Global Warmers Promote Dark Ages, Permanently

[MG1962]

As I pointed out above, no one has died to causes unique to nuclear energy outside the Soviet Union in almost 60 years. 10 years safe operation under a new design isn't going to achieve what more than half a century under proven technologies hasn't been able to. There's no technology that's going to placate the radical environmentalists as most, if not all of them, have already pledged to oppose fusion technology should it be developed.

We may have to suffer high energy prices and one or more 2003 New York blackouts a year before the peoples desire to have things the way they were overrides their unfounded fears and superstitions.

So only radical enviromentalists are opposed to nuclear energy as a power source?

 

[leftysergeant]

Enron and Haliburton aren't nuclear industry companies.

Of course not. THey are examples of the kind of low-life idiots who flourish when someone slips the regulatory bodies a Mickey.

Outside the former Soviet Union, the number of people who have died due to causes unique to nuclear energy has been exactly zero since the early 1960s.

I think a few of them doed in Japan in the late 1990s. Some fool tried to rush a procedure of some sort.

Meanwhile, coal power cuases or contributes to 150,000+ deaths per year.

No other argument is needed.

Actually, you are right if you are arguing for solar panels on every roof top. Haven't heard of a single injury not directly related to poor grip strength or ladder management connected to solar panels.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Of course not. THey are examples of the kind of low-life idiots who flourish when someone slips the regulatory bodies a Mickey.

Examples which lack a parallel in the nuclear industry.

I think a few of them doed in Japan in the late 1990s. Some fool tried to rush a procedure of some sort.

You think wrong.

Even if you were right, that would make it what... a single digit death toll in half a century?

Actually, you are right if you are arguing for solar panels on every roof top.

No... I'm arguing for a energy solution that will do the job.

Gujurat Solar Project, India = 24,000 megawatt hours per day, 58 square miles
Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, Canada = 144,000 megawatt hours per day, 6 square miles

Energy sources live and die on density and capacity. Wind and solar just don't cut the mustard.

 

[leftysergeant]

You think wrong.

Ermm..No, that would be you.

Tokaimura, Japan, 30 Septermber 1999, 2 dead.

This in one of the most anal-retentive, by-the-freaking-book industrialized nations in the world.

Even if you were right, that would make it what... a single digit death toll in half a century?

Still too many and it could have been worse. Imagine what would hapen if some turd like Don Blankenship ownered a controlling interest in a nuke plant?

Don't want to think about it.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Ermm..No, that would be you.

Tokaimura, Japan, 30 Septermber 1999, 2 dead.

This in one of the most anal-retentive, by-the-freaking-book industrialized nations in the world.

Wow... so now we're up to TWO casualties in 50+ years.

In other words, nuclear still has the best safety record.

Still too many and it could have been worse.

Speaking of anal retentitive, your'e seriously proposing abandoning an entire industry because of 2 deaths in half a century? How is that not insane?

Listen, son. Accidents happen, people die. That's life.

They just happen less at nuclear plants than anywhere else.

Imagine what would hapen if some turd like Don Blankenship ownered a controlling interest in a nuke plant?

You're right. We want only responsible state-employed overseers operating such critical installations. Like the ones who ran Chernobyl.

Don't want to think about it.

I can tell, I haven't seen any evidence that you have thought about it.

Fatalities per terawatt year:
Coal: 342
Natural gas: 85
Hydro: 885
Nuclear: eight

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

So only radical enviromentalists are opposed to nuclear energy as a power source?

They are the chief source of all the lies and misinformation.

Get rid of them and the people who were otherwise vulnerable to fearmongering will have to turn to nuclear engineers and other qualified experts for their information.

 

[leftysergeant]

You're right. We want only responsible state-employed overseers operating such critical installations. Like the ones who ran Chernobyl.

No. The fools at Chernobyl were not big fans of unions. And I would trust unionized workers over any who would consider Blankenship and his fellow low-lifes fit to run a hazardous operation. Massey Energy should have been liquidated over a year ago for murder.

As it is, we have to subsidize private industries who want to build nuclear plants.

Socialize the risks, privatize the profits.

Fascism in a nutshell.

 

[leftysergeant]

They are the chief source of all the lies and misinformation.

Get rid of them and the people who were otherwise vulnerable to fearmongering will have to turn to nuclear engineers and other qualified experts for their information.

Problem is that the power company executives are the ones who would then control the flow of information.

No reason on earth to trust a freaking MBA on scientific matters.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

No. The fools at Chernobyl were not big fans of unions.

Uhhh... Chernobyl occurred in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Lefty.

You fail history and geography forever.

Problem is that the power company executives are the ones who would then control the flow of information.

I've attended two annual conferences of the Canadian Nuclear Society. In addition to sharing frequent e-mail exchanges with some of the top minds in civilian nuclear power generation in North America. Never once have I heard the words "I'll have to clear my answers with my boss before talking to you".

No reason on earth to trust a freaking MBA on scientific matters.

I talk to this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy and this guy.

You, on the other hand, are like the kind of person who thinks a Ph.D. in theology must be an expert in post collapse structural analysis because he hates the same politicians you do.

EDIT: Ohh... I've also spoken to this guy too.

He's pro-nuclear too, though his Ph.D. is in astronomy or astrophysics. Which is still a helluva lot better than your source for scientific matters.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

And what's your obsession with this Blankenship fellow? He's a bigwig in the coal business... so what? I've been advocating running him out of business, replacing his industry with a cleaner and healthier one.

The average coal fired powerplant is thousands of times more radioactive than a equivalent nuclear plant.

If you want to continue protecting this Blankenship fellow, and allow him to continue venting hundreds of tons of radioactive waste into the air water and soil every year, then by all means, be my guest.

It just makes you look like a hypocrite.

 

[leftysergeant]

Uhhh... Chernobyl occurred in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Lefty.

So? Their labor unions were a sham. Communism never had a chance after Stalin started taking lessons from the Fascists.

I've attended two annual conferences of the Canadian Nuclear Society. In addition to sharing frequent e-mail exchanges with some of the top minds in civilian nuclear power generation in North America. Never once have I heard the words "I'll have to clear my answers with my boss before talking to you".

Meh. They know which side their bread is buttered on.

You, on the other hand, are like the kind of person who thinks a Ph.D. in theology must be an expert in post collapse structural analysis because he hates the same politicians you do.

I was no more impressed with Dixy Lee Ray than with David Rag Griffin or any of the twoofer whackadoodles.

He's pro-nuclear too, though his Ph.D. is in astronomy or astrophysics. Which is still a helluva lot better than your source for scientific matters.

He sees it as a safe source of energy. His PhD does not ensure that he has taken the venality of MBAs into consideration. There are lots of idiots out there who manage to get various PhDs even in areas like biology and still fall for Creationist BS.

 

[leftysergeant]

And what's your obsession with this Blankenship fellow? He's a bigwig in the coal business... so what? I've been advocating running him out of business, replacing his industry with a cleaner and healthier one.

Trouble is that the same sorts of scuzzballs are poised to move into the nuclear industry. Corporations are not expected to be moral. They are required by law to be profitable. It is, thus, ethical, in their hideous little dystopia, to be immoral.

Immoral corporations kill people.

The average coal fired powerplant is thousands of times more radioactive than a equivalent nuclear plant.

All the more reason to go to wind, geothermal and solar. We may need the coal later when the oil runs out for industrial materials.

If you want to continue protecting this Blankenship fellow, and allow him to continue venting hundreds of tons of radioactive waste into the air water and soil every year, then by all means, be my guest.

It just makes you look like a hypocrite.

Defending him? I want him strung up from a tree that was poisoned with mine tailings.

I also want to keep the hands of maggots like him off of things that could kill people if they get careless. The people who are slavering to start pouring concrete for nuke plants should be pouring money into wind farms now. But that would be too moral and difficult for them to get their minds around.

 

[Furcifer]

As I pointed out above, no one has died to causes unique to nuclear energy outside the Soviet Union in almost 60 years. 10 years safe operation under a new design isn't going to achieve what more than half a century under proven technologies hasn't been able to. There's no technology that's going to placate the radical environmentalists as most, if not all of them, have already pledged to oppose fusion technology should it be developed.

We may have to suffer high energy prices and one or more 2003 New York blackouts a year before the peoples desire to have things the way they were overrides their unfounded fears and superstitions.

Well like MG pointed out, it isn't just radicals, it's normal people that believe in the technology, appreciate it for what it is, but just don't trust people.

And you can't blame them for that. Technology changes, but people, people have stayed the same for a while when you think about it.

Every time you tell people "that couldn't possibly happen" someone comes along, or some thing comes along and makes it happen.

Today you say "It couldn't happen, nothing could possibly happen short of a strategically placed meteor the size of a Volkswagen" and early next week what happens?

So even when you get over the possibility of an accident, you're left with the waste. That's why I think it will take Gen IV, to get past the issue of waste, not so much in reality, but in people's minds. I think that's where the happy medium will be met.

Until then I think you have to respect the fact that for some people any risk is too much. Saying it's just irrational it is in itself irrational. You can't dismiss that many people and expect to make progress with them. I love reptiles, have had many snakes and lizards. Some of the most interesting and harmless creatures, less dangerous than your average house cat. Unfortunately some people just don't like them, they don't trust them and they don't want to have anything to do with them. You do what you can to teach them, get them accustomed to them and hope their fears subside. But the last thing you do is dismiss them as irrational, call them stupid and thrust a snake in their face.

 

[DC]

Because they don't have the nuclear plants yet to justify it. Besides the US does have a good solution that could be in use right quick.

Do you have a better solution?

Europe has enough plants and also still doesn't have a solution.
no body has a solution , just ideas. theoretical solutions.

 

[BenBurch]

Lefty, my solution to fears of nuclear power in the hands of private corporations is simple; Corporations might OWN them, but only the US Navy should be allowed to RUN them.

 

[Unabogie]

Lefty, my solution to fears of nuclear power in the hands of private corporations is simple; Corporations might OWN them, but only the US Navy should be allowed to RUN them.

See, this is where I am on this issue. We only have to go back less than a year to hear President Obama telling us that deep water drilling has come a long way and the technology is safe. Then the next day (seemingly) one of the rigs explodes and we have a disaster on our hands. And did the technology fail? No, the cretins at Dick Cheney Inc knowingly used faulty cement and BP didn't seem to care. It was all profits, all the time, and 11 men died while unimaginable damage was done to the ocean. So what's the common denominator? Profit. Something as potentially dangerous as a nuclear reactor accident just can't be placed in the hands of cronies and, as Lefty puts it, MBAs.

It's a national security issue and it should be run by people who can be held accountable and whose sole concern is running the damn thing the right way.

 

[lomiller]

Total BS. That invisible hand has only one goal, and that is to grab. The Hand doeos what is profitable, whether anyone else suffers or not. Government is there to do what needs to be done regardless whethervthere is a profit to be made and to keep that freaking greedy invisible hand off stuff that belongs to all of us.

The invisible hand *is not* the problem, rather its right wing insistence on not creating the conditions that are required for the invisible hand to work.

The invisible hand works because it rewards the person who can produce things most efficiently. For example if one company takes 2 man hours to produce a product and another only takes 1 the second company will win and take over the market. This frees up man hours to produce something else so there is more total wealth created so that everyone can be better off.

Where it breaks down is when one company doesn’t produce the item more efficiently, but instead finds a way to pass on the cost to others. AKA externalities. For example iof you have two companies making a product but one pays to have it’s waste dealt with properly while the other dumps it in the local park where the public needs to pay to dispose of it. In this case the second company “wins” despite the fact that “win” doesn’t create any increase in total wealth but actually decreases it.

This is basically what’s going on with CO2. At present companies don’t have to pay any of the costs associated with releasing CO2 so they have no incentive to do things more effectively. Effectively we are all subsidizing bad behaviour.

 

[lomiller]

So only radical enviromentalists are opposed to nuclear energy as a power source?

Even those of us who support nuclear power reject SoT’s cornucopian view of it. If you’ve seen anything he posts on it he always ends up appealing to technologies that are not even on the drawing board like all fast reactor fuel cycles, fuel supplies that are “infinite” because a researcher once extracted a small amount of uranium from seawater in his laboratory, and ignores the simple impossibility of building the 10000 or so new reactors that would be required.

Nuclear power can and should grow, but anyone who suggests it can be scaled up to replace fossil fuels simply is dealing with fantasy not reality.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Meh. They know which side their bread is buttered on.

Your fellow conspiracy theorists in the 9/11 subforum say the exact same thing about members of the structural engineering profession who don't rubber stamp their paranoid fantasies.

One thing I often hear from these guys is how tired they are of hearing uneducated persons like yourself accuse them of trying to murder their own families. It gets old, really fast. If you have evidence that everyone with a degree in nuclear engineering has been cooking the books as part of a capitalist plot, bring it. Otherwise, take it back to the forum set aside for nonsense like yours.

He sees it as a safe source of energy. His PhD...

That's all I needed to hear, thanks. Your concession that I get my science from scientists is noted.

Trouble is that the same sorts of scuzzballs are poised to move into the nuclear industry. Corporations are not expected to be moral. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...

Leftist agitprop and neo-marxist blather. You're just wasting bandwidth, Lefty.

All the more reason to go to wind, geothermal and solar.

Those power sources are inadequate, remember?.

Gujurat Solar Project, India = 24,000 megawatt hours per day, 58 square miles
Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, Canada = 144,000 megawatt hours per day, 6 square miles

No density, no capacity, no way.

It's just as bad for wind:

Defending him? I want him strung up from a tree that was poisoned with mine tailings.

And yet you're playing straight into his hands. Solar and wind can't compete with his business. Nuclear can. You're padding his throne with your dollars and your ignorance. You're his best friend, Lefty.

I also want to keep the hands of maggots like him off of things that could kill people if they get careless. The people who are slavering to start pouring concrete for nuke plants should be pouring money into wind farms now. But that would be too moral and difficult for them to get their minds around.

I want to replace his industry, the one that has killed 1.5 million people in the last ten years, with one that has killed zero in the same time period.

That's plenty moral enough.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

If you’ve seen anything he posts on it he always ends up appealing to technologies that are not even on the drawing board like all fast reactor fuel cycles,

Breeding U-238 into Pu-239 has been done since the 1940s.

fuel supplies that are “infinite” because a researcher once extracted a small amount of uranium from seawater in his laboratory,

Get your head out of the seawater for a minute. Using that technology first developed in the 1940s, the existing stockpiles of U-238 in the US could fuel Americas economy for literally thousands of years.

and ignores the simple impossibility of building the 10000 or so new reactors that would be required.

Bull@#$%.

The "simple" definition of "impossibility" means "can't be done", something you seem to be confusing with "can't be done by next tuesday".

Let's not build 10,000 reactors. America has an existing fleet of 104 reactors. So lets build 104 more. A journey of a 1000 steps starts with just one. But you bitterly resist even that. Or are you going to tell me that's impossible too?

You could easily do exactly that if you had a government that was blowing away 80 billion dollars a month more than it takes in.