Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

WASHINGTON - August 2 - Green Party members strongly criticized an announcement from the Department of Energy that production of plutonium 238 for batteries would be resumed at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls.

The program is estimated to cost as much as $1.5 billion and produce 50,000 drums of radioactive waste. Plutonium 238 hasn’t been produced since the Cold War.

“The Idaho National Laboratory site is already heavily polluted by large quantities of nuclear waste stored carelessly over earlier decades,” said Robert McMinn, spokesperson for the Idaho Green Party. “Groundwater has been contaminated by previous leaks, and further production and storage of waste will magnify the danger to nearby cities and recreational areas, including Idaho Falls, Big Lost River and the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.”

Greens warned that plutonium 238 is highly radioactive and that a single particle can cause lung cancer. An explosion or deliberate release would spread particles randomly through the atmosphere with no advance warning or protection for civilians.

“Many people in Idaho suffered severe health problems from fallout from the Nevada nuclear tests conducted in the 1950s and 60s — fallout that settled on our crops and contaminated milk from our dairy cows,” said Matthew Denney, Idaho Green delegate to the United States. “We are not inclined to believe the government’s claims of safety. Any calculation of the cost of this project must include evacuation, clean-up, and hospitalizations for cancer.”

Numerous accidents involving nuclear power devices include a navigation satellite powered by plutonium 238 which broke up over the Indian Ocean in 1964, releasing radioactive particles throughout the atmosphere. The New Horizons space mission to Pluto scheduled for January 2006 will use plutonium 238 to power a generator.

“There is an increased chance of release of nuclear material from plutonium power devices, especially during deep space missions where so many things can go wrong,” said Jody Grage Haug, Washington State Green and co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. “The probability of an accident resulting in a release of plutonium during the New Horizons mission is estimated at 1 in 300, according to NASA. Are we willing to risk our health and the health of our children and grandchildren with such terrible odds?”

Energy Department officials claim the batteries will be used for “national security applications,” excluding weapons, missile defense systems and military satellites, and experts suspect that they will be used for espionage purposes. Since the program is classified, there is no indication or oversight over how the batteries will be used.

“The U.S. military will convert the batteries to military use once a ready supply of plutonium 238 is available,” said Kevin Bayhouse, Secretary of the Idaho Green Party. “If used in wartime, explosion or theft of the batteries will contaminate people and battlefields, causing health problems potentially even more serious than depleted uranium shells and bombs.”

A US-led team of geologists had gathered a rich harvest of data around the Larson B ice shelf just before it’s spectacular collapse in 2002.

The researchers, reporting in Nature, the British science weekly, say that since the end of the last Ice Age, some 11,000 years ago, the ice shelf had been intact but had slowly thinned, by several dozen metres.

Its coup de grace came from a recent but decades-long rise in air temperature, they say.

The modern collapse of the LIS-B (Larsen B iceshelf) is a unique event within the Holocene. The LIS-B eventually thinned to the point where it succumbed to the prolonged period of regional warming now affecting the entire Antarctic Peninsula region.

The research is the latest in a series of studies to sound the alarm about the effects of climate change in Antarctica, where the bulk of the world’s fresh water is locked up.

The dilemma as Greens is that we have little control over the policies that create global warming. Republicans are in denial and Democrats are too tame to make any serius changes. Long term green planning may be reduced to making the best of the catastophe that is being bequethed upon us

A US-led team of geologists had gathered a rich harvest of data around the Larson B ice shelf just before it’s spectacular collapse in 2002.

The researchers, reporting in Nature, the British science weekly, say that since the end of the last Ice Age, some 11,000 years ago, the ice shelf had been intact but had slowly thinned, by several dozen metres.

Its coup de grace came from a recent but decades-long rise in air temperature, they say.

The modern collapse of the LIS-B (Larsen B iceshelf) is a unique event within the Holocene. The LIS-B eventually thinned to the point where it succumbed to the prolonged period of regional warming now affecting the entire Antarctic Peninsula region.

The research is the latest in a series of studies to sound the alarm about the effects of climate change in Antarctica, where the bulk of the world’s fresh water is locked up.

The dilemma as Greens is that we have little control over the policies that create global warming. Republicans are in denial and Democrats are too tame to make any serius changes. Long term green planning may be reduced to making the best of the catastophe that is being bequethed upon us

Lawyers for Washington Post journalist Walter Pincus urged a federal district judge yesterday to recognize new legal protections for reporters with confidential sources and refuse a request to hold him in contempt in a case involving former government scientist Wen Ho Lee.

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Although he said that curriculum decisions should be made by school districts rather than the federal government, Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.

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No one has more influence over the pace and location of development in Montgomery County [than Derick Berlage]. As Planning Board chairman, Berlage oversees the Department of Park and Planning, the $92 million-a-year agency that manages parkland and regulates development. The five-member board devises land-use policy subject to County Council approval.

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