Do you believe the nuclear energy lobbies are gaining ...

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

... the strength and influence they need to sway Congress to approve building more nuclear facilities in the U.S.?

And secondly, would you like to see more nuclear facilities built in the U.S.?

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No Future for Nuclear Energy

---SNIP---

What nuclear lobbies ignore is all the coal and oil that needs to be burned to enrich uranium, to transport radioactive wastes with protective highway and rail convoys and provide security since they would be a priority target for sabotage.

Apart from that, let’s start with the technological insanity of the nuclear fuel cycle-from uranium mines and their deadly tailings, to the refining and fabrication into fuel rods, to the multi-shielded dome-like nuclear plant, to the necessity for perfect operation of the facility, to the still unresolved problems of the location and containment of hot radioactive wastes and contaminated material for the next 200,000 years!

All this for one objective-to boil water into steam. A pretty complex chain of events in order to boil water. There are far better, cheaper ways to meet the electricity needs of today’s generation without burdening future generations for centuries with the deadly waste products.

Back in the Seventies, before the public rose up and said no to nuclear power, helped by Wall Street’s reluctance to finance these trouble-prone plants, the Atomic Energy Commission projected the construction of 1000 atomic power plants in the U.S. by the year 2000. There are today 103 plants...

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/21/2673/

[ThomWV]

1. I hope so

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. Kick for larger sample. nt.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

3. Kick for larger sample. nt.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. Kick for larger sample. nt.

[jmp]

5. I voted ...

No and Yes.

Nuclear energy should be one aspect of a diversified energy policy. Hell the French do it like crazy, and they don't seem to have a major problem as a result.

[AndyTiedye]

11. There Won't Be Enough Fuel for All Those Nukes

Of course, the nukies have a plan for that.
They'll build breeder reactors and fuel the plants with plutonium.

Then every rogue state and terrorist group in the world can go nuclear. :scared: :nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke:

I voted Yes (I think they will)/No (I don't think they should).

[Kolesar]

6. Ralph Nader is overstating the carbon/resource impact of the nuclear process

What nuclear lobbies ignore is all the coal and oil that needs to be burned to enrich uranium, to transport radioactive wastes with protective highway and rail convoys and provide security since they would be a priority target for sabotage

...

I am disappointed at all of the political process involving electricity generation. The real issues are not brought forth. Elected officials don't know the subject well, and the public is pretty darn ignorant too.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

7. I agree that elected officials don't know...

...the nuclear energy issues very well.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

8. exactly.

phrasing the question this way is as unfair as some of the pro-GOP push polls.

nuke power can be and is safe, when done properly. You don't aim for the largest, the most spiffy, the most incredible design. No, you use what has been proved to work over and over again, to be safe, efficient, and easy to maintain.

The french took an efficient design, improved on it, then, used the SAME DESIGN for its plants. All of them. We build each plant as though it were magic, and has to be reinvented from top to bottom. How stupid is that, unless you are an energy company's engineering branch, being paid to copy (ahem) and adapt the system for an entirely new location. As though longitude and lattitude change technology of nuke plants. (other than fault lines, that is)

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

9. Are you saying both or one of my poll questions is...

...unfair? -- if so, please explain how.

[TahitiNut]

10. Who Are the Merchants of Fear?

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/cockburn

Beat the devil by Alexander Cockburn
Who Are the Merchants of Fear?

(from the May 28, 2007 issue)

No response is more predictable than the reflexive squawk of the greenhouse fearmongers that anyone questioning their claims is in the pay of the energy companies. A second, equally predictable retort contrasts the ever-diminishing number of agnostics with the growing legions of scientists now born again to the "truth" that anthropogenic CO2 is responsible for the earth's warming trend.

Actually, the energy companies have long since adapted to prevailing fantasies, dutifully reciting the whole catechism about carbon neutrality, repositioning themselves as eager pioneers in the search for alternative fuels, settling comfortably into new homes, such as British Petroleum's Energy Biosciences Institute at UC, Berkeley.

In fact, when it comes to corporate sponsorship of crackpot theories about why the world is getting warmer, the best documented conspiracy of interest is between the fearmongers and the nuclear industry, now largely owned by oil companies, whose prospects twenty years ago looked dark. The apex fearmongers are well aware that the only exit from the imaginary crisis they have been sponsoring is through a big door marked "nuclear power," with a servants' side door labeled "clean coal."

The world's best-known hysteric and self-promoter on the topic of man's physical and moral responsibility for global warming is Al Gore, a shill for the nuclear and coal barons from the first day he stepped into Congress entrusted with the sacred duty to protect the budgetary and regulatory interests of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oak Ridge National Lab. White House advisory bodies on climate change in the Clinton/Gore years were well freighted with nukers like Larry Papay of Bechtel.

<more>

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

12. I read this piece shortly after it was...

...published and was surprised at Cockburn's assault on Gore and his perceptions about global warming.

I generally like Cockburn, but thought he missed the mark pretty badly with this one.

[TahitiNut]

13. I think it deserves consideration - if only to provoke thought and dispel ...

.. the notion that there's any simple answer or that corporatists don't hedge their bets.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

14. I'll buy that. nt.