BP didn't mislead the Obama administration. The White House has been watching the live feed since the day of the explosion. Obama has known the 5000 barrels figure that BP was putting out was false.
Obama and BP have been actively trying to prevent the live feed becoming public.
About Gulf Oil Spill
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You "earned" that lecture because you said this: "On the other hand, France depends mostly on nuclear energy without any incidents".
It's not true, and if we have learned nothing else from the ongoing oil catastrophe in the gulf, it's that until and unless you have a way to clean up the worst possible scenario, YOU DON'T GET TO DO IT!
About Gulf Oil Spill
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Yes, it is a political exercise.
Admiral Thad Allen has had the authority all along to do this, as well as shut BP down and out. There really is no sense of urgency or gravity by the government. After his appearance yesterday on The Rachel Maddow Show put him up front as the face for government's failure (he's not the problem -- the fault lies way up at the top in the Oval Office).
Putting this team together today is his (and the Obama administration's) latest effort to stall and avoid responsibility for this catastrophe.
BP is still operating, BP's Atlantis operation (unsafe and uninspected) is still operating, Bobby Jindal didn't call for help in protecting Louisiana's wetlands until after the oil washed ashore there yesterday (4 weeks after the oil was known to be gushing out of control and heading for Louisiana), Obama hasn't nationalized this entire operation, is still insisting on a cap for what BP (and all oil companies) would have to pay, the oil and gas is gushing out of control, and they're just now trying to figure out how much has been spilled?
Oh, and Admiral Thad Allen is retiring from the Coast Guard in 2 weeks. Someone else will then replace him and have to be brought up to speed on this situation. A stop-loss is in order right about now.
Yes, this is Obama's Katrina.
About Gulf Oil Spill
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Like "clean coal", there is no such thing a "clean and safe" nuclear power.
No one has yet found a durable solution for storing nuclear waste, that remains highly radioactive for centuries.
France continues to deposit thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste into its nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague on the Normandy Atlantic coast, close to the English Channel.
Confirmation that radioactive brine has been leaking for two decades from a German underground deposit for nuclear waste is yet another blow to the idea that nuclear power can safely increase electricity generation and simultaneously reduce emissions.
Radioactive leaks from the nuclear waste deposit Asse II near Braunschweig in Lower Saxony, some 225 km southwest of Berlin, were first discovered in 1988. The state-owned Helmholtz Institute for Scientific Research, which operates the centre, officially admitted the leaks only Jun. 16, under pressure from the German press.
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About Gulf Oil Spill
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I'll bet you didn't know about this:
The recent (2005) heat-related disaster in France, the most heavily nuclear dependent nation on earth, illustrates a serious flaw in expecting nuclear reactors to either "help" reverse global warming, or even more immediately, be available when most needed during heat-related emergencies (when demand for electricity is greatest).
During the French heat wave, 5,000 died from heat-related causes. The problem was so severe, and France so desperate for electricity to continue its economy and any modicum of cooling that the government allowed reactors to operate past known temperature safety limits, and discharge water into rivers in excess of allowable temperatures.
In other words they risked nuclear accident and the thermal death of their rivers to keep electricity on. The reason for the problem was not only the recent record setting temperatures, but also the fact that the accompanying drought had drastically reduced river water volumes and flow-rates. The hot discharge water was not able to dilute either heat or "allowable levels" of radionuclides, as per operating regulations.
About Gulf Oil Spill
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How are the Japanese doing nuclear?
Like everybody else, the Japanese are doing nuclear badly.
They have a reprocessing plant that's been closed down because of fire and explosion, have had nuclear power plant accidents (the Japanese people aren't very happy about nuclear), and I understand that France and Great Britain reprocess or recover plutonium from Japan's nuclear waste.
Japan is building another reprocessing plant, planning "deep geological burial", but that could mean they'll continue to dump it in the ocean (everybody's doing it) or hopes on some crevice or Yucca. Treaties like NAFTA allow for other nations to dump in the US, and given how we're being driven into bankruptcy, it won't be long before we're a third world nation and the 'Bikini Island' for our creditors.
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Reprocessed nuclear waste shipment to pass by Philippine waters:
http://jap
About Gulf Oil Spill
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Then there's India.
Holding India out as some paragon for nuclear is amusing (India's nuclear power plants generally leak three times the norm) considering that India currently has one nuclear plant literally built on eroding sands at the ocean (Madras Atomic Power Station located at Kalpakkam).
Since we're talking about fires, here, thorium oftens ignites spontaneously in air. It also decays very slowly compared to many other radioactive materials. Exposure can lead to increased risk of cancers of the lung, pancreas and blood, as lungs and other internal organs, as well as increased risk of liver diseases.
I'm old enough to remember this same sort of enthusiastic sales pitch the first time around, based on nothing but hope and a desire to have taxpayers pay for a technology that was unproved as safe (but that didn't stop anyone from touting it as such).
The same is true for thorium. With thorium reactors come a whole new set of (as yet) insolvable problems (for instance, the fuel needs special containers that are extremely durable and can stand up to corrosive salts, but such a system has yet to be proven over decades). But that hasn't stopped people like you from a gung-ho support based on nothing but youthful exuberance.
About Gulf Oil Spill
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