Tuesday, August 19, 2008








Nukey Good Newz !!!

Entergy’s Nuclear Workforce Development Partners Receive $1.1 Million in NRC Grants
08/12/2008

On Aug. 1, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced partners of Entergy’s Workforce Planning strategy will receive grants totaling more than $1.1 million to fund scholarships, faculty development and program development.



Over the past 18 months Entergy’s Nuclear WFP group has worked closely with School Relations to identify existing education and training programs that align with projected workforce needs. WFP also worked on closing gaps where programs did not exist at all. Nuclear WFP has been partnering with colleges, universities and technical schools to develop nuclear-specific programs for a future workforce.



Entergy’s Nuclear WFP strategy is working with these technical schools and colleges around the United States to build new education and training programs for the next generation of nuclear workers. In fact, Entergy has more than a dozen such partnerships under development.



John Wheeler, manager of Entergy’s Nuclear WFP team, said the partnerships were great news for Entergy. “These education and training programs line up with our future workforce needs. The funds will make a big difference in jump starting these programs and in accelerating the education and training of new nuclear talent. It’s also rewarding to know that our hard work is continuing to be recognized in the form of more than $1 million that will go towards developing our future nuclear workforce," he said.



This latest announcement brings the two-year total of federal grant funding for Entergy’s nuclear workforce development partners to more than $3.6 million. Wheeler mentioned the department was always looking for prospective funding. “For example, we’re expecting the U.S. Department of Labor to announce new community-based job training grants sometime this fall,” said Wheeler.



Seven of the academic partners are the latest recipients of NRC Education and Training grants. The grant recipients are:

$95,972 for Polytechnic University in New York, NY to develop a Nuclear Engineering minor degree program.
$100,000 for University of Missouri and Linn State Technical College to develop a freshman level nuclear technology course.
$128,000 for Alcorn State University to continue the development of their Radiation Safety, Training & Technology Program.
$150,000 for Lakeland Community College for the Great Lakes Regional Nuclear Scholarship Program.
$82,687 for Lake Michigan College for scholarships to attend their Energy Production Technology Program.
$150,000 for Linn State Technical College for scholarships to attend their Nuclear Technology and Nuclear Quality Control Technology Programs.
$412,000 for Idaho State University for two new faculty positions in Nuclear Engineering and Health Physics.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Have lunch, will munch. Join me?






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Friday, February 23, 2007

THE BIG RISK OF JOINING AN ENTOURAGE

The Independent Safety Assessment Entourage

In 1996, a marginally acceptable nuclear plant- the Maine Yankee plant-was a hotbed of unfinished work orders, unfollowed procedures, shoddy work practices, dozens of "workarounds" where some jury-rigged gilhooley wangdoodle of a home made temporary solution was left in place on a semi-permanent basis... extension cords ran through the control room powering items that had been designed to have their own power supply-but didn't. This plant requested a power uprate from NRC, and received it, even though a calculation proving its ability to withstand a small loss of coolant accident, had been kluged by simply referring to another calc, the case of a large coolant break, and the slipshod workaround of simply saying "Oh, if it withstands the large coolant break, it oughtta withstand the small break, right?"

Amazingly, this slipshod evasion of a true calculation was allowed to stand as "engineering judgement" by NRC, even though the plant's Final Safety Analysis Report-its FSAR-(part of its license) had promised to calculate the loss of coolant break in all sizes, from smallest to largest, in ten percent increments. A whistle blower went public with the evaded calculation, and two organizations were in deep, deep trouble.

Maine Yankee was in trouble because, short of staff, and money-starved, it had trained itself to skate on the edge of failure, and talk its way past the resident NRC inspectors.

NRC was in trouble, because it had failed to enforce a written committment for Maine Yankee to do ten calculations, and had accepted a single "one size fits all" safety calc in its place. Internally, NRC groused about just how bad, bad was, and just how good a plant needed to be, to be acceptable. It knew someone had messed up.


In a desperate bid to salvage its credibility, NRC devised a special emergency administrative tactic, a one time only self-reinvestigation, by way of bringing in 25 new inspectors to do a "vertical slice" inspection at Maine Yankee. At the end of the exercise, in November 1996, the 25 new inspectors had developed a laundry list of bad conditions found in a 3 month period,the worst being a safety injection pump that would not have functioned when needed, because its starting wire was not connected, and a set of several hundred meaningless valve tests , done religiously by the plant's test group, but so ineptly designed, that the tests as performed did not really test for anything, thus calling in to question the ability of almost every valve in the plant to perform its function when called upon, and a control room air conditioning system, which was allowed to ice up and fail repeatedly for years, without ever being permanently fixed.

The Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company was not a real corporation with a credo, or a corporate identity, it was a consortium of ten local power companies kicking in 10% each, to start a nuclear plant, and who then simply milked the plant from day one, doing everything the most evasive way possible to save cash, never hiring enough staff to do upkeep work, and simply riding the nuclear tiger for profit, almost like a band of strict Maine preachers of old , buying a ten percent interest in a brothel somewhere, forced to never own up to any responsibilities, because it was, well, a damned nuclear brothel, right?

NRC had been flim flammed by the preachers, and had bigtime egg on its face. Good will, or trust, had not been enough, and NRC needed more penetrating inspection methods, and a rating system, able to tell shoddy from bad, and unacceptable from acceptable. Out of the experience, NRC crafted its Reactor Oversight Process-- a system of constant inspections, with ratings given to each category in each plant. The one-time Independent Safety Assessment was made an every-week occurrence, and forms the backbone of NRC's working method today-- (Incidentally, the period when the ROP has been enforced is also the period when nuclear plants went from 30% efficiency to 99% efficiency).

So--- was the Maine Yankee Independent Safety Assessment successful? Yes, in that it upped the standards for every plant, and formed the kernel of a new ongoing set of high inspection standards, universally enforced.

Should it be done once more, in 2007?

The Maine Yankee situation was unique. Indian Point, and its corporate mentor Entergy bear no resemblance to Maine Yankee whatsoever, and ten years of NRC test results are in the public domain to prove it. That is ten years of tests identical to Maine Yankee's ISA, done on a constant rotating basis (aside from the resident inspectors at the plant permanently), and therefore a call for a new ISA, shows either an absolute ignorance of the nuclear industry, the ROP, and the rigid recurrent ISA's always going on at Indian Point, or else is simply a cynical stunt, done for political purposes. If NRC even were to comply, and hold a new "ISA", it would be forced to interrupt its own series of ongoing ISA's at the plant to do so.

So, was Hillary Clinton's staff misled by some antinuke activist, a Ray Shadis maybe, someone who had heard about Maine Yankee, but who suppressed the facts of the new constant ISA regime brought in afterwards? I suspect this is exactly what happened.

Is there a debt to pay, in using sliphsod "activist movement" reporting tactics, as a basis for making real world governmental policy? Bigtime. It puts egg on John Hall's face, Hillary's face, and incidentally on the faces of Westchester's 17 county legislators, although their faces have very little room for more egg, being sloppily smeared with a veritable Western Omelette of shame for their sycophantic obeisance to personalities like user Mike "The Kapo" Kaplowitz, who trots them around at will, kind of like Britney Spears' entourage.

And that's why an Independent Safety Assessment at Indian Point is not needed. Indian Point is already doing it.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

we must prove that what we believe can be proven


BECAUSE WE HAVE TO KNOW

The cult had waited months for the saucers to arrive. All had been prepared. The "special kool-aid" was set out in pitchers near each bunk, for the faithful to drink, when the great moment arrived. Great leader Nu-Day knelt impressively by the burning incense pyre and chanted "Ommmmmm..." as the hands on the clock approached the fateful hour of midnight, when the chosen ones would depart on ether waves for the mother ship. Excitement was high. As the second hand reached the very top of its arc, midnight arrived. Nothing happened. An acolyte was dispatched to the window. "Do you see the ship?" ... "No , Master, no ship is here" They waited motionless. 12:15 passed. 12:30 passed. Finally at 1:23 A.M., great leader Nu-Day stood, let out a sigh, and exclaimed..."I do not know what to believe. I was positive the alien entities had spoken to my inner being, and that great catastrophes were starting at exactly midnight. In order to find out once and for all, just why our flying saucer did not arrive, we must call John Hall, and begin an Independent Assessment of Indian Point".

"Yes, Yes", they all exclaimed... "You are truly a great leader!" "An Independent Assessment!! Yes! Yes! Hallelujah Boogaloo!!"

And so it was that the Independent Assessment Cult was gloriously born, the night the saucers didn't come.

And why shouldn't Indian Point help us in our quest?

After all, it's just to find if our sacred cult doctrine is true or not!

A simple request !!

Saturday, February 3, 2007

WEB DRIFTERS



The Web Drifters.

Loners with no children. Predators with no careers....Men in their fifties, each being supported by a manipulated female family member, so that they have time on their hands, and do not work. Men with no teenage boy to mentor, guide, and teach how to be a good citizen, or a good baseball player, ..no college-age daughter to cherish, and to learn from, and prepare for life. No children, no family future to guard, no old age , or grandchildren to look forward to, no family line, for whom to save the planet. Two childless idlers, powerless and dependent, one living off his aged mother, one living off his working wife. These oddlings, loners nearing 60, are NOT environmentalists, as most people understand the word.

They do not fear, fight, or say one word about the lead being spewed from the huge Eberhard paint factories in Peekskill. Nor do they fear, or fight, or try to clean up the napthol benzine being released from the dry cleaner at Blue Mountain Mall in Peekskill, (where hazmat teams had to decontaminate the entire strip mall 4 years ago), or from the old dry cleaner site in Baldwin, where the mall had to be abandoned for 8 years because of the poison. They just don't care. Again, they do not fear, or fight, the dioxins & PCB's spewed from the stack of Resco incinerator daily, and nightly, 24-7-365, the fumes from which blow directly onto one member's house at 351 Dyckman street ** . No mention is made of the chlorine tanks kept in a blockhouse at the corner of South and Louisa st, 300 yards from one man's front porch. The deadly chlorine gas does not concern him, nor does the salt stored nearby, at the Peekskill municipal salt house, salt which leaches into the river, killing fish and waterfowl.. He does not care about Karta Garbage Transfer, visible from his front porch, where clouds of asbestos, lead, heavy metals, and carcinogens rise up each day, coating his house a mere 1/4 mile downwind, and where 2 Mexican workers have been torn to their deaths in the shredding machinery, one man never ever being found. These environmental abuses, and health threats, surrounding them on all sides, are invisible to them, of no concern. They ignore the raw sewage pumped into the Hudson at Annsville Creek, and at Lent's cove, reeking , disgusting abuses, within 300 yards of their doorstep. Why? Would a true environmentalist ignore all this criminal earth-bashing, and contain his focus to only a single spot? Is not nature holistic, a multifaceted, entangled whole, whose every part provides sustenance to another part? Answer: Yes it is. But do they see this , or care? Answer: No they do not.

They "care" about only one place, and stay up all night at their PC keyboards, ranting about a single spot, ignoring the rest of humanity and its needs. Ignoring the rest of us, and all our opinions, all our triumphs , our mutual adjustments, our common hopes, our lifestyle, our interactions, our sports, our drama, and not coincidentally, our future. They are perpetrators of "Single Issue Myopia".

So what is it, that they think they are doing?

1) They are "branding"
2) In furtherance of the branding, they are obsessing.

Branding, a web phenomenon, involves identifying yourself with a logo, a phrase, or a specific campaign focus, in order to raise personal visibility on the web, so that you may eventually cash in, and begin to sell ad space on your website, and to seek donations from websurfing people at large. It is specifically taught by web technique gurus, and is being much talked about today. The top "branded" bloggers have even gotten book deals, and radio & TV spot interviews, and many, many "branded" bloggers now make a small, but steady, income off their following, people who adhere to their "brand" .

These birds are trying to milk the local activist movement, to get themselves branded.

But .....are they approaching the local activist movement (which they intend to provide their clientele)..in a spirit of humility, gratitude, and acknowledgement of decades of effort sunk into the movement by local activists going back to the 1960's? No, they are not. They began by harrassing all the local groups, accusing them of not being extreme enough, not obsessive enough, not hateful enough. Why? Aside from being boorish web-thugs at heart, such acknowledgement COULD NOT HELP THEIR BRANDING EFFORT.....Of what use could it be to their branding campaign to join up, sit down, listen, become a worker, help out, FIT IN, and follow the established leaders? That would only help the OLD group, not them,... not THEIR website, not their "brand".

So here we have it, in all its shabby hubris, its isolated psychopathic slant, its shallow useless aims, its malicious and devious positioning, and those few who actually visit this blog of theirs will notice lately, talk about "needing contributions", and how every army "fights on its stomach". Need I say more? Beware these web-predators. If they are lucid, you will only be hectored, drawn away onto their own little personality island of hate, drawn away from the existing environmental conversation, and asked for money. If they are NOT lucid, your personal danger in becoming involved with them, may have no limits.

They chose their target, because it had a certain innate visibility, and had been attacked by others in the past, giving it, from a distance, a sort of sinister charm. Both of the perpetrators have a recent history of trying out one web campaign, or another web campaign, being unsuccessful, asking for contributions, and then giving up, to drift on to another similar self promotion a few months later. They are lost souls, ....electronic hoboes, ......Web Drifters.

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Tags: drifter hoboe bum predator manipulator sabateur indian royce point porgie remyc nuclear entergy energy chevalier indian point indian point green nuclear butterfly

WEB DRIFTERS



The Web Drifters.

Loners with no children. Predators with no careers....Men in their fifties, each being supported by a manipulated female family member, so that they have time on their hands, and do not work. Men with no teenage boy to mentor, guide, and teach how to be a good citizen, or a good baseball player, ..no college-age daughter to cherish, and to learn from, and prepare for life. No children, no family future to guard, no old age , or grandchildren to look forward to, no family line, for whom to save the planet. Two childless idlers, powerless and dependent, one living off his aged mother, one living off his working wife. These oddlings, loners nearing 60, are NOT environmentalists, as most people understand the word.

They do not fear, fight, or say one word about the lead being spewed from the huge Eberhard paint factories in Peekskill. Nor do they fear, or fight, or try to clean up the napthol benzine being released from the dry cleaner at Blue Mountain Mall in Peekskill, (where hazmat teams had to decontaminate the entire strip mall 4 years ago), or from the old dry cleaner site in Baldwin, where the mall had to be abandoned for 8 years because of the poison. They just don't care. Again, they do not fear, or fight, the dioxins & PCB's spewed from the stack of Resco incinerator daily, and nightly, 24-7-365, the fumes from which blow directly onto one member's house at 351 Dyckman street ** . No mention is made of the chlorine tanks kept in a blockhouse at the corner of South and Louisa st, 300 yards from one man's front porch. The deadly chlorine gas does not concern him, nor does the salt stored nearby, at the Peekskill municipal salt house, salt which leaches into the river, killing fish and waterfowl.. He does not care about Karta Garbage Transfer, visible from his front porch, where clouds of asbestos, lead, heavy metals, and carcinogens rise up each day, coating his house a mere 1/4 mile downwind, and where 2 Mexican workers have been torn to their deaths in the shredding machinery, one man never ever being found. These environmental abuses, and health threats, surrounding them on all sides, are invisible to them, of no concern. They ignore the raw sewage pumped into the Hudson at Annsville Creek, and at Lent's cove, reeking , disgusting abuses, within 300 yards of their doorstep. Why? Would a true environmentalist ignore all this criminal earth-bashing, and contain his focus to only a single spot? Is not nature holistic, a multifaceted, entangled whole, whose every part provides sustenance to another part? Answer: Yes it is. But do they see this , or care? Answer: No they do not.

They "care" about only one place, and stay up all night at their PC keyboards, ranting about a single spot, ignoring the rest of humanity and its needs. Ignoring the rest of us, and all our opinions, all our triumphs , our mutual adjustments, our common hopes, our lifestyle, our interactions, our sports, our drama, and not coincidentally, our future. They are perpetrators of "Single Issue Myopia".

So what is it, that they think they are doing?

1) They are "branding"
2) In furtherance of the branding, they are obsessing.

Branding, a web phenomenon, involves identifying yourself with a logo, a phrase, or a specific campaign focus, in order to raise personal visibility on the web, so that you may eventually cash in, and begin to sell ad space on your website, and to seek donations from websurfing people at large. It is specifically taught by web technique gurus, and is being much talked about today. The top "branded" bloggers have even gotten book deals, and radio & TV spot interviews, and many, many "branded" bloggers now make a small, but steady, income off their following, people who adhere to their "brand" .

These birds are trying to milk the local activist movement, to get themselves branded.

But .....are they approaching the local activist movement (which they intend to provide their clientele)..in a spirit of humility, gratitude, and acknowledgement of decades of effort sunk into the movement by local activists going back to the 1960's? No, they are not. They began by harrassing all the local groups, accusing them of not being extreme enough, not obsessive enough, not hateful enough. Why? Aside from being boorish web-thugs at heart, such acknowledgement COULD NOT HELP THEIR BRANDING EFFORT.....Of what use could it be to their branding campaign to join up, sit down, listen, become a worker, help out, FIT IN, and follow the established leaders? That would only help the OLD group, not them,... not THEIR website, not their "brand".

So here we have it, in all its shabby hubris, its isolated psychopathic slant, its shallow useless aims, its malicious and devious positioning, and those few who actually visit this blog of theirs will notice lately, talk about "needing contributions", and how every army "fights on its stomach". Need I say more? Beware these web-predators. If they are lucid, you will only be hectored, drawn away onto their own little personality island of hate, drawn away from the existing environmental conversation, and asked for money. If they are NOT lucid, your personal danger in becoming involved with them, may have no limits.

They chose their target, because it had a certain innate visibility, and had been attacked by others in the past, giving it, from a distance, a sort of sinister charm. Both of the perpetrators have a recent history of trying out one web campaign, or another web campaign, being unsuccessful, asking for contributions, and then giving up, to drift on to another similar self promotion a few months later. They are lost souls, ....electronic hoboes, ......Web Drifters.

......



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.
.
.
.
.
.
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.
.
.
.
.
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Tags: drifter hoboe bum predator manipulator sabateur indian royce point porgie remyc nuclear entergy energy chevalier