Nukes are green.

Metanis · Post by **Metanis** » April 10, 2005, 6:08 pm

The fact this appears in the New York Times makes me think that even Hell is experiencing climate change. It must be frozen over down there.

Nukes Are Green

Nukes Are Green
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 9, 2005
If there was one thing that used to be crystal clear to any environmentalist, it was that nuclear energy was the deadliest threat this planet faced. That's why Dick Gregory pledged at a huge anti-nuke demonstration in 1979 that he would eat no solid food until all nuclear plants in the U.S. were shut down.

Kristof must have read this article in Wired magazine because it sounds similar.

This issue will be another divisive one for the Democrats and for the Left in general unless they jettison the knee-jerk anti-nuke ultra greens.

In the Wired article I especially like the comment about dealing with the radioactive wastes from a reactor.

Either way, it's clear that the whole waste disposal problem has been misconstrued. We don't need a million-year solution. A hundred years will do just fine - long enough to let the stuff cool down and allow us to decide what to do with it.

The wackos always cry about the milennia required for the wastes to totally decay. Why not expect that human progress will find a better way to deal with this problem in the future? Instead of worrying about thousands and thousands of years how about just a hundred or so?

Anyway, I find this renewed interest in nuclear power to be refreshing. It sure would be nice to let those Arabs keep their oil. Forever.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » April 10, 2005, 6:50 pm

Yes pushing problems ahead of you and hoping for a sollution is such a smart thing to do!

Hey Metanis put a gun to your head and pull the trigger, I am sure by the time you die there will be a way to bring you back!

Cartalas · Post by **Cartalas** » April 10, 2005, 7:34 pm

Kelshara wrote:Yes pushing problems ahead of you and hoping for a sollution is such a smart thing to do!

Hey Metanis put a gun to your head and pull the trigger, I am sure by the time you die there will be a way to bring you back!

Why dont you give a demonstration on yourself? this way we can see how its done, No, never mind your gods sick joke im sure you will find a way to fuck it up.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » April 10, 2005, 7:49 pm

It is pretty amusing when people try to slam others but their sentence is so incoherent that nobody understands it.

Rivera Bladestrike · Post by **Rivera Bladestrike** » April 10, 2005, 7:51 pm

I'm for nuclear energy, there's several plants here in NJ, if only they would make some newer high tech ones people would probably be more comfortable. The ones here in NJ are like 50 years old and people are getting a little worried.

Cartalas · Post by **Cartalas** » April 10, 2005, 10:23 pm

Kelshara wrote:It is pretty amusing when people try to slam others but their sentence is so incoherent that nobody understands it.

Your post wasnt that bad

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » April 10, 2005, 10:44 pm

Anone with a room temp or better IQ has always understand that nuclear power plants are not bombs, and that they are in fact a "green" source of power compared to anything else.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » April 10, 2005, 11:06 pm

I wouldn't say anything else, I'd say anything else we are currently fully utilizing. While I am not 100% against nuclear power I'd also like to see a hell of a lot more money put into research and development of possible power sources.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » April 10, 2005, 11:34 pm

It would take vast quantities of oil to create enough nuclear reactors to fill our needs, and even then the known supplies of yellow cake wouldn't last "Forever", more like a few decades.

Tangurena · Post by **Tangurena** » April 11, 2005, 1:39 am

Is is the high point of fashion to blame the demise of the nuclear industry on commie treehugging liberal lawyers. What isn't fashionable is when reality intrudes. Nuclear plants stopped being made because they stopped being economical to build. Building a nuclear power plant is a good way to lose a few billion dollars. Unless of course the operators of them could get a few billion dollars in corporate welfare.

When folks claimed that nuclear power would be too cheap to meter, that was when the cost of construction, operation and decommissioning of a nuclear reactor would be paid for by the sale, to the US Government, of all the Plutonium produced during the operation of the plant. Back then, the US Government was paying about $1,000 per gram of Plutonium. But along comes 1970 and the US Government stops buying privately produced Plu. Oops, now the plants aren't making a profit, and are now losing money like the bank is on fire.

Reactor designs in the US are intended to create lots and lots of Plutonium. The Canadian designed CANDU reactors produce a tiny fraction of the Plu that the US reactors do (something around 1-5% of the American plu production).

The US Government stopped purchasing privately produced plutonium back in 1970. Since then about 1700 tons of plutonium are in private ownership here in the USA. The US military owns about 100 tons of plutonium.

The factory that refines uranium to make fuel for nuclear reactors is the exact same factory that refines uranium to manufacture nuclear bombs. Reactors use one level of purity and bombs take a higher level of purity. Why do you think our government is pissing all over the Iranians about the enrichment plant? Because it is the same factory. Only the intent of the operator makes it one sort of plant or the other.

There are no commerical US reactor designs that use plutonium. If we bothered to design some that could use plutonium, we would have a start on getting rid of the huge vaults of the stuff scattered around the country. Stuff that will be dangerous 250,000 years from now. Stuff so dangerous that a few ounces sprinkled into the water supply will kill millions of people. Stuff so dangerous you can build a Nagasaki grade bomb with only 20 pounds of it. And there are 1700 tons of it in private hands in the USA.

People in this country won't make plans further ahead than next quarter, and to keep this stuff safe requires making plans a million times longer than businesses are willing to make now. Call me cynical, but based on past and current trends in the US, expanding the nuclear program is suicidal. If you hate and despise America, and want to poison it forever, go ahead with your nuclear expansion program. You won't be alive when it glows at night and poisons millions of people, that is why you're proposing this fairy tale.

Arborealus · Post by **Arborealus** » April 11, 2005, 2:38 am

Kylere wrote:Anone with a room temp or better IQ has always understand that nuclear power plants are not bombs, and that they are in fact a "green" source of power compared to anything else.

When you say green you are of course referring to the glow of all those folks around Chernobyl?...I'm trying to recall when Iceland's geothermal power systems caused the long term evacuation of hundreds of square miles...then there's the time the wind farm's windmills went berserk and sliced up hundreds of people...

Granted they are less injurious on the whole than oil, coal, natural gas...

Animale · Post by **Animale** » April 11, 2005, 9:39 am

In order to satisfy the U.S.'s energy demands, a high-tech state of the art nuclear power plant would have to be built every two weeks for the next 30 years. Good luck on that.

Animale

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » April 11, 2005, 1:28 pm

Icelands geothermal vents are harnassed with equipment built using fossil fuels, it was trasnported there using fossil fuels etc. Windmills same same. Nuclear same same. In the end the nuke plant can be used for hundreds/thousands of years, we have an entire asteroid belt made of rocks and we KNOW many have heavy materials.

Chernobyl was caused by bad design, human error, system error and ignorance, but if you compare the death toll and damage to what the oil industry has pulled off in the last 10 years, guess who wins.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 11, 2005, 3:16 pm

Animale wrote:In order to satisfy the U.S.'s energy demands, a high-tech state of the art nuclear power plant would have to be built every two weeks for the next 30 years. Good luck on that.

Animale

Build as many Nuke plants as you can. You don't need 100 percent dependency on nuclear power or any other power but they will help reduce our reliance on oil while other alternative energy sources are also sought.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » April 11, 2005, 5:23 pm

you guys are missing the key component of the whole fucking thing.

this conversation about what makes sense could not have its head farther up its ass.

gentlemen, what alternative energy lacks to compete with the petrochemical industry is HUGE profitability.

that means people don't invest. that means nothing fucking happens.

for christ's sake they are building an underwater hotel in Dubai jsut for the fuck of it. Dubai is an emirate in the middle east that sees a lot of oil money flow through it. I guess they handle finacial services or something.

anyway, if you want to play on a golf course in the fucking desert, go to Dubai.

if you want to see a single hotel that bought all of South Africa's gold export for half of a year, go to Dubai.

if you have any doubt as to whether or not the petrochemical industry is going ANYWHERE without a fight, you are out of your mind.