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To understand the true effects of a Nuclear accident do some light reading about Chernobyl.

Here's a good place to Start
http://www.iaea.or.at/NewsCenter/Features/Chernobyl-15/cherno-faq.shtml

Areas as far as 500km from the site were considered contaminated.
The Exclusion zone is 30km circle around the site.

This is a great site about one lady's motorcycle trips through the Chernobyl "dead zone"
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html

Although it is safe in normal operation, things can always go wrong, and they do. Even if the risks are small, a largescale accident could wipe out populations and make huge areas uninhanitable for decades.

While I agree with the latter part of your argument, the former part is incorrect. The worst nuclear accident in history (Chernobyl) failed to "wipe out" even the population of the local city. A total of 56 people have died to date, with an expected final death rate of 4,000 due to Chernobyl-related illnesses. There were about 1,800 documented cases of Thyroid cancer from the event. FAQ/Findings

Current radiation levels are actually lower than the natural background levels for areas like Norway. However, the higher content of radioisotopes in the soil makes it unwise to live there. Despite this, many residents have moved back into the area.

The Chernobyl event is quite comparable to the 5-day, 1952 London incident where 3,000 people died from coal pollution.

The radiation released by coal is not that significant, and blends into background levels.

It's not the radiation you should be concerned about. It's breathing the radioisotopes into your lungs and blood stream. Once there, the radioisotopes have a chance to do the MOST damage by hitting the soft tissues with direct doses of radiation. Normally your skin provides a great deal of protection, but large internal doses tend to circumvent that protection.

But the way it's handled is what makes nuclear power so dangerous, and that's the reason so many people oppose it.

The way it's handled is what makes coal so dangerous. That's the reason why so many people should be opposed to it.

From the University of Michigan: "Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning."

I think the results are clear. Coal is FAR more dangerous than nuclear.

The total cancer deaths added to the world over time with the Chernobyl disaster is estimated at 1.5 milion. After some googling it appears Caesium and Plutonium have similar effects:

Reference for the 1.5 megedeath estimate?

Wikipedia tells me the following:

The IAEA notes that, while the Chernobyl accident released as much as 400 times the radioactive contamination of the Hiroshima bomb, it was 100 to 1000 times less than the contamination caused by atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the mid-20th century. One can conclude that while the Chernobyl accident was a local disaster, it was not a global one.

IAEA tells me:

No studies have been able to point to a direct link between Chernobyl and increased cancer risks or other health problems outside the immediately affected republics of Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation.

Quite frankly, I can't find anything to support a 1.5 million death figure. I can't find anything to support a .15 million death figure or even a .015 million death figure. Quite honestly, from what little research I fan find, it seems that there has been a documented case of 1,800 people with thyroid cancer in the area and 10 deaths due to that, in addition to those killed during/immediately after the reactor went (about 31).

I also found this (biased?) report which states:

The most recent and authoritative UN report has confirmed that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed to the Chernobyl disaster. The UNSCEAR* 2000 Report is consistent with earlier WHO findings. The report points to some 1,800 cases of thyroid cancer, but "apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 14 years after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality or in non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure." As yet there is little evidence of any increase in leukaemia, even among clean-up workers where it might be most expected. However, these workers remain at increased risk of cancer in the long term.

The figures I'm finding are supporting 4000 - 10000 additional deaths due to Chernobyl, out of millions affected, although those _are_ predictions (unlike your prediction of 1.5 million deaths, I _can_ show the reasoning behind this figure). If the 4000 - 10000 deaths prediction is right, it will be hard to verify: the natural cancer rate will be about 800,000 cases in the affected group.

In short, Chernobyl raised the cancer rate by about 1% throughout parts of Russia and the Ukraine. Its amazing : an obsolete, unsafe design with unsafe practices leading to what is probably one of the worst nuclear accidents possible only killed 4 - 10k people.

I don't mean to trivialize the deaths of cancer victims, but in the whole scheme of things, that's nothing. 10k total predicted deaths is less than half the deaths in one year attributed to "safe" coal power generation in the US. Yes: The worst nuclear power accident will have killed less people than a year's worth of expected deaths due to normally operating coal power plants.

First of all, the design uses 1.3 tonnes of fissile Plutonium. Toshiba's write-up on the IAEA website has an interesting approach to this. "In order to keep strict control over the plutonium used... a large amount of fuel can be confined for a long time in the reactor vessel without refueling." In other words, less frequent transportation of fuel = better safeguards. However their fuel inventory balance shows that the spent fuel has almost as much fissible Pu-239 as the fresh... thus although the fuel stays put for 10 years, when it comes out its still potent (although jazzed up with a lot of fission products, which makes it unlikely to be easily handled by your run-of-the-mill crackpot).

The nuclear safety characteristics are excellent (i.e., negative void reactivity, negative temperature coefficients across the board, complete loss of power + no shutdown predicts sheath temperatures less than 850 degC, etc.). The economics, however, are not so good. According to the doc on the IAEA website, the thermal power is 125 MW. Using a generous conversion efficiency of 35%, that equals 44 MW of electrical power minus a few MW to run the station itself. To compete with the new generation of "big nukes" (i.e., over 700 MW), this station would have to cost between 40 and 80 million dollars (the new plant designs are trying to come in a $1,000,000 per MW).

The graph doesn't show what you think it does, no correlation is being made between the level of CO2 and the temperature change since pre-industrial times.

It is undeniable that CO2 levels have increased since pre-industrial times, this has been measure by direct sampling of the atmosphere as well as by proxy measurement of the Icelandic and Greenland ice sheets.

"To state that the increase in CO2 is undeniably causing the increase in temperature" is bad science, but only because you provided no context. There is strong evidence that CO2 absorbs strongly in the infra red and weakly in the visible. Incoming radiation from the Sun is allowed in, outgoing is absorbed and causes the CO2 and surrounding gases to heat up.

Further, if we take the two other terrestrial planets as "test Earths" for extreme climates, both Mars and Venus have 90 % CO2, as such their not in the same regime as the Earth, however, Mars should be approximately 20K cooler than has been measured, this is due to the heat absorbed the the atmosphere.

Venus, which also has global cloud coverage has a heat increase of over 400 K compared to what it "should" be (under reasonable black body assumptions). This was agreed on as early as the 60's (proposed by Sagan in 60/62), there are no other plausible reasons for such a huge increase in heat, the clouds on Venus block out 95% of the incoming light from the surface, yet it's hot enough to melt lead.

We have experiments to back up the scientific conclusions that have been made, numerical models (CPDN for example) have performed numerous experiments where concentrations of CO2 and other GhG are increased over a period, the mean temperature increase is positive even when no other conditions are explicitely changed. Theoretical chemistry can calculate pretty well how different gases will react under given conditions. When Chapman devised the Ozone balance, it turned out it wasn't quite right, until CFC and OH/NO radicals were included. Models of CO2 and other GhG are simple enough, they absorb IR, they don't absorb Visible, there aren't many conclusions that can be drawn from that.

I'm not entirely sure which four in you list you refer to,but...

• The heat balance of the earth is measured in numbers much bigger than the heat output of fuel burning, one second of solar input is 0.7 kW per square metre average over the entire Earth,compared to an estimated 0.01 Kw/m^2 for the total power output, that's 1% of the total (that's current day values).
• Is the Earth going through a warmer part of the what now? The galaxy/ Universe is slightly bigger than the Earth, and it has a mean value of 2.7 K
• How would this Earth core heating manifest itself? more volcanos I guess? Also regular Earthquakes as the mantle reconfigures to a more stable state, neither of these have been seen to my knowledge.
• We can measure the output form the Sun pretty accurtaly, either by, you know, looking at it, which we have been doing (wrt Ozone) since 1920. Proxy measurements from sedimentiary rocks and ice sheets extend this to at least a billion or two years. The paleoclimatalogical solar constant was about 7% lower than the present day value, the Earth was covered in ice, even to the equator.
• The total area covered by satellites is so depressingly small that they probably won't even register on the millikelvin instruments used to measure absolute zero. The satellites which absorb significant amount of heat (most of them) rotate in order the face cold space to radiate the heat away from the Sun, this is the "barbecue roll" theat they talk about in Apollo 13 just before the explosion. The moon is huge, satellites small, no effect here, move on.
• Aliens, deat

The UN, and WHO have given DU ammo a clean bill of health.

No, they haven't. This statement is provably a lie.

See here:

"Replying to concerns over the use of depleted uranium in the Balkans, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan emphasized the need for inter-agency cooperation and reliable scientific advice.

On 31 January 2001, the Secretary-General responded to requests he received from the governments of Italy, Iraq and Lebanon. Excerpts from his reply follow:
'I am very aware of the concern about the possible health and environmental impacts from the use of depleted uranium and I consider it of the utmost importance that the most reliable scientific advice is obtained concerning the issue.'"

As for WHO, while they said the risks were relatively low, they did not give a clean bill of health:

"Recommendations

* Following conflict, levels of DU contamination in food and drinking water might be detected in affected areas even after a few years. This should be monitored where it is considered there is a reasonable possibility of significant quantities of DU entering the ground water or food chain.
* Where justified and possible, clean-up operations in impact zones should be undertaken if there are substantial numbers of radioactive projectiles remaining and where qualified experts deem contamination levels to be unacceptable. If high concentrations of DU dust or metal fragments are present, then areas may need to be cordoned off until removal can be accomplished. Such impact sites are likely to contain a variety of hazardous materials, in particular unexploded ordnance. Due consideration needs to be given to all hazards, and the potential hazard from DU kept in perspective.
* Small children could receive greater exposure to DU when playing in or near DU impact sites. Their typical hand-to-mouth activity could lead to high DU ingestion from contaminated soil. Necessary preventative measures should be taken.
* Disposal of DU should follow appropriate national or international recommendations."

In the information age, it's intentional ignorance.

Pot, meet kettle.

LOL. If you want to ridicule a post by echoing it and "reversing" who it talks about, you have to make sure the reversal maintains atleast a smidgin of truth. Otherwise you just make yourself look like an idiot.

That black hole of a country

On that map North Korea is in fact a "black hole". It looks like ocean. The United states is by far the brightest region, with "the whole of euorpe" coming in a close second.

the world's LARGEST ARMY and LARGEST NUMBER OF NUKES.

You are demonstrating pure ignorance. China has the worlds larget army, 2.9 million servicemen, more than double the US's 1.4 million. Russia has the most nukes, well over twice as many as the US.

They are diverting their entire economy (what little there is of it) to supporting that army and building weapons.

North Korea spends somewhere between 20% and 30% of its GDP on its military while approximately 10% of its population has starved to death in recent years. The US spends somewhere between 4.3% and 5.7% on its military, and the US spends a higher percentage of its miliary spending on RESEARCH, compared to all western nations. The US provides food (food stamps) to anyone who needs them.

The North American government is incredibly isolationist

LMAO! Isolationist?? The usual complaint is the exact the opposite.

and paranoid.

The US thinks that there are terrorists trying to blow up Americans and American buildings. Americans and American builings are in fact blowing up.

In this document North Korea accuses the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency of conspiring to harm North Korea. Part of the "proof" of this supposed conspiracy is the fact that North Korea is reffered to as "North Korea" rather than as "DPRK". They take a "serious view" of this "insult to their soverignty". This document is fairly typical of North Korean perception on international relations. Not to mention their constant fear that at any moment the 38,000 US personel and South Korea's half million servicemen are going to charge head-long into what is undoubtedly the most heavily forified border in the world, against the third largest army in the world.

As for Liberation, Iraqis were in fact dancing in the streets and toppling Saddam statues. Somehow I don't think you are going to find many South Koreans welcoming North Korean forces.

-

Do you really think that a turbine could extract more kinetic energy from wind than 2344 times its land area of forest extracts with friction? Remember, modern turbines have three rather thin blades, whereas forests are by definition filled with foiliage. In terms of surface area against the wind, a single tree within the same area that a turbine takes would have thousands if not millions of times the area. Also, trees aren't very rigid against moderate windspeeds, converting wind into waste heat much more than solid objects do.

Plus, the amount of heat that atmospheric carbon dioxide causes to be forced into the atmosphere will more than make up for 16,000 TWh of turbine extraction. (0.3 watts per square meter yeilds more than 150,000 TWh over the earth's illuminated surface area.)

Tritium isn't plutonium. It decays relatively quickly. Waiting eight half-lives eliminates over 99.5% of any radioactive material; for tritium that translates into less than a century.

I suppose you'd like to simply ignore the fact that Iraq did, in fact, expel weapon inspectors on 30-Oct-1997 and 2-Nov-1997. UNSCOM inspectors of US nationality were expelled and/or refused entry on those dates. (Sources: 1, 2

Yes, Butler ordered the teams to leave after this point, but Iraq did indeed block the inspectors.

this has been going on for a while.

They have flesh eating flies in south america that swarm on cattle and people alike, inflicting painfull and diseased flesh wounds. They have been reducing their numbers using this irradiated fly technique for a while. The results have been good it seems.

The flies arent mutants, they're sterile. They still mate with the non-irradiated flies, but they don't produce offsprings, so they reduce the number of flies in the next generation without a whole bunch of pesticides getting in the food chain.

Here is some nuclear propaganda

Yeah, for information on the actual tsetse elimination tests at Zanzibar, you should also check out this pdf. It's from the IAEA, and explains everything better than most news articles.

Here's another paper in PDF format.

Here's a very interesting excerpt, for all those who can't figure out why this might actually work:

Tsetse life-cycle. The tsetse is a unique insect. It gives birth every 9-10 days to a full-grown larva, which immediately burrows into the soil andforms a pupa. Thus the egg and larval stages of tsetse are notsubject to the usual hazards and losses experienced by otherinsects.Female tsetse produce at most nine larvae. Tsetse fliesunquestionably have the lowest reproduction potential of anyinsect, and this fact makes them a good target for SIT. A single mating provides sufficient sperm for fertilizationthrough the female's 90-100-day lifespan. Since females usuallymate only once, if they are mated by a sterile male they will notproduce any offspring.

Here's another paper in PDF format (or you can use Google to view as html).

Here's a very interesting excerpt, for all those who can't figure out why this might actually work:

Tsetse life-cycle.

The tsetse is a unique insect. It gives birth every 910 days to a full-grown larva, which immediately burrows into the soil andforms a pupa. Thus the egg and larval stages of tsetse are notsubject to the usual hazards and losses experienced by otherinsects.Female tsetse produce at most nine larvae. Tsetse fliesunquestionably have the lowest reproduction potential of anyinsect, and this fact makes them a good target for SIT. A single mating provides sufficient sperm for fertilizationthrough the female's 90100-day lifespan. Since females usuallymate only once, if they are mated by a sterile male they will notproduce any offspring.

This is nothing new . . . the "eradication through release of great numbers of sterile insects" method has worked before on fruit flies, both in Florida, South America and Africa, and Australia. They weren't developed through direct genetic alteration, but the theory is the same.

For those with an interest in the scientific mainstream of Nuclear Fusion work internationally, check out the IAEA Nuclear Fusion journal at http://epub.iaea.or.at/fusion/
--
Paul Gillingwater

Those who wish to learn about serious research
going into Nuclear Fusion around the world (not
just in the USA) may wish to look at the web
site for the premiere refereed journal in the
field, the Nuclear Fusion Journal, at:

http://epub.iaea.or.at/fusion/

Note especially the World Survey.