Japan’s emissions hit record levels 3

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1. 

   usandthem Posted 1:00 am
   13 Nov 2008

   Nuclear powerJapan should never have built nuclear plants in the first place.Their country is on the Pacific Rim of major volcanic and earthquake action.They were lucky that there was not a major escape of nuclear material.This is yet another reason that nuclear power plants should not be built.Along with the FACT that we still do not have a safe way to get rid of the waste.The Yucca Mountain site is unsafe because it sits on a fault line.This is unexcusable given the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars went into scouting and building the site.
   
    I understand that we need power and that nuclear energy is "green"as far as emitions are concerned,but there is still the waste.Coal and oil are what we are used to,but that has high emition rates that are contributing to global warming.We have to learn to conserve,the free ride is over folks!We need to develope green energy from solar,tidal,hydro,and wind and we have to do it NOW!Even these green technologies have some drawbacks because of how they are manufactured.Everything has a price,but renewables leave less of a carbon footprint and they are renewable.A culture that is so desperate that they/we will build dangerous nuclear power plants on fault lines and in earthquake and volcanic zones is dangerously deluding themselves,and endangering life on earth.

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2. 

   JORTH Posted 11:56 am
   13 Nov 2008

   Nuclear Power and Yucca MountainUsandthem should investigate their "facts" before they use the word fact to define speculation.
   
   You can't create a fault under Yucca Mountain simply because someone speculated that there is a fault under a mountain range. There has been significant geological research of the Yucca Mountain geology to  show no seismic activity in the last 10,000 years. This is not considered to be a fault by any current geologic definition.
   
   In addition to your mis-statement of facts you also termed the Japanese "Lucky" to have a nuclear reactor survive an earth quake without releasing any  radioactive material. In reality this was a designed result because the western world reactors are designed to survive an earthquake as well as many other natural and man made disasters.
   
   Your reckless use of terms like facts and lucky only question your credibility.
   
   

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3. 

   GRLCowan Posted 1:49 pm
   13 Nov 2008

   If there was no major escape of rad. material ...... then why does the Pacific Ocean now contain more than a thousand megawatts' worth of such material?*
   The desire of 'usandthem' to protect the Japanese from false solutions is very commendable. In looking at the designs for reactors like those at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, however, I don't see anything that would respond badly to rough shaking.
   If it had been made of nuclear fuel plus exploding wood, it might have been able to increase the Pacific's radioactivity, for a little while, by 1 percent.
   --- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
   *(It always did)

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