dbinid’s Recent Comments

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  nonsense

  Insurance?  You think owners/operators of nuclear power plants operate without liability insurance? ! ?

  R&D:  don't understand your point ... ?  Maybe you would enjoy studying the history of the National Reactor Testing Station, which later had other names and is now known as the Idaho National Laboratory.  A fifty year history, 50-ish some odd reactors built, pushed to limits, fuel tested, all to learn lessons needed to enable commercial nuclear power.  The Idaho site never had anything to do with weapons (Los Alamos, Livermore, Oak Ridge, Hanford ... those are the Weapons labs).

  Subsidies?  What nuclear subsidies?  The trivial support in EPACT05 to pay for losses incurred for the first few reactors if their opening is slowed by government liscensing delays?  That's not subsidy, that's the government covering risks created by the government's own new untested liscensing process.  Maybe you don't know what "subsidy" means.  Or, maybe you're thinking of ethanol which can't even exist subsidies.  Or, maybe you don't remember the wind industry collapsing when its Carter-era tax credits expired? On And no, global warming doesn't change that posted 2 years, 9 months ago 12 Responses

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  NUCLEAR ENERGY: the other inconvenient truth

  Nuclear      $45 / MWh and baseload capable
  Wind         $70 / MWh and variable
  Solar       $160 / MWh and variable
  IGCC+CCS     $80 / MWh and baseload capable

  One of these has the lowest carbon footptint, http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn268.pdf
  That same one also has the lowest cost.  If we use the lowest carbon footprint, lowest cost electricity source we maximize GHG emission reduction for dollars invested.

  What else?  The world is already radioactive.  Learn about cosmic and terrestrial natural background radiation.

  What else?  Nuclear weapons?  Proliferation?  Nobody needs nuclear electricity generation to enrich U for a simple gun-type U-235 bomb. Denying ourselves emission-free nuclear electricity does nothing to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation.  In fact, the opposite is true, you can police/safeguard materials only if you ARE involved.

  Waste?  Let's talk about it.  Spent fuel.  A contained solid, held in posession, not sent up a stack.  Meanwhile, 900 tons of CO2 per second are being dumped into the atmosphere.  That makes nuclear energy a model of responsible waste management.

  What about longevity of nuclear waste?  What about longevity of CO2!  Study ocean carbonate chemistry.  Study what we know about the ocean's rate of response to the PETM.  Study the work of such authors as Christopher Sabine or David Archer (U of Chicago).  Be assured, the CO2 event we're starting is every bit as long lasting as nuclear issues.  Did you know 7% of today's CO2 emissions will still be in the atmosphere 100,000 year from now?  True.  Remember the glacial maximum that was supposed to be peaking in 80,000 years?  Cancelled.

  This whole thing is much, much, much bigger than most of you realize.  Your great-great-grandkid's lives?  Have you seen Mad Max?  Their great-great-grandkids lives . . . have you seen Clan of the Cave Bear?

  If you think we have the time and luxury of not choosing nuclear, then you don't understand the science of climate.

  Learn ocean carbonate chemistry.  Study the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum carbon incursion.  Study natural background radiation.  Think about the fact that life evolved in a world that was already full of ionizing radiation.  Think about that.  
  Radiation ... life evolved in it!

  Study.  Learn.  Think.On And no, global warming doesn't change that posted 2 years, 9 months ago 12 Responses