p e n g u i n d e v i l

So in the late 1970’s I was living here, Portland, just not too many miles upriver from a nuclear plant that had one of the largest reactors yet built. It was quite a sight and quite a target for the large number of progressive citizens in these parts. I went on a tour of it in grade school, which I found quite memorable and I even got to look into the control room from the observation deck! In 1978 they discovered: building construction errors, the proximity of a faultline and cracking of the steam tubes.
It was made all the more interesting because this plant was, strangely & symbolically, named Trojan Nuclear Power Plant (yes, it even used a chess knight for a symbol… Were they trying to make us think of the condoms or, more likely, the Trojan Horse… Either way, the meaning seemed such a blatant signpost of hidden threat, I am still shocked at the gall it took to use it.). Of course there was a concerted effect to shut the plant down.

Into all of this, a movie was released called The China Syndrome (it even featured cracking welds on tubes…just like Trojan!). Most of the meat takes place in the control room, which was modeled after the Trojan control room (in fact a lot of it took place on the observation deck for the control room, making it doubly eerie to me). Then to make matters worse, two weeks after the movie came out, the incident at Three Mile Island occurred (don’t even bring up the double Pennsylvania connection!). This all made for a very unfriendly Nuclear environment here and Trojan suffered many protests, shutdowns and minor accidents before being finally closed 16 years into its 35 year lifespan. Of course, in walks Chernobyl (and more recently, Robert Polidori’s brilliant photography book on it, Zones of Exclusion) and for a lot of people, including myself, nuclear was removed from the table as a viable energy source.

Well, to be realistic, I know that the fuel disposal is the big issue and that there have been hundreds of Nuclear plants operating for years without any known big problems. But it still is a dangerous industry. It seems to me like it may be the future of power, whether we like it or not, but boy, if we would build houses and buildings with modern solar panels for roofing, our need for dangerous power would be much diminished. But then again, I am a renewable resource person, living somewhere that most power is hydroelectric (31 power generating dams?).

In honor of the 60 Minutes last night where they were discussing the embracing of Nuclear Power in France and the weakening reluctance towards it in the USA. We watched The China Syndrome. I hadn’t seen it in many years, but I think it has aged well. The threats of nuclear power, the attempts to downplay those and the reluctance of the media to confront these issues remain timely, especially now when plans are being presented across the nation for additional plants to be constructed (for the first time in something like 20 years). It is the story of a reporter who is in the right place at the right time to witness a near-accident at a nuclear plant and the efforts of the power company to silence the story. Things get ugly, as one might imagine and, as Carter Burke would say, a few deaths were involved. I may be cynical, but I don’t feel like the lengths the company would go to to protect itself were exaggerated and it really does make you think about the dangers of Nuclear Power and it feels like it was based on a true story (though it wasn’t really) and it is, in fact, very similar to Silkwood. It’s also pretty involving: they don’t shy away from technical jargon, and it has some good little thriller aspects to it and a car chase! Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas are the film crew (I am not a fan of either one, but they do just fine) but two actors that I always enjoy make it an a-list movie: Jack Lemmon plays the plant supervisor who is torn between his plant and the knowledge that he has of its faults and James Karen (yes, of Return of the Living Dead fame) plays Fonda’s producer.

I do highly recommend it for people who have issues about nuclear power, for people who don’t have issues about nuclear power, and just plain for anyone who likes a good drama with some political meat to it.

Since everybody likes discussing the “browser wars” and platform popularity, I thought I would throw in my two cents. It seems that when people report on market share, they give about 80% to internet exploiter and 90-95 percent to windows users.

Looking at the stats for this site, the last 100 visitors show this breakdown (the different versions are compressed…):

62.00% Firefox (2.0=35%, 1.5=25%, 1.0=2%)
27.00% Safari 1.2
7.00% MSIE (6.0=6%, 7.0=1%)
4.00% Other (Camino=2%, Mozilla=1%, Omniweb=1%)

and

45.00% Mac OS X
39.00% Windows (XP=33%, 2003=5%, 2000=1%)
16.00% Unknown

And for the old Blogspot incarnation?

61.00% Firefox 1.5.0 (1.5=32%, 2.0=28%, 1.0=1%)
19.00% Safari
18.00% MSIE (6.0=13%, 7.0=5%)
2.00% Other (Camino=2%, unknown=1%, Mozilla=1%)

and

60.00% Windows (XP=56%, 98=2%, Vista=1%, 2000=1%
24.00% Unknown
16.00% Mac OS X

I don’t know if that means anything but I certainly like the looks of it. It shows a very strong tendency towards Firefox and Mac OSX, well above the average… Though blogspot shows 60% windows (what are earth is that “16% other”), even the 16% Mac is above the trend.