Johnson Valley, CA - West Fry wind energy generation facility project

[Max7]

Inevitable

MAX, I like the way you think. You have obviously given this much thought. I agree with what you say, I just think a nuke plant is one of those political hot potato's that will go nowhere. Mabey i'll feel different after the november elections.

I think you will start to see proof of a political climate change very soon. Nuclear power plants will be built in the next decade it's just a matter of time. May I suggest that shifting your perspective from nuclear power as a "political hot potato" to a more proactive view addressing the safety concerns and refinement of nuclear waste.

India,China,Russia,Saudi Arabia, will all build new nuclear plants in the very near future. The United States of America will not be left out.

If you would like to help. Here's a petition to sign. 989,000 truly hopeful public signatures to date.
Best, Max7

http://www.americansolutions.com/

[Lawrence]

Fact: France derives 70% of their energy from nuclear and safely disposes of their waste.

Slight correction.

France has 59 nuclear power plants which produce about 99.5% of the county’s total power production. Since production exceeds consumption, nearly 20% of the total production is being exported to other European countries, making France the world's largest net exporter of electric power. A side benefit is that France’s electricity cost is among the lowest in Europe.

Today, the next generation nuclear plants are being built and the Finnish one is scheduled to go online sometime next year.

If France can do it we certainly can...Right?

Well, Europe has always been light years ahead of the US when it comes to most technologies.

[Max7]

Lawrence,
Thanks for the current information!
Best, Max7

[Roger]

Meeting Monday Night

I want to remind everyone of the West Fry Mtn. Wind Energy Project meeting Monday night June 30th at the Lucerne Valley Elementery School - it's location is on Barstow Rd (SR 247) Just north of the 4-way stop in the middle of town.

The meeting is scheduled to start at 6:00 PM and run until 8:00 PM.

For those that are able to attend, would you al like meet for dinner at Adeleta's Mexican Restruant right acrcoss the highway from the Valero Gas Station? Meet at 4:45?

PM me for my cell if you think you might have trouble finding your way.

It would be great if we had a big turnout! I'm taking time off from work to attend, you should too!!

Thanks!

[bakerhab]

This was found on Pirate. I am a Cal4 Wheel board member and the board, to the best of my knowledge, has not endorsed John's position, re: His quote, "And, if someone is willing to pay for me to not be concerned, I will take the money."

Helen Baker

[from http://pirate4x4.com/forum/showthrea...63#post8418763 Post #21]
Yes, I know about the windmill payoff. I found out about it on Wednesday. I have suspected something for a couple of months. It is solely an ORBA-D37-EcoLogic discussion.

In the grand scheme of things, I personally don't have a problem with it.

From the 4x4 perspective... The impact of the towers is minimal as the southern most tower is about quarter mile from any rockcrawling trail. That has been verified after I got the people using the area to reveal their secrets and they looked at the proposal maps.

See a December posting in this forum about those routes.

I provided the same proposal I received from FPL to ORBA, D37 and CORVA (Ed). From there, Ed jumped on it and a couple of others in the California City area as bad. ORBA and D37 went silent after an initial flurry of activity.

From what I have been able to gather, D37 will have some course adjustments to make. I never did hear about the trials bike impact. But, they are tied into D37...

Overall, FPL is not planning any security perimeter and their only safety concern is in the rotor swept area about 20 meters above ground.

They (FPL) have been conducting bird surveys in the area and find no significant movement of birds. It is not part of the general hunting area. It is an area with high population of lizards. But, so is the entire JV area.

So, I am not concerned with the visual impact. And, if someone is willing to pay for me to not be concerned, I will take the money.

Consider, Fry Mtns sits on the western edge of the Marine proposal. Perhaps the windmills and the powerline are potential boundaries. And, if air operations are part of the Marine plan, the towers would be close to the reserved airspace.

I do foresee a temporary impact during construction. Perhaps after construction some additional canyons would be available?

WRT to the Marine issue: Knowing the federal budget cycle, they will be making a decision to proceed with the EIS within 30-60 days. That gives them time to get contracts in place this fiscal year. Right now, they are probably under pressure to commit un-spent funds from the current fiscal year which they can put under contract for actions next fiscal year. For the feds, fiscal year is Oct 1-Sept 30.

The "big picture" is that everyone concerned needs to come together and look at a strategy for recreation. There are a lot of questions to several proposals in the works.

BLM has called a halt to processing solar projects pending completion of a programatic EIS covering solar. I have a note posted about some additional meetings at http://www.muirnet.net

The short version is there are any number of activities in process that are going to impact recreation opportunity: most concerning wilderness and energy. I have been searching a lot of different sources for the past few months to understand the complete picture.

See http://www.muirnet.net/4x4voice/index.php/access-issues

For Energy, scroll down to that section....

Communications is key and there has not been a good level of communications on issues. By the same token, information has been posted and people have been slow to grasp the gravity of the situation.

So far this week, I have met with Congressman McKeon's Deputy Chief of Staff concerning wilderness issues. I have spent a day with other OHV "leaders" about a range of issues. (BTW, these are the leaders of the OHV groups that fund two Sacramento lobbyists.) And, I have spent the day in one of a series of on-going meetings to retain what recreation opportunity is available in the Sequoia National Monument.
__________________
John Stewart, KF6ZPL
Natural Resource Consultant
CA4WDC, http://www.cal4wheel.com
Moderator, MUIRNet - Multiple Use Information Resource Network - http://www.muirnet.net
###

[Roger]

This is unbelieveable!

They "don't have a problem with the visual" - well why don't they move to Lucerne Valley or have they ever asked someone who lives here what they think about the visual. They should offer to let them put them up in wherever the hell they live. I hope that is the last stupid thing that person ever writes.

We must fight this project, once one goes in it will be a matter of time before JV and all the Mojave desert is covered with these usless wind generators.

I'm P!$$ed now...

[Ol Man]

I will be at the meeting.

[Max7]

I'll be at the meeting.
Best, Max7

[Mitch]

Max,

Good speeches from both you and Roger tonight. It was good to see you and show some support with you guys. I was impressed with the OHV supporters present tonight: "Tin Binders", "Ventura County Axle Snappers", "Friends of Johnson Valley", "Friends of Giant Rock", Justin with "W.E. Rock", And of course "MY JEEP ROCKS"! Nice evening, hope that I didn't forget any group.

Mitch

[Max7]

Hot for Nuclear Power

...I just think a nuke plant is one of those political hot potato's that will go nowhere.

Hey hondatom,
I just thought you might like to read this:


The Enemies of Nuclear Power
by Travis Norsen (August 3, 2001)

As Congress ponders how the country can avoid an energy crisis like the one that has affected California, many people believe that only science-fiction can offer a long-term solution--a solution in which discoveries in theoretical physics would lead to a new energy-producing technology. The fuel for this technology, as they imagine it, would be abundantly available, safe, inexpensive and clean.

It may surprise those people to learn that the only fiction here is the belief that this is some future fantasy. Actually, the relevant discoveries in physics happened nearly a century ago, and the resulting technology--nuclear power--is now almost 50 years old. But the fact that this valuable technology is playing a diminishing role in our economy reveals something very important--not about nuclear power itself, but about the motives of its militant opponents.

Nuclear power provides a cheap alternative to fossil-fuel-based sources of electricity. With comparable capital and operating costs, and a mere fraction of the fuel costs, it can provide electricity at 50--80 percent of the price of traditional sources. It is extremely reliable, and is by far the cleanest of any viable energy source currently known.

Its safety record is also exemplary. In America today, the nuclear industry ranks among the safest places to work. It experiences only 0.34 accidents resulting in lost work time per 200,000 worker-hours, compared with a 3.1 average throughout private industry. While during the past 40 years, hundreds of thousands have died as a result, directly and indirectly, of coal mining and other means of energy production, there has not been a single fatality, or even a serious injury, resulting from the operation of civilian nuclear plants in the United States. The annual probability of radiation leakage for the newest reactors is estimated at less than one in a billion--a level of safety no other source of energy can even approach.

Why then is opposition to nuclear power so strong?

The loudest objection raised by the anti-nuclear groups is that there is "no safe level of radiation." It is also the phoniest. The major sources of radiation are natural and ubiquitous: we are continuously bombarded with radiation from cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere and from naturally occurring radioactive elements in the earth. Compared with these background sources, the radiation from nuclear power plants is negligible.

The average annual radiation dose received by Americans is 360 millirems (or "mrems"), about 300 of which come from naturally occurring sources like radon. By contrast, you would get only 0.01 mrems per year as a result of living 50 feet from a nuclear power plant. Even a single annual cross-country airplane flight exposes you to 3 mrems, while a medical X-ray gives you a dose of 20 mrems.

Yet the hysterical claims of the anti-nuclear activists continue to shape government policy, leading to absurd licensing standards for nuclear plants. For example, the radiation levels in Washington's Capitol building (due to uranium in the granite walls) would legally prevent the structure from being licensed as a nuclear plant. People who work full time at the Capitol are exposed to radiation levels thousands of times higher than those produced by nuclear plants.

Similar irrational standards apply to the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste disposal site that is being developed in the Nevada desert. In the 1980s the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) insisted that radiation at the site cause no more than 1,000 deaths in 10,000 years--compared with the thousands of deaths per year the EPA was then predicting from exposure to natural radon. Yucca Mountain is now being further delayed as environmentalists demand that the time scale be extended to 100,000 or even 1,000,000 years.

No wonder not a single license for a new nuclear plant has been granted in over two decades--and no wonder the country faces insufficient supplies of electricity.

The opposition to nuclear power represents a political, not a scientific, viewpoint. The anti-nuclear groups, and the broader environmentalist movement of which they are a part, are fundamentally hostile to capitalism and production. They are against nuclear power, not on any sound scientific grounds, but for the same reason they consistently oppose logging and oil drilling and dam construction--because they want to reverse the progress we have made in conquering nature to serve man's interests.

They do not seek a better means of generating energy--they want us to "conserve" and to do with less. Their goal is to turn out the lights on our industrial society. What the defenders of nuclear energy need, therefore, is to defend that industrial society--by upholding man's moral right to produce the wealth on which his values and life depend.

Made available through ARI MediaLink.


Travis Norsen, a Ph.D. candidate in theoretical nuclear physics at the University of Washington, is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, Calif.

And another:

14 December 2007

Hot for nukes
By Edwin J. Feulner

Environmental lobbyists have America between a rock and, well, a hot place.

Raising cataclysmic alarms about global warming, they insist that the road to climate disaster is paved with human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide. Among the worst villains, they say, are fossil-fuel burning power plants. Their crime: creating massive amounts of CO2 while producing electricity.

Most Americans are concerned about the environment, but we like our electricity, too. So what to do? The logical answer: Build more nuclear power plants.

"Wrong," reply the activists. “Nuclear power is bad."

But to the extent that global warming is a problem, nuclear power must be part of the solution. In fact, it's already playing a big role, supplying some 20 percent of our electricity.

That's already paying off, environmentally speaking. Even though America hasn't built a new commercial reactor in decades, the 104 plants currently operating prevented the release 681.9 million metric tons of CO2 in 2005. That's a lot of emissions. In fact, that's like taking 24 of every 25 cars in our whole country off the road!

Nuclear plants are environmentally friendly because nuclear fission produces no atmospheric emissions. No CO2. No smoke. Nothing. Plants powered by fossil fuels, by contrast, emit like crazy.

Relying more on nukes could reduce some of the inconsistencies urged by the Environmental Industry, too. Consider, for example, their distaste for CO2 emitting cars and trucks. They advocate replacing these vehicles with hybrid cars, which operate partly on batteries.

But even battery-powered vehicles must be charged. If the electricity used to juice the batteries comes from a coal- or gas-fired plant, the car is still -- indirectly -- generating CO2 emissions. If the electricity comes from a nuclear generator, though, the problem is truly solved.

Nuclear power isn't new. It's a tried and tested technology that's safe, reliable and economically viable.

And investors are eager to expand the use of nuclear power to generate electricity. In fact, utility companies with nuclear experience have sought to purchase existing plants, are upgrading their operating plants and are extending their licenses so that they can produce more energy for a longer time. Perhaps the only roadblock is certain activists, many of whom describe themselves as environmentalists.

Back in the 1970s, they painted nightmare scenarios about potential meltdowns to stop new plant construction. But it's worth remembering that the worst incident in U.S. history -- the partial meltdown of a reactor core at Three Mile Island back in 1979 -- produced zero casualties.

People near that plant were exposed to an average estimated dose of about 1 millirem of radiation. That's far less than the typical 2.5 millirem you receive on an airplane flight from Los Angeles to New York. Almost 30 years of hindsight later, the “threat” of nukes appears wildly overblown. Ask France, which produces 80 percent of its electricity through nuclear power.

As an alternative to nuclear power, the Environmental Industry pushes greater -- and ever more government subsidized -- use of renewable power sources, including wind, solar and geothermal. But we've been trying to develop these sources for decades, and none is even close to being ready to meet our nation's energy needs. Nuclear power, meanwhile, already provides about one fifth of our electricity, despite heavy regulation that artificially drives costs up substantially. It's a track record no other alternative energy source can match.

There's no sign that Americans intend to reduce our use of electricity. In fact, our growing nation will undoubtedly need even more power. So until we change the way we generate power -- a process that must begin with the expansion of nuclear energy -- we're likely to see a steady increase in CO2 emissions.

Nuclear power is reliable, safe and environmentally friendly. True nature lovers should start stumping for more nuclear plants, not fewer.

Ed Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org).