I personally am totally against TVA nuclear programs. The consequences of a screw up would be horrific and we have dramatic proof, based on our own experience, that TVA will not make any victims whole. This article is behind the KNS paywall but here are excerpts:

“TVA’s small modular reactor project is experimental and unnecessary,” said Don Safer, Tennessee Environmental Council board member. “We now have affordable, safe, proven technologies such as wind, solar and energy efficiency and conservation that can deliver, unlike new nuclear power, which has been a failure.”

While granting the hearing, the board rejected the environmental groups’ contention that TVA has not considered the potential for spent fuel pool fires in requesting an exemption from NRC’s requirement that nuclear power plants have a 10-mile emergency planning zone around them.

In siding with TVA on that issue, the NRC board stated the environmental groups "misunderstood" TVA's request for an exemption, that TVA is asking only to use an alternate emergency plan — "a dose-based, consequence-oriented approach to establish an appropriate (emergency planning zone) size consistent with (U.S. EPA Protective Action Guides) criteria.

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Take your kids outside and show them this:

Time: Fri Oct 13 8:20 PM,

Visible: 3 min, Max Height: 45°, Appears: 10° above NW, Disappears: 44° above NE

It's big and fast and doesn;t blink. Strong binoculars might let you see the rectangular shape that is as wide as two football fields.

A small lack of foresight in locating the bottle opener.

Yelling Spreads More Cold and Flu Virus than Sneezing...

One consequence of this proliferation of droplets? You might want to avoid people who yell a lot. A recent study on the aerosols produced during human speech, which was presented at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics conference this year and is pending publication in a peer-reviewed journal, expanded this research to find that yelling produces 50 times more aerosol particles than talking in a normal voice.

Read more: (link...)

Micah Cash releases his new book this month.

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Deputies found Scott Edmisten, 43, of Johnson City, carrying a .357-caliber Magnum, a loaded .45-caliber semi-automatic, a .223-caliber fully automatic assault rifle, a .308-caliber fully automatic assault rifle, more than 900 rounds of ammunition, and survival equipment, Washington County Sheriff Ed Graybeal said.

Graybeal asked the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to help investigate, since the automatic weapons aren't registered and lack serial numbers. He told The Johnson City Press that Edmisten had apparently modified the AR rifles to make them automatics.

Fox News, Actually

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Hiking -

"I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike!

Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, 'A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers.

Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."

- John Muir

Did you know that? 50 caves in Roane County?

Here's a note from cave geologist extraordinaire, Chuck Sutherland...

With the Fall data release of the Tennessee Cave Survey (TCS) comes the updated Tennessee cave distribution map.

This year 153 new caves were added, and 42 caves removed. Caves get removed either because they have been re-measured since discovery and shown to fail to qualify for the survey (50' horizontal, 30' vertical), or the cave is connected to another known cave and two or more caves become one cave.

In other news White County is still way out in the lead with 1,357 unique caves. The majority of caves in Tennessee occur at a specific geologic contact, and that particular contact is well exposed in White County.

Does anybody really believe Beth Harwell will go against the millions of dollars that the opioid pharmaceutical industry and for-profit prison corporations have spent on our legislature?

“We’re not talking about recreational at all, I’m not for that. I’m not even for smoking marijuana, that causes cancer,” Harwell said. “I’m for oils and edibles and something that can help a lot of people who are suffering from chronic pain.”

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The sun rose due east this morning in summer and will set due west tonight in the Fall.

Putting a Kentucky coal company CEO on the TVA board is a slap in the face to hurricane victims everywhere.

The Tennessean is Jeffrey Smith, deputy director of operations at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Then we have a hedge fund manager and a bank president.

Perhaps the most interesting is Kentucky nominee Kenneth E. Allen, who has retired from a career in the coal mining industry – most recently as chief operating officer of Armstrong Coal, a subsidiary of Armstrong Energy. TVA in recent years has moved away from reliance on coal-fired electricity generation and toward nuclear power and natural gas while Trump in his campaign pledged to try and restore health to the coal mining business.

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Dismissal of McFarland's Lawsuit Upheld by State Supreme Court

A majority of the Court held that the unsuccessful candidate’s election contest was, in effect, an appeal from the Commission’s previous decision, but was filed after the legal time limit. As a result, the Court dismissed the lawsuit.

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From the Daily Kos Political Roundup:

TN-Sen: Andy Ogles, the former head of the state chapter of the Koch Brothers-affiliated group Americans for Prosperity, recently announced he will mount a Republican primary challenge against Sen. Bob Corker, and he has already secured the support of one influential Tennessee Republican. Wealthy businessman Lee Beaman announced that he plans to form a super PAC and raise $4 million to support Ogles' candidacy, meaning Ogles should have plenty of cash if he can capitalize on his connections to the Koch donor network and if Beaman's plan bears fruit.

Beaman had reportedly wanted state Sen. Mark Green to challenge Corker a few months ago, and while Green said in August he wouldn’t run, he stated just last week that he was "seriously considering it." However, Beaman has apparently either decided that Green won’t jump in after all, or he has just moved on to Ogles. Corker himself still hasn't decided on whether to seek a third term in this dark-red state, but said last week that he'll make up his mind "very soon."

Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III today expressed in a letter to credit reporting firm Equifax his deep concern that the personal information of over 3 million Tennessee residents has been stolen by unauthorized individuals, leaving consumers vulnerable to identity theft and financial loss. In doing so, he added his voice to those of several other attorneys general who recently wrote to Equifax with similar concerns.

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Tomorrow morning at 6:50 am take the kids outside and tell them to look west. The huge light that flies up from the horizon and across the sky will be the International Space Station.

Time: Tue Sep 19 6:50 AM, Visible: 6 min, Max Height: 54°, Appears: 10° above WNW, Disappears: 10° above SSE

Tennessee state and local governments provide more than $2.5 billion in subsidies such as grants, tax breaks and tax credits to businesses each year, but there’s often little public information provided on whether the taxpayer money is working to produce promised jobs.

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The space craft will be sent to a fiery doom in the atmosphere of Saturn. Left alone it could crash into one of Saturn's moons and possibly contaminate their potentially life bearing surfaces and oceans. The last images will take 86 minutes to beam back to Earth and will take a couple of days to process. Cassini has sent back spectacular images and priceless scientific data about Saturn, the most fascinating planet in our solar system.

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Here is the free e book of Cassini images from NASA: (link...)

I'm ready to be done with Irma, so, Yeah, I'm a science geek. Check out the names scientists have given to places on Jupiter:

Dalmatian Zone/Eye of Odin
Dark Eye/STB Ghost East End
Coolest Place on Jupiter
Renslow/Hurricane Rachel

Now go there: (link...)

Yes, this is long. But, the Southern Environmental Law Center has put together an excellent response to TVA's move to cut the public's right to speak out on significant environmental actions by TVA.

But we have beautiful weather for Muirfest today!

In addition to some great music and ecology walks and talks, we'll release 2600 of these babies. Kids of all sizes can release a fish. We'll start at 2 and be done by 2:45 if all goes well.

Great presentations and music starts at 3 and goes to 7:30:

JASON ESKRIDGE, Jay Clark and the Tennessee Tree Beavers, Outta the Blue!

Bring camp chairs or blankets for the music.

It's all FREE!

Thanks to the Fisheries Division at TWRA for setting up the lake sturgeon release at Muirfest Saturday Sept 9. We'll be at the cove bridge and plan to release all 2600 sturgeon starting at 2 PM. We hope a lot of kids (of all ages) will come out and personally release a sturgeon which could grow to 6 feet long, weigh 200 pounds and live for over half a century in Watts Bar Lake.

Tennessee Uncharted sturgeon release

Previously on RoaneViews

With Harvey on track to be the most expensive natural disaster to ever hit the USA, Hurricane Irma has strengthened faster than observers expected and is already a category 3 hurricane.

(The National Hurricane Center) said it was too early to know what impact Irma could have on the Bahamas and United States, where there are no warnings or watches currently in effect.

"Regardless, everyone in hurricane-prone areas should ensure that they have their hurricane plan in place, as we are now near the peak of the season," the NHC said.

After my first trip to Japan a friend asked me what I saw? The main thing I noticed was the lack of fat people and that the old folks were really active and healthy. They live an average of 7 years longer than we Americans do and then tend to decline for 6 months and pass on. It shouldn't take a study to prove that a healthy lifestyle improves your old age but now we have one. It may not get much play on the corporate media because living healthy does not make money for the healthcare industry.

...Greater distances walked and better-quality diet were associated with a relative compression of the disabled period. Obesity was associated with a relative expansion of the disabled period. Smoking was associated with a shorter life and fewer years of able life.

"We discovered that by improving lifestyle, we can postpone death, but even more so, we can postpone disability -- in fact, it turns out that we're compressing that disabled end-of-life period to a shorter timeframe," said Dr. Anne Newman, senior author of the study. "This clearly demonstrates the value of investing in a healthy lifestyle."

I have to go for a long hike now, because I can't give up bacon.

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