They aren't even weapons at this point. (You know, the "W" in "WMD")

They are toxic waste.

Saddam had ammo dumps everywhere. Saddam wasn't a big fan of maintenance and upkeep, so you are going to find a lot of old, dangerous junk in these places.

The NY Times article suggests that the Pentagon did not crow about these finds precisely because they were pre-1991 junk and not the WMDs that we were promised. The press would have laughed at them. As to keeping the number of injured servicemen secret, that is the default behavior of the Pentagon going back to Agent Orange in Viet Nam. I have heard rumors that the Pentagon is keeping the number of servicemen injured by depleted uranium secret, also.

I believe that the Pentagon actually thought that Saddam had an active chemical weapons program going on when we invaded Iraq. A modern army such as the U.S. army has little to fear from chemical weapons. What they didn't know was that Saddam had given up making chemical munitions when Clinton bombed all the chemical plants.

AC above is totally wrong. Saddam was cooperating fully with the inspectors when we attacked him. He was begging us to inspect whatever we wanted. There were UN inspectors on the ground when George W. Bush told them to get out because he wanted to start bombing.

You run the pumps before the reactor starts up and after it shuts down. You use the electricity from one of your other nuclear reactors to do this. Electrical power is easier to pass around than steam power.

If you are thinking about running a steam turbine on primary reactor coolant remember that it is highly radioactive.

Inject some halon or something. Or use big fans to disperse the gas.

The first day of the accident, when they were running on batteries, they should have got another generator in there and hooked it up. It's a week later and they are just now doing that. Now they have to dig through rubble and endure massive doses of radiation.

Putting the electrical switching equipment below sea level in a tsunami prone area was pretty stupid, too.

There should be a regulation to have a backup generator 50 miles away that can be air dropped into the reactor site. There should be connections already in place for hooking it up.

Engineering Corynebacterium glutamicum for isobutanol production

or pdf download:

doi:10.1007/s00253-010-2522-6

LD50 for isobutanol is 2460 mg/kg.

The orally lethal dose in humans of pure ethylene glycol is approximately 1.4 mL/kg.

"Higher" alcohol usually means that it has more carbon atoms --- 4 in this case vs. 2 for ethanol.

I would say that isobutanol is a "better" alcohol for fueling cars than ethanol because it has a higher energy density, doesn't evaporate as much and doesn't suck water out of the air.