Read the parent post I wrote - it says all energy sources. True, but you did say:
All energy production entails contaminants of some sort in the full life-cycle spectrum, and nuclear fission is not much cleaner than many other less risky choices. If you're not including coal in those other risky choices, then fine. I don't believe anything else than coal and energy can provide enough power with current technology (even with drastic reduction in consumption, which I advocate), making it a coal vs. nuclear battle for me.
However, your standpoint is laudably moderate for someone discussing nuclear power, so I don't really feel I have to prove myself right or "win" or anything. The fact that we agree that one should take the entire cost of coal into account is enough for me.
a. deaths in the mining process itself; b. waste byproducts from the mining process; c. heavy metal contamination from the ore extraction process; d. chemical contaminants released into the environment during ore extraction; e. air and water pollution due to methods used for ore extraction;
I've probably missed the window for getting any moderation, but here goes.
You're taking into account the entire process involved in nuclear power generation. This is good. However, you're forgetting that it will inevitably be used to replace coal, which is not good. If you follow the news, you will know that coal miners constantly die all over the world. Also, coal mining pollutes and causes respiratory disease in the most heavily mined areas. Finally, it destroys entire mountain ranges, even in the US.
Uranium mining has the same destructive effects, but we need thousands of times less of it. If you've heard of uranium miners dying in the news, then you have heard something I haven't. I think this sums it up quite well: uranium mining does use much more nasty chemicals than coal mining, but still comes out ahead by virtue of being several orders of magnitude smaller.
You're flamebait/troll, but I'll bite for future reference.
This place won't post stuff without links (there are exceptions, but you can't count on them). If a submission doesn't have a link, the story won't be posted. If a story isn't posted, you won't find out about it.
In other words, if this story in Finnish hadn't been posted, you would have been more ignorant about the OOXML ISO process, story in Finnish or not. A longer summary or complete translation will no doubt appear soon, too (I speak Finnish myself, but am too busy at the moment unfortunately).
If all species but one died out (let's say fruit flies), it would promote better reproduction. I do not think anyone would see that as a good thing though.
Oh, and fruit flies would be the only ones seeing anything anymore, of course.
Wouldn't it be pretty ironic if they ended up using cheap child labor to make these? Won't work, every child is allowed to manufacture only one of these - hence the name.
Let's not forget what makes these probes possible: nuclear power, more specifically RTGs. No, I'm not trying to glorify nuclear, but we simply don't have the technology to make something equally robust at anything approaching a reasonable price and launch weight. So for the moment, RTGs it is for outer solar system probes, and nuclear reactors should be given consideration if they make more valuable science possible (remember, the Russians already used some of those in space AND had them fail, so they won't be the end of us).
RW is great for photographers. If one doesn't back up every time one downloads from the camera, a harddrive crash will inevitably kill some photos. Since it often makes sense to download significantly smaller amounts than 4.3 gigs, RW is to be preferred (I always use it). When the RW is full, one of course backups it to a single-write disc, in addition to keeping it all on the harddrive.
The ultimate here is of course DVD-RAM, but I haven't got the single disc I have to work under Ubuntu. That format is really recommended though despite the price for anyone who does frequent, small writes.
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However, your standpoint is laudably moderate for someone discussing nuclear power, so I don't really feel I have to prove myself right or "win" or anything. The fact that we agree that one should take the entire cost of coal into account is enough for me.
I've probably missed the window for getting any moderation, but here goes.
You're taking into account the entire process involved in nuclear power generation. This is good. However, you're forgetting that it will inevitably be used to replace coal, which is not good. If you follow the news, you will know that coal miners constantly die all over the world. Also, coal mining pollutes and causes respiratory disease in the most heavily mined areas. Finally, it destroys entire mountain ranges, even in the US.
Uranium mining has the same destructive effects, but we need thousands of times less of it. If you've heard of uranium miners dying in the news, then you have heard something I haven't. I think this sums it up quite well: uranium mining does use much more nasty chemicals than coal mining, but still comes out ahead by virtue of being several orders of magnitude smaller.
Fucking Post!
You're flamebait/troll, but I'll bite for future reference.
This place won't post stuff without links (there are exceptions, but you can't count on them). If a submission doesn't have a link, the story won't be posted. If a story isn't posted, you won't find out about it.
In other words, if this story in Finnish hadn't been posted, you would have been more ignorant about the OOXML ISO process, story in Finnish or not. A longer summary or complete translation will no doubt appear soon, too (I speak Finnish myself, but am too busy at the moment unfortunately).
If all species but one died out (let's say fruit flies), it would promote better reproduction. I do not think anyone would see that as a good thing though.
Oh, and fruit flies would be the only ones seeing anything anymore, of course.
Let's not forget what makes these probes possible: nuclear power, more specifically RTGs. No, I'm not trying to glorify nuclear, but we simply don't have the technology to make something equally robust at anything approaching a reasonable price and launch weight. So for the moment, RTGs it is for outer solar system probes, and nuclear reactors should be given consideration if they make more valuable science possible (remember, the Russians already used some of those in space AND had them fail, so they won't be the end of us).
RW is great for photographers. If one doesn't back up every time one downloads from the camera, a harddrive crash will inevitably kill some photos. Since it often makes sense to download significantly smaller amounts than 4.3 gigs, RW is to be preferred (I always use it). When the RW is full, one of course backups it to a single-write disc, in addition to keeping it all on the harddrive.
The ultimate here is of course DVD-RAM, but I haven't got the single disc I have to work under Ubuntu. That format is really recommended though despite the price for anyone who does frequent, small writes.