Nuclear power is too risky 12

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1. 

   GreenEngineer Posted 9:56 am
   23 May 2007

   hmphColor me not impressed.
   Snyder objected vociferously, arguing that climate change would not destroy life on earth, though it might make things difficult for humans for a few hundred years.
   I'm no nuke fan, but I have to point out that nuclear waste isn't going to destroy life on earth either.    It will just make things... difficult.  (What a great choice of words, too, from a poet who obviously has all kinds of insight into the highly-interconnected nonlinear feedback mechanisms of climate, weather, and agricultural systems.)
   For that matter, nukes probably won't destroy global technological civilization either, while global warming surely could.  If the choice was between nukes and global warming, only a fool would choose global warming, since it is both a larger-scale of danger and represents more unknowns.  Fortunately, the choice is not that simple.

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2. 

   sunflower Posted 10:02 am
   23 May 2007

   Autogenocide - good for GaiaHe has it about right.  But so bitter.  He knows we do not have time for nuclear everything.
   And a sulfur haze requires adding more long-life CO2 from fossil fuels.

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3. 

   Delay And Deny Posted 10:13 am
   23 May 2007

   French Nuclear Waste Program
   
   http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0411.shtml
   Why is such a big deal?
   France gets 80 percent of electricity from nuclear.
   If we go plug-in electric, like the Chevy Volt, or all fuel cell, like the Chevy Sequel, we can get heat, light, transportation and more all from nukes at almost no cost to our society.
   What is more, if high density France can bury a few pounds of nuclear waste in its back yard, then America's enourmous empty Southwest could handle it easily.
   
   John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
   
   
   You Read It Here First

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4. 

   Rune Posted 11:01 am
   23 May 2007

   Hey, you left out point 4 . . .. . . which quite naturally follows point, um, 2, as it turns out.
   
   
   
   It is easy to forget that we are now so numerous, almost anything extra we do in the way of farming, forest and home building is harmful to wildlife and Gaia.
   
   However, by cranking up nuclear fuel extraction, processing, distribution, use, and, most importantly, by following Lovelock's innovative answer to the nuclear waste disposal problem by burying some of it in everyone's front yard, we can put an end to the exponential human population growth, turning asphalt jungles into natural petting zoos for the few remaining adults and their mutated children to enjoy (when their chemo treatments aren't making them too weak to venture outside).
   And hang on kids, cuz the good news does not stop there.  Oh, no!  This is also the way to end the costly and increasingly unpopular War Without End(TM) on terror, too.  Now, instead of arming the hell out of the world so that said world can trade weapons for terrorists' cash on the black market, leading to the boring, daily reports of "insurgent," "civilian," and "military" body counts that cut into more important news about American Idol(TM), terrorists can become part of the solution--part of the Gaia Groove(TM), if you will, by recycling!  (And what could be more All American, yet progressive and green than recycling a steadily increasing stream of concentrated toxic material we prefer not to think of as waste?)
   That's right!  We'll have those sleeper cells up all night, acting as Mother Nature's Little Helpers(TM), as they gather radioactive waste and repackage it as dirty bombs in the summer, while they help their kids through college in the winter be renting them out as service workers with the hot new idea for keeping driveways and walkways ice free in the winter.  (Bad news for poor Rudolph, though, for he will be among the first, though few, wildlife casualties when he is forced out of a job because his nose won't be the thing that glows to guide Santa on his much more manageable rounds--thus leaving him with no money to buy an airline ticket and matching carbon offsets to vacation in one of those dreamy, radioactive wildlife sanctuaries that Lovelock cannot freely explore, but so admires.)
   Now, I know, you're probably thinking, but wait, if we are gonna have a nuclear induced die-off, aren't we gonna miss out on that cool new way of combating global warming promised in Lovelock's point number 3?  With so many fewer people, how are we ever going to afford enough nukes to generate a substantial global dimming effect?  Not to worry!  Although, in the long run scientists may be needed to come up with new and creative ways of screwing up the atmosphere, in the short term there will be more than enough cremations and funeral pires to make up for the difference--to say nothing of adding several new and interesting colors to those few remaining sunsets that symbols the end of days for so many would-be bunny killers, seal slaughterers, and wildflower murderers.
   So, what are you waiting for?  Sign up for Jolly Jimmy's Nuclear Winter Wonderland Dream Package today and enjoy that warm glow and room to grow that you've been craving!
   Celebrity voice impersonated.  Not available in stores.  Some restrictions apply.  Use only as directed.  Terrorists not included.  Funerals and cancer treatments optional and become the responsibility of randomly chosen victims.  See web site for details.  Investors should read prospectus carefully.  Odds of winning determined by number of surviving participants.  Quantities limited . . . by design.

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5. 

   Gary Gifford Posted 11:08 am
   23 May 2007

   Kosher solution to nuclear waste?Check this out.  Apparently an Israeli company has figured out a way to turn nuclear waste into harmless glass by annihilating it with plasma.  At about 1/10th the cost of burying it and instant neutralization of radiation, it sounds too good to be true.
   
   Cheers,
   
   Gary Gifford

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6. 

   GRLCowan Posted 2:35 pm
   23 May 2007

   It's not true.Unless they mean the radiation is instantly neutralized by putting ~5,000 kg/m^2 of glass in its way; that works. Or that much water; in water's case, 5,000 kg/m^2 translates easily into 5 m thickness.
   --- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
   
   Oxygen  expands around boron fire, car goes

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7. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 3:13 pm
   23 May 2007

   No it's notApparently an Israeli company has figured out a way to turn nuclear waste into harmless glass by annihilating it with plasma.
   And if you read further you would see that it's low level radiation medical waste.
   Stop perpetuating the myth.
   Reprocessing does nothing meaningful to reduce high level waste.
   Yucca Mountain fills up by temperature.
   
   Not volume.
   And low level waste is basically meaningless when it comes to temperature.

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8. 

   caniscandida Posted 5:12 pm
   23 May 2007

   nukes and haibunIt should be fairly clear, from this posting and thread and from other stuff up in Gristmill, that the conversation on nuclear energy is not yet going very smoothly.  So much prejudice, so much mistrust, so much curious physics is flying about, that I wonder why anybody bothers to read anybody else on the subject.
   And Gary Snyder is no better, really.  It is quite unclear what the value is of his comments, on Lovelock and nukes, at that arch-Californian event.
   However, Snyder is to be congratulated for experimenting in haibun, which is indeed a fascinating genre, perhaps best known from the travel journals of Basho.  But Japanese culture is just about the most willfully obscurantist and auto-ethno-centric culture in the world ("You cannot hope to understand our art, if you are not one of us!"), so there is no way really for us non-Japanese to know if a haiku is better all by itself, or when packed in a prose context, itself not always very coherent, and full of allusions and connotations that no one who is not Japanese could ever appreciate.
   In the West, the mixture of prose and poetry has been tried numerous times, though it has never become a genre in itself.  A great classic example is Dante's "La Vita Nuova," about his love for a girl, and his interpretation of that love.  Lots of Western writers have done lots of kinds of mixing; but there are not as well books of rules, and traditions, regarding how it should be done, and what it means.  Thank God!
   And God bless Gary Snyder, for paying attention to that truly great humanitarian crime, or, if you will, sin, the destruction by the Taliban of the monumental monolithic cliff-side-niche figures of the Buddha, at Bamiyan, in north-central Afghanistan.
   It is the Taliban, and their fellow-travelers, who have induced many of us to believe that Islam is not truly considered a world religion, rather it is a world spite.  Those statues were standing there for very many centuries: Suddenly, were Muslims in danger of being converted to Buddhism?; Suddenly, were Muslims in danger of being seduced by figurative art?; Suddenly, were Muslims in danger of becoming fascinated by pre-Islamic civilizations?  No, not at all.  So then what?  Was it not that the Taliban knew that the destruction of those monuments would offend us Westerners, and they knew that they had a hope of bringing all the Muslim world to support them by alleging these vague and questionable Muslim causes?
   I have not read yet what Gary Snyder wrote, relating the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas to the destruction of the Twin Towers here in my hometown on 9/11.  But the connexion is very clear to me.
   
   Chickens are our cousins!
   
   So are other sensitive animals!
   
   Enough is enough!
   
   No more factory farms!

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9. 

   GRLCowan Posted 7:20 am
   24 May 2007

   Why anybody bothers to readI can't claim ever to have changed my mind on the matter, but there are those who have.
   In that other, very long thread I thought it would not go unnoticed -- by lurkers -- that the question I asked three times was evaded. ("Just off the top of your head, estimate how much oil ..." The USA used to burn a lot of oil for electricity production.)
   --- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
   
   Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes

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10. 

    sandwalk Posted 3:03 am
    25 May 2007

    a different kind of nukeIt has been a while since I read it, but I can recommend John McPhee's book "The Curve of Binding Energy" where he discusses questions about nuclear energy with Theodore B. Taylor, a nuclear scientist who is not at all pleased with how nuke energy has been handled by the government.  
    
    As I remember, he suggests we go to smaller, local plants (for which there are numerous safe designs) to limit the cost of transporting this energy across vast expanses of expensive power lines. And he does address waste storage issues.
    
    Nuclear energy does not have to be a monolithic embodiment of evil; that's already taken by Bush.

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11. 

    Kit Stolz Posted 4:26 am
    25 May 2007

    thanks......for the recommendation. That books sounds like a must-read for me.

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12. 

    wfairbroither Posted 7:39 am
    26 May 2007

    on Snyder(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
    
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