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bananas's JournalThe Lost Interview with Bill Gates - WBAI - Wed Aug 14, 8-9pm ET
THE LOST INTERVIEW WITH BILL GATES - WEDNESDAY AUG. 14
Personal Computer Show
Wednesday, August 14, 2013 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM
The Personal Computer Show will feature "The Lost Interview with Bill Gates".
In 1986 at the Comdex Show held in Las Vegas, WBAI'S Hank Kee sat down with Bill Gates to talk about the past, the present, and the future of the personal computer industry from his perspective.
At the time of the interview Microsoft was but a young fledging company who had partnered with IBM when the IBM PC was introduced. It is fascinating today to overlay his vision then with the technological changes during the past 27 years.
We “lost” the tape of the interview after the initial airing. It has since been rediscovered. As we start our 31st year of The Personal Computer Show on WBAI, we thought it would be fitting to rebroadcast this interview as the content is still relevant.
Mystery memos fuel battle between Nevada, DOE over nuclear waste
Source: Fox News
U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz plans to meet with Nevada’s governor on Tuesday to discuss an escalating dispute between the state and the federal government over where to dump hundreds of canisters of radioactive waste, FoxNews.com has learned.
Tensions have risen in recent weeks over who should be forced to keep the nuclear material. The federal government says Nevada signed off on a series of memos agreeing to take it, but Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval says those talks never happened -- and says his state shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of burying toxic waste in its backyard.
<snip>
That’s a problem because Moniz testified under oath during a July 30 Senate hearing to their existence.
“There were long discussions held, many memos signed on specifically this particular low-level waste movement,” Moniz told senators. “The department agreed to special activities for the disposal. The department agreed to do something unprecedented – to move this in secured transports.”
<snip>
Sandoval, a former federal judge and state attorney general, has also accused the DOE of trying to set a dangerous precedent by exploiting a regulatory loophole to classify the waste as a low-level hazard so that it can be buried at a nuclear test location about an hour northwest of Las Vegas.
<snip>
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/12/fight-between-nevada-and-doe-over-nuclear-waste-heats-up/
Environmentalists warned that Moniz was a bad choice because of his ties to industry.
On edit: I though this was about low-level waste but was wrong as pointed out by ConcernedCanuk below.
Who gets credit for Florida's nuclear advance fee law, one of worst in state history?
Who gets credit for nuclear advance fee law, one of worst in state history?
Robert TrigauxRobert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist
Friday, August 9, 2013 4:02pm
Rarely in 22 years of writing about the Tampa Bay business scene have I received so many emails and calls from frustrated and angry readers with the same request.
By name, they ask, who is responsible for this evil 2006 law passed by the Florida Legislature? They're talking about the measure that let big power companies charge customers years in advance for high-priced nuclear power plants that may or may not ever be built. That law authorized companies to keep the money charged in advance — even if the project is canceled.
<snip>
Ask most state legislators today about the impact of the advance fee and many still parrot the power company argument. Charging customers advance fees saves money in the long run, they say.
But for whom? Certainly not current customers who must pay more each month. Certainly not for any future customer when projects like the Levy plant and Crystal River are ultimately canceled or shut down.
<snip>
So who's legislatively responsible for this mess? In addition to original sponsors Hasner and Constantine, two dozen lawmakers who voted for the measure remain in the Legislature. Four of those are from the Tampa Bay area. They are Sen. Charles Dean, R; Sen. Arthenia L. Joyner, D; Sen. Tom Lee, R; and Sen. John Legg, R.
<snip>
Via http://nuclear-news.net/2013/08/10/when-the-nuclear-industry-buys-florida-politicians-they-stay-bought/
UNSCEAR members protest against minimising health effects of Fukushima radiation
Shocked UNSCEAR members in Belgium protest “It even goes back behind the lessons of Chernobyl and other studies.”
Original post: Marc Molitor
Les délégués belges indignés: “On minimise les conséquences de Fukushima” by Marc Molitor
http://www.rtbf.be/info/societe/detail_les-delegues-belges-indignes-on-minimise-les-consequences-de-fukushima?id=8042566
English translation by Alex Rosen, M.D., Vice-chairman, German IPPNW
Shocked UNSCEAR members in Belgium protest
“It even goes back behind the lessons of Chernobyl and other studies.”
Discussions continue in UNSCEAR, the organization of the United Nations responsible for assessing the consequences of nuclear disasters and radiation. The committee prepared a report submitted for discussion amongst experts from different countries at a recent meeting in Vienna – a report that has aroused the indignation of the Belgian delegation: “Everything seems to be written, its members say, to minimize the consequences of the Fukushima disaster. It even goes back behind the lessons of Chernobyl and other studies.”
The Belgian delegation includes several experts in the study of nuclear energy. UNSCEAR must submit its report to the General Assembly of the United Nations next fall.
Back in Brussels, the head of delegation, Hans Van Marcke delivered his critical impressions on UNSCEAR’s conclusions in a presentation to the ABR, the Belgian Association for Radiation Protection. According to our information, the discussions were so tense and the Belgian were so shocked that they threaten not to sign the report and some thought even of leaving the conference. They were offered to include their objections and those of others, mainly English experts in a new, revised document. But the past has shown that it is the secretariat and the rapporteurs who lead the agenda and who give the text its final orientation, and that the greatest vigilance is needed to see to it that the final versions adequately reflects the discussions.
<snip>
Nuclear revolving door gobbles up billions of dollars of ratepayers' money
Nuclear revolving door gobbles up billions of dollars of ratepayers' money, threatening to move onto taxpayers next!
While still a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioner, Geoffrey Merrifield did the nuclear power industry a big favor. He spearheaded a seemingly simple, but significant, change in NRC regulations, which paved the way for new reactor construction, unfettered by bothersome environmental safeguards. Merrifield shephered through a change in the definition of the word "construction." Now, nuclear utilities could build any aspect of a nuclear power plant, save for the reactor and its containment building, without having to first complete an environmental impact statement, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Thus, large aspects of a new reactor construction job -- such as foundation excavations for the reactor complex, or construction of the turbine building -- could proceed apace, building "facts on the ground," and momentum that would be hard to stop.
Merrifield capped such corruption by leaving NRC immediately after his dirty work, and going to work for the Shaw Group, which specializes in -- you guessed it -- new reactor construction! This example of the nuclear revolving door between supposed government regulator and industry even made a number of senior managers at NRC uneasy about Merrifield's blatant, self-serving conflict of interest.
Now, as reported by the Atlanta Progressive News, to such corruption must be added incompetence, raising not only financial risks, into the billions of dollars, but radiological risks that could impact millions of lives:
"These problems have existed from the beginning and been raised in every other CB&I hearing and still there is no fix... they [Georgia Power] still do not have a competent outfit making parts and once the new parts get delivered to Vogtle, they are repairing them to make them acceptable. This alarms me because incompetence of this magnitude breeds disaster especially when it comes to construction of a nuclear device. There is no way these reactors can be considered safe... when ‘patch it together’ is the best construction model they are able to come up with," Antonoplos said.
<snip>
Speaking of nuclear revolving doors and federal loan guarantees, the top lobbyist for the nuclear power industry, Alex Flint at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI, photo left), has passed through multiple times. For one, he "served" as the staff director on the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee, under Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), on whose personal staff Flint had previously "served." The ENR Committee hatched the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In addition to the $13 billion of direct taxpayer subsidies in that bill aimed at promoting new atomic reactor development, Flint wrote the federal nuclear loan guarantee language. After the bill was enacted into law, Flint left "public service" and went to work at NEI, where he remains to this day.
In a very real sense, Flint wrote his own (likely high six-figure, if not more) paycheck, while "serving the public" -- up for dinner to the nuclear industry, that is!
<snip>
Nagasaki mayor slams Abe's nuclear policy on atom bomb anniversary
Source: ABC News (Australia)
Nagasaki's mayor has urged the Japanese government to take stronger action in opposing nuclear weapons, during a ceremony to mark the 68th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city.
As tens of thousands of people gathered in Nagasaki for the anniversary, mayor Tomihisa Taue used the occasion to call for stronger anti-nuclear leadership from Tokyo.
Mr Taue says the recent failure to sign a statement rejecting the use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances was a betrayal.
"If we cannot accept the wording that usage of nuclear weapon will never be permitted, it means the Japanese government is showing that nuclear weapons can be used depending on the circumstance," he said.
<snip>
Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-09/nagasaki-mayor-slams-abe-nuclear-policy/4877418
Crazy Pills (Lariam anti-malaria drug)
Crazy Pills
By DAVID STUART MacLEAN
Published: August 7, 2013 235 Comments
CHICAGO — ON Oct. 16, 2002, at 4 p.m., I walked out of my apartment in Secunderabad, India, leaving the door wide open, the lights on and my laptop humming. I don’t remember doing this. I know I did it because the building’s night watchman saw me leave. I woke up the next day in a train station four miles away, with no idea who I was or why I was in India. A policeman found me, and I ended up strapped down, hallucinating in a mental hospital for three days.
<snip>
I had been prescribed mefloquine hydrochloride, brand name Lariam, to protect myself from malaria while I was in India on a Fulbright fellowship.
<snip>
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration finally acknowledged the severity of the neurological and psychiatric side effects and required that mefloquine’s label carry a “black box” warning of them. But this is too little, too late.
There are countless horror stories about the drug’s effects. One example: in 1999, an Ohio man, back from a safari in Zimbabwe, went down to the basement for a gallon of milk and instead put a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger. Another: in Somalia in 1993, a Canadian soldier beat a Somali prisoner to death and then attempted suicide. “Psycho Tuesday” was the name his regiment had given to the day of the week they took their Lariam.
<snip>
Mystery particle could shrink your hard drive to the size of a peanut
Source: NBC News
A strange, newly discovered particle could shrink a laptop computer's hard drive to the size of a peanut and an iPod's drive to the size of a rice grain.
The particle, called a skyrmion, is more stable and less power-hungry than its conventional, magnetic cousin. Besides storing data in ultra compact media, skyrmions could lead to faster computers that combine storage with processing power and usher in smaller and smaller devices that have the same computing power as a desktop machine.
Kristen von Bergmann and her colleagues, led by Roland Wiesendanger at the University of Hamburg in Germany, report their findings in Thursday's issue of Science.
<snip>
Skyrmion-based electronics wouldn't just be smaller and more stable -- they'd use less power, noted Avadh Saxena, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In fact, the skyrmions require 100,000 times less power to manipulate than magnetic fields on a hard dive.
One factor that bodes well for building real drives is that the researchers didn't need to use any exotic substances for the magnetic film. "It's exciting that they used relatively conventional materials," said Ulrich Rössler, a physicist at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research in Dresden, Germany.
Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/mystery-particle-could-shrink-your-hard-drive-size-peanut-6C10879170
Critics of small modular reactors forecast financial risk
Source: Augusta Chronicle
A nonprofit nuclear group released a report Thursday saying that efforts to develop small modular reactors at Savannah River Site and other venues will require “tens of billions of dollars” in federal subsidies.
“SMRs are being promoted vigorously in the wake of the failure of the much-vaunted nuclear renaissance,” Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said in a statement. “But SMRs don’t actually reduce financial risk; they increase it, transferring it from the reactor purchaser to the manufacturing supply chain.”
<snip>
Makhijani’s report, “Light Water Designs of Small Modular Reactors: Facts and Analysis,” estimates that $90 billion in orders would be needed for mass production of the small units.
“A hundred reactors, each costing about $900 million, including construction costs – would amount to an order book of $90 billion, leaving aside the industry’s record of huge cost escalations,” he said. “Shifting from the present behemoths to smaller unit sizes is a financial risk shell game, not a reduction in risk.”
Read more: http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2013-08-08/critics-small-modular-reactors-forecast-financial-risk
Engineer held with pictures of Kalpakkam reactor
Source: Times of India
An engineer was arrested for trying to smuggle out photographs of the fast breeder reactor at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam near Chennai on Wednesday. Central Industrial Security Force guards who arrested M Shaffir Ali, 28, seized four pen drives containing more than 400 photographs of the sensitive installation.
Ali, hired by a contractor involved in the construction of the reactor, had worked in the structural engineering section of the plant for the past four years. The guards arrested him when they found him moving shiftily in a restricted area on Wednesday.
The CISF guards found Ali, who attempted to escape when they stopped him, was carrying four pen drives, a cellphone and a card reader. The CISF informed the Kalpakkam police about Ali's detention and handed him over to them.
Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, which is developing the country's first fast breeder reactor, is not under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
<snip>
Read more: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Engineer-held-with-pictures-of-Kalpakkam-reactor/articleshow/21696904.cms
This is a military fast breeder reactor.
Under Bush's stupid "Nukes for Mangoes" deal, India gets to declare which reactors are civilian and which are military.
The military reactors are the ones "not under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)."
They are used for making nuclear weapons.
It's not clear what this engineer was doing.
Maybe he was a whistleblower documenting poor construction methods.
Maybe he was a peace activist who wanted to expose the nuclear weapons work.
Maybe he was a terrorist getting detailed layouts for planning an attack.
Maybe he was paid by Pakistan to spy on this dangerous threat from India.
Maybe he was paid by Pakistan to sabotage the reactor.
Maybe he just wanted to keep a personal portfolio of his work.
Article via http://www.nucpros.com/content/engineer-held-pictures-kalpakkam-reactor
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