(Ed has a series of NRC/VT Yankee-meeting live blogged comments on the user diaries sidebar. Kudos for that, and very interesting stuff. I encourage folks to check them out. – promoted by odum)

It’s remarkable that Entergy’s attitude to the NRC is so similar to their stance with Windham Regional Commission: use old or generic data and not-quite applicable methods, promise more info at a later date, and keep going as if you’ve explained everything, but never give the info requested.

Today, the NRC staff seemed very skeptical about ENVY’s process. It remains to be seen if this will be the first time the NRC stands up to a reactor operator requesting a another 20 year operating.

It is clear the NRC is not yet satisfied with what ENVY has presented as their analysis.  

This is about my experience working on Edwards campaign, but it says nothing bad about any Democratic candidate.

Primary season in New Hampshire is odd.  I’m sure, to many of the locals, it’s like a plague of locusts has descended upon the region, having taking an odd migratory stopover on their way from Iowa to South Carolina, Nevada, or some other region.  

For three of the last four days, I was one of those locust.  I already wrote about seeing Edwards in Keene on Sunday (the one day out of the last four we didn’t canvas) and canvassing  and then later seeing Edwards on Saturday.

Today I’m just writing about the experiencing of canvassing, which I’ve done before in previous elections (for Paul Hodes in 2006, for Howard Dean in 2004), and what it means to walk a neighborhood in support of a candidate.

There’s always a problem with me for knocking on peoples’ doors.  I hate it when people knock on my door unsolicited.  So when out with campaign literature, we try to be very respectful of people’s boundaries.  Any house that has any sign outside that indicates “do not disturb,” “no soliciting,” etc… we’d turn around and leave them and mark it on our list.  If they had signs inside their windows indicating specific support for any candidate, we just marked that and moved on.

The list we went from was specific; we didn’t just knock on anyone’s door.  We visited people who were known Democrats or independents who didn’t indicate a final decision on their candidate.  Most of the people we encountered were polite.  We did encounter one Romney supporter, which was a bit of a surprise, and we skipped the house with the giant McCain sign on their lawn, because, really, why approach a house with a sign that’s designed as though it’s meant to be a threat?

I don’t know where this is going.  I don’t know what’s happening tonight.  I don’t know what’s happening in the next primaries.  Three weeks ago, no one was predicting Edwards defeating Clinton in Iowa, just as no one (that includes me) is predicting Edwards defeating Obama in South Carolina. Obama’s got tons of momentum and I’m learning to make peace with the idea of his candidacy.  If that’s how it’s going, I hope he turns out to be a lot more left-wing than his campaigning suggests, but we’ll see.  

In the meantime, campaigning was fun.  Even people who voted for other candidates were friendly for the most part.  A pair of Clinton supporters invited us into their house to warm up this morning.  We ran into an Obama canvasser at one point and traded helpful tips (“the guy at #4 has already voted for Obama” — “The house at #5 both just told us they voted for Clinton”  — “the house at #3 is up for sale and the owners have moved out,” etc.)  I’ve read other posts about dirty tricks from the Obama and Clinton campaigns.  I don’t discount the possibility of stupid juvenile tricks coming from any political campaign, but we had an Obama supporter covering some of the same houses we covered (some before, some after) and there was no indication that he stole or threw out any of the literature we left.  We covered houses in a neighborhood with Clinton supporters who had left door knockers on houses which already had Edwards and Obama knockers and no campaign had tried to remove or hide the other campaign’s literature, at least as far as we could tell.  

I know everything is a bit tense right now, but really, we do have people disagreeing not out of hostility but out of valid differences as to what’s best for the country.  One of my neighbors is a Clinton supporter and I respect why she’s made that choice.  There’s no hostility over our differences.  

A lot of people we talked to Monday said they were still undecided but they didn’t want to hear another word from anyone from any campaign.  I can’t blame them.  I made sure I put them on the “don’t ever bother again” list.  

A couple fun notes about the day:

1. when I walked into the Edwards office to do phone work on Saturday, after we had spent the morning canvassing, one of the other phone bankers was Granny D.  That was awesome.  I got to introduce myself to her and tell her how much I admired her.  She offered me an egg;
2. this is anecdote, third-hand, so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently a few Rudy supporters decided to canvas for their candidate by wearing Yankees gear.  

   In New Hampshire;

   Talk about not knowing your target audience!

3. When doing phone calling, I got a big-time Kucinich supporter who wasn’t hearing any of my Edwards spiel, but instead decided he wanted to try to talk me onto his side.  It was entertaining, but mutually futile in the end
4. we have pranksters in NH, that I’m sure are not at all connected to the campaigns.  This is not surprising.  Apparently, overnight, someone stole a few signs from a Romney house’s lawn, and replaced them with 50+ Edwards signs, arranged in geometric patterns.  Everything about this makes me think “college prank.”    I don’t see why anyone involved in any campaign would do this, but even I can see the humor in it.

   You kids!  Get off that lawn!.

So, now… I’m basically exhausted.  I’ve spent the better part of four days working for a candidate whom I know will not come in first.  I got to shake his hand and thank him on Sunday, which was really a treat.  I walked over five miles today, and almost that much yesterday.  Twenty years ago, walking five miles for a candidate wouldn’t have meant that much to me, but today it seems as though there’s a certain labor of love involved in this.

The most common theme I got from people was that it’s really nice to have good choices of good candidates.  I’ve posted before about why I would rather have Edwards as the nominee than any other choice, but I’m not going to talk about that any further here.  He’s my guy, but I totally get why he’s not everyone’s guy, and I totally get why many people are making the choices they’re making.

So here’s my final comment: whomever you’re supporting in this race, if you’ve volunteered for any Democratic candidate, thank you.  You’re doing something important, even if I disagree with your choice.  It’s a lot of work to take time out from your schedule to campaign for a candidate.  It’s draining, exhausting, both physically and emotionally.  Win or lose, your effort is of value.

(crossposted to Daily Kos)

questions from the public

public questions

Dave Lochbaum, UCS re: water chemistry-

were changes monitored over the operating time and incorporated into predictions?

Entergy- we don’t have to answer you.

Ray Shadis, NEC: will the underlying methods and calculations be available for review and evaluation?

NRC- we use very experienced people here, so we don’t need anyone outside the NRC to verify the data and process. We spent two days at VY reviewing their data and hope you can tell from our questions that we’re trustworthy.

Shadis- considering the Office of Inspector General report (that NRC staff cut and pasted operator/licensee data and arguments directly into their review documents), more public scrutiny is warranted.

NRC-Trust us. If ENVY doesn’t provide us with the information, we will not approve the relicense.

Audette and Smallheer, Reformer and Herald. Please tell us succinctly what happened today, and what are next steps.

NRC- we’ll get back to you on that.

NRC- We’re expecting more info from ENVY before Feb 7 Advisory Committee on Rractor Safety meeting.

Entergy- we’ll get back to you on that

Entergy- there is some significant evaluation work going on so we can show you this is accurate, but we haven’t done the work yet.

NRC-when? Can you give us a date?

Entergy- we’ll get back to you. We’ll let you know when we’re done.

Entergy summary:

The methods we’ve used have been used traditionally.  We’re building in conservatisms to allow for error and variation.

We’re very comfortable with the way we’re doing this.  

more skepticism from the NRC

——

Entergy- Everything that’s here, there’s nothing new.

NRC: Shear stress could be as much as 41%.

Entergy- the process can be approved subject to site specific review. The methodology can be generic.

NRC- it depends on the experience of the analyst. There’s not enough qualified people in the county to travel around to do that. That’s why people want a clear process.

Entergy- we can do the review in house or with a sub-contractor.

NRC- You wanted to ignore the shear stress until we asked you about it.

NRC- We don’t know how to trust your methodology at all. You’re not going to tell us what kind of shear stress will generate this. My problem is your methodology. You may have used this for the last 20 years. You need to demonstrate it to us.

nozzle stresses

NRC: you put yourself in such a bind.

NRC: is there any new data here?

Entergy- for these nozzles, there is no new data.

Entergy- there’s a couple things we did based on our experience. Ran a different analysis on this nozzle. This is not a right angle nozzle, it has an extra bend.

Shear stresses are significant. Worked backwards to show our other calculations have a similar result, and are therefore accurate.

NRC: how many nozzles have this geometry at VY?

Entergy- this is the only one.

NRC- You cannot even show me the magnitude of the shear stress.

5 MINUTE BREAK  

Well, this is interesting. ABC News is reporting that turnout in today's primary is “absolutely huge”, and like towns like Portsmouth, Keene, Hudson and Pelham are actually concerned about running out of Democratic ballots.

[Dep. Sec. of State]Scanlan said that the Secretary of State's office is sending additional ballots to Portsmouth and Keene (traditionally Democratic strongholds), Hudson (Republican leaning with significant numbers of independents) and Pelham (large number of independents).

According to Scanlan, the ballot strain seems to be on Democratic ballots, which suggests that the undeclared voters are breaking for the Democratic primary. New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner predicted that 90,000 undeclared voters would vote in the Democratic primary compared to 60,000 voting in the Republican primary.

This doesn't bode well for Clinton or McCain. Could a blowout be in the works?

Long theoretical discussion, then another example of being out-of-date

Entergy: most vendors use component stresses.

NRC: Just because most vendors use it, doesn’t mean it’s correct. 25 years ago, if you told me to use that, I would. Today, I would refuse.

Nozzle calculations

Entergy: This is not VY, we’re showing you, this is a generic picture, not specific to ENVY.

Entergy:

We used a method that was commonly used 25 years ago.

Simplistically, if I model a sphere and want to model a cylinder, I could increase the diameter in the calculation because the cylinder has twice the hoop stress of the shere. This bounds the difference between the sphere and the cylinder.

“I think the non-linear aspect of it is very small.”

The nozzles introduce a discontinuity

NRC: the geometric discontinuity is in your model. You have to demonstrate to me the shear stress and nominal stress are very close.

ENVY: the nozzles we examined were not from VY.

Normal hoop stress should be 2.65. This would not cover the nozzle corner.

Entergy- we’re getting off on a tangent. We’re trying to explain what we did.

Livish blogging on AGING MANNAGEMENT

Projection uses present water chemistry. Doesn’t account for varying levels of noble metals, etc.

Used different analysis for different nozzles.

NRC: model you used for analysis was standard in the past, but is not necessarily the model to be used in the future. We wanted nozzle corner location addressed. You did not address this. What you used is based on 1970’s when computer time was so expensive.

Entergy: We will address that.

NRC: It’s even more confusing to me after I’ve reviewed your submission. I want specific numbers.