.[59]
[edit] Historic photos
Cooling water retention basins at the F-Reactor
Underground tank farm with 12 of the site's 177 waste storage tanks
Inside one of the waste storage tanks
Inside the PUREX facility
View of the central plateau from Rattlesnake Mountain
The government town of Richland in the early days of the site
Hanford workers lining up for paychecks
Hanford scientists feeding radioactive food to sheep
Testing a sheep's thyroid for radiation
Cold War-era billboard
"Atomic Frontier Days" parade in Richland
The Fast Flux Test Facility
[edit] References
1. ^ "B Reactor". United States Department of Energy. http://www.energy.gov/about/breactor.htm. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
2. ^ a b c d e f "Hanford Site: Hanford Overview". United States Department of Energy. http://www.hanford.gov/?page=215. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
3. ^ a b "Science Watch: Growing Nuclear Arsenal". The New York Times. April 28, 1987. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEFD71F38F93BA15757C0A961948260. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
4. ^ a b c d e f "An Overview of Hanford and Radiation Health Effects". Hanford Health Information Network. http://www.doh.wa.gov/hanford/publications/overview/overview.html. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
5. ^ a b c d "Hanford Quick Facts". Washington Department of Ecology. http://www.ecy.wa.gov/features/hanford/hanfordfacts.html. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
6. ^ Harden, Blaine; Dan Morgan (June 2, 2007). "Debate Intensifies on Nuclear Waste". Washington Post: p. A02. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7951-2004Jun1.html. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
7. ^ Dininny, Shannon (April 3, 2007). "U.S. to Assess the Harm from Hanford". Seattle Post-Intelligencer (The Associated Press). http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/310247_hanford04.html. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
8. ^ a b Schneider, Keith (February 28, 1989). "Agreement for a Cleanup at Nuclear Site". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE2DF1230F93BA15751C0A96F948260. Retrieved on 30 January 2008.
9. ^ "The Columbia River at Risk: Why Hanford Cleanup is Vital to Oregon". oregon.gov. 2007-08-01. http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/NUCSAF/HCleanup.shtml. Retrieved on 2008-03-31.
10. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.12. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
11. ^ Seelye, Katharine (June 10, 2000). "Gore Praises Move to Aid Salmon Run". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E7D61E3FF933A25755C0A9669C8B63. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
12. ^ "Site Map Area and Description". Columbia Riverkeepers. http://www.columbiariverkeeper.org/sitemap.htm. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
13. ^ Lewis, Mike (April 19, 2002). "In strange twist, Hanford cleanup creates latest boom". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/67172_boom19.shtml. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
14. ^ "Hanford Reach National Monument". HistoryLink.org: The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7438. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
15. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.12. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
16. ^ Hanford Island Archaeological Site (NRHP #76001870) and Hanford North Archaeological District (NHRP #76001871). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2007-01-23. http://www.nr.nps.gov/. (See also the commercial site National Register of Historic Places.)
17. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.12. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
18. ^ Gerber, Michele (2002). On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (2nd Ed. ed.). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. p. 16–22. ISBN 0803271018.
19. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.10. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
20. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.12. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
21. ^ Gerber, Michele (1992). Legend and Legacy: Fifty Years of Defense Production at the Hanford Site. Richland, Washington: Westinghouse Hanford Company. p. 6.
22. ^ Franklin, Matthias (January 14, 1987). "Hanford Engineer Works, Manhattan Engineer District: Early History". Speech to the Technical Exchange Program.
23. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.12. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
24. ^ Oldham, Kit (2003-03-05). "Construction of massive plutonium production complex at Hanford begins in March 1943". History Link. http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5363. Retrieved on 2008-04-06.
25. ^ Thayer, H. (1996). Management of the Hanford Engineer Works in World War II. New York, NY: American Society of Civil Engineers Press.
26. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.21–1.23. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
27. ^ Gerber, Michele (2002). On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (2nd Ed. ed.). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. p. 35–36. ISBN 0803271018.
28. ^ a b Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.15, 1.30. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
29. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.22–1.27. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
30. ^ Findlay, John; Bruce Hevly (1995). Nuclear Technologies and Nuclear Communities: A History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities, 1943-1993. Seattle, WA: Hanford History Project, Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington. p. 50.
31. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.27. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
32. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.22. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
33. ^ Groves, Leslie (1983). Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. New York, NY: Da Capo Press. p. xv.
34. ^ Sanger, S. L.. Working on the Bomb: an Oral History of WWII Hanford. Portland, Oregon: Continuing Education Press, Portland State University. p. 70.
35. ^ Sanger, S. L.. Working on the Bomb: an Oral History of WWII Hanford. Portland, Oregon: Continuing Education Press, Portland State University. interview with Generaux.
36. ^ Hanford Cultural Resources Program, U.S. Department of Energy (2002). Hanford Site Historic District: History of the Plutonium Production Facilities, 1943-1990. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. p. 1.42–45. ISBN 1-57477-133-7.
37. ^ "Cocooning Hanford Reactors". City of Richland. 2003-12-02. http://www.ci.richland.wa.us/richland/hanford/index.cfm?PageNum=12. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
38. ^ NRHP site #92000245. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2007-01-23. http://www.nr.nps.gov/. Retrieved on 2008-04-06. (See also the commercial site National Register of Historic Places.)
39. ^ "B-Reactor Museum Association". B Reactor Museum Association. January 2008. http://www.b-reactor.org. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
40. ^ "Big Step Toward B Reactor Preservation". KNDO/KNDU News. 2008-03-12. http://www.kndu.com/Global/story.asp?s=8007629. Retrieved on 6 April 2008.
41. ^ Chemical & Engineering News Vol. 86 No. 35, 1 Sept. 2008, "Hanford's B Reactor gets LANDMARK Status", p. 37
42. ^ "National Historic Landmarks Program - B Reactor". National Park Service. August 19, 2008. http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=1219850799&ResourceType=Structure. Retrieved on 2009-01-05.
43. ^ "Plutonium: the first 50 years: United States plutonium production, acquisition, and utilization from 1944 through 1994". U.S. Department of Energy. http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/pu50yc.html#ZZ16. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
44. ^ Hevly, Bruce; John Findlay (1998). The Atomic West. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
45. ^ Nuclear tourism: Hanford lures visitors - US and Canada - MSNBC.com
46. ^ "Hanford History". Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. http://www.wpsr.org/history/. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
47. ^ "Radiation Flowed 200 Miles to Sea, Study Finds". The New York Times. July 17, 1992. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE0D8173FF934A25754C0A964958260. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
48. ^ Gerber, Michele (2002). On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (2nd Ed. ed.). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. p. 78–80. ISBN 0803271018.
49. ^ Hanford Downwinders Litigation Website. Downwinders.com. Retrieved on 2008-04-06.
50. ^ McClure, Robert (May 21, 2005). "Downwinders' court win seen as 'great victory'". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/225306_downwinders21.html. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
51. ^ "Hanford Site Tour Script" (PDF). United States Department of Energy. October 2007. http://www.hanford.gov/hanford/files/PublicTourScript.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
52. ^ "Hanford Site: Hanford Advisory Board". United States Department of Energy. http://www.hanford.gov/?page=397. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
53. ^ a b c d e f Stiffler, Lisa (March 20, 2008). "Troubled Hanford cleanup has state mulling lawsuit". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/355924_hanford21.html. Retrieved on 8 May 2008.
54. ^ Wald, Matthew (January 16, 1998). "Panel Details Management Flaws at Hanford Nuclear Waste Site". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E3D71638F935A25752C0A96E958260. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
55. ^ a b Wolman, David (April 2007). "Fission Trip". Wired Magazine: p. 78.
56. ^ Hanson, Laura A. (November 2000). "Radioactive Waste Contamination of Soil and Groundwater at the Hanford Site" (PDF). University of Idaho. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
57. ^ Gephart, Roy (2003). Hanford: A Conversation About Nuclear Waste and Cleanup. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. ISBN 1-57477-134-5.
58. ^ Dininny, Shannon (September 8, 2006). "Hanford plant now $12.2 billion". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/284334_hanford08.html. Retrieved on 29 January 2007.
59. ^ Stiffler, Lisa (April 3, 2008). "State steps back from brink of Hanford suit". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/environment/archives/135723.asp. Retrieved on 8 May 2008.
[edit] External links
Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hanford Site
* Official Hanford website Department of Energy.
* Hanford Challenge Hanford watchdog group, based in Seattle.
* Hanford News Current news from the Tri-City Herald.
* Hanford Site Environmental Report Detailed annual report on radioactive concentrations measured at the Hanford Site.
* Atomic Heritage Foundation Historic Preservation of Manhattan Project Sites at Hanford.
* B Reactor Museum Association A collection of Hanford-related documents from a group fighting to preserve the B-100 Reactor at Hanford.
* Contaminated US site faces 'catastrophic' nuclear leak 2008 New Scientist report.
* Heart of America Northwest Hanford watchdog group, based in Seattle.
* The Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Annotated bibliography for the Hanford Site.
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14 July 2008: Contaminated US site faces 'catastrophic' nuclear leak
Contaminated US site faces 'catastrophic' nuclear leak
* 14 July 2008
* Magazine issue 2664. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* For similar stories, visit the Energy and Fuels and The Nuclear Age Topic Guides
ONE of "the most contaminated places on Earth" will only get dirtier if the US government doesn't get its act together - clean-up plans are already 19 years behind schedule and not due for completion until 2050.
More than 210 million litres of radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford in Washington State. Most are over 50 years old. Already 67 of the tanks have failed, leaking almost 4 million litres of waste into the ground.
There are now "serious questions about the tanks' long-term viability," says a Government Accountability Office report, which strongly criticises the US Department of Energy for delaying an $8 billion programme to empty the tanks and treat the waste. The DoE says the clean-up is "technically challenging" and argues that it is making progress in such a way as to protect human health and the environment.
The DoE's plan, however, is "faith-based", says Robert Alvarez, an authority on Hanford at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. "The risk of catastrophic tank failure will sharply increase as each year goes by," he says, "and one of the nation's largest rivers, the Columbia, will be in jeopardy."
The Nuclear Age - Learn more about all things nuclear in our explosive special report.
Issue 2664 of New Scientist magazine
* From issue 2664 of New Scientist magazine, page 7. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* Browse past issues of New Scientist magazine
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
* 14 July 2008
* Magazine issue 2664. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* For similar stories, visit the Energy and Fuels and The Nuclear Age Topic Guides
ONE of "the most contaminated places on Earth" will only get dirtier if the US government doesn't get its act together - clean-up plans are already 19 years behind schedule and not due for completion until 2050.
More than 210 million litres of radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford in Washington State. Most are over 50 years old. Already 67 of the tanks have failed, leaking almost 4 million litres of waste into the ground.
There are now "serious questions about the tanks' long-term viability," says a Government Accountability Office report, which strongly criticises the US Department of Energy for delaying an $8 billion programme to empty the tanks and treat the waste. The DoE says the clean-up is "technically challenging" and argues that it is making progress in such a way as to protect human health and the environment.
The DoE's plan, however, is "faith-based", says Robert Alvarez, an authority on Hanford at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. "The risk of catastrophic tank failure will sharply increase as each year goes by," he says, "and one of the nation's largest rivers, the Columbia, will be in jeopardy."
The Nuclear Age - Learn more about all things nuclear in our explosive special report.
Issue 2664 of New Scientist magazine
* From issue 2664 of New Scientist magazine, page 7. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* Browse past issues of New Scientist magazine
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Time for Treasury to Walk the Walk
Time for Treasury to Walk the Walk
Will the Need to Fund Trillions in Spending
Burst the Bubble?
Dear A-Letter Reader,
So it begins.
2008 was the year of big promises for the U.S. government. Trillions in bailouts, emergency lending programs and otherwise free money buoyed the financial system and may have helped prevent a disastrous collapse of the world economy.
But now, in 2009, it’s time to pay the piper.
Even before funding Obama’s proposed US$900 Billion stimulus plan, the U.S. government will need to raise some US$1.5 – 2.5 trillion before the end of fiscal year 2009 (September 30th) to keep up with the spending plans of Congress and the Treasury. To make that possible, the Treasury is re-introducing the seven-year-note and doubling the number of 30-year auctions planned for ’09. It may also start monthly auctions of all of its benchmark securities.
And now the floodgates are officially open. According to today’s Financial Times, the US government announced plans for a U.S. $67 Billion debt sale in February, the first of many enormous auctions. As new sales come online, investors are wondering whether the flood of Treasury securities will drive interest rates up. Is all this issuance going to take a toll on prices?
Some are even wondering whether this might be the beginning of the end for a Treasury Bubble…
Mr. T’s Wild Ride
In the last year, while most investments simply plummeted, Treasuries have been on hell’s hayride. As investors waffled back and forth between the need for a safe haven and the sheer magnitude of U.S. debt issuance in store for 2009, Treasury yields reached historic lows (and – in turn – prices reached historic highs).
After peaking in mid-June, yields on the 10 and 30-year Treasury bond bottomed in late December, tumbling by 49% and 47% respectively. In between those dates, Lehman Brothers collapsed, global credit came to a standstill, and Bernanke unleashed a horde of emergency lending programs and lip service about buying up the long end of the curve to keep rates low.
But since mid-December, yields have surged back up – gaining 40% and 43% on the ten and thirty-year bond – on concerns about 2009’s funding obligations and rising deficits in the U.S.
While this bounce in yields – from 2% in December to 2.95% now – might seem like a major move, keep in mind that there’s definitely still room for more upward movement. Yields could gain another full percentage point and still settle under 52-week highs.
Calling the Giant’s Bluff
In the December issue of our flagship publication, The Sovereign Individual, Investment Director Eric Roseman took a position on Treasuries…one that’s returned over 32% since mid-December.
Using the ProShares Ultrashort 20+ Yr ETF (ticker symbol TBT), Eric took a short position on Treasury debt, citing the increasing size of Treasury offerings and the decreasing appetite for Treasuries worldwide…
“The writing is on the wall,” Eric said in December, “Betting against long-term Treasury bonds over the next 3-5 years is as close to a sure thing as we can get in this volatile market. Remember – market risk has not been eliminated. Rather, it has been transferred from the global banking sector to national governments.”
“To expand credit and fund bank liabilities,” Eric went on, “they will embark on a massive global fund drive – and put upward pressure on U.S. Treasury yields. When they ultimately succeed, the resulting nemesis won’t be deflation, but aggressive inflation.”
“This process won’t transform itself overnight. But as the desperate issuance of debt grows, I expect inflation to make a formidable comeback, probably starting in 2010 or 2011. I have no doubt that over the next 12 months, the U.S. long-term Treasury market will face higher interest rates.”
…But Keep your Eyes Open
While interest rates are on the rise and the market is looking like it might balk at the flood of new issuance on the way in 2009, the climate is still incredibly volatile.
We believe that Treasury yields are headed up in the long-term and likely to spike again in the short-term, but there’s an immense amount of government interest in keeping them low for the time being. Low rates are crucial to recovery, as they can keep mortgage rates low and – in turn – minimize the damage to the U.S. real estate market…the epicenter of the crisis.
To that end, Bernanke has repeatedly mentioned buying up the long end of the curve…a maneuver that seems to generate less and less of a response each time he mentions it. But the U.S. government has demonstrated its willingness to do anything and everything to keep this crisis under control, so for now this is more of a short-term trading opportunity than a long-term investment strategy…and traders should proceed with caution.
TBT is a double-inverse ETF, meaning that it provides twice the inverse of the daily performance of the Lehman Brothers 20+ yr Treasury Index. So it can be especially volatile, ranging between a 52-week high and low of about US$75 and US$35.51. Make sure to keep a 25% trailing stop in place.
Special Offer
$592 Trillion Phantom Economy Blows as Latest Demon Derivative Unwinds
The worst demon derivative to date is about to whip down Wall Street…leveling what little is left! Over 700 banks (with trillions of dollars in assets) will come crashing to the ground. Hundreds of hedge funds will collapse. Corporate bankruptcies will soar. And another $20 trillion will be wiped off global stock markets. But this one bombed out investment will soar two to ten fold as the world comes undone. Find out the entire story from the investment group who eerily predicted the current crisis “to a T!”…
Click here to learn more
Minimizing Hidden Forex Fees
"While offshore banks provide access to many investments you simply can't buy in the United States, or only buy with great difficulty, you'll pay for the privilege." Wealth Preservation & Tax Consultant Mark Nestmanntold us recently, "And nowhere is that truer than when you purchase securities denominated in foreign currencies. But you'll never know it unless you do some digging and then negotiate with your foreign bank to reduce those charges."
"For instance, last spring a Turkish lira-denominated bond that I hold through my Austrian bank account matured. The bank credited my account for the interest. Since my base account is denominated in euros the bank converted the lira to euros. It charged me a commission (outlined on a statement) of the lira equivalent of EUR 9 to convert the equivalent of a little under EUR 1,000 from Turkish lira to euros."
"That's perfectly fair. But what the bank didn't disclose was that the foreign exchange rate they used for the currency conversion was about 1.5% above the prevailing inter-bank rate. That resulted in an undisclosed debit of around EUR 90."
"I'm not complaining that I didn't get the inter-bank rate. As a retail customer, I understand that I won't have access to inter-bank rates for small forex transactions. It's also possible that the inter-bank rate fluctuated substantially on the day that the bank made the conversion. However, I think that they bank should have disclosed this to me, and they didn't."
Mark went on to explain a few ways that you could minimize these hidden fees...
"First, if you're purchasing securities from your foreign account, try to stick to securities denominated in your base currency unless you have a compelling reason to purchase securities in another currency. (In my case, the opportunity to buy AAA-rated Turkish bond with an 18% annual interest rate was such a reason.)"
"Second, if you do change currencies, ask your account representative how far above the inter-bank rate you can expect to pay for the conversion. You're likely to pay a higher premium for relatively "exotic" currencies like the NZD than for more mainstream currencies like the euro or Swiss franc."
"Third, if you're conducting a really large transaction—say, above US$100,000—it's fair to ask the bank to conduct it at or at least very close to the inter-bank rate. The worst they can say is "no." If they do say no, ask them to at least document on your statement how far above the inter-bank rate the forex exchange was conducted."
"Incidentally, if you're a U.S. taxpayer, you can't deduct these hidden debits on your tax return. You have to add them to your basis in that security, and then use that higher basis to reduce whatever capital gain—or increase whatever capital loss—you have upon sale or redemption."
Utilities Showing Relative Strength in ‘09
While they may not be as exciting as tech companies or derivatives, Investment Director Eric Roseman recently pointed out the promising performance in an otherwise nightmarish year for equities...
"With the Dow Jones Industrials Average down 8.5% this year, one of the few areas of the market posting any gains at all is the Dow Jones Utilities Average or DJUA, up 1.6%."
"Though it's still too early to confirm a primary bull market trend for this sector, utilities might emerge as a leader if stocks finally escape the wrath of this relentless bear. That's because utilities are heavily regulated in most states and underwent a major legislative overhaul years ago - something that awaits the financial services sector after years of fat profits and excessive bonuses."
"One caveat for utilities is the trend in credit spreads, or the difference between the interest rates yielded by utility bonds versus benchmark Treasury bonds."
"These spreads have widened sharply over the last 60 days and indicate utilities might run into severe headwinds ahead of major expansion plans and funding requirements amid a tight credit environment."
"Still, if the DJUA breaks its 200-day moving average, I'd be bullish on the sector."
"Staid and stodgy might be dull. But there's nothing wrong with a 4.2% annual yield and reliable earnings in a bear market. Watch the utilities."
Obama, Obama Obama.
The relationship between the President and the public has taken a rapid turn for the normal as we transition from, "The Audacity of Hope" to "The Audacity of Appointing Tax-Dodgers to what will likely be one of the spendiest administrations in U.S. government history."
Today, Legal Counsel and Former Congressman Bob Bauman shares his perspective on Obama's first few weeks in office, and what they tell us about this otherwise relatively unknown politician...
Yours in Personal Sovereignty
MATTHEW COLLINS
Special Offer
On March 30th, FDA results could make you $195,600
On March 30th, there’ll be an announcement of FDA results for a new
drug that could become the bestselling pill in the history of medicine.
One medical source says, “It could tap the largest pharmaceutical
market ever.” Even more exciting, early investors could make as
much as $195,600, overnight… by getting in immediately.
Click here for the full details.
The Audacity of Nope
By Bob Bauman
Since the election last November, (especially in the last two weeks since he took office), events are tending to make Barack Obama appear not as the agent of promised hope and change, but more like the typical Chicago politician, (Rod Blagojevich most certainly excepted).
What's more, when it comes to policy decisions and appointees, our new President appears to need more than just a little on-the-job training.
Can't Get No, Satisfaction
In 2005, most likely in order to gain the support of organized labor in his long-shot Presidential campaign, then U.S. Senator Barack Obama voted against ratification of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a harmless free trade agreement that he knew would help both Americans and our neighbors in six poor countries to our south, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.
As he candidly described his decision-making process a year later in his celebrated memoir, The Audacity of Hope, Obama knew that CAFTA posed absolutely no economic threat to the United States. The combined economies of the Central American countries were roughly the size of New Haven, Connecticut. The agreement allowed free U.S. foreign investment for six countries that badly needed it. "Over all," Obama concluded in his book, "CAFTA was a net plus."
Nevertheless, Obama admitted: "I ended up voting against CAFTA, which passed the Senate by a vote of 55-45. My vote gave me no satisfaction but I felt it was the only way to register a protest against what I considered to be the White House's inattention to the losers from free trade."
Politics, Pragmatism, Not Principle
During the raucous, two-year battle for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, both Senators Hillary Clinton and Obama dumped all over various aspects of free trade, pandering for votes from nervous workers and union bosses with trash talk about American jobs being shipped overseas by greedy global companies with their headquarters in tax havens.
Both candidates, paying their union dues, also opposed ratification of other free trade treaties with our strongest South American allies, Columbia and Panama - and both went to extremes, even claiming they would re-negotiate the NAFTA treaty between the U.S., Mexico and Canada (although one of his campaign advisors said Obama didn't really mean that...and got fired for his impolitic admission).
As a Senator from Illinois, Obama even went further, co-sponsoring Michigan Senator Carl Levin's pet hate project, The Anti-Tax Haven Act, a bill that would allow the U.S. Treasury to control, and even ban, offshore private capital flows and investments by Americans. This nonsense comes at a time when the U.S. government desperately needs foreign capital and offshore investors to finance Obama's trillion dollar deficits.
Will the Real Obama Stand Up?
In the next few weeks, President Obama gets the opportunity to cast another vote on American protectionism - this one with truly global importance - and his decision will reveal whether he will once again honor the political demands of labor union bosses at the expense of the best interests of the majority of Americans.
Last week, in passing the so-called "stimulus" legislation, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives included a "Buy American" requirement that seeks to protect iron and steel (roughly 0.5% of U.S. GDP).
The U.S. Senate bill now being debated provides protection for "all manufactured goods" (roughly 14% of GDP). But both the House and Senate bills leave the final decision to Mr. Obama, giving the President authority to grant waivers, in whole or in part, to any country he wants.
Importance of Free Trade
As I have explained before at length, underpinning the Sovereign Society's advice concerning offshore banking, asset protection and profitable foreign investments is an important freedom that too many Americans take for granted - the unfettered ability to move capital, goods and services across international borders with a minimum of government interference - in other words, free trade.
Historically, free trade has been a winner for America and the world. Undeniable proof shows that, on balance, free trade creates more U.S. jobs than it harms. But it is always easier to point to jobs lost through foreign competition than jobs created from exports.
But there really may be some of that "hope" about which candidate Obama spoke so eloquently. He may be backing away from his past pandering and the Democrats' "Buy American'' legislative clause - which has produced major alarm among America's key trading partners all over the world.
In an interview with Fox News Channel, the president acknowledged it would be a mistake to send a protectionist message in the current global economic climate. "I think it would be a mistake, though, at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for us to start sending a message that somehow we're just looking after ourselves and not concerned with world trade,'' he said.
Perhaps Mr. Obama does believe in real change - at least changing wrong past political positions. He even hinted that he would seek to remove the Buy American provisions from the legislation.
History Lesson
Yesterday the European Union warned the U.S. government against worsening the global recession by adopting a "Buy American" policy that they think could lead to a trade war.
No doubt EU officials had in mind the onerous 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that, in the opinion of many economists, was a direct cause of the severe reduction in U.S.-European trade from a 1929 high, to the depressed levels of 1932. Most see that act as a major contributing factor to the severity of the Great Depression and a U.S. unemployment rate as high as 25%, that persisted for nearly decade
Other then the Presidential remarks quoted above, the administration has not yet stated an official position on the "Buy American" clause. But as usual, Vice President Joe Biden didn't get the word. In an interview last week, Jumpin' Joe said, "I think it's legitimate to have some portions of 'Buy American' in it."
Good Advice
Let's hope the freshman President will carefully study history and take the advice he was given by Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's U.S. Treasury secretary, when Obama asked advice on his 2005 CAFTA Senate vote - and on what he should tell "the Maytag workers in Galesburg" who feared that free trade agreements with low-wage countries would cost American middle class jobs.
Mr. Rubin gave this sage advice, "There is one thing [to] tell the workers in Galesburg that is certain. Any effort at protectionism will be counterproductive, and it will make their children worse off in the bargain."
And that same advice discredits the proposed Obama/Levin restrictions on the free movement and investment of capital offshore in this highly interdependent world of ours.
Americans are now caught in a financial twilight zone. For your own sake, we urge you to join the Sovereign Society today and open the door to safe and secure offshore asset protection and investing - while you still can. We welcome you.
Will the Need to Fund Trillions in Spending
Burst the Bubble?
Dear A-Letter Reader,
So it begins.
2008 was the year of big promises for the U.S. government. Trillions in bailouts, emergency lending programs and otherwise free money buoyed the financial system and may have helped prevent a disastrous collapse of the world economy.
But now, in 2009, it’s time to pay the piper.
Even before funding Obama’s proposed US$900 Billion stimulus plan, the U.S. government will need to raise some US$1.5 – 2.5 trillion before the end of fiscal year 2009 (September 30th) to keep up with the spending plans of Congress and the Treasury. To make that possible, the Treasury is re-introducing the seven-year-note and doubling the number of 30-year auctions planned for ’09. It may also start monthly auctions of all of its benchmark securities.
And now the floodgates are officially open. According to today’s Financial Times, the US government announced plans for a U.S. $67 Billion debt sale in February, the first of many enormous auctions. As new sales come online, investors are wondering whether the flood of Treasury securities will drive interest rates up. Is all this issuance going to take a toll on prices?
Some are even wondering whether this might be the beginning of the end for a Treasury Bubble…
Mr. T’s Wild Ride
In the last year, while most investments simply plummeted, Treasuries have been on hell’s hayride. As investors waffled back and forth between the need for a safe haven and the sheer magnitude of U.S. debt issuance in store for 2009, Treasury yields reached historic lows (and – in turn – prices reached historic highs).
After peaking in mid-June, yields on the 10 and 30-year Treasury bond bottomed in late December, tumbling by 49% and 47% respectively. In between those dates, Lehman Brothers collapsed, global credit came to a standstill, and Bernanke unleashed a horde of emergency lending programs and lip service about buying up the long end of the curve to keep rates low.
But since mid-December, yields have surged back up – gaining 40% and 43% on the ten and thirty-year bond – on concerns about 2009’s funding obligations and rising deficits in the U.S.
While this bounce in yields – from 2% in December to 2.95% now – might seem like a major move, keep in mind that there’s definitely still room for more upward movement. Yields could gain another full percentage point and still settle under 52-week highs.
Calling the Giant’s Bluff
In the December issue of our flagship publication, The Sovereign Individual, Investment Director Eric Roseman took a position on Treasuries…one that’s returned over 32% since mid-December.
Using the ProShares Ultrashort 20+ Yr ETF (ticker symbol TBT), Eric took a short position on Treasury debt, citing the increasing size of Treasury offerings and the decreasing appetite for Treasuries worldwide…
“The writing is on the wall,” Eric said in December, “Betting against long-term Treasury bonds over the next 3-5 years is as close to a sure thing as we can get in this volatile market. Remember – market risk has not been eliminated. Rather, it has been transferred from the global banking sector to national governments.”
“To expand credit and fund bank liabilities,” Eric went on, “they will embark on a massive global fund drive – and put upward pressure on U.S. Treasury yields. When they ultimately succeed, the resulting nemesis won’t be deflation, but aggressive inflation.”
“This process won’t transform itself overnight. But as the desperate issuance of debt grows, I expect inflation to make a formidable comeback, probably starting in 2010 or 2011. I have no doubt that over the next 12 months, the U.S. long-term Treasury market will face higher interest rates.”
…But Keep your Eyes Open
While interest rates are on the rise and the market is looking like it might balk at the flood of new issuance on the way in 2009, the climate is still incredibly volatile.
We believe that Treasury yields are headed up in the long-term and likely to spike again in the short-term, but there’s an immense amount of government interest in keeping them low for the time being. Low rates are crucial to recovery, as they can keep mortgage rates low and – in turn – minimize the damage to the U.S. real estate market…the epicenter of the crisis.
To that end, Bernanke has repeatedly mentioned buying up the long end of the curve…a maneuver that seems to generate less and less of a response each time he mentions it. But the U.S. government has demonstrated its willingness to do anything and everything to keep this crisis under control, so for now this is more of a short-term trading opportunity than a long-term investment strategy…and traders should proceed with caution.
TBT is a double-inverse ETF, meaning that it provides twice the inverse of the daily performance of the Lehman Brothers 20+ yr Treasury Index. So it can be especially volatile, ranging between a 52-week high and low of about US$75 and US$35.51. Make sure to keep a 25% trailing stop in place.
Special Offer
$592 Trillion Phantom Economy Blows as Latest Demon Derivative Unwinds
The worst demon derivative to date is about to whip down Wall Street…leveling what little is left! Over 700 banks (with trillions of dollars in assets) will come crashing to the ground. Hundreds of hedge funds will collapse. Corporate bankruptcies will soar. And another $20 trillion will be wiped off global stock markets. But this one bombed out investment will soar two to ten fold as the world comes undone. Find out the entire story from the investment group who eerily predicted the current crisis “to a T!”…
Click here to learn more
Minimizing Hidden Forex Fees
"While offshore banks provide access to many investments you simply can't buy in the United States, or only buy with great difficulty, you'll pay for the privilege." Wealth Preservation & Tax Consultant Mark Nestmanntold us recently, "And nowhere is that truer than when you purchase securities denominated in foreign currencies. But you'll never know it unless you do some digging and then negotiate with your foreign bank to reduce those charges."
"For instance, last spring a Turkish lira-denominated bond that I hold through my Austrian bank account matured. The bank credited my account for the interest. Since my base account is denominated in euros the bank converted the lira to euros. It charged me a commission (outlined on a statement) of the lira equivalent of EUR 9 to convert the equivalent of a little under EUR 1,000 from Turkish lira to euros."
"That's perfectly fair. But what the bank didn't disclose was that the foreign exchange rate they used for the currency conversion was about 1.5% above the prevailing inter-bank rate. That resulted in an undisclosed debit of around EUR 90."
"I'm not complaining that I didn't get the inter-bank rate. As a retail customer, I understand that I won't have access to inter-bank rates for small forex transactions. It's also possible that the inter-bank rate fluctuated substantially on the day that the bank made the conversion. However, I think that they bank should have disclosed this to me, and they didn't."
Mark went on to explain a few ways that you could minimize these hidden fees...
"First, if you're purchasing securities from your foreign account, try to stick to securities denominated in your base currency unless you have a compelling reason to purchase securities in another currency. (In my case, the opportunity to buy AAA-rated Turkish bond with an 18% annual interest rate was such a reason.)"
"Second, if you do change currencies, ask your account representative how far above the inter-bank rate you can expect to pay for the conversion. You're likely to pay a higher premium for relatively "exotic" currencies like the NZD than for more mainstream currencies like the euro or Swiss franc."
"Third, if you're conducting a really large transaction—say, above US$100,000—it's fair to ask the bank to conduct it at or at least very close to the inter-bank rate. The worst they can say is "no." If they do say no, ask them to at least document on your statement how far above the inter-bank rate the forex exchange was conducted."
"Incidentally, if you're a U.S. taxpayer, you can't deduct these hidden debits on your tax return. You have to add them to your basis in that security, and then use that higher basis to reduce whatever capital gain—or increase whatever capital loss—you have upon sale or redemption."
Utilities Showing Relative Strength in ‘09
While they may not be as exciting as tech companies or derivatives, Investment Director Eric Roseman recently pointed out the promising performance in an otherwise nightmarish year for equities...
"With the Dow Jones Industrials Average down 8.5% this year, one of the few areas of the market posting any gains at all is the Dow Jones Utilities Average or DJUA, up 1.6%."
"Though it's still too early to confirm a primary bull market trend for this sector, utilities might emerge as a leader if stocks finally escape the wrath of this relentless bear. That's because utilities are heavily regulated in most states and underwent a major legislative overhaul years ago - something that awaits the financial services sector after years of fat profits and excessive bonuses."
"One caveat for utilities is the trend in credit spreads, or the difference between the interest rates yielded by utility bonds versus benchmark Treasury bonds."
"These spreads have widened sharply over the last 60 days and indicate utilities might run into severe headwinds ahead of major expansion plans and funding requirements amid a tight credit environment."
"Still, if the DJUA breaks its 200-day moving average, I'd be bullish on the sector."
"Staid and stodgy might be dull. But there's nothing wrong with a 4.2% annual yield and reliable earnings in a bear market. Watch the utilities."
Obama, Obama Obama.
The relationship between the President and the public has taken a rapid turn for the normal as we transition from, "The Audacity of Hope" to "The Audacity of Appointing Tax-Dodgers to what will likely be one of the spendiest administrations in U.S. government history."
Today, Legal Counsel and Former Congressman Bob Bauman shares his perspective on Obama's first few weeks in office, and what they tell us about this otherwise relatively unknown politician...
Yours in Personal Sovereignty
MATTHEW COLLINS
Special Offer
On March 30th, FDA results could make you $195,600
On March 30th, there’ll be an announcement of FDA results for a new
drug that could become the bestselling pill in the history of medicine.
One medical source says, “It could tap the largest pharmaceutical
market ever.” Even more exciting, early investors could make as
much as $195,600, overnight… by getting in immediately.
Click here for the full details.
The Audacity of Nope
By Bob Bauman
Since the election last November, (especially in the last two weeks since he took office), events are tending to make Barack Obama appear not as the agent of promised hope and change, but more like the typical Chicago politician, (Rod Blagojevich most certainly excepted).
What's more, when it comes to policy decisions and appointees, our new President appears to need more than just a little on-the-job training.
Can't Get No, Satisfaction
In 2005, most likely in order to gain the support of organized labor in his long-shot Presidential campaign, then U.S. Senator Barack Obama voted against ratification of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a harmless free trade agreement that he knew would help both Americans and our neighbors in six poor countries to our south, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.
As he candidly described his decision-making process a year later in his celebrated memoir, The Audacity of Hope, Obama knew that CAFTA posed absolutely no economic threat to the United States. The combined economies of the Central American countries were roughly the size of New Haven, Connecticut. The agreement allowed free U.S. foreign investment for six countries that badly needed it. "Over all," Obama concluded in his book, "CAFTA was a net plus."
Nevertheless, Obama admitted: "I ended up voting against CAFTA, which passed the Senate by a vote of 55-45. My vote gave me no satisfaction but I felt it was the only way to register a protest against what I considered to be the White House's inattention to the losers from free trade."
Politics, Pragmatism, Not Principle
During the raucous, two-year battle for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, both Senators Hillary Clinton and Obama dumped all over various aspects of free trade, pandering for votes from nervous workers and union bosses with trash talk about American jobs being shipped overseas by greedy global companies with their headquarters in tax havens.
Both candidates, paying their union dues, also opposed ratification of other free trade treaties with our strongest South American allies, Columbia and Panama - and both went to extremes, even claiming they would re-negotiate the NAFTA treaty between the U.S., Mexico and Canada (although one of his campaign advisors said Obama didn't really mean that...and got fired for his impolitic admission).
As a Senator from Illinois, Obama even went further, co-sponsoring Michigan Senator Carl Levin's pet hate project, The Anti-Tax Haven Act, a bill that would allow the U.S. Treasury to control, and even ban, offshore private capital flows and investments by Americans. This nonsense comes at a time when the U.S. government desperately needs foreign capital and offshore investors to finance Obama's trillion dollar deficits.
Will the Real Obama Stand Up?
In the next few weeks, President Obama gets the opportunity to cast another vote on American protectionism - this one with truly global importance - and his decision will reveal whether he will once again honor the political demands of labor union bosses at the expense of the best interests of the majority of Americans.
Last week, in passing the so-called "stimulus" legislation, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives included a "Buy American" requirement that seeks to protect iron and steel (roughly 0.5% of U.S. GDP).
The U.S. Senate bill now being debated provides protection for "all manufactured goods" (roughly 14% of GDP). But both the House and Senate bills leave the final decision to Mr. Obama, giving the President authority to grant waivers, in whole or in part, to any country he wants.
Importance of Free Trade
As I have explained before at length, underpinning the Sovereign Society's advice concerning offshore banking, asset protection and profitable foreign investments is an important freedom that too many Americans take for granted - the unfettered ability to move capital, goods and services across international borders with a minimum of government interference - in other words, free trade.
Historically, free trade has been a winner for America and the world. Undeniable proof shows that, on balance, free trade creates more U.S. jobs than it harms. But it is always easier to point to jobs lost through foreign competition than jobs created from exports.
But there really may be some of that "hope" about which candidate Obama spoke so eloquently. He may be backing away from his past pandering and the Democrats' "Buy American'' legislative clause - which has produced major alarm among America's key trading partners all over the world.
In an interview with Fox News Channel, the president acknowledged it would be a mistake to send a protectionist message in the current global economic climate. "I think it would be a mistake, though, at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for us to start sending a message that somehow we're just looking after ourselves and not concerned with world trade,'' he said.
Perhaps Mr. Obama does believe in real change - at least changing wrong past political positions. He even hinted that he would seek to remove the Buy American provisions from the legislation.
History Lesson
Yesterday the European Union warned the U.S. government against worsening the global recession by adopting a "Buy American" policy that they think could lead to a trade war.
No doubt EU officials had in mind the onerous 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that, in the opinion of many economists, was a direct cause of the severe reduction in U.S.-European trade from a 1929 high, to the depressed levels of 1932. Most see that act as a major contributing factor to the severity of the Great Depression and a U.S. unemployment rate as high as 25%, that persisted for nearly decade
Other then the Presidential remarks quoted above, the administration has not yet stated an official position on the "Buy American" clause. But as usual, Vice President Joe Biden didn't get the word. In an interview last week, Jumpin' Joe said, "I think it's legitimate to have some portions of 'Buy American' in it."
Good Advice
Let's hope the freshman President will carefully study history and take the advice he was given by Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's U.S. Treasury secretary, when Obama asked advice on his 2005 CAFTA Senate vote - and on what he should tell "the Maytag workers in Galesburg" who feared that free trade agreements with low-wage countries would cost American middle class jobs.
Mr. Rubin gave this sage advice, "There is one thing [to] tell the workers in Galesburg that is certain. Any effort at protectionism will be counterproductive, and it will make their children worse off in the bargain."
And that same advice discredits the proposed Obama/Levin restrictions on the free movement and investment of capital offshore in this highly interdependent world of ours.
Americans are now caught in a financial twilight zone. For your own sake, we urge you to join the Sovereign Society today and open the door to safe and secure offshore asset protection and investing - while you still can. We welcome you.
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