The Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News 14MAR2012

Kansans witness early morning meteor Puppet Masters Sottnet
A flash of light in the early morning sky over the Great Plains on Tuesday lit up social media and cyberspace as witnesses tried to figure out what they had ...
www.sott.net/.../242892-Kansans-witness-early-morning-mete...

Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News: MBIQ (Meteor Bot Internet ...
By Lunar Meteorite * Hunter
Latest Worldwide

Florida / Georgia Fireball Meteor(s) 13MAR2012

Florida / Georgia Fireball Meteor(s) 13MAR2012

Please check your security camera videos for a capture; anyone with a photo or art work of the event please email me; drtanuki@gmail.com

We need your sighting reports to confirm this event; please submit a sighting report.  Thank you!
Report your meteor sighting
Meteor/Fireball Report Form(click here to report a meteor / fireball)
13MAR2012 Shay

Finland Meteor Fireball 11/12MAR2012

Finland Meteor Fireball Midnight 11/12MAR2012


Finland Meteor Fireball Midnight 11/12MAR2012
(click on image to enlarge)
At 11-12.3 midnight I saw brighter than Venus fireball descending from the Sky. My estimation for brightness is somewhere -8mag.
It had blue/orange color, and tail was orange. Lenght of the tail was maybe 5degrees.
Fireball reached horizon and from my observation place it

MBIQ (Meteor Bot Internet Query) Bot Detects Kansas / Oklahoma / Missouri / Nebraska / Arkansas Meteor 13MAR2012

MBIQ (Meteor Bot Internet Query) Bot Detects Kansas / Oklahoma / Missouri / Nebraska / Arkansas Fireball Meteor 
~06:42 am CDT 13MAR2012


Kansas / Oklahoma / Missouri / Nebraska / Arkansas Fireball Meteor ~06:42 am CDT 13MAR2012Neon Markers= Sighting Reports
Red Circle Markers =Allsky Cameras
(click on image to enlarge)
v.2  (c) 2012 LunarMeteorite*Hunter, Dirk Ross...Tokyo / Google Earth
All

Three Fireballs Over Italia 10/12MAR2012

Three Spectacular Fireballs Over Italia 10/12MAR2012


Fireball 20120312_010549
http://meteore.forumattivo.com/t2413-fireball-20120312_010549#9669



Fireball 20120312_020653 
http://meteore.forumattivo.com/t2412-fireball-20120312_020653



Fireball 20120310_022756
http://meteore.forumattivo.com/t2401-fireball-20120310_022756
Ferruccio ZanottiIMTN
 2012 THE Year of Meteors!

UCS Channels Goldilocks In Response to Fukushima

NEI's Senior Vice President of Communications, Scott Peterson, passed along the following note concerning last week's report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "U.S. Nuclear Power Safety One Year After Fukushima."

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has weighed in on the U.S. response to Fukushima and their conclusion is clear: We’re moving too slowly….No, wait, we’re moving too fast!...Check that, too slow!

Taking a page from Goldilocks, who couldn’t seem to find the right size chair, UCS can’t seem to find the right speed for applying lessons learned in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan a year ago.

After first praising the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for reacting quickly to the events in Japan, a new UCS report prods the agency to move faster. Then report declares that “speed is not always a virtue.” In the most remarkable twist of logic, UCS criticizes the nuclear energy industry for “acting too hastily by launching a voluntary program” to improve safety.

Really? Moving too quickly to improve safety?

At least the UCS report got something right. The industry is not waiting for orders from the NRC to act. Our FLEX strategy protects against the two main safety issues at Fukushima¬—the loss of electrical power and the loss of cooling capability—by stationing emergency backup equipment in multiple locations, including regional centers.

Every U.S. nuclear operator has committed to order additional equipment by the end of the month, and more than 300 pieces of backup emergency equipment has already been delivered or ordered. Rather than applauding these proactive safety measures, UCS complains that the industry is “jumping the gun” by getting ahead of the NRC.

The industry and the NRC are in general agreement on the issues that need to be addressed, but the regulatory process takes time. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the NRC fast-tracked the industry’s safety response by issuing a series of orders, with a deadline of October 2004.

After the industry met that deadline, the NRC began a rulemaking process to codify the orders and essentially get its procedural/bureaucratic house in order. Along the way, it added a few more requirements that weren’t finalized until close to the end of the decade. In that case, UCS distorts the facts to complain that the industry’s response was too slow.

Now that we are moving even more quickly to respond to Fukushima, UCS says we are going too fast. Does UCS seriously believe we should just sit and wait while the NRC process unfolds? We see ways to strengthen our defenses against extreme events now, and we are acting. To do otherwise would be an abrogation of our responsibility.

The NRC will oversee our safety enhancements, and will not hesitate tell us to do something more or something different—backed by the agency’s full enforcement authority—as the regulatory process plays out.

That approach might not satisfy Goldilocks or UCS, but we think it is juuuuust right to ensure that lessons learned from Japan are applied as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Scott also contributes on occasion to the Huffington Post.

The Number 22

Nuclear energy generation supplies 20 percent of the electricity in the United States. It’s been that way for years, as reported by the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy.

But a number of factors, according to the EIA, has pushed the relative percentages of several energy sources up because one went down rather dramatically, both statistically and practically.

That would be coal, which dropped from 46 percent in December 2010 to 39 percent in December 2011. The EIA says that the main driver of this decrease is the increased use of natural gas, which increased its share from 22 percent to 26 percent.

Electricity use itself declined 7 percent, so that in itself makes percentage increases and decreases a little chimerical – that is, nuclear generated roughly the same amount of electricity as last December but in a smaller marketplace – as did hydro, which advanced from 6 to 7 percent.

But the decline of coal in favor of natural gas is quite real: coal generation fell 21 percent compared to a 12 percent rise in natural gas generation. The last time coal fell below 40 percent in these surveys was in 1978.

So the news about nuclear energy might seem a numerical blip. But it’s not a trick, and it’s legitimate to note because it speaks to the steadiness of nuclear energy. We’ll have to keep an eye on the monthly report to see what happens when electricity usage returns to its former levels.