Ghost Dog
Ghost Dog's JournalSo Hagel specifies Iran, huh. More general phrasing here:
http://www.stripes.com/news/uss-donald-cook-heads-to-rota-as-part-of-missile-shield-1.264891Published: January 31, 2014
The first of four U.S. Navy destroyers to form the centerpiece of Europes missile defense shield departed the U.S. East Coast on Friday for its new home port in southern Spain.
Plans call for the USS Donald Cook to be joined by three more Arleigh Burke-class missile-guided destroyers, which carry the Aegis weapon system, in the coming two years. All are to be stationed at the U.S. Navy base in Rota, Spain, on the Atlantic coast north of Gibraltar.
Other pieces of the missile defense shield, known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach, include land-based Aegis interceptor batteries in Romania and Poland, radar in Turkey and a command center at the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein, Germany.
The plan has caused a major rift with Russia, which says the shield is aimed against its own nuclear missile arsenal. The U.S. and its NATO allies insist the defense system is to meant to protect Europe from potentially hostile countries in the region, such as Iran.
The destroyer detachment expands the Navy presence in Europe at a time when other services are drawing down across the continent. It follows the Navys current emphasis on forward deployment, or having ships stationed closer to areas of interest...
/... http://www.stripes.com/news/uss-donald-cook-heads-to-rota-as-part-of-missile-shield-1.264891
... I wonder how much Spain gets paid for the use of Rota, air and naval...¿?
Let the UN have teeth. Let it tax and spend,
conjoin and coerce, reward and punish.
But make it respond to bottom-up, directly participatory democratic social forces.
Would you go for a French-style Republic?
ie. with an all-but plenipotentiary President?
Or for more of an Italian, say, model, where the President merely attempts to maintain some kind of order?
A note on (the world's non-existent) nuclear waste repositories
Common elements of repositories include the radioactive waste, the containers enclosing the waste, other engineered barriers or seals around the containers, the tunnels housing the containers, and the geologic makeup of the surrounding area.[3]
The ability of natural geologic barriers to isolate radioactive waste is demonstrated by the natural nuclear fission reactors at Oklo, Africa. During their long reaction period about 5.4 tonnes of fission products as well as 1.5 tonnes of plutonium together with other transuranic elements were generated in the uranium ore body. This plutonium and the other transuranics remained immobile until the present day, a span of almost 2 billion years.[4] This is quite remarkable in view of the fact that ground water had ready access to the deposits and they were not in a chemically inert form, such as glass.
Despite a long-standing agreement among many experts that geological disposal can be safe, technologically feasible and environmentally sound, a large part of the general public in many countries remains skeptical.[5] One of the challenges facing the supporters of these efforts is to demonstrate confidently that a repository will contain wastes for so long that any releases that might take place in the future will pose no significant health or environmental risk.
Nuclear reprocessing does not eliminate the need for a repository, but reduces the volume, reduces the long term radiation hazard, and long term heat dissipation capacity needed.
/... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository
In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act directing the Department of Energy to build and operate a repository for used nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste. The act set a deadline of 1998 for the Energy Department to begin moving used fuel from nuclear energy facilities.
To fund the federal program, the act established a Nuclear Waste Fund. Since 1983, electricity consumers have paid into the fund one-tenth of a cent for every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced at nuclear power plants. These fees continue to accumulate at a rate of $750 million a year, and the fund accrues more than $1 billion in interest each year. The funds balance, as of May 2013, is more than $29 billion. Without a high-level radioactive waste management program and annual congressional appropriations, these funds are not available for their intended purpose.
In 1987, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, directing the Energy Department to exclusively study Nevadas Yucca Mountain, a remote desert location, as the site for a potential repository for geologic disposal of used nuclear fuel. After two decades of site studies, the federal government filed a construction license application in 2008 for a repository at Yucca Mountain.
However, President Obama in 2010 stopped the Yucca Mountain license review and empaneled a study commission to recommend a new policy for the long-term management of used fuel and high-level radioactive waste. In January 2012, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future published its final recommendations, most of which are supported by the industry. The Energy Departments used fuel management strategy to implement the commissions recommendations was issued in January 2013.
/... http://www.nei.org/Issues-Policy/Nuclear-Waste-Management/Disposal
The Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste is a framework for moving toward a sustainable program to deploy an integrated system capable of transporting, storing, and disposing of used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from civilian nuclear power generation, defense, national security and other activities.
The Strategy addresses several important needs. First, it serves as a statement of Administration policy regarding the importance of addressing the disposition of used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste; it lays out the overall design of a system to address that issue; and it outlines the reforms needed to implement such a system. Second, it presents the Administrations response to the final report and recommendations made by the Blue Ribbon Commission on Americas Nuclear Future (BRC). It also responds to direction in the Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012, to develop a strategy for the management of used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste in response to the BRCs recommendations. Third, this strategy represents an initial basis for discussions among the Administration, Congress and other stakeholders on a sustainable path forward for disposal of nuclear waste.
/ and blah blah blah... http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Strategy%20for%20the%20Management%20and%20Disposal%20of%20Used%20Nuclear%20Fuel%20and%20High%20Level%20Radioactive%20Waste.pdf
(18-page .pdf) The essence of the Obama Plan? Back to the drawing-board on square one, basically. And lots of political opportunities...
[center][/center]
Mmmm. "If our allies (and other western nations) are able to build similar sized ships
with stealthy designs, full military sea-frames, far more armament/protection, with mission packages for 1/3 less, then it isn't hard to see why every other allied navy that was initially interested in LCS has since walked away."
... Like this?
[center]
http://www.gizmag.com/type-26-global-combat-ship-unveiled/23791/ [/center]
... One wonders about final cost there too.
Eurozone inflation rate falls to 0.8%
The eurozone's inflation rate fell to 0.8% in December, official figures have shown, down from 0.9% in November.
The Eurostat data means that the inflation rate has moved further away from the European Central Bank's (ECB) target of just below 2%.
In November, the ECB cut its benchmark interest rate to a record low of 0.25%, reflecting the low inflation outlook.
The ECB will gather for its latest meeting later this week, although no changes to policy are expected.
The data may fuel concerns that the eurozone risks a period of deflation, in which consumers delay purchases in the expectation that prices will fall further...
/... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25636441
But low inflation alone can cause problems. And with 11 of the euro zone's 18 members recording inflation below 1% in November, the problem is widespread.
The key issue is that it will make the process of adjustment more difficult for countries that need to boost their competitiveness. Arguably, a period of higher inflation in the stronger countries would now help to counterbalance lowbut still positiveinflation in the weaker countries, helping to rebalance the euro zone. After all, this would simply be the opposite of the situation in 2000-07, when Germany was undertaking reforms: German inflation averaged 1.5%, euro-zone inflation was 2.2% and the rate in the so-called periphery countries was 3.3%, Citigroup notes. But German inflation as measured by European Union standards is running at just 1.2%.
And low inflation threatens over time, perhaps, to reawaken concerns about debt sustainability in some countries. While there has been encouraging news on real growth in gross domestic product in recent months, the fall in inflation will reduce its ability to erode debt. After all, it is nominal growth, not real growth, that is decisive for debt-to-GDP ratios.
The ECB's problem is that it has already fired a good deal of monetary ammunition. Rates are at 0.25% and options deployed elsewhere such as quantitative easing are operationally tricky for the ECB. The main tactic appears to be to wait it out as growth picks up gradually.
For now, the ECB should keep its powder dry: The latest data don't change the big picture, and there are encouraging signs on growth from business surveys and from markets, where sovereign borrowing costs for southern Europe are continuing to fall. But if inflation slows significantly from here, the ECB will again be forced to enter new monetary policy territory.
/... http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304887104579306354114249772
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