The Grid by Phillip F. Schewe

The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World

by Phillip F. Schewe

(J. Henry Press)

This is one book filled with juicy tid-bits... Half a chapter is dedicated to a guided tour of Indian Point... where the author writes: "nuclear and conventional power plants have a lot in common... they both use 19th Century physics."

This is how he describes it: "Visiting a nuclear reactor is a lot like going to the castle of the evil witch in the Wizard of Oz." and Indian Point as: "the most heavily defended industrial facility in the United States."

In fact the security for Indian Point is maintained by Wackenhut, the same outfit that handles the perimiter around the not-so secret Area 51, and a majority of our prisons, where 2 million people are incarcerated, slightly more than the mere 50.000 people locked up in Japan at any one time.

Which brings up the question, why does America, the land of the free, have 2% of its population in jail, while a country like Japan, the size of California, with almost as many citizens as ours, has so few of them behind bars?

In Grid we learn that Entergy controls 30,000 megawatts of electricity. One 1000 megawatts reactor, like the two currently operating at the Indian Point facility, possesses at the heart enough fissionable material equivalent of 1,000 nuclear bombs.

On page 212: "The Indian Point containment structure can sustain the direct hit of a commercial jetliner without rupturing, one is solemnly told by plant personel, although no direct test of this proposition has been made."

Phillip Schewer goes on to write: "The financial, regulatory, and public relations obstacles for a nuclear renaissance in the United States are formidable."

Phillip has a Ph.D. in particle physics and worked at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, helped to explore the inner structure of protons. He is also a playwright and a member of the Dramatists Guild.

There are to Phillip's credit, quite a few references to Nikola Tesla in the book, though none to Tesla Motors, makers of the new Hollywood super-toy, which defends its anti-nuclear EV advocacy by offering the car with a roof top photovoltaic system to charge it.

Read more in this IEEE Spectrum magazine review.

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Contact the author:

Phillip F. Schewe

American Institute of Physics

One Physics Ellipse

College Park, MD 20740-3843

301-209-3092 fax: 301-209-0846

pschewe@aip.org

NRC...DoE...DoD... Back to Square One!

The Greening of the U.S. Military: Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change
(Public Management and Change)
by Robert F. Durant

$29.95 Paperback 256 pages
Publishing Date: June 15, 2007
ISBN-10: 1589011538

Georgetown University Press

3240 Prospect Street, NW

Washington, DC 20007

202-687-5889 Fax: 202-687-6340

Publicist - Kimberly Wilson

202-687-9298

kaw46@georgetown.edu

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Robert F. Durant is professor of public administration and policy at American University. He has received numerous research awards, including the 2000 Best Book Award from the Public and Nonprofit Division of the Academy of Management; the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book on U.S. national policy from the American Political Science Association; and the Charles H. Levine Memorial Award given jointly by the American Society for Public Administration and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. He is a fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration.

Dr. Robert F. Durant
American University
School of Public Affairs
Ward Circle Building 345
4400 Mass. Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20016
(202) 885-2509
durant@american.edu

By the Cold War's end, U.S. military bases harbored nearly 20,000 toxic waste sites. All told, cleaning the approximately 27 million acres is projected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. And yet while progress has been made, efforts to integrate environmental and national security concerns into the military's operations have proven a daunting and intrigue-filled task that has fallen short of professed goals in the post-Cold War era.

In The Greening of the U.S. Military, Robert F. Durant delves into this too-little understood world of defense environmental policy to uncover the epic and ongoing struggle to build an environmentally sensitive culture within the post-Cold War military. Through over 100 interviews and thousands of pages of documents, reports, and trade newsletter accounts, he offers a telling tale of political, bureaucratic, and intergovernmental combat over the pace, scope, and methods of applying environmental and natural resource laws while ensuring military readiness. He then discerns from these clashes over principle, competing values, and narrow self-interest a theoretical framework for studying and understanding organizational change in public organizations.

From Dick Cheney's days as Defense Secretary under President George H. W. Bush to William Cohen's Clinton-era-tenure and on to Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, the battle over "greening" the military has been one with high-stakes consequences for both national defense and public health, safety, and the environment. Durant's polity-centered perspective and arguments will evoke needed scrutiny, debate, and dialogue over these issues in environmental, military, policymaking, and academic circles.

"The Greening of the U.S. Military helps to add energy, depth, and luster to academic studies of policy history, bureaucratic politics, and public management."-Michael Barzelay, professor of public management, London School of Economics and Political Science"For those who may have formed impressions of the Pentagon's progress, or lack thereof, in becoming greener, this highly readable and accessible book is an indispensable resource."
-Kent E. Portney, professor of political science, Tufts University

"A very well-written book describing the attempts to instill a 'beyond compliance' environmental culture in the military and the forces that shape these efforts. In short, no book is as up-to-date and extensive or as theoretical. The scholarship is superior."
-Denise Scheberle, professor of public and environmental affairs, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay"

[A] highly significant contribution to analysis and understanding of organizational change in government."
-Hal G. Rainey, Alumni Foundation Distinguished Professor, The University of Georgia

Table of Contents

1. A World Apart?
2. Greening, National Security, and the Postmodern Military
3. About Face at the Pentagon?
4. Base Cleanups, Sovereign Impunity, and the Expansion of the Beaten Zone
5. Guns, Dogs, Fences, and Base Transfers
6. Missiles, Mayhem, and the Munitions Rule7. Natural Resources Management, Miltary Training, and the Greening of the Drone Zone
8. Safety, Security, and Chemical Weapons Demilitarization
9. Pollution Prevention, Energy Conservation, and the Perils of Châteaux Generalship
10. Avoiding the Harder Right in the Post-Clinton Era?
11. Lessons for Practice and Theory