Northwest Now: Nuclear Tank in Washington State Leaking Radioactive Waste

Northwest Now

Nuclear Tank in Washington State Leaking Radioactive Waste

In a report circulated by the Associated Press, Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced late Friday afternoon a tank at the Hanford Nuclear Plant, the nations most contaminated nuclear site, is currently leaking radioactive waste. According to the report, the tanks which are “long past their intended 20-year lifespan” hold millions of gallons of nuclear waste. The suspected leaking tank holds nearly 447,000 gallons of radioactive sludge from decades of plutonium production. Inslee stated the leak could vary from 150 to 300 gallons over the course of a year, likely resulting in a long term contamination threat to groundwater and rivers. Inslee blamed spending cuts and the incompletion of a $12.3 billion plant to safely convert the waste into a more stable form for the tank’s neglect. The nuclear site sits directly on the Columbia river, the biggest waterway in the Pacific Northwest.

 

 Photo Via No Water-No Life

 

Our Pacific Northwest: Artificial Leaves Lead The Way To a Sustainable Future

Our Pacific Northwest

Artificial Leaves Lead The Way To a Sustainable Future

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have found inspiration in something we all take for granted on a daily basis. In a report filed by the San Francisco Chronicle this week, scientists have developed a rough prototype of artificial leaves that have the ability to convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into a chemical fuel. The process, which mimics the process of photosynthesis, has the potential to develop what they call a “drop-in” fuel which could power our automobiles and mass transit without releasing greenhouse gases into the air. The article went on to state that this process of artificial photosynthesis has the ability to retain more of the sun’s energy than other bio-fuels and can be easily compacted into a dense fuel which could fuel automobiles over long distances. Although the process is still in its early stages and faces many challenges ahead, we congratulate the scientists of our Pacific Northwest in pioneering a technique which could prove effective in combating our nation’s carbon footprint.



Our Pacific Northwest: Preserving Protest From the Past

Our Pacific Northwest

Preserving Protest From the Past

The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that the National Park Service, usually in charge of preserving the natural world, has made efforts to restore graffiti on a water tower on Alcatraz Island. Normally graffiti within the boundary of a national park is a federal offense; this graffiti was made by American Indian protesters who occupied the island from the winter of 1969 to the spring of 1971. The piece of graffiti restored is a painted 5-foot tall sentence stating: “Peace and Freedom Welcome Home Of The Free Indian Land”. The standoff between the protesters and the federal government made national headlines and helped fuel the Native American equality movement at the time. According to the report, the National Park Service restored the piece because of its social significance, and because that is what they believe the park is all about. Although little else remains of the Native American occupation today, the deteriorating water tower recently underwent a $1.5 million restoration, further preserving a little-known piece of protest history in our Pacific Northwest.

 Picture via San Francisco Chronicle

Our Pacific Northwest: The Floating Remains of a Calamity

Our Pacific Northwest

The Floating Remains of a Calamity

The Seattle Times reported earlier this week that Washington scientists from the state’s ecological department will examine a dock that landed on the shores of Olympic National Park on the state’s northwestern tip. Why so much attention to a perceived useless floating piece of dock? According to the Times report, it is believed the debris is highly likely to have originated from the tsunami that devastated Japan in March 2011. Scientists point to evidence of the debris’ uncanny characteristics to one that floated on the Oregon shore near Newport, which has been confirmed to have broken lose from a fishing port in Japan. Representatives from the Park Service and Fish and Wildlife will be assigned the task of removing any of the 30 species identified on the dock considered to be invasive to the national park. The assessment of the dock could not only give state scientists insight, but also serve as a reminder of one of the greatest natural disasters in human history, traveling 32 months and roughly 5,000 miles to reach the shores of the Pacific Northwest.



Our Pacific Northwest: Nolan Roquet

Our Pacific Northwest

The University of Washington has announced this week it will award Nolan Roquet with a well-deserved degree. Unfortunately, the dean-listed student with graduate school offers from Stanford and MIT isn’t alive today to accept it. Roquet died September 4, 2012 at the age of 24 after a nearly six-year battle with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer. Although Roquet was diagnosed the summer of his freshman year in 2006, The Seattle Times reported Roquet excelled as an engineering student, volunteered at a Ronald McDonald House for children hospitalized with life threatening illnesses, and tutored high school students for the SAT. Roquet was only a few credits from graduating before his death, prompting the Uuiversity to award a rarely given posthumous degree. Empirical magazine would like to take this opportunity to recognize and celebrate the incredible life of Nolan Roquet, a young man who embodied the Pacific Northwest’s pioneering courage and spirit in the face of insurmountable adversity.

Announcing the Best Fiction and Poetry of the Year

Just In Time For The Holidays

Cool Waters Press announces its first annual collection of the best fiction and poetry published in Empirical magazine. We here at Empirical love to not only produce a quality magazine, but as well bring great authors (both fiction and non-fiction) and poets to the forefront of the publishing industry. We will be featuring excerpts from the collection throughout the month, but I have included a broad overview:

May 2012 

The Storytellers – Laura Rittenhouse (fiction) 

Picnic – Kenneth Weene (fiction) 

Syrinx – Nina Kossman (poetry) 

My Doctor – Troy Jollimore (poetry) 

Your Voice – Walter William Safar (poetry) 

Psychadelic Substance – John Elywn Kimber (poetry) 

Belief Systems – Betsy A. Riley (poetry)

June 2012

The Solitary – Anne D’Arcy (fiction) 

Hush – Mikelle Gaines (fiction) 

Street Bequest – Cake! (flash fiction) 

“L” is for Lichen – Martin Willitts, Jr. (poetry) 

Mother – Hazel Quigley (poetry) 

On a Theme by Keats – George Freek (poetry) 

Chalk Talk – Marc Shapiro (poetry) 

Exist – Rachel Kuintzle (poetry)

July 2012 

Wonderland, Neverland, and Oz – Randall Auxier (fiction) 

Beside Blue Horse Creek – Louise Young (fiction) 

A Flight of Paranoia – Derek Keeling (fiction) 

Paper Palace – Jami Kali (poetry) 

Winter Flies – Gary Metras (poetry) 

Submarine – Christopher Woods (poetry) 

Silent Symphony – Betsy A. Riley (poetry)

August 2012 

Sneakers – Aaron Gudmunson (fiction) 

Things Look Nice – William Cass (fiction) 

Charred Cat Ears – Melissa Darcey (fiction) 

The One Who Carries the Sun on His Back – Louise Young (fiction) 

The Imitator – Alexandra Wilson (poetry) 

Japanese Garden in a French Mind – Stephanie Sears (poetry) 

To Perform – Maude Lauke (poetry) 

Energy Independence – Edward Zahniser (poetry) 

Assisted Living – Mercedes Lawry (poetry) 

In Paris – Catherine Edmunds (poetry)

September 2012 

My Thoughts Exactly – Jennifer Hanno (fiction) 

Coyote Dreams – Louise Young (fiction) 

The Farm – Sabah Muhammad (fiction) 

Here – Robert Balun (fiction) 

Let Her Be a Flower – Lara Gularte (poetry) 

Joining the Thousand – Maude Larke (poetry) 

Conference of Crows – Francis Opila (poetry) 

Scratch Apple – Christopher Bacavis (poetry) 

Yang Guifei’s Welcome Feast – Bryan Jones (poetry)

October 2012 

One Brother – Karim Julien (fiction) 

Discontinuity – Mike Berger (poetry) 

Johnny – CS Fuqua (poetry) 

Bathsheba – Gary Corseri (poetry) 

The Woman in McDonalds – Richard Luftig (poetry) 

The Rites of Wealth – Lorna Davis (poetry) 

Savages Came – Christopher Wolfe (poetry)

November 2012 

In My Father’s Silence – Finn Kraemer (fiction) 

What I’d Ban – Carol V. Davis (poetry) 

Molar – Carol V. Davis (poetry) 

Cycling – Travis Laurence Naught (poetry)

December 2012 

Maman, Maman – Jaime O’Neill (fiction) 

Globster – Laura Elizabeth Woollett (fiction) 

Shadows in Winter – F. Jay Fuller (fiction) 

Capsized – Shannon Rooney (poetry) 

Within the Going – Peggy Aylsworth (poetry) 

The Bridge, the Warrior, and Blue Eyes – Peggy Aylsworth (poetry) 

Drought Conditions – Travis Laurence Naught (poetry) 

Voices II – Carol V. Davis (poetry)

As you can see, there is a lot of wonderful poetry and fiction in this collection. It is available in print and on Kindle. Be sure to follow the blog to receive updates about stories from the Empirical archives, as well as what we are planning in the future.

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