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Car of Tomorrow

Farm of Tomorrow

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the reactor revival is NOT ready for prime time

A devastating blow to the much-hyped revival of atomic power has been delivered by an unlikely source---the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC says the "standardized" designs on which the entire premise of returning nuclear power to center stage is based have massive holes in them, and may not be ready for approval for years to come.

Delivered by one of America's most notoriously docile agencies, the NRC's warning essentially says: that all cost estimates for new nuclear reactors---and all licensing and construction schedules---are completely up for grabs, and have no reliable basis in fact. Thus any comparisons between future atomic reactors and renewable technologies are moot at best. And any "hard number" basis for independent financing for future nukes may not be available for years to come, if ever.
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But in the meantime, Public Service Commissions like the one in Florida, have given preliminary approval to reactor proposals whose projected costs have more than doubled in just one year. Florida Power & Light's two proposed reactors at Turkey Point, on the border of the Everglades National Park, are listed as costing somewhere between $6 billion and $9 billion. FP&L refuses to commit to a firm price, and is demanding south Florida ratepayers foot an unknowable bill for gargantuan projects whose costs are virtually certain to skyrocket long before the NRC approves the actual reactor designs. By contrast, the "huge" preliminary deal just reached between Florida, environmentalists and U.S. Sugar to buy some 180,000 acres of land to save the Everglades is now estimated at less than $2 billion, less than one-sixth the minimum estimated cost of the two reactors proposed for Turkey Point.

In the larger picture, the depth of this scam is staggering. With no finalized design, and no firm price tag, a second generation of nuclear power plants is now being put on the tab of southeastern citizens whose rates have already begun to skyrocket. These reactor projects cannot get private financing, and cannot proceed without either massive federal subsidies and loan guarantees, or a flood of these state-based give-aways. They also cannot get private insurance against future melt-downs, and have no solution for their radioactive waste problem. Current estimates for finishing the proposed Yucca Mountain national waste repository, also yet to be licensed, are soaring toward $100 billion, even though it, too, may never open.

Read down a bit:

Pedal power challenges car culture as cyclists seize Los Angeles freeways

Los Angeles, meet the bicycle.

Of all the least-expected consequences of soaring fuel prices, this has to be near the top of the list: swarms of cyclists are taking to the intimidating, multi-lane thoroughfares of Los Angeles, some even defying the law and whizzing between the stationary cars on the gridlocked freeways.

The result is a city of diehard motorists in need of some anger management. Criminal charges have already been filed against one driver accused of deliberately braking in front of two cyclists in the wealthy suburb of Mandeville Canyon — home of the world's most famous Hummer-driving road hog, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both cyclists ended up in hospital.
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Even in liberal LA, however, there is an element of political antipathy in this showdown. Even if cyclists do not overtly consider themselves to be combating everything from obesity to global warming when riding on two wheels, motorists tend to perceive their every on-road manoeuvre as holier-than-thou.

The Cyclists' Bill of Rights has done nothing to disabuse motorists of the notion that all cyclists are condescending, Obama-cheering elitists. The document states that cyclists are an “indicator species” of a healthy community, and represent a solution to environmental destruction and gridlock. One pro-cycling group, the Crimanimalz, organises frequent law-defying rides to prove how much more efficient two-wheeled transport can be.

Would avid cyclist George Bush count as an "Obama-cheering elitist?" And in PA we used to have the Ridge ride, where both cyclists and wannabes would try to rub elbows with the Governor on his Serotta. (Ridge took heat for riding a NY bike instead of a PA built Cannondale.) Many of the guys I rode with were local Republican businessmen. One, Rick Geist, was our Republican state congressman.

But in the MSM anyone who rides a bike must be an elitist. An Obama-cheering elitist, at that.

BTW is there anyone that doesn't find all these anti-Obama screeds from the same few posters sadly transparent and unconvincing?

Canadian Auto Workers Boss Buzz Hargrove: “I told Rick Wagoner it’s not a question of if you’re going to have to file [for bankruptcy], it’s a question of when”

But wait! There's more. Buzz reckons ALL of Detroit's automakers are going down. "I don't see how they can survive in their current form."

I've been following pistonhead site The Truth About Cars' 'deathwatch' articles on GM, Ford and Chrysler (or ChryCerberus) for several years now. TTAC's contributors made their dire predictions because American carmakers have based their profits on building trucks and truck-like vehicles while ceding the efficient car market to imports. With $4 gasoline the norm, the Big Three now resemble the doomed dinosaurs in Fantasia.

Chicago's huge budget shortfall tied to national economic crisis:

With huge budget shortfall, city layoffs loom

Top mayoral aides have been meeting privately with union leaders to prepare them for the loud noise they'll hear this week, when Mayor Daley lowers the budget boom.

Daley's preliminary 2009 budget is expected to include the largest shortfall in recent memory -- more than $400 million, according to some sources -- setting the stage for service cuts, employee layoffs, unpaid furlough days or a combination of the three.

With expenses rising, real estate transfer taxes plummeting and sales taxes down as strapped consumers cut spending, painful budget cuts appear to be the only alternative. Other cities and states are facing equally painful choices.

"Food prices go up. Gas prices go up. And expenses go up. The dollar is losing value continually. We are in a serious financial crisis in America. I keep saying that. People look at it and, maybe, dismiss it. But, I think we're in a much more serious financial crisis than people . . . believe. It's gonna have a long effect on this economy," Daley said Friday.

City managers face furloughs

Two thousand city managers earning more than $75,000 a year will be required to take three unpaid furlough days by Dec. 31 to help ease Chicago's worst budget crisis in decades under a mayoral plan to be presented today before a City Council committee.

The Finance Committee is expected to approve Mayor Daley's $3 million furlough plan, triggering a period of shared sacrifice that's certain to extend to the city's unionized employees.

In study, evidence of liberal-bias bias

Cable talking heads accuse broadcast networks of liberal bias -- but a think tank finds that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Barack Obama than on John McCain in recent weeks.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.

You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.

During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.

Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.

Conservatives have been snarling about the grotesque disparity revealed by another study, the online Tyndall Report, which showed Obama receiving more than twice as much network air time as McCain in the last month and a half. Obama got 166 minutes of coverage in the seven weeks after the end of the primary season, compared with 67 minutes for McCain, according to longtime network-news observer Andrew Tyndall.

I wrote last week that the networks should do more to better balance the air time. But I also suggested that much of the attention to Obama was far from glowing.

That earned a spasm of e-mails that described me as irrational, unpatriotic and . . . somehow . . . French.

But the center's director, RobertLichter, who has won conservative hearts with several of his previous studies, told me the facts were the facts.

"This information should blow away this silly assumption that more coverage is always better coverage," he said.
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But don't expect cable talking heads to end their trashing of the networks.

Repeated assertions that the networks are in the tank for Democrats represent not only an article of faith on Fox, but a crucial piece of branding. On Thursday night, O'Reilly and his trusty lieutenant Bernard Goldberg worked themselves into righteous indignation -- again -- about the liberal bias they knew was lurking.

Once again, I was suddenly logged out when I submitted this post.