Lest we forget (Cheney Energy Task Force and 2005 Energy Bill)

[jpak]

This is was they did...

http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/020521.asp

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0826-02.htm

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/nuclear/index.asp

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10832.

And this is what they got....

http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=3&catid=1351

http://www.citizen.org/print_article.cfm?ID=13980

Power Corruption and Lies...

[Double T]

1. The 'TASK' was to devise as many ways possible to SCREW.....

the American people on EVERY energy source.

[jpak]

2. "Mission Accomplished"

n/t

[rodeodance]

3. many have forgotten sad to say.

[wishlist]

4. I predict measures in bill will eventually cause electric rates to soar

Right now many people are using electricity instead of gas and oil for heat this winter because electric rates have not gone up as much. But the bill includes deregulatory measures and stripping of state regulation and anti-trust safeguards of electic utilities. Because of this bill and the natural gas crunch, I don't expect to see reasonable electric rates for much longer.

[O.M.B.inOhio]

6. Maybe it will be a boon for providers of private solar & wind power

[jpak]

5. The nuclear power industry was well represented

and handsomely rewarded for its efforts....

The cast of playah's...

Exelon Corporation had contact with the task force six times. (Exelon contributed $910,886 to Republican candidates and the GOP from 1999 to 2002.)

Nuclear Energy Institute had contact with the task force 19 times. (NEI contributed $437,404 to Republican candidates and the GOP from 1999 to 2002.)

United States Enrichment Corporation had contact with the task force 12 times.

Westinghouse had contact with the task force nine times. (Westinghouse Electric Company contributed $65,060 to Republican candidates and the GOP from 1999 to 2002.)

Southern Company had contact with the task force seven times. (Southern contributed $1,626,507 to Republican candidates and the GOP from 1999 to 2002.)

and their ill-gotten gains...

Taxpayers pay 50% of the cost of licensing new nuclear power plants.

Taxpayers pay utilities up to $2 billion if the NRC delays nuclear power plant construction.

Extension of the Price-Anderson Act (taxpayers directly subsidize their accident liability).

Taxpayer loan guarantees for up to 80% of the construction cost of 6000 MW of new nuclear capacity.

$6 billion in production credits (1.8 cents per kWh as opposed to 1.5 cents per kWh for wind power).

3 million bucks to the GOP got them $12 billion in goodies...

Who sez money don't talk??????

[NNadir]

7. I was wondering why they're building 24 nuclear reactors in South Africa,

24 in India, 19 in China and 4 in Indonesia, 2 in Vietnam, 2 in Bulgaria, 8 in South Korea...

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm

Now I am informed of the answer:

Dick Cheney! Dick Cheney! Dick Cheney!

:eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes:

It is too bad that we can't harness the energy of the endless tears, with hydroelectric dams, of the failed anti-environmental anti-nuclear movement as it loses international credibility in the face of reality.

Humanity faces an emergency and it really doesn't have time for the tired repetition of logical fallacies of the type represented by "guilt by association."

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html

Example:

"The al Qaeda Cheering Section:

"The most telling moment in last night's speech came after the president noted that 'key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year.' In response, notes the New York Times, 'some critics in Congress applauded enthusiastically.' If Osama bin Laden watched the speech, one imagines him applauding too."

Source: James Taranto, "The al Qaeda Cheering Section", Best of the Web Today, 1/21/2004...

...Exposition:
Guilt by Association is the attempt to discredit an idea based upon disfavored people or groups associated with it. This is the reverse of an Appeal to Misleading Authority, and might be justly called "Appeal to Anti-Authority". An argument to authority argues in favor of an idea based upon associating an authority figure with the idea, whereas Guilt by Association argues against an idea based upon associating it with disreputable people or groups.

Exposure:

McCarthyism was a specific version of Guilt by Association in which an individual, organization, or idea was associated in some way with communism. The form of the argument was as follows:

Target - Middle Term - Communism

Here, an association is made between the target of McCarthyism and communism by linking both through some middle term. For instance, in the 1960s some anti-communists attacked support for civil rights by pointing out that the Communist Party of the United States also supported the civil rights movement. It was then argued that anyone who supported civil rights was thereby supporting communism, whether they intended to or not.

Martin Luther King, Jr. - Civil Rights Support - Communism

This can be reformulated as a categorical syllogism as follows:

All communists are civil rights supporters.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is a civil rights supporter.
Therefore, Martin Luther King, Jr. is a communist.

[jpak]

8. All are guilty

Bush, Cheney, the Corrupt Frist/Hassert/DeLay Congress, the K-Street Kriminals and the Corrupt Nuclear Power Industry - and anyone that supports their policy on nuclear power.

BTW, House and Senate Republicans repeatedly attempted to defund all support for solar and other renewables in last year's Energy Bill - it was the Democrats that fought to keep it.

[NNadir]

9. I love this stuff. It couldn't be better. I guess the rest of the world

is picking up the ball and eating our lunch in the vast thousand exajoule solar PV market electricity market.

:eyes:

Or do they shout "Cheney! Cheney! Cheney!" in Japan? In Germany? Finland? Korea?

Again, as I've taken to pointing out, Ma Bell invented the solar cell in 1954 and immediately began hyping it in terms that are familiar even today.

The international indifference to solar PV may be a matter of return on investment. After all, the solar cell was invented in 1954, and elsewhere yesterday I produced exciting ads from The Bell System of that era promising a glorious solar future, after "just a little more research."

I was recently informed, by someone who claims to know, that 170,000 US homes have solar PV power. The person in question was referring to this as a grand solar PV victory, even though the number of homes in the US is in the hundreds of millions and not the hundreds of thousands.

We have the renewables expenditure budget for 1990 to 1999 available to us. Here it is: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/rea_issues/reatabp2.html

Solar energy got 1.2 billion dollars in that period, a period where no one was yelling "Cheney! Cheney! Cheney!" since Cheney was running Halliburton. Of this, 733 million was an investment in solar PV energy. Thus by simple division we can see that the cost per home serviced by PV electricity in 1990's R&D was $4,300 per household. By extension, we see that to cover the other 105,000,000 households identified by the US Census in 2000, we need only spend another $452,000,000,000 to get solar PV down to the cost of ordinary electricity.

According to the energy information agency, the absolute value, in energy for the wonderful solar PV we hear about, in units of energy, production was 0.06 exajoules in 2003, down from the values for the previous three years. At a federal research expenditure of more than 0.04 cents per kilowatt hour (double the fully loaded cost production at many nuclear plants), the solar business was clearly a rotten investment with very little return.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/rea_data/table2.html#fp

But in the face of a massive global climate change crisis, a crisis the may define the ultimate outcome of humanity, we're supposed to sit by and listen to the same balderdash about the grand solar PV future that we've been hearing since the mid 1950's? Dick Cheney, apparently is not the only nut case on the planet.

The rest of the world seems to know this too, even though Dick Cheney doesn't rule the world (yet).

Of course, we don't do guarantees in the solar PV business do we? We solve problems in the solar PV industry by creating glorious websites with glorious promises. If you try to make us we'll do our usual substitution for producing exajoule quantities of energy, and exercise the logical fallacy (also linked elsewhere) of "guilt by association" and shout: "Cheney! Cheney! Cheney!"

[jpak]

10. LOL!!!!

After 60 years of commercial operation and >$66 billion in subsidies and R&D, the only way to get a new nucular power plant built in the US is for the industry to conspire in secret with Dick Cheney, throw millions at the GOP and obtain $12 billion in subsidies - that's $2 billion per new nuclear plant.

Such a deal - and pathetic.

[NNadir]

11. Dick Cheney! Dick Cheney! Dick Cheney!

For one billion dollars a year, the nuclear industry produces 8% of the world's primary energy, about 30 exajoules saving 400 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

And now for the grand solar PV crowd in exajoules! Um, let's see, it must be somewhere, let's see, well, um, yeah, ITS THE BEST THING EVER IT WILL SAVE US! FUCK YOU DICK CHENEY FUCK FUCK FUCK DICK CHENEY DICK CHENEY DICK CHENEY HASSERT LOL LOL LOL CHENEY CHENEY CHENEY

You say: Dick Cheney!

I say: Exajoules...

You say: Dick Cheney!

I say: Exajoules...

I note that the fossil fuel investment in war, blood and treasure - justified by playing to nuclear paranoia by Dick Cheney! Dick Cheney! Dick Cheney! :eyes: is costing around one trillion bucks.

Now, when fossil fuels are replaced - and I'm open to all solutions except making more big dumb promises that can't be kept - I will be happy to debate the merits of the technologies that have replaced them.

For the record, I favor government subsidies to clean energy, since I am a Democrat. They trouble me not the least, except of course when they are wasted. There has to be a return on the investment.

Political stances

In 1960, Bethe, along with IBM physicist Richard Garwin, wrote an article criticizing in detail the new anti-ICBM defense system that the government was planning to install. In the article that was published in Scientific American, the two physicists described in detail how almost any countermeasure that the US could take would be futile, as the enemy would be able to thwart the system through the use of suitable decoys. He was one of the prime scientific voices behind the signing of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty which prohibited atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Bethe campaigned for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. After the Chernobyl accident, Bethe put together a committee of experts that analyzed the incident, and concluded that a similar episode would not happen in any good US reactor, as the Russian reactor suffered from a fundamentally faulty design and human error also had significantly contributed to the accident. Throughout his life, Bethe remained a strong advocate for electricity from nuclear energy.

In the 1980s, he, along with other physicists widely opposed the Strategic Defense Initiative missile system that was being conceived by the Reagan administration (with considerable support from Edward Teller), arguing against the enormous sums of money spent on it and the feelings of instability and animosity that it would foster. In 1995, at the age of 88, Bethe wrote an open letter calling on all scientists to "cease and desist" from working on any aspect of nuclear weapons development and manufacture. In 2004, he signed a letter along with 47 other Nobel laureates endorsing John Kerry for president of the United States citing George W. Bush's misuse of science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bethe

[jpak]

12. Hysterical nonsense

Dick Cheney was the architect of ChimpCo's nuclear power policy and his Energy Task Force was the nuclear industry's GOP-slush-fund candy store.

Anyone that supports the construction of the nuclear plants funded by the GOP Energy bill supports Bush Administration energy policy - period.

Furthermore, Cheney and the nuclear industry don't give a sweet cherry about CO2 emissions or global warming - in fact, they lobby just as hard against CO2 emissions caps as they do for taxpayer funding of new nuclear power plants.

Oh yeah - there were a lot of guilt tripping physicists from the Manhattan Project days that supported "peaceful" nuclear power (post Hiroshima of course).

I note that such "peaceful" technologies are current sources of tension in the Middle East, South Asia and the Korean Peninsula.

Peaceful my ass....

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Dead_Parrot]

14. "current sources of tension"?

Whereas nobody on Earth is likey to go to war over solar energy. Why is that, I wonder?

[NNadir]

15. People don't kill for 0.061 exajoules. It's not worth it. People kill

for oil.

[jpak]

17. But lots of people are planning to kill lots of I-ranians

because they're building uranium enrichment facilities to fuel their nuclear power plants.

....is it worth it??????

on edit: and North Korea's plutonium production reactor is only rated at 5 MW(e).

...is this too small for concern?????

[NNadir]

19. No they are going to kill Iranians for the same reason they kill Iraqis.

Oil.

It was widely reported in the press, although apparently some credulous people haven't heard about it, that the justification for the war in Iraq - weapons of mass destruction - was a complete lie.

Anyone who understood nuclear technology understood that immediately. People who didn't understand nuclear technology didn't.

Uranium is just an excuse foisted on a nuclear illiterate people. If nuclear issues were really involved, US troops would be in Pyongyang. No oil, no war. It's very simple and very clear.

[jpak]

21. Yes, ChimpCo wants Iran referred to the UN Security Council because of its

ability to refine petroleum.

There is no concern over Iran's plans to build and operate uranium enrichment plants.

Just ask Condi.

:rofl:

[Dead_Parrot]

22. Hmmm

Pakistani nukes: No oil, no problem.
Israeli nukes: No oil, no problem.
Indian nukes. No oil, no problem.
Iranian nukes, maybe, in 10 years time.... PANIC!

[jpak]

24. Jerusalem's nukes are a problem for Tehran

and Karachi's nukes are a problem for New Delhi

and Tehran's potential nukes are a problem for Jerusalem

no problems??????

not so....

[Dead_Parrot]

26. I'm talking about US policy

Or were you referring to a different Dick Cheney?

[NNadir]

28. No, if you think about it, he wants to steal their oil.

One doesn't need to be a Nobel Laureate in Physics to get that. No oil, no war.

:eyes:

Neither Bush nor Cheney give a rat's ass about nuclear issues, except to the extent that they can use them to pull the wool over the eyes of credulous people by appealing to nuclear issues to execute their real purpose. Otherwise there would be troops in Pyongyang. Most people who have a passing familiarity with Bush and Cheney know that these guys have had oil on their brains for as long as they've been in business.

North Korea, I note, is a non-issue in the Bush cabal. Mostly they want to keep it on the back pages of the newspapers. North Korea has enrichment facilities; it also has plutonium. It has long declared its intention to build nuclear weapons - and still it can't get the Bush administration to pay any attention to it whatsoever.

Now, if oil were discovered in North Korea...

Again, it has been widely reported in the news that nuclear issues had nothing to do with the attack on Iraq - the nuclear claims were fabricated, although some people apparently were out to lunch when this was discovered. The nuclear appeal in the run up to Iraq was a deliberate lie. Again, anyone who understands nuclear technology, from Elbaradei down to me, understood that immediately. People who understand the distinctions between nuclear power and nuclear weapons - just as people understand the difference between napalm and diesel oil - can easily recognize a Bushian lie on the subject. People who avoid such distinctions, can't.

In the Iranian case, I note that no one needs uranium enrichment capacity, but then again, I don't think that uranium enrichment is the real issue.

I strongly suspect that the Iranians would almost be fond of a US attack, and I am not so sure about their intent in this nuclear posturing which in any case, has nothing to do with nuclear electricity. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush, through incompetence, have clearly failed in their attempt to secure Iraqi oil, and certainly the US defeat emboldens potential opponents. As external enemies are important and compelling military victories raise internal stature of the governments of most states, the Iranians may have some well calculated intentions in all of this. Maybe they want a war, especially if they have large internal problems that can be shifted on to the shoulders of external demons. The US, the Iranians note, does not dare to nuke oil fields. One suspects that under the current conditions, the Iranians may well be in a position to defeat the US Army in a ground war, since the US Army is clearly exhausted and cannot even occupy the territory it has already conquered. Iran, on the other hand, is a nation that took a million causalities in its war with Iraq and still was left standing. I am not saying that the Iranians are good guys - all war is immoral - but given their assessment of their enemy, such a calculation certainly seems plausible. If so, then it is oil which is destabilizing and oil that has induced the crisis.

Most of the world I believe, gets the current case about the justification for the latest oil war. Many people, I am told, are muttering privately in the UN, "what, again?" I think that only a tiny subset of the world's population - definitely not its strongest thinkers - believes anything that comes out of the White House - especially nonsense about nuclear weapons in oil bearing states.

The world is getting many things. This is why the world is adopting nuclear power. Most people who cannot or will not steal oil, most who understand the real danger of fossil fuels are adopting nuclear power: Even Indonesia, until recently an oil exporter, is in this class:

"Nuclear power plants can produce energy at about 3.5 US cents per kilowatt if their capacity is above 600 megawatts" chief of the National Atomic Energy Agency Soedyartomo Soentono said. The national electricity company currently spends twice the amount for equivalent energy produced from oil. The government aims to reduce oil use for energy production from the current 55 percent to 10 to 20 percent by 2020.

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Trends&loid=8.0.152059704&par=0

The continual attempt at confusion between nuclear weapons and nuclear power is the last refuge of an internationally discredited movement, the anti-environmental anti-nuclear movement. This movement has been swept aside as the world for political, economic, moral and importantly environmental reasons, seeks to disenthrall itself of the shackles of oil. If, and this is not a sure bet, the world survives global climate change, it will do so only through the agency of nuclear power.

The world has seen the truth:

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[jpak]

23. US troops are not in Pyongyang

because NK has hundreds of chemical-capable artillery systems within range of Seoul.

If ChimpCo went after NK's nuclear facilities, thousands of SK civilians would die within the span of a few hours.

[NickB79]

37. We've killed 100,000 Iraqis and 2200+ US soldiers

You honestly think Bush cares about killing thousands of SK civilians?

[jpak]

48. Yes - because a war on the Korean Peninsula would

produce large numbers of US military and SK civilian casualties and threaten not only SK's economy but Japan's as well.

The Carlyle Group would not allow allow this....

[Name removed]

38. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NNadir]

39. And your point is what? That the Isreali government is superior to

Dick Cheney?

You and the Isreali government are experts in Iraqi weapons policy?

Maybe you could go to Iraq with your special knowledge and help Dick Cheney find his weapons. He can't seem to find him though he and his pet monkey are good friends of the Isrealis.

Isreal, as is widely suspected, has many nuclear weapons, although it has no commercial nuclear reactors. There is a "research" reactor at Dimona. The United States has no plans to invade Isreal or North Korea.

The entire planet knows that the invasion of Iraq some 22 years after the Isreali bombing turned up no evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Maybe you didn't hear about that, but it was in the news in a few places. That's right: The US invasion of Iraq was fraudulent. You can look it up. The US had no evidence of an Iraqi bomb program so the US made it up. I cannot say if Isreal participated in this fraud, but the fraud is widely known.

I note that Libya, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and possibly several other countries had nuclear weapons programs and abandoned them. South Africa had 6 bombs actually assembled. They were dismantled. All states possessing nuclear weapons find that they are expensive to make and maintain. Therefore the statement that all nations that possess commercial nuclear technology also make nuclear weapons is fraudulent.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/rsa/nuke/

In any case, whatever risks are associated with nuclear weapons, they are much lower than the risk of global climate change. The world has gone more than 60 years since the invention of nuclear weapons without another one being used on a population center. Global climate change, on the other hand, is happening now with 100% certainty.

One can no more uninvent nuclear weapons any more than one can uninvent gasoline or napalm or, for that matter, coal fired electricity. In cases where nuclear weapons have been developed, the only way to destroy the weapons is to fission the plutonium and or highly enriched uranium they contain. Therefore nuclear disarmament is only possible through the agency of a well structured nuclear power infrastructure. The United States has many nuclear reactors that are now fueled with uranium from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons.

Anyone who believes that the risk of nuclear power, which is a much related to nuclear power as napalm is related to gasoline down at the Exxon station, is as great as the risk of global climate change is avoiding this truth:

There is no such thing as risk free nuclear energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[bananas]

42. My point is that in your nuclear advocacy your are over simplifying things

It is about more than just oil.
Israel is saying the same things about Bushehr that it said about Osirak.
And if we don't bomb it, Israel will, for the same reasons they bombed Osirak, which have nothing to do with oil.
The U.S. policy is more than just about oil, our bombing Iran will kill two birds with one stone.
We kill people for many reasons besides oil - for example, Bush didn't invade Haiti because of it's huge oil reserves.

[NNadir]

43. A comparison of Haiti and Iraq/Iran/N. Korea is rather silly.

Haiti involved almost no risk to the United States, and had risk developed, the United States would have simply left. George W. Bush has done very little militarily - almost nothing - in countries that have no oil, and the few such actions have been legacy actions.

Now he has used fraudulent nuclear justifications for all of his oil related aggressions, but they are a fig leaf. In this activity he is aided by domestic American nuclear hysterics who understand next to zero about nuclear technology. In fact all US policy since 2001 has been focused mostly on oil and the conservative inability to accept that oil must be abandoned as a fuel.

I note that the issue in Iran however is clearly not about nuclear power. The attempt to confuse nuclear war and nuclear power is absurd. The international community has made it clear that Iran can have nuclear power in the context of international law. The Russians have expressed a willingness to supply all their nuclear energy needs.

Iran has not accepted this. Iran's failure to accept these conditions however is not a justification for war, no matter what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney try to tell you to the contrary. Were it so, the United States and the international community would be talking war with Korea as well as Iran.

In any case, only one nation that has developed nuclear weapons has actually used nuclear weapons. Probably about 100,000 nuclear warheads have existed and only two have been dropped on cities, two out of the first three in fact. We can say based on a probabilistic analysis of history that the probability of nuclear war is something less than the probability of global climate change which is experimentally shown to be 100%, since it is an occurring event. Some nations have undoubtedly considered using nuclear weapons, including the nation that first invented them, but all have been sobered by the potential consequences and averred.

Thus the number of people killed by nuclear war since 1946 is zero.

The number of people killed in the last two years because of unfounded nuclear hysteria, on the other hand, numbers close to 100,000, depending on the number of dead civilians in Iraq, an number which is something of an international mystery. Thus, since 1946 - sixty years ago - the risk of being killed by nuclear hysteria has been infinitely larger than the risk of being killed by actual nuclear war.

I contend that a public well educated with respect to nuclear technology would not have bought into the nuclear nonsense used to justify the oil war in Iraq.

As I have noted elsewhere, I suspect that the Iranians are provoking war, because like most insane war mongers, they believe they can win and thus shift responsibility for their domestic affairs on to external sources. It is one of the oldest tricks in the public policy book throughout recorded history, if it also one of the least successful, most tragic and most dangerous tricks in the book. A military victory over the United States would be an immense internal political victory in many countries and would leave many leaders politically unassailable from within. Given the potential rewards, the Iranian government may be willing to accept the risk. After all, it is not the members of the government who will die. This is immoral and wrong, but the Iranian leaders would not be the first leaders of a nation to engage in such behavior based on such a calculation. Support for why they reason why they may so calculate is found here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2063149#2063367

If war is what the Iranians in fact want, the world should NOT allow anyone to oblige them. As in every nuclear standoff thus far, patience is far better than action. Rather the world should use it's own nuclear resources to remove the one truly effective bargaining chip the Iranians have, oil, from the table.

In any case, there are no risk free solutions in Iran, but on the scale of the much riskier matter of global climate change, Iran is a trivial affair and would remain so even in the event that Iran developed and used nuclear weapons. That is a true measure of the magnitude of the climate change risk.

All of this obviates again the following truth:

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[bananas]

44. Since you're an expert, what will the bombing of Iran be like?

Since you claim to be an expert in all things nuclear, this is a question that your expertise applies to. You probably have some concept of Iran's civilian nuclear power infrastructure. Assuming that we will be bombing it and destroying it, what will it take? Will we destroy just a few sites, or everything from uranium mines to processing facilities to the reactor at Bushehr? How much of it do you think we'll destroy? How many days of bombing will it take? Are there underground facilities deep enough that we'll need nuclear bunker-busters for? Also, since we'll be bombing Iran's military infrastructure, do you think we'll need nuclear bunker busters for any underground military complexes?
I'm concerned that Bush will find some excuse to use nuclear weapons, and maybe try to deny it as they did with white phosphor in Fallujah.

[NNadir]

45. I don't participate in war planning.

War planning is an exercise for very poor thinkers.

In war, everybody loses and the objectives of war always prove impossible to obtain.

I will note that no amount of war can disinvent nuclear weapons. We can, by the exercise of proper use of the nuclear fuel cycle in nuclear reactors, minimize the ease with which nuclear weapons can be made.

[jpak]

47. LOL!!!!!!

The central issue in this developing crisis IS Iran's ambition and ability to enrich uranium for its nuclear power plants.

It IS about nuclear power - period.

[NNadir]

49. The Russians have offered LEU uranium to the Iranians. It is about oil.

Period.

The Iranians can have nuclear power at any time they wish, using the surfeit of enriched Uranium being provided by the Russians. The Russians dominate the world LEU market as they dismantle their cold war era nuclear weapons, which is, of course, a good thing.

The Iranian government of today is the result of a deliberate pattern destabilization from 52 years of oil politics dominated by the United States, dating to the 1953 CIA coup installing the Shah of Iran.

No oil, no Shah. No Shah, no Islamic Revolution.

This is well known for anyone with a rational sense of history. A brief overview of the 1953 CIA coup and its relationship to oil can be found here:

http://www.iranchamber.com/history/coup53/coup53p1.php

The CIA did not organize revolts in other countries bordering the old Soviet Union which did not have oil. The CIA, for instance, demonstrated very little interest in destabilizing Finland or in overthrowing its democracy.

One notes that shrill claims about nuclear weapons and the promotion of general nuclear ignorance - which are no less dubious than the last shrill claims about nuclear weapons - further to advance the ridiculous case for frivilous war. The case is exactly the same as the case made for the war in Iraq, where certainty about Iraqi nuclear intentions was presented to the world as a fact.

As most people on the planet are now aware, with some disingenuous dissents, this alleged certainty was not merely a misrepresentation; it was a lie.

As noted before however, the risk of Iranian nuclear weapons is not as high as the risk of global climate change.

The world as the opportunity to disentrall itself from oil and coal and natural gas. This opportunity is presented by nuclear energy, which is the only greenhouse free form of energy - other than hydroelectric power - that has produced on demand power at an exajoule scale. As a side benefit, many of the materials now comprising nuclear weapons can be isotopically denatured so as to make the reassembly of nuclear weapons much less likely, more difficult, and improbable.

Therefore the truth remains as ever:

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[NNadir]

50. More on the historical roots of oil politics in Iran dating to 1953 can be

found in this report: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

Britain Fights Oil Nationalism

The coup had its roots in a British showdown with Iran, restive under decades of near-colonial British domination. The prize was Iran's oil fields. Britain occupied Iran in World War II to protect a supply route to its ally, the Soviet Union, and to prevent the oil from falling into the hands of the Nazis — ousting the shah's father, whom it regarded as unmanageable. It retained control over Iran's oil after the war through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.


In 1951, Iran's Parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry, and legislators backing the law elected its leading advocate, Dr. Mossadegh, as prime minister.

Britain responded with threats and sanctions.

Dr. Mossadegh, a European-educated lawyer then in his early 70's, prone to tears and outbursts, refused to back down. In meetings in November and December 1952, the secret history says, British intelligence officials startled their American counterparts with a plan for a joint operation to oust the nettlesome prime minister.

[Dead_Parrot]

40. I thought we were talking about current US policy...

We can discuss the German invasion of Romania in 1916 if you like, but that's not relevant, either. :shrug:

[bananas]

41. US policy is strongly tied to Israel

Israel is saying the same things about Bushehr that it said about Osirak.
NNadir is grossly oversimplifying things when he says this is just about oil.

[Dead_Parrot]

51. True, but

it's not just about Nuclear power/weapons and WMD's either. It's a can of worms that probably shouldn't have been opened (I've seen the Israel/Palestine fourum, and I'm not touchig it with a bargepole). :)

[bananas]

57. I agree with everything you just wrote. nt

[NickB79]

36. This is why they are going to kill Iranians

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x39530

Basically, we need to keep the world using US dollars to buy oil, or our economy is sunk. Iran is moving away from US dollars, to Euros.

Oddly enough, that is similar to what Iraq was starting to do before we invaded, selling oil in Euros instead of US dollars. Anyone else see a pattern emerging here?

[jpak]

16. Wind turbines and PV modules make poor weapons

I suppose one could catapult an opponent into the whirling blades of a wind turbine or clobber a foe with a small PV module, but it's difficult to destroy a major city with them.

Spain isn't rattling sabers over Portugal's plan to build its 64 and 116 MW PV farms...

....and South Korea has no fear of Japan's 900 MW of roof mounted PV capacity...

...and 10 Downing Street has no security concerns over Denmark's 3.1 GW of wind turbine capacity....

...and Ottawa isn't planning to bomb the 250+ MW worth of wood-fired generating capacity across the border in Maine....

[wordpix]

31. they also make poor reasons to go to war

[NNadir]

18. Oil is not a source of tension in the Middle East?

I am very surprised to learn that.

The International Panel on Climate Change will be very surprised to learn that support for nuclear power is the same as support for the Bush energy policy.

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg3/128.htm#3842

I note that no one is threatening to go to war with North Korea. People are threatening to go to war with Iran.

Hmmmm. Why is that? I wonder...

Oh yeah, oil.

I note that any carbon dioxide cap is meaningless without a means to prevent the release of carbon dioxide. No such technology exists other than nuclear power.

People keep claiming that such an alternate technology exists, but when you ask them to produce it, they can't.

(Significant energy is measured in exajoules EJ, 1 EJ = 10¹⁸

The pretense that nuclear policy is the same as oil policy can be disproved simply by looking at the periodic table of the elements. This table can be found here: www.webelements.com The conditions under which carbon is involved in nuclear reactions are rather extreme and are not found on earth, as is detailed in this Nobel lecture:

http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1967/bethe-lecture.pdf

There has been no war in South Asia for quite some time. I do believe that India and Pakistan went to war 4 times before either possessed nuclear weapons. I always thought that the lack of peace there had something to do with religion, but I stand corrected. Pakistan and India hate each other because they both have nuclear weapons.

Oh well, at least they're engaged in high level exchanges: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3628430.stm

In any case, since no one has died in a nuclear war since 1945, whereas many people have died since then from napalm, and no one has died from a nuclear accident since 1986, whereas coal miners and refinery workers die regularly, and since no one has ever been killed by so called "nuclear waste" storage, while global climate change threatens all life on earth, the following truth still applies:

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[jpak]

20. LOL!!!!!!

Wind turbines do not exist....

PV doesn't exist...

Biomass plants don't exist...

Biogas plants don't exist....

Hydroelectric plants don't exist...

Solar thermal doesn't exist...

Tidal power doesn't exist...

OTEC doesn't exist....

Energy efficient appliances don't exist....

Insulation doesn't exist!!!!!

Hybrid vehicles don't exist!!!

Mass transit systems don't exist!!!!!

They're all make believe!!!!!!!

and even if they did exist - they can't reduce CO2 emissions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and the nuclear fuel cycle emits no GHG's!!!!!!!!!

:rofl:

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Dead_Parrot]

30. I've just remembered...

DU has an "ignore user" function. Maybe it's time I tried it out. :)

[NNadir]

29. The unit of energy, again, is the exajoule.

I note that the existence of mass transit has had zero effect on arresting global climate change.

Likewise all of the other tiresome nonsense, biomass, PV blah blah blah. They don't work. If these things were capable - through mere existence at any scale, there wouldn't be global climate change would there?

:eyes:

Again, and we can do this all night, the global climate change impact of all energy sources have been measured. Nuclear is superior to all technologies with the exception of wind power, but wind power, like many other hyped small scale technologies is not continuously available on demand.

www.externe.info

Indeed, as I noted in another thread recently, remote solar PV is only marginally better than diesel generators until at least a decade has passed. I covered the lifecycle costs of these systems in another thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=38275&mesg_id=38275

The original document, which shows in detail the environmental cost, through a detailed description of every facet of PV manufacture in a 60 page referenced document manages to find that remote solar PV is better than a kerosene lamp after two years, and as good as diesel generator in 10 to 20 years, is here:

http://www.chem.uu.nl/nws/www/publica/e2000-15.pdf

Again, I am perfectly willing to discuss the merits of any system that has replaced fossil fuels when such systems have done so. An appeal to systems that are on a demonstration scale or trivial scale has done next to zero to arrest global climate change, even though the solar PV industry, a failure, has existed since 1954. If it were not so, global climate change would not be underway.

:eyes:

I am confident that any such analysis done in the future will reveal the truth:

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[wordpix]

32. where will you put the nuke waste, how will you protect all those nuke

plants and what states, towns and cities will want to have deadly radioactive nuke waste transported through them?

Once you work out all the problems, get back to me and we'll talk about nuke energy as viable.

[Dead_Parrot]

33. If nuclear waste is "deadly"...

perhaps you can tell us how many people have died from it?

(Hint: less people have died from nuclear waste - ever - than have died from fossil fuel waste in the last 60 seconds)

[wordpix2]

34. it's toxic for thousands of years---I don't think people are wading around

in it. Read up on half life of radioactive waste

[Dead_Parrot]

35. I am well aware...

...of what a half-life is, thank you. You get more radioactivity in your lungs from coal ash than you do from nuclear power: Not to mention the nanometre-scale particles, heavy metals and toxic gasses. Which is why more people die from fossil fuel pollution in an hour than have died to date from the Chernobyl fire.

[jpak]

46. LOL!!!!!

There were several studies that examined the relative radiological impact of coal and nuclear power plants in the 1970's - before the Clean Air Act was fully implemented and used data from coal-fired power plants that possessed few - if any - pollution control systems (and none of the modern systems available today).

One study examined radioisotope releases from three plant designs: 1000 MW coal plant, a 1000 MW PWR and a 1000 MW BWR.

It concluded that the BWR released more than the coal plant and the coal plant released more than the PWR design.

One can manipulate the outcomes of these types of comparisons by assuming the use of coals with higher- or lower-than-average uranium content or assumptions about pollution control technologies (example: a modern integrated gasification combined cycle plant vs. an older plant grandfathered under the Clean Air Act).

Similarly, real-world nuclear power plants often release more radioactive material per year than their designs specify (and many do).

So how much radioactivity do coal and nuclear plants emit each year in the US?????

Nobody knows.

The EPA was supposed compile and publish this data but ChimpCo quashed its release.

BTW: I am not a "coal apologist" and any insinuation that I am a "coal apologist" is a fucking lie (not that you would call me than but others will - guaranteed).

[Dead_Parrot]

53. I wouldn't stoop that low...

But I do have concerns that the anti-nuke crowd (including yourself - sorry) simply haven't grasped the scale and urgency of the problem, to think that it can be solved even in part by doggedly grinding out non-nuclear renewables. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they'll get there eventually - But I doubt it will be in my lifetime. Maybe it's something for my kids to look forward to.

Here and now, we need to replace the majority of our energy sources with ones that do not use fossil fuels. 20 years from now is too late. 10 years is too late. Hell, it's too late for millions of people and thousands of species already, but if we act now we can save a fair chunk of whats left.

As NNadir points out, global consumption is measured in exajoules - or even zettajoules, generation in terawatts (or gigawatts for individual plants): They just aren't terms that cam be applied to renewables in any meaningful way*, and all the low-energy lightbulbs in the world aren't going to effect the gigawatt or so you need for a smelting plant. That's just the laws of physics, unfortunately

So we have a choice: we can either make a difference now by using what we've got, or we can watch the planet die for a decade or two while we wait for technology to catch up. Painful though it may be, it really is that simple.


*The exception is hydro, which is limited by where you can put it, and just a different sort of environmental disaster

[jpak]

54. The reason we don't have exajoules of renewable energy today

is because, 30 years ago, the US elected Republican assholes who said renewables can't work and will never work.

They said it about wind power and Denmark proved them wrong.

They said it about PV and Japan is proving them wrong again.

I most certainly do recognize and appreciate the scale of energy production in the US and the world...

...and I also know that resource depletion will result in the demise of all those exajoules nuclear and fossil energy within a few short decades.

Renewable energy systems are manufactured from some of the the most abundant elements in the Earth's crust (aluminum, silicon and iron - and to a lesser extent, neodymium for which there is an abundant supply relative to demand), are easily recyclable and have none of the problems associated with nuclear power (weapons proliferation and spent fuel disposal).

Renewables are the only reasonably sustainable energy resources available for the 22nd Century and beyond.

nuff sed...

[Dead_Parrot]

55. The world is not the USA

Granted, the reptiles in the GOP have stuffed the US back decades on research, but that doesn't affect the rest of us: and we're not solving the storage or cost problems either. Japan's aim is for 10% of it's power from PV by 2030: A comendadable target, and propably achieveable given the billions they pour into R&D.

But they will still to get the other 90% elsewhere, and I notice they are also planning to up nuclear generation to 40% by 2013. So you might want to be careful about holding them up as a shining example... :)

As you said yourself, Denmark are hitting a wall over grid storage. Spare electricity is no good to anyone if you can't keep it for when you actually need it.

Renewables as the core generation for the 22nd century sounds like a good plan. But we're at the beginning of the 21st century with a fucked planet. We don't even have "a few short decades", We've got a few short years.

[NNadir]

56. Danish and Japanese CO2 and renewable energy in tons and exajoules.

The total quantities of all renewable energy produced in Japan and in Denmark are readily available, although the renewable figure includes all forms of non-hydro renewables, wind, geothermal, garbage burning (which is mysteriously classified as "renewable" to jack the numbers), biofuels and the tiny solar industry.

First let's look at the renewable figures which are translated into exajoules from billion kilowatt-hours by multiplying by 3600 X 10¹².

Denmark: 0.03 exajoules.

Japan: 0.1 exajoules.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table17.xls

Here are the carbon dioxide releases from Denmark and Japan in millions of metric tons.

Denmark: 58.61

Japan: 1,205.54

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1co2.xls

These figures are for 2003.

Quads (1 quadrillion BTUs) are converted to exajoules by multiplying 1055 X 10¹⁵.

Thus the total energy demand for Denmark was 0.935 exajoules.

The total energy demand for the much larger Japan was 23.7 exajoules.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1.xls

These figures are also selected from the 2003 column, the last in these spreadsheets.

[jpak]

59. Exajoules smexajoules

If exajoules is the sole predictor of past and future "success", then coal is the clear winner.

It clearly supplies more exajoules than nuclear and is growing faster than nuclear.

...and we should be throwing money at it as fast as we can.

But wait...that's what ChimpCo IS doing!!!!!

....and there ain't no such thang as global warming. It's a fraud and several prominent climatologists with Ph D's say so.

:rofl:

[NNadir]

60. Denial of the nature of energy will be fatal to many people. The unit

of energy remains the exajoule. Only those types of energy that can produce on an exajoule scale can be considered for a reasonable replacement for coal.

Worldwide, independent of the nature of governments, this situation is understood to be true.

[wordpix]

58. don't forget that ass, "St." RonnieRay-gun, took Carter's solar panels off

the WH

So much for "energy independence"

[JohnWxy]

52. A VERY IMPORTANT POST. THANKS!

I voted for this but it was past 24 hrs since you posted. The GAO tried to find out just who was on the task force, but Cheney told them to "go F- - -" themselves.

So much for open government.