Reports of a natural gas smell sparked the evacuation of several buildings in downtown Great Falls on Wednesday morning, but it turns out scratch-and-sniff cards were to blame and not a widespread gas leak.

Nick Bohr, general manager at Energy West, said workers at the company were cleaning out some storage areas and discarded several boxes of scratch-and-sniff cards that it sent out to customers in the past to educate them on what natural gas smells like.

“They were expired, and they were old,” Bohr said. “They threw them into the Dumpsters.”

When the cards were picked up by sanitation trucks and crushed, “It was the same as if they had scratched them.”

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20130508/NEWS01/305080010/Energy-West-official-Scratch-sniff-cards-blame-gas-smell-downtown-Great-Falls?nclick_check=1



People stand on the sidewalk in downtown Great Falls after being evacuated due to widespread reports of a natural gas smell in the area.

President Obama will decide this year whether to allow the project to carry oil sands crude from Canada to U.S. ports.

This year President Obama will decide whether to allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico. Few environmental issues in recent years have engendered so much passion and debate. The pipeline would facilitate the transportation of a particularly thick type of oil, oil sands crude, from Canada to U.S. ports.

What is oil sands crude?

It is a tar-like substance containing bitumen, extracted from the boreal forests of western Canada by strip mining.

Where would the pipeline go?

If approved, Keystone XL would carry 830,000 barrels a day from Alberta to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. Canada is already the biggest exporter of oil to the United States.

Why is this issue so important to the Canadian government?

Only 4% of Canada's 170 billion barrels in proven reserves of oil sands crude has been developed, and Canada sees the deposits as a massive source of wealth. The United States buys 98.5% of Canadian oil exports at a great discount compared with global prices. Canada wants the pipeline built so it can sell to the world market.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-keystone-qa-20130407,0,7871332.story


I realize that many already know this, but I thought it was a pretty clear explanation...

Transatomic, an MIT spinoff, is developing a nuclear reactor that it estimates will cut the overall cost of a nuclear power plant in half. It’s an updated molten-salt reactor, a type that’s highly resistant to meltdowns. Molten-salt reactors were demonstrated in the 1960s at Oak Ridge National Lab, where one test reactor ran for six years, but the technology hasn’t been used commercially.

The new reactor design, which so far exists only on paper, produces 20 times as much power for its size as Oak Ridge’s technology. That means relatively small, yet powerful, reactors could be built less expensively in factories and shipped by rail instead of being built on site like conventional ones. Transatomic also modified the original molten-salt design to allow it to run on nuclear waste.

High costs, together with concerns about safety and waste disposal, have largely stalled construction of new nuclear plants in the United States and elsewhere (though construction continues in some countries, including China). Japan and Germany even shut down existing plants after the Fukushima accident two years ago (see “Japan’s Economic Troubles Spur a Return to Nuclear” and “Small Nukes Get Boost”). Several companies are trying to address the cost issue by developing small modular reactors that can be built in factories. But these are typically limited to producing 200 megawatts of power, whereas conventional reactors produce more than 1,000 megawatts.

Transatomic says it can split the difference, building a 500-megawatt power plant that achieves some of the cost savings associated with the smaller reactor designs. It estimates that it can build a plant based on such a reactor for $1.7 billion, roughly half the cost per megawatt of current plants. The company has raised $1 million in seed funding, including some from Ray Rothrock, a partner at the VC firm Venrock. Although its cofounders, Mark Massie and Leslie Dewan, are still PhD candidates at MIT, the design has attracted some top advisors, including Regis Matzie, the former CTO of the major nuclear power plant supplier Westinghouse Electric, and Richard Lester, the head of the nuclear engineering department at MIT.


http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512321/safer-nuclear-power-at-half-the-price/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130312


I'm not trying to start anything here, just thought this was too noteworthy not to post.

INDIANAPOLIS (WLFI) - State legislators are working to protect people from buying a car that meth has been manufactured in.

A proposed bill would require dealers or sellers who know meth has been made in a vehicle within two years to inform a potential buyer.

State Sen. Ron Alting (R-22) said the information has to be in writing. He said if a seller does not do that, he or she will be required to reimburse the buyer the amount of money paid for the vehicle. He said the seller may also have to pay no more than $10,000 in liquidated damages.

Alting said more and more people seem to be making meth in their cars and sometimes get caught doing it.


http://www.wlfi.com/dpp/news/local/sellers-must-tell-buyers-if-meth-was-manufactured-in-vehicle

NEW YORK — Hess is getting out of the gas station business and ridding itself of its energy trading and marketing businesses, as it shifts its focus further into exploration and production.

The company will also nominate a slate of six independent directors to its board, replacing six that already hold seats.

The announcement arrives about a month after the hedge fund Elliott Management, one of the company's largest shareholders, accused the board of "poor oversight," and said that the company's management was responsible for more than a "decade of failures."

Elliott, which holds a 4 percent stake in Hess Corp., is pushing to seat five outsiders on the board.

But Hess rejected Elliott's nominees in a letter to shareholders Monday, accusing the firm of trying to disrupt progress it has already made in reshaping itself. It said that Elliott hasn't taken into account how much company shares have risen since it began to shed previous business models.

Hess said the nominees chosen by Elliott would effectively dismantle the company.

http://www.wral.com/hess-under-pressure-to-exit-retail-business/12178750/

Source: BBC News

Kenyans are voting in an election that observers describe as the most important in the country's history.

It is the first time a vote has taken place under a new constitution, designed to prevent a repeat of violence that followed the 2007 polls.

More than 1,000 people died in widespread ethnic violence when supporters of rival candidates clashed.

Despite appeals for calm, at least four police officers died when they were attacked near Mombasa on Monday.

At least six other people - including several attackers - are also reported to have died in the assault in the early hours in Changamwe, half an hour's drive from the centre of Mombasa.


Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21651267

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In the capital Nairobi, voters rose early to stand in line, some of them chanting "peace"

As 11 teams of lawyers deliver opening statements in trial over 2010 disaster, judge sets out a three-month timetable

The man in charge of BP's ill-fated Deepwater Horizon rig warned his boss that staff were operating in "chaos, paranoia and insanity" just days before a fatal blowout killed 11 men and caused the worst oil spill in US history, a New Orleans court heard on Monday.

In opening arguments Michael Underhill, the lawyer representing the US Department of Justice, said BP knew it was drilling a "well from hell" but that its managers refused to deviate from a "course of corporate recklessness" that ultimately led to the fatal blowout at the Gulf of Mexico well.

In a difficult day for BP, Underhill was followed by statements from BP's partners in the fatal rig, Transocean and Halliburton, who also slammed BP. The dead rig workers "put too much trust in BP and paid for that trust with their lives," said Transocean attorney Brad Brian.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/25/deepwater-trial-justice-bp-warnings

According to the transcript of the secretly recorded tape, Charles Koch was chuckling like a six-year old. Koch was having a hell of a laugh over pilfering a few hundred dollars' worth of oil from a couple of dirt-poor Indians on the Osage Reservation.

Why did Koch, worth about $3 billion at the time (now $20 billion) need to boost a few bucks from some Indian in a trailer home? Koch answered:

"I want my fair share – and that's all of it."

Now "all of it" includes a pipeline, the Keystone XL, which would run the world's filthiest oil, crude made from tar sands, down from Canada to his family's refinery on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Problem: the Keystone XL tar-oil tube would endanger the largest US water sources, vastly increase pollution in the USA and measurably heat the planet.


http://www.nationofchange.org/i-want-my-fair-share-and-s-all-it-1360943988

This was a very unlikely SOTU, but Jimmy Fallon as Boehner had me in stitches anyway and I just had to share it...


http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2013/02/boehner-gets-emotional-during-state-of-the-union/?__source=feed_recent_entries

According to a University of Michigan study, fuel economy of newly purchased vehicles hit a new record all-time high in January.

The average fuel-economy (window-sticker) value of new vehicles sold in the U.S. in January reached a record of 24.5 mpg--up 0.4 mpg from the revised December value and up 4.4 mpg (or 22%) from the value in October 2007 (the first month of our monitoring). The recent improvements reflect the improved fuel economy of the 2013 model year vehicles.

The University of Michigan Eco-Driving Index (EDI)--an index that estimates the average monthly emissions of greenhouse gases generated by an individual U.S. driver--stood at 0.82 in November. This value indicates an improvement of 18% since October 2007. The EDI takes into account both the fuel used per distance driven and the amount of driving (the latter relying on data that are published with a two-month lag).





Read more at http://blog.gasbuddy.com/posts/U-of-Mich-Fuel-economy-of-new-vehicles-at-a-new-record-high-of-24-5-mpg/1715-530587-1613.aspx#u9IALluLauuyt1UI.99