Free Republic

Governor Bob Riley has declared a state of emergency in Alabama, saying he has gotten information from the federal Department of Energy that energy shortages are likely because of Hurricane Ike. A state law that prohibits "unconscionable pricing" of items for sale or rent goes into effect when the governor has declared a state of emergency. Riley's declaration this afternoon says that "disruption of essential utility services, systems and severe energy shortages will likely occur." Earlier today, the governor's office issued a statement saying Riley had limited authority to declare an emergency. State law does not allow the governor to...

No, even more so.Remember that nifty "Foreclosure prevention and relief" law that was sponsored by Sen. Chistopher Dodd, written by Bank of America and Countrywide Credit, and signed into law by the president recently? Remember how it carried a mandatory -- yet rather tangential -- provision for federal government monitoring of all automatic payment transactions? You probably thought, "hmm." And maybe then you thought, "why'd they do that?" And then, "well, they must know what they're doin'." But some of us thought, "OK, what are the pickpockets (with the full force of the federal government) up to now?" And some...

ONE of "the most contaminated places on Earth" will only get dirtier if the US government doesn't get its act together - clean-up plans are already 19 years behind schedule and not due for completion until 2050. More than 210 million litres of radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford in Washington State. Most are over 50 years old. Already 67 of the tanks have failed, leaking almost 4 million litres of waste into the ground. There are now "serious questions about the tanks' long-term viability," says a Government Accountability Office report, which strongly criticises...

As fears grow over Iran secretly developing nuclear weapons, U.S. counterintelligence officials are keeping a close eye on scientists from Iran and other Muslim nations working at the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, WND has learned. The Energy Department recently revoked the security clearance of an Egyptian-born nuclear physicist because he was suspected of "conflicting allegiances." Last year, DOE and FBI agents began questioning Moniem El-Ganayni, who worked on the side as a Muslim prison chaplain.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today issued a solicitation seeking to purchase heating oil for the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve (NEHHOR) using $3 million in appropriated funds. The Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve provides an important safety cushion for millions of Americans residing in the Northeast region of the country. Due to the modest volume of heating oil expected to be purchased with the available funds, no impact on market prices is expected. In 2007 a 35,000 barrel sale was conducted to raise funds necessary to award new long-term storage contracts to fill NEHHOR to its authorized capacity...

Dennis Kucinich is currently on the floor of the House presenting his bill to impeach President George W. Bush. C-SPAN, 8:00 PM 9 Jun 2008.

There used to be a place you could turn in Gas Stations if you thought they were charging to much. Is that still out there???

Great Dane makes a deer friend Last Updated: 2:38PM BST 07/05/2008Richard AustinAs Bambi discovered, life as an orphaned fawn can be a bit scary - unless you have a friend called Rocky that is.> Doe-eyed Cindy would have been left all alone in the world were it not for the strong paternal instincts of the Great Dane, who is as protective of her as he is his puppies. Staff at the Secret World Animal Rescue Centre in Highbridge, Somerset, have been caring for Cindy since she was found close to death when she was days old. The 9st dog towers...

The Energy Department unveiled its blueprint Wednesday for spending up to $1.3 billion on multiple clean-coal power plants that would capture carbon emissions and permanently store them underground. The announcement, launching two weeks of public comment over the revised plan for the project known as FutureGen, came despite pledges by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin to scuttle the effort. The Democrat stands convinced a town in his home state of Illinois deserved the project -- all of it. FutureGen's developers -- an alliance of a dozen big power and coal companies -- tapped Mattoon, Ill., as the site in December. But...

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded more than $126.6 million to the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB) and the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) for the Department’s fifth and sixth large-scale carbon sequestration projects. These industry partnerships, which are part of DOE’s Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, will conduct large volume tests in California and Ohio to demonstrate the ability of a geologic formation to safely, permanently, and economically store more than one million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). Subject to annual appropriations from Congress, this project including the partnership’s cost share is estimated to cost...

Organism with a taste for olive drab shows promise for greener energyLOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, May 4, 2008—A spidery fungus with a voracious appetite for military uniforms and canvas tents could hold the key to improvements in the production of biofuels, a team of government, academic and industry researchers has announced. In a paper published today in Nature Biotechnology, researchers led by Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute announced that the genetic sequence of the fungus Tricoderma reesei has uncovered important clues about how the organism breaks down plant fibers into simple sugars....

The Bush administration has ear-marked $20 million in its 2009 budget toward the US Department of Energy's efforts to design nuclear power plants in the 250-to-500 megawatt range as part of its Global Nuclear Energy Program (GNEP). The money marks the first substantial commitment to building the new plants since President Bush announced the program in February 2006. The latest nuclear plants designed for US domestic use have capacities about 1300 megawatts. GNEP, which now includes 21 member countries, hopes to begin construction of its first reactor in a country currently without nuclear power in 2015, saying the plants will...

A Good Start by: Malcolm A. Kline, February 12, 2008 The White House has actually recommended cuts in U. S. Department of Education programs. (They are on S-5.) “The Budget proposes to terminate 23 small and narrow-purpose elementary and secondary education grant programs, saving $494 million,” reads the explanation from the U. S. Office of Management and Budget. “States and school districts that view these issues as a high priority can support them with funds provided under broad-purpose Federal education programs, such as Title I, Teacher Quality State Grants, and other programs.” “The Budget redirects the savings from these terminations...

WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Oil and natural gas production at Alaska's North Slope has been declining since 1988 but the region holds promise if energy prices stay high and Congress opens key areas to exploration, the U.S. Energy Department said in a report released on Tuesday. Through 2050, the North Slope could yield up to 36 billion barrels of oil and 137 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under optimistic assumptions, the Energy Department said. That would be enough to meet current U.S. oil demand for about five years and natural gas for a year and a half, but...

AMARILLO - Three Pantex employees remain on paid administrative leave for violating nuclear safety procedures after workers failed to keep a close lookout on a nuclear warhead for a few minutes last week, a top Pantex official said Wednesday. The incident violated long-standing "buddy system" rules aimed at preventing unauthorized access to nuclear weapons. B&W Pantex President and General Manager Dan Swaim said workers failed to keep proper visual surveillance of the warhead for less than eight minutes on Jan. 10. A fourth employee entered the area and discovered the violation, which was promptly corrected. The warhead remained under protective...

Over 200 of the leading climate scientists impelled government leaders to take radical measures to slow down global warming as "there is no time to lose." A petition from at least 215 climate scientists calls for the world to cut in half greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It is directed at a conference of diplomats meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate the next global warming treaty. The petition, obtained by The Associated Press, is to be announced at a press conference there Wednesday night. The appeal from scientists follows a petition last week from more than 150 global business leaders...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defying a threat of a presidential veto, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to push ahead with a $21 billion tax package, including repeal of tax breaks for major oil companies, as part of an energy bill, aides to the speaker said Tuesday. Democratic leaders circulated a summary of the legislation that includes the new taxes as well as a requirement for a 40 percent increase in automobile fuel efficiency, a huge increase in the use of ethanol as a motor fuel, and a mandate for utilities to use renewable fuels. Republicans earlier this year blocked Senate attempts...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States reduced greenhouse gas emissions in 2006 after four years of increases, the government said Wednesday ahead of a key United Nations meeting next week on climate change. The Department of Energy (DoE) said greenhouse gas emissions in the world's biggest polluter fell by 1.5 percent in 2006, the first decline since 2001. Measured against US economic growth of 2.9 percent last year, the department said greenhouse gas intensity fell by 4.2 percent, the largest yearly decline since 1990, its base year. President George W. Bush welcomed the DoE report as confirmation of his administration's...

Early U.S. Daylight Savings a bust in power savings Mon Apr 2, 2007 6:56PM EDT By Lisa Lee NEW YORK (Reuters) - The early onset of Daylight Savings Time in the United States this year may have been for naught. The move to turn the clocks forward by an hour on March 11 rather than the usual early April date was mandated by the U.S. government as an energy-saving effort. But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The United States is moving toward the regulation of carbon emissions, a U.S. energy official said Thursday, despite the Bush administration's adherence to a voluntary approach to controlling the primary gas blamed for climate change. "There will be carbon regulation of some sort," said Dan Arvizu, director of the National Renewable Energy Lab of the Department of Energy, told an international conference on biofuels. He spoke a week after briefing President Bush's global warming conference of major carbon-emitting nations. "I am neutral as to which kind of carbon management regulation there will be. It is very clear...

Rep. Duncan Hunter would slash funding for federal agencies that oversee environmental protection and workplace safety to "free up that heavy hand on free enterprise" and promote economic growth. Appearing on the public television show "TechnoPolitics," taped for broadcast this weekend, the El Cajon Republican called for substantial cuts in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). "I think we're going to have to cut the budget of the EPA. I think we should cut 30 to 50 percent," Hunter said. "Government is an industry unto itself. . . . Agencies work to build...

Posters Note: The title sounds almost Nixonian, but Mr. Hunter has been a thorn in many bureaucratic sides for a long time, as this article reveals. Rep. Duncan Hunter was aware that the U.S. Department of Energy was unhappy with him. Little did he know how unhappy. As chairman of a House national security subcommittee, the El Cajon Republican has called for cutting the agency's budget. But he did not realize that had earned him a spot on what has become known as the Energy Department's "enemies list." Still, Hunter was not exactly surprised when another member of Congress recently...

LAS VEGAS, (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled that Nevada can shut off water needed for bore hole drilling at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. In a strongly worded order focusing on federal "credibility and good faith," U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Las Vegas said the Department of Energy could not ignore state limitations and continue using water for drilling test holes near the repository site. "This entire 'crisis' is self-imposed and self-created," Hunt said in his 24-page order, dated Friday but distributed among the parties on Tuesday. "The only argument the DOE makes is that...

The United Nations' Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal is now six months old, so it's a good time to assess progress, if that's the right word. The evidence of misdeeds at the U.N. Development Program in North Korea continues to mount, but there's still no "urgent" and "external" inquiry, as ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January. Now the U.S. has uncovered evidence that in addition to transferring millions of dollars in cash that may have gone to help prop up Kim's grotesque regime, the UNDP also transferred dual-use technology. It did so without bothering to secure a U.S....

Maintenance Man Charged With Stealing Nuclear Secrets Posted: 11:31 AM Jul 19, 2007 Maintenance Man Charged With Stealing Nuclear Secrets Knoxville (WVLT) - A former Bechtel Jacobs maintenance man at an Energy Department facility in Oak Ridge has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of stealing materials used for uranium enrichment and then trying to sell it to a foreign power. Sixty-five-year-old Roy Lynn Oakley is accused of trying to sell national secrets from the East Tennessee Technology Park. But he is home with his wife after bonding out minutes after his arraignment and only hours after turning himself in...

The key Middle Eastern members of oil cartel OPEC are under pressure for an increase in production after a warning from Goldman Sachs that prices could hit a peak of $95 a barrel by the end of the year. Goldman Sachs said in a research note oil prices could reach $90 a barrel this autumn and $95 a barrel by the end of the year if the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries does not ease production cuts that have helped tighten global markets. But OPEC says world oil demand next year will grow moderately while supply from rival producers...

Congressional leaders aren't finished scrutinizing Los Alamos National Laboratory over its security failures. Members of a powerful House committee have asked Congress' investigative arm, the General Accountability Office, to evaluate the feasibility of moving classified activities to other laboratories "where there is a better track record with respect to security." In a Feb. 16 letter to Comptroller General David Walker, House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders said repeated security problems have cast doubt on whether lab manager Los Alamos National Security and the National Nuclear Security Administration "are capable of assuring adequate safety, security, and sound business management practices." The...

WASHINGTON, July 13 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Energy has started an enforcement action against Los Alamos National Laboratory. The department and its National Nuclear Security Administration announced Friday they had started a "formal enforcement actions ... against the University of California and the Los Alamos National Security, LLC, the prior and current management and operating contractors of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico." The action was being taken "for violations of classified information security requirements under their respective contracts," the NNSA said in a statement. "Investigations revealed that management deficiencies of both contractors were a central...

DOE Provides up to $51.8 Million to Modernize the U.S. Electric Grid System Superconductor Research Crucial to Improving Power Delivery Equipment WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman today announced that DOE will provide up to $51.8 million for five cost-shared projects that will help accelerate much-needed modernization of our Nation’s electricity grid. This research will advance the development and application of high-temperature superconductors, which have the potential to alleviate congestion on an electricity grid that is experiencing increased demand from consumers. Making investments to modernize our electricity grid; securing a diverse and stable supply...

What's going on at Los Alamos? The nation's premier nuclear-weapons laboratory appears plagued with continuing security problems. Barely 10 days after revelations of a leak of highly classified material over the Internet, NEWSWEEK has learned of two other security breaches. In late May, a Los Alamos staffer took his lab laptop with him on vacation to Ireland. A senior nuclear official familiar with the inner workings of Los Alamos—who would not be named talking about internal matters—says the laptop's hard drive contained "government documents of a sensitive nature." The laptop was also fitted with an encryption card advanced enough that...

Those recently foiled terrorist attacks aimed at Fort Dix and JFK Airport underscore the critical importance of monitoring homegrown “sleeper cells” within the United States. But they’re not the only internal threats to America’s homeland security. Judging by the headlines, it appears the federal government is itself a security problem. In response to criticism that it failed to “connect the dots” prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI unveiled a massive database last summer that contains information culled from its own files and those of other federal agencies, including the Treasury and Homeland Security departments. The bureau’s 12,000 agents...

An internal audit has discovered that twenty computers have disappeared from a critical counterintelligence agency tasked with protecting America's nuclear secrets. Fourteen of the computers contained classified material, marking yet another in a string of embarrassments for the Department of Energy: The office in charge of protecting American technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies is missing 20 desktop computers, at least 14 of which have been used for classified information, the Energy Department inspector general reported on Friday. This is the 13th time in a little over four years that an audit has found that the department, whose...

RICHLAND, Wash. - The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday fined the federal Energy Department $1.1 million over violations of an agreement to clean up the Hanford nuclear reservation, the nation's most polluted nuclear site. The fine involved operations at a landfill that is the primary repository for contaminated soils, debris and other hazardous and radioactive waste from cleanup operations across the site. After first shutting down operations upon discovery of the failures, the EPA has permitted the landfill to resume operations under strict oversight. The EPA pointed out problems in a letter to the Energy Department on Tuesday, saying that...

The past four years had been remarkable, a climb to prominence a congressman from New Mexico could only have dreamed of. Bill Richardson's good fortune began in late 1996 with an early-morning phone call from President Clinton, who tapped him to serve as ambassador to the United Nations. It was a position he used to launch himself onto the international stage as a peacemaker, deal-broker and regular on the Sunday morning political week-in-review shows. Less than two years later, he had been promoted from Cabinet-light to a full member of the Clinton team, heading the 110,000-employee Department of Energy. It...

When Youngsville's Craig Lewis set out to hunt on an either-sex deer day at Tony's Ranch in Ringgold, he never knew it would literallly be an either-sex day. Lewis set up in his stand at 5:30 a.m. and around 7 a.m. spotted a small deer near his feeder. As he battled through the mist and the rain to spot the deer in his scope, another deer moved into sight. This one was much bigger than its companion. "When I looked up, all I could see was the body," Lewis said. "It was big, like a horse. But its head was...

On Thursday, the Department of Energy canned the guy in charge of the country's nuclear weapons program. On Thursday, Los Alamos National Laboratory told staffers to get ready for random drug tests. On Thursday, Democrats took control of Congress. Looks like Department of Energy and LANL officials are running for political cover after another year of throwing millions of taxpayer dollars at security improvements to see if they stick. "Why" doesn't matter as much as "what took so long?" The latest DOE/LANL embarrassments involve a DOE computer security breach in Albuquerque (the theft of more than a thousand employee Social...

WASHINGTON -- The nation's existing electric power grid could fuel as many as 180 million electric cars, a Department of Energy study estimates. The study, being released today by the department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is the federal government's first look at the grid's capacity to handle the demands of so-called plug-in hybrids, which can be operated as an all-electric car for most daily commutes. Until now, there have been few detailed studies of the effect of plug-ins, which are championed by environmental groups and the utility industry. Currently there are only a few hundred plug-ins on the road, most...

Man Shoots Doe With Rack of Antlers MICHIGAN, N.D. (AP) -- When Carmen Erickson dropped a deer with a single shot in a cattail slough south of here, he thought he'd downed a nice buck. Unlike his shot, he was a little off. The deer was a doe. "It's got no male utilities," said Erickson, who lives in Minot. "It has teats ... it was pretty unusual." Six hunting partners with Erickson witnessed the doe with a 4-by-4 rack. "I'm sure this story will be around for 10 years," he said. "At least in our group." Erickson notified the state...

Data Found In Drug Raid Contains Weapons-Design Secrets. The recent security breach at Los Alamos National Laboratory was very serious, with sensitive materials being taken out of the facility — possibly including information on how to deactivate locks on nuclear weapons, officials tell CBS News. Officials say there is no evidence the information taken from Los Alamos was sold or transferred to anybody else, but there is no way to be sure right now. As CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson was the first to report, secret documents apparently taken from the lab were found during a drug raid at a...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - A self-described methamphetamine addict said he doesn't know anything about the classified Los Alamos National Laboratory data that authorities found in the mobile home where he was staying. "I was basically at the wrong place at the wrong time," Justin Stone, 20, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from jail.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Energy has released a plan to control greenhouse gas emissions by avoiding, reducing or capturing them. Government officials said The Climate Change Technology Program represents the technology component of a strategy introduced by U.S. President George Bush in 2002 to combat climate change that include measures to slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions through voluntary, incentive-based and mandatory partnerships, advance climate change science, spur clean energy technology development and deployment and promote international collaboration. "The technologies outlined in the plan -- hydrogen, biorefining, clean coal, carbon sequestration, nuclear fission (!!)...

Leading players in the petroleum industry, including Saudi Arabia and Exxon Mobil Corp., are aggressively arguing that plenty of crude oil remains for world consumption, in an effort to counter critics who contend crude output is about to plateau. That argument, known as peak-oil theory, has provided intellectual backing for the boom in crude prices and sowed doubts among some policy makers about crude's long-term reliability as an energy source. Such doubts, coupled with concern over sky-high prices, have added impetus to the search for oil substitutes -- including in Washington, where President Bush this year declared the U.S. "addicted...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- IBM will build a next-generation supercomputer for the U.S. Energy Department with the potential to achieve a sustained speed of 1,000 trillion calculations per second, or one petaflop, the department said on Wednesday. The new computer, dubbed "Roadrunner", will be built at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Congress provided $35 million in fiscal 2006, which ends on September 30, to launch the computer project. Roadrunner may eventually be used for an Energy Department program that ensures the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons is safe and reliable without the resumption of underground testing, the department...

The U.S. government and oil giant BP Plc. have discussed scenarios where half of Alaska's huge Prudhoe Bay field could continue to pump oil for hungry U.S. refiners, U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Tuesday. The news, which Bodman delivered to reporters after speaking with BP America Chief Executive Bob Malone, could sooth worries that a shut-down of the 400,000 barrel per day Alaska field will exacerbate shortages in Nigeria, Iraq and elsewhere. BP on Sunday began shutting down the field after discovering a corroded pipeline and said it could be weeks or months before production resumed. Initially BP...

WASHINGTON - The Energy Department is prepared to provide oil from the government's emergency supplies if a refinery requests it because of the disruption of supplies from Alaska, a department spokesman said Monday. "We're taking a very serious look at this," said spokesman Craig Stevens, referring to the loss of nearly half of oil shipments from Alaska's North Slope because of a pipeline corrosion problem. Stevens said the department will be in contact with BP Exploration Alaska Inc. and West Coast refiners later in Monday to assess the situation. "If there is a request for oil we'll certainly take a...

WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department on Friday set rules on how utilities can qualify for a $2 billion pool of federal risk insurance that is meant to spur construction of the first new nuclear plants in 30 years. The first six new projects to apply for building licenses could qualify for the funds, which would reimburse utilities for delays from unforeseen legal issues and bureaucratic snags, the Energy Department said. The incentives, required by energy legislation Congress passed last year, seek to jump-start the nuclear industry from a 30-year hiatus in building new plants. The nation's...

A Bush administration proposal to rework an Energy Department agency that oversees nuclear and worker safety has run into opposition from a former energy secretary and others. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who was energy secretary in the Clinton administration, sent a letter to current Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman this week criticizing the proposal to merge the Office of Environment Safety and Health with other DOE agencies. "The DOE plan downgrades and weakens safety and health protections,'' Richardson wrote. Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire also signed the letter. Both governors have large Energy Department nuclear facilities in their states. "Given the...

Not so many years ago, nuclear energy was a hobgoblin to environmentalists, who feared the potential for catastrophic accidents and long-term radiation contamination. But this is a new era, dominated by fears of tight energy supplies and global warming. Suddenly nuclear power is looking better. The nuclear industry recently trotted out two new leaders of its campaign to encourage the building of new reactors. They are Christie Whitman, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace. This campaign is the latest sign that nuclear power is getting a more welcome reception from some...

U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Tuesday that high gasoline prices which have skyrocketed to a near record are a "crisis" for Americans. "It is a crisis in the sense of the individual," Bodman told reporters after a meeting with Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi. Naimi, also speaking with reporters, added that the U.S. plan to reduce dependence on foreign oil supplies through renewable energy sources was "a good thing for the world" as some oil fields, including the North Sea fields, decline.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Sunday that the U.S. was just "three or four years" away from perfecting the process that would allow American motorists to fuel their vehicles with ethanol instead of gasoline. Asked, "how long before you think that we will be off of oil and onto ethanol?," Bodman told NBC's "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert: "We will be in a position over the next three or four years . . . where we will have designed the enzymes and we will be in a position that we can then start the conversion." Bodman said that besides...