saturn return to sender

CRW_3643.jpg

According to NRC spokesperson Eliot Brenner, interviewed on Wednesday afternoon, the spent fuel rod pool at the Waterford plant is being kept cool by two backup generators that are being “topped-off” with new fuel each day.

- In the Wake of Hurricane, New Orleans Nuclear Plant in Jeopardy

Wow, so … you mean if infrastructure were damaged in some sort of disaster, whether man-made or natural, such that people were unable to top-off the generators …

Some experts and scientists feel that a spent nuclear rod pool, when severely compromised, could result in a catastrophic fire capable of dwarfing the Chernobyl tragedy.

“Once a pool fire gets going, nobody could approach it. It would be a smoky, slow-burning fire, giving off this cloud of smoke. It would probably hug the ground and drift downwind,” [Gordon Thompson, director of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Institute for Resource and Security Studies] said. He speaks in terms of epic time, describing a landscape that would remain uninhabitable for generations.

It is hard for me to believe this. If the power grid went down and people couldn’t attend to this plant or get fuel to it, it would go Chernobyl? I hope I’m misunderstanding, because given the incompetence displayed recently by those “in charge,” this scenario does not seem far-fetched.

How many secondary disasters are waiting for a failure of infrastructure? Forget stocking the basement with canned food and water … we’ll all be killed by our own nuclear meltdowns, anyway.

Or by less exotic waste:a superfund landfill in downtown New Orleans is underwater. How much of our seafood comes from the Gulf Coast, again?

I find some solace knowing that the mountains and the clouds will still be here when we’re gone …

With apologies for the disrespect, but we’re watching Larry King Live … Richard Simmons is on … first of all, does he own any clothing that is not a tank top? He’s wearing a black, sequined tank top. It is an evening gown in tank top form.

Then he says this: “… and New Orleans is the Venice, Italy of the world …”

Er. Nice one.

Now Celine Dion is emoting. A lot. A little too much.

Breathe, Celine, breathe.

I’m glad we have celebrities to make our lives bearable. The absurdity of their detachment from reality is the only buffer between us and the absurdity of our leaders’ detachment from reality.

Slate reports on “The Rebellion of the Talking Heads”. Contrary to evidence it appears that many reporters are human, with a human soul, and faced with large-scale pointless suffering, will find their priorities align with their humanity before their nation, religion, party, or corporate sponsor.

Why it takes a rancid-water rotting-flesh innocence-raping crisis for people to remember that we are human before anything else will be part of our undoing.

I have mirrored a clip of Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith losing their shit on the air as Hannity and Colmes try to rein them in. (via MeFi) Not so unusual for a source prone to sensationalism (it is Geraldo, after all), but as defiance of the party line by the party’s primary mouthpiece, it is remarkable. In this clip Fox appears to be walking a fine line between obeying its corporate masters and obeying its government masters. I know who will win. The administration ultimately answers to corporate masters, too.

Meanwhile, the National Guard is not allowing the Red Cross to enter New Orleans, citing the fear that having Red Cross inside New Orleans will prompt people to stay in the city rather than evacuate … but then according to the Fox reporters, the people in the Superdome were effectively locked in, and evacuations not happening.

All that appears to have been broadcast last night, though, and according to reports this evening the Superdome has finally been emptied of refugees. Five days.

I wanted Bush to walk into the Superdome and do his speech-on-the-rubble act. I wanted him to inhale death, shit and toxic fumes and shape it into words of leadership and support. But mostly, I wanted him in the Superdome. I wonder if, free from his sterile cocoon and coddling news reports, facing that kind of suffering (perhaps for the first time in his life), we might have seen some crack of humanity in his dull, corrupt shell.

You’re so right, FEMA director Michael Brown. The victims of the hurricane still in New Orleans should have picked up their oxygen tanks, tossed their wheelchairs in the back of their Expeditions, and driven themselves out of town as soon as the evacuation notices were given. But no, they “chose” to stay. They deserve what’s happening to them.