The "Scientization" of Yucca Mountain

Harperdog writes "This is a nice piece by Dawn Stover on how science has had little to do with the choice, and blockage of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository. This article doesn't go where you think it will; it isn't too long but is a thorough exploration of the process. Here's a quote: 'Government officials are often guilty of politicizing science. Egged on by business or religious interests, they cast doubt on the scientific evidence for a connection between tobacco and lung cancer, or between fossil fuels and climate change, or even between humans and our primate ancestors. Some scientific findings are suppressed, while others are manipulated or distorted beyond recognition. But in the case of Yucca Mountain, the reverse happened: Government officials "scientized" politics. They made decisions that were largely political but cloaked them in the garb of science.'"

Comments

Wha?

[eln]

How is that not exactly the same thing? In either case, you're manipulating or misrepresenting scientific data in order to achieve political goals.

Re:Wha?

[i kan reed]

Yep, you are exactly correct. Making up fake science, or using it selectively is politicization in true form. Scientization would be taking a politically contentious topic and limiting its policy to what is determined to be most effective by the scientific method. Luckily we already have that to some extent in the field of medicine, but we could do with more.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

The decisions are politically-motivated in either case. The difference is that in one case, politics leads to rejecting the science, which in the other case, politics leads to pretending to accept the science.

Both are stupid and wrong, but there is a difference.

Re:Wha?

[Samantha Wright]

It's almost completely disappointing that someone thought this was a novel or fascinating enough point to base a paper on. Even (mature) creationists claim to be "on the side of" the scientific method, they simply reject particular theories by claiming them to be unscientific, and then invoke the same old appeal to authority.

I mourn the day when the average scientist was someone with a clear grasp of the world outside of the tangibles and theoreticals of their chosen specialization. This "scientization" rubbish, proferred as noteworthy, would not have survived the barest scrap of journalistic scrutiny had it been submitted to a publication with non-scientist editorial staff; instead we would have a nice, straight-forward piece about politics mucking up science, as with everything else.

Re:Wha?

[Obfuscant]

Luckily we already have that to some extent in the field of medicine, but we could do with more.

Do you mean like a full study of the effectiveness of specific medical treatments and the probabilities of success and such, so that each member of society will have only the most likely to succeed and best rate-of-return procedures paid for?

Or like as soon as a scientific study shows that something is bad for people (like eating too much ice cream) it is made illegal?

Politics and government shouldn't be about enforcing scientific results, it needs to take into account people and their odd quirks, like a desire to be able to make their own choices about things and exhibit some level of freedom.

Re:Wha?

[vlm]

Luckily we already have that to some extent in the field of medicine

You need to specify your country. USA, people will laugh at you or think you're trolling. Canada, eh, ya maybe so, maybe so.

Re:Wha?

[vadim_t]

I suppose it's a matter of perspective.

I think the idea is that in politization you bring up arguments like "but what about the economy?", trying to distract people from reality with emotional arguments.

In "scientization" you do the contrary: you bring up scientific sounding arguments, trying to distract people from the real political motivations.

In the end it comes down to the same thing, it's just that the angle is different. In one you emphasize politics, in the other you attempt to present a facade of rigor and impartiality.

Re:Wha?

[Fluffeh]

It is different because in one case they are saying that "Science is wrong/doesn't exist - therefore we should...." and here where there is nothing that can be labelled as a Religion Vs Science issue (meaning they can't throw the creationist/denialist line) they simply jibber jabber, lie and cover up actual science to further their own agenda.

While it isn't totally different, I agree, it actually shows them as being much more hypocritical.

If a politician was truly a creationist, in some way (though I would disagree with them) I would somewhat accept if they were acting out political decisions based on that, but if they then suddenly turned around and said that they "Voted for .... due to the strong scientific evidence for evolution." then as far as I am concerned, they have lost all credibility and integrity.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds more like he just wanted to rant on 'business or religious interests'. But then found out the real reason those excuses are used. To further a political agenda. It is messing with him as it breaks his worldview so it seems 'odd'. This is someone who thinks the gov will eventually do the right thing. Most gov programs are manipulated by someone to get some sort of advantage (ideological, political, or money). The excuses to achieve that goal are usually not really relevant (though they seem so at the time but who cares as long as the law is passed). Just so long as they are enriched somehow. In this particular case "science" was used to further someones agenda (probably gov kickbacks/taxbreaks/contracts). If you think I am full of it think about this. What do most gov programs do? Do they actually produce anything? Or do they write checks to organizations and contractors in the form of tax breaks and real checks? Most of the time it is the latter these days. If people were serious about the 'top 1%' they would do well to start with the free money party that the gov has and the laws that enable them to act that way.

It really is just raw blatant greed usually. Sorry Harperdog (the original submitter), most people suck. There are many out there where this would seem foreign and reprehensible to even contemplate. However, there would be those who snap their own grandmas back in two if it meant they got say... a billion dollars and not only that they would find a justification for it (dont want to seem like a evil guy after all).

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada, eh...

I see what you did there...

Re:Wha?

[SleazyRidr]

You don't have to enforce scientific results; they have a tendency to do that by themselves.

Did you realise that scientific studies have shown that eating ice-cream (and other "bad" foods) can have the positive effect of reducing stress levels and (in moderation) actually be beneficial to your health?

Dragging myself back on topic, how do you think the FDA and friends decide which drugs to make legal for over-the-counter sales, which should require a prescription, and which should be outright banned? If you answered "with science" you'd be partially correct!

In summary, don't worry, science is looking out for you, there's no boogy-man coming for your ice-cream.

Re:Wha?

[gatkinso]

My thoughts exactly.

Re:Wha?

[spads]

Yes. This is not scientization of anything. This is just lying about the scientific findings, saying the science said no, when the science said yes. If anything, the descientization.

I guess the (journalistic method) more remarkable the revelation, the less closely you are supposed to examine it.

Discovery: "My goodness, we've discovered birds flying upside down under water!"
Appropriate response: "Hmmm, remarkable!"

Re:Wha?

[demonbug]

Yep, you are exactly correct. Making up fake science, or using it selectively is politicization in true form. Scientization would be taking a politically contentious topic and limiting its policy to what is determined to be most effective by the scientific method. Luckily we already have that to some extent in the field of medicine, but we could do with more.

The problem with science is that it rarely gives black and white answers to complicated questions, so your results often depend a lot more on what you ask than the actual science behind the answer. Yucca Mountain has been extensively studied, and there is ample scientific evidence to argue both for and against a nuclear waste repository there - the answer depends entirely on how much risk you are willing to accept. Choosing an acceptable risk level is almost purely political in nature, and can change with the political tide. Looking at the acceptable risk when the project started, the scientific investigations conducted since then suggest that Yucca is probably an appropriate place to store waste. Looking at the acceptable risk now, with a more politically powerful Nevada that fought to decrease the acceptable risk level, the scientific evidence suggests that Yucca is not feasible. The science hasn't changed (well, actually it has quite a bit since the beginning of the project, but that isn't really relevant here), it isn't being used selectively, the thing that has changed is the politically-determined acceptable risk. It is quite valid to say that the science doesn't support building a waste repository at Yucca - the science doesn't support it (at a given acceptable risk level).

The thing that is problematic about this is that the politicians increasingly use this to hide the political decision. They focus on saying that the science doesn't (or does) support X or Y, when really they should be saying that the science doesn't support it at our chosen risk criteria. They do their best to avoid discussion of the risk criteria, which is what the political discussion should be about.

Re:Wha?

[osu-neko]

Did you realise that scientific studies have shown that eating ice-cream (and other "bad" foods) can have the positive effect of reducing stress levels and (in moderation) actually be beneficial to your health?

Aside from poisonous things, there are no "bad foods". There are a lot of foods you shouldn't eat too much of, but that's the point, innit -- "don't each too much of" does not mean "do not eat (period)". Every food you can possibly name is beneficial to your health as long as you don't eat too much of it.

Re:Wha?

[ohnocitizen]

I think the difference is between whether science is the target or the tool. In most cases, political goals trump scientific reality: science is the target, politics the tool. In this case, a political goal was furthered by using science as a positive beacon of trusted authority: science is the tool, politics the target. Its a fairly remarkable (though not by any means new) thing, given the increasingly hostile-to-science political landscape in the US.

Re:Wha?

[geekoid]

" scientific evidence to argue both for and against a nuclear waste repository there "
false. The evidence shows it's reasonably safe. The opposition keeps making up strawmen to make it seem like the data was gather incorrectly.

Re:Wha?

[mcguiver]

One of the problems with Yucca Mountain is that the government is doing so much research that you are bound to find scientists who disagree with the majority of the findings and are always raising concerns. The public gets wind of these concerns and refuses to allow Yucca Mountain to progress until the concerns are addressed. Said scientists gets another grant, does more research, finds another "problem", and the cycle continues. There is research done regarding Yucca Mountain the flies in the face of our understanding of the oxidizing behavior of Uranium. Yet it is done by a scientist and opponents grab onto it and use it. Though Yucca Mountain is a great place to store the waste, it will never open thanks to the current regulations surrounding it.

Re:Wha?

[ColdWetDog]

" scientific evidence to argue both for and against a nuclear waste repository there "
false. The evidence shows it's reasonably safe. The opposition keeps making up strawmen to make it seem like the data was gather incorrectly.

You just agreed with demonbug. "Reasonable" is a word that can be used to push both sides of the argument. Reasonably safe also means reasonably unsafe - it depends on your acceptance of risk.

The exact arguments can be made for most medical procedures, especially screening tests, like the current controversy surrounding prostate and breast cancer screening. In fact, if you took demonbug's paragraph, substituted PSA, prostate cancer and urologists in the appropriate places, you would have a pretty good explanation of the current controversy.

Re:Wha?

[blair1q]

You don't have to enforce scientific results; they have a tendency to do that by themselves.

No, they don't.

You have to keep testing them and showing the results. Because the people on the other side will keep repeating the same lie over and over, and inventing new lies, and putting them out in every new medium, making them look like the current state of human knowledge, while the facts you thought were enforcing themselves are gathering dust in a journal on the back shelf of a library nobody visits any more.

Science isn't animate. People have to sell the truth at least as hard as other people sell the lies.

Re:Wha?

[sjames]

Or like as soon as a scientific study shows that something is bad for people (like eating too much ice cream) it is made illegal?

That's either pure politics again or it's politics creating bad science. Science may tell us that something is bad for us. An enlightened policy will make sure people know of the result and how well proven (or not) it is and urge us to do the right thing.

I understand your skepticism though, when it comes to nutrition and health there's a lot of bad science and weak results being quacked about all over the place. Much of it is the natural result of political PHB types trying to look smart while they boss people around "for their own good". Most of that leaves people worse off than ever like when trans-fat laden margarine was the "healthy" choice and people put up with it rather than enjoying real butter.

Re:Wha?

[Obfuscant]

You don't have to enforce scientific results; they have a tendency to do that by themselves.

No, they don't. There is nothing coming out of a scientific study of the effects of, say, tobacco, that prevents anyone from smoking. If that were true, nobody would be smoking today. They'd all have been prevented from doing so by the scientific studies that tell them it is bad for them.

To get the enforcement, you need laws and someone who comes arrest you if you break them. Laws come from politicians.

It would be a BAD thing if scientific studies resulted in laws without any concern for anything else, like this "emotional" economy or freedom or rights or any of the other human considerations. Not only when the scientific studies are wrong, but when they are right, too.

For Yucca, let's suppose that every study says "this is a safe place to bury wastes". Should you ignore every other concern and forge blithely ahead building a nuclear waste dump there? Suppose there was a study that said that your back yard was a safe place to bury nuclear wastes, and a backhoe will be around tomorrow at 8AM to start digging. Would you be happy?

Did you realise that scientific studies have shown that eating ice-cream...

Did you realize that that was only one small example of the bigger picture, and that by poking holes in ice cream you've not actually dealt with the bigger issues involved?

Re:Wha?

[khallow]

I disagree. Dismissing contrary research (I don't know whether that has happened in this case or not) is beyond merely changing your risk criteria. It introduces bias. That means that the decision can become completely unhinged from the actual risk, even if the decider superficially is doing so solely on the basis of a (biased) risk evaluation.

Re:Wha?

[Obfuscant]

That's either pure politics again or it's politics creating bad science.

What? A scientific study that tells us that ice cream is bad for these specific reasons is POLITICS? No, it's a scientific study. I didn't say it was a biased or faulty scientific study.

Science may tell us that something is bad for us.

That's what I just said.

An enlightened policy will make sure people know of the result and how well proven (or not) it is and urge us to do the right thing.

And that "enlightened policy" is exactly what I'm talking about being necessary instead of just "science". The "enlightened policy" looks at more than just the scientific study, it looks at all the other issues involved.

I understand your skepticism though,

No, clearly you do not, because I am not talking about taking a skeptical view of science, I'm talking about considering more than science when it comes to dealing with social and societal issues. I don't care if the science is unimpeachable and proven beyond any reasonable doubt, there are other things to consider when making laws.

Newton's laws of motion are pretty well defined and accepted. Momentum increases as the square of the velocity. You'd have to be really outside the norm to think otherwise. So, applying that science to automotive policy, speed limits should be as low as possible. Five MPH at most. Double that limit to ten and you've multiplied the momentum by 4 and the amount of damage by the same. Maybe even 5MPH is too much!

But wait -- people need to get from point A to point B in a reasonable time. Rules can be put into place to lessen the likelyhood of colissions. People will naturally go at a speed they feel is safe, all else being equal, so putting a 5MPH limit on major roads is not going to be effective anyway. These are things that fall outside Newton's laws that still need to be considered.

It's all because those salty bags of water don't feel compelled to limit themselves to what is "safer" or "safest" according to science. It's only a wonderful side-effect that some of the science that tells us what is "safer" isn't really very good science, or is simply wrong, that makes not blindly obeying the scientists an even better thing.

For the commenter that asked me how I think the FDA determines drug laws, well, they already do that. I was responding specifically to a comment that said "more is better" when it comes to having science determine laws. But even there, too, drugs are approved that have known side effects. The benefits of the drug to people's lives is still a consideration, over and above the science. That's a good thing.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know the discovery of penguins was so controversial. I'll have to look it up on wikipedia.

Re:Wha?

[sjames]

The politics is translating a single study saying over X amount = bad for you into a blanket ban before it even gets peer reviewed. Science doesn't ban, politicians do.

The more likely case though is when the political process conspires to make sure grants go to researchers that get the "right" answers and then those answers are used as an excuse to do something to benefit a big campaign contributor. Or, in the case of a bureaucrat, the "right" answer is the one that backs their push for a bigger budget.

The flip side is that researchers who come up with the "wrong" answers find that there is no budget for followup.

The political process gives us either the enlightened policy or much more frequently the knee jerk "doing something" or the ulterior motive.

Re:Wha?

[scheme]

Newton's laws of motion are pretty well defined and accepted. Momentum increases as the square of the velocity. You'd have to be really outside the norm to think otherwise. So, applying that science to automotive policy, speed limits should be as low as possible. Five MPH at most. Double that limit to ten and you've multiplied the momentum by 4 and the amount of damage by the same. Maybe even 5MPH is too much!

Newton's laws of motion don't discuss momentum at all. Also momentum does not increase as the square of velocity, in newtonian mechanics, p=mv so momentum increases proportionally to velocity. Kinetic energy increases as the square of velocity (k=.5*mv^2). But even that doesn't really determine how bad an accident is since you need to know how elastic the collusion is and the impulse since those tend to be better indicators of the severity.

Re:Wha?

[Curunir_wolf]

how do you think the FDA and friends decide which drugs to make legal for over-the-counter sales, which should require a prescription, and which should be outright banned? If you answered "with science" you'd be partially correct!

Very partial. Like, you get 3/10, maybe even less. Just studying the case of the FDA's cooperation with Big Pharma on red yeast rice leaves you with a whole new appreciation about the real purpose of the FDA.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I call BS, too. This is exactly the same - only the order of things differ. Science first, lobbying second / lobbying first, science second, it doesn't matter. The goal is to falsely use pseudo-science to support policy.

Re:Wha?

[bluefoxlucid]

I challenge you to find one food that I can't eat too much of.

Our so-called "science" is ludicrous anyway. Fruit juice is bad for you--too much sugar. I guarantee that consuming fruit juice every single day is healthy; if your body isn't burning the sugar, something is wrong. I bike to work every day--I'm not going to get fat or diabetic from drinking fruit juice on the days I don't bike to work, even if I only drink fruit juice and nothing else.

Today's standard procedure is for a person to wake up, climb out of bed, shower, and either microwave something or get in the car. Sit on your ass while you drive to work, maybe snag food from the drive-through (without ever getting off your ass). Get out of the car, walk as little as possible to the building. Elevator one floor up. Sit at your desk for 8 hours; bring a packed lunch so you don't have to get up to eat. Elevator one floor down. Sit on your ass on the drive home. Sit your ass on the couch with a TV dinner and watch TV for 6 hours. Go to sleep.

There is no way you will ever be healthy. I eat anything I want--fried eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, with bread and cheese and all, all fried in a mixture of butter and lard and bacon grease. Harmless. My sugar intake is incredible--I drink a lot and I mostly drink Tang! I drink tea at work, with a lot of honey in it. My biggest worry is fluoridation of water, especially since tea concentrates so much fluoride already--imagine my intake, compared to the EPA recommended max dosage! All this fat and sugar stuff is just energy--hell, I have gelatinous pre-measured units of energy I keep with me.

I eat whatever I want. I eat when I'm hungry. My body seeks energy. You go on a diet and still get fat and sick and have diabeetus and clogged arteries because you sit on your ass for 18 hours a day and sleep the other six. Nutrition experts tell us all this stuff is good/bad for you based on--imagine this--the sick fat people that never move off their asses.

Re:Wha?

[bluefoxlucid]

An enlightened policy

People like to fancy themselves enlightened these days when they understand the nature of nothing, and have no interest in seeking out any new understanding.

Re:Wha?

[blahplusplus]

Everyone should watch the following about human reason, and why facts 'don't support themselves' according to our minds.

http://bit.ly/dYaWUc

Re:Wha?

[SleazyRidr]

Lettuce. You'll find it very hard to get enough lettuce down your throat that would be constituted as "too much." If you can, I'll give you a free T-shirt.

What exactly about science is ludicrous to you. The fact that you shouldn't consume more energy than you expend?

Science will tell you sitting on your arse all day is bad for your health (if you couldn't work it out anyway) and that you need to exercise to be healthy. Crackpots will tell you that if you eat the right things you don't have to exercise and you can still be healthy, but there is no science that backs that up.

Re:Wha?

[SleazyRidr]

Is that a goatse link hidden behind a URL shortener?

Re:Wha?

[SleazyRidr]

I was thinking more along of what happens happens whether you've allowed for it in your policy or not.

Obfuscant is clearly scared of psuedoscience being used to justify policy decisions that will come after him and other ice-cream eaters. Science as a whole has a pretty bad reputation from being twisted for political purposes over so many years. It's no longer a scientific problem to solve, we've got to get past the big PR problem before we can think about using science for good again. I don't know the answer, I'm just some guy on an internet forum. ):

Re:Wha?

[SleazyRidr]

As for the enforcing themselves bit, I meant more along the lines that if you smoke you have increased your risk of cancer etc. no matter what any politician says.

I'm not sure where you've got the idea that science is so limited in its scope. I'm not sure how science could result in laws without any consideration for anything else. Sticking to the ice-cream example, you can use science to show the effects of eating ice-cream, but that's it. Then the politician's job is to weight up the economic factors, the social factors, the health factors, the cultural factors etc. and decide on his ice-cream policy.

Of course there's more to deciding on where to put a nuclear waste dump than knowing that it's a safe place to do it, but being a safe place to do it is a prerequisite to being considered for a nuclear waste site. Even if every other factor told you to dump it somewhere, if it's going to leak in 5 years then you can't dump it there, you'd need to find somewhere that wasn't quite as good from other standpoints, but met the requirements of being safe.

The problem with the Yucca mountain nuclear waste repository is that politicians decided on all the other stuff first, then told scientists to find that it was a safe place. That quite seriously limits how effective science can be; what if it hadn't been found to be safe?

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

You still should watch the simple sugars intake. It won't hit you when you're young, but eventually, you'll start to get an insensitivity to insulin and you could become diabetic.

Re:Wha?

[blahplusplus]

Nope. Here's the full one, I just use bit.ly because it has a quickcopy/paste of links feature that you can re-use (most common links have a menu when you load the page just hit "copy").

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Re:Wha?

[interkin3tic]

There doesn't even need to be another side actively opposing it, it's intrinsic. Rational thought doesn't come easily to us humans. We get scientific facts that challenge our deeply held beliefs, and we typically respond in a very unscientific manner, by attacking it.

As a scientist, it's extremely distressing when I realize that I am doing it in science. I had a nice little hypothesis my first year of grad school, was very proud of it. My first result shot it right to hell. I wasted the next half a year trying to show that my hypothesis was still true, that the result was a fluke. Eventually I realized that I was being an idiot, and that opened the door to a much much more interesting model. I wish I could say that was the first lesson I learned and have never made that mistake again. The more accurate statement would be "And I still make that same mistake every damn time."

Re:Wha?

[bluefoxlucid]

Lettuce contains too much fiber. Too much iceberg lettuce will QUICKLY create severe constipation. Other kinds of lettuce are rather high in Vitamin A, which is poisonous.

There is science that claims fruit juice is FAR better for you than fruit, and science that claims fruit juice is horribly bad for you. Fresh squeezed orange juice is one of the worst things for you, says recent science. It's about on par with soda.

Re:Wha?

[bluefoxlucid]

There is no insulin released while I'm on my bike ... though there is when I consume bread, grains, and fruit juice. Bread is proclaimed to be the thing you should eat the most of ... and it causes a massive insulin spike, the GI of white bread is higher than the GI of glucose (it's like 140) and the GI of whole wheat is still 95-110. So pure sugar is less bad for you than this shit, allegedly.

I'll be fine. Simple sugars are in high demand rather frequently.

Re:Wha?

[SleazyRidr]

I think I see the problem now you're listening to the over hyped science journalists and thinking they represent actual science. No way would a scientific paper proclaim the fruit juice is better for you than fruit. The effects of fruit and fruit juice may be compared, but from there it's up to you (or a journalist) to ascribe meaning to it in terms of your own life.

I like fresh squeezed orange juice.

Re:Wha?

[Obfuscant]

Obfuscant is clearly scared of psuedoscience being used to justify policy decisions that will come after him and other ice-cream eaters.

You are clearly a moron, because you want to put words in other people's mouths.

Re:Wha?

[Obfuscant]

I'm not sure where you've got the idea that science is so limited in its scope.

And I have no idea where you got the idea I said anything of the sort.

I'm not sure how science could result in laws without any consideration for anything else.

Then you haven't been reading this thread. We're talking about the application of science to "pubic policy" and laws. Science can easily result in laws without consideration for anything else if you demand that science be the basis for laws.

You'll note, if you read carefully, that this has nothing at all to do with pseudo or junk science, and nothing really to do with ice cream. Ice cream was one trivial example. Real science, used as the basis for law, is just as bad as pseudo or junk science.

Now, stop telling people I'm scared that someone is going to use junk science to take my ice cream away, dipshit.

Re:Wha?

[SleazyRidr]

Alright, since you don't like the ice-cream example any more, I'll use the speed limit example from your other post.

What are the speed limits? Around here they range from ~30 to ~70 mph. These figures were decided upon based on Newtons laws of motion, and other considerations. Nowhere in any of Newton's writings will you find a scientifically determined speed limit, policy makers took the science and worked out a good speed limit, balancing all the factors.

Even something as obvious a drugs: science can only tell you that they're bad for your health and that they'll kill you. It's up to politicians to decide that people not dieing is a worthwhile goal and that maybe we should write some laws about drugs.

Re:Wha?

[Obfuscant]

Newton's laws of motion don't discuss momentum at all.

The second law states that the net force on a particle is equal to the time rate of change of its linear momentum p in an inertial reference frame

You're right on the square. Same argument. The energy goes as the square. Ban anything going faster than 5 MPH because it is unsafe. Science says so.

But even that doesn't really determine how bad an accident is

Laws don't deal with any specific accident, they deal with trying to prevent them altogether, or lessening the overall damage. Science says that the energy goes up as the square, which is good enough to justify a very very low speed limit everywhere. For safety. Ignoring all other concerns.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who proclaims bread is the thing you should eat the most of? Grains, maybe, but that doesn't mean just bread. As you pointed out, breads have a high GI and are really not nice for anyone with gluten intolerance.

Re:Wha?

[bluefoxlucid]

The scientific rationale for fruit juice being better than fruit is that it concentrates all the nutrients and antioxidents and other useful stuff. A fist-sized apple won't make a fist-sized glass of juice; it takes 4-6 of them. A couple decades later, the same science lead to an alarmist reaction about the huge amount of sugar--fruit contains sugar, and fruit juice contains more sugar because all the non-sugar parts are removed.

It's science. It's both the best stuff in the world and the most horrible for you. I think any science that says sugar consumption is automatically bad (yeah even at levels of like 5 tablespoons in an 8 ounce glass) is wrong. I use that energy.

Re:Wha?

[SleazyRidr]

Science has told you that fruit juice contains high levels of nutrients and antioxidants.
Science has also told you that fruit juice contains high levels of sugar.
Science has mentioned once or twice that the average person today consumes too much sugar, based on a low activity level.
You have weighed up the scientific facts, considered the fact that you are physically active on a daily basis, and decided that drinking fruit juice is good for you.

That is exactly what I want from the politicians running this (and every other country). Listen to what the science finds, consider the conclusions in the context of what's actually happening, and take appropriate action from there.

tl;dr version: I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Wha?

[bluefoxlucid]

Yes, but I've also noticed that "nutrition scientists" seem to base their conclusions on this ideal that the definition of "Healthy" follows the baseline of society, even if that society is nothing of the sort. In other words, we know that it's not healthy to be completely sedentary; but all of "nutrition" seems based on the idea that you're mainly sedentary. Even when you're moderately active, people claim that sugar and fat are simply bad for you.

More importantly, there is no indication of baseline for nutrition science, and so all this is given and taken as the absolute healthy baseline: a "healthy adult" should vehemently avoid sugar and fat, so they say. I don't think their definition of "healthy adult" is correct, and I think their conclusions are compromised because of it. Sugar and fat intake aren't bad for you, except in gross excess of what's in fruit juice and meat--a person like me (I'm not an athlete, I get 14 miles of biking in a day and use the stairs instead of the elevators) can eat a mainly meat diet fine, and I'm not on a low-carb diet by any stretch. An athlete will need far more than I do.

Of course I could overeat and become unhealthy. I could eat junk like donuts all day and it would have an effect on me. I can cram donuts down every day, though, and if I'm not eating a whole cake or a dozen donuts every day or something I'm still going to be fine. One or two won't do anything bad to me: the energy supply will reduce my need for base food energy, but two donuts isn't enough food and I'll still be taking down other foods that supply the proper nutrient load. Sugars get consumed; fats get consumed or stored in muscle cells (fast energy, rather than storing into fat cells), and the efficient consumption and storage of fats prevents certain types of cholesterol from floating in the arteries (the body uses the "bad stuff" first, i.e. it's self-balancing when in good working order).

That's not how nutritionists see it. The science they put out says, "Holy crap, donuts? That's bad for you. Totally bad for you. You'd be way better off if you avoided that entirely." They'll scream all day that I'd be healthier if I ate just rabbit food. Bad science.

Earthquake stability...

[Forbman]

well, I knew someone who was doing research on table rocks in the area, to guesstimate how long those rocks had been teetering on their pedestals, with the hypothesis that a significant earthquake would have knocked them off...

As I recall, their research indicated that of the ones they'd checked, they'd probably been on their pedestals for a few thousand years, at least...

this is new?

[roc97007]

> Government officials "scientized" politics. They made decisions that were largely political but cloaked them in the garb of science.'"

One could argue that this has happened often, in many fields. What's new here?

Re:this is new?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It isn't really confined to science, or even as new (relatively) as science is.

Whenever you make a political decision, it is helpful to have reasons that don't make you look quite as crass and calculating. Certain reasons are as old as the hills(defending Us vs. Them, preventing the decline of Morality, etc.) others change according to the prevailing epistemology of the time. In theistic societies, your political decision is couched as being the one that makes god happy. In technological ones(it's hard to say that the US, or the contemporary west is "scientific", given that magical thinking and sheer nonsense continue to flourish; but nobody denies that knowing the world is among the most powerful ways of changing it), your decision has sound, reasonable, scientific backing. Heck, RAND has probably done a cost-benefit analysis justifying it!

Re:this is new?

[vlm]

> Government officials "scientized" politics. They made decisions that were largely political but cloaked them in the garb of science.'"

One could argue that this has happened often, in many fields. What's new here?

Wait till she discovers the psuedoscience of economics... if yucca mountain got her wound up into writing an article, Keynesian economics might literally make her head explode.

Another good one is climate science.

Re:this is new?

[Joce640k]

Obama's looking worse and worse with every day that passes.

Re:this is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that all of the Republican candidates are even worse.

Re:this is new?

[ColdWetDog]

Obama's looking worse and worse with every day that passes.

What would Romney do?

Really, while I am profoundly disappointed in Obama's tenure, I doubt a Republican president would have done anything different. Even Ron Paul would do the same.

Re:this is new?

[blair1q]

http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/09/so-that-ignorance-wont-be-reason-why.html

"Obama hasn't done anything right" is a canard. Stop falling for right-wing propaganda.

Re:this is new?

[gangien]

Looking at that page...

I doubt many people would question he's increased spending a shitton.

Re:this is new?

[roc97007]

> What would Romney do?

> Really, while I am profoundly disappointed in Obama's tenure, I doubt a Republican president would have done anything different. Even Ron Paul would do the same.

To a major extent I can agree with that. As a fiscal conservative, I am profoundly glad that McCain didn't win, because he'd have done the same things as Obama, only with Republican support. I think the damage Obama has done has been minimized in part because of party opposition. (Ideologically, I don't belong to either party, but am currently registered Democrat.)

Ron Paul would have done something different, I believe, but I'm not sure whether that would be a good thing. Some of his views genuinely frighten me.

Cain is interesting. I don't know yet where he is socially, (I tend to be socially liberal) but he may be exactly what we need fiscally, at least for now. We may have to put up with a social conservative in order to have a fiscal conservative in place for a few years until we get the economy back on track.

This is all way off topic, of course.

Re:this is new?

[blair1q]

They would be wrong.

Reagan and W set the records for spending increases, and Obama won't break it.

Re:this is new?

[gangien]

you link to a page showing many of the spending increases and then you say he didn't increase spending?

Re:this is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about "categorizing those who criticize Obama on his handling of this issue as 'having fallen for right-wing propaganda'" is a canard?

Re:this is new?

[roc97007]

"Stop falling for right-wing propaganda" is a canard.

Re:this is new?

[ganjadude]

are you serious??? obama has spend more in 1 month than bush did in a year

Re:this is new?

[imric]

Right. Because many people haven't 'fallen for' the propaganda and know it for what it is - and still spread it.

Re:this is new?

[imric]

Hahaha! that's pretty funny. When has a conservative President helped the economy in say, the last 50 years?? Hell, even Reagan's actions (loosening credit, removing regulation) ended up with massive bank bailouts by his lackey, Bush Sr.

Re:this is new?

[Pope]

What would Romney do?

Do you mean, "What would Romney do, given a Congress full of the opposing party?"

Reprocessing

[Wonko the Sane]

The vast majority of that waste is still capable of producing useful energy. If it was reprocessed there'd be a lot less that needs to be stored.

Re:Reprocessing

[vlm]

The vast majority of that waste is still capable of producing useful energy. If it was reprocessed there'd be a lot less that needs to be stored.

Correct engineering, wrong politics.

The problem is the folks who would be hired to reprocess are so incredibly crooked and such political backstabbers that we would literally have less pollution if we just tossed it all off the end of a pier into the ocean, or heck, if we just ground it up and sprinkled it on our breakfast cereal. For "national security" we can't have anyone reporting on stuff being dumped out on the ground, not can we?

I don't think the French or Japanese are as corrupt as the Americans, or at least they're as corrupt overall yet corrupt in ways that make it safer for them to reprocess than for us to reprocess. We should simply sell/give the stuff to them.

Re:Reprocessing

[AK Marc]

The vast majority of the waste is not capable of producing energy. The majority of the volume of waste is stuff like office furnishings from nuclear plants and other things that had long-term exposure and registers above background levels. Yes, the spend fuel can be reprocessed, but the majority of the volume would be just fine in a landfill (so long as they didn't build a school on top of the landfill - don't laugh, I've seen it happen multiple times). Much of it isn't even "radioactive" from a lay-person's perspective. It's less radioactive than a fair bit of Fiesta Ware, which people ate off years after reports about it.

Re:Reprocessing

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'waste' you refer to, at least that which doesn't escape into the environment, goes on producing radiation (energy). I doesn't stop just because it's no longer used as part of the core. That's why it's isolated and kept underwater in cooling tanks, like the ones that failed at Fukushima. It's still

According to Helen Caldicott's book; Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, there are over 200 nuclides which naturally occur in during fission of Uranium. They build up in the reactor fuel rods as the Uranium breaks down. The processing of spent fuel rods entails separation of the useful elements and is hazardous for the same reasons that any handling of radioactive materials can be lethal. You can receive a lethal dose of radiation from close contact with these rods in less than a minute.

'Reprocessing' requires containment, secure transportation and results in radioactive byproducts (waste). It's not like the 'spent fuel' is 100% recyclable, and then you have a new and different system to deal with. The effort may seen advisable, but without proper elaboration, inspection and analysis, how would we know this to be true?

Caldicott did a fairly comprehensive job of raising many questions about the nature nuclear power from the energetics that describe the entire system to the health and environmental concerns which, to this day, go under-reported in our media because no one really wants to deal with the fact that this entire system is a lethal byproduct of the cold war which we are all better off without, in the long run.

For heaven's sake, we're boiling water with a system that creates enough plutonium 'waste,' each and every year, at each and every commercial electricity plant, to build 50 nuclear warheads with multi-megaton yield! There's no other use for plutonium because of the security concerns, and we're encouraged to believe that this is a public utility that should be further commercialized!!

Nuclear energy would be a great idea, if we understood how to use it efficiently and the benefits outweighed the costs of the health hazards. But we still don't have a place or the means by which to store nuclear waste, and any of its forms. And in the mean time, we're busy contaminating the biosphere. Its released in the cooling water outflow and the vapor that has to be vented from the ironically named containment vessels. And currently we're stockpiling an every increasing amount of spent fuel rods at each commercial site with no end to this practice in sight. Additionally, we incinerate radioactive clothing and other equipment under some ridiculous rubric that assumes we can contaminate the atmosphere at will and without consequence.

The people responsible for this should be required to live downstream from the incinerators and only in areas with the highest probability of the greatest contamination in the event of core meltdown and atmospheric realease.

Re:Reprocessing

[sjames]

That waste is more political than actual. It's not properly "nuclear waste" it's stuff that should go up on ebay. It's just more "political waste".

Of the actual waste, the stuff that lasts thousands of years is otherwise known as valuable fuel. The remainder is much more manageable even if it isn't practical to refine out useful isotopes like Co60 for medical and industrial apps.

Re:Reprocessing

[Wonko the Sane]

That's an extremely misleading list of prepared talking points.

Re:Reprocessing

[ganjadude]

more people die mining coal, oil, and on wind and hydro plants in the past 60 years than from nuke power.....

Re:Reprocessing

[Trax3001BBS]

Love canal - waste doesn't have to be radioactive to be harmful.

The waste planned at Yucca Mountain is high level stuff.
Spent fuel rods, waste products of Plutonium production.
Stuff that can hurt you.

One main reason people don't want a disposal site near them
is this stuff has to be transported, and accidents happen.

Gloves, clothing, furniture, tools and stuff of that nature
are just put in a plastic bag, boxed up and buried, not
that deep either.

In this area they turn high level waste into glass. Similar to this
http://www.srs.gov/general/programs/solidification/index.htm
it not only reduces the waste (no liquids) it stop it from
being airborne, or getting into the ground water.

Re:Reprocessing

[Anonymous Coward]

From an engineering perspective, available reprocessing just kicks the can down the road for our children to deal with. The waste that comes from a reprocessed fuel reactor is more difficult to deal with than the original spent fuel.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-wasteland
For a good examination of reprocessing though it is dated 2007.

The only problem with Yucca MTn

[geekoid]

is that people have no clue what nuclear waste is, what it looks like, or how it's stored. Yucca Mtn. is a fine place for nuclear waste. Nuclear waste that should be used in modern nuclear plants as fuel, BTW,

Re:The only problem with Yucca MTn

[catmistake]

yeah... I guess its just enourmous happy coincidence then... because Yucca was only chosen because the central storage idea was a hot potato... no one wants the waste. Yucca was the only location left after the nimby's said what they say. Yucca, and the whole plan, is bullshit. And then they crafted the science to suit their needs. And then the pro-nukers jumped on board the tiny little boat of an idea this was. Shame on the pro-nukers! They have enough wits to have seen that Yucca was sort of a sacrificial cow... and they ate it up anyway. This tarnishes credibility of pro-nukers arguments, who seemed to be over-enthusiastic about the Yucca plan because it gave them what they want, which is to say it deluded them into believing "Well, now we can build all the dirty fission plants we want!"... all arguments resting on the bullshit lies politicians laid before them. How embarassing for pro-nukers! And look! ---^ they won't let it go! Even after it is revealed that they were deceived, they STILL believe the deception! wow.

Re:The only problem with Yucca MTn

[dbIII]

Only if "modern" means "doesn't exist in any from yet" and if you ignore all but a very small subset of the waste. I think even Wikipedia has an entry on reprocessing that the above poster and anyone that chances across this should look at before believing in magic. Learn that reprocessing is designed to be a fuel solution and not a waste solution - at the end of it you end up with a lot more waste from contamination. It's only been spun (ie. blatant lie) as a waste solution by slippery people in politics trying to pull a fast one.
Some stuff is going to be left over, just treat it with respect and store it properly instead of believing in the magic that cocaine sniffing idiots from advertising agencies want us the believe.
Look at it from the viewpoint of science and engineering and not politics. Politics is telling you to pretend there is no problem while science offers solutions to the problem. The low grade stuff is not a huge problem, and with the high grade stuff that can't be reprocessed or put in a yet to be built accelerated thorium reactor or whatever there are long term storage solutions such as synrock.

Re:The only problem with Yucca MTn

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so cocksure about YM being a "fine place for nuclear waste", an associate I've known for 50 years was a geologist on that project and he was "removed' from it due to their ignoring his teams findings about how Inappropriate YM is for nuclear waste. He tried for years to notify officials but he was "ignored" and it drove him to drink, ruined his life, he maintains to this day that YM isn't a safe place to store for nuclear waste.

Re:The only problem with Yucca MTn

[khallow]

at the end of it you end up with a lot more waste from contamination.

But highly radioactive fuel rods don't end up being part of that "lot more waste". Which greatly reduces your waste problem.

Re:The only problem with Yucca MTn

[dbIII]

You've missed the point - the extra waste is still a problem that has to be dealt with. Reprocessing has never been about reducing waste and those that pretend it is are not being honest.

Re:The only problem with Yucca MTn

[dbIII]

But highly radioactive fuel rods don't end up being part of that "lot more waste"

Actually quite a lot of the material in those fuel rods does, otherwise they wouldn't be "used" fuel rods would they? Look at it rationally instead of the sales talk from kids that didn't even take physics in high school that want to make you think it is magic.

Re:The only problem with Yucca MTn

[jacksdl]

I agree with the parent. The adage that one man's trash is another man's treasure is no where as true as with "Nuclear waste". The rarity of the elements contained in that waste and their unique characteristics means that it is likely we will find important uses for them. So it may make more sense to store them in a way that allows us to get back at them. Even if we don't find uses for them, we will surely develop better processes and technologies to extract and render them less dangerous.

Unless, of course, you subscribe to the pessimistic view that we are inevitably going to see the collapse of civilization and the return of illiterate barbarism. In which case, I would suggest that you are focusing on one of the smaller risks in that post-apocalyptic world.

My suggestion would be to find a way to safely store them for 50 years. If, at the end of that time, we still haven't found a better use for the "waste", then we repackage it for the next 50 years using the superior knowledge and technology that will then be available.

Re:The only problem with Yucca MTn

[khallow]

Actually quite a lot of the material in those fuel rods does, otherwise they wouldn't be "used" fuel rods would they? Look at it rationally instead of the sales talk from kids that didn't even take physics in high school that want to make you think it is magic.

Look at what happens with a fuel rod in the process of recycling. The uranium and plutonium is put in a new fuel rod. You're left with short half life decay products and neutron poisons. You can either use some of the former isotopes in goods (such as nuclear batteries or radiological medicine) or dispose of them (a few centuries wait gets rid of most of the radioactivity).

The science community does the same thing.

[swan5566]

Never mention the words "intelligent design" if you ever plan on getting tenure at a public university. I'm not talking about supporting it, I'm talking about even seriously investigating it at all. Then there's all the politics involved for each discipline for publishing in journals. Hardly scientific.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Oh Gawwd Peak Oil]

Exactly. Just like if you mention you are "seriously investigating" the possiblity that 2 + 2 = 5, you probably won't get tenure either. They will think you are a crackpot. And justifiably so. Intelligent Design is similar.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Misanthrope]

You can't seriously investigate intelligent design, it's not science. Any sane university should run anyone who thinks it is out on a rail.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mention the words "intelligent design" if you ever plan on getting tenure at a public university

Funny, people get all sorts of grants to hit amino acids with lightning and to make artificial life forms.

Oh wait, that's not what you were talking about, huh?

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists "seriously investigate" extremely obvious phenomena all the time. Scientists just have an anti-religion bent. Just ask Georges Lemaître or J Harlen Bretz, who produced correct theories that were discounted for religious reasons.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

From an academic's perspective, UFO investigation is more reputable than ID masturbation. There has never even been a single argument for ID that wasn't circular. "Irreducibly complex" is a red herring invented by ID to mean "we don't understand it, which is proof we can never understand it" which is provably false, as our understanding continually expands.

ID *should* be a kiss of death to university tenure because it is inherently anti-academic.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Moheeheeko]

But...in large values of 2, 2+2 does = 5....

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please state a testable hypothesis given by intelligent design.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[mcgrew]

How could one possibly study intelligent design? ID is an untestable hypothesis. You can't know God unless he wants you to know him. ID and creationism aren't science, and unless something earth-shaking happens, never can be.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Oh Gawwd Peak Oil]

I don't think scientists have an anti-religion bent. Many scientists are religious themselves. But they do have an anti-dishonesty bent, or an anti-politicising things that should have nothing at all to do with politics bent.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Chris Burke]

Please state a testable hypothesis given by intelligent design.

"People who believe ID is a scientific hypothesis on average have a poor or selectively blind understanding of science and what it means to be testable."

Or does that not count? I guess it's more a hypothesis about Intelligent Design.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[vlm]

You can't seriously investigate intelligent design, it's not science. Any sane university should run anyone who thinks it is out on a rail.

Sociological madness of crowds study, pathological delusional psychology, computer assisted statistical historical analysis ... Which brings out the haters that the soft sciences are not really science, blah blah blah whatever.

Domesticated livestock and food crops have been intelligently designed by farmers over the past few centuries. Are there measurable numerical long term genetic effects of intelligent design actions, which I'm predicting would show up in modern Holsteins but not modern Humans?

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not any different from mentioning "phlogiston" as if it was a valid model while you are applying for a chemistry job. It's also like stepping into a math department and seriously asserting that 2+2=5, or stepping into a geography department and seriously suggesting that the Earth is best modeled as flat. Is it pure "politics" that leads to a reaction like that from other people? No. The human reactions to such silliness may be social and/or political, but they aren't primarily or solely determined by social and political factors, they are determined by the fact that someone is asserting something that is demonstrably ridiculous or unfounded.

Humans are affected by politics, and science is no different. Of *course* politics affect science. It's inevitable. But I'd say that politics affect science far less than many other human activities because most people in science are dedicated to and are strongly influenced by the evidence from reality, whereas politicians aren't particularly constrained. Politicians will twist reality as far as they can get away with if it benefits their interests. If that means twisting the science, it's fine with them as long as most people don't notice. If only a bunch of "ivory tower egg head scientists" are going to call them out on it, so what?

As long as it sounds good to most people and conveniently fits their preconceptions and wishes the politician has it made. Ask most people in Nevada if they want a nuclear waste disposal site within their state and the obvious answer is "No", not for any scientific reason, but because they don't want it in their backyard. The politician will match this view and the science is completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it is a good site or not.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[swan5566]

ID is a potential premise that helps to make sense of the model. Not assuming ID is just as much of a premise. You can not scientifically prove ID, but to say that science disproves ID is itself unscientific. Just because something cannot be proven (indeed, no axiom can by definition) doesn't mean it should never be mentioned in academia.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can study intelligent design scientifically. It's exactly what archaeologists do when they try to determine which stone tools were made by early man and which are just oddly chipped rocks, or what they do when determining that a charred spot is a fire pit and not a lightning strike. And you can't say this just applies to nonbiological items: biologists in the future will probably spend a fair amount of time screening various organisms for signs that they were genetically engineered at some point. Which is possible, you can look for out-of-place genes, organisms with no clear line of descent, etc.

Granted, applying intelligent design ideas to gods, and particularly to the Judeo-Christian God, just doesn't work. You might be able to manage it with one of the small gods. If Zeus was sitting up on mount Olympus in Greece tossing thunderbolts you could compare them to other lightning and electrical discharges. But God either made the whole universe or none of it, which means you can't compare "intelligently designed" to "not intelligently designed" and look for differences between the two, like you can in archaeology. Every hydrogen atom and rock is just as intelligently designed as an eyeball, if the universe is created, so it doesn't work.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[vlm]

For those who don't get it, Bretz was a (the?) prototypical catastrophism dude who fought a horrible battle against the uniformitarianists and the U basically won and suppressed him for some decades. The C have a vaguely biblical outlook, because noahs floods and fire and brimstone with in with the C outlook. HOWEVER Bretz was from early-mid last century, biblical C guys other than crazy radio preachers had long since died out. The Venn diagram of serious C geologists and crazy fire and brimstone preachers has an overlap, but its mighty small indeed. The appeal of the U position was frankly physics envy, the laws of nature are always the same and always will be, relativity and the constant speed of light everywhere and stuff. You can kind of forgive the U guys for not understanding the thermodynamics of the earth in a non-nuclear world. For what little they knew back then, its surprising they didn't get more confused than they did.

The "modern" point of view is there is no conflict between U and C outlooks. The laws of physics and thermodynamics have applied for some billions of years, and that in no way conflicts with the existence of volcanoes and glaciers and giant river floods and comets and stuff. If I recall Bretz's C thing was a totally out of control river flowing thru what is now a desert, or something like that.

I don't remember what Lemaitre's thing was, too lazy to look it up on wikipedia, and it also probably has nothing to do with the trolling anyway.

Its like divining the religious views of astronomers by looking at nova astrophysics papers and assuming that has something to do with the "star of bethlehem", when really all the astronomer wanted to do was integrate an equation and run some physics.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Domesticated livestock and food crops have been intelligently designed by farmers over the past few centuries. Are there measurable numerical long term genetic effects of intelligent design actions, which I'm predicting would show up in modern Holsteins but not modern Humans?

That's actually a reasonable question, and speaking as someone who's worked on both cow and human genetics, I'll say: no, probably not. A comparitive analysis of the genomes of various breeds of domestic cattle certainly shows selective pressure toward certain phenotypes (milk production in some breeds, meat production in others, etc.) but the only way to say that selection has beeen "intelligent" is to know the history -- which, in the case of cattle, of course we do. We see similar pressures in comparitive genomic analysis of human populations WRT disease resistance; sometimes we know the history, sometimes we don't. IOW, genetic variation in cattle looks remarkably like genetic variation in human beings, and the distinction between design and natural selection is based on knowledge that can't be obtained by looking at the genome alone.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[geekoid]

and never mention search for bigfoot, or green men from mars. It's isn't science, it's nonsense.

Lets see some proof.. hmmm? no proof? no predictions? no way to falsify?

yeah, not science. OTOH, if you can show it as scientifically plausible, you would be given lots of offers, and tenure would be assured.
But you can't because it's wrong.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[geekoid]

NO ID was the thinking, then it was shown to be inconsistent with the evidence, and then we got evolution. SO YES SCIENCE HAS SHOWN IT TO BE WRONG.

and Philosophy is the acadamia you want. Not Science.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[slimjim8094]

You're misrepresenting intelligent design, I suspect delibrately and knowingly

What you're describing is actually evolution. It's called selective breeding, and while it's true that there's an intelligence behind the selection, there's still an evolutionary pressure at work. Dogs don't really develop into adults... they stay puppy-like their whole life because people like that.

But that's not what intelligent design is about at all. Intelligent design suggests that things like eyes or other complex features are far too complex to have come about due to "mere" selective pressures, and thus somebody must have created it from whole cloth.

You're talking about a well-understood consequence of evolution and selective pressure, and trying to label it as ID.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are islands with wide gaps of non-viability in the genetic fitness landscape.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try again. Lemaitre was taken seriously by the leading physicists of his time, even when they disagreed with him. And he was receiving international honors within the decade. Bretz's most controversial paper kicked off decades of debate. Neither situation had anything to do with religion. Moreover in both cases science worked as it is supposed to. Research comes up with new evidence. Scientists debate about the best way to explain all of the evidence. New theories are suggested. Those theories are used to make predictions. More research is done to check the predictions.

Thanks for bringing up Lemaître and Bretz, they are two brilliant examples of how science works.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[gilleain]

I don't remember what Lemaitre's thing was, too lazy to look it up on wikipedia, and it also probably has nothing to do with the trolling anyway.

His theory was the Big Bang. Appropriately enough, he was a priest.

wiki link for the truly lazy

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[gilleain]

There has never even been a single argument for ID that wasn't circular. "Irreducibly complex" is a red herring invented by ID to mean "we don't understand it, which is proof we can never understand it" which is provably false, as our understanding continually expands.

Well, I would generally agree. You could maybe test if you could 'reduce' protein-protein interaction networks (or gene networks) by graph edit operations. There was a talk about that today at work, and it seems like you can replace subgraphs in a network with smaller subgraphs and still have the same logical result. If you can generate a series of functional networks that increase in complexity through time, then that's proof against ID

Then again, this kind of research is simply called "genetics" or bioinformatics...

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[gilleain]

There are islands with wide gaps of non-viability in the genetic fitness landscape.

So the hypothesis would be : "organisms cannot traverse these gaps"?

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

So the hypothesis would be : "organisms cannot traverse these gaps"?

"Cannot" doesn't sound scientific. Replace with "highly unlikely to".

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Forbman]

I'd say that dog breeding is probably a better area than livestock. At least with livestock, we generally eat or get rid of the bad ones, and not too many lines with otherwise powerfully expressed, good traits have some really negative traits that come along in their offspring (wikipedia mentions a couple of holstein bull lines that have one, quarterhorses have a couple of lines with a very bad inherited skin disorder, etc).

With dogs, however, there are negative traits in some popular breeds that have come to be (hip dysplasia, cocker spaniels, etc), that are only now trying to be bred out of the breed, and it's an uphill battle.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

If you can generate a series of functional networks that increase in complexity through time, then that's proof against ID

There is no "proof against ID. The best you can do is prove all their current claims false. After that, they'll come up with new claims. Remember ID is the opposite of science. They took an answer they believed to be an irrefutable truth, and are attempting to find supporting evidence (ignoring all other facts). Science is taking observations and trying to describe the truth that leads to those facts (through experiments). Irreducible complexity has already been proven wrong. But it's still an ID argument because the general person on the street will not know what irreducible complexity is, let alone that it has been disproved as a supporting argument for ID. It isn't about finding the truth. They already know that. It's about convincing others. It's a social networking attack against science. The theory is that if you get 51% of the people to agree the world is flat, then the world is flat. And coverage of the two sides must be "fair and balanced" even if we *know* the world is not flat.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[sjames]

Public universities tend to be highly political, it's just more of the tempest in a teapot than of the international brinksmanship variety.

However, that's not what's at play with ID. ID cannot be scientifically tested. It has never had any supporting evidence at all. So, yes, ID will keep you off of the tenure track just like specializing in "practical perpetual motion machines" or a lifetime of trying to decide if the green moon cheese came from a goat or a cow.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[LordLucless]

"Irreducibly complex" is a red herring invented by ID to mean "we don't understand it, which is proof we can never understand it" which is provably false, as our understanding continually expands.

I see you don't understand the concept of irreducible complexity at all. Most of the structures that are claimed as irreducibly complex are well understood. The idea is that if you can find a structure in which certain formations couldn't have developed without the present of other formations which also relied on the first, then you've identified a structure which couldn't have plausibly evolved - it's like finding a circular dependency, and it is a logical argument.

Of course, the fact is that we've been able to determine plausible evolutionary paths for all the formations suggested as irreducibly complex, so the irreducible complexity argument doesn't support ID, but that doesn't mean that the argument itself is illogical - just that there's no evidence to suggest that it's true.

If you look at a candidate for irreducible and complexity, and respond with "well we just don't know how it evolved yet", then you are begging the question, and it is you being illogical.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

ID is an unscientific "theory". It's that simple. For something to be considered a scientific theory must satisfy 2 very simple points,

1. Comply with current observations
2. Predict testable observations that would be considered "new", like GR predicted bending of light by mass, or how evolution predicts survivability of organisms, or how Newton laws allows us to measure mass of earth and the sun.

This stuff is basic science. I'm talking elementary level science for 11 year olds. ID fails this, hence ID is NOT science. ID is dogma. It belongs in church.

Of course any ID promoter should never receive any tenure position in science field, EVER. You can't break basic axioms of science and expect to actually work in scientific field now?

What's next? A mathematician will claim that 1+1 1-1 everywhere and then claim that they are not taken seriously? Seriously.

PS. This is why String Theory is not really considered a theory, just a math project. It doesn't really predict anything testable at this time.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

philosophically, "irreducible complexity" is bullshit. What you mean to say is there may be possible things that would nevertheless take too long to appear. evolution is really a philosophical concept, imperfect reproduction + selection of what reproduces = evolution. philosophically, imperfect reproduction could just as easily include "replace this crocodile with a bird", even though actual reproduction usually makes much, much smaller changes.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

I see you don't understand the concept of irreducible complexity at all.

Given that I said nothing about it, how did you manage to come to that conclusion? Was it that you decided you didn't like my conclusion, so you made up lies about what I do and don't understand. Not to mention that the manner in which "irreducibly complex" is invoked, in my experience, is as a Chewbacca defense, not as a well formed platform for discussion. "An eye without a lens or without rods and cones would be useless, thus God Must Exist (and designed us)."

If you look at a candidate for irreducible and complexity, and respond with "well we just don't know how it evolved yet", then you are begging the question, and it is you being illogical.

I've done no such thing. I've said nothing that indicates I have or would ever do such a thing. I'm stating that I've had ID preached to me in that manner, and I believe it to be illogical (as you apparently do as well), like all arguements ever made for ID. You seem like a proponent of ID. You don't listen to the facts, but use slight of hand to try to frame the discussion into an argument you think you'll win, even if unrelated to the initial question. If you win the unrelated argument you fabricated, then God exists, right?

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[LordLucless]

Given that I said nothing about it

"Irreducibly complex" is a red herring invented by ID to mean "we don't understand it, which is proof we can never understand it"

You most definitely said something about it.

"An eye without a lens or without rods and cones would be useless, thus God Must Exist (and designed us)." is a misrepresentation, and a fairly obviously facetious one at that. The argument would more properly run "An eye without a lens or without rods and cones would be useless, thus it could not have evolved one component at a time, thus there must be another mechanism for its existence." Even if irreducible complexity were demonstrated by the evidence, it wouldn't say anything about the existence of God, or the lack thereof.

I'm stating that I've had ID preached to me in that manner, and I believe it to be illogical (as you apparently do as well), like all arguements ever made for ID.

You made no such qualifications in your original post - nothing about how it was "preached" to you, or "in your experience", or "you believe". You made flat-out assertions. You also make a sweeping generalization about every argument ever, which is also quite unscientific.

You don't listen to the facts, but use slight of hand to try to frame the discussion into an argument you think you'll win

You reframed irreducible complexity as "we don't understand it, which is proof we can never understand it", then proceeded to demolish the strawman you'd just constructred, before claiming victory in the name of logic and science. I think someone in this conversation is guilty of what you say, but it's not me.

You seem like a proponent of ID.

And you seem like a "new atheist" Dawkins-worshipper - preferring to vilify your opponents with rhetoric rather than actually debate them.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[catmistake]

Well, not talking about ID, which is a specific idea with an agenda, but many legitamate scientists have come to the belief that some things are just too ... perfect. Some observable things are just... too beautiful NOT to have been ... conceived. The trend has been lightly documented... The New Story of Science is just one of a number of books concerning these non-scientific ideas popping up in popular science... that sort of documents how some scientists moved from atheism to agnosticism. The book is about science, not religion.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

Even if irreducible complexity were demonstrated by the evidence, it wouldn't say anything about the existence of God, or the lack thereof.

Have you ever had this discussion with a *real* believer in ID? Their logic *always* ends with "if you can't prove evolution 100%, then you proved God exists." ID is a thelogical exercise to counter science, and is inherently anti-science. We can't even prove gravity to 100%, so gravity must be an illusion created by God and doesn't actually exist.

And you seem like a "new atheist" Dawkins-worshipper - preferring to vilify your opponents with rhetoric rather than actually debate them.

And what do you call people who avoid the subject and attack the speaker when they are on the other side? Because you did the same to me that you condemned. Are you or are you not a proponent of ID? It's a valid question. So many times here, the pedantic will play devil's advocate, arguing against what they believe just to rile up others. So I was indicating that you came across as a True Believer. Are you?

And there have been actual predictive explanations of the eye from evolutionists which were later confirmed. There has never been a single prediction from ID, so it's unscientific and anti-academic, which is the only thing in question here, not whether they are true.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[LordLucless]

Have you ever had this discussion with a *real* believer in ID?

And now you're creating a false dichotomy with an artificial distinction of a "real" believer, who behaves in all the ways you want to condemn. Have you ever had this dicussion with a *true* Scotsman?

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at a candidate for irreducible and complexity, and respond with "well we just don't know how it evolved yet", then you are begging the question, and it is you being illogical.

That's ridiculous. It's not at all illogical to assume that some evidence will fit into a pre-tested positive framework. In the case of biology, it's not at all begging the question because natural selection is a reasonable assumption at this stage of our understanding. And if further study shows the evidence to be unexplained by the old theory, then the old theory is either modified or rejected. In practice, this is not begging the question.

ID on the other hand does not allow further study. To avoid "begging the question", you'll have to calculate the irreducibility of a structure without regards to how it arose. If you do that, then you must necessarily end up with a tornado in a junkyard probability statement - thus irreducible complexity proves itself. Your requirement that you must calculate irreducible complexity without begging the question is the tautology here.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

Look at your knees. They are stupid and weak. They only make sense if we used to be quadrapeds (and even then weren't that good).

Some observable things are just... too beautiful NOT to have been ... conceived

snowflakes are beautiful, however, thinking that God personally assembles all snowflakes seems sillly. And they are "conceived". Nature is a driving force, the graceful fall into entropy, like a star getting sucked into a black hole, is pretty, but not "designed." Just because it wasn't conceived doesn't mean it can't be beautiful. Or that Nature, with no intelligence or soul, did design it (which isn't to elevate nature to the status of God like Gaia or such, but sometimes there isn't a cause. It's just that way.)

The belief that "if we can't understand it, God did it" is what gave us God 10,000 years ago. I'd like to think that we are smarter than the pre-historic humanoids, but then, I look around and see we are still petty, shallow, superstitious, scared little animals.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

And with that, you avoided every question I asked of you. Do you believe in ID? Or do you believe in it, but you know it's stupid, so you refuse to publicly admit to it? After all, why else would you have tiptoed around the question multiple times?

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[LordLucless]

Why? What possibly impact do my beliefs have on my argument? If my argument is logical, it should stand on its own, regardless of what I believe. Contrariwise if it doesn't.

For someone whose accusing others of changing the topic, you're fairly insistent at changing it away from the topic at hand, to my beliefs.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[mdsolar]

He did rest on the seventh day, so you might catch Him napping....

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[catmistake]

I'm not gonna argue with you... I think evolution looks pretty clear, speaking for myself, I'd never let my children go to any district that took ID seriously. I'm just pointing out a relatively new trend, say in the last 40 or so years, in previously very hard atheistic science circles... that as these very smart and well educated scientists get older, see more and learn more... they are no longer atheist. They say they don't know.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Rakishi]

Graph edit doesn't do much because proteins drop out of the graph over time. We only see the final building and not the scaffolding that existed when it was being built. That is also why the whole argument is bunk.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Rakishi]

Anthropic principle basically kills any such argument in it's tracks. Any further arguments can be killed by our brains continual lack of objective standards and proper rationality. We see what we want to see and what we see we consider good.

Unfortunately none of this solves the annoying problem that atheism leads to nihilism as a proper philosophical stance. People really don't like that and will cover up that irrational dislike with even more irrationality. Every other half decent solution I've heard just comes down to ignoring the whole annoying problem and simply living life. Which is great in some ways but lousy for making a complete philosophical framework for oneself.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[mcgrew]

ID is a potential premise that helps to make sense of the model. Not assuming ID is just as much of a premise.

That is absolutely correct. Athiests take the lack of the existance of God on faith. Personally, I think "things just growed" vs. "it was designed" fails Occam's Razor. For something to accidentally happen that we have yet to be able to make happen on purpose seems incredibly unlikely to me.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[bluefoxlucid]

I would like to subscribe to your news letter. Do you play Go?

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[mcgrew]

Actually, I think the Greco-Roman gods were probably real people (or pre-human anscestors of Homo Sapiens). Thor probably invented the hammer, Zeus probably invented the flaming arrow, promethieus probably was the guy who first harnessed fire, etc.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Bigby]

In his second paragraph. The first paragraph is very much about intelligent design and would be fine at a University.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

they are no longer atheist. They say they don't know.

I don't like the redefinition of atheist. IF you don't believe in God, you are an atheist. Agnostics are all atheist. "I don't know whether there is or isn't a pink elephant in my house right now." So you don't believe that there is, you believe you can't know (since you aren't there at the moment). That makes you atheist AND agnostic. They aren't exclusive. Agnostic is a pretentious and elitist subset of atheist (whom they generally assert are the pretentious and elitists, despite being a member).

But the theists worked hard to create this divide so that polls and such would separate out non-believers into multiple categories and make the numbers seem smaller and to create in-fighting among atheists. Yay language hijacking. Though, in their defense, the first agnostics were theists (we can't "know" but we can "believe").

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

Why? What possibly impact do my beliefs have on my argument?

Why are you ashamed of your beliefs?

For someone whose accusing others of changing the topic, you're fairly insistent at changing it away from the topic at hand, to my beliefs.

It was a comment in passing that you focused on, but didn't answer, which made it a central topic to me. Why would your logic not support your beliefs? If they don't match, why are you arguing aganist what you believe? If they do match, why are you so ashamed of them to be unwilling to own up to them? Wanting to know whether someone is playing devil's advocate isn't an unreasonable question, despite your assertions it is irrelevant, I've found it to not be.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for you, true athiests are no better and no worse than the true believers. The only ones that are insightful to the meaning of words are the agnostics. Its not a "new" definition. If you'd stop to think about it for a minute, you'd reallize "atheism," in its purest for, can't exist. Once you say "I don't believe it God," you are pretty much putting that existence into contention. The true atheist would be like a boy raised by wolves that had no knowledge of society or religion. It is only the enlightened and the wise that reailze they don't know anything. I don't know... maybe you're an undergraduate student... and therefore believe you know everything.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

If you'd stop to think about it for a minute, you'd realize "atheism," in its purest for, can't exist.

Bullshit. Everyone was born an atheist. There is no inherent concept of God. God is taught by parents. God is rarely sought out by children, but thrust upon them. If that were not the case, then why does it work out to where the overwhelming majority of people have the same religion as their parents?

Once you say "I don't believe it God," you are pretty much putting that existence into contention. The true atheist would be like a boy raised by wolves that had no knowledge of society or religion.

And the moment someone walks up to the wolf boy (who magically speaks English) whether he believes in God, when he says "no, I do not know of this God of which you speak." he has somehow changed? I don't understand how stating your opinion changes your opinion, as seems to be your indication.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you haven't heard about... there's a... (seriously, maybe you better sit down because you're going to shit kittens when you finally discover what I'm about to tell you is true) there is a part of your brain that is dedicated to belief and religion. If one were to put a mild shock on the right area of your brain, you would suddenly have a convincing religious experience. There's literally an area of the human brain that *evolved* that if you shock it, you pretty much meet God. idk about near death experience testimony or parapsychological reality shows, but the fact that this is well documented neurological fact is supremely interesting, to say the least. Now that we know this, and we have some history of world religions, and applying the work of Campbell to neurology, perhaps there is more to this whole belief thing that really has nothing to do with the existence of anything, but just the way and how well we live and what we all are.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

There's a section of your brain dedicated to "why (hence why so many children run arround annoying their parents with "why?" all day long). And when you fill it with nothing, it makes up something for the why. God is caused by lazy parenting! You solved it. All we need is parents to not ignore or lie to their children when the question of "why" is asked, and God will be dead!

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[c6gunner]

Why? What possibly impact do my beliefs have on my argument? If my argument is logical, it should stand on its own, regardless of what I believe. Contrariwise if it doesn't.

Your argument doesn't stand on it's own. Your beliefs are of interest because they tell us why you would propose a ludicrous "theory" with no explanatory power as an "explanation" for well udnerstood phenomena. If you're a true-believer, it tells us that you're almost certainly motivated by a faith-based ideology rather than an examination of the data. If you're not a true-believer, it tells us that you've probably managed to misinterpret the argument and the state of the science. If I were the one having this discussion with you, I would ask the same question; your response would dictate which approach I took in trying to explain to you where you've gone wrong.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

You just made that up, didn't you?

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[LordLucless]

Your argument doesn't stand on it's own.

Well, deconstruct it then. It would be valuable to first read my argument, because looking at the rest of your post, it looks like you're inferring it from your own preconceptions rather than actually attempting to comprehend what I wrote.

why you would propose a ludicrous "theory" with no explanatory power

Actually, I haven't proposed, nor endorsed, a theory at all in this thread.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, deconstruct it then

Naw. It's been done, and I don't feel like wasting time.

Actually, I haven't proposed, nor endorsed, a theory at all in this thread.

Yep, I know; that's why I put the word "theory" in quotes. You're right - ID is not, and never will be, a theory in any meaningful sense.

Re:The science community does the same thing.

[AK Marc]

Nope. The brain is hard wired to want to know "why" because that's a part of how the human brain works. You call it the "belief and religion"center, but I see it differently. "Religion" started off as nothing other that lies to fill the void. "Why are we here?" Because God did it. When you don't have the answer for your children, make up shit, and we get religion. There's nothing inherently "religious" about people, other than the desire for answers. You call the quest for knowledge "religion" I call religion the "quest for ignorance." But they are the same parts of the brain. Those who want to see God will see it in whatever they look at, whether the beauty of a tree, a shape of a potato chip, or the human brain. God didn't hard-code in a God-zone in the brain. Evolution favored those who understood the "why" of not eating the red berries, so a "why" section was well developed for better ability to generalize knowledge. You were the one that made up the religious section of the brain. I just corrected you.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians only use science when it's convenient to them? Say it isn't so!

NO!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

scientific evidence for a connection between . . . humans and our primate ancestors

YOU LIE!!!!!111!!!

Yes, exactly.

[Weezul]

The author is simply an idiot. It might be true the DoE should've considered multiple sites though.

What about Natives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yucca mountain is a sacred site to the Shoshone people. Also, every nuclear dump site in history, has sprung a leak. Are we supposed to tell native people "Oops sorry about that your sacred site is now garbage".

Think about it, Native people are still here, respect that.

Re:What about Natives?

[Kaenneth]

Yeah, well, everything is sacred to someone, so it's not an excuse.

Makes no sense

[fermion]

According to the article, the site was chose for political reasons
The Energy Department initially identified nine potential repository sites and conducted environmental assessments for each. The department then nominated five of these sites for further study and, in 1986, recommended the three highest-ranking sites for detailed characterization: Yucca Mountain, Deaf Smith County in Texas, and the Hanford Site in Washington state. Hanford and Deaf Smith County were represented, respectively, by House Majority Leader Tom Foley and Speaker of the House Jim Wright. They joined forces and flexed their political muscle to remove their states from the short list, leaving only Nevada -- a state whose representatives, including then-freshman Senator Harry Reid, had little clout. In 1987 Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to focus solely on Yucca Mountain.

Later the science said it probably be a good site, but everyone knew there were potential issues, 20 years later, with better science and stronger political opposition, it was decided that there was enough political opposition and science to reconsider the effort.

Here is the political and financial reality. No one really wants a permanent nuclear dump site. Firms who are storing the nuclear material are raking in huge amounts of free and unbounded taxpayer dollars. It is likely that if no permanent solution is found, they are guaranteed a profit far into the future. While any area that accepts the nuclear material is going to become very rich, it is also going to cause a great deal of damage. Think mountain top coal mining. It is very profitable, except to the towns that are destroyed with arsenic poisoning, and loss of tourism. Politically, whoever allows their state to become the worlds dumping ground is going to have tough time being reelected, no matter how much money it brings in.

Really there is no good place to dump the material. In Texas there is groundwater issue. Yucca could be the best place to dump the material, but given that the process has taken so long, due to politics, it is reasonable to take a look at the situation again. The politics are often different. We are getting to a point where reprocessing is an option, which means that we might be dealing with larger quantities of less toxic waste. Also, nuclear power is apparently not financially feasible as all plants in the US are going to require huge quantities of taxpayer money to build, so we may have a finite quantity of material rather than the ever growing quantities that were projected in the 80's.

I am not going to say that this guy used fake science to attack someone he did not like, but the article certainly seemed like abusing science to achieve a foregone result.

Re:Makes no sense

[mcguiver]

Who are the firms that are storing the nuclear material that are "raking in huge amounts of free and unbounded taxpayer dollars"? Most of the spent fuel (the stuff the Yucca Mountain is designed to handle) is being stored on-site at commercial reactors. The utilities are paying to store the waste, plus they are paying a tax so the government can dispose of the waste. The utilities are more the willing to have a permanent solution.

Your political and financial reality has a large dose of fantasy in it. Any area that accepts the waste repository is not necessarily going to become very rich. Jobs will be created in the area, but a desert won't suddenly become a metropolis. Just look at the area around Yucca Mountain, closing the project hasn't turned Nevada into a ghost-state. A few people have lost their jobs but the communities around there are still thriving. Your comparison between a nuclear waste dump and mountain top coal mining is fantasy at best. I am not sure how nuclear waste will destroy surrounding towns and I the proposed waste sites are well out of the way of any tourism.

Agreeing to host a waste repository isn't exactly political suicide either (and it isn't like you are agreeing to become the world's dumping ground like you seem to suggest). Accepting a repository will bring some jobs and moneys into your state. It is a lot safer than having chemical plants being built in your state. Accidents in chemical plants have claimed many more lives and contaminated more area than nuclear waste accidents have.

Forgive me if I seem snarky, nuclear waste is my area of specialty and I get tired of the same old arguments.

Re:Makes no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

You didnt read the report FTA did you? The WIPP facility is cited as a sucessful example of how you establish a waste repository and it doesnt involve forcing it on the site selected. Also from the report, one of the reasons Nevada was against Yucca is because they were the ONLY site chosen without cause out of a possible three. The BRC report states multiple repositorIES are necessary for a successful isolation policy (with interim storage until the repositorIES are completed).

another fact-choosing luny

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is still not completely clear whether Yucca Mountain would be a good place to bury radioactive waste"

It was decided 30 years ago that YMP was the best of 5 candidate sites. Prior to that, there were potential sites considered all across the US. But Yucca Mountain was chosen because it fit the criteria for a site best:

-low to no population near by
-low to no yearly rainfall
-low to no geologic activity

It also sits in the Nevada Test Site. The NTS is a HUGE tract of the (uninhabitable) Nevadan desert reserved for the government. It's a no fly zone, it's a no-go zone, and it's generally one of the most secure pieces of land in the world. If you don't believe me, I suggest you try to drive there. (No, really, don't - you're likely to be shot.)

This guy wants to say that the billions of dollars of research done into the YMP is "of no use". I suggest he's just another fear monger looking to stir up support for his policies via taking on something the ignorant masses are inherently fearful of. Sure, his analysis sounds level handed, but then the devil's in the details.

Things that YMP could be if the idiots could just get over themselves:

-a 'clean up' of some of the more drug infested parts of Nevada

There's plenty of drug related crime in the closest part of Nevada to the NTS. There's also little to no work up there. Bring the jobs, and the crime will decrease. I'm *sure* of it.

-a use of otherwise unusable land

Look, the NTS isn't going anywhere. If it's not storing nuclear waste, the feds are just going to be using it for whatever they use it for. They're not going to sell that land to developers, there's no private use that's ever going to be made of the NTS. Did I mention the NTS is some of the most inhospitable land in the world? There's no chance at society ever desiring a population center near enough to the YMP to be in danger.

-a huge local stimulus for the Nevada economy.

Currently, Nevada has gambling tourism as it's sole economy. Any other industry is supportive of tourism. The local "chamber of commerce" (don't get me started on those biased and misleadingly named fools) even sees Nevada's lack of a broad economy as a problem. The YMP would be a long term project requiring the hiring and long term employment of thousands of scientists, engineers, and 'support staff'. We're talking about BILLIONS a year in waste management.

Or we could let fear mongers tell us that the YMP is a bad idea and leave Nevada to rot.

PS We have contractual and national security reasons to establish a nuclear waste repository. As part of international agreements the US made to stem nuclear proliferation, the US loaned out nuclear fuel to nations across the world with the understanding that spent nuclear fuel would be shipped back to the US at a later date. That was some time ago and we are now over due on our waste pickup. They can sue the US for BILLIONS in international courts while that dangerous nuclear waste sits in unsecured waste pools around the world.

Re:another fact-choosing luny

[arkenian]

I have to admit I always found it amusing that while Nevada as a whole doesn't want Yucca Mountain in most polls, most polls DID indicate that those areas closest to the facility DID support it (if only for the economic benefits)

Re:another fact-choosing luny

[Anonymous Coward]

We have contractual and national security reasons to establish a nuclear waste repository. As part of international agreements the US made to stem nuclear proliferation, the US loaned out nuclear fuel to nations across the world with the understanding that spent nuclear fuel would be shipped back to the US at a later date. That was some time ago and we are now over due on our waste pickup. They can sue the US for BILLIONS in international courts while that dangerous nuclear waste sits in unsecured waste pools around the world.

Correct on all counts, but since I don't have mod points, I'll just add a note of thanks... and a punchline: The punchline of the joke is that the very same people who opppose Yucca because it was somehow "unsafe", are the very same ones whining about how unsafe nuclear power is, because of what happened to the spent fuel rods cooling off in the four reactor buildings at Fukushima.

Re:another fact-choosing luny

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you see, considering that they now have to try to clean out the "safe" site in Germany but suspect that they can't before it collapses due to the ground water that has already flooded the rusting barrels with radioactive material I have a hard time believing anyone who claims some site to be safe. Unless we add a law that the scientists and politicians if they prove to be wrong will be buried with the waste. Then I might start believing those still claiming it safe again.

Re:another fact-choosing luny

[Anonymous Coward]

>They can sue the US for BILLIONS in international courts
PFFT Ahahaha ha HA H-HA

Oh wait
You were serious?
Let me laugh harder!

Re:another fact-choosing luny

[Bill_the_Engineer]

It also sits in the Nevada Test Site. The NTS is a HUGE tract of the (uninhabitable) Nevadan desert reserved for the government. It's a no fly zone, it's a no-go zone, and it's generally one of the most secure pieces of land in the world. If you don't believe me, I suggest you try to drive there. (No, really, don't - you're likely to be shot.)

It's secure due mostly to health concerns. You can tour the NTS.

The only time we've ever thought too long-term

[Anonymous Coward]

Yucca mountain would clearly have held our nuclear waste just fine for hundreds of years (which is a lot more than you can say for the places it is currently kept). Any yet they wanted it certified to hold on to the stuff for tens of thousands of years. This is foolish. There's no conceivable scenario wherein humanity would have to worry about the radiation on that time scale. Either we will have come up with a way to make use of it (probably just wised up and used it as fuel) or civilization will have collapsed and we'll have bigger problems (and probably be dealing with far more fallout from nuclear weapons). As strange as it is to say it, our government needs to think more short-term!

Re:The only time we've ever thought too long-term

[SoftwareArtist]

There's no conceivable scenario wherein humanity would have to worry about the radiation on that time scale.

If you think there is "no conceivable scenario", you really need to work on improving your imagination. I can think of dozens of scenarios. You really think the only possible outcomes are that someone digs up all that radioactive waste to use as fuel, or that civilization collapses? You can't conceive of a future in which neither of those happens? Come on, that's just silly.

Re:The only time we've ever thought too long-term

[Anonymous Coward]

Well regardless, that is how it is assessed. Take a look at a recent Hanford Site EIS. The risk levels are calculated out for about 10,000 years for each alternative scenario!

Re:The only time we've ever thought too long-term

[SydShamino]

I don't think we have any problems in situations where someone could stop by every 100 years or so and replace the signs that say "Keep out! Radiation danger!" with new ones in the new modern language. If they have a Geiger counter, then they could even move the signs in or out relative to the danger.

Because even if Yucca Mountain leaks in a few hundred years, it probably wouldn't be any worse than Chernobyl or Fukushima are right now.

Re:The only time we've ever thought too long-term

[mcguiver]

The thing is though, there really isn't a conceivable scenario that would result in danger to humanity. The engineered barriers that are used (canister, back fill, overpack, etc.) are sufficient to ensure containment for thousands of years. This is more than enough time to ensure that pretty much anything but the trans-uranics are decayed away. As far as the trans-uranics go, we have a really good idea of what they do in the wild. The presence of uranium mines is a great indication that it doesn't spread quickly over a large area. By the time that we have contained the waste for 10000 years all we have left is essentially a new uranium mine just like the one that we dug up.

Re:The only time we've ever thought too long-term

[mcguiver]

It is worse than that. Current regulations for Yucca Mountain are on the time scale of 1 million years. With regulations on this scale there is no wonder that compliance cannot be shown. No one has any idea what the climate will be like anywhere on this planet 1 million years from now. Heck, look at 1 million years ago; walking upright was the new thing (relatively) and controlled fire was the stuff of science fiction.

Re:The only time we've ever thought too long-term

[Anonymous Coward]

We keep waste at the WIPP right now and it's supposed to last more than 10,000 years. Is that more than "hundreds of years?" Because that is a place that nuclear waste is "currently kept" and I need to know if 10,000 is more than hundreds.

Thanks.

And I'm not saying that Yucca is bad, or that nuclear is bad or anything like that. Only that Yucca wasn't the only solution. The WIPP is up and running and should last feasibly forever.

Re:The only time we've ever thought too long-term

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no conceivable scenario wherein humanity would have to worry about the radiation on that time scale.

If you think there is "no conceivable scenario", you really need to work on improving your imagination. I can think of dozens of scenarios. You really think the only possible outcomes are that someone digs up all that radioactive waste to use as fuel, or that civilization collapses? You can't conceive of a future in which neither of those happens? Come on, that's just silly.

ok, I'll bite. Civilization as we know it continues, the fuel is stored for 80% of its design of hundreds of years. I'll be charitable and limit that to 160 years.
Are you telling me that with current progress, we won't want to create a new, secure location right next door in about the same area (where we'll be glad we don't have to risk transport very far)? One of the biggest hurdles right now is all the little towns that are scared to have a train going by with the waste. Just build another YMP with 100 years' better engineering in the Nevada Test site and store twice as long. Now we're at 160 years plus 320, personally I'm willing to bet we would have a solution for this in another half a millenium.

Since these isotopes are so heavy, they will likely be useful as ion propulsion fuel, or as some really useful matter for an antimatter annihilation type system (think Star Trek main reactors).

If civilization collapses, any problems with this facility would be self-containing, since no-one will want to travel there. Anyone who does will leave convenient skeletal markers to warn others, which is typically a good warning for humans. Since there is so little groundwater there, the 'cursed ground' is unlikely to spread.

Now let's try saying the same for the local waste pools right next to the reactors like we saw on fire in Japan after just a major earthquake? We are now choosing to keep this dangerous stuff in difficult to guard open pools and hoping a disaster does not happen. We built a nice place to put it and are too scared to just put it there. People seem to forget that the stuff will exist somewhere, it does not disappear because you turn on an entertainment show and forget about it.

In case of most other scenarios, we will have more concern from the current storage methods and areas than Yucca Mountain Project. The number of scenarios that make YMP more dangerous than where the stuff is now, today, are truly hard to think up.

Re:The only time we've ever thought too long-term

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think there is "no conceivable scenario", you really need to work on improving your imagination. I can think of dozens of scenarios. You really think the only possible outcomes are that someone digs up all that radioactive waste to use as fuel, or that civilization collapses? You can't conceive of a future in which neither of those happens? Come on, that's just silly.

So your scenario is, people reject knowledge and civilization and live like Amish for 500 years, then there is a "pole shift" and God will thunder from above that only safe place for humanity is Yucca Mountain or they will perish in the "great flood". So all remaining people, all of them, go to Yucca Mountain for salvation, but are killed by evil radiation instantly.

Is that the scenario? Oh wait, I have another one.

The moon splits in two due to mining on the moon which causes it to crash to Earth for some weird reason. Then people that live near Yucca Mountain turn into evil radiation creatures that only go out of the caves at night. Let's call them Morlocks. Then these evil Morlocks kill all the god fearing environmental windmill people and then collapse the planet into a blackhole. If only, if only no one stored that evil radiation on Yucca Mountain, then the Earth would have been safe!!

I see what you mean.

The GP is 100% correct. Either civilization collapses and we are fucked (Yucca Mountain the least of your worries). Or people dig up the storage to use it/move it. What other *sane* scenario have you thought of?

Re:The only time we've ever thought too long-term

[unrtst]

I have little faith in people caring for something that is dead and off limits for very long.

People seem to forget that the stuff will exist somewhere, it does not disappear because you turn on an entertainment show and forget about it.

I completely agree. And people will forget a whole lot faster when it's not in someones face all the time (like it is now).

In case of most other scenarios, we will have more concern from the current storage methods and areas than Yucca Mountain Project.

Again, I completely agree. That extra concern for the current methods is what I want!

Sorry for turning your words around. I find it very odd that those statements (and many like it) are used in defense of using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste storage facility.

FWIW, my take on it is that if it's too much work and too costly to store the waste safely, then that's a handy way of letting the market decide. Nuclear hasn't been around all that long yet, and there aren't that many reactors really, so if it's an obvious problem already, that doesn't bode well for the next 200+ years. I believe large scale solar can and will work (who knows which one, but the liquified salt ones sound good, and I like the idea of using a large dam and pumping the water back up during the day to sustain the night). If you ignore the environmental impact of coal/oil/nuclear, that type of solar install isn't cost effective yet. Coal/oil/co2 has been catching a lot of flack, and if that continues, it'll make solar more competitive... and someday way down the road, we'll run out or run very low. Making food into oil is neat, but I'm not too keen on the social impacts that'll likely have. Nuclear is great, but only as long as we're able to ignore or deal with the waste.

I'm honestly not an environmentalist type of guy. Solar just makes a lot of sense to me. We even have enough light up near NYC - if you cover New Jersey with solar, it'd make enough to power the whole US :-) (Arizona + improved power distribution sounds even better though).

Conflate

[Beeftopia]

they cast doubt on the scientific evidence for a connection between tobacco and lung cancer, or between fossil fuels and climate change, or even between humans and our primate ancestors.

Conflate.

Reminds me of the Nazis

[Anonymous Coward]

They came up with "science" to justify their views as well.

Re:Reminds me of the Nazis

[0123456]

They came up with "science" to justify their views as well.

And the Commies.

Fortunately governments today have no incentive to create fake 'scientific' results in order to justify massive increases in power or taxation (or both).

Wait...what?

[stephencrane]

That makes zero sense. This attempt to define 'scientization' is exactly the same as the definition of 'politicizing' science. The scientization of politics would mean limiting political language and maneuvering within the confines of the implied logic of scientific findings.

"Scientization"

[fiannaFailMan]

What is the study of the process of "Scientization"? Would that be Scientology?

Re:"Scientization"

[ThePeices]

No. There is no Science in Scientology.

Re:"Scientization"

[fiannaFailMan]

Whoosh!

Politicians Lie?

[Rik Rohl]

No, never!
I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you...

... NOT!

The simple truth is that ALL politicians are lying scumbags, and they are quite comfortable with that if it means more money and power coming their way.

science isn't immune

[DaveGod]

'Government officials are often guilty of politicizing science. Egged on by business or religious interests, they [...]

Something I try to always keep in mind is that whenever anyone, including myself, says words implying "everyone else is bad" (or wrong), it's probably naive or arrogant. "Some _______ ________ are suppressed, while others are manipulated or distorted beyond recognition."

The main problem is common to any doctrine: people. Particularly people with some kind of vested interest, whether it be financial, political, ideological, power...

I get what she

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the draft report by the BRC here (which was even submitted to slashdot as a story...) you get a similar suggestion. Nobody is disputing the science of Yucca Mountain, just the political feasibility of it as the ONLY option as a repository. Since the BRC report states you must have repositorIES (with an interim storage solution in the meantime) and this has been the case for decades now. The only reason Yucca was taken off the table is because Nevada DIDNT WANT IT (at least to shoulder the burden by themself...). The BRC report points to the success of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) which is a very similar situation which has been active for about a decade.

Science is not in question here, only politics.

Pyramids

[kf6auf]

I don't understand why we don't just build pyramids, but with radioactive waste instead of dead pharaohs. They've proven that they can last for 4500 years and counting. You can build them almost wherever you want (subject to only to fault lines, nearby human populations, and proximity to radioactive waste generation).

Also, by this point, I'm not sure Yucca Mountain would be able to hold all of our high-level radioactive waste anyway.

Re:Pyramids

[geekoid]

You mean the high level radioactive waste that would fill a foot ball field about a meter in depth? yeah, it would be fine.

Another clueless person making remarks about Nuclear power. Please STFU, you're kind of people have done us enough harm.

Re:Pyramids

[ColdWetDog]

I don't understand why we don't just build pyramids, but with radioactive waste instead of dead pharaohs. They've proven that they can last for 4500 years and counting. You can build them almost wherever you want (subject to only to fault lines, nearby human populations, and proximity to radioactive waste generation).

That's not a bad idea. Lots of jobs. Above ground so we can see it. Use part of the high level waste to make an RTG, use the electricity to power giant billboards and use the billboard rental fee to pay off the whole thing.

Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

This is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientization? This is a good thing. Our government is a representative democracy, and not ruled by a philosopher king (nor a scientist, for that matter.) Science is one of the inputs to making policies on nuclear waste disposal. But it is not the only legitimate factor. Essentially, people take the scientific facts that support their position and make the argument that they are correct. The other side takes the scientific facts that support their position and use that as a justification for why they are correct. This is exactly what they should be doing. Now, in the end, the decision is a political one. So, more than likely, they end up voting based on factors other than the science, which is also OK. For example, if you build a nuclear waste site next to my house, even if it is perfectly safe, the property value of my house will go down. There might be no additional risk of nuclear contamination. But, still, it is legitimate for me to oppose it because it harms me by decreasing my property value. Likewise, if the general public hates nuclear power enough to vote you out of office if you build a nuclear waste dump in their backyard, then it is a wise decision to not do that.

             

There is such a simple solution for waste

[WindBourne]

Create small IFRs for putting on-site. Seriously, once a power plant is taken down, then a new one should be put up, and it should be an IFR. All that it should do is burn up the 'waste'. This approach would allow us to use what we have.

Re:There is such a simple solution for waste

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall that one of the Fukashima reactors was "down" as it was being used as a high radiation waste dump.

Re:There is such a simple solution for waste

[WindBourne]

Not sure about that, but all major nuke sites store 'waste' fuel on-site. By creating small IFRs, it would be possible to burn it up and use it for fuel.

not true

[edxwelch]

There's a lot of myths surrounding nuclear recycling.
Firstly, only the plutonium can be recycled, which accounts for less than 1% of the spent fuel rod. Most of the waste is uranium and contaminated with gamma emiting isotopes uranium 232 and uranium 234 and too dangerous to handle.
Secondly, recycling fuel doesn't make the waste "disappear". MOX fuel is converted to mostly to isotopes of plutonium after been burnt in the reactor and can't be recycled again.
Thirdly, producing MOX fuel is an expensive and dirty process. Sellafield and La Hague have to pump out low-level waste into the sea as part of the fabrication process.

Re:not true

[Wonko the Sane]

There's more than one way to reprocess.

My preferred solution would be to convert the spent fuel rods into a liquid form suitable for use in a molten salt reactor.

Re:not true

[edxwelch]

> My preferred solution would be to convert the spent fuel rods into a liquid form suitable for use in a molten salt reactor.
Only problem is that they don't exist

Re:not true

[Wonko the Sane]

So build some already.

No the science doesn't unequivocably support Yucca

[forgoodmeasure]

It is by no means clear that Yucca Mountain is the proper site for radioactive waste disposal. From the article:

"It is still not completely clear whether Yucca Mountain would be a good place to bury radioactive waste. Despite the Energy Secretary's 2002 seal of approval, there are legitimate scientific concerns about the suitability of the site. An independent US Nuclear Technical Waste Review Board said PDF it had "limited confidence" in the Energy Department's performance estimates for Yucca Mountain because of "gaps in data and basic understanding." As Gary Taubes observed in Technology Review in 2002, "By choosing Yucca Mountain as the only option for a nuclear-waste facility, Congress put the DOE in an untenable position. In effect, it sent the department out to prove that Yucca Mountain would work as a repository, rather than to do a dispassionate analysis of whether it could work or was the best possible site." "

Yucca Mountain, IRRC, is rather close to Vegas and the site actually has some history of water migration, even over the past 50 years. Admittedly I'm working off of a memory of a report I read a decade ago. Here's the link FWIW: http://www.environmentalreview.org/archives/vol07/ewing_abstract.html

"climate change"

[dukw_butter]

there is no science behind "climate change", obviously. It's a pseudo-scientific scare tactic. The temperature of the earth has not risen. There is no global warming. And changing to "climate change" midstream is just hedging your bets, like "boxing" the "exacta" or the "frifecta". We're not sure if it will get warmer. Or colder. But we are sure that the weather, which is always changing, will continue to change. In an unpredictable manner. And...uh...so we've got to quit burning fossil fuels. Hahahahahaha. Science? Please. Please. Please. The religion that is "climate change" doesn't even come close to being backed up by an true "science". I don't know a ton about Yucca Mountain, but I seriously doubt that you want to try to improve your argument by holding up "climate change" as a serious scientific endeavor. That would be a ghastly mistake.

Sad...

[Anonymous Coward]

This entire situation with YMC is a very good reason why we shouldnt be using nuke power.

We're not even wise enough to deal with the politics of where we put this stuff. Let alone wise enough to deal safely with the worst case scenarios of nuclear power.

We COULD do it. We have the technology for all this crap right now. We ARE capable of it.
But due to politics and money. We're never going to be able to do it correctly or safely. (at least in my lifetime given how humanity is.)

Nothing stopping us from having clean safe effective nuclear power and having a system in place to deal with our waste... but our own bullheaded arrogance and stupidity. Which we have alot of.

It's fucking SAD!

Makes me wanna slap the hell out of all our politicans. Not that it would help any...

More scientization of politics, in that case

[Radical Moderate]

I like your definition.

Obama campaign

[GWBasic]

In 2008 I helped the Obama campaign go door to door in Reno. As most of the people going door-to-door were from out of town, they explained to us that people in Reno really, really, really do not want Yucca mountain to open because they really, really, really do not want nuclear waste traveling on interstate 80.

Interstate 80 travels through the middle of Reno. A nuclear accident on the freeway will cause the city to grind to a halt and potentially destroy their homes and businesses.

Even though it's possible to argue that the containers used to transport waste are accident-proof, when it comes to keeping our fellow Americans peace of mind, it's probably best that we avoid transporting so much waste to close to people's homes.

Re:Obama campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, obviously the transports should be insured against such accidents.Won't happen of course, because then the price of nuclear electricity would have to be raised to a realistic level and people could not shout "but nuclear is cheapest!" anymore.

forgetting about Harry Reid of Nevada?

[Anonymous Coward]

Harry Reid is the Democrat Senate Majority leader. He is a very major ally of Obama. Harry Reid wants Yucca Mountain closed. Obama is just helping an important ally. Obama is not a dictator.

The Treasure Trove

[glorybe]

There is some validation and reason to believe that the huge treasure trove hidden in Yucca Mountain is real. It may have been removed by now but something has gone on with that place that really stinks.

way to sweep an issue under the rug

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you keep thinking that...

If you only produced any facts regarding irreducible complexity instead of blatant disregard for this insurmountable obstacle to evolution.

Re:way to sweep an issue under the rug

[AK Marc]

insurmountable? You are begging the question. You assume it is insurmountable, and then argue from that point. that's another reason ID is anti-science. For science, we assume everything is wrong, then try to prove it. If you try as hard as you can and can never prove it wrong, and millions of others try the same thing and also fail to prove it wrong, then it gets elevated. ID is "we assert ID to be true without proof because we don't like evolution, and you can never prove ID wrong because we'll change it the moment anyone proves any part of it wrong."

Stop making nuclear waste

[mdsolar]

The author gets to the thought that the community has to support nuclear waste disposal. Dealing with the waste is something we all have to do together. But, we can avoid imposing on any community by just not creating the waste in the first place. End nuclear power and the problem stops getting worse.

Re:Stop making nuclear waste

[The Immutable]

Yeah and instead we get to BREATHE the fossil fuel waste that gets produced to make up the energy gap. That doesn't cause a million different lung diseases including cancer at all.

Re:Stop making nuclear waste

[Curunir_wolf]

End nuclear power and the problem stops getting worse.

Depends on the problem you are trying to solve...

Re:Stop making nuclear waste

[mdsolar]

That is not a requirement. Hydro, wind and solar are all superior.

Re:Stop making nuclear waste

[bluefoxlucid]

Hydroelectric damming is a good way to disrupt an ecosystem. The most obvious impact of hydroelectric dams is the flooding of vast areas of land, much of it previously forested or used for agriculture. The size of reservoirs created can be extremely large. The La Grande project in the James Bay region of Quebec has already submerged over 10000 square kilometres of land; and if future plans are carried out, the eventual area of flooding in northern Quebec will be larger than the country of Switzerland.

Re:Stop making nuclear waste

[Anonymous Coward]

We could pulverize the nuclear waste and throw into the air, and nuclear powerplants would still pollute a few orders of magnitude less radioactive materials into the atmosphere than coal powerplants. The problem with nuclear waste is only that we have control of what we can do with the waste, thus it is an entirely political issue.

Re:Stop making nuclear waste

[imric]

And insufficient.

Re:Stop making nuclear waste

[Pope]

That is not a requirement. Hydro, wind and solar are all superior.

You heard it hear first, folks! Hydro, wind, and solar power do not cause ecosystem damage or pollution.

Brilliant. You must be quite the scientist.

Is Darwinism science?

[geoffrobinson]

Intelligent Design basically looks at things and gives a positive answer to teleology. Darwinism looks at things and gives a negative answer.

If Intelligent Design isn't science, neither is Darwinism because they are just the opposing sides of the same question.

Frankly, many Intelligent Design proponents believe in evolution and common descent, which won't be considered. As another posted, I doubt very seriously Intelligent Design will be accurately represented.

Re:Is Darwinism science?

[Glothar]

Intelligent Design is not falsifiable, thus not science.

Re:Is Darwinism science?

[geoffrobinson]

Then Darwinism in respect to teleology isn't falsifiable either.

Yes it's politics. Facts are of little use.

[Trax3001BBS]

Back in 1987 when Nevada's Yucca Mountain was selected, it also removed
Gable Mountain at Hanford Washington as a burial site. A lot of money
had been spent on Gable Mountain already; but for the government that means little.

When I took a tour of Gable Mt. a milestone had just been met:
boring a 1000 foot (cite?) horizontal shaft that didn't droop.
That was a few months before Yucca Mountain got the green light and
Gable Mt., it's progress, and employees were dropped overnight.

It was a known fact at that time Yucca Mt. was a bad choice, as the rock
was porous, and radioactive material could get into the ground water. Gable Mt
is a slow cooled basalt, non-porous.

This was a bad time for Hanford. The Chernobyl disaster was a year earlier,
100-N a plutonium production reactor located at the Hanford site shared a
common trait with the Chernobyl reactor. It was also graphite moderated,
because of this it was in the public/political cross hairs.

DOE, President Regan, and the people of the area wanted 100-N to continue
operating. The people west of the Cascade Mountains which splits
Washington State and where the political power is located were against it.

Politics were generally accepted as the decision to abandon Gable Mt. in
no small part because of 100-N. Those who could wanted the Hanford site to go away.

The 100-N reactor was enhanced at a phenomenal cost, started up a few more times
amid a political storm plaster all over the front page, so no secret. Finally 100-N
was shut-down due to the pressure, mothballed and now buried.

The Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) took a hit over this as well, and was shut down
even though it could of supplied isotopes for medical use - which are now in demand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Flux_Test_Facility

Now those who can are asking once again for Washington state to be considered
for a burial site. Something they wanted no part of earlier.

High level nuclear waste disposal is a necessity that needs to be dealt with and soon.
Even if Yucca Mountain could leak, it was a disposal site and a leak is nothing
more money can't fix.

Gable Mt. isn't without it's faults :}
Geology of Gable Mountain-Gable Butte Area:
http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=6423229

Re:Yes it's politics. Facts are of little use.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to inform you, but Gable Mountain was never the intended repository site at Hanford. The actual site was in the Umtanum formation, about 3000' below the ground surface. Gable Mountain was merely a testing location used as it was too expensive and time consuming to sink a shaft to the actual site. The basalt flow in Gable Mountain was similar in composition to the repository site, and it could be entered directly from the ground surface with horizontal tunnels.

The Hanford site (Umtanum flow) was actually a horrible site and dropped not simply because of Yucca Mt (which is actually a good site, in my opinion) but because, among other things: a) the highly-fractured basalt flows are highly permeable and water moves rapidly through them, b) there was evidence of very high rock stress and temperature at depth, which would have made development of excavations difficult and potentially dangerous, and, c) the flow path from the repository led directly to the Columbia River. Yucca Mt. suffers none of these problems and easily meets the even 1 million year dose limit requirements of the EPA. Read the license application available on-line before the Obama administration and Harry Reid eventually bury it completely. No pun intended

Politics vs Science? Oh that's never happened ...

[Gimbal]

For all the situations in which science has been misappropriated by government, in the leveraging of a merely political agenda, the government doesn't get all the credit - though, on their behalf, it could take a small bookcase just to document all the cases of which, those on and off the books.

I think it's refreshing to see an acknowledgement that such conflict occurs - between rational science and overall political whim, presently and historically.

Of course, in just a few minutes, I'm sure we'll all forget we even read this article. Adio, brave new world.

Somebody lied

[evilviper]

This article doesn't go where you think it will; it isn't too long but is a thorough exploration of the process.

I feel I was lied to on all 3 counts, and have come for my refund...

Lots of fake data on Yucca

[mdsolar]

Quite a lot of data on Yucca was faked by government scientists. http://www.macalester.edu/environmentalstudies/students/projects/citizenscience2010/yuccamountain/quality-assurance.html

Granite Facility

[MrKaos]

Yucca mountain is not a suitable site because it is made of pumice and geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is inappropriate to contain nuclear waste, and long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available.

We need something made of granite. The only human made structure with the potential to last 10000 years is Mt Rushmore, so it has to be an engineering project of that scale, because the logistical problems of transferring the 70000 odd tons of Pu239 to the "waste repository" (in reality - containment facility) are so involved that you want to get it right the first time and only do it once.

Even doing that will probably take 30 years to complete, but there is more to it than that.

I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor, and in a way I still am. But the reality is 3rd and 4th generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will last thousands of years. If you are going to build reactors then do it properly and build a Terra-watt scale nuclear reactor facility in the belly of a massive granite mountain with an attached waste facility that chomps up all your remaining plutonium or end all commercial nuclear activity altogether. As for the PBMR this reactor has some serious design flaws that, upon a closer examination of the design, makes them no better than RBMK as they age, especially when you are talking about a reactor design that lasts a inadequate 4-5 decades.

Nuclear power is energy intensive *after* the energy has been produced simply because our technology - especially material sciences - are not adequate to produce a Nuclear reactor (preferably a IFR style but safer) that has a life span that matches the geological time frames of the fuel. This exposes all the issues associated with de-commissioning reactor sites every 4 decades or so. We need a reactor design that lasts at least 1000 years and is a closed loop, i.e. the plutonium goes in and nothing comes out (except electricity and possibly hydrogen). In short the smart thing is for us to do is stop producing toy nuclear reactors, while we still can, and build a dedicated place to store the plutonium (ie a granite mountain) that is also a suitable place to build a Terra-watt scale reactor that satisfies those characteristics. A well designed and secured facility resistant to attacks even from orbit.

I don't hide the fact that I don't like the constant failure of the Nuclear Industry. But I'm also being realistic. I realise that the only way out of this mess is a well thought out and designed project because we have no other choice due to the nature of the materials. You have to redesign the entire industry, and it's a long term solution, but a much better legacy for future generations than a long term problem that will last a minimum of 25,000 years.

In the meantime we need to invest heavily in undeveloped, low externality, energy solutions like solar, wind, geo-thermal and micro-generation so there is enough energy *available* to carry out such an infrastructure project properly.

The DOE's original policy was the 'Defense in Depth' approach to the specification for building a spent fuel containment facility. The reason to choose a specific geology (granite) was, in addition to being stable, to have the geologic chemistry of the rock able to mitigate the effect of ground water traveling through the facility and carrying radioactive isotopes into the water table. The half lives of the actinides would be dependent on the reactor,

Re:Granite Facility

[BMOC]

If you are going to build reactors then do it properly and build a Terra-watt scale nuclear reactor facility in the belly of a massive granite mountain with an attached waste facility that chomps up all your remaining plutonium or end all commercial nuclear activity altogether.

That power has to be transmitted, which means line losses. You cannot practically generate power in Nevada and supply people 3 states away due to losses in transmission. It is always most cost-effective to generate power closest to where it is used. So while this suggestion seems rational on nuclear safety, it is horribly impractical in terms of electrical energy generation. This is why countries have hundreds of power plants close to population centers, instead of a single gigantic power plant in the middle of nowhere.

Re:Granite Facility

[MobyDisk]

It works for the sun.

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors burn LWR waste!

[Anonymous Coward]

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8&feature=player_embedded

Why not burn the waste in LFTRs? Oh yea they already spent BILLIONS on the "screw Nevada" setup. Too bad they didn't know about LFTRs before they started building the Yucca mountain complex....... oh wait they did know because they ran a LFTR for 5 years in the 1960s.

What a crock of BS the whole government, military industrial complex and nuke industries are.

The definition shifting trick?

[dbIII]

The "few centuries" should be a little bit of a clue that you need to treat the waste as waste and store accordingly.
What is it with all these people that want to pretend that nuclear waste is not nuclear waste? If they'd get their head out of the 1970s they'd know that there actually are some decent storage solutions now so the childish "let's pretend it doesn't exist" bullshit is no longer necessary.

Re:The definition shifting trick?

[khallow]

The "few centuries" should be a little bit of a clue that you need to treat the waste as waste and store accordingly.

And fortunately, we have Yucca Mountain for that.

What is it with all these people that want to pretend that nuclear waste is not nuclear waste?

Probably because your invisible pink unicorns haven't passed that memo on to us yet. There's also the very remote possibility that we're fully aware of this, but you're too busy rhetorically posturing to notice.

If they'd get their head out of the 1970s they'd know that there actually are some decent storage solutions now so the childish "let's pretend it doesn't exist" bullshit is no longer necessary.

So you're saying that not only are you not paying attention to what I said earlier, but your observation is irrelevant by your own admission? Please subscribe me to your newsletter!

Here we go again

[dbIII]

Above you wrote:

But highly radioactive fuel rods don't end up being part of that "lot more waste"

Which is obviously false unless you attempt to redefine waste in some attempt to pretend it is true or start trying to convince people to believe in magic.
This whole fucking stupid "no such thing as nuclear waste" bullshit is counterproductive and has held up real attempts to deal with it for decades. I heard a paper presented on Synrock in 1990 before it lost it's funding and it was about six months away from completion (as proved later when it finally did get more funding - it's now viable and commercially avialable). It's idiots that like to pretend we live in a perfect world that get in the way of improvents. Now somebody has fed you some bullshit to try to turn you into one of those idiots - resist it and look at things in terms of the science and not the PR promise of magic.

Re:Here we go again

[khallow]

Which is obviously false unless you attempt to redefine waste in some attempt to pretend it is true or start trying to convince people to believe in magic.

"Obviously false"? I did say what happened to the fuel rods. They get recycled. And hence, obviously, they aren't part of the waste stream. I wonder why you'd assert obviously false things?

This whole fucking stupid "no such thing as nuclear waste" bullshit is counterproductive and has held up real attempts to deal with it for decades.

Sure. And God kills a kitten every time someone rants on the internet.

Now somebody has fed you some bullshit to try to turn you into one of those idiots - resist it and look at things in terms of the science and not the PR promise of magic.

It can't possibly be that you are an idiot. My invisible pink unicorns will meet with yours and we'll work out a solution that doesn't hold up progress of the human race. It's interesting how people rant on about the "science" without providing even a shred of evidence for their assertions. That's so scientific.

As an aside, if I really am holding up human progress just by having an opinion on nuclear recycle that doesn't neatly dovetail with yours, then I think oh, $10 billion in payment should be a reasonable amount to charge for me to change my opinion. You'll know where to find me!

Re:Here we go again

[dbIII]

The "science" bit was a someone more polite way of attempting to point you towards reality and away from the cargo cult magical thinking. You've got no excuse now since you don't have to dig up papers and can instead look at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing