Fwd: Radioactive wasps
JBL
From: Bob Donnan <donnanl...@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, Aug 2, 2025, 9:12 AM
Subject: Radioactive wasps
To:
Radioactive wasp nest discovered at nuclear waste storage site in South Carolina
The contaminated wasp nest was the result of “onsite legacy radioactive contamination”
By Anna Betts | The Guardian | July 31, 2025
The US Department of Energy has reported the discovery of a radioactive wasp nest at one of its facilities in South Carolina that was once involved in the production of parts for nuclear weapons. According to a 22 July department report, the contaminated nest was discovered at the facility – the Savannah River site – on 3 July near tanks used to store liquid nuclear waste.
The site is near the center of the 310-sq-mile site. It said the nest was sprayed and was disposed of as radiological waste, and that testing confirmed radiation levels “greater than 10 times the total contamination values” that federal regulations allow.
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BREAKING NEWS!
PITTSBURGH (August 2, 2025) In a bizarre twist, thought to be the result of 20-years of shale gas production in and around the Ohio River Valley, a new super-villain has finally been identified.
‘Frac Wasp,’ as he’s being called by terrified locals, is believed to have gotten his radioactive super powers from Radium 226, brought up to the surface in large quantities, from the deep, black Marcellus shale underlying the tri-state of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
His original nest has finally been traced to an unnamed landfill in western Pennsylvania, one of many located in the region, that continues to accept radioactive drilling and fracking waste.
The Fantastic Four, as well as Superman & Krypto, have been summoned to deal with the ‘hot’ wasp, while also planning to monitor similar landfills and injection wells, for any of his offspring. Due to the 1600-year half-life of Ra226, their efforts will extend over more than a thousand Earth centuries.
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ENGLAND
Britain is about to start fighting over fracking again
“Abso-bloody-lutely”
Three years after a botched attempt to unleash the controversial industry helped bring down Liz Truss, it has a new fan: Nigel Farage.
Farage’s surging Reform UK says fracking will secure U.K. energy supplies and reduce bills. Opponents say that's nonsense — and that the drilling ruins the countryside and exposes locals to the risk of mini earthquakes.
Brace for another round of Britain’s shale gas forever war. Farage — whose party consistently leads national opinion polls — is committed to lifting a de facto ban on fracking.
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Fracking site clear-up extensions anger neighbour
A woman who lives across the road from a former fracking site has said she is "frustrated" the energy firm responsible for the fracking has applied for more time to restore the site to farmland.
Cuadrilla Resources has asked for a two-year extension to rehabilitate the Preston New Road drilling site in Little Plumpton, Fylde, claiming the delay re-establishing the farmland is due to monitoring required by the Environment Agency.
However, local resident Susan Halliday said the work should have been completed some time ago, adding: "They have already had one two-year extension – how do we know they won't be coming back again in two years' time?"
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FRACKALACHIA
ORVI report says fracking industry fails to deliver on economic promises
The 2025 "Frackalachia" report focused on 30 counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia that are responsible for 95% of Appalachian gas production. The natural gas industry is capital-intensive, so It requires a lot of money to develop, but due to improved technology and efficiency, doesn’t require much labor.
When it comes to fracking, politicians often fight over what is best for the economy versus what is best for the environment. But according to one new report, the natural gas industry hasn’t delivered the economic benefits it’s promised to Appalachia.
“I'm from Wheeling, West Virginia,” said Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute. “I kept hearing these glowing reports about how the economy was expanding with the growth of the natural gas industry, but I could look around and I could see we were losing population, we were losing jobs.”
“Nearly all of that money is landing in the pockets of investors, and the corporate executives, and shareholders of the companies, and in their creditors and providers of professional services, virtually all of whom are somewhere else,” O’Leary said.
The ORVI, a think tank dedicated to “a more sustainable, equitable, democratic, and prosperous Appalachia,” released an updated ”Frackalachia” report [41-page PDF] Thursday. Previous versions of the report came out in 2021 and 2023.
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NEW YORK
Renewed pipeline plans have fracking opponents raising alarms
Two previously rejected natural gas pipelines are getting a second look by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The prospect of new pipelines has revived opponents of fracking who fought against it for decades. New York banned the gas extraction method in 2014.
Opponents say if the pipelines are allowed this time they would harm water quality across the state. Both were previously denied permits by the DEC. The DEC public comment period for the NESE project was extended to August 16 the same day officials spoke out against it.
The Constitution pipeline would span 125 miles from Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania into Schoharie County, New York. Williams Companies, the company spearheading the project, says it would tap into the Marcellus Shale and provide enough natural gas to fulfill the needs of about 3 million homes in the Northeast.
The Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) project would run about 24 miles under New York Harbor with construction in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. According to Williams Co., it would connect two parts of existing pipelines to bring more natural gas to New York City.
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OHIO
Environmental group weighing another challenge to fracking in the Wayne
The Bureau of Land Management issued a decision in April that would allow fracking in the Wayne National Forest’s Marietta Unit. The environmental assessment behind the bureau’s decision ignored “a whole host of issues,” said Wendy Park, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.
The center was among the plaintiffs that successfully challenged a 2016 BLM environmental assessment that recommended allowing fracking on the [40,000 acre] Marietta Unit. In a 2020 decision, the U.S. District Court of the Southern District Ohio Eastern Division identified deficiencies in that assessment and ordered the BLM to address them.
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'It shook the house.' Noble County residents talk about frequent earthquakes
Stephen Bond has lived in Noble County for 53 years. In April, his house began rattling. He thought there was an explosion. "It shook the house, sounded like a bomb going off," he said.
The cause was an earthquake. The southeastern Ohio county has seen a spike in earthquakes this year, with 70 recorded — the second most in the state after Washington County, Ohio, which experienced 76 over the same time period, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources earthquake database. The vast majority of them were too small for people to notice, with just two over the 3.0 magnitude.
The quakes began after hydraulic fracturing operations for oil and gas — also known as fracking — started in Buffalo Township. On May 8, ODNR asked Encino Energy, operator of the Bears Pad, to halt operations in the community after recording the seismic activity nearby. The last quake recorded was 1.0 magnitude on June 6.
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PENNSYLVANIA
PPL Electric ‘advanced-stage’ data center pipeline grows 32%, to 14 GW
PPL supports legislation in Pennsylvania that would allow utilities to own power plants, CEO Vince Sorgi said.
PPL’s data center strategy includes an unregulated joint venture with Blackstone Infrastructure to build power plants in Pennsylvania to directly serve data centers. “The joint venture is actively engaged with hyperscalers, landowners, natural gas pipeline companies and turbine manufacturers and has secured multiple land parcels to enable this new generation buildout,” Sorgi said.
PPL supports pending legislation in Pennsylvania — H.B. 1272 and S.B. 897 — that would allow regulated utilities like PPL Electric Utilities to build and own generation to address a resource adequacy need, Sorgi said. The bills would also encourage utilities to enter into agreements with independent power producers to help “derisk” their new generation investments, according to Sorgi.
Comment
from an expert: IT’S A
FOOLISH IDEA!
The simplest logic is: with publicly-owned gen-cost
overruns/ breakdowns/ inflation on parts, etc – the shareholders pay.
With utility-owned, those unexpected costs go on the utility bill to
customers!
Another way of saying this: many more independent power producers have been
to bankruptcy courts than utilities.
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Activists pledge to resist any federal effort to lift fracking ban in Delaware River Basin
Environmentalists worry the interstate agency that imposed it is facing pressure from the Trump administration.
Fears that the Trump administration is looking for ways to lift a longstanding ban on fracking for natural gas in the densely populated Delaware River Basin — which includes part of Pennsylvania — have prompted environmentalists to seek public support for a commitment to defend the regulation.
The Delaware River Basin extends across four states, but only two—Pennsylvania and New York—also contain the gas-rich Marcellus Shale. Environmentalists say that allowing the industry to drill in Pennsylvania’s part of the watershed would risk contaminating drinking water for some 15 million people.
Activists are promoting a “Pledge of Resistance and Protection” of the watershed in response to what they see as a series of attempts by the administration and some of its supporters in Congress to hobble the Delaware River Basin Commission, an interstate agency that formally banned fracking in the region in 2021 after a moratorium that began a decade earlier.
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TEXAS
Permian Basin fracking falling faster than expected, ProPetro CEO says
Fracking in the Permian Basin is declining faster than expected due to tariff uncertainty and OPEC+ production hikes, ProPetro CEO Sam Sledge said Wednesday.
There are now ~70 hydraulic fracturing crews working in the world's largest shale patch, down from as many as 100 at the start of this year, Sledge reportedly said on the company's earnings conference call
The company said it now expects to run 10-11 frack crews in the current quarter and may make further cuts in Q4, in a forecast that is weaker than expected.
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STRANGER THAN FICTION
Roughly 200 Federal Air Marshals have reportedly been reassigned from their usual duties protecting the U.S. transit system to assist with Trump administration deportation flights alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Marshals, the main law enforcement arm of the Transportation Security Administration, better known for missions like protecting U.S. commercial flights, are instead carrying out tasks on deportation flights like providing security, handing out sandwiches to detainees, checking them for lice, and cleaning plans.
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AUTHORITARIAN NEWS
All the ways Republicans want to honor Trump, from the $100 bill to Mount Rushmore
· rename Dulles International Airport in Virginia after Trump
· put Trump on the $100 bill
· combining Trump’s birthday with Flag Day to designate June 14 a federal holiday
· Trump’s likeness to be carved into Mount Rushmore
· print a $250 bill bearing Trump’s image
· someone who should win the Nobel Peace Prize
· name the Opera House at the Kennedy Center for first lady Melania Trump
Smithsonian removes Trump from an exhibit’s impeachment display, but says it’s temporary
The Smithsonian Institution has removed from an exhibit a reference to President Donald Trump’s two impeachments, a decision that comes as the White House exerts pressure to offer a more positive — and selective — view of American history.
Trump is only the president to have been impeached twice — in 2019, for pushing Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden, who would defeat Trump in the 2020 election; and in 2021 for “incitement of insurrection,” a reference to the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters attempting to halt Congressional certification of Biden’s victory.
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Corporation for Public Broadcasting says it will shut down after Congress cut money
Currently, the CPB helps support more than 1,500 locally owned NPR and PBS member stations.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced Friday that it will begin shutting down, weeks after Congress canceled previously approved funding for the nation's steward of public media access. The Trump administration has maintained that the CPB should be stripped of funding despite objections from some Republican lawmakers whose districts include rural areas that rely on the local outlets.
The administration has repeatedly accused NPR and PBS of liberal bias, which the organizations have repeatedly denied. “Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” the corporation's president and CEO, Patricia Harrison, said.
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Map Shows Where Medicaid Cuts Could Close Hospitals
More than 60 million Americans live in rural areas, according to the 2020 census, where hospitals serve as essential lifelines, not just for emergency and primary care, but also for obstetrics, mental health services and long-term treatment. Medicaid provides critical financial support for these institutions, often serving as the backbone of care in areas with thin profit margins and high rates of public insurance enrollment.
Nearly one-third of the nation's rural hospitals are already in danger of closing due to sustained financial losses and low cash reserves, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, meaning Medicaid cuts would likely see these facilities shut down.
The Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform has identified over 300 rural hospitals at "immediate risk" of closure, as shown in the map above.
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Trump Doesn’t Beg Pardon For What He’s Done to the White House Rose Garden
They paved paradise and put up a concrete slab.
A former executive at NBCUniversal tweeted, “Everything Trump touches dies.”
Another tweet reads, “I will vote for any Democrat who promises to destroy and tear down the Trump ballroom. Also, tear up the Trump rose garden and put it back the way Jackie had it.”
Even with everything else going on, some crimes against taste are too outrageous to ignore.
The unfortunate epoch in which we find ourselves provides so many opportunities for one’s inner Eeyore, one’s barely suppressed Debbie Downer, one’s sublimated-with-difficulty censorious moralizer, to break out.
Donald Trump wants to knock down the fine old East Wing of the White House and replace it with a giant ballroom. That’s too kind. Really, he’s turning the stately White House into Mar-a-Lago North! It should be called the Juan and Eva Peron Ballroom! As a friend remarked, it looks like Versailles took a giant dump on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Here in America, ballrooms should be in hotels, not in the People’s House! Oh, for the good old days of democratic dignity and republican restraint!
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