Tuesday, November 10, 2009

China Production, Trade Surplus Climb, Boosting Yuan Calls

 China travel guide

Production rose 16.1 percent from a year before, the most since March 2008

Retail sales gained an annual 16.2 percent in October

trade surplus almost doubled from September, to $24 billion, as the slide in exports eased to the slowest pace this year

For many more statistics click on the following:  China Production, Trade Surplus Climb, Boosting Yuan Calls - Bloomberg.com

Electricity for Americans From Russia’s Old Nuclear Weapons

informally known as Megatons to Megawatts

... and a mobile Russian ICBM

In the last two decades, nuclear disarmament has become an integral part of the electricity industry, little known to most Americans.

Salvaged bomb material now generates about 10 percent of electricity in the United States — by comparison, hydropower generates about 6 percent and solar, biomass, wind and geothermal together account for 3 percent.

Today, former bomb material from Russia accounts for 45 percent of the fuel in American nuclear reactors, while another 5 percent comes from American bombs, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Enriching raw uranium is more expensive than converting highly enriched uranium to fuel grade.  To make fuel for electricity-generating reactors, uranium is enriched to less than 5 percent of the isotope U-235. To make weapons, it is enriched to about 90 percent U-235.

Electricity for Americans From Russia’s Old Nuclear Weapons - NYTimes.com

Seminar addresses FOIA changes | Daily Chronicle

I attended this meeting and hope to post some of the handouts and information.

About 100 people attended a seminar Monday at Northern Illinois University that addressed changes to government transparency laws.
The free session was the first of 11 scheduled to be held throughout Illinois aimed at raising awareness about modifications to the state's Freedom of Information Act and Open Meetings Act.

Seminar addresses FOIA changes | Daily Chronicle