Switzerland overtakes nuclear-needy European neighbors Though Austria banned nuclear power plants in 1998, and Germany is phasing them out by 2022, Switzerland leads the way in its comprehensive, progressive, voter-mandated energy plan. The vote on Sunday saw Swiss citizens pass the law called Energy Strategy 2050. If you’ll pardon a digression: Yes, the Swiss vote […]
Bordering countries had recently expressed firm concerns over aging French facilities Tangled up in bureaucracy and mired in controversy, Électricité de France (EDF) has been unable to resolve major hazard issues over several years, and now it has blown up in its face—literally, with respect to the poor souls injured in Thursday’s blast at the […]
On December 21, 2016, The New York Times ran an op-ed piece written by two U.S. senators. A Republican from Tennessee and a Democrat from Rhode Island teamed up to opine on the need to strengthen the nuclear power sector in America. Their pitch centered on the possibility that—as aging nuclear plants close—American’s will have […]
How does a worldwide supplier of reactor parts to nuclear plants decide to cheat on quality? In a previous article here on my ULTIMATE ERROR blog, I wrote about a nearly unfathomable situation in France’s nuclear power program. Critical components purchased by the French from a forge called Le Creusot were found to contain excess […]
Recent tests on components of at least 18 live reactors found risks of major accidents The stalwart environmental defense group Greenpeace probably feels pretty good about itself right now. Specifically, Greenpeace France, which called for investigations of nuclear power plants across the nation – investigations which turned up some harrowing problems. France’s nuclear security agency, […]
As we enter National Disaster Preparedness Month, a look at hard-hit U.S. areas Friday evening, Tropical Storm Hermine crept into the Carolinas, where its winds lashed at red oaks and birches, homes, and infrastructure throughout the Appalachian piedmont. As a Category 1 hurricane, Hermine entered Florida Friday morning through Apalachee Bay, along the bend of […]
Fortunately, it was only a test – this time… and the time before that… When undercover agents from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative department of Congress, procured enough bomb-making materials in 2015 to poison a major city, it wasn’t the first time they had managed the feat. Even calling it a feat is […]
Most of us are old enough to remember the predictions, peaking in 1999, of a “Y2K” catastrophe. A computer-dependent world would see everything from home computers crashing because of the bug to food running out due to interruptions in the computer-run supply chain, some said. Of course, we all know what happened: nearly nothing that […]
All the world does not view a post-apocalypse the same way In the United States and, to a lesser degree, in the United Kingdom, urbanization spawned fantasies of escape from crowded cities to the freedom of the wilderness. It’s impossible to know for sure, but the idea that you would be escaping in order to […]
Amid the horrors, lessons on resource allocation and preparedness The South American nation of Ecuador is facing a tremendous, multifaceted crisis, and the hardships on the horizon make the story sadder. Even before the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck on April 20, 2016, Ecuador was a nation with a struggling economy – an economy heavily invested […]