Pontifical Skiing

Drive an hour out of Rome and you’re already in the snow. John Paul II honed in on that fact as Holy Father and hit the hills out in the Abruzzi for some winter skiing.

Archbishop Dziwisz, then the Pope's secretary, recounted in his work 'A Life with Karol'  how they would sneak past the Swiss Guards so they wouldn't know the Pope was leaving: "As the vehicle left the pope's residence at Castel Gandolfo, another Polish priest in the passenger seat 'pretended to read a newspaper in order to hide the Holy Father,' who was sitting in the back of the car with Dziwisz." (From: Pope John Paul II Hit the Ski Slopes Incognito.)

We didn’t have to get past any guards to return to the same hills, but Father Bill and I did appreciate the short drive.

And the short lines that come from skiing midweek.

Once we hit the slopes you could see they still had high class visitors today: here Mary scans the descent from the summit:

Conditions were ideal with fresh powder, and though it was sunny when we arrived it looked like more was on the way.

  

With plenty of runs to choose from, it was a happy discovery that the one we spent the most time on had been renamed Giovanni Paolo II—run number 16.

 

Don't Wait till Tomorrow

Help with the relief of Haiti today! Pitch in with just a few clicks: one site that already has people on the ground is Mary's Meals Haiti Quake Appeal--their support for children and families is one of the many efforts that would be vitalized by your contribution.

1000 Years of Energy

With no carbon footprint.

And potentially so cheap you could let the meter run.

What’s not to like?

Meet Thor: not the Norse god, but the attributive element Thorium.  Wired Magazine’s January issue blows the lid on this readily available element.  Imagine nuclear power without the radioactive threat or the bomb-making capabilities:

After it has been used as fuel for power plants, the element leaves behind minuscule amounts of waste. And that waste needs to be stored for only a few hundred years, not a few hundred thousand like other nuclear byproducts. Because it’s so plentiful in nature, it’s virtually inexhaustible. It’s also one of only a few substances that acts as a thermal breeder, in theory creating enough new fuel as it breaks down to sustain a high-temperature chain reaction indefinitely. And it would be virtually impossible for the byproducts of a thorium reactor to be used by terrorists or anyone else to make nuclear weapons.

Narrating Kirk Sorensen’s rediscovery of a 1950’s document nine years ago, and his study of the research going into the element, the article points the way to a space-age innovation in energy production.

If we knew about thorium in the 1950’s, why didn’t we run with it?

Remember the no-bomb-making part?  Back in the 1950’s (and since) we wanted to make a lot of warheads—and uranium based plants gave us plutonium-239, which we needed to fuel the Cold War.

Now while we’re all fans of being able to blow away the entire surface of the planet, we’ve already arrived at that capability.  And thorium plants present no risk of meltdowns—so Chernobyl will never come to a theater near you.

Wired notes that the U.S. has enough thorium reserves to power us for 1,000 years—but it’s Russia that’s leading the way with thorium utilization.  Likewise India and China are following suit, with India expecting to generate 25% of its power with nuclear power by 2050.

Chemical and Engineering News in their November 16 article cite an attendee in an October Thorium Energy Alliance conference: "it's possible to have a Ph.D. in nuclear reactor technology and not know about thorium energy."

It’s time element 90 entered the conversation.