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Again, that's a common fallacy. It depends on how you go about reprocessing. The current once-thru fuel cycle actually results in more and purer plutonium in the waste stream than an IFR would. IFR's can burn up all of the current nuclear waste and all of the 'pure' plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. I'd say that's a reason to REQUIRE IFR reactors and reprocessing. 200 year waste with essentially no useful isotopes in it is a clear win over what we have now (that being lots of terrorist-bait in poorly guarded swimming pools at reactors sites all over the country).

Patently false, unless you limit yourself to the retarded design we currently use. Using IFR technology, there is enough fuel for 100,000 years.

The current reactor design is antiquated and hobbled by President Carter's decree that we will not reprocess nuclear fuel. So instead of extracting 90+% of the energy in the fuel and having 100 year nuclear waste, we extract 2% and have 10,000 year waste with the once-thru fuel cycle. Real smart, Jimmy. And he was a 'Nucular Engineer'!

Because of Jimmy Friggin' Carter we have the once-thru fuel policy that extracts less than 2% of the available energy from the fuel, and leaves waste that's hot for 10's of thousands of years. With a little work, we could have modern, safe, efficient nuclear energy with waste that's hot for only hundreds of years, with LESS of a plutonium proliferation risk that we have RIGHT NOW.

I salute India's research into making reactors that 'burn' thorium, since they've got quite a bit of it.

It depends on how you utilize your resources. Uranium isn't the only fissile or fertile fuel around, and we're currently only extracting 1-2% of the available energy in our current once-thru reactors. See this Q&A for more information on IFR technology.

It's alright - you can say the 'N' word! Even some environmentalists are saying it (gasp!!) Go ahead, it's easy. Nooo-cleee-urrr. Nu-cle-ur. Nuclear. There, that wasn't so hard. I think we've made great progress.

Obligatory content: I'm convinced that the only way out of our energy 'crisis' is to adopt IFR technology. This interview in particular spotlights its technical merits and the political stumbling blocks that have been thrown in its path.

The IFR was started by poppa bush. It was within 3 years of completion. Sadly, Clinton killed it (did not want to, but it was part of a deal with congressmen, in particular kerry; IMHO, this was the single biggest mistake that clinton made; far worse than lying). The nice thing about the IFR is that it is 100% based on past and current tech. There was nothing new to RD, except to integegrate these. The idea is that you load the ractors and then when fuel is used up, a set of robots bring out the fuel, seperate it, add new fuel while re-process the old fuel right on site. Since it is a fast/breeder reactor, it does create plutonium. But NOBODY would have the capability to get close to it. After about a 100 years, the reactor is shut down permanently, and a VERY small amount of trans-uranic waste is left over that decays within 150 years. THis is the best paper to read

ITER is a TEST. Purely a TEST. It is HOPED that it will generate excess energy, but we do not know. The chances are that it will. But even then, it will be 2050 before it is really known. Then it will take another decade or two to get prototypes going, etc. etc. IOW, the earliest that you will see plants on-line is about 2060-2070. That is far too far away (though it is good that we do it; need to know).

We can still start up the IFR, but W. says that he is interested in doing it, but appears to be doing nothing. I am guessing that this will happen in the same way that our energy research was funded (W spoke about America's research via SERI, though he had just cut 10% of their budget).

• Great Q/A on IFR with Dr. George S. Stanford
• Wikipedia article
• a Frontline (PBS) interview with Dr. Till

Why are we ignoring this technology???

No, there are no designs that don't produce long-lived waste. The IFR concept which you referenced never got beyond a small-scale prototype stage.

Pointing to that as a 'design' that doesn't produce long-lived waste is incorrect and misleading since, at best, it only reduces the waste volume.

More importantly, there are many years of development needed before it would even be known if the IFR concept were operationally feasible.

Here is from the original designer of the IFR. It can be restarted up. W. has a number of companies pushing to get ahold of our work. It would be useful to do that as fast as possible.

TMI and Chernobyl revealed classes of nuclear disasters that the industry had said were not supposed to occur. There were so many safeguards and so much redundancy that meltdowns simply couldn't happen. Well, they did. The reactor designs (two very different designs in these cases) both implied that meltdown and release of radioactive gas, water vapor, (and in the case of a full meltdown the radioactive elements used as fuel) was inevitable if the redundant cooling systems failed.

The human cost of Chernobyl was quite a bit higher than people realize. Given that both of these disasters were far smaller than they could have been, that cost should be sobering.

Chernobyl Legacy, a photo essay by Paul Fusco

New reactor designs might make the risk/reward trade off for fission power more reasonable. (See: New use for nuclear waste) However, the designs from the sixties and seventies that are running today really ought not be near cities or in areas where it would suck to have to fence off a couple hundred square miles for a few centuries after a disaster.

Wait a minute... OK, follow the trail.
co2science.org is owned by craig idso, who has in the past been linked to exxon mobile, and exxon has funded co2science.org in the past (Here). Also, co2science was paid $250,000 to make a video about how good global warming would be for society, funded by Western fuels. Do a search on the dude, All you'll find is his links to big business, and little in the way of credentials. For Instance:
http://www.ecosyn.us/adti/Corrupt_Idsos.html
On his work with the Coal Industry
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=129849 &p=irol-newsArticle&ID=577889&highlight=
and for the other side of the aguement, a guy only using 2 sources makes the same case you are, and surprise, one is idso, and the other is a Balling character who is usually listed alongside the Idso's and their funding sources
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA334.html

1. You are opposed to the long term radiactive waste? This burns up nearly ALL the energy that is left to cause 1000's of years of radiation.
2. Opposed to paying terrorists to blow us up? So am I. This would enable a true electrical society.
3. Tired of a yo-yo effect on pricing? So am I. Nearly all of the fuel that would be loaded in these, we have ready to bury in the ground. Once loaded, there would be no change in the fuel price.
4. Do not like the safety record of the nuclear industry (though it is actually excellent)? This has the advantage that it is a TOTAL passive safty. The only way that it is going wrong is if you can blow it up (which would require a nuke to do), or if you can bend the laws of physic.
5. Do not like the idea of plutonium being produced. Well, this is a breeder reactor so there is plutonium, but wrong kind AND it is all enclosed. NOTHING could get close to it until the entire system is shut down. Permantly.

Compared to current light-water reactors with a once-through fuel cycle that uses less than 1% of the energy in the uranium, the IFR has a very efficient (99.5% usage) fuel cycle.

Another important benefit of removing the long half-life transuranics from the waste cycle is that the remaining waste becomes a much shorter-term hazard. After the actinides and transuranics are removed from the spent fuel, the remaining waste elements have half lives of a few decades at most. The result is that within 300 years, such wastes are no more radioactive than the ores of natural radioactive elements.

This interview with George S. Stanford, Ph.D highlights the history and potential on IFR's.

um ...

The Pilgrims weren't all Puritans. In fact, the Mayflower Compact was writtten on board the Mayflower to try to prevent mutiny by the majority on that ship who were not in it for religious reasons but rather, for profit (which was the primary motivation for almost all colonies.

Converting the people living in the Americas to some kind of faith or another was more the motivation of Spain, who had (in 1492!) only just rid the Iberian Penninsula of non-Christians. Occasionally, some of the English Colonists would pay lip service to this ideal, but it was rarely policy.

The 37 Separatists (Puritans) fleeing religious persecution who were on board the Mayflower had set about trying to convert their fellow shipmates. And when it was discovered that they were strongly desirous of creating a theocratic movement in the new colony, their shipmates immediately threatened to let them off right where the boat was at the time (in the middle of the Atlantic) where they could set up their government in any way they preferred.

Since the victors tend to write the history books, we tend to be particularly focused on these particular Separatists who narrowly missed setting up a theocracy in salt water. Over the course of the years following the original Mayflower landing, more Puritans emigrated and it is these people who began linking governance with their religion. They were primarily interested in making money, realizing the trade in shipbuilding timbers and exploitation of the costal fisheries was making a number of the colonists wealthy and land in the colony was available at low cost.

And, rather than indescrimately kill all Native Americans, the earliest colonists were beneficiaries of a French trading mission that had passed through the area five years before the Mayflower landed, unwittingly exposing their trading partners to European diseases. It is said that influenza killed off half of the tribal population in the area the first year and when the Mayflower landed, the colonists found the land empty.

This stands in sharp contrast to the Roanoke colony which lasted some 10 months, the survivors of which were returned to England due to increasingly hostile Native Americans.

If you look at a map of New England, you'll see many towns and cities with the word "field" in the name. The reaon why this reoccurs is due to the habit of the Europeans referring to these areas as clearings. Now these areas wold not have been cleared had the Native Americans cleared them but, due to disease sweeping through the indigenous populations whenever contact was made with the Europeans, these clearings had been abandoned. Europeans called a "clearing" a "field."

The Plymouth colonists' first contact with the Native Americans was in March, 1621, when Samoset, a Wampanouy, entered their encampment and began conversing with them in English, which he had picked up from English sailors in the area. Samoset and later Squanto, a Massasoit, were interested in these new white settlers because they wanted to form an alliance between them and their tribes in order to be able to fend off incursions from other tribes. They figured that the European technology might help them resist encroachment on their lands and that an alliance would help them both from a military standpoint and a trade standpoint. But the Europeans would never have been a consideration had their tribe not suffered substantial losses in population due to disease.

Now, I have read history and part of it is due to my ancestry being from the founders of the Cape Ann colony, which settled in Massachusetts in 1623. Many relocated to Connecticut by the 1680s. While the Puritans were very strict in their adherence to the tenants of their religion, you have to understand that they did not try to convert Native Americans--that was just not their aim. I

This footnote to the Wikipedia article is especially good reading.

Whatever happened to the vaunted Slashdotter cynicism towards FUD? I know things trend leftward here on /. but don't facts and reality have any weight any more? Check out this website with supporting cites of Crichton's thoughts that the "Panic now" approach to global warming is not the best way to go: http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16260#r ight The argument I always stick on is that Mars is warming as well and there is no way that our SUV's could possibly warm Mars. Earth has been warming and cooling periodically since its inception. Let's find out if action is required before taking drastic steps that WILL cause deaths and misery among the poor. For example, in America if gas goes up to $6 a gallon then we can mostly suck it up. . .except for the very poor. This type of thing will raise food prices (how do you think food gets to the stores?) and limit the employment options for the poor to travel to find the good jobs by raising the cost of transportation. And that's just in America, what about in places that are really desperately poor. When you make $200 a year a small increase in the price of gasoline takes a huge bite out of your living standard as every product from food to building materials has to get there with gasoline. Bjorn Lomborg in his book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" pointed out facts like these and was pilloried as a heretic for it. I don't care about agendas, I only care about facts and results. I refuse to support actions that the facts don't currently support as necessary when the guaranteed results cause misery and needless deaths. Do you guys remember DDT? Environmental extremists caused it to be taken off the market and not used any more. This has resulted and in millions upon millions of deaths for no good reason. Oopsy. http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/000000005591 .htm "Malaria is on the increase in all tropical regions of the planet - especially in Africa. In 2000, the disease killed more than one million people and made 300 million seriously ill." There are many, many, many peer reviewed serious scientists who think that Global Warming cannot conclusively be blamed on human behavior. Further, others point out myriad BENEFITS to global warming, so even if it is caused by humans it may be a blessing and increase quality of life. http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA165.html "If history is any indication, greater precipitation may be only one of many benefits of global warming. For example, between the 10th and 12th Centuries, when the temperature of the planet was roughly 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today, agriculture in North America and Europe flourished and the southern regions of Greenland were free of ice, allowing cultivation by Norse settlers. " Check out he dissenters before you advocate actions that will get people killed.

"Infant mortality" has different definitions between _states_ in the USA. Was it a miscarriage, or did a baby die? It depends on which state you're in. Comparing between countries will give you some real apples and oranges. This is maddening if you are in a state with a broad definition of "infant mortality" and your hospital is getting bad quality outcome numbers because of the definitions your state legislature made.

Also, one would expect that infant mortality would be highest in a country with the highest risk obstetric patients, wouldn't we? Let's see. A country where women with careers wait until their 30's to have babies instead of their teens and twenties. Where, as a result, infertility treatments and therefore multiple gestations (twins, triplets, etc) are common. Where, as a result, the neonatal ICUs are crammed with babies from about 30 weeks gestational age (having been in the uterus for only 3/4 of the celestial committee's recommended stay.) One could easily make the assumption that the more money a country is willing to spend on medical care, the higher their infant mortality would be.

The actual numbers, sampling biases, etc are much more complicated than this, but anyone who thinks Cuba's medical care is better than that in the US is a bit confused or deliberately misleading others in my opinion. I wouldn't want to be a 30 week gestational age infant in Cuba.

Here's an article that gets into a little more detail, but really the whole socialized medicine argument is like debating creationists. You aren't going to change their belief with any evidence. I just get sick of the infant mortality / longevity comparisons which are so obviously inane.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547ComparativeHea lth.html

Why not build an Integral Fast Reactor (FAQ), and use the electrical output to electrolyze water, or use the thermal output of a Lead Cooled Fast Reactor to thermochemically crack water into oxygen and hydrogen.

As far as waste is concerned, the Integral Fast Reactor waste products have a relatively short half life. From the Wikipedia article: "The result is that within 300 years, such wastes are no more radioactive than the ores of natural radioactive elements."

This is a non-issue. With the typical fuel cycle for a fast reactor, producing weapons grade plutonium is basically impossible. It can be done, but you would need to run a completely different fuel cycle, explicitly for the purpose of producing plutonium. The only way for this to go unnoticed is to build and operate your own private reactor, so there is no more inherent danger.

An added benefit though, is that these reactors are capable of burning plutonium. As such, they can be used to dispose of our current stockpile. Actually, they can burn all sorts of stuff which is currently considered waste. After some on-site reprocessing, you continually send most of the material back through. (Current reactors only utilize something like a few % of the fuel and the remainder is the highly dangerous and long-lasting waste that everyone is so terrified of.) The minimal waste that is left over in an IFR, will reach background radiation levels in ~300 years.

Perhaps just as important, they are inherently safe from meltdown; if the cooling system fails, the reaction stops. This has even been tested in practice, and works as expected. Basically, it is a nearly ideal source of power from almost every aspect. All of the dangers and drawbacks of current designs have been addressed--what remains is to educate people about this clean, safe, and abundant source of power.

Below are links to the Wiki, and a sort of FAQ about the IFR. The latter addresses any concerns about proliferation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html

Idiots, or dishonest.

We're back to the "who's money are they looking after?" question here. Of your 3 links, two are right-wing pro-big-oil sources, and one is a goverment agency under the Bush "no-bid contracts to Halliburton" administration.

What I meant by idiot is the "common sense" view that a big hunk of metal is safer. Yes, if you hit a smaller car, the people in the smaller car have a higher chance of being killed by your penis-size compensator, but if both hit a brick wall, I'd rather be in the small car. The small car will die, I will live.

Idiots, I guess:

Study: Smaller cars are more dangerous

Fuel Efficiency Regulations Cost Lives and Money

Government's Dangerous Prescription

• http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA409.html
• http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
• http://www.nationalcenter.org/TSR50802.html

• http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA409.html
• http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
• http://www.nationalcenter.org/TSR50802.html

• http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA409.html
• http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
• http://www.nationalcenter.org/TSR50802.html

• http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA409.html
• http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
• http://www.nationalcenter.org/TSR50802.html

The Supreme Court had nothing to do with enacting rights for either minorities or women. It was done correctly, through Constitutional amendment and legislation, and not by activist judges.

Yeah.

Us Americans have such a short term memory. This has been going on for a long time. http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12 374,1509876,00.html http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/global_warming;_ylt=AjO PHgKyNMiA1zjvEt8quVSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHN lYwN0bQ-- http://www.nationalcenter.org/Climate-Gate.html And of course, the big one that made national news: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/19/scie ntists.bush.ap/ I could cut and paste all day. The fact is this administation tries to hide information from the public all the time because they are engaging in illegal and immoral activity. Bush said 'Jesus is my hero' once and that makes it all ok with most people. As long as he's against abortion, most people will follow him into hollow shell that was once the USA.

I agree that "fast nuclear reactor" is a fine name. I think you'll be glad to know, however, "the fact that it produces high grade (bomb grade) nuclear fuel" is actually not a fact. Check out the following link, which discussed the IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) specifically relating to proliferation risk: http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html. Wikipedia also has some useful information.

While it is true that a fast nuclear reactor can be rigged to produce more plutonium 239 (the kind of Pu that bomb makers want) than a thermal reactor (70-80% of the fuel vs. 60%) it is so contaminated with exotic transuranics that are highly radioactive that it's practically useless for making a weapon. A bomb maker wants at least 93% pure Pu239, so even 80% is not good enough, but the shielding required to deal with the contamination of the other highly radioactive elements that are present negates that "benefit". Waste from a thermal reactor would be much easier to turn into a bomb, but even so, no such weapon has been produced in the decades we've had nuclear technology. Uranium enrichment is so much easier, and easier to keep secret. You start with abundant, stable, U238. Who'd want separate out exotic elements from a substance you'd have to keep behind 6ft thick shielding? Try transporting that.

As for the environmental argument, fast nuclear reactors can not only burn U235 like a thermal reactor (which is 1% of naturally occurring uranium) they can burn plutonium from decommissioned weapons, "waste" fuel from thermal reactors and U238 (which is 99% of naturally occurring uranium). Once you've burned all the uranium and plutonium, what's left is highly radioactive, which means that it has a low half-life, which means that it decays to a safe level much more rapidly. We're talking hundreds instead of hundreds of thousands of years. That means that planning to keep the waste onsite makes sense.

An even larger environmental benefit from fast nuclear reactors is reduced mining. Since these advanced fuel cycles can burn more kinds of material (i.e. the vast majority of transuranics) instead of only burning 1-2% of an isotope of uranium that is 1% of naturally occurring uranium (we're talking four orders of magnitude difference), the environmental benefits of reduced mining activities are enormous. Moreover, not only do you not need Yucca Mountain, but because we can burn "waste" we've already generated as fuel, we already have stockpiles of fuel that will last us for centuries. This actually solves yet another, often overlooked, problem with conventional nuclear: we're running out of U235. We probably have 100years worth of U235 in the ground. With a fast nuclear reactor we can burn just about anything.

Not only does an advanced fuel cycle, like that used in the IFR, limit proliferation, and limit the lifetime of the resulting waste to hundreds of years instead of hundreds of thousands, it can be built in a passively safe reactor. The IFR relied on the laws of physics to prevent meltdown. First, the fuel in the IFR was metallic instead of ceramic. This means two things. First, metals conduct heat much better than ceramic, increasing the rate of thermal transfer away from the fuel. Secondly, the fuel expands as it heats, shutting down the reaction. Finally, the fuel was placed in a pool of liquid sodium (the fuel itself was clad in steel) at atmospheric pressure, instead of using pressurized water as the primary coolant. The IFR relied on convection in the liquid sodium to carry heat away from the fuel instead of pumped pressurized water. So, what happens when all active (secondary) cooling is removed? They actually did the test. The fuel heated up slightly and was then passively cooled by convection currents in the liquid sodium carrying heat away from the fuel as the reaction shutdown.

So, an advanced fuel cycle, like was used in the IFR, can have dramatic benefits to the environment by reducing not only long term waste storage requirements, but

Ok, that's done.

Sun to Blame for Global Warming

A False Consensus On Global Warming

Facts disprove warnings about global warming

Global warming claims 'based on false data'

You are correct, the original post does not imply all Christians are fascists. However, the statement is still clearly implying a correlation between Christianity and Fascism. It is similar to asking the question "If you found out George Bush cheated in college, how would that affect your opinion of him?", the question doesn't say he DID, but it certainly means to leave the reader with that thought.

As for Canada's health care, here are a few links you might be interested in reading:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/20/health/m ain681801.shtml?cmp=EM8705
http://www.nationalcenter.org/TPHealth18.html
http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/hl856. cfm

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom--go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" --Sam Adams, August 1st 1776

Uhhh... I thought the parent was talking about not worrying about global warming.. I think you pulled this "Rules free" thing right out your ass.
The point your missing is: Now no one has to worry about spending rediculous amounts of money
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA328.html to try and slow down a problem that we have little to no control over. Environmentalist are going to have to find a different way to persuade us all from polluting now!

I'm sure that you understand there are reasonable limits to the freedom of speech. For example, no one seriously argues that fraud(deceptive commercial speech) is a protected right under the first amendment.
Any limitation on political speech should be denounced by all freedom-loving people. I personally find McCain-Feingold to be particularly troubling. Potential limitation of the freedom to publish pornography could be seen as the first step on the slippery slope to fascism. I think the more realistic translation would be a minor contraction in the accepted breadth of what rational people consider unlimited speech.

What is certain - no matter whose model you use - is that the Kyoto accords will not appreciably affect CO2 in the atmosphere, and still less will it affect climate, while it will cost many trillions of dollars in direct costs and lost growth.

At one tyme I supported Kyoto and in the 2000 election instead of voting for whom I wanted I specifically voted against Bush. So it was with no supprise to me when he said he wouldn't support it once he got into office. However because of something he said I did some reseach, he specifically stated China and India along with other un/under developed countries didn't have any emissions targets. Sure enough in my research I found out he was right about that. So now as long as some are exempted from any emissions limits by Kyoto I too am against Kyoto. Back then both China and India were building new coal fired power plants that would put quite a bit of greenhouse gases out. However I still believe the US can and should do something. As for lost growth, I don't see it, if anything I see more employment a growth not less with a healthier environment. There would be more reseach into cleaner technologies and manufacturing jobs would be created in these clean(er) technologies. Solar energy for instance will require a boost in manufacturing pvs creating more jobs, distribution of and installation of PVs will create even more jobs as will periodic maintainance. The same will happen with wind genies, wind generators. Bioremediation and cleanup of brown fields will create more employment.

Also with Global Warming, if it's true, economic losses for businesses can be significant. Hurricanes need warm water to grow, and has been seen in Florida the last couple of years the state has been badly hit by one bad hurricane after another. Who suffers? Besides those killed, insurance companies have to make all those payments for damaged and lost property. To pay for those losses they raise their premiums so the insured pay more. About the only one who benefits from this are the construction companies.

And what of the spread of diseases and virii? Ebola for instance is spread by birds and mosquitoes, as warming happens mosquitoes will spread further north. I'd bet other virii can spread in the same way.

1. increased nuclear power investment, particularly fuel cycles that use the "waste" of current Uranium cycle plants (mostly Plutonium), or new Thorium-cycle plants.

At one tyme I was strongly against nuclear power, and am still wary of it, but as I learn more I think more and more that it may be an answer. For instance Integral Fast Reactors: Source of Safe, Abundant, Non-Polluting Power . And Nuclear Waste and Breeder Reactors - Myth and Promise .

Earth-based solar power, wind power, tide power, geothermal power, OTEC, biomass, and conservation will not provide enough energy to replace fossil fuels. Slower growth will just increase poverty and thus population, thus has no net long-term benefit.

Now as stated above I fully support some of these alternative energy sources.

People don't like nuclear power because of incidents like three mile island and Chernobly ,yet more damage is done each year by the cumulitive effects of coal/gas and oil plants.

I read somewhere that more people die in coal mines in russia every year than the total death toll (including long term cancer deaths) from chernobyl. And chernobyl was a crappy design that would not be allowed in the US. Cancer death estimates vary considerably, however. Additional eurasian cancer deaths would have to be compared to polution related deaths from power plants (which kills thousands every year). Directly attributable deaths for nuclear power, per terawatt years of power generated are 8 for nuclear power, 85 for natural gas, 342 for coal, and 883 for hydroelectric (dam's break). Add some cancer deaths for nuclear and pollution related deaths from fossil fuels. And add global warming related deaths to fossil fuels. Commercial power plants have 11000 reactor years of operation in over 30 countries with two major accidents. That is about one accident per 100 power plants over the projected life of the reactor and future accidents are likely to resemble three mile island rather than chernobyl. And coal plants release more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear plants (yep, coal contains radioactive material).

Average radiation exposure to 2 million people around three mile island was 1mrem compared to 6mrem for a set of chest xrays. Exposure at the plant boundary was 100mrem which is less than the annual background exposure. So, even if you were standing near the plant, your total lifetime radiation exposure was increased by about 1.2%.

Studies indicate that US Nuclear reactors will survive a direct hit from a 767.

Nuclear waste disposal is an issue. Integral Fast Reactors have the potential to reduce the magnitude of this problem considerably.

About a year ago, James Lovelock, of Gaia fame, proposed nuclear power as the only alternative that could stem global warming in time

There is one new technology that is more suited for oil replacement and could be a decent alternative to nuclear as a fossil fuel replacement: Thermal Depolymerization . That is a new technology but a pilot plant is producing 400 barrels of oil per day. When run off of plant (or even animal) material, the net greenhouse emissions are zero and the process consumes waste (and a wider variety of waste than other technologies) rather than creating it.

I live about 30 miles from two nuclear power plants (and the site of what might be the first new power plant built in the US) and less than half a mile from a research reactor.

Just food for thought.

-HJ

Expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the conditions for the United States becoming a signatory to any international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

This is grossly unsupported by proper engineering analysis and history.

But the arguments that RGPU weapons are impractical have been thoroughly discredited

An IFR could even be used to burn existing n-waste.

Do you ever get the feeling that our country has been through this kind of thing before?

Civil rights was rammed down America's throat, too. It wasn't the executive or legislative branch paving the way--it was the judicial branch. Without those "activist judges" going against the mainstream American values of the day, there's a very real chance that you'd see a "whites only" sign hanging in the window of your local Starbucks. Which was right--the judgement of the activist courts, or the will of the American mainstream?

This kind of thing is exactly why we have a judicial branch. Fundamental human rights aren't open to debate on the grounds of "what the majority is comfortable with". The founders were keenly aware of the "tyrrany of the majority", and they went to great lengths to keep the majority from trampling the rights of the minority. One of these safeguards is the judicial branch of the federal government.

Over the years, the American mainstream has maintained that blacks are worth 3/5 of a human being, that women are property, that the Irish are a race of sub-humans, that it is perfectly appropriate to sell and purchase human beings, that marrying an individual of the wrong race was a capital offense, and that Indians either needed to move out of our way or be killed. Today, the American mainstream believes that gays and lesbians shouldn't be allowed to marry those they love--or even enter into civil unions, for that matter. Occasionally, the Legislature or the Executive will take it upon themselves to right these wrongs. In most cases, though, it's the Judicial branch that steps in and upholds the individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Be thankful that our highest court is not subject to the whim and fancy of American mainstream thought.

Read it for yourself. It does say that the US should not sign any agreement unless all the countries are held to the same standard (currently 80% of the world is not restricted what-so-ever by the protocol - including China) and it shouldn't be signed if it would do severe damage to the US economy. It also says that if it is passed on to the Senate for ratification.. it needs to be delivered with an impact assessment.

To me - it all seems pretty reasonable.

a. Gore did sign the protocol (which was symbolic only).
b. And that both Clinton and Bush decided to not pass the treaty on to the senate, citing the Byrd-Hagel resolution as strongly suggestive that the Senate would not ratify it.

As for this:

The resolution was written so broadly that even strong supporters of the Kyoto Protocol, such as senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) voted for it. In doing so, Sen. Kerry said: "It is clear that one of the chief sponsors of this resolution, Senator Byrd . . . agrees ... that the prospect of human-induced global warming as an accepted thesis with adverse consequences for all is here, and it is real.... Senator Lieberman, Senator Chafee and I would have worded some things differently... [but] I have come to the conclusion that these words are not a treaty killer."

Here is the text of the resolution. Find the statement that was so compelling that John and Joe couldn't resist voting for it...

I've read it... it is one of the most straight-forward resolutions I have seen from the Senate.

Uh, last time I checked, statutes trumped common law in their jurisdiction. Moreover, new Federal law (INDUCE) would trump rulings on the old Federal law (found in 17 U.S.C.) made in a Federal Appeals court (MGM v Grokster).

As you rightly pointed out, the worst the Supreme Court can do is declare a law unconstitutional; however, even they have to wait for an actual "case or controversy". They can also overturn themselves, e.g. Brown v Board of Education overturning Plessy v Ferguson.

Now begins speculation. As far as INDUCE goes, it could be viewed as an end-run around Betamax, since the Betamax decision only applies to current doctrines of secondary infringement (obviously). The new 'inductive' doctrine would be a peer to the vicarious and contributory doctrines, and may or may not be subject to Betamax, since the Supreme Court didn't have induction in mind when they made the ruling.

1. Human error.

2. Serious failures can also accur with modern reactors although the design is fundamentally different to the one used in Chernobyl. They are not immune just because of the way they are built (which is often claimed by energy groups). The different reactor design merely makes them more secure but not perfect.

3. Fission itself is clean. But the nuclear waste is not. You cannot keep burying all the nuclear waste in some old mine for another 200-300 years. With a half-life period in the millions this is one hell of a legacy for our children.

4. What if something happens?

Chernobyl caused 31 deaths not including cancer.

Uh huh. Brown v. Board.

The residents of Nevada are protesting the inturment of the nations nuclear waste in their backyard.

No, not all residents. There are many who aren't in opposition to the internment of the waste.

Questions for you: Do you believe that the current storage pools are safer than Yucca Mountain? Do you have an answer for the existing waste that doesn't involve Yucca? If a method could be found to greatly reduce the volume and threat of existing nuclear waste, wouldn't you be in favor of it?

Breeder-burners can use the spent fuel currently sitting idle in storage pools as well as weapons material that awaits decommissioning. I am against using Yucca for long-term storage but not for the same reasons as you I think. I think Yucca should be a short-term waystation to get the material out of storage pools until breeder-burners are online. My personal favorite is the IRF/AFR model.

And there's tons of this stuff which is going to be criss-crossing the nation via rail, and truck, terrorist opportunities abound.

And how many accidents have there been? In France where the vast majority of the electricity comes from nuclear power, how many terrorist attacks have succeeded against the rail and trucks that have criss-crossed that nation for decades? What terrorist opportunities? Please enumerate them.

You mentioned hydroelectric. Look back at that energy map of California. What do you think would happen if terrorists attacked those dams, flooding the valleys in front of them, drowning the residents, and washing away homes, businesses, and communities? Or did you think hydroelectric was warm and fuzzy since you can't get thyroid cancer from it?

Nuclear may be safe? But with a loose definition of safe.

Yes, it's a loose definition. That's what large-scale electricity generation entails. No form, not green, not nuclear, not fossil fuel-based is 100% safe when producing large amounts of energy on a municipal level.

And it will never be as safe as the green alternatives.

You're right. It's hard to be safer than an alternative that can't run at the same capacity. 104 nuclear facilities are licensed in the US -- many of them share a physical location. Only 102 of them are actually running. 20% of all US electricity comes from nuclear. How many nuclear accidents have occurred in US history? Now look at the number of injuries and fatalities both of workers and people in