Stuff I learned from the pro-nuclear crowd...

[JackRiddler]

(Ah, I say this is worth its own post.)

1) The Maginot Line is impenetrable.

2) Waste? What waste?

3) It's all right to play Russian roulette with New York City.

4) What I mean is, the odds of a meltdown are just soooooooooooo low, although no one can say with plant designs that are no more than 20 years old, but it must be sooooooo low. And you're really hypocritical to mention the chance on a medium that requires electricity.

5) No matter how complex the system, all possible accidents over a decade or a century's time can be foreseen and prevented through good design and conscientious operation. Also true for two centuries. Also three centuries...

6) Enron is not a typical energy company. Stories of corporate malfeasance and negligence and preventable technical failures apply in every industry except the nuclear, which is perfectly well-regulated and totally conscientious about its meticulous standards.

7) Nuclear power is, apparently, the first activity in the history of mankind never to result in any deaths whatsoever. Zero, zip. All claims to the contrary are hearsay by fearful, bitter and pre-modern cave-hippies. If you can't prove it in court, it cannot be. Nuclear power has killed less people than playing bridge.

8) The only accident that ever happened was Chernobyl. That was a commie meltdown. A Western meltdown cannot possibly happen.

9) Chernobyl's not uninhabitable, since lots of plants and animals live there. And they love it!

10) Accidents and leaks revealed decades after they occur don't count. Neither do leaks that were announced in advance. Those are controlled.

11) Waste? What waste?

12) Hey, hippie, you like that electric guitar? Gotcha!

[ColbertWatcher]

1. Beautiful! n/t

[spoony]

2. The reason for your ignorance on the matter

must be that you have a habit of "learning" things that no one has said, and heeded nothing that people less hysterical than you had to teach.

[ColbertWatcher]

4. The reason for your defensiveness must be...

....must be your habit of not being able to consider beyond a narrow ideology.

[spoony]

6. The most unforgivable thing

about your posts is that they are boring. You just say the same thing over and over. Never actually making sense, for of course it is the NIMBY regressive crowd which has bound this country in their narrow ideology; which has forced the building of coal burners and resulted in tens of thousands of deaths from their pollution.

[ColbertWatcher]

7. And yet...

...you have not been able to sufficiently refute them.

If you want to change the subject, fine. Just be honest about your desire/need to do so.

[bean fidhleir]

16. Refute *WHAT*? The statements are made of straw. CHEAP straw.

Normally I agree thoroughly with JR's posts. But not in this case because the science is against him.

1) The Maginot Line is impenetrable.

Of course that didn't matter given air power and what does that have to do with nuclear power?


2) Waste? What waste?

Whether waste is "a problem" depends on how narrow the range of solutions you're willing to look at is. What happens to spent rods dropped into, e.g., the 7-mile-deep Mariana Trench? Or off the coast of Cuba into the crevasse where the plate is being subducted?


3) It's all right to play Russian roulette with New York City.

It's "Russian roulette" only if you have evidence from other nuke sites that the premature death of the player (NYC, I presume) is functionally certain to occur.



4) What I mean is, the odds of a meltdown are just soooooooooooo low, although no one can say with plant designs that are no more than 20 years old, but it must be sooooooo low. And you're really hypocritical to mention the chance on a medium that requires electricity.

This is a logical fallacy.


5) No matter how complex the system, all possible accidents over a decade or a century's time can be foreseen and prevented through good design and conscientious operation. Also true for two centuries. Also three centuries...

Who's saying this? Right now, the betting is that higher-order life doesn't have 300 years left.


6) Enron is not a typical energy company. Stories of corporate malfeasance and negligence and preventable technical failures apply in every industry except the nuclear, which is perfectly well-regulated and totally conscientious about its meticulous standards.

Since when are we forbidden to learn from experience? Where is it written that we have no choice but to throw up our hands and accept that the worst is inevitable?


7) Nuclear power is, apparently, the first activity in the history of mankind never to result in any deaths whatsoever. Zero, zip. All claims to the contrary are hearsay by fearful, bitter and pre-modern cave-hippies. If you can't prove it in court, it cannot be. Nuclear power has killed less people than playing bridge.

Who's saying this?



8) The only accident that ever happened was Chernobyl. That was a commie meltdown. A Western meltdown cannot possibly happen.

Who's saying this?


9) Chernobyl's not uninhabitable, since lots of plants and animals live there. And they love it!

It's certainly true that plants and non-humans are living what appear to be normal lifespans near Chernobyl.


10) Accidents and leaks revealed decades after they occur don't count. Neither do leaks that were announced in advance. Those are controlled.

Who's saying this?

11) Waste? What waste?

See 2

12) Hey, hippie, you like that electric guitar? Gotcha!

The reality is that there is no better non-polluting solution in the short term. It's no good for the long term, but there's nothing that can match it in the short term. Geothermal would be much better, but I've never heard of a way to do it. The currently operating geothermal energy installations are few and they all exploit existing natural activity.

[ColbertWatcher]

17. LOL!

The fact that you tried to seriously refute the first point without once getting the gist is hilarious!

Geothermal would be much better, but I've never heard of a way to do it. The currently operating geothermal energy installations are few and they all exploit existing natural activity.

Since when are we forbidden to learn from experience?

Geothermal would be much better, but I've never heard of a way to do it. The currently operating geothermal energy installations are few and they all exploit existing natural activity.

The reality is that there is no better non-polluting solution in the short term. It's no good for the long term, but there's nothing that can match it in the short term.

How is it not good in the long term, while simultaneously "non-polluting"?

[bean fidhleir]

26. *sigh*

I "got the gist" just fine - it was *irrelevant* because made of cheap-ass straw, and inside-out with it. The Maginot Line might well have *been* impregnable - to an army on the ground. But technology made its notional impenetrability irrelevant, and the change was embarrassing for the French generals (or should have been) and terrible for the people. But that makes a lousy example because if technology makes nuclear power irrelevant, that'll be GREAT. That's exactly the kind of outcome we should hope for!


"How is it not good in the long term, while simultaneously "non-polluting"?"

It's not good in the long term because uranium ore is a scarce resource. Metaphorically, it's fossil fuel. It won't regenerate except in geologic time, if even then. It's non-polluting because it doesn't transfer carbon into the atmosphere by burning, which all other reliable large-scale sources of power do.

We don't have geothermal technology; we don't have fusion technology; we don't have good tidal technology; wind technology is *noisy*, expensive, and has a low yield per installation; solar is similar to wind except that it takes up space rather than being noisy. Coal is reliable, but massively polluting and a fossil fuel; petroleum is massively polluting and also nearly gone; wood is reliable and renewable in less than geologic time, but it's massively polluting and we're now coming to realize that a tree being killed and turned into lumber is losing almost 100% of its value (and as pulp is losing MORE than 100%) because its real value is as a living part of the planetary respiratory system.

[ColbertWatcher]

47. You're funny.

What I'm hearing you say is that uranium spent in the production of nuclear power is non-polluting.

Is this what you're saying?

Do you really not get what referencing the Maginot Line means?

Seemingly relevant details that miss the point are not the game ender the pro-nuclear crowd hope they will be.

Nor do they change the point.

Try reading the OP one more time.

[bean fidhleir]

53. If you desperately need to laugh, I suppose so.

Yes, uranium is non-polluting if treated appropriately. Of course to suit an agenda it's possible to treat it inappropriately and claim there are no other options. But hell, it's possible to use it as a viciously polluting *weapon* too - but who but a psychopath would do that!?!

And are you really trying to claim that the Maginot Line reference won't bear the interpretation I placed on it? I don't really care what your interpretation is (whatever it is) - it's not superior to mine except apparently in your opinion.

[ColbertWatcher]

54. LOL! You're not making sense...

...still.

Now I'm bored.

BTW, I like your use of the word "if".

[bean fidhleir]

55. When you don't have anything substantive to say, why not keep quiet? (nt)

[ColbertWatcher]

56. Are you hearing anything?

Don't you mean if I don't agree with you I should stop posting?

Look, this has been interesting.

But, since you're not the OP and you contribute little to enlighten the conversation, I hope you don't mind if I ignore your posts.

[bean fidhleir]

57. "Don't you mean if I don't agree with you I should stop posting?"

No, I don't mean that. I mean what I said. I'm happy -even eager- to be disagreed with, if someone has substance to their disagreement. So far, all you've done is try to ridicule me in a content-free way. That suggests that you have nothing worthwhile to offer, and, if you're an adult, should keep quiet.

[JackRiddler]

49. Thanks for your comments...

We don't have geothermal technology; we don't have fusion technology; we don't have good tidal technology; wind technology is *noisy*, expensive, and has a low yield per installation; solar is similar to wind except that it takes up space rather than being noisy.

Excellent points. Sounds like someone should take, oh, say half the Exxon profits and a tenth of the regular Pentagon budget, which would be a mere 70 billion dollars, and gamble it on developing something useful for a change.

[bean fidhleir]

51. Were it within my remit, I'd spend an order of magnitude more than $70G.

I'd divert the entire budget of the MIC teraboondoggle, if it were practical. We need a better technology than nuke, but we need something much, *much* better than anything else now gives us.

[JackRiddler]

59. Clearly, I agree. But I was being "moderate"...

This is the central issue for everyone on the planet today -- how do we get energy? It's related causally to all other problems, and even 10 percent of this insane Pentagon budget would start solving it. The numbers for what has been spent on energy alternatives for decades are basically zero.

[bean fidhleir]

61. I should have realized that. Apologies. And strong agreement.

It's just barking nuts that the oil companies have such a death-grip (and I only wish I meant that metaphorically) on the world.

Reading Feynman's account of the Manhattan Project it's clear that there was a lot of luck involved in the physical survival both of Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. Between the poorly understood forces they were dealing with and the non-scientific bureaucracy trying to keep the left hand from knowing even where the right hand was, never mind what it was doing, it's a real wonder they didn't suffer a cataclysm.

I wonder whether we could survive a MP-type crash program to develop an energy source. What's certain is that it would need to be a *public* program, not a capitalistic one. Would we have to put a new form of government in place for such a program to even be possible? We certainly don't have the same form now, except nominally, that we had then. Now we have the post-Red-Scare "Capitalism Über Alles In Der Welt" form.

[AndyTiedye]

9. The OP Forgot #13

13. Anyone who doesn't drink the nuclear Kool-Aide is "ignorant".

[spoony]

10. If you have a reasonable stance against it, fine. Spreading lies is ignorant.

And I do not suggest anyone drink nuclear anything. That's how bad reputations start.

Anyhow Euro '08 is on, so I'll deal with you lot later.

[MercutioATC]

13. Actually, I believe all of those statements are from DU posts...

...so people DID say them.

(correct me if I'm wrong, JR)

[JackRiddler]

14. Certainly not. I invoke my First Amendment right of satiric re-statement.

[MercutioATC]

15. Well, I recognized the "Chernobyl is habitable because plants and animals live there"

statement from a post here yesterday...

[JackRiddler]

21. True. That one's near-verbatim and others on the list are pretty accurate paraphrases, too. n/t

[ColbertWatcher]

18. WHAT! This is satire!? n/t

[girl gone mad]

52. No, I think he got it about right.

But forgot to add the anti-science accusation. I find that one particularly dumb, personally.

[libnnc]

3. What you said right there...

:kick:

:thumbsup:

[mrbscott19]

5. I think nuclear energy

will be a wonderful energy source until we are able to sustain ourselves on geothermal, solar, wind, etc. Unless you either want to pay out the yin yang in utilitiy bills or keep polluting the skies, nuclear energy is the only good option.

[Bill McBlueState]

8. I like black lung disease.

All energy sources carry some risk. Unless you like black lung disease; in that case, coal mining is all fun and games.

[JackRiddler]

19. I forgot that one - file it under the "gotchas"...

Now how about some clarity? I'm sure we're both against black lung disease.

We might even both be against the idea of turning food into fuel at almost no net energy gain and letting people starve for high food prices, which is what the ethanol scam is about.

Exxon recently announced the highest corporate annual profit ever at $40 billion, and all they had to do for it compared to the previous year was watch the oil price rise. Rockefeller family shareholders put in an initiative to re-direct some of that to development of alternative energies. The management opposed that, and won the vote, saying oil was just too profitable not to reinvest the full amount back into drilling for it, anything else would be irresponsible to the highest value on earth, which is shareholder value. Capitalism at work - why does anyone have such an insane incentive? The market system clearly is warped.

Short of nationalizing the oil multis, which I'd be all for, you could put a windfall tax to raise $50 billion off the oil multis. You could take $100 billion more out of the Oil Expeditionary Force, a.k.a. the Pentagon, and use the $150 billion (long as dollars are still good), and maybe even keep spending $150 billion a year, as follows:

- development of genuinely renewable and clean alternatives, solar and wind first, with a more cautious approach to hydro and geothermal
- state-owned car company puts out the same electric compact cars that the private auto industry decided to kill
- rebuild the railways and make them CHEAP; subsidize their infrastructure (and make the highways pay for themselves through a gas tax)
- light surface rail and trolley cars for cities -- and why not bike paths and ped zones?
- enforcement of a much higher MPG standard, with an incentive or two
- efficiency initiatives, especially for building heating (number two source of energy consumption after vehicle fuel)
- follow the lead of Apollo and the Manhattan Project and gamble a few billion dollars on unlikely-sounding miracle alternatives, including a stab at clean fusion possibilities

Do you see coal on that list?

Do you think it's a bad idea?

I'm sure I missed lots of good ones? Feel free to add.

Do we really need to add nuclear to that, however? I realized I engaged in a bit of unintentional sophistry, when I implied that fission nuclear plants don't just require a low probability of meltdown and thus total disaster, but in fact require it for centuries. That's not true, of course, since the uranium ore would run out long before that. So fission is in no way the solution to hydrocarbons that you seem to imply.

Or do you think so?

[ColbertWatcher]

22. I'm sure we're both against black lung disease.

That's racist talk, right there.

[proud patriot]

11. sounds like a conversation I had with a guy named Clint

x( on spot for sure .

[anigbrowl]

12. Great. Going to the opposite extreme really leads to progress.

Don't like nuclear power? Just demonize all proponents of it as unreasonable, illogical propagandists. Call anyone who acknowledges risks and wants to cautiously examine costs vs benefits a shill for the nuclear industry. Pretend everyone who isn't totally anti-nuclear is actually in the pay of The Powers That Be.

Yep, that's a real mature and progressive approach to discussing a complex issue, and has the added bonus that it saves the time and effort involved to learn any science. Absolute dismissal of nuclear power strategies are just as stupid as absolute dismissal of climate change concerns.

BOB is disappointed by you.

[TrogL]

20. Ontario, Canada has been running nuclear as its main electrical supply for decades

...with little or no problems.

[JackRiddler]

23. I'm sure there is a substantial chance that new-design reactors can operate for decades...

safely. The problem is, the almost negligible risk cannot be quantified with certainty for decades (given the complexity of the systems and the human elements involved) and the scale of the disaster may be total for a given area.

Now you can come back and say: hydrocarbons are going to indirectly but with near-certainty cause global-scale disasters possibly killing billions through changes in sea levels and weather; so the extremely low risk of a meltdown in a heavily populated area directly killing hundreds or hundreds of thousands in a single blow is worth taking. And that might be worth arguing, if fission power were really in a position to replace hydrocarbons sustainably. But it's not.

And what about the waste? How can one proceed without an idea of what to do with it?

So why aren't we looking for ways to avoid both these alternatives? Why are we allowing industries with the money to determine the future of how our civilization produces its energy not on a rational-utilitarian basis, but proceeding from their own bottom line?

[XOKCowboy]

31. Once again what of the waste? Decades vs 24 Centuries

Look beyond your nose please. The electricity that flows from the steam powered generators isn't the end product. Please explain how they are SAFELY disposing of the waste from those nuclear plants?

[bean fidhleir]

60. "are safely disposing" or "could safely dispose"? There are MANY things not being done well,

wouldn't you agree? Why should we assume the worst about the future?

Spent fuel rods could be safely dropped into the 7-mile deep Mariana Trench or, closer to home, at the site of plate subduction in the Caribbean. The forces involved in plate tectonics are so large that anything human-made won't even register as a blip in the noise.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

24. It's funny stuff.

"Chernobyl doesn't count because the people who ran it were incompetent!"


"My life would be nothing without the nucleon plant!"

[JackRiddler]

25. Hey, that one's better than mine: "Chernobyl doesn't count because the people who ran it

were incompetent." Thanks.

[Dark]

27. Wow. You really love playing the Chernobyl card, don't you?

Guess what. Not only is wildlife flourishing, but people are living there as http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0604/feature1/gallery2.html">well:

As for the waste, yes we can bury it until we find a better way to deal with it.

Name ONE catastrophe that's happened in the western world. I know you have a hard-on for referencing Chernobyl, but why don't you compare the Soviet's environmental record with ours? Or the amount of safety precautions that their MiGs had versus our planes.

But you won't, because then you'd find that the Russians never gave a crap about safety or efficiency.

[JackRiddler]

28. Not at all. Love has nothing to do with it.

[NNN0LHI]

29. In the 70's NIPSCO was trying to build a nuclear facility just across a short stretch of ...

...Lake Michigan where if there ever was an unexpected event the prevailing winds would have blown any fallout right over the water and toward the city of Chicago. It did not get built.

No one wants these things near them.

Don

[Overseas]

30. 14) Some genetic mutations can be good !

[TheWraith]

32. If you didn't insist on being rude, AND arrogant, AND clueless, I'd be happy to enlighten you.

Not that it would matter much to you, since you're clearly hell-bent on making up strawman arguments for you to knock down. Sad that you feel your own reasoning is so shoddy and half-assed that it can't stand up to the actual discussion, so you need to make-believe that the people who disagree with you believe something they don't. So have fun with that, Secretary Rumsfeld.

[JackRiddler]

33. It's a humor piece.

First of all, through the years I really have heard all of these arguments made, as paraphrased. (Well, except for the Maginot Line. I read that one in a book.) So you would be right in accusing me of playing strawmen, except I don't believe these comments are really the best one can do in favor of fission energy. It's a joke, see?I've heard smarter people say smarter things, that I may have disagreed with, but did make me think. So if you think you can enlighten me, or more importantly, others reading this thread - please do so.

[XOKCowboy]

34. I'm with you. Nobody yet has explained how you can safely store/decomtaminate the waste

knowing that it will still be deadly in 20000 years. Please enlighten me also.

[NutmegYankee]

37. The waste will become less deadly over time.

The most dangerous isotopes tend to be the most radioactive, and as such, have shorter half lives as they throw off the alpha, beta, and gamma particles to decay into a stable isotope of some metal. The waste with the long half lives, like uranium, are actually not as dangerous and they do not emit as much radiation.

[XOKCowboy]

41. Please define time in your context...

10000 years? 5000 years? Most of the waste will still be deadly to humans then. You still haven't said how we're going to store/decontaminate millions of tons of this waste either.

[NutmegYankee]

42. The most dangerous waste is hundreds of years.

The higher the radioactivity, the faster it decays. The stuff that lasts is not as radioactive. You still would like it contained, since dust can cause lung cancer with long-term exposure and some of the metals are toxic like mercury.

For the rest:

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

[warren pease]

35. And I just learned that some pro-nukers behave exactly like 9/11 "debunkers.."

In fact, I even recognize some of the same names from various wild evenings in the dungeon arguing over the meaning of minute details in the physical, empirical, anecdotal and circumstantial evidence. One tactic they always fall back on is the stray nitpick -- actually an in-depth proofreading exercise in the search for that stray error they can use to impugn the entire argument, the bitch about it for the next seven posts, hoping that their adversary will just get bored and go away.

The tactic is like a driver focusing all attention on a small spot on the upholstery, even as the car's brakes have failed and it's careening down San Francisco's 22nd street hill. Violent, bloody, fiery death is seconds away, but at least that seat's going to go to the great leather couch in the sky without blemish.

And damn if it doesn't work with me. I can take maybe three of Senor BoloB's exceptionally weird calls to "prove it" and "show me the evidence" and suchlike. This is after I've already done exactly that, of course, so since there's really no point in responding to demands to provide something that's already there, I just bag it and cede the field of battle to whoever's the most obnoxious and tiresome gullible nitwit of the evening and do something more exciting and challenging, like watching paint dry.

Same here in NukulurLand, where evil Iranian physicists spend every waking hour perfecting their WMD delivery systems so, just as the Dickster and Condi and Little Boots predicted, the next smoking gun will in fact come in the form of a mushroom cloud. They got the country wrong, but those damn four-letter words starting with "I" always screw me up, too.

Uh Oh... Wait a minute now. Those aren't the nukes were talking about here, you fool. Nah... We're talking about reviving the nukulur power industry in the US. The industry that can't get insurance at any price, so they're going to hit up taxpayers to post a bond to cover them. Another classic example of the free market at its most non-credible: privatize profits and socialize risks.

Last I heard, the feds were collaborating with nukulur industry execs to deal with the radioactive waste, deadly for 10,000 years at the least, by melting it into sheets of glass and burying the whole toxic mess in some cave that absolutely nobody will ever even get close to for way more then 10K years. Either that or they were going to blow off the glassification process and just slosh it into zillions of 55 gallon drums and bury the whole toxic mess in that same cave that nobody will ever even approach for maybe 30K years.

It's amazing how 55 gallon drum technology has evolved over the past decade. Used to be they'd rust out or corrode from the acidic contents in just months. Now, the Eternal Drum Company, Inc. is claiming their drums will outlast the second coming, the rapture and Armageddon all rolled into one. Not that anyone's going to be around to check, but you just have to take them at their word.

Oh, and they're planning to transport this toxic slurry to the cave of perpetual disinterest by truck from all points of the compass. Which is a great move because everyone knows trucks these days never crash or get into major accidents. Plus which, thanks to deregulation, today's poorly paid trucker is absolutely committed to being all he can be, or at least as good as that whopping $6.55 an hour deserves. So you know that's not going to present any problems.

And best of all, now that motor vehicle accidents have been outlawed, there are no more of those old-school collisions, fiery wrecks or annual hundred-vehicle monster pileups where the trucks and cars play intricate suicide games, making up the rules as they go along, driving blind in the tule fog of California's Central Valley.

OK. Now please debunk all that. Notice I didn't even get into current risk assessments and consensus probability scores for the hierarchy of major nukulur incidents -- from jammed valves to insufficient water in the cooling system to a ruptured fuel rod to catastrophic multiple simultaneous system failures resulting in a partial or full core meltdown -- all that plus stats estimating numbers of immediate or rapid deaths, cancer clusters that will start showing up in a decade or two, and likely instances of chromosomal damage that will lead to off-the-charts percentages of kids born with birth defects.

And all this, when plotted, forms a classic J curve, with the x axis representing the level of exposure and the y axis the increase in number of deaths correlating with increased exposure. You can even look at what are described as statistically valid numbers rating the potential for mass casualties and deaths within specific zones and at varying distances from the nuke.

But we don't to get into all this stuff. I mean, why make this tougher than it needs to be?

I'm so used to deflecting attacks from this puddle of miniature snapping turtles that I'm lost without at least a good "fuck you, moron" or "get stuffed, dumbfuck" or "kiss my ass, you shit for brains Luddite."

All in the spirit of good clean fun, of course.


wp

[XOKCowboy]

36. Damn I wish I could recommend your post...

Standing O brother. You nailed it.

[libnnc]

40. seconded

:thumbsup:

[JackRiddler]

48. That post is a top 10 something!

Though to be fair, note that the splits on this issue are obviously different than in the dungeon; some who would debunk there are actually nuclear skeptics here.

Otherwise: Great post! Had me ROFL. Thanks.

[DCKit]

50. Well said. Now cut and paste it, then recycle it into every pro-Nnew-cue-lur post from now on.

But I do have to add:

Exajoules: All three, and up in my house with radiation-induced disease. Series.

[HamdenRice]

58. Excellent rant!

I have to save this one -- just for the "stray nitpick" analysis!

[Cleita]

38. You forgot this. Yucca Mountain is already compromised from past nuclear

tests so it's okay to store nuclear waste there even though native Nevadans disagree and don't want it stored there.

[nadinbrzezinski]

39. My lord they forgot of three mile island?

and by the way nuclear reactors are actually elegantly simple...

[Cleita]

43. The air raid alarms are wonderful and the pills for radioactivity that

you have to keep in your medicine cabinet daily remind you of how harmless and safe they are.

[nadinbrzezinski]

44. Didn't say they were safe

but they are elegantly simple.... never confuse this ahem, elegance, with safety

Way too many things can go wrong with these systems... far more than I can be comfortable with.

As to the air raid sirens, trust me we have one up the road... not close enough to be in the way if the core blows... but it is up the road

[Cleita]

45. Well, the only good thing about the alarms is that when there is a power

loss, the grids with the sirens, and our grid is one, is the last to lose power because they have to work to keep them viable just in case.

[two gun sid]

46. Wow. That sounds just like the baloney they try to feed you...

at NNPS.

Nuclear power is not cheap, it's not efficient and it's not safe. I'm no fan of coal. Most of my family were coal miners in WV and my Grandfather died a horrible death from Black Lung Disease. Burning coal is very dirty and harmful. But this rush to move to more nuke plants is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

[bean fidhleir]

62. It is, however, the least-awful solution in the short term. I repeat: *short* term

We need at least one long-term solution and nukes are absolutely not it. We need a "Manhattan Project"-type crash program to find one or preferably several. Geothermal-on-tap or fusion would be favorite.

But we also need a short-term solution. Right now we're getting closer to the point (if, as Hawking says, we haven't already passed it) where the system will race out of control and send the planet into Venus mode: 250C and H2SO4 rain, killing all life except possibly some bacteria. We should probably avoid that if we can!!

Nukes are the only short-term solution that won't keep bringing us closer to that point of no return and the end of all life. Compared to Venus mode, even having a reactor go blooey is benign.

[two gun sid]

63. I am of the opinion that we should not do nuclear power

but I do agree that your suggestion for a crash program to develop other sources of energy.

By the time we could build any new nuclear facilities and get them critical and online we could be making significant headway toward new alternative sources of power.

[Cleita]

64. Excuse me but once the foot is in the door or the proverbial camel

gets his nose under the tent, there is no stopping them. No thanks.

[bean fidhleir]

68. On one level, you're right. The last time I checked, the amount of uranium

available for use was about 100 years' worth at the level being used at the time (which of course wasn't much). But I just now checked the IAEA site to update myself and found that they're very equivocal about how much there is in an effective sense.

They claim anything from 85 years at 2004 levels of consumption up to several thousand years using "fast reactor" technology - which would have the added benefit of more thoroughly using the fuel, making the waste products lose their remaining radioactivity in a much shorter time. However, the "fast" technology also sounds (I haven't tried to study it) less well-controlled, which would be a very big mark against it if true.

I have a strong appreciation for camel's-nose arguments. They seem to prove true too often for me to get glib about them.

But it feels to me like we're in a fix. I hope you can explain why we're not. The power companies want to do nukes. If we have the power to say No now, when we actually do need the reliable, large-scale, non-polluting energy generation that nukes alone can provide today, why wouldn't we also be able to say No in the future, after the need is being satisfied by some other safer, long-term technology such as fusion, geothermal, etc? What would change?

[diane in sf]

65. The best and cheapest short term power sources are energy efficiency and wind.

Energy efficiency includes all forms of energy conservation. We took our use down in California by 10% in a few short months after being screwed by Enron, and that is the lowest hanging fruit. Wind is currently the cheapest way to generate energy--you put enough windmills up and you even out the intermittent factor.

[bean fidhleir]

72. Energy efficiency is good. How tough do you think we could get on ourselves?

All my lamps are CFL except my drafting lamps, which are regular fluoros. I'm looking into converting them to LED. I don't own an air conditioner (3 fans that I run when needed. They're not enough.). The stove and fridge are both electric, but they came with the apt; I use the fridge all the time, and the stove occasionally. The building has electric washers and gas dryers available, and I'm looking into a hand-crank washer. My sewing machine, vacuum, microwave, and stereo are rarely used. I do use my blender to make lassi, and an old Braun grinder for coffee. One of my violins is electric, and of course my computers. That's it. I pay about $50/mo for it. I don't know how much further I could cut down and still have a life I'd want to live. How many other people would want to cut down as far as I have?


I'm much less confident about wind. The towers to capture it are unsightly, their operation is *NOISY* (edit: new ones are claimed not to be, so I don't know), and since wind doesn't blow at a uniform speed, some kind of *large* storage device such as a capacitor array is needed to even out the flow, adding to the cost. Also, even small capacitors can hold a lethal charge, and one large enough to be used as a storage device would be like a bomb if/when it blew out (and they do blow out).

[uponit7771]

66. France? ..............anyone? ....I CONSTANTLY see them left out of the equation! Do we hate them?

[JackRiddler]

70. They've put themselves in quite a bind.

Where are they going to dump the waste?

How are they going to dispose of these reactors when done?

[uponit7771]

71. They recycle their waste till the half life is nothing (relatively) and they use such small amounts

...of it when building smaller plants.

They will tear down the old ones and build new ones ...that's the reactors that is not the plants.

The NRC only allows 4% processing FAR FAR from weapons grade.

There's no reason why we shouldn't be doing what France is doing

[spoony]

73. One poster told us to "move to France"

if we don't like the coal pollution here. Haven't heard that one since the run up to the Iraq War

[JackRiddler]

74. Well at least it makes more sense, dumb as it is.

[deaniac21]

67. The Maginot Line wasn't penetrated. The Germans just went

around it.

[JackRiddler]

69. As I am well aware. The point being...

It's usually not the disaster you plan for that happens, it's the one that surprises you!

[JackRiddler]

75. k