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The Yucca Mountain Project
Kai Erikson argues that radiation and other forms of radioactive waste are a new species of trouble (Erikson, 1994). Nuclear waste disposal is a pressing issue of extreme importance. Nuclear waste is material that either contains a radioactive substance or has been contaminated by radioactive elements and is no longer useful. With all of the dangers surrounding nuclear waste and a half-life of one hundred thousand years this issue must be solved with complete certainty. Any mistakes or miscalculations can destroy the environment.
Congress established a national policy in 1982. To solve the problem of nuclear waste disposal, this federal law is called the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The United States Department of Energy is responsible for finding a site, building a facility, and operating the repository.
They studied nine locations for ten years and then narrowed it down to three. The three sites were Hanford, Washington; Deaf Smith County, Texas; and Yucca Mountain, Nevada. In 1987, Wes Barnes, the director of the Yucca Mountain Project (an offshoot of the Department of Energy) decided the desolate mountain ridge in south-western Nevada is to become the final resting place (Monastersky, 1997). More than one hundred of America's commercial nuclear reactors are planned to deposit the worst of their nuclear waste deep into the mountain. It is to be stored permanently, but the project says it will be guaranteed for ten thousand years. The project proposes that the containers be surrounded by impermeable layers of volcanic rock guaranteeing safety (Wolfe, 1997).
The Department of Energy (DOE) reports that there is 20,000 tons of used-up nuclear fuel and that number should double by the year 2000 (kieft, 1997). The fuel rods are now placed in cooling ponds near the plants. Most pools are full, or nearly full. Aware that time is running out, Yucca Mountain was the only site left. The mountain sits inside the Nevada Test Site about 80 miles of Las Vegas. A huge earth boring machine is digging a tunnel 25 feet wide into the mountain. Two miles of tunnel have already been excavated and three more miles remain till completion. The mountain is planned to receive waste by the year 2010 (www.cyberwest.com).
The Nevada state government is against putting the depository in the Mountain. Many people disagree with the project a say the the site can safely hold the waste for only 100 years (www.
The Lowry Landfill Superfund Site is located in Arapahoe County, Colorado, approximately 2 miles east of Aurora. It consists of approximately 507 acres of waste disposal area and is operated by Waste Management of Colorado, Inc. The land surrounding the site consists of native prairie grass and a wetland located along a local creek. Sections around the site are zoned for agricultural use including cattle grazing and non-irrigated wheat farms. 1 The area is home to numerous endangered species including the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. Due to the large amounts of wastes disposed on the site between 1965 and 1980, it became extremely contaminated with a variety of inorganic and organic contaminants. From 1984 to 1993, the EPA oversaw remedial investigation and feasibility studies that were performed by all responsible parties. Since its listing as a superfund site in 1984, multiple remedial actions have been performed in order to rehabilitate the site. These include clay barrier walls around the site, a groundwater collection system, a soil cover for the main landfill, as well as a landfill gas collection system. Groundwater that is collected on the site is treated at an onsite water treatment facility. In 2007, construction began on an onsite gas to energy plant that utilizes the methane produced by the landfill site. The electricity produced by the plant is enough to power 3000 households. 1 Today, use of land and groundwater on and near the site is still restricted by the state of Colorado.1
Removal of the mountaintops causes environmental impacts from blasting. The blasting has caused rocks to be deposited into valleys on the hillsides, burying almost 2,000 miles of streams which feed the Mississippi River. Slurry, the residue which is used to clean the coal can wash into groundwater and may contain arsenic, lead, manganese, iron, sodium, strontium, and sulfate. A recent research study is beginning to link these environmental impacts to the grave health concerns in the Appalachian communities. During most of the Mountaintop removal mining’s history coal industries have been able to obtain permits easily to operate, but once under the Obama administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) those permits now take more time to obtain. The permit process requires all applications to be reviewed before being given out to coal
The Laramie Project, written by Moisés Kaufman, is a compilation of interviews by The Tectonic Theater Project, news publications, and journal entries. After the brutal murder of Mathew Sheppard in 1998. Kaufman along with his theater troupe made six visits to Laramie, Wyoming, where the murder took place, to interview people about what happened and how they felt about the crime in their community. They interviewed about two hundred people, of which about sixty were included in the play. The play showcases a small town in America in a historical time of tragedy. The production of The Laramie Project was simple. The stage setting was minimal and the the actors consisted of eight people portraying more than sixty. Through the patchwork of interviews The Laramie Project conveys the themes of identity, representation, and change.
As the eras changed, American culture did as well. Literary works including The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne reveal to us two main characters that were alienated by their societies and not valued for their true worth as individuals. Both main characters in these novels endure an identity crisis which then leads to them becoming their own tragic hero/heroine. Both F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby and Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlett Letter, depict characters that reinvent themselves to conform to their own ideas of how they should live and how people should perceive them. In both contexts, the main characters are both, in a way, trapped in their lifestyles. Jay Gatsby of The Great Gatsby had spent his whole life dedicating himself to win a beautiful girl (not of the same status) and Hester Prynne of The Scarlett Letter not being able to be herself because her perfect Puritan society didn’t accept the fact that she was an individual. In the end, both characters leave their marks and leave us as readers to decipher our thoughts and opinions on them.
Genocide is the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. In Germany during World War II a man named Hitler tried to eliminate any race except for what he called the "Arian" race. In the process he committed genocide by killing off 6 million Jews and a total of 8 million people in all. Europe was going through some very hard times during the mid 1900's so that no one was able to see a disaster such as the Holocaust coming. Many things led to the weakening of Europe at the time. The Ottoman Empire was breaking up plus they were still trying to get over the devastation of WW I. Bosnia and Herzegovina had been having many problems as well. They were a witness to much change and devastation ever since the early 1900's when they became merged as Yugoslavia with three distinct ethnic groups. In the middle of WW II the axis powers split Yugoslavia into two separate pieces, pinning one side in conflict and war against the other. By the end of WW II a man named Josip Tito, a Croatian Communist created a pact between the two fighting sides. This lasted until 1960 when Tito granted Muslims a distinct ethnic status in society as an effort to put them on equal grounds with the Serbs and Croats. After Tito's death conditions got bad. The Serbs gained most of the power and began killing off the weaker non-Serb peoples. The situations between Germany and Bosnia are quite different, however, there is a strong resemblance as well. It is highly unlikely that another Holocaust would ever occur again as long as the memory of the catastrophe is not forgotten.
The reason this genocide happened is because Bosnia declared its independence from Yugoslavia, because of this the Serb military killed thousands of Bosnian civilians. This was the worst act of genocide since the Nazis while 6 million jews were killed.
“Although many different ethnic and religious groups had resided together for 40 years under Yugoslavia’s repressive communist government, this changed when the country began to collapse during the fall of communism in the early 1990s” (Holocaust Museum Houston). This quote is a very truthful one. Many people in this world probably have never even heard of the Bosnian Genocide. It was a very tragic time in history that could have been prevented if people didn’t have so much pride and arrogance like Slobodan Milosevic did.
The Bosnian genocide was a war that started in 1992 and ended in 1995. The purpose of learning this genocide is that we can be aware of what an genocide is considering that there are many different definitions of genocide. This was an example of genocide that we can learn from and know what genocide is so we can stop genocide from occurring in the future because we are the next generation of the
Cell phones are gradually affecting American culture today because they are becoming a key part of everyday life. The cell phone is "?an indispensable companion that serves without favor or prejudice. It has reached into every civilized corner of the world--and often brought civilization with it. From its wires spring the words of history in the making, the chatter of daily life" ("43 Years" sc. 1). The cell phone enables individuals to communicate rapidly over great distances and obtain information like never before. People can now pick up the phone and get information on the weather, time, stock market quotations, and other things simply by dialing a few numbers. Cell phones connect the world together, to the point where individuals become almost helpless without it. The next time you find yourself waiting at a stoplight, take the time to observe the people around you. There will likely be at least one person in the surrounding cars who is talking on the phone. Even on the streets, people continue to chat on the phone. Cell phones are everywhere. One resident in Greenville, S.C. admitted that he uses his cell phone at least 15 times a day (Chany sc. 2). The cell phone is in such high use that the traditional phones in homes and offices almost become antique devices on display. Although traditional phones are still around, individuals are quicker to pick up their cell phone.
Even though cell phone was created in recent decades, it continues to grow in level of it 's capabilities. Cellphone used to be for calling, then it changed to texting that took a longer time, and now it 's easy as touch of a screen or verbally communicate on the screen. We 're surrounded by technology wherever we go and we feel sense of satisfication or security from these devices. There 's even accessories that help us stay connected by syncing our cellphones like Apple Watch, Mac, or iPads to our phones where we can easily view and reply to a text.
As a conclusion, Rwanda and Bosnia genocide was about ethnic conflicts for gaining power or for land, mass murders, area destructions, civilians deaths, hiding evidence and many more. Also genocide has different stages to categories its specification such as classification, symbolisms, discrimination, dehumanization, extermination, preparation and many more. As the end of genocide there were deaths of some ethnic groups too which are hardly found or known as minority groups. We should further inspire and encourage future world people to prevent such a tragedy like the Rwanda and Bosnia and other genocide conflict from ever happening again.
Students have been writing essays since education was formalized centuries ago. There are several formats that they are taught throughout the course of their formal education, two of the most common being; Narrative, and Descriptive. Both of these have distinct characteristics that define them, and while they share many similar qualities and are developed to make the reader immerse themselves in the story. Narratives tend to have the power to capture and persuade on a deeper level than most descriptive papers. Two prime examples are the narrative I Want a Wife by Judy Brady and the descriptive essay Fish Cheeks by Amy tan. While they both do an exceptional job at delivering a lesson Brady’s causes you to think from the beginning, her use of the rhetorical devices such as pathos, ethos, and logos are incorporated with a heavy use of sarcasm and harsh remarks that claws for the reader’s attention.
The history of modern Bosnia began with the country of Yugoslavia in the 1900s. At the beginning of World War I, the Baltic region was controlled by Austria-Hungary. The trigger for WWI actually took place in Sarajevo, Bosnia, when a group of insubordinate Serbs assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand (heir to Austria-Hungary). In the ashes of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Baltic countries formed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in 1918. The Kingdom united as the country of Yugoslavia in 1929, of which Bosnia was a constituent republic until Nazi Germany invaded in 1941. After Nazi Germany fell, President Marshall Tito took over the country and controlled it. Although President Tito was a Communist, he did do some good in the country, especially by keeping the Soviet Union at arm’s length, which planted unity in his country against a common enemy. When Yugoslavia was under Tito, it had some of the best times in Slavic
Cell phones have created one of the biggest social changes in human history. We as people have gone from speaking face to face, to call each other on the phone occasionally, to today where we all carry a computer in our pockets that can do anything you want it to. We as people have gone from being social with one another to posting things on social media. It’s crazy to think that just 25 years ago you couldn’t communicate with someone else across town without being at home using the telephone. Cell phones have changed us socially in a drastic way. It has changed the way we communicate with one another, it has changed how we interact with others, and it has changed the way we act in public places and social gatherings.
The greatest disadvantages of nuclear energy are the risks posed to mankind and the environment by radioactive materials. ‘On average a nuclear plant annually generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel cla...