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Happy Halloween! What are you going to be?
Ok, ok. I know. It's all about moi. What am I going to be? Get this: Tongue of Dog. Remember?
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Ewwww, right? Anyway, Tongue of Dog is my favorite part of the Second Witch's incantation in MacBeth because it reminds me of the happy, stupid grin my dog Eisenhower used to get when he would think that all was well and then drool all over my nice clothes, without a thought for my mother's rules or for the hassle it would be for me to clean up his mess.
I'm feeling happy and stupid.
"Happy" because this week's fire at the Pilgrim Nuclear Station was doused without injuries or release of radioactivity. Reminds me of the good luck we had with the Vermont Yankee transformer fire in 2004. - "Happy" because I don't live in Europe, where eight nuclear incidents reported since May 24, including the inadvertent contamination of 100 workers and an off-site release of radioactive uranium in France, have reminded the public again and again that nuclear power is a source of routine and accidental radioactive pollution.
- "Happy" because Entergy is delaying spinning Vermont Yankee and its other unregulated assets into Enexus, and that whole idea was a public relations fiasco to begin with.
- "Happy" because Entergy has finally offered to add $60 million to the decommissioning fund (even if $60 million is only about 1/8 of what the fund was lacking before the stock market crashed, and even if Entergy won't add that money until 2026).
- "Happy" because Entergy has announced that it won't begin decommissioning for another 60 years even if Vermont Yankee's license is not renewed. This is good because, when Entergy's most staunch supporters realize that decommissioning costs hundreds of millions of dollars more than Entergy ever let on, I will be long gone from this job, and spinning a positive from a howler of a negative will be someone else's problem.
- "Happy" because the special legislative panel that is pressing the Department of Health over its unilateral decision to change the way it measures radiation being emitted by the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant adjourned Thursday and won't announce a decision until next month.
Which leaves me free to celebrate Halloween--and feel the "stupid" part of "happy and stupid." Which is to confess, Lord, that I may have forgotten already. What are you going to be?
Amen,
Tongue of Dog
1 comment:
Laughing mama is surprised the Dept. of Health and Entergy haven't come up with a more scientific means of determining how much radiation damage a person would get standing at the fenceline for a year. It's easy. Rather than use "tissue phantoms" we just need to sacrifice one person per year, stand them at the fence, then after 365 days grind them up in a blender and test for radiation. Bill Irwin says that won't work, though, because it's not radiation exposure that's cumulative, it is radiation damage. So first we'd need to insert probes into them, not just into each blood-forming organ, but into virtually every cell. The ORAU model is that precise. Wow. Get that? Radiation damage is cumulative. So is radiation pollution of the fission products, activation products and hot particle variety. A little leaks out year after year, or is released, or decays from continuously released noble gases into longer lived isotopes of some other horrific frankenelement. Because it stays hot for generations, the background radiation everywhere fallout from ENVY falls out will increase. This is convenient for ENVY, and the VT Dept. of Health, because they subtract the background radiation from what they read on the fenceline TLD's, and report a number from which an average of a number of background stations most of which are in Vernon has already been subtracted. In other words, a number someone has changed for some reason, but without knowing what any of the real numbers are, no one can say just why or how they have changed. So what's .8, .71. of .6? Just a fudge factor. Why not just fire the Dept. of Health, make up a number, and save tax dollars? Or go back to old fashioned biology and chop up a real fenceline vicitm in a blender, and then do an assay.
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