nuclear power

Bill Whittle’s newest season of ‘What We Saw’ on Daily Wire Plus dips its toe in the oceans of blood Russia’s Communist revolution released.

The true crime genre is not big enough for what Communists and socialists did in Russia in the 20th century. It demands a new genre — perhaps call it true horror.

Bill Whittle’s newest season of “What We Saw” on Daily Wire Plus dips its toe in the oceans of blood Russia’s Communist revolution released. It’s grisly and difficult to take in. Whittle attempts to quantify the myriad forms of mass killings by comparing their death tolls to the erasure of several U.S. cities, yet still the numbers are numbing.

What’s not numbing is the question he includes in the season’s trailer comparing the Nazi Holocaust with the Soviet mass murder of an estimated 20 million: “Why are we encouraged to never forget one, and then intentionally taught to forget the other?” //

While it’s difficult to probe such manifestations of supernatural evil, doing so should be required of every human being. That’s because we need to look at evils like these and attempt to understand how they happen and what they say about human nature and history. Such knowledge is a fortification against it happening again — creating, for example, common knowledge that evil and corrupt governments often baselessly accuse their opponents of terrorism.

Here are four other things one can learn from studying Soviet history, as horrifying as that exercise can be.

1. Misery Is Normal in Human History

It’s hard to believe that when you’re an American and all you’ve ever known is clean and hot water coming out of the tap at a turn. But it’s also important to keep in mind. For one thing, it produces appropriate gratitude. For another, it should discipline hasty desires to “tear it all down,” and cultivate contempt for people who use the same lying words and policies as Communists.

2. People Are Not Innately Good

A heck of a lot of people somehow believe that humans are innately good. //

Soviet Russia is a tire iron to the back of that idea’s head. There can be no excuses for what the Communists did. No amount of bad potty training or poverty can excuse the mass murder of 20 million people and the enslavement of countless tens of millions more in gulag concentration camps. //

3. Socialists, Nazis, and Communists All Make the Same Hell on Earth

The truth is, socialists, Nazis, and Communists engage in furious infighting, but they’re all ultimately on the same side. They fight with each other, not because they disagree about collectivism, but because they all want to be on top of the dogpile of bodies their sister collectivist ideologies cause. Communists are Nazis are socialists are communists.

Socialist true believers will seek their collectivist ends “by any means necessary,” including government-sponsored terror, killing fields, and concentration camps. Anyone who proclaims himself a socialist in the face of historical facts about the hell on Earth socialism has always produced is a fool and fellow traveler, if not a covert supporter of mass terror.

4. We’d Better Keep America From Full Socialism

Let’s be honest: The United States is already partly socialist. We’re a pension plan with an army, as Andy Biggs noted, and every few years some other collectivist program that ratchets up the socialism is increased or enhanced, like Obamacare.

Americans live in a country full of people who truly believe their political opponents should be killed for disagreeing with them. Worse, they've convinced themselves that such a position is righteous. After all, when you aren't just instituting policy but are "protecting democracy" from "fascists," pretty much anything is on the table. In their minds, there won't be a country left if they don't do whatever it takes to retain power.

Would Olbermann and the millions of other deranged leftists who think like him throw everyone in the image headlining this article in gulags if they had the chance? You can bet your house they would. That's what makes them so insidious as a political force. They have no boundaries because, in their minds, they are saving the country. //

The problem for Olbermann and many on the left is that they have nothing else in their life providing them with a sense of purpose. They don't believe in God. They don't have families to go home to. That leaves them deriving their purpose from an ever-escalating delusion of "defending democracy." What does Olbermann have other than shouting like a lunatic on social media about killing his political opponents?

His behavior is a warning we should all heed. There's a difference between caring about politics and making it the very foundation of one's worth and being. A person who does the latter is teetering on the edge, and it's a long way down. //

KJSpeed
37 minutes ago
Anyone who puts their faith in politicians and political solutions to the problems in this world faces a lifetime of frustration, disappointment and despair. Fighting these spiritual battles with political weaponry is about as effective as bringing a water pistol to a gunfight. It is good to stay engaged, but not consumed. //

St. Joseph, Terror of Demons KJSpeed
25 minutes ago
That’s why unless Trump becomes a committed Christian, he will not be able to beat the globalists and leftists who are anti-God.

This is a spiritual battle that simple politics cannot overcome.

These are the liner notes to the "Weird Al" Yankovic box set which came out in 1994, as written by Dr. Demento.
We call him Weird Al. //

Whatever you choose to call him, Alfred Matthew Yankovic is rock music's greatest humorist. Since his first LP came out in 1983 he has sold more funny records, CDs and tapes than any other person on this planet.

That's doubly remarkable because funny music, the music I play on my radio show, is a genre with more than its share of one-hit wonders. Except for the late Frank Zappa (who would rather have you remember him for his serious music) you have to go all the way back to Spike Jones in the 1940s to find another creator of funny music who was as consistently successful and brilliant for as long a time as Al has been.

Google has been putting its thumb on the scale to help Democratic candidates win the presidency in the last four election cycles during which it censored Republicans, according to a right-leaning media watchdog.

The Media Research Center published a report alleging 41 instances of “election interference” by the search engine since 2008. //

A source close to Google told The Post that third parties who have looked at our results and “found no evidence to support claims of political bias.”

“There is absolutely nothing new here — just a recycled list of baseless, inaccurate complaints that have been debunked by third parties and many that failed in the courts,” a Google spokesperson told The Post.

Cyril R says:
March 3, 2024 at 7:34 AM

A good writeup Michael. A couple of poimts though.

Actually water without precise chemistry control is very corrosive. All reactors require good chemistry control (there’s no such thing as pure helium). Davis Besse shows that borated water isn’t too nice either. And 155 bar borated water at 320C doesn’t qualify as “no hazard”.

Fluoride salts are stable, don’t generate hydrogen, and corrosion control rests on having the salt reducing toward the structural alloy rather than the passivation layer required with water. Fluoride salts also do not cause stress corrosion. So it ends up a simple matter of allowance thicknesses.

I like LWRs. Much better than coal plants. But they are basically glass cannons. The power goes out, the core melts down, generating explosive hydrogen in the process that detonates the containment and spreads radionuclides all over the country. Or someone thinks there is water in the core when there isn’t and the core melts down. A glass cannon like that just begs for military grade bureacracy not unlike a nuclear missile silo. Said bureaucracy is very expensive and results in all manner of bloat that inflated prices and build times. With advanced reactors focussing on inherent safety you at least have a case for a more rational regulatory approach.

A 3000 MWt LWR gets you 1000 MWe. An advanced reactor of 3000 MWt gets you 1500 MWe. That’s a quarter billion bucks a year more revenue.

By the way, 3 outages in 10 years is very good. Solar power stations have 365 outages a year.

During the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) earliest years, the General Advisory Committee was sometimes viewed as a source of discouraging, delaying advice. Made up of selected members of the scientific establishment, the group habitually sought more studies and inserted costly delays aimed at making the perfect next step instead of taking steps that were good enough to support practical learning.

A March 8, 1952 New York Times article titled “Atomic Delay Laid to A.E.C. Advisers: Even Dr. Conant Should Yield to Men With Faith in Goal, Coast Chemists are Told,” provides a well-positioned person’s insights into the disappointingly slow process of developing power reactors. //

Pitzer gave the AEC a backhanded slap by calling it “reasonably efficient by general governmental standards,” and stated that its monopoly in atomic energy had delayed atomic reactor development.

He described how material production reactors, with their complex chemical processing systems, had been built in less than three years during wartime. During that time of rapid progress, he said, if there was a disagreement about which of two courses of action were best, both of them were followed.

In the succeeding years, following either route needed to be preceded by an “exhaustive series of preliminary studies” that added layers of cost to the project. Salaries, overhead and other cost components always accumulate during delays.

He noted how it took six years from the end of the war to build anything that could generate electricity, and even then it was a tiny reactor that produced just 100 kilowatts of power in December, 1951.

“The slowness,” Dr. Pitzer declared, “did not arise from a lack of designs for power reactors which reputable scientists and engineers were willing to build and test. It came rather from an unwillingness of the commission to proceed with any one of these designs until all of the advisers agreed that this was the best design.”

The speaker likened the present setup, with a multitude of committees advising the Atomic Energy Commission, to an automobile equipped with a separate brake lever for every passenger.

Stewart Peterson says:
January 18, 2021 at 12:14 PM

Conversely, from the perspective of the people conducting the approval process:

Nobody ever gets fired for doing nothing. However, people get fired for exceeding their authority all the time. Lawyers are arguing over where the line is, and the line never stops moving, and all previous decisions are reviewable and the people who made them are fireable, on the basis of a legal standard that didn’t exist at the time the decision was made.

So what do you do? If there is anything at all novel about what the applicant wants to do, you insist to the applicant that you have no authority to act on their application. This only changes once you have a directive, in writing, from someone above you. That person is unlikely to make such a directive unless they’re such a short-timer that they won’t get fired when the rules are reinterpreted. This is how political appointees get exasperated with minor and obvious decisions being kicked up to them instead of being resolved three levels below, where by any logic they should have been.

What it looks like to the applicant is that old political cartoon of the officials standing in a circle and pointing to the next guy. (You go to the Department of X. They say, “X doesn’t have authority to do that. Y does. Ask them.” You go to the Department of Y. You go there and they say, “Y doesn’t have authority to do that. X does. Ask them.”) Meanwhile, the organization as a whole drops the ball. No individual person in it has any incentive to act in the group’s interest.

I call this the “organizational infield fly rule.”

Much of the anti-nuclear activism in the courts is effective precisely by creating this type of doubt in the minds of the NRC staff – not by changing policy. All they have to do is create that question in the back of a junior manager’s mind: “will I be fired if I sign this?”

The path of least resistance? Appoint another committee to write another report.

Even after Israel cleared the hospital complex of Hamas, Hamas returned and started using the hospital again, leading to an Israeli raid last night. The intitial reports were that a “Senior” Hamas official was the target, but until this morning, his identify was not released: //

The hostpital complex was infested with terrorists, with fierce firefights from within, leading to many dead Hamas terrorists: //

Today the IDF revealed the identity of the target, Faiq Habhoud, the head of the Operations Directorate of Hamas’ Internal Security:

I am in New York again, and I am sending you this postcard from a city I love and have loved; from a broken city. Broken; yet struggling to reimagine itself, as it has so many times before.

Are we better? Are we lost? Are we changed, changed utterly? //

We are post-Tower of Babel now.

The culture of New York is now completely fragmented, and this happened through language.

It used to be that while there were a million different languages and accents here, everyone was trying to communicate as best he or she could — all the time. New Yorkers were famous for this! Any given day was thrilling, because random strangers, from whatever part of the world, would say something silly or funny or wise to you in passing, and everyone would manage to get the gist of each other, whatever anyone’s level of English. We were all present in the joy of being Americans — New Yorkers!— together.

That commonality is simply gone. Culturally, this city could now be anywhere in the world — any globalist, polyglot city. The culture that was New York has been smashed right through. //

The fact that somehow, all at once, English has collapsed as even the remotest goal of New York City common speech, and that speaking English seems not to be important at all to many of the newest immigrants, means that there is a loneliness and sadness and boredom and homesickness, involved with getting around New York City and its boroughs — journeys that used to be thrilling because you met people from everywhere, through their English.

Somehow it has suddenly become acceptable completely to ignore people in ordinary human interactions, and not even to try to communicate with them in even very basic English. //

Even recent immigrants with very little English in New York used gladly to say “Good morning!” or “Have a nice day!” — whatever chit-chat their language levels allowed — as recently as just a few months ago. We were all participating in a common linguistic community, at whatever level anyone happened to be.

Now that effort of participation seems to have simply been dropped in many quarters. I don’t know how or why cultures suddenly shift in these ways or why the prestige of English suddenly collapsed; but the fact that many people in the City now have given up trying to communicate in English, and tend to ignore those who do not speak their languages, creates an anomie, a fractured civitas; atomization. And it weakens us as a city. We cannot speak to one another in a crisis, let alone create culture, dance, or music together, or even spark romance or build families together; we can no longer have those moments of humor or goofiness or the deep many-cultured into one-cultured exchanges, that I miss so much.

China knows that a weakened American society will mean an easier path for China to triumph on the international stage.

In his explosive new book “Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans,” Peter Schweizer chronicles China’s surprising ties to the Ferguson protests and the 2020 riots. “Blood Money” also exposes how China is pushing fentanyl to the United States, knowing it will devastate our country, and how a Chinese billionaire is spending significant money to promote transgenderism in the United States, even as China remains an unfriendly place for LGBTQ Chinese. Finally, China is exporting a tool to the United States that increases the likelihood of mass shootings. //

Schweizer: Well, it’s a great question. They want to defeat the United States, but they don’t want to fight a kinetic war. So they have adopted a strategy called disintegration warfare, which, as the name implies, their goal is to see the disintegration of the United States.

It’s not to say that they cause all of our internal problems, but absolutely they exacerbate them, they add accelerants to them. And so this is part of their strategy. Their hope is they can defeat the United States without actually having to fight a kinetic or fighting war.

One interesting twist is that in the Harrel v. Raoul case, the National Association of Police has filed an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief supporting the Harrel Petitioners. This brief, available for review here, argues that the “Seventh Circuit’s legal standard eviscerates the Second Amendment, that the Illinois law’s “restrictions [approved by the Seventh Circuit] threaten to leave American citizens without effective means to utilize the sort of weapons employed by criminals throughout the country—and employed by nearly all police departments to fight them.”

And in a key paragraph:

In the world far removed from courtrooms, judge’s chambers and lawyers’ offices, Americans are using guns to defend themselves and others at extremely high rates—up to 2.8 million times a year. More than half of the incidents of self-defense involve more than one assailant, in which the ability to fire more defensive rounds obviously assumes more importance. Indeed, 3.2% of incidents involve five or more attackers, where the ability to shoot more than ten rounds is obviously critical. There are, of course, numerous reported incidents of citizens defending themselves who have been required to use more than ten shots to do so—or failing to defend themselves when only ten rounds were available. //

henrybowman | March 17, 2024 at 2:23 pm

“The panel did so after ruling that “large capacity magazines” (LCMs) are rarely used in self-defense…
…owners of the affected magazines, which come standard with most modern firearms.”

And the second observation proves that the first must indeed have been not a finding of fact, but an arbitrary ruling. //

oldvet50 | March 17, 2024 at 2:37 pm
This amendment was explained to our class in junior high school American History when I attended in 1962. A well regulated (trained) militia is necessary to protect our country. A standing army did not exist at the time, but could be formed when needed out of the citizenry (males). They would need to supply their own weapons and be proficient in their use. It has nothing to do with hunting and everything to do with fighting our enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC. How we even got to this point in banning certain weapons is beyond my comprehension. //

SHV | March 17, 2024 at 2:58 pm
This one is interesting. A 2A ruling from far left judge.

“District Judge: Gun Ban For Illegal Immigrant Unconstitutional”

https://www.breitbart.com/2nd-amendment/2024/03/16/district-judge-gun-ban-illegal-immigrant-unconstitutional/

“The Court finds that Carbajal-Flores’ criminal record, containing no improper use of a weapon, as well as the non-violent circumstances of his arrest do not support a finding that he poses a risk to public safety such that he cannot be trusted to use a weapon responsibly and should be deprived of his Second Amendment right to bear arms in self-defense.”

By turning most of health care into what amounts to regulated utilities, Obamacare forced mergers and acquisitions within the sector.

A recent Wall Street Journal story highlighting a new antitrust investigation against the nation’s largest health insurer represents a variation on a long-standing theme. In this instance, as in prior occurrences, the Justice Department and federal officials are trying to undo the harmful effects of a law — Obamacare — that has led industry giants throughout the health sector to consolidate.

Recall that, four election cycles ago, then-candidate Obama promised in 2008 that his health care plan would lower premiums by an average of $2,500 per family. That premiums continue to rise unabated shows the failure of Obamacare by Obama’s own standards — and the anti-competitive behavior the law has engendered explains why. //

But Warren gave away the plot by citing the title of a blog post in her letter: “How Obamacare Created Big Medicine.” It’s the perfect summation of why, as Donald Trump said in social media posts around the time of Warren’s letter, “Obamacare sucks.” And the Justice Department’s investigation into UnitedHealth provides an implicit admission that even President Biden and his administration agree.

to what extent is providing IVF treatment to families the best option? To what extent does it truly protect the life of the mother and the unborn? //

This experience taught me a lot about the need to advocate for my own health. I can’t imagine how many women a year go into those clinics desperate for a child, blindly trusting these doctors and unaware of any restorative approaches to treating their reproductive systems. How many women wind up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars putting their bodies through so much pain? How many human embryos are created and frozen because the doctor was lazy — or greedy? How many doctors know the actual outcomes of IVF but aren’t upfront about the heartache and risks?

States like Alabama need to rethink how they are fighting the pro-life fight. Women need to know there are safer, more affordable, and more effective options. I’m so grateful I learned about this holistic method and was able to give birth to a healthy baby.

Macron was asked about the prospect of sending Western troops to Ukraine, which he publicly raised last month in comments that prompted pushback from other European leaders. "We're not in that situation today," he said, but added that "all these options are possible."

Macron said that responsibility for prompting such a move would lie with Moscow – "It wouldn't be us – and said France would not lead an offensive into Ukraine. But he also said, "Today, to have peace in Ukraine, we must not be weak."

He said that the continent's security was "at stake" in the conflict which he said "is existential for our Europe and for France." He added that "if the situation should deteriorate, we would be ready to make sure that Russia never wins that war."

He said there had been "too many limits in our vocabulary" since the Russian invasion in February 2022. "Two years ago we said we would never send tanks. We did. Two years ago, we said we would never send medium-range missiles. We did," he said. "Those who say 'let's not support Ukraine' do not make the choice of peace, they make the choice of defeat," he added. //

Inadvertently, Putin admitted what I and others have said all along. The only way to bring Putin to the negotiating table is to dangle the specter of a military defeat in front of him. This bullsh** of worrying about "off ramps" and "escalation" when Putin is clearly not interested in the first and unable to credibly do the second has increased the length of this war and its destruction. While Putin bears all the responsibility for the start of this war, Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have much to answer for in how it has been conducted.

For a movie based on the life of a saint, it is decidedly non-religious. I suppose this was focus-tested at some point along the way, but it really detracts from the movie. God is maybe mentioned once. Jesus is not mentioned. The only prayer in the movie is one scene where the nuns say grace before a meal, and it is done in a very non-Catholic way. The characters are almost archetypes. //

Also interesting is the subtext of the position of recent immigrants as portrayed by David Morse in the role of Archbishop Michael Corrigan. They are so interested in not making waves and blending in with native New Yorkers that they ignore the plight of immigrants like their parents suffered. Cabrini's persistence and goodness come through. I think Cabrini's actions are straight from the Parable of the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1-8). In a society that is increasingly paralyzed by inaction and indecision, seeing what one person, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, can accomplish is a tonic. //

The opportunities for the Christian faith to be effortlessly incorporated into the movie were limitless. Cabrini never prays and never contemplates her pain in terms of sanctifying suffering. She never has doubts about her mission or her abilities. She never prays for guidance or assistance. All of this is very un-Catholic, particularly in the context of a nun. At one point, the Archbishop tells her he often wonders if she is acting out of her religious calling or from ambition. It's a question that needed to be explored and answered but ended up as a toss-away line in the script. //

The decision to make a film that doesn't fit into the "Christian movie" genre results in attributing Cabrini's work to her efforts rather than to the greater glory of God. That is unfortunate.

Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is developing such a pill for humans—minus the tasty flavoring—that could provide protection against the tick-borne disease for several weeks at a time. In February, the Irvine, California–based biotech company announced results from a small, early-stage trial showing that 24 hours after taking the drug, it can kill ticks on people, with the effects lasting for up to 30 days. //

Lyme disease is caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, which gets passed to humans through the bite of an infected tick. In most cases, a tick has to be attached for around 36 to 48 hours before the bacteria can be transmitted. Symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic skin rash that looks like a bullseye. //

The experimental pill that Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is testing is a formulation of lotilaner, a drug that paralyzes and kills parasites by interfering with the way that signals are passed between their nerve cells. Lotilaner is already approved as a veterinary medicine under the brand name Credelio to control fleas and ticks in dogs and cats. //

In a Phase II trial, 31 healthy adults took either a low or high dose of the Tarsus pill, or a placebo. Researchers then placed sterile ticks on participants’ arms and, 24 hours later, measured how many died. They also observed tick death 30 days after a single dose of the pill. At day one, 97 percent of ticks in the high-dose group and 92 percent in the low-dose group had died, while only 5 percent of ticks in the placebo group had. One month out, both doses of the pill killed around 90 percent of ticks. The company reported no serious adverse events from the pill, and none of the participants dropped out due to side effects. //

DNA_Doc Ars Praetorian
5y
561
"Without a vaccine for Lyme disease on the market, current prevention includes using insect repellents such as DEET and permethrin and wearing closed shoes, long pants, and long sleeves when in a tick-infested area."

Yes, if only we had a vaccine for Lyme disease...oh wait...we did.

The FDA approved a Lyme vaccine (LYMErix) in December of 1998. Shortly after, some people complained of arthritis and sued SmithKline Beecham, its maker. It didn't matter that it made no sense that the vaccine would cause arthritis at all (ie, no plausible mechanism of action), nor that Borrelia burgdorferi itself enters the joints and causes severe inflammation; the masses were convinced. So two large (~20,000 participants) two-year studies were conducted and confirmed the implausibility of the vaccine causing arthritis, but it wasn't enough. The media had publicized a possible connection, sales were decreasing as a result, and GlaxoSmithKline (as it was then known) was spending millions of dollars defending itself from numerous lawsuits filed by greedy attorneys.

Utimately, GSK withdrew the vaccine from the market. An effective vaccine beneficial for human health was taken off the market not because of any real safety issues, but because idiots ruined it for everybody.

Edited to mention that rasheverak and Jim Bacon ninja'd me and I didn't notice. :) //

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/

DovePig Ars Praetorian
2y
9,267

A few points, as this short Wired article misses a few things or gets them wrong:

1. A multivalent Lyme vaccine is in clinical trials currently, from Valneva/Pfizer. Previous phases have shown it to be pretty promising.
2. DEET dissolves plastics like nylon pack straps and jackets, you are better off using another repellent Icaridin (Picaridin).
3. Permethrin is NOT a repellent, it's an insecticide. It does not repel ticks, it kills them as it's a neurotoxin, like other insecticides – that's why it's also poisonous any other invertebrates like helpful bugs and bees, aquatic wildlife, fish and even cats (!). I really wish some companies stopped falsely marketing permethrin as a safe repellent when it's not. It's safe when carefully applied to clothing, but shouldn't ever be sprayed wantonly in the environment, on lawns or in nature (Thermacell permethrin "candles" are banned in Finland in forests for that very reason).
4. Also, we had a Lyme vaccine two decades ago already. Safe and working, if only for the US strain of B. burgdoferi. Greedy lawyers and dumb antivaxxers stopped it and stopped the development of new vaccines for said two decades, as til now nobody would risk developing one only to have to stop it again. ETA: Darn, it says something good about Ars commenters that I've been ninja'd on this issue thrice already, good job ;-)

That said, a pill that could kill ticks upon attaching sounds really interesting, especially with all the other nasty diseases they carry (wait till you hear about tick‑borne encephalitis virus, which might not only kill you, but can really mess up your brain and memories permanently even if you survive it).

Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Power

Over the past three weeks ELWA has been hosting a group of people from the US that have been helping to make upgrades to the power system. The team consists of former missionaries, former missionary kids from ELWA, electricians, contractors and even a Liberian who used to work at ELWA but now lives in Philadelphia. In total 9 people traveled out from the US to work with ELWA's 5 electricians and an extra 8-10 ELWA services staff that helped out.

The project consisted of replacing all the transformers on campus so the voltage could be dropped from 7,200 volts to 2,400 on the primary transmission lines. The change was recommended a couple years ago after an electrical engineer analyzed ELWA's system and recommended the voltage be dropped to reduce the high voltage leaking to ground and jumping around insulators. We also installed some new transmission lines and changed our output voltage that the generators produce.

A DIY Guide to Going Nuclear

Building a nuclear weapon has never been easier. NATO's Michael R�hle provides step-by-step instructions for going nuclear, from discretely collecting material to minimizing the fallout when caught. These simple steps have worked for the likes of Israel, Pakistan or North Korea, and your country could be next.

Tired of being bossed around? Want your neighbors to treat you with more respect? Want to play in the majors? If so, you have to have your own nukes.

Impossible? Not really. Granted, if your country is a signatory of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), as most countries are, the constraints on your bomb building are considerable. Inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are difficult to circumvent. And the IAEA can no longer be fooled as easily as in the 1980s, when it failed to uncover Saddam Hussein's military nuclear program in Iraq despite regular inspections.

The IAEA's increased awareness means that you have to be imaginative. Here are some steps to consider.

GENERAL

In the execution of its mandate to provide adequate and reliable electric power to the nation at economically reasonable tariff, the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) operates and maintains two (2) distinct electrical power system, namely: the Monrovia Power system and the rural Electrification system. The Monrovia power system before the war supplied electricity to Monrovia and its outlying areas, extending to Kakata City , Tubmanburg City, and Buchanan City . Rural electrification before the war operated eleven (11) isolated diesel out stations with three under construction at the onset of the civil war, served the people who resided out side the Monrovia power system.

THE EVOLUTION OF LEC

In the early 1940s, the Monrovia Power system consisting of a single unit, serving the public. The unit was located at the corner of Carey & Lynch streets and was operated by Henry F. Luke, after whom the Luke Power plant at Bushrod Island is named. Monthly collection then never exceeded 16% of the monthly billing.

In the year 1949, the Government of Liberia (GOL) procured three 40-kW superior diesel generators through the United States Government Land Lease Program, and installed them at the Krutown power plant where the LEC central office is located today.

The Liberian company led by Commander William R. Trimble under contract with the GOL, replaced the Liberia Company and operated the Krutown power plant until 1960.

In June 1960, the Monrovia Power Authority (PUA) was created by law to consolidate and control the activities associated with power generation, transmission and distribution with the view to reducing system technical and commercial losses. The Stanley Engineering Company was hired by the GOL to manage the MPA. However, in 1964 Sanderson and Porter replaced Stanley engineering company. The GOL at the time preferred Stanley engineering company to carrying out the task of surveying, designing and supervising the Mount Coffee Hydroelectric project. //

With all of the LEC facilities damaged as a results of war, it became appropriate to effect the long awaited power system change, over which the years left Liberia as the only Country in Africa that operated power system base on North America standard of 60htz , 220/110v customer voltage.

In 1998, with funding with from the Danish Development Agency (DANIDA), a Danish Consulting firm NESA Team, carried out a power system conversion study. Today, Liberia has effectively converted its system from the North America standard to 50HTz 400/230V customer voltage.