Trucks loaded with factory parts to refine oil in the US. How strange it is to find out that is a bad deal.

On the other hand, natural environmental damage in Japan last night. 8.9 Richter quake. Tsunami over 30 feet high bulldozed miles of farmland and left debris scattered across the countryside with dead people and animals. Nuclear plant cooling shut down. Petrochemical plants exploding. And we are worried about mega loads on trucks inconveniencing our important lives.

"Our" important lives? How about our habitat which, regardless of your ignorance, affects our lives in ways many folks don't begin to understand?

Just yesterday, those of us fighting the megaload menace on Rt 12--which is backed by oil companies--were delighted to hear that Idaho Rivers United sued the Forest Service in federal court for not fulfilling the legal requirements of their agency to protect the rivers and the wild life in this area. Their public interest law firm is Advocates for the West, in Boise. See IRU's website for full press release.

In brief:
Federal suit charges Forest Service with abdicating responsibility over Clearwater and Lochsa rivers
BOISE — The U.S. Forest Service violated the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act and other federal laws by allowing the Idaho Transportation Department to issue permits for hundreds of road-closing, mega-sized shipments of mining and industrial equipment via U.S. Highway 12, Idaho Rivers United charged in a lawsuit filed here today.
Filed in Boise’s U.S. District Court, the lawsuit is the first federal action to challenge Exxon Mobil’s proposal to transport hundreds of so-called mega-loads up Highway 12 and through the Clearwater and Lochsa Wild & Scenic River corridors, for which the Forest Service has management responsibility.

Exxon said they couldn't reduce the size of these loads as their reason to force their megaloads over Rt. 12. After Conoco took a month to get 2 across to MT, they suddenly realized they COULD reduce the load sizes, and sent 30 loads up the interstates from Lewiston.
Now they are technically able to send all 170 loads left up the same way--interstates, and leave Rt 12 to the outdoor lovers and tourists who create income and jobs for residents of the whole area.

Right, mindless chants by what is clearly a college-age crowd. Ho ho ho Chi Minh!
Pretty impressive, what engineering makes possible.

Ah yes--engineering-- like the nukes in Japan after the 8.9 earthquake. Two of them today are in danger of meltdown. One of them is already emitting radioactive steam.
Hohoho Dave Skinner, representing the "economic development no matter who gets hurt" crowd; bet you're a big nuclear power booster too.
Well, now that Japan is about to have meltdowns you can shove the radioactivity that will inevitably blow across the ocean to us here in the Rockies up your ignorant brain. Let's hope it isn't worse than that.
So long, land of nukes Idaho. So long ConDon of AEHI coming to a scenario near you, in Payette.
I'm waiting with baited breath to see how Sens. Crapo and Risch spin this one. And spin they will.

The nukes automatically shut down. The issue is no electricity to run the cooling pumps. Evidently the stand by power didn't "stand by me." But there is no immediate danger, or at least not according to BBC at 6 Pacific time tonight. Venting of radioactive steam will relieve some pressure as power to run the pumps is recovered. If you really want to live dangerously, sleep in a banana storage room.

Radiation is running through each and every one of us every second of the day. We live in a cosmos of flying and flitting particles and bits, most of which pass through us harmlessly. It is our nature to live with them.

The tsunami is an instant snap shot of what is surely our future, no matter what. To be ground to particle size by glaciers is our fate. In fact, science has found that glaciers have grown over forests before, and the organic matter from the crushed and smashed glacier covered forest is measurable in the melt water running from underneath some of them. Our society will provide even more exotic stuff to be ground to particles and measured in some distant time in the melt water from glaciers not yet formed. But they will, and it will.

Left wing airheads, dumber than right wing airheads. Mega loads!!! Big F..... Deal!!!

Ok bearbait

Wake up and smell the coffee.
Since you posted last night, one of those nukes exploded. Radioactivity is being released that if encountered by a human equals the full natural exposure of one year. People are being evacuated for miles around. Under earthquake/tsunami conditions, these attempts to evacuate are pitiful because communications are still down, roads are upended, and worse.

You are possibly hoping for an earthquake at INL? so you can show us all how SAFE their reactor is -- not. See the research on http://environmental-defense-institute.org .

You must work for the nuke industry, because every other intelligent research-wise person rejects nuclear power as "clean and green" (according to the industry). It is neither clean nor green: from start with the mining of uranium to finish with lack of adequate storage for rad-waste, and ultimately protection from meltdowns and explosions.
Check out the Japan nuke news today on http://www.nirs.net.

These comments and their reference to the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan are reminders to all of us of the fleetingness of life and the temporary-ness of the things we humans build.
The problems at the nuclear power plants point to the fact that our society is willing to take major risks in order to have certain comforts of life that we now consider necessity.
All this makes me think we must continue to protect those few places we've set aside as a nation for their natural beauty and intrinsic health.
More than ever we must stick to the current standards we have for our highways and bridges and not allow multi-national corporations like ExxonMobile to bend the rules to their advantage. The first two megaloads did not meet their permit requirements. There were numerous delays over 15 minutes, a rock face was scraped and lots of tree limbs were broken off. The weight of these loads is too much for the bridges and road bed of highway 12. ITD had to ask 7 trucking companies to stay off the road while the megaload was traveling - how's that for free flowing commerce?
It took ConocoPhillips over a month to get two of their loads from Lewiston to Lolo - at that rate it will take over a decade to move Exxon's 200+. Highway 12 is not a good route for this equipment. There are other options - both of getting the equipment to site as well as manufacturing closer to the destination.

sandy:

Well-said and well-put. Thanks for adding to the sanity around here!

Seeking Nirvana through the rejection of technology and manufacturing is self-delusional and futile.

I just am home from a gun show. Haven't read the current news. So I went to Drudge and the lead story was the nuclear plant explosion.

NOT a nuclear explosion. Super heating caused cooling water to break down into its natal gases. The explosion was a hydrogen explosion, in the building that houses the reactor. It happened while venting steam. The result is that now there is far less radioactivity in the atmosphere, or so it is being measured. The reactor is contained in a sealed exotic metal vessel, and there is no danger of a Chernobyl kind of meltdown. OR so said a Russian nuclear scientist. The Japanese nuclear engineers are beginning to use sea water to cool the vessel, an action that has never been tried.

The big tourist town of Hiroshima was the epicenter of a nuclear bomb so long ago. The world has not come to an end. Energy Luddites want to cover the desert with solar panels, which have to be constructed of mined materials. Connected to the grid with mined materials. I don't give a tinker's damn what you do, convenience comes with a price and a resource use. Even if you want to camp out in a cave and chase acorns, pine nuts and squirrels for a living. Reasonable use is the only answer, or some way to convince the breeding, illiterate, poverty worn third world True Believers not to keep on having children. It is not old people, or the people now here who are going to suffer. That is reserved for those unborn generations down the road who got no prior consideration for their predecessors. I am not worried about nuclear meltdowns from earthquakes. I do worry about my brick house falling down on my shoulders. I do worry about what unborn great grandchildren will face in this changing world. Nuclear power is not one of the things I worry about. I do worry about single purpose religious zealots intent of killing all who don't convert or any they might in jihad. I do worry as much about single world economics as I do single world religion. I do wonder about single minded eco-obsessives who also want to force their religion of Gaia on the rest of the World.

I have a question for the truly religious muslims of the world: Is it true Allah does not take sides?? Because it is muslim brother against muslim brother across the middle east today. The despots with the biggest weapons are winning, in the name of Allah. Or as they say in Polebridge: Jihad is best if kept in the family. Sorta like incest.

I bought ammunition for an old rifle at the gun show. No sense having a shooter with no bullets to run through it. I was standing in front of a table looking at something, and a man next to me put his arm around me and said "Honey..oh, your not my wife." I said "No I am not and you should tell her to lose some weight." He told my I could do that, but he wouldn't dare. We parted, as friends, I think..

I will keep my computer on so I can read about the immanent nuclear explosion, should it happen. But is hasn't, yet.

bearbait you might want to cut down on your fox news consumption. . .I thought this was a thread about megaloads. . .

Garcia:

Another typically Garcian obtuse comment. Technology is not being objected to, dummy.
The issue is this (can't draw pictures on these comment formats):
There were and are alternative ways of getting oil co. stuff up to Canada--the Interstates. Duh.

The metal workers still say that they could have built these things on site in Billings and up in Alberta and doing it that way could have provided jobs and training in areas and trades where both America and Canada need younger replacement workers with these skills.

CNN just posted this: "The IAEA said investigators in Japan found radiation levels have returned to normal at the Onagawa nuclear power plant. "

"The metal workers still say that they could have built these things on site in Billings and up in Alberta and doing it that way could have provided jobs and training in areas and trades where both America and Canada need younger replacement workers with these skills."

Too expensive for those Multinational Corps. Much cheaper to build em and ship em.
USA, home of ticket sellers and chambermaids, what a country.

"...a rock face was scraped and lots of tree limbs were broken off. "

Oh no! That's terrible.