Author Archives: julyye49

Aid Group Bombed for the Second Time in Three Weeks

by julyye49 Posted on October 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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For the second time in three weeks, a hospital belonging to the international medical aid group Doctors Without Borders has been bombed by warplanes.

The latest attack occurred on Monday night in Yemen, where aircraft from a coalition led by Saudi Arabia attacked a hospital belonging to the aid group, which is also known as Médecins Sans Frontières. While the group said patients and staff were in the hospital at the time of the attack, they did not report any deaths. The Saudi-led coalition has been bombing Yemen for seven months in a campaign against the Houthis, a Shiite rebel group that currently holds power in the country. But Doctors Without Borders says the Saudis were aware of the hospital’s location. “We provided the coalition with all of our GPS coordinates about two weeks ago,” Hassan Boucenine, Doctors Without Borders’ Yemen director, said to Reuters.

That mirrors the attack that took place three weeks ago, when an American AC-130 gunship destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing at least 30 people. The group said the US military had been given the coordinates of the hospital and should have known its location. American officials at first said they didn’t know they had fired on a medical facility. “The hospital was mistakenly struck. We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility,” said Gen. John Campbell, the US military commander in Afghanistan. But more recent reports claim American special operations soldiers knew the building was a hospital but believed the Taliban were using it as a base. The decision to attack the hospital anyway may mean the strike was a war crime under international law.

Boucenine did not shy away from using that language to describe the Saudi strike last night. “It could be a mistake, but the fact of the matter is it’s a war crime,” he told Reuters. “There’s no reason to target a hospital.”

The strike is only a small part of destruction caused by the Saudi-led air campaign, which the United Nations says is responsible for most of the approximately 2,000 civilian deaths in Yemen that have occurred since strikes began in March. The bombings have also leveled historic parts of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, which had survived years of civil war and rebellion since the Arab Spring revolts hit Yemen in 2011.

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Aid Group Bombed for the Second Time in Three Weeks

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Test Scores Are Up! (Except In the One Place It Actually Matters)

by julyye49 Posted on May 7, 2014

Mother Jones

I periodically try to remind everyone that test scores for American students have not, in fact, plummeted over the past few decades. In fact, they’re up. To the extent that standardized tests can measure learning, American kids simply aren’t doing any worse than kids in the past. They’re doing better.

But there’s always been a caveat: this is only for grade school and middle school kids. All those test score gains wash out in high school, and today brings the latest evidence of this. Scores from the 2013 NAEP—widely considered the most reliable national measure of student achievement—are now available for 12th graders, and they confirm what we’ve known for a while. In reading, scores have been basically flat since 1992, and the scores for every racial subgroup have been pretty flat too. Math has only been tested since 2005, and scores have risen a few points since then. But not enough to demonstrate any kind of trend.

There are technical issues with testing 12th graders that can affect these scores. As dropout rates go down, for example, the test population becomes less proficient. And senioritis can affect how much effort kids put into these tests. Still, the best evidence indicates that we’re making pretty good progress improving the proficiency of students all the way through middle school, but we still haven’t cracked the code for high school. And in the end, that’s all that matters. It’s great that fourth graders are doing better, but if all those gains wash away in the final three years of high school, we’re not ending up any better than before.

UPDATE: Actually, math has been tested since 1990, but the test was revised in 2005 and scores before then aren’t comparable to current scores. A crude comparison suggests that scores actually have increased for 12th graders since 1990, perhaps by as much as ten points, though this is in direct contradiction to the long-term NAEP, which shows no gains at all for 17-year-olds. My own guess, based on both of these results, is that math scores have increased slightly since 1990, but probably not enough to really be noticeable.

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Test Scores Are Up! (Except In the One Place It Actually Matters)

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The six U.S. nuclear power plants most likely to shut down

by julyye49 Posted on November 13, 2013

The six U.S. nuclear power plants most likely to shut down

By

Sandia National Laboratories

Three Mile Island: still not popular.

The nuclear power industry is melting down in America, and in the rest of the Western Hemisphere too.

Nuclear plants still generate nearly 20 percent of electricity in the U.S. But a report by investment research firm Morningstar in its latest Utilities Observer publication warns about the sector’s risks. The report says “the ‘nuclear renaissance’ is on hold indefinitely” in the West thanks to low electricity prices, largely driven by the natural-gas fracking boom but also by new renewable energy projects, and controversy in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown:

Aside from the two new nuclear projects in the U.S., one in France (Flamanville), and a possible one in the U.K. (Hinkley Point C), we think new-build nuclear in the West is dead. …

We don’t expect an end to the new nuclear construction in China and South Korea or the development interest in India and elsewhere in Asia. … Nuclear power is not going to disappear as a long-term option and it will continue to evolve. However, an investment in a new Western nuke plant even with the best available technology today will remain a rare experiment.

Another problem for the sector: Nuclear power plants are ill-suited to modern energy-pricing schemes, as The New York Times recently reported. Nuclear plants can’t be quickly powered up or down to meet demand as prices rise and fall throughout the day and night, so sometimes reactor operators are forced to sell electricity at a loss when demand is lowest. 

Five U.S. nuclear power plants have recently shuttered or announced upcoming closures: Vermont Yankee in Vermont, San Onofre in California, Kewaunee in Wisconsin, Crystal River in Florida, and Oyster Creek in New Jersey. Those closures have been largely the result of falling power prices and rising maintenance costs.

Here are six more nuclear plants that Morningstar identifies as the most likely to close next:

1. & 2. R.E. Ginna, opened in 1984 in Onatario, N.Y., and James A. FitzPatrick, opened in 1974 in Scriba, N.Y.

Blame it on the wind. “Renewable energy has flooded the wind-rich region, driven by New York’s renewable portfolio standard,” the Morningstar report notes. “Upstate New York off-peak power prices have fallen to $32 per megawatt hour as of mid-2013 from $55/MWh in 2008. Transmission bottlenecks prevent the plants from tapping the state’s eastern markets, where power prices are 30% higher.”

3. Pilgrim, opened in 1972 in Plymouth, Mass.

The power plant’s operating license was extended until 2032 despite fierce opposition last year. Still, says Morningstar, “Entergy is not obligated to operate it for that long and could exit if power prices sink much further.”

4. Three Mile Island, opened in 1974 in Middletown, Penn.

One of Three Mile Island’s two reactors closed down in 1979 because, well, because it partially melted down. Now Morningstar says the other reactor is at risk of closure because it “faces challenging economics,” and those challenges will be exacerbated if several large natural-gas plants are built nearby as proposed.

5. Davis Besse, opened in 1977 in Oak Harbor, Ohio

Morningstar notes “strong opposition” to efforts to extend the power plant’s operating license after it expires in 2017 and the plant’s “tarnished reputation.” The facility closed in 2002 after corrosion was discovered in the main vessel and it didn’t resume operations until 2004. Still, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff declared in September that there were no safety issues at the plant that would affect its relicensing effort.

6. Indian Point, opened in 1973 in Buchanan, N.Y.

Neighbors and many lawmakers really want to shut down this plant, located less than 50 miles north of Manhattan. “When you have this much local opposition and opposition from state government, what I’ve seen over time is that it’s very difficult to operate plants,” former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Michael Jaczko told Bloomberg in October. “The best solution is to sit down with all the interested stakeholders and think about a way to shut down the plant on a reasonable time frame.” Still, Morningstar’s analysts say that “owing to transmission constraints and Indian Point’s relatively low cost, we think there is a strong probability that the plant will eventually be relicensed.”

Maybe somebody should tell James Hansen about the nuclear industry’s mounting woes.

MorningstarClick to embiggen.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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The six U.S. nuclear power plants most likely to shut down

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