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More than a month into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the oil is coming ashore and polluting the Gulf of Mexico in a plume stretching from the surface to the seabed. The Deepwater Horizon gushes oil and gas without ceasing. And when the New York Times reports that the government is still issuing permits to drill despite President Obama's call for a moratorium, the Department of the Interior explains those permits away as being for new allowances for work on existing wells.
Last night, we heard from another branch of the government. Energy Department Secretary Steven Chu was our first Geek Week guest, invited because – as a Nobel Prize physicist with a background in alternative energy, he knows the science and the policy at work. Chu shared his understanding of the technology behind capping the well, and he also told us he knows the news.
The key exchange:
MADDOW: It just seems like we've now proven it's not safe to drill this deeply because we don't know how to fix it when things go wrong at this depth. How could we ever approve this going forward unless there are some major technological advances?
CHU: Well, I don't know the details of what was approved and not approved, I only know what I read in the papers. But let me just say that it is very important as we go forward to look at what things we can do to guarantee that it would be highly unlikely that something like this will ever happen again.
MADDOW: Mr. Secretary, I would say I'm worried that you only know what you read in the papers about what's being approved. One of the things that's been frustrating is to hear the Obama administration announce there's a moratorium on going forward with new approvals for offshore drilling and then to keep reading in the paper over and over again that actually, even though that's been announced publicly, the
approvals have kept chugging along. Is there a situation here in which the right hand of the government doesn't know what the left hand is doing?
I've been worried about the relationship between the government and BP. I'm starting to worry about the internal relationship among government agencies in terms of actually knowing what we're doing right now.
CHU: In the "New York Times" this morning I read that there was an interpretation of what you mean by new permits to drilling, that's what I read in the "New York Times." And personally, I think we should stop all new drilling, whether it's pre-approved or whatever until we get to the bottom of this. I think that will be done. And so, yes, you know, the government is a big bureaucracy, and I hope that's been fixed.
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Secretary Chu: so not impressive.
I was hoping Secretary Chu would be reassuring last night. Not even close. The White House has finally admitted the federal gov’t has neither the expertise nor equipment to stop this disaster.
The bottom line is this country should have begun the conversion to renewable energy sources decades ago. I have lost all faith that President Obama will do anymore to take us in that direction than his predecessors. I’ve heard all of his speeches about where he wants to lead us. He is an eloquent speaker, but his words are hollow. Very disheartening.
I'm just impressed Chu actually owned up to the government's inability to take charge in a directed and effective manner. It's damning with faint praise, but at least there's no "Heck of a job, Brownie" going on.
It wasn't a good showing for Chu, probably because he's a physicist, not a politician, and probably because Rachel had it right when she said one part of the Obama administration doesn't know what the other part is doing. This is beyond a political disaster, the environmental destruction will affect us all on this planet for generations to come...I don't want to hear my that the Sec of Energy is getting his info from the NY Times and that the POTUS spent the night at a fundraiser in San Francisco. Sure not the change I voted for in 2008.
There were a few things that Mr. Chu said that bothered me, also. One was the disposal of waste from nuclear power. His solution was that we will be able to burn more of the uranium, so there won't be as much waste, and that in the years ahead, physicists will be able to decrease the amount of waste even further. To hear pure speculation from someone who should know, is frightening when we're talking about a power with the ability to annihilate the whole population.
Taking chances without preparation for correction, is a very viable concern for all of us right now. Our lives, as we know them, have been extremely threatened with the Gulf disaster. We MUST be able to trust our government to do everything possible to keep us and our environment, safe. That's why we send them our taxes.
I don't like nuclear power, especially when it's being handled by humans. We've witnessed what can happen to our environment when man cuts corners for profit. I doubt that phenomenon is just privy to the oil industry.
We have all heard the old saying; "The root of all evil is the love of money." It isn't politicians or oil well executives who are destroying our country. It's the love of money. Not the money, but the 'love' of it. Moses would call the almighty dollar a pagan God.
Rachel did a good job of interviewing and challenging some of Secretary Chu's comments, but I'd like to see today's best investigative journalist go a lot further on the issue of the Obama Administration's recent conversion to nuclear power. The industry loves to talk about plant safety, because they can make a good case. Two aspectsthey don't like to talk about are disposing of highly radioactive wastes and who pays for the disposal of wastes. Since the industry is generating the wastes, why aren't they paying for the billions of dollars it will take to study the problem and build the depository, not to mention the gazillions more to pay for the monitoring of it for a "million" years (Chu's time standard to store it)?
Let's see: homo sapiens came out of the plains of Africa 50,000 years ago; the first organized settlements were constructed 10,000 years ago. One million years?? That's more incomprehensible than the national debt! And, is Chu assuming that someone in the U.S of A. will be monitoring it for a million years?? Could a mathematician figure out what the present cost to a utility would be for their 20 or more casks of radioactive wastes for that time period? Gazillions? It would be the world's most expensive way to boil water!
Safe disposal and internalizing the real costs are two stopper issues for the industry. Chu's confident assertion that we have plenty of time to figure it out is not shared by many of us, including many nuclear scientists. In any case, paying for their own insurance (now paid by taxpayers) and paying the real costs of long term waste disposal would make wind and solar power look like a bargain.
Well said, J.R.Pease!!! Has our world gotten to the point of being too difficult for us to handle? Rachel's Geek Week is refreshing in itself. We like to know there are really, really smart people out there that can solve these massive problem. But, we've become distrustful of the people, who obviously aren't so smart, that determines whether these 'massive problems' are viable for exploration.
It really doesn't matter how many sophisticated possibilities are available for the ease and enhancement of life when there isn't human ability to initiate them safely.
I think Nuclear power is beyond our control. I, also, think oil wells should not be drilled off shore, for the same reason. We don't have enough 'nerds' to devise, build and then operate such enormous undertakings. They get left to the hard hats and the management jerks. Cost of these operations is prohibitive enough, but the dangers to our earth and life itself, is too magnanimous to even project.
We've overstepped the "Peter Principle" to the max.
Secretary Chu seemed to be trying to avoid answering Rachel's direct, simple questions. Disappointing.
So when does Palin start kvetching about how terribly Dr. Maddow treated Dr. Chu with her hidden agendas and all? Waiting, waiting.
Dr. Chu's assurance that we do not know how to store nuclear waste, but he is sure we can come with something, is a hollow comment. When he worked for President Bush at the Berkeley Lab, it was his responsibility to come up with a solution for nuclear waste, which he never did. Then he closed Yucca Mountain. Is he really that naive to trust that the engineers will come up with a solution when the problem of nuclear waste disposal becomes larger? We sure are in a heap of trouble with him as our energy secretary.
Nuclear power stations take 10 years to come on line from the moment the shovel hits the ground.
They are not carbon neutral as the building uses the carbon they would have produced.
No Nuclear power station anywhere in the the world has been built on schedule & on budget.Typically costs escalate.
We still don't know how to deal with the waste.Dr Chu crossing his fingers & hoping some bright spark will come up with a safe solution isn't encouraging.We've been building these things without a solution to that problem for a long time.
Then there's the obvious big target security problem.
Then there's the decommissioning problem when they have reached the end of their useful life .We don't know how to do that either.
Then of course there's the international hypocrisy problem.We can build them; you can't ;because your going to build a nuclear bomb.Why should any country take any notice of the USA ?
Someone might be able to add to this list but aren't there enough reasons to invest in renewables & put the money in research for renewables
I thought Chu did ok. The drilling permits are issued by the Interior Department and Chu doesn't deal with them. It would be good to get Salazar on about them. I've seen some claims that Interior hasn't issued any permits for new drilling since the moratorium started, which means nobody has been allowed to drill a hole where there wasn't one already. They have issued a bunch of drilling permits, that are not technically for NEW drilling. E.g. you have an old permit to drill a 3000 foot hole, you drill the 3000 feet, and the results make you want to keep drilling to 4000 feet or change the direction of the hole, so you need another permit. Interior has (according to some) interpreted the moratorium to mean: no permits for new holes, but it's ok to permit modification of existing holes. I suppose that's not as bad. I'd be interested in clarification.
As for the nuke waste stuff, weapons proliferation is scarier to me than low level radioactivity sealed up in a rock dome (doesn't seem worse than naturally occuring radioactive ores). Certainly having 10x less of it is a big improvement over what we have now.
Building Nuclear power plants without knowing what to do with the waste, sounds vaguely familiar. It's beginning to look like we don't know a lot more than we do know.
I, also, thought Chu did OK. It was very obvious that he was very intelligent. He also was very honest, which is why we got the 'newspaper information' statement and his view on Nuclear waste. He was the one who managed to get us pictures of the oil spill, so that was good. It really wasn't what he said the bothered me, it was the reality of what he said that bothered me.
I think we need to apply a lot of reverse engineering. By that I mean, we need to know the repercussions and the failures of a project before we start doing it. To just fall in line to stay in front on the world stage can be dangerous, as we all know.
mr. chu. not exactly a fire brand of confidence. he seemed more worried about protecting the prez's image than stopping the spill.
I wonder if he'll get fired over that "joke"? It was a real hardy har har!
This guy is supposed to be a genius nerd, yet he can't do a decent interview. Why does Obama think Chu's ingeniousness in his specialty area means he can suddenly draw forth and unite an army of super-nerds who can solve the oil crisis?
Just because you can name new particles that are created in a super-collider, or whatever, it doesn't mean you have a clue about how to stop an oil leak a mile down!
All this talk about how to keep up with energy demands has left me puzzled as to why most people almost never talk about cutting back on energy use. Conservation seems to me to be more important that production, yet its scarcely touched upon.
Well, we can really tell when Rachel likes someone. Nothing in this interview at all except cheer leading. Nuclear power plants? I thought this guy was going to say just listen and do what I say you stupid people. He sounded just like Axlerod on Hardball. I thought the show was just plain bad.
Rachel Maddow does not really understand energy issues. No comment (or seeming understanding) about peak oil or how energy production constraints can lead to limited economic growth and the end of the way of life as we know it. Energy is the canary in the coal mine that portends to much larger concerns. And the canary is looking pretty drowsy right now.
Instead, she (albeit expertly) brings up traditional left-wing fear-mongering issues such as strip-mining of coal, nuclear power fears (in general) and now the latest "look at the BP well, isn't all offshore oil well drilling bad?" meme. She doesn't understand that risk must be balanced with opportunity (and cost) to maximize overall safety at a low overall cost.
I'm starting to be concerned that her intellect is mostly used to appear thoughtful, rather than used to form important thoughts.
don't worry about "rachel's intellect" jim, it is you who is challenged. if we have lost 15 million barrels of oil to the fragile gulf environment so far, it would represent less than 1 day of oil use in america. so your nonsense that this pathetic colossal disaster being an acceptable trade off for our energy needs is quite simply the stupidest argument i've heard on this subject.
as with a nuclear meltdown, it takes just one major accident to destroy irreplacable segments of our economy and environment for decades, maybe even generations.
so spare us with your idiot "left wing, fear-mongering" political hyperbole. what you have drastically missed is the reality of this situation and what these unnecessary disasters are doing in real time, "to the end of the way of our life as we know it".
12,000-19,000 barrels per day since April 20 means 444,000 to 703,000 barrels as of May 27, but no matter. Perhaps you meant gallons?
I never implied that a burst off-shore oil well is an acceptable outcome under any circumstances. The hard question, which people like you (and presumably Rachel) do not want to ask is what do we displace this oil use with? We can keep buying foreign oil, but the long term implications of that are not great for a number of reasons. We can displace oil use, possibly, but that's a very hard road as well. The same with nuclear power. If not nuclear, then what? Coal? If coal, then what about climate change issues? If you think solar or wind can make a meaningful impact anytime soon (next 30 years) then it is you that has "missed the reality of this situation". Even Sec. Chu sees that, and tried to explain so in his interview.
Oil drilling is bad, coal mining is bad, uranium processing is bad. So is the use of these materials. Bad. Bad. Bad. Rachel articulates that pretty well ("the rape of a mountainside"). What she does not articulate well (or at all, for that matter) is versus what? What is the alternative? If that stuff is bad (which in many ways, I believe it is) then what is the path away from their use? In that she's like most other journalists who just point out how bad something is without pointing out that there are few easy alternative choices, let alone what those choices might be.
She took pains to point out how every President since Nixon has promoted a stance of energy independence for the country, and to no avail. But she made no follow through as to why this has not occurred. You'd think she'd at least be curious.