Chips it’s the Russians again

There are many fine things about the Russian nuclear industry. For example, it has plenty of radiant women in it, which is why they have the Miss Atom Beauty Competition, open to any woman aged 18-34 who works in the nuclear sector in Russia or other ex-Soviet states, or is studying nuclear science at university. The most glowing among them wins a mink coat, second prize is diamond jewellery and third, a Swiss watch. You can go along and vote at http://miss2007.nuclear.ru/eng/

Another thing is that the Russian nuclear industry has a waste disposal program, which is commendable. It involves such things as burial of solidified radioactive wastes in concrete burial units or trenches, and injection of untreated low-level liquid wastes into deep underground porous rocks surrounded by layers of clay, etc.
Which is pretty much best practice around the world. According to Anthony F. Earley Jr, “The U.S. is producing 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel each year, with 50,000 metric tons held on site at existing nuclear facilities. While that approach may be inefficient, it is perfectly safe. For example, at our Fermi 2 nuclear plant, used fuel has accumulated in our fuel pool which will reach capacity in 2010. We will build a dry cask storage facility similar to the two other facilities already in place at other Michigan nuclear plants. These facilities can safely store waste for decades.”

Russian investigations of potential geologic repository sites are ongoing.

Back here in SA, our former health minister (and there we were back then, thinking Manto would be a new broom) and current minister of foreign affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, has assured us that Russia will be doing all it can to assist us in our quest for more nuclear energy than we could have conjured up in our most febrile dreams. Wonder if we’ll get to host some of their waste in return for the assistance?

7 out of 10 Americans now believe nuclear energy to be safe, affordable, reliable and clean. The world currently has about 442 nuclear power stations. America needs 50 new ones, China’s adding 63, India’s building 7, Russia has plans for another 42, etc etc...

If it sounds like earth’s about to become one giant nuclear landfill, that’s because it is. But let’s not have any furrowed brows and backward thinking here, because it’s perfectly safe, as Mr Early Jr has said. Be positive. We’re all in this together and for the sake of morale we should not go off and google negative words like “Dounreay” anymore ok? Everyone knows that the Scots are either mad or retarded in any case, and those things won’t happen anywhere else.

Everything’s going to be just fine.

South African Ballet Theatre needs YOU

Koos Kombuis wouldn’t mind if the State Theatre got bulldozed. He said:

“Dis nie asof die Staatsteater my koud laat nie. Ek het sterk gevoelens oor hierdie saak, en dit ontstel my, want ek weet my opinie is onlogies, onfatsoenlik en hoogs aanvegbaar.
Om heeltemal eerlik te wees: ek haat die fokken Staatsteater… om die eenvoudige rede dat dit ’n verskriklike lelike gebou is.”

I could not agree more. The sheer ugliness of the State Theatre is only one of many reasons why, if you’re in Gauteng and plan on going to the ballet this March, but you can only afford one ballet not two, you should choose SABT’s Romeo and Juliet at the Civic Theatre instead of St Petersburg’s Swan Lake at the State Theatre. This is not an advertisement, it’s my duty. The SABT is a hard working company with a big heart and a whole lot of soul, and they need us more than the Russians do. Ballet is not soccer or rugby after all, toemaar, dis orraait, we all have our little things and in any case we don’t mind at all if soccer fans don’t feel like going to the ballet. Or rugby ones even. It’s not that we have anything against rugby fans you know, some of our best friends are… where was I going with this? Oh yes –

So St Petersburg are back for a rerun of their blockbuster swanlake and the tragedy is that the Gauteng leg runs alongside the SABT’s season of Romeo and Juliet. Shame, I don’t think they spitefully planned it like that on purpose. But it will puncture the SABT’s ticket sales because people see the words “Russian” and “Ballet” together on the same page and then it must be holy or something so that’s what they’ll rush off to see.

Well the SABT needs us more. Where the Russian ballet companies are their country’s darlings and want for nothing, we have to set up cake tables to raise funds so our own companies can have refurbished sets. And if someone bequeaths a much needed studio piano, we have to have another cake sale for the moving and tuning of that piano. Not that we mind doing it at all, we do it for love. That our dancers themselves couldn’t afford to shop at these cake sales even if they wanted to, is only a blessing if you look at it wrong way up.

Go see Romeo and Juliet. Come on, Swan Lake? A wedding story, with lots of technical showing-off, a gullible prince, a villain who looks like a mosquito who thinks he’s Batman, a wildly eccentric plot (I’m going to be in trouble for this blasphemy) and so many quivering feathers that you can’t see the trees for the tutus? Or Romeo and Juliet. A love story, with swashbuckling swordfighting (ok, foppish fencing then, I can’t tell a lie) and a dependably tragic and satisfying ending. Go for it.

If you happen to hate ballet and would rather stick pins in your eyeballs then sorry for putting you through this.