Can't see the forest for the catalogs

It is almost November, and that means that the springs of the postal delivery vehicles are sagging under the weight of a thousand catalogs. This time of year your mailbox, like mine, is stuffed with glossy, high-clay paper. Retailers all over America want you to buy more cheap plastic crap from sweatshops in China, or perhaps expensive organic cotton crap made by indigenous worker cooperatives in Peru.

There is a way out, before the forests (and your wallet) are stripped bare. Grab a stack of catalogs, go to CatalogChoice.org, register, and start entering customer numbers. They will get you off the mailing lists and in ten weeks or so your mailbox will empty. You can go back to the site as more catalogs come in and nix them as well.

A friend of mine tipped me off to this a few days ago and I immediately started ripping through my recycling bin like a mighty catalog hunter. Now you, dear readers, can enjoy the same satisfaction.

Avoiding a nuclear renaissance

The Bush administration and the nuclear industry are trying to promote a nuclear renaissance. The last new nuclear plant was constructed decades ago, before the Three Mile Island incident of 1979. A new one has recently entered the permit process.

I’ll set aside the operational safety issues of a nuclear power plant aside for the moment and consider the waste. After the fuel rods have been in the reactor a while the amount of U-235 has gone down and there are a number of new radioactive elements, including Cesium 137, Iodine 131, and Strontium 90. Some of these elements decay quite rapidly, and others take thousands of years to reach a low level of radioactivity.

There is a pool of water next to most nuclear plants, filled with racks of spent nuclear fuel rods. These rods need to sit for a few decades until they cool down. Then they need to be cared for and protected for several thousand years as they keep decaying into less radioactive elements. In theory, the spent fuel rods at Vermont Yankee and all the other nuclear plant in the U.S. will eventually end up buried in underground caverns at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. In reality, Yucca Mountain is nowhere near finished, and the State of Nevada is fighting to prevent it ever being finished. One of our Vermont State Representatives who has visited Yucca Mountain calls it “the big lie in the ground.” Meanwhile, about three quarters of our 104 nuclear power plants in the U.S. will run out of room in their waste storage pools in the next few years. This will require them to use dry cask storage, which is just what it sounds like. There are a number of people who are doubtful about dry cask storage, including a whistleblower from the biggest dry cask manufacturer, who alleges faulty welds and otherwise substandard construction. The other problem is that even if Yucca Mountain construction went gangbusters starting today, by the time it would be completed there would be more nuclear waste around than it could hold.

Right now we have about 488 metric tons of radioactive waste stored at Vermont Yankee, with more being produced as you read this. We are stuck with it, as are our children, and their children, and their children, and their children, for a thousand generations. A “nuclear renaissance” (in our case, relicensing Vt. Yankee) would add even more waste to a system unable to deal with what we have now.

I’d like to propose an alternative. This alternative is based on the fact that nuclear plants provide what is called base load electricity. The amount of electrical power a region consumes goes up and down hour by hour each day, day by day each week, and it cycles by season as well. There is a level of demand that is always there, morning, evening, weekends and holidays, that is called the base load. The extra electrical demand that happens when all the air conditioners in Houston rev up on a summer afternoon is called the peak load. Nuclear plants are base load generators – they don’t rev up and back down very quickly, they just sit there at one level. It makes sense that to offset the need for a base load supplier such as a nuclear plant you would need to reduce base load demands.

In 2006, nuclear power accounted for 787,219,000 megawatt hours (MWh), or just over 19% of electrical production. (The total being 4,064,702,000 MWh in 2006) How can we chip away at that need? To start with, I’m thinking of industrial motors and refrigerators. Both tend to get switched on and stay on.

According to the Department of Energy, “industrial motor energy use could be reduced by 11 to 18 percent if facilities managers undertook all cost-effective applications of mature proven efficiency technologies and practices. That is, implementation of all well-established motor system energy efficiency measures and practices that meet reasonable investment criteria will yield annual energy savings of 75 to 122 billion kWh, with a value of $3.6–$5.8 billion at current industrial energy prices.” That is 75 to 122 million MWh out of our 787 million provided by nuclear. I’ll split the difference, call it 98 million, leaving us 689, 219,000 to deal with.

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy proposes that new commercial refrigeration standards would save 2.3 million MWh annually by 2020. That only drops us to 686,919,000, but it’s something.

Home refrigerators account for 12% of U.S. energy use, or roughly 487,760,240 MWh. Replacing an average refrigerator from 1993 with the highest efficiency conventional refrigerator available today would cut energy use in half. New refrigerator designs could cut in half the yearly consumption of even the best units out there today. The potential in some cases would be to cut energy consumption by a factor of four. According to the folks at EnergyStar, about 25% the refrigerators around today (31 million out of 125 million in U.S. in 2006) are pre-1993 and about 33% EnergyStar qualified. Over the next couple of decades we would be replacing our refrigerators anyway. Work out the percentages and it is conceivable that we could reduce our domestic refrigeration load by 63%, or 309,191,206 MWh.

Subtract that and we have 377,727,784 MWh of annual nuclear production left to deal with. That is a little less than half of our present production, and I have only addressed refrigeration and industrial motors. I could go on, but this shows the feasibility of conserving our way out of a nuclear (waste) renaissance. In 2003, Europeans averaged 5765 annual kWh per capita, compared to our 13,243. They don’t seem to be lacking in heavy industry, refrigeration, lighting, or high-tech electronics, so a 19% (or even 50%) cut in our electricity use is not out of the question.

My metaphorical question is “why juggle expensive grenades when there are cheap tennis balls to be had?”

An open letter to Senator Leahy on the Mukasey nomination

Dear Senator Leahy,

I have read and heard accounts of today’s confirmation hearing for Bush’s candidate for Attorney General, Judge Michael Mukasey. I’ll get right to the point.

You asked Judge Mukasey about the secret Justice Department memo of 2005 that authorized the use of waterboarding (simulated drowning), among other techniques, as interrogation methods. Judge Mukasey responded as follows:

“I'm certainly going to examine the underlying memos and the underlying facts. But I have not been read in—I think that's the Washington expression—to any of the classified information”

Senator, I haven’t read the memo either. I have only read about it in press reports. They all say that the memo claimed that the technique did not rise to the level of torture. I don’t have a law degree, or experience as a federal judge, but if you asked me about waterboarding, I would not give you an answer equivalent to “I’ll get back to you on that.” Waterboarding is torture, period. Anyone with the remotest understanding of the technique and a grain of conscience would say the same.

Any man giving an equivocating answer on that question, indicating that he hasn’t formed an opinion, raises three possibilities in my mind.

He is lying.
He has a stunted moral conscience.
He is uninformed about waterboarding.

Judge Mukasey’s judicial experience with cases involving terrorism and national security makes the last possibility extremely doubtful.

Either of the two remaining possibilities disqualifies him for the post.

I know that his confirmation is supposed to be a “slam dunk,” to borrow a phrase, but please reconsider. If he equivocates now on torture (and, as he has, on habeas corpus and secret surveillance), what will he do with the power of the office? “Better than Alberto Gonzales” is not good enough.

Sincerely,

M.H.

(Update, 10/23/07: Senator Leahy and other members of the Judiciary Committee have sent written questions to Judge Mukasey, describing waterboarding and asking him directly about whether he regards it as torture. Leahy has stated that he will delay any vote on the nomination until he gets an answer. He says that his own vote on the confirmation is in question, along with the votes of other committee members. Is the Senator influenced by the M.H., or is it just a question of great minds thinking alike? Undoubtedly the latter.)

Oil for Yen: the first grain of sand

A grain of sand drops out of place on a steep hillside, hitting two other grains of sand and knocking them out of place. A little slump in the sand evolves, which displaces a pebble. Do I need to elaborate? Eventually the whole hillside comes rumbling down, from sand to boulders.

I think I just saw that grain of sand make its move. The slightly ungrammatical headline in Business Week read, “Japan refiners pay for Iran oil with yen.” Iran wants to lower its holdings of U.S. dollars and so it arranged a deal with the Japanese refiners to pay for the oil in their own currency.

You might well ask, “Why should the Japanese pay for oil in dollars anyway?” The yen is a perfectly convertible internationally traded currency. There is some history involved. (Oversimplification alert – people have written entire books on this bit of history)

Back in 1971, the U.S. government had a big problem. The U.S. was bleeding cash and borrowing to finance the war in Viet Nam and to buy foreign oil. The dollar was backed by gold, pegged at $35 an ounce. Foreign governments started showing up, demanding real gold for their dollars. Of course, there was not 1/35th of an ounce of gold for each and every dollar out in the world, so we had a gold reserve crisis. President Nixon solved this by detaching the dollar from gold and letting it float on the world market. The dollar devalued, and inflation resulted. To counteract this, in the early 1970’s, the U.S. cut a deal with Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer in OPEC, to provide military support for the Saudi monarchy in return for the Saudis selling oil only for dollars. Later this agreement was extended to all of OPEC. These agreements established the so-called petrodollar.

Robert Newman explained the petrodollar with a story about the artist Salvador Dali. In his later years, the story goes, Dali never paid a dime when eating out. He would entertain his friends all evening, and when the bill came he would write a check. Then, just before handing it to the proprietor, he would do an original sketch on the back. This made the check more valuable as an artwork than the cost of dinner, and it would never get cashed. So it goes with the dollar. Everybody needs dollars to buy oil, so they keep circulating and seldom come home to the U.S. to buy goods. But what if people started to decide that Dali’s check sketches were worth less than the cost of dinner? His account would be overdrawn almost instantly. If the dollar was no longer necessary to buy oil then dollars would start coming back to the U.S. Our currency would tank, driving oil prices (for us) that much higher.

Some observers have said that Saddam Hussein sealed his fate when he started selling oil for Euros through the oil for food program in 2000. It might help explain our current animosity against Iran. Iran has been taking Euros in payment for oil and is planning to establish its own oil bourse for a few years now, with oil sold for Euros. President Chavez of Venezuela, another non-favorite of this administration, came out in support of this move, and even transferred some of Venezuela's cash reserves out of the dollar.

Of course, Iran can’t sink the dollar all by itself. As long as Saudi Arabia and other major exporters keep demanding dollars, we are relatively safe. However, it is not comforting to think that our financial future depends on the petrodollar. First, it gives OPEC an enormous amount of leverage over us. Second, we are reliant on OPEC maintaining internal discipline, which has already cracked with Iran’s oil for yen move. Third, there is the possibility of an escalating series of opportunistic side deals between non-OPEC exporters and importers in various internationally traded currencies as the dollar declines. This could become a vicious circle, as the declining dollar would drive more oil-exporting countries away. After all, where is it written in stone that there should be only one currency for buying oil? Other commodities sell for an array of currencies in various domestic and international markets.

What I fear is a case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. No oil-producing country wants to upset the political and financial structure that keeps the whole scheme going, but none of them wants to be the last one holding large reserves of devalued ex-petrodollars. As the dollar declines due to our foreign trade and account deficits, and as countries like Iran move away from the dollar for political reasons, others will feel compelled to hedge their bets with other currencies. From the grain of sand to the house-sized boulders, the whole hillside could come thundering down.

(For more resources on the petrodollar warfare debate, try this Wikipedia entry.)

Nuclear Push Poll

I was just on the receiving end of the most blatant and egregious push poll you can imagine. For those of you not familiar with the term, a push poll is essentially an advertisement disguised as an opinion poll. For example, in a congressional race an unscrupulous candidate might commission an attack poll with questions such as “If you knew that congressman John Spineless voted for a bill to lower penalties for child molesters, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?”

The phone rang just after the dinner hour and a woman identified herself as working for the Charlton Research Group.

She asked a few questions about my demographics, plus some questions about how much I knew about the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and its corporate owner, Entergy. There were a few questions about the recent collapse of part of the Vermont Yankee cooling towers. Then the woman started in with a seemingly endless stream of propaganda.

"Entergy has won the Blah-blah-blah Corporate Responsibility Award for an unprecedented sixth year in a row, blah blah blah. Does this make you feel more or less positive about the relicensing of Vermont Yankee? Somewhat or strongly?" "Vermont Yankee provides 218 high paying jobs amounting to (some millions) in payroll per year in Vermont. Does this make you feel more or less positive about relicensing Vermont Yankee?" And so on, and so on, with seemingly endless “Isn’t Entergy wonderful?” questions about baseload power, redundant safety systems, their security force, carbon savings, needing cheap power to keep jobs and our kids in Vermont and on and on. I was waiting for something like “Since Entergy’s CEO is God’s anointed representative on earth…..”

At one point I called the game and pointed out what was going on. The woman on the other end, obviously just trying to make a minimal buck making phone calls, asked me to be patient and told me that my opinion was important. The stream of propaganda was fascinating as well as frustrating, so I persevered.

She had asked me my opinion of relicensing at the beginning, and asked me again at the end, testing the effect of the propaganda assault. Nope. Strongly oppose.

After wishing her a good evening I did a web search on the Charlton Group. They have an impressive client list, including oil companies, chemical companies, agribusiness, tobacco interests, and timber companies. They also have done work for organizations with names such as “Alliance for Reasonable Regulations,” and “Association of California Tort Reform.” In other words, corporate astroturf efforts to gut environmental laws and trample ordinary people. There were a few friendly names in there such as the American Lung Association, but it was mostly corporate PR.

Part of the Charlton Research portfolio is “Issue Management” and “Crisis Management.” I suppose that with a cooling tower collapse in the news and relicensing in play Entergy decided that some crisis management was needed. In practice the “poll” was a clumsy effort. I got fed up with the nonsense less than half way through. I imagine that most Vermonters would lose patience as well.

The State and the power companies need to recognize that Vermont Yankee is a stopgap power source at best. It is a present liability in terms of operational safety and a future liability in terms of radioactive waste storage. Eventually people will realize that our grandchildren’s’ grandchildren will still be tending to those spent fuel rods in Vernon. An aging, overstressed nuclear reactor is not an asset, no matter how many push polls Entergy buys.