I always suspected that breaking up old military ships for scrap
was complicated, dangerous business. But I didn't know the half of it.
This
article from The World, a newspaper in Coos Bay, Ore. --
an area that has a large number of shipyards -- fills in many of the
blanks. Focusing on U.S. worker-safety regulations, the article explains
why it costs so much to dismantle ships here in the U.S., and why it's
so cheap to do the same thing overseas in countries like Bangladesh and
other Asian nations.
The regulatory pressure and the consequent economic pressure present
a real quandary. Do we dismantle our old military ships here, where the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration's tough rules and tougher
enforcement make it almost prohibitively expensive to do so? Or do we
have them towed overseas, where the jobs are scads cheaper to do, but
where the workers who do those jobs are put at serious risk of life and
limb? Probably most of those foreign workers are oblivious to the perils
they face, but even if they knew about the hazards, many of them, like
their employers, would gladly accept the work, and the risks.
Obvious parallels can be drawn to our national e-waste predicament,
and it would appear that we have a long way to go before we solve that
one, too.
Go, Shoot: The controversial proposal to build a nuclear waste
storage facility on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley,
Utah, is back in the news. The Salt Lake Tribune
reports that a company called EnergySolutions -- formerly
Envirocare of Utah -- is aiming to shake things up by fighting fire with
fire, so to speak.
EnergySolutions, which owns the rights to a nuclear waste
reprocessing technology used in the U.K., is preparing a TV-and-radio ad
blitz aimed at promoting recycling as the best, safest way to handle
nuclear waste.
The Bush administration has recently been making noise about
reconsidering the concept of recycling nuclear waste, but the Department
of Energy has said it would take at least 15 years to make that concept
a reality.
You Don't Say: It's just about quitting time, so let's jump
straight to our Inbox Bottom Headline of the Day. Today's
earth-shaker comes courtesy of the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Get ready.
Here it is:
Debris Piles Up At Landfill.
Fascinating how those places work, isn't it?
