This lede made me laugh out loud:
As concerns about greenhouse gases and global warming mount, nuclear energy is getting a second look in California, with supporters ranging from the governor to at least one environmental activist.
Oh goodie! Who's the token "at least one environmental activist" this time? Is it Patrick Moore, 20-year industry shill co-founder of Greenpeace? Is it James Lovelock, fearful and panicked dystopian author of the Gaia hypothesis? Or is it Stewart Brand, future tech true believer founder of the Whole Earth Catalog? Those are pretty much your three choices.
Oh, this time it's door No. 3:
"I have changed my mind from being mildly anti-nuclear to mildly pro-nuclear because carbon dioxide is now the most dangerous pollution and it is endangering the natural environment," said Stewart Brand, who in 1968 created the Whole Earth Catalog, which covered subjects including alternative energy.
I continue to wonder, as I did over a year ago, how many times this same damn story is going to get written. At least, luvagod, could they find another token "at least one environmentalist"? I'm bored with these three.
New nukes? A fair shot, not a free ride
David Frum says ‘Conservatives Heart Nuke Power.’
Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Comments
View as Flat
GRLCowan Posted 8:29 am
28 Mar 2008
Let the baby light matches in the fuel storage room!
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Solarspike Posted 8:30 am
28 Mar 2008
If you want to know how much "progress" is being made in the nuclear power revival just check out the headlines http://www.energy-daily.com/Civil_Nuclear_Energy.html
I count thirty countries with plans for developing new nuclear power plants. Last month when Bush was in Turkey he said the proliferation issues had be solved.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0328/p07s03-woam.html
FARC acquired uranium, says Colombia
Sixty six pounds of uranium was for a 'dirty bomb,'
I guess maybe his statement was a little premature.
"No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large
amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make safe
and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for
historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a
transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more
serious than any crime ever perpetrated by man. The idea that a
civilization could sustain itself on the basis of such a transgression
is an ethical, spiritual and metaphysical monstrosity. It means
conducting the economic affairs of man as if people really did not
matter at all."
E. F. Schumacher Small is Beautiful 1973
It is a sad and unfortunate thing that we as a society are even having
this discussion. Nuclear power, along with its even more evil
joined-at-the-hip twin, nuclear weapons, are exhibit #1 in the reasons
why our species doesn't even deserve to exist on this planet (and may
not for much longer if we don't wake up).
There is a failure of responsibility not just for the morally
challenged nuclear advocates (this is giving them the benefit of the
doubt that they are not actually intent on the evil that is the likely
result of their work) who are still proposing this insanity but for
the institutes of higher education who do not provide scientists with
any education in values, morals and ethics. By simply turning these
highly educated people loose on the world to create without conscience
is unacceptable and dangerous in the extreme. A society lives by it's
values and the educational institutions are failing society. When will
this change?
It seems that scientists often fall into thinking that if an idea
does not violate the laws of physics, and that we can do the
engineering to create it, and we have government tax money (so even
the economics don't have to work), that such an idea should be
pursued. They seem incapable of questioning assumptions much less of
understanding the ethics and morality of their work. Simply because
they have learned some tricks of physics they never seem to wonder if
these concepts might violate the laws of nature or the laws of any
higher metaphysical reality.
Many very well educated people are apparently not smart enough to
act in their own best interests. Advocates of any nonrenewable
environmentally destructive thermal power plant technology, either
coal or nuclear, have failed to question the basic assumptions of our
energy hungry society. Does it make any sense to go on up the ever
increasing energy use curve at any cost? The answer for those who
cannot tell the difference between right and wrong is "Of course it
does not."
Nuclear advocates such as Patrick Moore seem to flaunt their
inability to understand ethics by readily providing disinformation,
illogical arguments and outright lies in support of their cause. In
Mr. Moore's well known article Going Nuclear: A Green Makes the Case
he states that only 56 people died from the Chernobyl melt down. He
fails to mention the 50,000 children who are dying of thyroid cancer
from the radiation released by that nuclear disaster.
We need not pursue dangerous and destructive technologies to meet
our energy needs. There is 15,000 times more renewable energy resource
available than the amount of energy we presently use every day.
Renewable energy technology is available to harvest this clean energy
and safely meet all our needs and at less cost.
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Pangolin Posted 8:55 am
28 Mar 2008
Meanwhile we're putting solar panels on outhouses and bus-stops out here. Even the republicans are quietly outfitting thier country manses with solar power and geo-exchange HVAC because the power grid has been just a tad more unreliable lately.
They've lost and they know it.
Put the Carbon Back
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Tasermons Partner Posted 9:35 am
28 Mar 2008
I would personally say that's not quite true, I'd say GHGs as a whole are the most dangerous (on a world-wide, long-term, scale) pollution. Not just CO2 in particular.
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KenG Posted 2:36 pm
28 Mar 2008
The FARC Uranium was depleted Uranium. You can't make a dirty bomb from something that has no significant radioactivity. What were they doing with it? Who knows? Boat anchors maybe?
50,000 children dying of thyroid cancer? Over 20 years after the event, 9 of the 56 deaths were children with thyroid cancer. The conservative estimate is that another 4000 cases of thyroid cancer could occur but, since it is very curable, the number of deaths would be expected to result. Still a grim result but exaggerating by a 1000 times or more is not credible.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:56 pm
28 Mar 2008
Even if it can be redesigned, tested, and proven safe, taking at least 10 years, it would still be many times more expensive than renewables and conservation and smart grid technology.
But let them try a few test reactors, in a remote, already contaminated area they already wrecked with radiation. There are many.
Give them a chance to put up or shut up. but no new permits for old, proven unsafe technology.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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pmoore2222 Posted 8:17 am
29 Mar 2008
Grow More Trees, Use More Wood
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GRLCowan Posted 9:06 am
29 Mar 2008
Not really alternatives, or not yet, anyway. When we have nuclear motor fuel plants, and cars that are thus indirectly nuclear-powered, there's a chance the fuel will (1) be safer, as I propose in my sig line, and (2) not be sin-taxed, so governments won't be so hellbent on getting people to drive fast, far, and with frequent hard stops. That will be another safety gain.
The anti-nuclear movement is politically opportunistic and is based on manufactured fear. Get a life.
But why do the dark forces manufacture dissent? Because they tax fossil fuel. They tax it at a rate equivalent to thousands of dollars per pound U3O8. Do you know a low-level civil servant who is strongly pro-nuclear? Chances are he'll soon be looking for a private-sector gig. How will he get a life then? He'll have lost the one he had.
Let the baby light matches in the fuel storage room!
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Tasermons Partner Posted 1:23 pm
29 Mar 2008
To my knowledge (which is limited, mind ya), no member of the public has ever been injured in an accident at any solar, geothermal, or wind-power facility in the West.
And I'm willin' to bet that accidents amongst workers are less at those renewables than at nuclear, even when size and scale differences are taken into account.
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amazingdrx Posted 7:29 pm
29 Mar 2008
But if you won't admit the problems, you can't fix them. So no more chances. Take it or leave it.
That's the kind of negotiating position the next democratic president ought to take. And no more subsidies or liability and tax breaks.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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KenG Posted 11:16 pm
30 Mar 2008
Industrial accidents (to workers) is an order of magnitude higher in solar and wind facilities than in nuclear facilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Safety
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