Legalectric

Yesterday at the Fair…

There’s Alan at the booth, and note the guy in the green…

As you all know, I’ve got a lot on my plate, what with utility money-mongers trying to remake their world, and ours… and all this flap about “gay marriage” is what I regard as a political distraction from the harm the right is doing with their mutant and malignant capitalism.  But yesterday at the “Our State Fair is a Great State Fair” some people really got to me with their hateful and absurd agenda.  As Alan asked, “Why do you care about this?”  What is it that drives someone to sit at a little wooden booth in the sun all day to argue that someone who is gay should not be able to marry their partner?  I passed the “Minnesota for Marriage” booth in disgust, noting there was a video camera on a tripod at the southern end of the booth.  And Alan, fresh from a visit to the Republican building, wanted to have a chat.  He’s such a quiet and calm questioner, and is able to elicit the most amazing statement from people in any venue.  He did it again.  He went up to the booth and began to ask a woman there some questions.  The first, “Why do you care about this?”  And instead of responding, she said “Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions?” and he said, demeanor well depicted above, ‘Well, actually, I do, I asked you a question, why do you care about this?”

Note the guy in the green…

After I took this photo, I turned to catch the full booth…

… and the woman on the left told me I can’t take photos.  Excuse me?  I said I could and did!  She demanded to know who I was taking it for, and I said, “For me, Carol A. Overland, legalectric.org, you’ll find it there if you’re interested.”  She again said I couldn’t take photos, and that I have to get permission and fill out a form, it’s “down there” waving toward the other end.  She also said one of the others at the other end was an attorney… (drat, should have had a chat with THAT person, maybe it was the guy in green, though I think she may have meant the woman talking to Alan).  I told her I don’t have to sign anything… Then I ask whether their agenda includes outlawing D-I-V-O-R-C-E (!) and she gets pissed and hollers that I’m off point.  EH?  MOI?  OFF POINT?  I’m asking the question, and that’s my point.

The guy in the green comes over and gets very close into my space and in front of me and says “we’ve had about enough” and I’m just getting going, so I say, “OK, great, I’ll get your photo too” and got out the camera again, this time catching him with the camera and camera guy that was off to the left — what were they doing with that video camera:

So were they filming everyone who came up to the booth???  It was positioned to get the front of the booth… Hmmmmm… anyway, at this point I left to sit in the shade and catch up with Alan after he finished.

The punchline?  The woman he was talking to had been scripted to ask questions, and to get you to a point where you agreed that there should be some limits on who could marry, and actually told him, “You know, in Europe, people are marrying animals!”  He asked what country and what animals, and she didn’t know… uh-huh, right… so logically, we NEED this amendment in Minnesota so we won’t be marrying animals.  Alan missed his opportunity to tell her all about our wonderful German Shepherds who we so love…

Their “Minnesota for Marriage” website has no “About Us” information, not one name there, it’s an anonymous shell, “powered by ACT Right.com” where:

You choose your favorite candidates, causes, and actions, tell your friends, and get to work immediately helping the right people and organizations instantly. If you are pro-life, pro-second amendment, and pro-traditional marriage, want to support the Susan B. Anthony List, the National Organization for Marriage and the NRA, while helping a House candidate in Texas and a Senate candidate in Maine, you can do it at ActRight.com .

Minnesota for Marriage is registered as a Ballot Question group: Minnesota for Marriage

Here’s their 2010 Lobbying Report, via Minnesota Family Council fax.

… to put it mildly.

I’ve posted a few things about the Fukushima nuclear disaster:

Past Legalectric posts about Fukushima

And it’s just so depressing to read about this, but here we go again, finally some admission that yes, it is really that bad.  From the Washington Post:

Japanese scientist: Fukushima meltdown occurred within hours of quake

Well, DUH!  A choice paragraph from that article:

About 11 hours later, all of the uranium fuel in the facility’s unit 1 reactor had slumped to the bottom of its inner containment vessel, boring a hole through a thick steel lining, the University of Tokyo’s Naoto Sekimura told a committee of the National Academy of Sciences.

From the Mainichi Daily News:

Study says fuel at Fukushima reactor possibly melted twice

And from the Voice of America:

Japanese Nuclear Crisis Leaves Fukushima Town Broken

The International Atomic Agency’s most recent post was as of June 2:

Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log

adsf

Minnesota now has government shut-down.  Gee thanks.  To the Republicans, give me a break… this “Compromise” is breathtaking, bullshit beyond belief:

“Confidential Draft” (6/29/11)

Offers - 6/30/11

I won’t slave for beggars pay, likewise gold and jewels,
I would slave to learn the way to sink your ship of fools…

The bottles stand as empty, as they were full before,
Time there was and plenty, but from that cup no more
Though I could not caution all, I still might warn a few
Don’t lend your hand to raise no flag atop a ship of fools

Remember the flooding info and maps I’d posted a couple of days ago, noting that two nuclear plants in Nebraska were in the flood inundation area?

Low-level emergency declared at nuclear power plant

Well, Frieda Berryhill sent this photo of the flooding at the Ft. Calhoun nuclear plant:

Check the video, Omaha Public Power District - OPPD didn’t want the news crew filming the flooding!!!  And thankfully, they reported that point:

Flooding nuclear power station property

As if the flooding isn’t enough, they had an electrical fire, and shut down the spent fuel pond pumps to aid in fighting it.  There are many articles posted on this, all the IDENTICAL AP article, and not one mention of flooding:

Nuke plant stopped spent fuel pumps to fight fire

Here’s a local paper with some additional details:

Smoke causes scare at nuclear plant

Omaha Public Power District’s release on the flood:

OPPD Declares Notification of Unusual Event

June 6, 2011

As mentioned last week, the rising Missouri River waters have reached a level where OPPD is declaring a Notification of Unusual Event (NOUE) at its Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station. According to projections from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the river level at the plant site is expected to reach 1,004 feet above mean sea level later this week, and is expected to remain above that level for more than one month. OPPD notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and emergency management agencies in Nebraska and Iowa of the declaration.

A NOUE is the least-serious of four emergency classifications that are standard in the U.S. nuclear industry. Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station will not move out of this emergency classification until it is confident the water will remain below the 1,004-foot level.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission notes that a Notification of Unusual Event indicates events are in process or have occurred which indicate potential impacts to the plant. No release of radioactive material requiring offsite response or monitoring has occurred or is expected.

Fort Calhoun was in safe shutdown mode since early April for refueling the plant, and remains in that condition. In addition to the existing flood-protection at the plant, OPPD employees and contractors have built earth berms and sandbagged around the switchyards and additional buildings on site. They also are filling water-filled berms around the plant and other major buildings on site, have staged additional diesel fuel inside the Protected Area and are building additional overhead power lines to provide another option for power for the plant’s administration building, Training Center and one of its warehouses.

I’ve gotten a few emails questioning raising issues about our own GE nuclear reactors, like at Monticello, and they always note, “it can’t happen here.”  Anyone who knows anything about nuclear knows better… and as one living in a “nuclear” community, two reactors here in Red Wing, and three in Salem, NJ, right across the river from Port Penn, I know too well the risks.  Floods happen.  Hurricanes happen.  Salem and Hope Creek are built on a manufactured sand “island” on the Delaware River just up a tad from the Atlantic Ocean, up just enough to suck in the fresh water (and lots of fish), and close enough to be history as the sea continues to rise:

Well, folks we have a situation… the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is releasing a lot of water from dams along the Missouri River backed up with too much rainfall, and they’ve started to evacuate parts of North Dakota, and it’ll affect South Dakota and Nebraska too.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a site:  Flood Resources

Here are the “Inundation Maps”

On the Sioux City, IA to Omaha, NE link, check out map Z17 and look way over in the right side for the Ft. Calhoun nuclear plant (yes, there is something in Ft. Calhoun in addition to the legendary “Ft. Calhoun Interface.”), and compare with the maps below that focus on the plants — it’s hard to miss the placement of these “critical” plants in hard to find places:

From Roger Herried today:

As a result of one of the wettest winters in over 100 years the Missouri River is threatening 6 dams that were put in place over the last 60 years to reduce annual flooding on the Missouri’s floodplain which averages between 10-20 miles across.  When the area of concern was first settled by Europeans, they built their towns and farms in the fertile plain because it contained the best soil to grow food.  In 1889, there was a wet year that filled the entire floodplain with a torrent that lasted for weeks.  All towns and farms on the plain were washed away.  The only thing left of my home town of Vermillion SD. were a few big concrete blocks of the local church.  The next time they rebuilt was not on the flood plain but on the bluffs overlooking the Missouri.

Starting in the 1960’s the US Corps of Engineers constructed 6 dams on the Missouri River, the last of the six being located near Yankton SD called Gavins Point Dam. With the dams in place, everybody went back to putting farms and guess what, two nuclear power plants on the flood plain. Due to the extreme winter including major rains in May the Corp of Engineers has announced that it will be forced to release 150,000 cubic feet of water per second throughout much of June.  This is five times more water than the Corp has ever had to release before, and the rainy season has not ended yet.  They are suggesting that these levels will continue for much of June.

The Corps of Engineers has just released a set of projected flood maps for the area from Yankton SD throughout Nebraska showing what they think will happen in terms of controlled flood levels in the region.  Based on these maps both of Nebraska’s nuclear facilities are in severe danger with the Fort Calhoun unit located 19 miles north of Omaha Nebraska and projected to be under water from 4 to over 10 feet of water (see map below). Note that in May of this year, the NRC hit Ft. Calhoun for poor flood control problems from flooding that took place last year.  The facility is a 500 MegaWatt Combustion Engineering PWR reactor that is currently shut down.

The other reactor the Cooper nuclear station is located 23 miles south of Omaha and is an 830 MWe GE Mark 4 reactor and is currently at full operation.  It is predicted to be under water from 4-8 feet. Behind the reactor and to the Northwest are located levees that are meant to keep at least reduce flooding by 2 feet.

Here are two maps sent by Roger Herried that identify and focus on the Ft. Calhoon and Cooper Nuclear Station nuclear generating plants: