Multi-Gun

USPSA multi-gun. I had a couple of very good stages, high spots in an otherwise average showing. Here I am, earlier today, in the bright sunshine of a Carolina morning.


I got to spend a beautiful day at the range with friends. I got to burn powder and shoot stuff. Pretty much all I could have asked for from a Saturday.

...become good rifle shots so that if it becomes necessary that you defend your families and your country that you can do it.
--Lord Baden-Powell, writing in Scouting For Boys

Local News

If you want to get close to an event, find the local paper. The national msm gives a homogenized report that reads the same everywhere. In this case, getting close means the Tuscaloosa News.
Pictures, articles, and video. Like this one, taken after the tornado passed through.

When a tornado strikes, all of us are at risk.
--Spencer Bachus

Railroad Folklore

There was about a century of history and tradition when this book was published in 1953. The inside of the cover is all logos of the lines, big and small. The acknowledgments page is a who's who of mid 20th century railroading. But the stories, the stories are of conductors and brakemen, hobos and circus trains, epic disasters and tales of survival.

I bought it for a dollar in a pile of used books. I was looking for books to send to Afghanistan, but this one spoke to me. Great stories, stretching back to the building of the roads. I was entertained and I learned a lot about a part of American history. I don't think they could have imagined that it would end as soon as it did. They lived in a time when it was still amazing to make a four day transcontinental crossing.

Nothing was more up-to-date when it was built, or is more obsolete today, than the railroad station.
--Ada Louise Huxtable

Truth Justice and the American Way

I remember this show, although it was probably already in reruns when I watched it. Superman stood for all that was good and right and incorruptible. He was always a hero.


But Superman is a cartoon, drawn and written by people, and time has marched on. So Superman has come to this.

The spirit of Superman is great to have around.
--Brandon Routh

Okay, So We've Seen the Birth Certificate

I don't care. I didn't care before. The time to prove eligibility was before the election anyway. Pr. Obama was sworn in and I don't think you could get this Congress interested in an impeachment if someone proved it was forged, and came up with birth photos from Kenya. It was never a viable issue.

We don't need it anyway. We have the one and only issue we need. The budget is out of control. We owe, checking the link in the sidebar --->, 14.3 trillion dollars. We're still spending. Congress is unwilling or unable to effectively balance the budget. It's going to crush the economy. Sooner or later, we will stop spending. The only question is, do we want to do it in a controlled way, so that we still have some income and the ability to maintain the functions of government that are enumerated in the Constitution, or do we want to keep spending until we crash?

If there's some serious candidates, for the Presidency and Congress, that want to talk about a balanced budget and a plan to pay down the debt, I want to see them make a plea for my vote. Otherwise, we can let Romney and Trump battle it out for who gets to lose to Pr. Obama in 2012.

We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We've got better stuff to do. I've got better stuff to do. We've got big problems to solve.
--Pr. Barack Obama, commenting on the release of his birth certificate

Look at the Big Brain on Borepatch

In response to my short post yesterday, Borepatch fired up a small pile of extra synapses and offers this economic analysis of China, GDP, how it get calculated, and how statistics lie. Okay, I know statistics lie. The rest of it is why, as Marooned would say, Borepatch is one wicked smart smaht bastid.

I don't sell my reloads, I just won't do it. I do reload though, and shoot them a lot, even in matches, because it's the only way I can afford to shoot very much. However, if Borepatch wants to help burn through some .45, all he has to do is show up.

Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.
--Lyndon B. Johnson

Update: edited for spelling correction

It Slips Away

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that China will pass the U.S. in economic power in 2016. Read the article, especially the implications on the second page.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.
--Ayn Rand

A Promise I Hope To Never Keep

I got an email from my son overseas earlier today, asking for coffee and a chess set. At the end of it, he added this request.

Just a thought - if something does happen to me, god forbid, don't let them do all that pomp and ceremony that they want to do. I don't want a military funeral. Just cremate me and sprinkle my ashes in some gunpowder and bring some friends of mine to burn through the ammo.

I can do that, if it comes down to it. He and I had some fine times at the range together, and it would make as much sense as anything, which in that event would be no sense at all. So I gave him my word. I just don't ever want to have to keep it.

No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.
--Euripides

Get Low

Get Low is the title of a movie starring Robert Duvall. It's not the kind of film that's going to break any box office records, but I recommend it.

When you look back across a lifetime, there are defining moments. Some good, some bad, some that color everything that comes after. I've had some of those, so have you. There have even been some that could have turned out much worse if events had gone down slightly different.

This movie is about a man who had things go just about as bad they possibly could and has never forgiven himself. Now it's come to the end of his life and he wants to find some peace, and maybe redemption, before he dies.


It was a good movie for Easter weekend.

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
--Lewis B. Smedes

Gun Control Kills

A man breaks up a fight in a McDonald's. For intervening he was shot and killed a few minutes later. He was unarmed. The criminal that murdered him had a gun.

Gun control made sure that the law abiding citizen had no means to defend himself. Since the criminal was a criminal the gun control laws did not apply to him. He had chosen to be armed and managed to procure a firearm and ammunition.

IN BRITAIN! That's right, the unpossible happened. The fight took place in a McDonald's in London. For all of the gun control laws, on an island, the bad guy still had a gun. Gun control only disarms the law abiding, making them the guaranteed victims of those to whom the laws do not apply.

Gun control is a job-safety program for criminals.
--John R. Lott

Bag Day Followup

I know all of you have been waiting for this. I have been waiting for a chance to get to the range and finally got there this afternoon with the Savage Mark II. Shooting from the bench at 50 yds. I used Olin white box match ammo to get it sighted in. Then I did groups of 5. With the ammo that seemed to perform best I did groups of 10. I had six kinds of ammo to try, not a huge number, but one stood out.

I like the rifle and the scope. For an out of the box trigger, it hard to argue with what Savage has done putting the Accutrigger in a .22 rifle. The scope is a Bushnell, bright enough for the low light conditions on a rainy afternoon, and very forgiving on eye relief. It looks like this.


My skills are what they are, so the spread in this group says more about me than anything, but it looks like I will be competitive in the upcoming CMP Sporter Matches. This is 10 rounds of Wolf Performance Match Extra hand held from the bench at 50yds.


Next time I take it to the range it will have a sling and I will be practicing from prone and sitting.

Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.
--Wyatt Earp

Helmet For My Pillow

The Old Breed used to refer to Marines before the expansion of WWII. In the 1930s, there were only about 18,000 Marines on active duty. By 1945, it was almost half a million. The Old Breed absorbed those hundreds of thousands and made them Marines.

In between those numbers is the history of the Marine Corps in the Pacific. When the Marines landed on Guadalcanal there only were 2 Divisions and those were understrength. It was August of 1942, the Japanese held most of the Pacific. Their navy controlled the seas and they had the best fighter plane in the world. Even the Wiki outline of events is enough to give you a feeling of the desperation of the fighting. The Marines were on Guadalcanal from August to December. In December they were relieved and the Army came ashore to take over the island.

Guadalcanal became the first in a series of islands whose names became part of the Marine Corps history. We look back now in awe, remembering Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the rest. To the Marines on Guadalcanal, though, it was just a dirty, miserable, dangerous job. A place of rain and malaria and mud. A place of too much death.

Robert Leckie was a Marine Private on Guadalcanal. He wrote a book called Helmet For My Pillow. I read it recently and wanted to recommend it. It's his story, of becoming a Marine, surviving Guadalcanal, enjoying liberty in Australia, and finally being injured on Peleliu and evacuated, surviving the war. Helmet On My Pillow was published in 1957.

I bring it up for a number of reasons. It's a good read, real, no heroics, just a story of one man's experience. It is a story of how the New Breed of 1942 became the Old Breed and a reminder of the sacrifice made for us. The epilogue is worth the price of the rest of the book.

And there was this, which will be my quote today. While recuperating in a hospital, he met with a doctor who suggested to him that he was too smart to have been a machine gunner and this was his response.

Now I was shocked! The old shibboleth, intelligence! Had not our government been culpable enough in pampering the high-IQ draftees as though they were too intelligent to fight for their country? Could not Doctor Gentle see that I was proud to be a scout, and before that a machine gunner? Intelligence, intelligence, intelligence. Keep it up, America, keep telling your youth that mud and danger are fit only for intellectual pigs. Keep on saying that only the stupid are fit to sacrifice, that America must be defended by the lowbrow and enjoyed by the high-brow. Keep vaunting head over heart, and soon the head will arrive at the complete folly of any kind of fight and meekly surrender the treasure to the first bandit with enough heart to demand it.
--Robert Leckie, writing in Helmet For My Pillow

Sometimes It's Just Better To Get Rained On

The Feral Irishman has a post up about the mall clearing overreaction to a man with an umbrella. Seems to me that if we had something like the 2nd Amendment, seeing people carrying firearms would be commonplace, but apparently, it's just cause for hysteria just to see someone carrying an umbrella because it's black and tubular and OMFG!!!!11!! it looks like a gun.

Makes this umbrella look like a very bad idea.

In a free society this would just be a novelty. In a place like Massachusetts, it would get you killed.

The best safety lies in fear.
--William Shakespeare

Disarmed and Vulnerable

When you go to the courthouse, it's metal detectors and security. There are bailiffs and deputies everywhere. What could possibly go wrong?

I thought it was safe
--Catherine Scott-Gonzalez

Concord Massachusetts 1775

Remember.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
--The Concord Hymn, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Closer Than I Want To Be

We had a series of killer tornadoes come through the area over the weekend. We were fine. One tree limb broke off and pulled on the power lines, but the house was okay. In the next town there are homes destroyed and trees uprooted.

This couple had a very close call and recorded it. They were much closer than I ever want to be to a tornado. The location mentioned in the video description is on a major highway a few miles west of here.

Leaves stood still, and our hearts stood still,
But the sky was a-boil with clouds,
A coppery wrack, and the greenish black
Of shrouds.
We dove for shelter and none too soon.
The universe swayed and swirled,
And the monstrous horn of a unicorn
Gored the world.
--May Williams Ward

Tam Makes the Big Time

Tam posted a link about the Village Voice quoting her in a review of Atlas Shrugged-The Movie. So I had to follow the link. The article is a poke in the eye, but Tam already has that covered.

I want to mention the "related content" links at the end of the article. Because somehow a story about a vibrator shaped like Pr. Obama qualifies as related content to an article about "Rightbloggers" and Atlas Shrugged.

Meanwhile, if you want the best piece of Obama memorabilia yet, it's available here. It costs $20, or you can get a family and friends 5 pack for $90. Using one would make you feel like America, only with the option to use lube.

I call my vibrator the Elmo, because you know, like, tickle me Elmo.
--Snooki

Tell Me I'm a Good Man

Something about Lex's post about Col. Day reminded me of this. This is what Saving Private Ryan is really about. The rest of the movie is only there to make this scene make sense.

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.
--Bob Dylan

Hero

Lex profiles Col. Bud Day Go watch the video of Col. Day and the F100 Super Sabre. It's a reminder of the price of our freedom.

Rank and organization: Colonel (then Major), U.S. Air Force, Forward Air
Controller Pilot of an F-100 aircraft.
Place and date: North Vietnam, August 26, 1967.
Entered service at: Sioux City, Iowa.
Born: February 24, 1925, Sioux City, Iowa.

Citation: On 26 August 1967, Col. Day was forced to eject from his aircraft over North Vietnam when it was hit by ground fire. His right arm was broken in 3 places, and his left knee was badly sprained. He was immediately captured by hostile forces and taken to a prison camp where he was interrogated and severely tortured. After causing the guards to relax their vigilance, Col. Day escaped into the jungle and began the trek toward South Vietnam. Despite injuries inflicted by fragments of a bomb or rocket, he continued southward surviving only on a few berries and uncooked frogs. He successfully evaded enemy patrols and reached the Ben Hai River, where he encountered U.S. artillery barrages. With the aid of a bamboo log float, Col. Day swam across the river and entered the demilitarized zone. Due to delirium, he lost his sense of direction and wandered aimlessly for several days. After several unsuccessful attempts to signal U.S. aircraft, he was ambushed and recaptured by the Viet Cong, sustaining gunshot wounds to his left hand and thigh. He was returned to the prison from which he had escaped and later was moved to Hanoi after giving his captors false information to questions put before him. Physically, Col. Day was totally debilitated and unable to perform even the simplest task for himself. Despite his many injuries, he continued to offer maximum resistance. His personal bravery in the face of deadly enemy pressure was significant in saving the lives of fellow aviators who were still flying against the enemy. Col. Day's conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Air Force and reflect great credit upon himself and the U.S. Armed Forces.
--Medal of Honor citation for Col. Day

B.A.G. Day 2011

This looked interesting. I will be using it in the CMP Sporter matches. I hope it lives up to it's promise. Range report soon.

Only accurate guns are interesting.
--Colonel Townsend Whelan

BAG Day

Reposted from April 14, 2009.

I don't know how it started. I heard it first from Kim Du Toit about 2004. It's called Buy A Gun Day, and it falls every year on April 15th. Since they tax us and tax us and tax us, and then give a little back and have the temerity to call it a refund, this is one way of getting something out of it.

Because there's something you don't have that you want. Some hole in your safe that deserves to be filled. An item of blued steel and walnut, perhaps. Or a C&R eligible revolver that calls to you like it is the One Ring and your name is Gollum.
It burns us, we wants it, it is the Precious.

Whatever it is, take that tax refund and Buy A Gun.

Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the people's liberty's teeth.
-- Gen. George Washington, Continental Army (Ret.)

One of the Pleasures of Blogging

One of the pleasures of blogging is visiting a site for the first time and finding your blog already in the sidebar. That just happened, and so to reciprocate, Troublesome Times joins the blogroll. He's only been blogging since March, so if you hurry, you can read them all while they are still current. I think this one might be his best so far.

UPDATE: North joins the blogroll by commenting on this post. If I'm on your blogroll and you're not on mine, leave me a comment.

UPDATE 2: Preachers and Horse Thieves asks to join the list. He made a serious effort to do the actual math on the budget negotiation in this post. If my cows and teacups didn't explain it well enough, hit that link. He gets to the same conclusion. UNSUSTAINABLE.

UPDATE 3: Bells A Ringing chimes in. She has three good posts in a row. The most current one also talks of unsustainable spending, the one before that is a range report, and the best of the three is this one, memories of her dad.

UPDATE 4: Even though no one looks back here, I visited all the sites and added everyone who left me a comment to the blogroll.

I read blogs every day, for all sorts of reasons, but I turn to blogs especially when I want to hear alternative viewpoints...
--Jim Buckmaster

I'd Use Stronger Words

I don't usually read Pat Buchanan's columns, but this one dovetails so well with my last post, I couldn't resist sharing the link. It explains why the Democrats and the Republicans won't, maybe can't, comes to terms with the mountain of debt that is going to destroy our economy. Meanwhile, as the article says, the Fed borrows at the rate of $30 billion a week.

I'd use stronger words, or a better analogy if I had one, but I don't see how anything I say will make any difference. I think there's going to be an economic catastrophe.

Debt is the worst poverty.
--Thomas Fuller

Debt and Deficit

I had watched with hopeful interest the budget negotiations recently undertaken by our elected officials. They failed. No real change. We are still spending way more than we take in. Having discussed this with a friend at lunch, he suggested my earlier analogy about radiation might fit this problem as well.

Say I have a cattle ranch. A large herd of healthy cows. They do what cows do. Input and output. Every morning the stalls get shoveled. Outside behind the barn is a mountain of what get shoveled. Think of what get shoveled today as the deficit. Think of the pile of all the previous shovelings as the debt.

We just watched as our elected officials, on both sides, argued about how much of today's deficit was going to be added to the debt mountain. The size of the mountain is unchanged, mind you. Just the buckets of today's shoveling were under discussion. In the end, the bucket loader, full of today's deficit was stopped just before it was upturned on the pile. The House and Senate ran out with some different sized teacups and scooped up various amounts, saying such things as, "This is a big cup, if we take this amount out, it will surely make a real difference!"

Finally they agreed on a certain teacup, and removed that spending, waving the bucket loader onward to dump the rest on the debt mountain. "Look," they exclaimed, "All this spending removed, we have done a wonderful job."

During the time it took them to decide to remove that particular cup of debt, the cows were still at it in the barn. The amount they removed was less than the amount produced during the time it took them to discuss it.

And that, boys and girls, is your lesson about how government works in the 21st Century!

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
--Albert Einstein

Doing My Part

Just about everyone is aware of the efforts being made to fight breast cancer. Pink ribbons. Pink products. Bumper stickers like this one.


All well and good, but I just never saw anything I wanted to buy. Until now.


Federal has come out with a special run of target load 12 ga. shotgun shells. The hulls are pink and the boxes are decorated. They claim to be making a donation on each box sold to research, although I don't know what the amount is. I wrote to Federal and asked, if I get a reply I will post it.

I ordered two cases from Cabela's today.

Cancer got me over unimportant fears, like getting old.
--Olivia Newton-John

**H/T to Every Day, No Days Off

The Boys of Summer

I'm starting to really like this radio station.

I thought I knew what love was, what did I know?
--Don Henley

Taxes and Corporations

There is an important difference between individuals being taxed and corporations being taxed. If the government raises a tax, people effectively have less money. They take some, you have less to spend.

Corporations don't work that way. When you tax a corporation, they add the tax to their expenses. They have to, that's what a tax is to a corporation, it's an expense. It raises the cost of the product. They pass it on to the consumer. Every time, all the time.

Say you go to the lumber yard for a 2x4. The company that cut down the tree pays taxes. It pays taxes on fuel, profits, pays out for unemployment insurance, vehicle registrations, road use taxes. When it has a truck fixed, it paid more to cover the tax that mechanic's business has to pay. To make a profit and stay in business, the logging company raises the cost of the logs to cover the taxes he incurred.

Anyway, the log is sold to the lumber mill. The lumber mill pay taxes too, mostly the same sort as the logger, but maybe property taxes and who knows what. Where does that expense go? Into the price of the finished lumber, which already includes the cost of the log. The lumber mill sells the finished 2x4 to the local home improvement store.

That business pay shipping, which includes fuel taxes again, along with the wholesale cost of the 2x4 that includes all the previous taxes, and puts the 2x4 out on the rack. They have a building, lots of employees, and pay corporate taxes too. You come up and pick out that 2x4 as part of your order. It costs somewhere around $3.50, which you pay at the register along with your sales tax.

Who paid all the taxes on that product? You did. Every bit of it. You can't tax a corporation, it's not possible. Taxes are passed to the consumer. It isn't just the taxes the corporations paid, either, but the cost of all the accountants, clerical staff, computers, and lawyers needed to keep the necessary records that go with the taxes. All that is passed right on to the consumer, too.

Every single product, from corn flakes to automobiles is the same. Any politician, from any party, that points at greedy corporations and hollers that he just wants to tax them is lying through his teeth. He wants to tax you, he's just willing to let the corporations collect the money.

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
--Winston Churchill

Magic

Free by Zac Brown.

The magic is inside you. There ain’t no crystal ball.
--Dolly Parton

Canoeing

A canoe (or kayak) can take you places you can't get to any other way. Small streams, too narrow and shallow for other boats, open up into places to explore. You move silently, more part of the environment than with a motor.

It was the first warm weekend of spring. she wanted to look for migratory birds. I was just happy to be on the water. Paddling through a black water swamp we saw a lot of wildlife. One of the high points was a wild turkey that we startled. It flew across the open water just a few yards in front of the bow. We saw everything from gnat-catchers to bald eagles. I had a camera with me and took a few pictures of the day.

Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment.
--Ellis Peters

JayG is Marooned

Marooned has a post up today about Fidelity Investments moving out of Massachusetts. A good move on Fidelity's part. They leave behind the taxes and regulations that Massachusetts uses to fund their miracle. The thing I find interesting about this post is that it is clear that JayG understands why Fidelity left and agrees with the decision.

Still, for reasons both valid and personal, JayG chooses to continue to live in Massachusetts. In economic theory each of us is a self-interested independent actor making decision that we believe benefit ourselves. So I have decided to do what I can to influence him to choose freedom over continued taxation and restrictions.

I pledge $100.00 to be paid to JayG. upon his move to New Hampshire (or any other state that does not have firearms restrictions like Massachusetts), payable upon his establishing residency in the new state. If I get more than 10 pledges, I will put an tab in the sidebar of this site keeping track of the amount. I don't want to handle anything, you don't send me anything, just a comment that indicates your support and commitment to the pledge. If and when JayG moves, we will each be accountable to honor our pledges directly to him. Let's call it a Random Act of Patriotism™.

Personally, I hope he uses the money to buy a gun.

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life.
--Mohandas Gandhi

Here But Now They're Gone

There's an oldies station, and I catch a half hour coming home from the dojo two or three times a week. There are just certain songs that I don't ever need to hear again. Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog will cause my hand to break the sound barrier getting to the buttons. Most 80s and 90s pop music will get me hunting for a different station. Some of it was terrible when it was recorded, some of it didn't age well, and the rest was played to death.

There are other songs that make me reach over and turn up the volume. We all have them, songs that remind us of youth, of driving too fast on a country road, of being alone with that first true love, going to a concert with a couple of friends. The time slipped away, but the music brings it back for a few minutes. This is one of those songs for me. I'd be interested in yours.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent.
--Victor Hugo

Well, Wouldn't Your Mom Be Proud?

Really, I do think they should be able to dress like they want and not be subject to attacks. I also think I should be able to leave my house unlocked, leave my keys in the truck, and walk wherever I want without being robbed. I just don't believe the world works like that. But here's the news and the video from a different point of view.

Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done.
--Susan B. Anthony

Closing Observations on Poo

Whatever energy sources we use, there are costs, waste, risks, spills, etc. I don't expect us to stop using nuclear power. I would like to see long term storage plans for the waste and I do think it is immoral to keep making waste with no better plan than to keep it in pools at every nuclear power plant, which is the current U.S. policy.

I hit a few highlights, skipped Chernobyl because it was well known, didn't talk about the reactors and other waste that has already been dumped in the oceans. One closing thought. North Korea, Pakistan, India, and Iran. Does anyone think they will do better at managing the waste from their weapons programs than we did?

None of this is a serious threat to all life. It's a very serious threat to individuals that are unfortunate enough to be exposed to enough of it. At the lower end of exposure the effects are hard to measure. Picking out a small rise in cancer risk can be impossible. Studying the effects on life expectancy takes decades and still might be inconclusive.

We are deliberately exposed to sources of radiation all the time. We get x-rays for broken bones, CT scans for diagnosis, searched by the TSA before boarding an airplane. Even standing and watching your food microwave through the glass is an exposure. Spending a day on a sunny beach is a big exposure. You can be painfully burned by the radiation you receive.

How would it be possible to say what, if any, effects we each have from our exposure to bomb test fallout and radiation leaks from nuclear power? Like my first analogy, poo spreads and we all have some of it on us. We live with it.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
--Robert A. Heinlein

Large VS Infinite

When there is discussion of infinite dilution what it usually means is taking a problem like the radiation leaks at Fukushima and diluting them in the ocean. This, however, is not infinite dilution. Here's an image from the U.S. Geological Survey to illustrate.

That blue ball over North America represents all the water on the planet. It is a large, but finite quantity. If Fukushima was the only source of radioactive poo ever put in it, it would still be finite dilution.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
--C. S. Lewis

Windscale/Sellafield

A pair of air cooled graphite cored reactors built by the British to make plutonium for their weapons project. One of the cores caught fire in 1957. They got very lucky, the containment held, and it was put out with water. There was some release of radiation. Let's call this one a near miss.
It was bad enough that both reactors were mothballed in place and no one has ever built another air cooled graphite reactor.

The site got renamed Sellafield, was used for weapons and then nuclear fuel manufacture and reprocessing. It is now the subject of an ongoing clean-up effort. To pick one example, there's an open pool that was used for waste storage from the 1960s to the 1980s. Among other things, there is an estimated 1.5 tons of plutonium in it. It is a place so radioactive that two minutes near the edge of the pond is the limit for a human being. The pool attracts birds that land and take off, the walls have creaks permitting leaks, the poo spreads.

There are many different kinds of radioactive waste and each has its own half-life so, just to be on the safe side and to simplify matters, I base my calculations on the worst one and that's plutonium.
--David R. Brower

What Do You Do With a Submarine?

The Soviet subs weren't all that well built or safe when they were operational. Now they sit at anchor, awaiting dismantling. The reactor cores, surrounding areas and cooling water have to be removed before the remains of the ships can be cut up for scrap. There's 130 of them. 15 have had their reactors removed.

The problems in dismantling them are enormous. Once they are dismantled, what do you do with the cores?


Another chapter of the same report deals with the various types and quantities of waste being stored at the shipyards, the accidents, the deliberate releases, and the leaking pools.

The Russian Navy lacks funds to pay for the services of Mayak Chemical Combine, and at present, this constitutes the most important reason for the drop in the rate at which spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed. Thus there is a sharp increase in the amount of spent nuclear fuel that is stored at the naval bases, including fuel that remains in the reactors of laid up submarines. Specialists and the commanders of the fleet are both greatly concerned about this situation, for in theory it will be impossible to transport all this fuel to Mayak over the course of the next 30 to 40 years. In addition to this comes the spent fuel that Mayak Chemical Combine cannot accept for reprocessing, including:

* All spent nuclear fuel from reactors with liquid metal cooled reactors;
* Defective fuel assemblies, that is, parts that are bent or have broken cladding. This is especially true of the fuel assemblies that are stored in Storage Pool No. 1 at Gremikha and at unshielded locations at Gremikha and Andreeva Bay;
* Furthermore, there are a number of submarine reactors with damaged fuel assemblies, for example, K-192 (former K-131) at Shkval Shipyard.
--Bellona Report nr. 2:96. Written by: Thomas Nilsen, Igor Kudrik and Alexandr Nikitin.

Kyshtym, For Example

The Kyshtym disaster was a chemical explosion at a nuclear facility that made weapons grade materials for the Soviets. It blew open a storage tank and heavily contaminated about 800 sq. kilometers. Because of secrecy concerns, people in the path of the radiation were not warned for weeks or months, but eventually some of the worst affected areas were evacuated and remain so now.

Additionally, the reactors at the site did not have a recirculation system, they used lake water in an open cooling system, running the water through the reactor and back into the lake. This resulted in a similar situation to the ongoing Fukushima crisis, where water that had been directly in contact with the reactor core was released, except that it was deliberate and ongoing.

Then they dumped the high level waste in Lake Karachay as a storage solution. It is now so radioactive that being at the shore of the lake would expose you to a fatal dose of radiation in about an hour. Here's a report with details and doses.

Everybody is exposed to radiation. A little bit more or a little bit less is of no consequence.
--Dixy Lee Ray

Hanford Poo

Hanford, Washington. The site of 9 nuclear reactors and 5 processing plants used during the Cold War to produce plutonium. Sixty-seven tons of plutonium. Shut down now, but still the most radioactive site in the United States. Stored at the site are 53 million gallons of high-level liquid radioactive waste stored in large tanks. About a third of them are leaking. A major plume of that radiation is in the ground water and migrating toward the Columbia River. There are almost a 100,000 cubic yards of solid waste on site as well. Dump sites of pure plutonium have been found, there are no records of much of what was done, and the clean-up operation will stretch beyond our life times.

There was no plan to deal with the waste, it just piled up. Current plans to vitrify the waste and store it on site in pits is on hold, although that seems like the best alternative at the present time. Leaving the waste in the tanks is a recipe for failure, given the amount of time necessary to allow it to decay to safe levels. Since plutonium has such a long half-life, the waste will not be safe for a quarter of a million years. While that sounds like hyperbole, 24,700 years is the half-life, and 10 half-lifes will have to pass before it will decay enough, although it is true that this process follows a gradient, becoming less dangerous over time.

I am not opposed to nuclear power. I am opposed to teh stupidity. Whether it's coal, oil, nuclear, they all have risks, but deliberately using a technology that creates waste that remains dangerous for tens of thousands of years and failing to plan for that waste is immoral.

Hanford is one site. There are more, and as foreshadowing, let's just say the U.S. did way better than the Soviet Union.

If one is sufficiently lavish with time, everything possible happens.
--Herodotus

More Poo

Monkeys, smart ones, figured out how to make a small container full of special poo give off a lot of heat and light all at once. Those same monkeys ignored how much extra poo it spread around.

This is, in keeping with my analogy, like starting with an M-80 in a diaper pail, working up to grenades in a 55 gallon drums, and finally setting off 500 lb. bombs in the settlement tanks at a sewage treatment plant.

Here is a time lapse animation of all the nuclear explosions since 1945. Most of them were open air explosions until the 1960s. Some of them were used in engineering projects in the Soviet Union. The rest were all weapons testing. This is one way we spread around the special poo. There were others. Some of them are worse than this. As you watch this, remember that there had to be factories and reactors to make the special explosive poo, process the poo, and shape the poo into the bomb cores. Those factories, whatever they were called, are all contaminated with poo, too. We'll talk about those places next.


They weren't just little blips, either. Each one looked like this.

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
--J. Robert Oppenheimer

h/t to the Adaptive Curmudgeon for the video link

2012 is Coming

Because America needs more changing.

There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.
--Winston Churchill

1911s and a Blogroll Addition

Borepatch has a post up from a few days ago about getting his first 1911. I have thought about him several times and finally decided what I wanted to say. When I first met Borepatch, he lived in Massachusetts. He didn't own any firearms. He got to go shooting occasionally, but hadn't tried jumping through all the hoops to get the permission slips necessary to purchase.

Now he lives in a freer place, and his first handgun, the one that sang to him, that spoke of freedom so loudly that he had to have it is a 1911. While he had been away on family business, his wife had already bought a Sig for herself. Now they live where they can get a carry permit, can purchase a gun and ammo without a chit from the State, and they don't pay taxes in Massachusetts anymore.

This is a victory for freedom. It is also a defeat for Massachusetts.

Now my blogroll addition. I had found this site a few months back and bookmarked it, reading it occasionally. Walls of the City is added to the blogroll with this post about his father's purchase of a 1911. He titled it "This is an auspicious day" which is very appropriate. Here's a quote:

My father just purchased a new 1911...and he has a Concealed Weapon License. Congratulations, anti-rights cultists! You helped create your very worst nightmare – a free, responsible, adult human being who is aware of his rights, interested in defending them, and capable of doing so.

Walls of the City understood the import of his father's purchase in much the same way I understood Borepatch's. These two decisions, made in different states by people who do not know one another, still are bound together by shared values and ideas.

A free people ought... to be armed...
--George Washington, speech to Congress on Jan. 7, 1790

It Has Poo On It

Trying to under the events at the Japanese nuclear reactor at Fukushima is complicated. Radiation is measured different ways, there are many kinds of radiation, this situation keeps changing, and for various reasons what is reported is often false or wrong.

Here at RAoP, I strive for clarity. In an effort to make things clear, I am going to offer you an analogy I have been using to explain events.

It really goes back to when I was a young parent. Back in the dark ages when dinosaurs ruled the earth and I still had dark hair, we used cloth diapers on our children. When their stools were firm, it worked out okay. You removed the plastic pants, opened the diaper, dumped the contents in the toilet, rinsed the diaper and put it in the diaper pail to be washed. That was the best case scenario.

Occasionally one of them would have what I called a containment breach. Looking back at it, that was the reverse analogy to one I am explaining to you now, but that is what I called it. The first warning you would get was the odor. By then it was too late. There was poo everywhere. In their socks. On your shirt. Runny poo. It would spread. On your hands, on whatever you put them on. Anything you touched had poo on it. You could only contain it as much as possible, and then clean up everything. If this happened on a car trip, it was a major task.

I can remember, when the weather was good, taking them out in the yard, stripping them, and using a garden hose to rinse them off, then putting their clothes, and sometimes mine, on the back porch to wash separately. It would seem like there was poo everywhere. Diluting the poo, removing the poo, washing the poo covered clothes and letting the water from washing be carried away to poo filtration systems maintained by the city. All the while, they were making more of it. Babies are mostly poo production systems.

A recent study by the University of Arizona found that 72% of shopping carts have poo on them. Other studies show that poo is on keyboards, elevator buttons, parking meters, ATM machines, phones, and just about everything we touch. Why? Because even a little bit of poo spreads out.

Think about a teaspoon of poo. If you stirred that into glass of wine, what do you have? It isn't wine anymore, is it? It's poo. Pour that back into the wine bottle. Is that wine? Pour that bottle into a wine cask, do you want to drink it now? You might not be able to detect it anymore, but it's still got poo in it. How much wine would you have dilute that teaspoon of poo into before you would be willing to drink it?

One more example. From the FDA, in this document listing the guidelines for defects in food products, I offer you the government standard for cornmeal:

CORNMEAL Insects
(AOAC 981.19) Average of 1 or more whole insects (or equivalent) per 50 grams
Insect filth
(AOAC 981.19) Average of 25 or more insect fragments per 25 grams
Rodent filth
(AOAC 981.19) Average of 1 or more rodent hairs per 25 grams
OR Average of 1 or more rodent excreta fragment per 50 grams

Mouse or rat poo, 1 per 50 grams, is acceptable. In fact, it's impossible to prevent. Everything has poo on it. The question is how much and what is the risk.

Which leads us back to the discussion at hand. Fukushima. They used a kind of poo to make electricity. Now they have had a containment breach. There is poo getting out. Right there at the site, there is a lot of it. Anything it gets on becomes poo, too. Water used to cool the special poo becomes poo. Some of the poo is worse than the other. All of it is bad, and it spreads. it gets in the water and then in the fish. It gets on birds and bugs, on the grass the cows eat and into the milk. Because poo spreads. That's what poo does best. Even if you dilute it in all the oceans, it's still there. In the end, the Japanese are going to build a giant concrete diaper pail and put the poo in it as best they can, minus what poo escapes before they can get that diaper pail built. All of us will deal with the escaped poo, even if we don't know it.

This is not the first escaped poo of this type. My next post will make you wonder what sort of monkeys we really are, trying to use nuclear power without a coherent plan to deal with the waste poo.

Where there is poo, there is life.
--Mahatma Gandhi