Eeyore's News and Views

Iran tests first nuclear plant
Iran was testing its long-delayed first nuclear power plant on Wednesday as it pressed ahead with its controversial atomic drive despite international sanctions.
The head of the Russian nuclear agency Sergei Kiriyenko, who is visiting Iran for the so-called pre-commissioning phase, said construction of the Russian-built plant at the Gulf port of Bushehr was now complete.
"The construction stage of the nuclear power plant is over, we are now in the pre-comissioning stage, which is a combination of complex procedures," Sergei Kiriyenko told reporters.
Iran is carrying out comprehensive tests of various equipment at the 1,000-megawatt plant which officials said involve "virtual fuel," not nuclear fuel rods.
Iran and Russia are also set to announce a date for the plant to go operational during the pre-commissioning ceremony, the official IRNA news agency had reported on Tuesday.
Tehran's ambitious nuclear drive has triggered a row with Western governments which suspect it is seeking to covertly build atomic weapons, a charge Iran strongly denies.
Russia took over construction at Bushehr in 1995 but completion of the plant was delayed for a number of reasons, in particular the nuclear standoff between and Iran and the international community.
Iran insists its nuclear drive is for peaceful purposes only and has rejected repeated UN Security Council calls for a halt to uranium enrichment, despite a three sets of sanctions being imposed for its defiance.
Enrichment is the process that makes nuclear fuel for power plants but can also be diverted to make the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
The start-up of the plant will be a leap forward in Iran's efforts to develop nuclear technology but is likely to further unnerve Western powers, which were rattled by the launch this month of an Iranian satellite into space on a home-built rocket.
Kiriyenko said on February 5 that the actual "technical launch" of the Bushehr plant was possible before the end of 2009 if there were no delays caused by "unforeseen circumstances."
The project was first launched by the US-backed shah of Iran in the 1970s using contractors from German company Siemens but was shelved after the Islamic revolution until Russia became involved.
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said last week it had been informed by Tehran that the loading of fuel into the reactor was scheduled to take place during the second quarter of 2009.
The fuel, supplied by Moscow, is currently under IAEA seal.
All the main equipment at Bushehr -- which has been installed by Russian contractor Atomstroiexport.
"Virtual fuel which does not have uranium will be loaded in the core of the reactor," the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Mohammad Saeedi, told state television.
"The main units, especially the primary circuit, back-up systems and sub-units are tested to remove any failure that could happen in the commissioning stage," he said.
The IAEA, which has been investigating Iran's nuclear activities for six years, said in a report issued last Thursday that Tehran is continuing to enrich uranium, but has slowed down the expansion of its enrichment activities.
In all, IAEA inspectors had been able to verify that Iran has accumulated 839 kilogrammes (1,846 pounds) of low-enriched uranium. And Iran had told the IAEA that it had added another 171 kilogrammes this month.
Estimates vary, but analysts calculate that anywhere between 1,000-1,700 kilogrammes would be needed to convert into high-enriched uranium suitable for one bomb.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.ae2111b6fea6365feac3355561e7d261.111&show_article=1

Powerful alternatives on display at NYC convention
February 24, 2009 - 3:42pm
Evan Haning, wtop.com
WASHINGTON - Unexpectedly high electric bills are showing up at many homes in the Washington region, but cheaper power is on the way as New York's Greener Gadgets Convention hopes to demonstrate, when it opens Feb. 27.
New prototypes and products on display will include:
SunCat solar batteries recharge by soaking up sunlight. They are wrapped in flexible photovoltaic panels -- solar panels.
Samsung's Blue Earth phone has a full solar panel on its back which can generate enough power to recharge its battery. No more plugging in the cell phone at night. The Power Hog piggybank is an energy-saving teaching tool. This little piggybank plugs in the wall, and kids plug their TV or video game in its nose. It supplies all the power they need -- as long as they keep feeding it their coins.
The RITI Coffee Printer uses the grounds from your Breakfast Blend to make ink for your printer.
Flexible computer screens are very thin, and Hewlitt-Packard says they're indestructible.
Conference organizer Jill Fehrenbacher says heat pumps aren't the only things that run up your electric bill. "Electronics are responsible for 25 percent of home energy use."
http://wtop.com/?sid=1609488&nid=108

'Wonder gas' from cows cuts farm's fuel consumption
February 25, 2009 - 9:49am
UNDATED - New energy sources are being sought everyday in this country, but there's one, smelly energy source that a California dairy is now taking advantage of.
A California dairy farm has converted a pair of 18-wheelers to run on biomethane produced from cow manure, creating what is believed to be the nation's first cow pie-powered truck.
The dairy will use manure from 10,000 cows to generate 226,000 cubic feet of biomethane daily. That's enough to reduce the diesel fuel consumption on Rob Hilarides' farm by 650 gallons per day.
How in the world do you fill up a tractor-trailer truck with cow-pucky? The manure is flushed into holding tanks where bacteria breaks it down, then methane is pumped out to a refinery that removes the impurities. The methane is then pressurized and ready to pump.
Converting cow manure to biomethane, which some are even calling "wonder gas," cuts greenhouse gases in two ways. Burning biomethane methane produces less pollution. Also, producing biomethane cuts down on the methane released in the atmosphere by the manure itself.
Hilarides received a $600,000 grant from the California Air Resources Board's Alternative Fuel Incentive Program for his biomethane project. He now plans to convert five pick-up trucks to use the same fuel.
http://wtop.com/?nid=456&sid=1610180

Google’s Gmail service crashes across world
Google’s web-based email service, Gmail, has crashed this morning, leaving millions of users from Britain to Australia unable to send and receive messages.
The email service went offline at around 10.25am GMT, and the outage appears to have affected users throughout the UK as well as across Europe, and even as far afield as Australia and India.
It appears that only web-based Gmail access is affected, and users can continue to send and receive messages using other devices, such as mobile phones and third-party mail clients.
Google could not confirm what had caused the outage. “A number of users are having difficulty accessing Gmail,” said the company in a statement. “We are working to resolve the problem. We know how important Gmail is to users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologise for the inconvenience.
“We are posting status updates about the problem at mail.google.com/support.”
Bloggers and Twitter users were quick to flag up issues with the service. Google’s web-based email system is usually fairly robust, and suffers little downtime, so many internet users were left baffled by the problems and at a loss as to what to do. Many Twitter messages offered workarounds to the problem, such as using mobile email applications, while other Gmail users said they would simply down tools and make a cup of tea and wait for the issue to be resolved.
Several major companies, including Telegraph Media Group and The Guardian, have switched to using the Google Apps suite in place of conventional desktop email. Google Apps allows users to work collaboratively on documents via the web, as well as share calendars, and provides instant messaging and chat alongside Gmail email services.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/google/4797727/Googles-Gmail-service-crashes-across-world.html

Senator echoes Tea Party rally cry
'People have to show that they're not going to take it anymore'
February 24, 2009 10:05 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn © 2009 WorldNetDaily
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., a staunch opponent of the federal government's increase in size and spending legislated by President Obama's stimulus package, has issued a call for Americans to stand up – literally – and take back their freedom.
"I would think it's time to start thinking about peaceful demonstrations," DeMint said in an interview with Georgia's Augusta Chronicle. "The power of the people is there. Freedom is in the people's hands right now, and it's about to slip through."
DeMint lobbied his fellow Senators to resist the $787 billion stimulus package's new federal regulations in the areas of education, medicine, welfare spending and other arenas – all to no avail, as three of his fellow Republicans joined all the Democrats in the Senate to approve the massive spending bill by a vote of 60-38.
Disappointed by the outcome on Capitol Hill, DeMint is now calling on the common people to resist government actions he sees overflowing constitutional bounds.
"Really, I think the hope right now is not in Congress to make the right decision, because they're not," DeMint says. "It's just whether or not the American people are going to stand up and say enough is enough."
DeMint told the Chronicle despite the economic times that are pressing people into advocating the massive federal expansion, he still sees those that value their freedom over the government's handout, a group of people he called a "remnant."
"That's all it is," he concludes. "But that's all it takes. … Freedom is in our hands; it always has been. We've entrusted it to people in Washington, and increasingly they have picked our pockets and pulled power from us."
"People don't need to look to Washington," DeMint continued. "It's the people's government. And the people are going to have to take it back. They can do it with their voices and with their votes – and they may have to do it with their legs. People are going to have to show that they're not going to take it anymore."
What exactly, does DeMint advocate the "remnant" do? Apparently, make a noise in the government's seats of power.
"I think some of these folks," DeMint said, "might think twice if they had several hundred people standing outside one of their state offices asking, 'What in the world are you thinking?'"
DeMint's comments, as it happens, come at a time when many Americans are responding to a remarkably similar rally cry: the call to a new American Tea Party.
As WND reported, CNBC analyst Rick Santelli became a YouTube sensation after he spoke out against President Obama's proposed $275 billion deficit-financed homeowner bailout plan and other massive spending measures with a call for a new "tea party" from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
In a nearly three-minute rant that drew approving hoots and comments from nearby traders, Santelli said the Obama administration's promotion of bad behavior must be causing the Founding Fathers to roll over in their graves.
"We're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July," Santelli told CNBC "Squawk Box" co-anchor Joe Kernan. "All you capitalists who want to show up at Lake Michigan, I'm going to start organizing."
And while White House press secretary Robert Gibbs responded by downplaying Santini's argument, saying that "the verdict is in on that" and offering to buy Santelli a cup of coffee, "decaf," a wave of Americans have decided to take a page out of U.S. history's account of the Boston Tea Party and take Sentelli up on his suggestion.
An group called Top Conservatives on Twitter, for example, is planning protest "tea parties" for this Friday in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Trenton, N.J., and Lansing, Mich.
According to WND columnist Andrea Shea King, TCOT is planning additional Friday rallies and demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Fayetteville, N.C., Pittsburgh, Penn., San Diego, Calif., Fort Worth, Texas, Tulsa, Okla., Oklahoma City, Orlando, Fla., Omaha, Neb., Atlanta, Ga., and elsewhere in Missouri, with more cities joining in every day.
Floridians Unite is looking down the road and planning an Orlando Tea Party for March 21.
"This will be a peaceful rally to unite our voices and express the love that we have for our great nation and the principles it was founded on," states the Floridians Unite website. "We want to make our politicians hear loud and clear that we are tired of the bailouts, the wasteful Washington spending and the push towards the socialization of this country! We want less government! We want to decide where our hard-earned money goes instead of the elitist politicians in Washington taking it and using it to buy votes, doling it out to special interest groups and pork barrel projects! We want our constitutional rights preserved and protected, not trampled on!"
At the Pennsylvania Tea Party on April 11, organizers are inviting people to help them reenact the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773, by bringing one tea bag each to Point State Park in Pittsburgh with plans of actually tossing the tea into the Alleghany, Monongahela and Ohio rivers.
"Somebody in our government needs to finally pay attention," said Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck on his radio program last week. "It is what I've been talking about that was coming for a very long time, and that is disenfranchisement, which will turn into anger and then turn into God knows what."
For Sen. Jim DeMint, he's hoping it will turn into "peaceful demonstrations."
Rick Santelli is hoping those demonstrations will result in real change.
During the televised segment where Santelli revived the term "tea party," CNBC panelist Wilbur Ross, chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co., interjected, "Rick, I congratulate you on your new incarnation as a revolutionary leader."
"Somebody needs one," Santelli responded. "I'll tell you what, if you read our Founding Fathers, people like Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson, what we're doing in this country now is making them roll over in their graves."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=89942