OSAMA BIN LADEN

It turns out that all the time we thought Osama bin Laden was running around from cave to cave on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, he was actually just screwing around with his five wives in some luxury in Pakistan and fathering four children.

THE SAD STORY OF HIGH LEVEL RAD WASTE STORAGE

The following is modified from a post on Motley Fool, Investment and Analysis Clubs/Macro Economic Trends and Risks (March 29. 2012):

The sad story about the Nevada Test Site - Yucca Mtn.* and high level waste disposal is as follows: To get Nevada to allow the Federal government the right to put high level nuclear waste at the Nevada Test Site which is after all, Federal lands, the Federal government was going to give Nevada $125 million (a sum I thought was chicken feed) and Nevada, which had not officially complained about the nuclear device test (i.e. bombs) was all for it. Then some bean counter said that $125 million was too much and it should only be $25 million. At this point, Nevada called "Foul" and turned against it. I believe that the sum was eventually even lowered to zero.

The state of Nevada hired some real smart scientists to find things wrong with the Yucca Mtn. I know because one of my class mates hired was one of the smartest it not the smartest. He was a real talent. The Federal Government then rolled out some real smart scientists who were put on the job of showing that Yucca Mtn. was all right. I know because I was the boss of some of them for awhile. And then the war started.

So there were arguments that a volcano coming up right in the heart of Yucca Mtn. was a possibility. No, all the volcanism in that area ceased long, long ago. A glacial age was quite likely in 10,000 yrs,* and the water table would rise to cover the nuclear waste and destroy the containers. No, it is unlikely a glacial age could start that fast, and beside, the badies in the waste would be nearly all gone. What if we had a retrograde society where everyone had forgotten what radioactivity was and they dug this stuff out by mistake? Just how many people understand radioactivity today so you wouldn't have to lose a lot of talent to be retrograde. And on, and on, and on. So the smart guys in the Federal government tried to counteract the smart guys from Nevada and this went on for years.

Then just when the Federal government was going to ask to submit Yucca Mtn. to be licensed, the senior senator from Nevada and leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, asked the president for a favor to refuse the request. Plop.

I can't describe the disappointment. Scientists had spent their whole careers on this. It was like the Bridge of the River Kwai** all over only the construction plans and data gathering went on for decades not weeks or months. Even I felt it, and I got out in the late 1970s because I thought I saw where things were going. For the record, I was a proponent of granite for a storage media, but Eastern congressmen killed that because there is a lot of granite is in the East, and they don't want the repository there. We actually got a contract from the Canadians who were less squeamish (but who also abandoned granite) to work on granite which I did for awhile.

Be that as it may, I came to believe that Yucca Mtn. was a good experiment for high-level rad waste storage. And it was storage as the plans were that it could be recovered if necessary, though with difficulty. I think we might be able to forecast climate for a thousand years, but beyond that who knows? To guarantee it for a million years is silly.

So we are left with high level radioactive waste spread all over the country. Maybe that is not so bad as a successful terrorist attack would only have a limited effect. But it certainly is not ideal.

It is a terrible, terrible story and environmentalists had little to do with it, even if they didn't like it.

*http://www.yuccamountainexpose.com/Y47.htm; http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/06/dig_deeper_into_yucca.html

**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_on_the_River_Kwai

TOWARD U.S. ENERGY INDEPENDENCE?

A big part of the game of politics is for the opposing political party to blame the president for anything that goes wrong while refusing him credit for anything that goes right. Not surprisingly with the gasoline prices going up, we see President Obama blamed for these rising prices though he can do little about them (Short of reimbursing consumers something per gallon of gas to effectively lower prices consumers pay, something that I doubt the opposing party would agree to as it would run up the Federal deficit. There are countries that do this however.). Democrats did the same thing to President Bush in 2008 so it is just bi-party fun. If you were to read one article on the oil story, the article by Clifford Krauss and Eric Lupton in the March 23rd issue of the NY Times is the one you should read (http://www.cnbc.com/id/46831786). As they point out, the facts are that oil production in the U.S. is up from 4.95 million barrels/day in 2008 to 5.7 million barrels/day.

And as Krauss and Lupton (2012) point out, this increase is largely due to an environmentally controversial law and tax breaks passed by the Bush Administration plus the high price of oil today. At the same time, imports of oil have fallen from 60% in 2005 to 45% today (Krauss and Lupton). As good as this may be, any knowledgeable person will tell you the gasoline prices have nothing to do with U.S. oil production. But this progress in lowering imports of oil has come with damaging local environmental consequences. Thus it is a tradeoff.

Furthermore, the Republican Party loves to tell the price of gasoline at the time that President Obama took office, but they carefully don't mention that nearly four months before the president was elected and six months before he took office, oil was at an all-time high , a record that stands through this date of blog publication. Subsequently the Great Recession caused the price of gasoline to plunge. The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil hit its all-time high in July of 2008 at $145.29/bbl [or in inflation corrected terms $151/bbl (Krauss and Lupton)] and the price of gasoline also hit its all-time high in that time period [$4.11/gal or $4.30/gal in inflation corrected terms (Kraus and Lupton)], records that still stand as of this date (See chart below from http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx).

Incidentally, although the standard quote for oil in the U.S. is WTI, the price of oil produced in various places in the U.S. vary markedly from around $80/bbl for North Dakota sour crude (http://crudeoilpostings.semgroupcorp.com/) to around $130/bbl for Louisiana light sweet crude (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/USCRLLSS:IND).

Regarding the XL Pipeline:

Contrary to the way the topic is put by politicians, the XL Pipeline in the U.S. is very complicated and the best I can do is recommend you read the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline. And the lawsuits against the pipeline are not just from environmentalists but from refiners as well. I personally don't know how President Obama could approve the whole package until he is presented with either a final route for the pipeline or several recommended routes from which he could pick one. The part President Obama seems ready to endorse is the route from Cushing, OK, south and any route chosen from north of there is going to end up in Cushing anyway. So connecting will need be no problem. As far as the rest of it is concerned, I'm sure the XL Keystone pipeline will be built, one route or another. At any rate, it certainly has nothing to do with the price of oil now. The owners of the pipeline say they will sell to both Asia and the U.S. What does that mean? They will sell to the highest bidder? Getting congress involved in technological and scientific projects is scary.

MAY DAY TRADITION (Poem)

On the very merry first of May

With baskets of flowers, children play.

The baskets woven in school or at home,

The child departs to pick flowers alone.

Violets, daffodils and tulips galore

Are placed in baskets and left at the door.

With a smirk on the face and the doorbell rang,

The child runs away to hide with the gang.

But out of the door the mother runs

And catches the child, raining kisses in tons,

While the rest of the gang across the court

Laugh and laugh with the May Day sport.

1974

(Dedicated to the children of the

First Presbyterian Church of Lakewood)

OUTSIDE MY WINDOW (Dedicated to Robert "Big Ben" Doe) (Poem)

Outside my window and in the tree

Six little sparrows and a robin I see.

How strange, think I, that out in the tree,

While the snow floats down, a robin should be.

Out of my window and across the lawn

Two brown squirrels some peanuts munch on.

How strange, think I, while the snow falls on

The two little squirrels aren't in nests all along.

Out of my window the wind blows strong.

The trees bend over almost touching the lawn.

How strange, think I, as the snow blows on

That the birds and the squirrels are now all gone.

Yes, out of my window many wonders I see,

Such as birds and squirrels all up in a tree.

And many strange thoughts always come to me

When the wind blows the snow horizontally.

1971

THE COTTONWOODS OF DENVER (Poem)

The glaring sun shines down on

This desert waste of land

Lined with gold-green leaves.

The cottonwoods of Denver

Stately beside ditches stand

Up against the sky.

With chill air of dusk falling,

The songbirds now banned,

The sinking sun sets.

Blue mountains beyond tree tops,

Rimmed with blue-cloud’s band,

Stand there forever.

1967

ROCK CREEK WATERS (Poem)

Rock Creek waters,

Winding, twisting,

Tumble to the Potomac.

Butterscotch waters

Race and stall.

Ducks swim freely, yet, remain behind.

The storm’s torrent,

Swelling stream now,

Turbulent flows a river.

The angry waters

Crush and toss

Overflowing where the banks are low.

The winter’s cold,

Frosting, freezing,

Crusts the lonely creek with ice.

Quietly snow falls

Coating thick

Creek, bank, trees with blanket of snow.

The Sunday throng,

On sunny days,

Picnic and play on the banks.

No longer lonely

Waters now

Wind, twist, tumble to the Potomac.

1961