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But some claim the radioactivity is carried around on ocean currents to end up in our fish and on our beaches.

Harrisburg/US, 28 March 1979
A combination of technical failures and human error leads to a partial-meltdown in the core of Unit 2 reactor of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Radioactive gases are released, some 3,500 children and pregnant women are evacuated.

But some claim the radioactivity is carried around on ocean currents to end up in our fish and on our beaches.

Harrisburg/US, 28 March 1979
A combination of technical failures and human error leads to a partial-meltdown in the core of Unit 2 reactor of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Radioactive gases are released, some 3,500 children and pregnant women are evacuated.

That's capitalism for you.

Looks a little like socialism to me...Maybe I'm not sure what capitaism is, but from what I was taught in school, this doesn't look like it.

• Catastrophic accidents
• Weapons generation
• Radioactive waste
• Decommissioning costs
• Uranium is non-renewable

So what if a nuclear plant was designed that addressed these issues? Would you still be against it?

By the way, it was. The prototype was called the EBR-II. The reactor type is called an IFR (Integral Fast Reactor). Let's discuss...

Passive safety: safety systems that rely on properties of nature (like gravity) to function correctly rather than computers or complex machinery. Aside from the fact that a Chernobyl-like accident cannot happen in Western countries (the design was fundamentally different -- optimized for weapons production rather than power), Three Mile Island, a far less serious accident, cannot happen either. How can anyone say this with any conviction? Because they tested the Three-Mile scenario. What happened? The reactor quietly shut down.

So let's summarize safety in an IFR. If something went wrong (the heat exchanger pumps stopped working for example), the reactor is "scrammed", the control rods completely isolate the fuel rods. The control rods are suspended by electromagnet above the fuel rods. Cut the power the control rod suspension mechanism and they drop (gravity), stopping the reaction. But let's say the control rods couldn't drop for some reason. The heat would rise, but the sodium pool would distribute the heat so it wasn't simply localized at the fuel, preventing a meltdown of the fuel (incidentally, for those who get this confused, a meltdown means the fuel melted, not that the plant exploded). The fuel rods would expand gradually from the heat (hot things expand...natural property and all that), the density would descrease, and the chain reaction would reach a terminal point where it cannot sustain further reactions. But let's say that somehow failed. The fuel would need to penetrate the sodium pool to expose its radioactivity to the rest of the core facility (not the outside world, the core building). So let's say that the fuel actually got clear of the pool. It would be contained by the main structure. Let's assume that the fuel were working its way through the main concrete shell. More concrete could be poured to supplement any weak spots. And finally note that all of this highly unlikely scenario would take some time to occur. This would be more than enough time to evacuate anyone in the area.

-----

Re: Weapons use. "The IFR pyroprocess was designed to be 'proliferation resistant'. Simply put, this means that fuel recycled with IFR technology can't be easily used as material for nuclear weapons. Attempts to extract material to produce a nuclear weapon would require a huge, easily detectable, investment in the same type of facilities and equipment that would be required to produce the material directly from spent fuel from any type of reactor."

Only the material coming out of the IFR would have a much lower concentration of transuranics than that of current light water reactors. Which brings me to...

-----

Radioactive waste. The spent fuel of light water reactors and the nuclear material in nuclear warheads can be used for power generation in an IFR. You'll hear the boneheads at Greenpeace say things like "...the nuclear industry has failed to come up with a solution for what to do with nuclear waste." Utter bullshit. Here is a solution that reuses the spent fuel instead of dumping it in Yucca Mountain, uses it more efficiently so that the remaining isotopes are of types with substantially shorter halflives, and it gives a solution to the existing, decaying stockpiles of nuclear warheads.

-----

Uranium caches, while not a renewable resource, w

He has the support of the CATO Institute, a neutral, non-profit organisation fighting against the spread of junk science such as "global warming" (a single volcano belches out more SO2 than humanity has in its entire history) and "acid rain" (last time I checked, "evil" CO2 was not acidic), not to mention the hysteria about DDT, dioxins, asbestos and lead in fuel, none of which have any scientific backing but all of which are supported by eco-fascists and pro-statist left-wing biased news "sources" who want to stop the growth of the US economy becuase they're jealous and they hate our freedom.

I suspect this is futile, you're too busy campaigning to be bothered with facts, but....

Somehow I feel like this has become a process of doing your research for you.

Iraq Timeline


The British managed to keep that region in check for quite a long time. They handed back soveriegnty as a reward for helping out in WW1/WW2.

The British gained control over Iraq during WWI and gave them their independence in 1932 although it has been argued that they maintained control through a puppet dictator until WWII when they became no longer financially capable. At that point the US stepped in to try our hand at empire building. Prior to WWI they were ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

And you are saying we should follow the British example for ruling?

An example of British rule

"In 1921, Britain imposed a new monarch on Iraq - Faisal, "a king who will be content to reign, but not to govern," in the words of a British Foreign Office bureaucrat. The subsequent mass uproar was suppressed in brutal massacres in 1920-4. The brutality of British rule was captured in an infamous quote from Winston Churchill, who said "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes."

I don't know anything about that group, so I searched a little further and found this on GreenPeace.org

Greenpeace

"The first use of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East was by British forces in 1917, at a time when Britain occupied territory that was later to become Iraq. Chemical weapons were used in the process of welding the Kurdish north, the Shia south and the Sunni tribes around Baghdad, into an invented Iraqi 'kingdom' to control the region's oil. Winston Churchill, then Colonial Secretary, found "turbulent tribes" of Arabs were fighting this imperialism with some success and encouraged the use of chemical weapons. There was some opposition to this in Whitehall but Churchill wrote: "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.""

What city would you like to gas first?

In the end you have the British 'ruling' Iraq for a period of roughly 15 years. And during that period they used poisoned gas to suppress revolts whose purpose was self rule. I guess the dead were peaceful and the rest were too afraid to complain.

Of course osama was revoked his Saudi citizenship because they weren't happy with them. Iraq is an important step in the war on terror. Success in Iraq will be a major blow for the terrorists.

Here is a quote from a 'Special Press Summary' from the Virtual Information Center. I found it by searching FirstGov for information on 9-11

911 Highjackers"

From their web site:

"The Virtual Information Center (VIC) is a six-person cell that conducts research among public domain materials for the CDR U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) and his staff. The assessments generated by the VIC's researchers are disseminated to the headquarters staff and many other recipients as part of the VIC's situational-awareness mission."

In the section titled:

Saudi Crown Prince To Visit Moscow

"Fifteen of 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were Saudis."

Add Osama to that and you have 16 out of 20 were Saudi citizens. Yet we chose to attack Iraq, their neighbor.

I'm too lazy to look it up, it should be easy to find, but recently several experts on terrorism, and Al Qaeda in particular, have stated that all we have done with our unfocused 'war' is decentr

In the not too distant future there will be futile attempts to halt our greenhouse gas emissions as the evidence mounts that we're facing a problem. These will possibly involve the most mechanically efficient short-range vehicle (the bicycle) for all those trips under 2 miles (to the video store etc) that we all take in urban centers.

"When I see an adult on a bicycle I do not despair for the future of the human race." - H.G.Wells

What's tough is that Chernobyl-induced cancer cases amount to an increase of between 0.004% and 0.01% above the baseline rate of cancers (the exact number is subject to dispute, but is commonly agreed to lie in this range). Thyroid cancer rates are the only ones observed to have increased after Chernobyl, with an increase of 0.9% for the adult population as a whole and 5% for children under 14. Thyroid cancer is very treatable and has a mortality rate of 0.7%, so 100,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer would cause only about 700 deaths.

Some anti-nuclear activists assert that these numbers dramatically underestimate the number of deaths due to Chernobyl because they want to count as Chernobyl deaths the number of abortions (frequently estimated at 50,000-100,000) performed on frightened mothers throughout Europe in the wake Chernobyl. I hadn't seen the anti-nuke crowd join the pro-life movement before this.

According to the UNSCEAR, the only long-term effect that's been seen is an increase in thyroid cancer. They were surprised to see no increase in leukemia, whose connection to exposure to radiation is well documented and well understood.

The exact toll of the Chernobyl accident may never be known. Determining which cancers are caused by fallout and which by other causes is not possible and the numbers are so small as to be statistically uncertain. Perhaps the WHO number of 3500 deaths that I cited was low by a factor of two or three (another estimate, published in the anti-nuke Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, puts the toll at 6000 and rising as of 1996), but there's no credible estimate that puts Chernobyl't toll within a factor of five of Hiroshima.

It's kind of misleading to talk about Hiroshima and Chernobyl as though they were the same.

Greenpeace released a similar site a while back about the Mayak plant. The Mayak plant released the same amount of radiation over 50 years than Chernobyl released at once, and it's totally fucked up the area. Minatom don't want to shut it down and they're still reprocessing fuel.

Half Life: The Dangerous Effects Of Nuclear Waste

Linux is a threat against the natural wildlife found on the great wilderness of the interent created by the prosperous and nutritious habitat that is Windows.

We need to stop the Linux pollution before it swamps and kills the flourishing life that call its home the Windows box.

Support Greenpeace.

US Military has now confirmed : Earth Is Dying

Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Earth community when the US Military confirmed that the Earth Simulator was build due to the fact that the Earth will be uninhabitable by 2050. Coming on the heels of a recent National Academy of Sciences report that the average temperature has risen yet again, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The Earth is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Galaxy-Wide species diversity test.

You don't need to be an expert to predict Earth's future. The hand writing is on the computer simulation: Earth faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Earth because Earth is dying, EARTH IS DEAD! Things are looking very bad for Earth. As many of us are already aware, Earth continues to lose species.
Extinction flows like a river of blood.

The rainforest habitats are the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of their area. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time species black rhino and tiger only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Earth is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Earth leader Bush states that there are 7000 species left. How many mammals are there? Let's see. The number of mammal versus amphibian posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 mammal species. Rainforest reptile posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of amphibian posts. Therefore there are about 700 rainforest reptiles. A recent article put mammals at about 80 percent of the species market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 mammal species. This is consistent with the number of mammal Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of the rainforests, abysmal slash and burn agriculture, the drug war and so on, Columbian rainforests went out of business and was taken over by Brazilian rainforests who sell another troubled rainforests to international logging interests. Now Thai forests are also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Earth has steadily declined in wilderness and species. Earth is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Earth is to survive at all it will be among human dilettante dabblers. Earth continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. The simulation confirms it. For all practical purposes, Earth is dead.

well, everybody has their hobby horse. i'll bet if i look at your credit card statements, i'll see a raft of purchases from amazon.com, one of the more morally corrupt net establishments. probably, some payouts or receipts from ebay, too. ditto for that group. you probably have a closet full of clothes made in china because they're cheap and you aren't too concerned about how they got that way.

i once went two years without a phone because i had a tiff with the phone company. all that did was make it hard for people to reach me. it's more important to pick your fights and win them than it is to go around thumping your chest and proclaiming your own "purity." i don't give a damn whether you're pure if you're a jerk -- i don't want to know you and neither does anyone else.

that's why, for example, the quakers are a religious body known the world over, even though they comprise a tiny fraction of the christian population. and that's why the eff doesn't pick up every case that comes along. they won't waste effort on a case they don't think they can win. there are plenty of moral causes that invite attention -- go to GreenPeace if you can't think of any. DirecTV isn't even on my radar.

just because you own a keyboard doesn't mean you're required to type on it.

mp

It has nothing to do with the tonnes of nuclear waste produced for which the only solution seems to be "put it down a large hole, that'll do" then?

Or perhaps my irrationality extends to thinking that when the pigeons around the UK's nuclear waste processing plants are so radioactive they would be classed as nuclear waste themselves if they were inert. Internal contamination of the pigeons was found to be beyond safety levels set by the EC in the aftermath of nuclear accidents.

The problem with nuclear power is that it is made by humans and they have a habit of fucking up on a grand scale.

In theory it's all safe and dandy.

In theory, theory and practice are the same.

You should read some of the US Nuclear Inspectorate documents.

Our own inspectorate says that "British Energy's downsizing has seriously compromised nuclear safety."

I could go on and on and on. But you know that already.

I made a lot of money in 2003. I used it to buy just about anything I wanted and had time/space for; the same holds true for material desires down the road. Christmas drives me nuts, because it means that my friends and family will be wasting money buying me more stuff that will likely end up in a closet or at the salvation army. My only really memorable gift from xmas 2002 was a Barnes&Noble gift card, and I still haven't had time to read the damned books I bought with it!

So how about everyone just does me a favor and gives the money away? Following are my favourite charities:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Human Rights Campaign

The Sierra Club

Amnesty International

Greenpeace

I'm sure, in fact I know, that I have left a lot of worth organizations out. But seriously, my christmas wish is that people would stop wasting money buying cheap asian trinkets and spend it on something useful. Christmas doesn't have to be a load of crap. Make it worthwhile.

Unless, of course, you want to get me gift certificates at the Apple store.

Uh, no thanks.

I didn't vote, but even through I don't like the french because they are weasels too (Nuclear testing in the sea)

1960 - 1966 17 tests conducted in Algeria, including 4 atmospheric and 13 underground. ...
1966 - 1992 175 tests detected at the Pacific test site, including 44 atmospheric tests (39 at Moruroa, 5 over Fangataufa) and 131 underground (123 at Moruroa, 8 at Fangataufa). Some low- yield tests may not have been detected by seismic monitoring however; unconfirmed military sources have put the total at more than 200.

I love France. I like their French Foreign Legion, their language, their women. I like Europe in general but I think this time France has gone to far, they have had several mistakes in the past, like building a formidable impenetrable line, but not realizing any intelligent attacker would flank the line before trying to go through it. I will admit it was a great idea but who was the genius who thought they would stop at the border?

So I think we should invade France, nobody will complain because they are as xenophobic as Japan, if not moreso. French wine will be cheap, we could travel to Europe and live on US soil, and we will be right next door to our bed buddies the Brits!

Well, they do have WMD

On that note...

Look at the second picture down...

I especially love the "WTF is going on" look on Bush's face...

Hey, I was merely repeating what the French ambassador said on NPR:-)

Actually De Gaule did tell the US not to bother trying to replace them in Vietnam when they abandoned their former colony. France did not withdraw from choice, they withdrew for the same reasons the US withdrew later, the place was a quagmire.

Incidentally some posters have been criticisng me for 'buying into right wing criticism of France'. Err, not really, when the whole Iraq thing started I observed that the one good thing that could come out of it was that the right wing neo-cons would discover exactly how grateful France was to the US for rescuing it from the Nazis. Britain learned that a long time ago when de Gaulle vetoed Britain's application to join the common market.

France is very grateful to the US and British people for freeing France from the Nazis, however that does not mean they believe any gratitude is due to George 'AWOL draft dodger' Bush and his administration.

As for joining in to help in the war on terror, err well France is actually a state sponsor of terrorism as the folk at Greenpeace can tell you. France's bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was a state sponsored terrorist act. France's own neo-cons ordered the attack and then connived to get the terrorists who got caught out of jail. Last I heard Greenpeace had still not received compensation from France for the bombing and murder.

The real point of the post is that at this point the imperial pretensions of France are a complete joke. France simply does not have the military capacity to sustain an empire, behaving the way it often does simply makes them look ridiculous.

But fast forward a few years. You cannot be a military superpower without being an economic superpower. The Bushies are spending the country into the ground. When the baby boomers retire in ten years time and there is a choice between maintaining the militarism budget and paying social security they will choose to keep their pensions.

I think the most likely result of the invasion of Iraq is the emergence of Iran as the regional power and the rapid decline of the US as a military power as the US taxpayer is unable to afford a military budget larger than the whole of the rest of the world combined.

In other words, get those French jokes in quick. In a few years the US is likely to find itself in the same situation. Don't worry though, contrary to what the neo-cons would have you beleive it is probably not such a bad thing if the US does not have to play globo-cop all the time.

not a pratical/scientific one. In a sense, by putting a man in space a government is saying "look at what our technical infrastructure can do." Nothing more.

This was the original reason behind the apollo program and winning the space race. Once NASA accomplished this, NASA was left with the difficult job of justifying itself, and arguably the reason why they have not had a sense of direction.

Many will not like this post with responses like;

1) We need to send a man to mars --
This would take a huge amount of money by anyone's standards. Once there, what does he do?? Plant another flag and take soil samples?? A robot could do this much cheaper. Before spending all that money on a mars mission maybe Dubya should give that prescription drug beneffit to the seniors that he promised.

2) We need man in space to mine exotic minerals from asteroids --
The fact is that it will always be economically cheaper to find those minerals on earth, no matter what. It would be cheaper to send a man to the bottom of the ocean to mine it there if need be. But why send a man to do a dangerous job when a robot can do it cheaper and more efficiently in the first place??

3) We need man in space to establish the new frontier where people can go to live --
Again, it will always be cheaper to find places on earth for people to live than to shuttle them (and all the supplies they need) to outer space. Right now it's taking 1.5 billion dollars to maintain a couple people on the international space station. If this was meant to be, how much is it going to cost to shuttle a 100 million of their fellow Americans to orbit?? To say that it will be cheaper in the future is to ignore the obvious. NASA isn't asking for less money to do their job, they're asking for more money. As it is, there is no way for them to replace the aging shuttles that like to blow up every few years. Maybe it will be cheaper in the (very) distant future, but in the history of the space program the cost has never gone down to send a few people to orbit. Maybe they could use atomic rockets. We can only imagine the fun when something goes wrong there, not to mention all the radiation spewed into the enviroment. Fusion power remains a dream occasionally energized by lasers in buildings the size of small cities for a blink of an eye.

I bet all that money that would be spent on new and improved space planes to replace the shuttles could buy vast tracts of homes built by Habitat for Humanity for people to live in. Maybe thay could take a few dollars that they were going to spend on new spacesuits and spend it on saving the enviroment we have.

Everybody has lots of ways to conquer the laws of physics to get man into space. But nobody has a way to conquer the laws of economics.

For example, the formerly plentiful Patagonian and Antarctic Toothfishes (known in the restaurant trade as "Chilean Sea Bass" despite being amazingly ugly deep-sea dwellers) are well on their way to being fished to extinction.

Like many large fish, they have a long reproductive cycle, and thus are easily driven to extinction by modern fishing methods. Not that the fishing industry as a whole isn't fishing pretty much everything to commercial extinction, but they can do it a lot faster to species that take a long time to become reproductive adults.

The USA is responsible for over 25% of the planet's pollution, its population being maybe 5%.
So yes, if everyone behaved like the USA (or rather USA's government, which is believed by some of its citizens to be democratically elected ...but I digress) then the only solution would be to run off the planet. Fortunately most of the world's governments are less corrupted on this particular issue.

So if there is anything to be worried about, it is not space race (that's interesting, mind you). It's in what conditions we leave this planet to our children. Given USA's history on environmental issues, one can't be optimistic about it. I guess it would not sound strong enough to claim to be the greatest in something non-violent, right?

Go back to play with your computer now, and pospone the issue until your grandchildren will be in charge... the only hope is for some other kind of super-power to take charge in less 'dominatory' fashion.

Greenpeace reports that between 1950 and 1993 there have been 380 nuclear weapons accidents, some involving the accidental "dirty bomb" incidents, such as the dispersion of nuclear materials over Palomares in southern Spain.

Now according to the the National Human Radiobiology Tissue Repository who studied the Palomares incident as well as many other cases, a 78 year old person with elevated Pu in their bones will only have a 0.14285 probability of dying this year, whereas a normal american 78 year old will have an average probaility of dying this year of 0.12780.

We're already dropping nuclear material all over ourselves, and for the most part, you aren't going to hear about it until it's declassified.

Furthermore, have you been to Hiroshima and stood under the peace dome? Have you seen the children playing in the schools at Nagasaki?

The oppertunites for using peaceful nuclear power to explore space far outweigh the risks. Those accidents haven't degraded my environmental quality. I'm sure that a deliberate attack on myself would, but even that will heal with time.

We are talking about the power to reach out and travel the cosmos.

the chinese ming Emperor Zhu Di built a massive navy which traded extensively in the pacific, reached africa and almost discovered america.

When Emperor Zhu died, his sucessor was advised to lessen the tax burden of the navy, and burned all the ships. Result? Other more outward looking seafaring nations whipped them.

If we don't have deep space capability, then we are dead meat when we come across those who do. Especially if they are ex-earth colonists who decide to return. No chance of benevolance through alien genetics there.

Well, the site in my sig is all about freedom of the press. Well, it's a site where anyone is free to post any news they want without censorship.

It's not there to justify my post, it's on all my messages.

In the country I'm writing from, I have the freedom of speech. If you're in the USA, you do too, at least for the time being.

I wasn't trying to justify the theft was right. Just as I won't try to justify a 1st year law student standing in a subway with a law book in his hand saying "you can't hit me, it's against the law" to a bunch of thugs is a good thing. He'll more than likely get bitch slapped. Is there a law against taunting? Not that I'm aware of. It's constitutionally protected as free speech (just as this), but it's probably not a good idea.

When the recent war started, I was where a bunch of protesters were (coincidentally). I was wearing a shirt that said "Greens+" on the front and "Swallow The Leader" on the back. It's an advertisment for health supplements from a store someone I knew worked at. Everyone that has said anything about it reads a sexual reference into it (funny that). A guy walked up to me talking about Green Peace. I smiled and nodded. I guess the peace-nik's can't read. There was also a guy at a piercing shop with a picture of a pistol on his shirt. We're all making our statements. Mine was for oral sex. His was pro-war, and the protesters were obviously anti-government peace-nik's with a cause they didn't understand. :)

(free speech remember? I can saw what I want. {{Pbthhh}})

But I already know your answer.. "Opinions are like assholes.. Everyone has one..." That's fine. You can say it. It's your right.

Want to do something about it? Find some obscure but news-worthy news that you probably won't find on a major news outlet due to censorship, and post it to FreeInternetPress.com .. You can make a difference.

Fuck that, The Nuclear Control Institute and The Mayak gave me nervous breakdowns that no game can match. Though actually, Realms of the Haunting, had strange squeaking knife throwing things that drove me NUTS...

But still, those sites made me fail my exams >:(

>Look, I'm a lot more likely to accept claims made by people with PhDs and 60 years of experience in this stuff than random slashdotters as far as how much food we have for people, BUUUT, that being said, I was only posting quotes from the show.

Granted. Regardless of what alphabet soup you have trailing your name, its hard to fully quantify how much food is made worldwide, its not like everyone who makes food reports to a central authority or anything. I've heard estimates both ways.

Yeah, Greenepeace is probably a little overzealous. I'm trying to remember where it was that I heard someone talking about the wisdom that his father had passed on to him, that it's necessary to have extremists to some extent on both sides to help keep the majority of the population in check... with only arch-conservative or only ultra-liberal factins who speak out (which is really what the majority of the world doesn't do, and that is speak out) the people wouldn't have a difference of opinion to choose from. Anti-government and anti-capitalist forces are necessary, I think anyway, to continually challenge existing systems so they don't become decadent.

>Greepeace is a corporation themselves, and they suck, in too many ways to describe. I think the biggest one is, though, that they LIE, and not just a little, a LOT and OFTEN.

Greenpeace is not for profit organization, which isn't to say that they don't have an agenda (they do) or that they always tell the truth (they don't) but they don't really have a product to sell. They're an activist group like the ACLU on the libertarian side politically or the Christian Coalition on the authoritarian side. As for the lying, not to use the excuse that "everyone does it" but the truth is everyone in politics and economics does do it, intentionally or unintentionally, since they have an adgenda and varying degrees of ethics in achieving said adgenda. I don't think its right to hold them to a higher standard than, oh, another few entities.

I know they're just quotes, but I think it was Orwell who said something about blind reproduction of quotes, stastics, and figures lets others do the thinking for you. Food for thought ^_^.

Here's one the first hits from Google I got for Sweden whaling. Seems like your knowledge is concentrated on the US. Looking at your history, my point remains valid. All of your posts of late on Slashdot are rats against the US. You seem to have no response to my suggestion that your stop complaining online and act on something you believe in.

Sure, there'd be some ecological contamination

Does This answer your question?

Honestly, Flash kicks ass.

Well, that's good if true. But that's not enough. Let's see what Greenpeace says:

The survivors have never received adequate compensation for their debilitating illnesses and even 18 years after the disaster, the polluted site of the abandoned factory, bleeds poisons daily into the groundwater of local residents.

In the criminal proceedings in courts in India, preceding the settlement, UC and members of its senior staff (including Chairman Warren Anderson) refused to appear in court or obey court orders. Warren Anderson and UC were notified as absconders by the court.

This settlement was made without any consultation with the survivors. The survivors petitioned the court against the settlement. The court ruled that the settlement did not remove criminal liability from UC, UCIL and senior staff mentioned in the initial criminal case.

These figures should be compared to $108 million that Monsanto Company was ordered to pay the family of a single chemical worker who died due to benzene exposure or the $2.5 billion offered by Johns Manville Corporation for about 60,000 claimants of injury caused by exposure to asbestos. (5)

As per the current settlement, the average claimant (the gas affected who put in a claim for compensation) receive approximately $300-$500, which in most cases does not pay for medical bills.

...

# Myth. An independent investigation claimed that a disgruntled employee caused the incident.

Reality. Even though UC has had an opportunity in court to provide information on this sabotage theory, originally presented by Arthur D. Little (ADL), and thus resolve the case, it has failed to do so. However, the corporation still promotes this argument. When this theory was proposed in an international seminar, there was widespread condemnation by experts. A safety specialist with the World Bank noted that he "was shocked when [he] heard that ADL people were promoting the "sabotage" theory for Bhopal at the Institution of Chemical Engineers conference in London." (12)

I don't know much about Bhopal so I thought it best to quote directly, but I couldn't let such one-sided bullshit stand unchallenged.

Are you by any chance an astroturfer working for Dow? Maybe you're not, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if some of the pro-Dow arguments here came from astroturfers.

(If ad homenim arguments can be used against Greenpeace, I don't see why I shouldn't use ad homenim arguments right back!)

...that bit about DOW suing the families that were destroyed/hurt by their Bhopal disaster?

Don't ya just love the web? Here's the link to instantly write a letter to Dow.

And here's what I just sent them:

As the new CEO and President of Dow Chemical Company, I am stunned at your actions against the survivors of the Bhopal, India industrial tragedy. Dow has been a respected name in corporate America for so many years. But this incomprehensible treatment of the poor and sick, when you should be doing everything in your power to make things right, to offer aid and rebuilding, health care and clean up, changes my vision of Dow and its executives and my family and I have lost all respect.

Once again the almighty dollar rules a corporation rather than the fundamental care of the people who once supported it. It matters not that this incident occurred under Union Carbide, you knew this when you bought them.

You know quite well that if this had happened in the U.S., this would have been fixed by now. To attack a poor and innocent people, those that have lost many family and still struggle to survive, shows your true bully side. To think that you would do this because they dared to perform a peaceful protest is nothing more than shocking to me. Dow was always such a respected name.

When you add to that your treatment of the parody site Dow-chemical and the whole YesMen fiasco, to use such an ill-gotten law as the DMCA to silence the web and force the take down of not only a web site, but also an entire ISP is unfathomable. It shows that your new stance is to merely silence those who would dare stand up to you, and this is nothing more than a cartelish, mob mentality than can no longer have respect.

I implore you to correct this. To drop your charges against the poor and suffering of India, and to drop your charges against a parody web site, which under the US copyright law, it is perfectly legal to parody just about anything.

I have begun my march to inform those in my family and my place of work of your actions. Others are doing the same. Will you sue me too just to silence me?

I grew up with the name of Dow and have always believed it be an important and respected company. Unless these serious issues are corrected, I can no longer ignore the truth, nor can I think of Dow with any high regard.

Take note that I am writing this to you via the convience of the web. Yes, the Internet is a wonderful and rich thing which allows us to recieve such information and respond accordingly, even on New Year's Day. The DMCA does nothing but silence this information. But I include my own salutation, because I do not agree with the one built into this online form.

With utmost sincerity,

A very aware U.S. citizen-
(name here)

...are going to use the Greenpeace letter generator to send a complain to the Dow CEO? It'd be interesting to get a gauge on how much mail he'll be getting...

Here are some photos.

If we wait a few more years we can do an undersea cable.

Yes, petroleum spills by people cause temporary and localized deaths of organisms and disruption of ecosystems, but they just aren't that big a deal in the overall scheme of things.

Names within .ltd and .plc have to match names of companies registered at Companies House in the UK. Apart from the laws against misrepresentation quoted on the page linked to above, companies are bound by law to register the home addresses of directors, and you can get this information from Companies House (not as easy as WHOIS, but its there).

I'd like large chunks of the net to stay anonymous and all that, but equally I'd like it if more of the net was like this - you can actually determine who you're dealing with 'in meatspace' because the registrar has the law on his side.

Technically, SSL certificates are supposed to help with this whole trust issue (which is what it boils down to - businesses have to earn trust to make sales) - but the CAs themselves are not trustworthy. How much for a certificate issued by the Consumer Association or Greenpeace?

Got any evidence of the nuclear industry EVER making that claim? I didn't think so.

No, not on me, but I definitely remember seeing a British Public Information Film from the 50s that did indeed make that proud boast.

Of course, whether that was a genuine opinion from within the nuclear industry, or just deliberate false propaganda to keep public opinion onside while they built their nuclear-bomb factory (Windscale, now known as Sellafield), I don't know.

Talking of Sellafield, I'm no hippy, and am not always comfortable with everything Greenpeace do, but nevertheless this makes rather worrying reading...read the note at the bottom.Also, it looks like the U.K. needs to build its own version of this site to deal with all our own waste.

But back to the original question. One quick Google later, if this rather dodgy looking webpage is correct, the phrase was used by the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission on 16th Sept 1954 in a speech to the National Association of Science Writers, although to be fair the nuclear industry was already retracting it within four years.

Does that answer your question?

• 
  
• reclaims reusable uranium and plutonium,
  
• provides safe, internationally accepted conditioning suitable to the technical and radiological properties of each type of final waste,
  
• reduces the amount of final waste requiring disposal by at least a factor of 5, as compared with approaches in which the spent fuel itself is waste,
  
• removes almost all (99.8%) of the plutonium, a leading contributor to nuclear waste toxicity, from the final waste.
  

NO! GM crops will spread like a disease and kill of other plants. They are a health risk and will do irreversible damage to the environment. We should not tamper with what we do not understand. No genetic manipulation of nature!

Yes friends, it is time for me to bring up my solar-hydorgen powered Jeep once again!

Do you know why people think that hydrogen powered vehicles are a long way off? It ain't the energy companies keeping it a secret, it is an unholy alliance between environmentalists and the government!

How do I know? Well, my Jeep is powered by solar derived hydrogen and I drive it almost daily (unless I am in a hydrogen powered aircraft of course). I purchase my hydrogen in liquid form, so do the airlines. My Jeep's birthday (to me) is tomorrow, 16 April, the day I liberated it from it's pen at the dealership. It will be 6 years old and has carried me over 226,000 miles now. Try that with a $5,000 "electric Honda deathtrap"!

Back to the point... The conspiracy has hidden this plentyful source of hydrogen by banding together with advertisers and disguising the name. Just so you are not duped, and to prove that I am being honest, here is the formula for the reaction: CxHy + O2 --> CO2 + H20 SEE? Simple! The big "H" on the left side is Hydrogen of course. It is bonded with some Carbon (the C on the left) to keep it in liquid form at surface tempratures and pressures, thus making it stay "in the container" so-to-speak until it is needed for combustion.

Not only does my Solar/Hydrogen Energy Plant, under the hood of the Jeep prouce water (more on that later), it also produces plant food! Yep, that little CO2 notation is something plants love! I try to drive up to pristine forrested areas as much as possible to feed the trees. Sometimes the trees love me so much they want to come home to my fireplace, but that is a different environmental service that I preform (free of charge too) and it can wait for another topic.

Ooops! I almost forgot to let everybody in on the secret places where I get the hydrogen for my Jeep! Liquid sunshine, aka, hydrogen fuel, is sold at places with funny names like Exxon/Mobil/Connico/Arco/Shell/Standard/Amaco... As a matter of fact, many of these places will clean the outside of your vehicle if you just come in and fill your hydrogen tank with at least $5 of the stuff! They use that left over H2O to scrub all the grime and crud off of your vehicle after a nice weekend of tree feeding.

Besides the great combustion properties of "liquid sunshine" (my favorite name for this miricle product), it is perfect for lubricating the parts that make your vehicle go, no matter what kind of power plant you run. Why do I call it solar-hydrogen or liquid sunshine? Because solar energy was used to combine the carbon and hydrogen of course! How much more environmentally sensitive can you get than that?

I could go on forever, but seriously, the energy companies have known about vast quantities of hydrogen in the earth's crust for ages. It is called "oil" and "natural gas" and is a lot easier to extract that chunks of granite. School children know of another surface source, it is called water and it is a lot easier to haul around than granite or hydrogen gas too.

Sometime soon I will tell y'all about my solar-hydrogen fireplace. The best BBQ ribs in my apartment complex are smoked there.

Real Corruption in Nigeria - and Shell Oil

Not until you start looking at the larger
context does it make sense that we still burn
coal. Companies with money can support
blatant lies if they spend enough to media
brainwash them into the general public. And we all just accept it.

Yes, and disreputable and dishonest organizations can support blatant lies which kneecapped nuclear power in America. The electrical power utilities don't have any vested interest in coal, or they'd never have bothered to build what nuclear plants they could!

Face it, it's goofy, NON-PROFIT environmental organizations which are "brainwashing the general public", not "companies with money".

ASA

This rather misses the point (in addition to being a bit optimistic). A brief glance at Greenpeace highlights the dangers in long-distance radioactive fuel transport. Trafficking and sabotage of nuclear fuel shipments are the potential source of major disasters, alongside abysmal safety records for fuel storage and reprocessing.

Nuclear power has too many 'collateral' problems, not least in the way it helps the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It's time to ditch it.

Greenpeace's own version of Slashdot is running a string of these.

Join Greenpeace and save the Earth's fragile magnetic stability!!!

Please don't be antagonistic whenever someone is mentioning anything about China. (In fact, China, India and Pakistan all are the major victims, according to CNN).

We are talking about microeconomic here when refering to these rubbish problem. That's some dodge rubblish collectors in developed world somehow sell these rubblish to some dodge rubblish "recycler" in the developing world. We are not talking about act of government here.

China, in the province or central govt level, tried hard to block dangerous waste eg, medical ones from importing. I remember Philipine also tried. Here is a list from Greenpeace that docuemented some of the high profile smuggling attempts blocked by China in 1993-97.

The key is always the people. Unlike medical waste that usu rots when arrived, these computer waste usually looks "clean". The workers (even the local authorities) underestimate the danger. The current situation is far far from satisfactory.

It didn't take much searching to find an article on greenpeace's website that still states that acid rain is "degrading forest".

Yet envirnmental pressure groups are more believable to the general public than politicians or scientists.

That why you should be a skeptical environmentalist. Lomborg is not saying that there are no environmental problems, he's saying that just because an environmental group says there is a problem doesn't mean there is.

On your second point, why do I constantly here environmentalist saying that our air is getting more and more polluted, when in fact the opposite is happening? I think the environment is important, I just wish environmentalists wouldn't lie to us when stating their case.