A 30th Anniversary Celebrated Quietly

Read this 30 Years Later Chernobyl talks about the near-completed shelter at Chernobyl.

If only we could call this Science Fiction.... but it is very real, folks.

"The arch, called the New Safe Confinement, is being built — at a cost of at least $1.7 billion — to last 100 years. Inside, the radioactivity levels will be so high that normal maintenance, like painting, will not be possible. So inside and out, the arch is covered in stainless steel, and dehumidified air will be circulated around the structure’s steel trusses to prevent rust."

It's a folly, he says.

William H. Miller, Ph.D., is a Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia. So I will grant he has the credentials to speak, but I would also suggest he has a vested interest in seeing an ongoing future in nuclear energy.

His recent article in the Columbia Daily Tribune, Alternative Can't Keep Up With Nuclear, he says, “It would be folly for the United States to turn away from nuclear power.”

The foolishness in my opinion, is, and has always been, in not addressing the subject of permanent long-term storage of nuclear waste. Can we at least talk about this a little?

We should never stop looking for alternative energy sources. Morocco has just opened the world’s largest solar energy plant, Ouarzazate Solar Plant.

Maybe California’s deserts might be an ideal location for something similar to Morocco to help ease a shift away from nuclear.

Alternatives won’t keep up if they are not aggressively pursued, that I suggest is the real folly.

S.S. Olympic - Arriving Southampton July 18, 1918

Here are some excerpts from my soon to be publish novel, A Hundred Year of Tears - One Soldier's Story from the Savannah to the Somme. It would be White Star Line's ship, S.S. Olympic, that would carry Sgt. John Guess from his home in America to England, to begin his final journey in France with Company H, 364th Infantry Regiment, 91 Division, American Expeditionary Forces.

~  ~  ~

Leaving New York

It’s hard to describe the buzz that was taking place along the Hoboken piers, where a constant stream of ferry boats were making their way to the well-camouflaged ships that we were about to board.

   As we neared the ship that would take us over the Atlantic we could barely make out the name — S.S. Olympic — painted on the side of the hull of the White Star Line. No longer the stately floating palace from the days before the war, she now looked rather tacky in her camouflaged coat of brown, black and yellow paint. Her glorious name had been exchanged for a mere identifying number.

   It took most of the day for all the men to board, find their assigned bunks and get their gear stowed away. On each bunk a life jacket awaited the recruits. This new gear would become a vital part of our daily lives as we made the ocean crossing.

On English Soil

It was the morning of July 18^th that we awakened with five U.S. destroyers surrounding the Olympic as it made its way on this last leg of the trip. By evening and under the soft light of the moon, we could make out Land’s End on the port side as the ship worked its way through this maritime graveyard. Morning found us at the entrance to Southampton where we waited silently for the rise in tide that would take us up the channel and to the piers.