Category Archives: Current Events

Colorado Environmental Film Festival—Rocky Flats

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Part I of this posting discussed the content in two of the movies at the festival about water use and misuse.  This posting will be about two movies that discussed Rocky Flats worker illnesses and plutonium contamination near the former nuclear weapons plant.

The second movie shown was “Rocky Flats Legacy” by Scott Bison, and it is about former workers fighting for compensation for illnesses they believe were caused by exposures while working at the plant. I know people who were in this movie, which made it personal and distressing.

As I wrote in “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked,” I sympathize with people who are dealing with devastating diseases. I also understand the frustration and anger of dealing with government bureaucracies. I don’t know how many of the people would have gotten sick anyway, or how to sort out which of them got sick because of workplace exposures at Rocky Flats. However, In Chapter 27 of my book I quote a study of Rocky Flats workers that, “When compared with U.S. death rates, fewer deaths than expected were found for all causes of death, all cancers, and lung cancer. No bone cancer was observed.” These results are remarkable because 26 percent of the workers in the study had some level of plutonium “body burdens.”  I received a criticism that I neglected to mention there were a few kinds of cancer that were higher than the general population. There were very few cancer categories that were higher, and those results were slightly higher. However, statistics are meaningless to someone who has been told they have cancer and can’t prove whether or not exposures at Rocky Flats were the cause.

There were comments in the third film, “No Water to Waste” by Chris Garre, about plutonium contamination at and near Rocky Flats. The film stated there was no way to determine how much plutonium was left behind when the plant was closed and demolished, because the documents on that subject “were sealed.” I would suggest that the film maker didn’t do much investigation, because anyone who wants to research the subject can find more than they would ever want to read in the numerous public documents created during the closure process involving DOE, the EPA, the State of Colorado, and the Kaiser-Hill Company.

The basis of the statement might be from a story floating around that the government sealed 65 boxes collected during the raid of Rocky Flats that “would reveal the truth.” I am convinced that the people in the Justice Department who orchestrated the raid would have eagerly indicted people if there had been actual crimes proven in the “mysterious 65 boxes.” There was an opportunity to look at the boxes that wasn’t taken. Ann Imse wrote in the Rocky Mountain news that no one had requested a review of any of the boxes of documents three months after the U.S. attorney said he would consider allowing Rocky Flats cleanup officials to see the Grand Jury records. The Colorado regulator overseeing the cleanup said he didn’t have the time to look at them. It’s too bad a review wasn’t requested, because those “mysterious 65 boxes” are now part of a conspiracy theory that won’t die until someone looks at the boxes and finds the contents to be just as boring as the content of the other thousand or so boxes sent to the Justice Department by the plant. (I expect my book would have sold many more copies if I had decided to make it a fiction story about horrid crimes at Rocky Flats. The book reveals a less exciting and truthful story.)

Back to the movie, there was a recent news article pertinent to what was presented. A Boulder Camera article, “Study: Rocky Flats contamination still high,” by Laura Snider reports that samples collected by the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center found that “…the area is as contaminated by radioactive plutonium as it was 40 years ago.” The group apparently collected the samples to combat building a parkway past the area, and, in my opinion, confirmed at least three points. One is that the results reported by the site, Colorado, and EPA 40 years ago were accurate. Another is that the plutonium hasn’t blown downwind. The final point is that Colorado Health and EPA officials “…insist the amount of plutonium contamination at the eastern edge of the site is well below levels that would be dangerous to human health.”

On the subject of how much plutonium is dangerous, I considered commenting to the gathering at the Golden Hotel that it is too late for anyone wanting to avoid plutonium contamination. All humans have billions, trillions, or quadrillions of plutonium atoms in their bodies from the many tons scattered around the earth from atmospheric testing.

Rare Earths

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I became interested in the so-called rare earths after talking to a friend who gave me a quick course on the subject. Traces of these metals are everywhere, but there are only a few places on the planet that have high enough content to be called “ore” and justify mining. He also told me China has the richest deposits of the metals, and they also have less interest in the environmental impact of the mining. (All of that of course brings to mind the metal “unobtanium” being mined on the planet Pandora in the movie Avatar.)

Rare earths enable a long list of products to perform to the standards we take for granted. Smart phones, military night vision goggles, and cruise missiles (naming only a sample) wouldn’t work without them. Batteries for hybrid cars and wind turbines require large amounts.  The one mine in the U.S. that produced these metals was closed in 2002 under pressure from environmentalists, and the Chinese became the only significant source. The Chinese have announced they were restricting exports to levels that were not capable to meet demand, but kindly offered to build factories to build all of the products that used the metals. That created enough concern that the California Mountain Home mine has been reopened after pledging to operate with “zero effluents.”

There is an excellent article in National Geographic titled “The Secret Ingredients of Everything” by Nick Mann on the subject. You can read the entire article at the link, but I’ll provide my summary. The Prius battery has 20 pounds of lanthanum and the magnet in a large wind turbine has more than 500 pounds of neodymium. The red color on our televisions is from europium, and catalytic converters on our cars contain cerium and lanthanum. The dysprosium used in making computer hard drives was selling for $212/pound when the article was written.  Demand for these “ingredients” shows no signs of abating. In 2015 the world’s industries are forecast to consume an estimated 185,000 tons of rare earths, 50 percent more than the total for 2010. With China holding tightly to its reserves, where will the rest of the world get the elements that have become so vital to modern technology? (Russia, Australia, and Canada also have exploitable deposits.)

China is struggling with the environmental impact from the lucrative mining of rare earths (once again bringing to mind the Avatar story). The Chinese are reportedly working to reduce the impact form the large mines around Baotou, but violent criminal gangs are operating dozens of illegal mines without any regard for environmental impact. “If you own a smart phone or a flat-screen television, it may contain contraband rare earths from southern China.”

It seems unlikely that there will be enough of many of the rare earths to meet the world demand, especially with China imposing restrictions on exports. Recycling of older cell phones, etc. is becoming increasingly attractive.

Freakonomics, A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

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This book by economist Steven D. Levitt and New York Times writer Stephen J. Dubner was published in 2005, and I wish I hadn’t waited this long to read it. It describes how “experts” manipulate information to their advantage. Any person who intends to buy or sell a house or car or have a child educated should read this book.

The book is educational and interesting. There is a chapter titled “How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?”Stetson Kennedy is the hero. He had Klan bloodlines, but went against the Klan after the black woman who raised him was beaten and raped after accusing a white trolley driver of shortchanging her. “So Kennedy decided—as any foolhardy, fearless, slightly daft anti-bigot would—to go undercover and join the Ku Klux Klan,” Kennedy took the Klan oaths, and one was, “Do you further swear to do all in your power to increase the white birth rate?” Kennedy’s first attempts to damage the Klan by telling officials of meeting plans failed. He then had the brilliant idea of enlisting the Adventures of Superman show. Kennedy gave the show a list of the Klan’s childish passwords. The show had several episodes of Superman combating the Klan. Children, including those of Klan members, were soon wearing capes and shouting “secret passwords while chasing others wearing pillowcases in a game called “Superman Against the Klan.” Klansmen were embarrassed, meeting attendance plummeted, and new applications for membership dropped to zero.

The discussion of Norma McCorvey will undoubtedly disturb readers. The authors were criticized by the entire political spectrum for what they wrote. Ms. McCorvey had given up two children for adoption, and was once again pregnant. She wanted a legal abortion, and a court case calling her Jane Roe was filed. The child had been born by the time the Supreme Court issued the Roe v. Wade ruling. She became a pro-life activist, but the ruling in her case allowed millions of women to have legal abortions. There were 750,000 abortions in the first year after Roe v.Wade, and it was estimated that half of those children, if born, would have lived in poverty, and would have been at risk of being criminals. The rate of violent crimes dropped despite universal predictions the rates were going to escalate out of control.

There are several educational tales. A study of real estate agents selling their own homes showed those houses remained on the market an average of ten days longer than homes they were selling for others. Their homes also sold for three percent more. That allowed them to pocket about $9,000 more on a $300,000 home. They had no incentive to hold out longer to put another $135 their pocket with the normal sharing of realtor fees to wait for a better offer.

There is a detailed analysis of teachers and the incentives given when their students do well on standardized tests. Some teachers earn the incentives by doing a good job of teaching while others cheat by giving the students longer than allowed or even changing answers using the eraser on the standard number two pencil. Students who have good teachers continue to test well while those who had teachers who cheated have lower scores from carefully monitored tests.

The authors give a few adages to explain the book: “Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life. The conventional wisdom is often wrong. Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle causes. Experts…use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda. Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so.”   

I can’t begin to describe all of the fascinating information derived by analyses of data described in the book. I’ve chosen the few samples given below.      

The amount of money spent is not the dominant factor in the outcome of elections. Americans spend more on chewing gum than on political campaigns.

The sales of car seats are more about successful marketing playing on the natural fear of parents than safety.

Baseball player Mark Grace said you aren’t trying if you aren’t cheating. Many people thought Grace had it right. Seven million children disappeared from the United States in 1987 after each child was required to have a Social Security number listed on income tax returns.

There is an interesting section describing how people attempt to attract attention on internet dating sites, and, not surprisingly, some of their self-descriptions are suspect. Less than one percent describes themselves as having “less than average looks.” It is also not surprising that “…men who say they want a long-term relationship do much better than men looking for an occasional lover. But women looking for an occasional lover do great.”

There is a detailed and disturbing discussion of crack cocaine dealers. Sudhir Venkatesh was sent by his graduate advisor into the Chicago ghettos to ask blacks a series of stupid questions about how they felt about being black. He miraculously survived and learned much about the dealers and their systems. The foot soldiers made on the average of $3.30/hour, and had a one in four chance of being killed during the four years he lived with them. They often asked Sid if he could perhaps get them a good job, such as working as a janitor at the University. The few people who made it to the higher ranks were very well paid, and all the foot soldiers took the risk for little pay on the outside chance they could make it to the higher status.

The final chapter of the book is about what effect on the names of kids on their lives. Two kids were named Winner and Loser, and the one named Loser became a respected New York policeman while the one named Winner spent most of his life in prison. Loser never hid from his name, although his friends typically called him “Lou.”  Beyond that, I was disinterested in this chapter.

The next to final chapter about what influences academic performance by school children is surprising. It isn’t surprising that the quality of teaching has the greatest influence. Other factors are counterintuitive. The statistics do not indicate taking kids to museums or reading to them is a positive. I think what the authors are missing is that the parents or grandparents taking the kids to a museum or reading to them is fun and rewarding for the parent or grandparent and the kid. I don’t care what the statistics show. We love the time with the grandkids. We doubt it hurts them that we relish our time with them, and don’t care that it doesn’t provide a statistically positive outcome for the grandchild.

Warren Buffet and his Secretary’s Taxes

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Warren Buffet’s secretary was in the spotlight at President Obama’s State of the Union Address after Mr. Buffet repeated his comments that she is the one paying the higher taxes. I know that Mr. Obama believes this is unfair, because I received a four page letter (perhaps robo-signed) that asks the question, “Do you think it is fair that Warren Buffet’s secretary pays a higher tax rate than Warren Buffet?” He then gives the answer, “I don’t and neither does Mr. Buffet.”

Mr. Buffet believes he and other millionaires should paying higher taxes on their individual returns, but he apparently doesn’t feel the same about Berkshire Hathaway. He owns a big share of that company, and it pays considerable amounts in corporate taxes. However, the company’s annual report discusses the running dispute it has with the IRS about how much it owes. This isn’t new; the IRS has been actively contesting whether Berkshire Hathaway is paying enough for almost a decade.

There are several interesting factors at play in this story. First, do his secretary and everyone else in Mr. Buffet’s office really pay more than Buffet? The answer is obviously no. The secretary does pay a higher rate on her estimated $200,000 salary, although I can’t find how she is paying the reported 35.8 percent of her income. There is a link to a tax calculator that shows a single person with taxable income of $200,000 would pay $50,897 in federal taxes, or 25.45%. A married person filing a joint return with the same taxable income would pay $44,070 or 22.03%. Perhaps Nebraska has really high state taxes or Omaha adds several percentage points for some sort of municipal tax.

Buffet reportedly pays federal income taxes at 17.4 percent of his taxable income, because much of his income is from capital gains that are taxed at a maximum of 15%. The disparity between his tax rates and those for his secretary is what has created outrage and earned her the adoration of those who champion higher taxes for millionaires. I haven’t seen it mentioned in many places that Mr. Buffet pays an estimated seven million dollars on his personal return, which my rudimentary math tells me that he reported about 40 million dollars of income. He wouldn’t have to wait for tax laws to be changed to address his outrage that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. He could simply donate another 7 million dollars to the government and there wouldn’t be an issue that needs national attention. I don’t know whether he could claim that donation to reduce his taxable income for the next year. Perhaps he doesn’t really want to send the IRS more of his personal income because his 23% share of the Berkshire Hathaway disputed corporate taxes is over five billion dollars.

It isn’t a surprise that Mr. Buffet is a big fan of Mr. Obama. The President’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline provides a big boost to earnings of Berkshire Hathaway. The pipeline was to transport oil from the Bakken oil fields in the Dakotas along with Canadian oil, but now much of that oil will have to be moved in railway tank cars operated by Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company. Berkshire Hathaway already owns 22% of that company and has an offer to buy the rest.

Let’s think about Keystone XL for a bit. The pipeline had been cleared as having minimal environmental impact in a three year study. It would have provided jobs to people making the pipe and installing it. It would have brought large quantities of oil to U.S. refineries that didn’t originate in countries that don’t like us very much. It also would have increased the amount of Bakken oil that would also move to those refineries. Apparently none of those positives would have justified irritating the people who call themselves environmentalists.

Choices for Producing Energy

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I just posted a review of “Wormwood Forest” by Mary Mycio about the Chernobyl disaster, and that brought me back to the question of what is the most responsible method of producing our electricity. We all want electricity to power the fans on our furnaces, the air conditioning, our lights, our computers and printers, to charge our phones other devices, and for some to charge the batteries in their cars. Abundant and affordable electricity is crucial to our economy and the comfort many or most of us have come to expect in our lives.

Most of our electricity is produced in plants fuled by coal (about 50%) or natural gas (about 21%) and by nuclear energy (about 19%). However, new regulations are putting pressure on the coal plants. First Energy Corp recently announced they are retiring six coal-fired plants because of the stricter federal anti-pollution rules. About a third of the workers at the six plants are eligible for retirement, and another 100 or so will be able to transfer to other jobs in the company. However, that leaves about 250 people who can’t retire without a job. This is probably just the beginning of such announcements, since it won’t be economically feasible to retrofit older plants.

I’ve reviewed several books that are pertinent to the discussion. The best, in my opinion, is “The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear” written by Dr. Petr Beckman and published in 1976. On the subject of Chernobyl he would have observed the that minimal environmental effects from Three Mile Island proved that properly designed safety systems can prevent a disaster while shoddy design gives us what happened at Chernobyl. Dr. Beckman wrote that there is no completely safe way to make energy. “Energy is the capacity for doing work, and as long as man is fallible, there is always the possibility to do the wrong type of work; to ask for safe energy, therefore, is much the same as asking for incombustible fuel. He also observed that nuclear energy is “…far safer than any other form of energy.”

Back to the review of “Wormwood Forest,” the author was astonished during her tours of the Zone of Alienation created by the explosion of a Chernobyl reactor by the proliferation of wildlife. She said little is known about the radioactive animals of Chernobyl, but “What is known is that there a many, many more of them than before the disaster.” She also wrote that what she saw during her extensive tours converted her from being an “…adamant opponent of nuclear energy to ambivalent support…”at least until we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.” I’m hoping that thinking such as that spreads before we reach the economic disaster created by bad economic policy and energy shortages predicted by some of the books I’ve recently reviewed.

Recent events involving the government trying to fund development of alternative energy endorses  the wisdom of Ms. Mycio in advocating nuclear energy until we sort out what is really possible with alternative fuels. As mentioned in the review of the book “Game Over” by Stephen Leeb, there isn’t enough iron to build the windmills and towers to replace energy from carbon based production. Solar power hasn’t been proven to provide a net gain in energy, and the results of providing Solyndra over half a billion dollars in government loans only led to a delay in bankruptcy and the layoff of about 1100 employees. There isn’t enough land area to grow biofuels to replace hydrocarbon energy production, and converting food such as corn into ethanol is both inefficient and idiotic.

Solyndra isn’t the only failure involving alternative energy technology. Beacon Power, a company involved in energy storage also went into bankruptcy after receiving $578 million dollars in taxpayer-guaranteed loans. The most recent bankruptcy was Ener1, an electric battery company that was recently awarded an $118 million dollar stimulus grant. That bankruptcy occurred about one year after Vice President Biden visited the plant to highlight the progress being made by the company with federal funds.

My hope is that technology for alternative energy becomes more successful or that new nuclear power plants will be built using the lessons learned from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Japan before we reach a precipice of economic failure driven by misguided political policies about how we make our energy.

Game Over, The Impending Economic Collapse

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I posted a review of a book “Game Over” by Stephen Leeb in which it is predicted that the U.S. economy is doomed to collapse because the world has reached what is called “Peak Oil.” All commodities are limited, and the developing world is demanding more of its share. Another review on the same subject titled “Reinventing Collapse” by Dimtry Orlov which gives virtually the same prediction, although that book is about comparing what the U.S. collapse will look like compared to what happened with the Soviet Union.

President Obama might have hastened the eventual collapse of the U.S. economy by his recent rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline is proposed to bring Canadian tar sand oil to the U.S. to be refined. Federal law requires that government projects be subjected to detailed environmental impact studies under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA approval was given to Keystone XL after three years of study found the project would not have an adverse environmental impact. However, the powerful Environmental lobby hates the idea of the project and threatened to not support the Obama reelection campaign if he approved the project.

The President said he rejected the project because the “arbitrary date” set by Congress did not give enough time for full review (despite the lengthy NEPA review). I speculate that most Presidents would have at least complained about Congress passing a law with a deadline for action by the President. However, I also speculate that the President made a calculated political decision. He needs the environmental movement to support his campaign with volunteers to man the phone banks and do the door to door work to get his vote out next November. The Unions wanted the jobs that would be created by pipeline, but I’m guessing Mr. Obama knows they will vote for him over any Republican candidate. Nate Beeler’s political cartoon in The Washington Examiner on January 18 expresses a different perspective. It shows a caricature of President Obama dusting off his hands after tying a pipe labeled “Keystone XL Jobs” into a hangman’s noose. Another figure holding a sign “Need Job” is asking, “IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE FOR ME or YOU?”

“Game Over” documents that alternative energies such as solar, wind, and biofuels can’t replace the energy provided by carbon-based fuels in the near future or ever. An article in the Wall Street Journal by Robert Bryce has interesting information about popular alternative energy sources and nuclear power. It would take 770 square miles of land covered with wind turbines to replace the two Indian Point nuclear reactors that sit on 250 acres of land and provide 30 percent of the energy used by New York City. There isn’t enough iron oxide to build enough towers and wind mills to come close to replacing electricity produced from carbon-based production. It isn’t yet certain that solar panels produce more energy than is required to construct, operate, and maintain the panels.  An area the size of Illinois would have to be planted in switch grass for biofuel to replace one-tenth of the energy produced by oil. Biofuel production as advocated by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, “…is a fool’s errand.”

The Canadians are saying they know they will sell the oil, probably to the Chinese, if the U.S. continues to block the Keystone XL pipeline. The argument that the oil is “too dirty for use” won’t impress a world that is demanding more oil. It will be burned somewhere, and Mr. Obama may have assured it won’t produce jobs and energy here.

“Game Over” predicts that runaway inflation and devaluation of the U.S. dollar along with declining commodity resources will be a centerpiece of an economic collapse. The worst case scenario is that the developed nations, which have created complexity along with wealth, will collapse in the midst of violence and starvation. Perhaps that possible outcome will somehow overcome the resistance to nuclear energy. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the Japanese tsunami disasters certainly have given nuclear energy a bad reputation. The waste generated is another subject popular with critics. However, the “…American commercial nuclear power industry, over its entire history, has produced about 62,000 tons of high-level waste. Stacked to a depth of about 20 feet, that would cover a single football field. Coal-fired power plants in the United States, by contrast, generate 130 million tons of coal ash a single year.” (That is an interesting observation, but remembering what causes a nuclear criticality would tell you that stacking high level waste isn’t a good idea.)

There has been a stream of comments and counter comments about the Bakken field in the Dakotas and how much that huge deposit could help with U.S. demands for oil. The field is producting just under half a million barrels of oil a day, which is stretching the infrastructure ability for collection and shipment. There are also arguments about the “fracking” to improve extraction. The Bakken field is generating oil and arguments. There is an interesting discussion about how much the field might be able to produce on Snopes. That source says production from the field has already peaked at about half a million barrels a day.

I speculate that many people will eventually think developing the Bakken fields, want Canada to sell us oil transported though some pipeline, and/or building more nuclear plants are all acceptable alternatives to starving in the cold and dark.  I also speculate that President Obama’s choice to block the Keystone XL pipeline will prove to be unpopular with a majority of Americans when they eventually can’t afford to fill the gas tanks of their cars or when the charging stations for their battery powered cars aren’t receiving electricity from the power plants. Maybe people won’t really care until they aren’t able to use their electricity-powered computers, cell phones, and other electronics or when they have to walk or bike to get anywhere.