there is no understanding of capitalism that would make an owner of an oil well clean up their own mess unless forced to by law.
eventually they would want to cap the well to save the oil, of course. no doubt. but there is no capitalistic force on the planet other than marketing that would make them clean up their own mess.
and in fact, capitalism would hurt them for doing that if it increased the cost of their product. competitors would get the sales.
Radical Terrorists are to Islam, what Totalitarian Regimes have been to Communism, are what White supremacists are to caucasians, are what the Westboro Baptist church is to Christianity.
they are people and groups who use a basic idealogy, harnessed for radical, evil ends. They are no more the "true expression" of an ideology than "Small Government" Nazis would be Republicans. Just because they share something doesn't mean they are the same.
Also, while you champion capitalism, consider the proper capitalist response to the utter destruction of the gulf of mexico would be.... simply... to ignore it and drill through the oil.
Finally, communism is not socialism. which you should understand before trying to critique either one.
Sorry, number 3 was mistaken: that's a response to a different post I read right before yours. my apologies.
I understand why cap and trade sucks if you're the only one doing it. but no one wants to go first.
a critical component would be to enact trade rules requiring other nations to meet your emission standards to sell in your country. but of course the WTO would throw a hissy fit about that.
the end result of reprocessing still leaves very dangerous material when its done. it's a smaller pile and it doesn't last nearly as long as the waste most of us have now, but even france requires long term geologic storage to deal with waste, and they know a few things about reprocessing. they still have to deal with hundreds of years of protecting a pile of nasty, dangerous junk.
you also have security risks to deal with during the whole extraction, processing, and transportation phases of the fuel's lifespan, not to mention the nuke itself.
meanwhile the clean stuff... well, someone bombing a PV array isn't going to cause much difficulty for us.
why is that important? How about you call me when your fancy nuke energy doesn't require us to guard the waste for hundreds of years?
PV doesn't need a water source, could be installed both centrally and in a distributed fashion, can be implemented as fast as you can manufacture and place the panels, and generates nearly no long term dangerous or toxic waste with a basic recycling program in effect. PV isn't even the cheapest at almost 0.25/kwh, just the easiest to deploy
while we are building out that capacity, we can be working simultaneously on time shifting energy demands (smart grid work, doesn't even need grid upgrades. internet and wireless plug adapters could help quite a lot) and distribution/storage.
no one is ever going to build a nuke in 3 years from "we need to build a nuke" through siting approval and construction. 5 years is wildly optimistic. Maybe, once you have a site and approvals, you can actually build in that fast, but that's not the whole process, now is it?
So "cap and trade" impoverishes the masses. by going directly after something they want to control, CO2 emissions, and putting a price tag on it, they are creating a "wealth divide" as companies have to use free market principles to figure out how to meet the new targets.
You advocate a system where the government figures out how to meet the new targets, and forces everyone to use the new techniques.
two problems.
1. cap and trade is a textbook example of using free market principles in an effective way to achieve a result. Don't prescribe methods, prescribe goals, leave methods open. Let the market figure out what works. if you have to do collective action, this is the way it should almost always be done.
2. forcing everyone to use some new, presumably not-free technique, still increases prices and creates a larger "wealth divide".
3. If the rest of your statement is true, calling this an "increase in a wealth divide" is laughable. lowering rich countries and raising poor ones reduces, not increases a wealth divide.
I'm not saying the particular methods in any particular bill are right or wrong. this is top-view of the concept discussion only and your arguments don't make any sense.
there are about a dozen clean, renewable sources that are infiintely safer and that do not generate waste that can be turned into weapons for hundreds of years after we are done with it.
it can be done for 0.25/kwh or less, right now (just considering solar PV, which isn't even the cheapest, just the most universally deployable), plus some investment in time shifting energy demands and in transmission improvements. by the time nukes are done being built, that number will be significantly less. there are areas of america paying 0.25/kwh right now. it's not the end of society to do that. and it solves all the same problems nukes do (anything that can be powered electricall).
if we don't do cap and trade we should at least add the entire american military budget to our gas taxes.
OR, we can strap our great (x50) grandkids with protecting a pile of weapons grade nuclear waste so we could continue to have "cheap" electricity. hmm. tough choice.
that's the "free market" for you though. do whatever you can pretend is "cheap" as long as you can keep pretending.
-First off, there is nothing wrong with my english, though I have to wonder how even if english is your second language (you write very well considering that fact especially, kudos) how you are claiming my understanding of the issues around the pebble bed reactors is wrong. the article detailed the contamination issues faced in black and white. are you just plugging your ears and chanting, or do you have an actual argument to articulate about that?
-nuclear waste from reprocessing includes material that can more easily be processed into a weapon grade material, that is why I am "equating" the two. We are not just guarding a few football fields of toxic junk for hundreds of years here. That wouldn't be any worse than a landfill, really. We are talking about something very different: protecting a potential stockpile of relatively high grade nuclear material.
Hundreds of years is more reasonable than thousands... definitely true. But it's still a damn long time. Unless you are generating junk you would willingly hand to an enemy or terrorist organization, it's a very long term security issue. we can't even guarantee the existence of our country throughout that kind of timeframe... certainly we can't predict the level of instability we may face in that time.
-with clean energy powering manufacturing, and cradle to grave recycling (thanks First Solar!) issues are then small with solar. Other methods, also with clean energy powering the processes, are far better than current, dirty, dangerous alternatives already in use.
legislation is only needed to prevent in the price of a product from making it appear artificially cheap. as they currently do, IMHO. I'm not otherwise worried about leglislation and I don't know why you even bothered to bring it up since I didn't. I am simply opposed, to the nuke lobby acting like it's the savior of the world and pretending that it's a risk free proposition. it is not.
there is no parsing of this conversation or discussion that results in nuclear being risk free. We are arguing only about grades of risk. I am saying, we don't need to be arguing about risk at all anymore. We should be focusing on the truly risk free alternatives.
something doesn't have to be "very scary" before it's not preferable to "not scary at all".
First off, 'people like me' would be people who don't believe in magic, infallible extraction, generation, reprocessing, and CENTURIES LONG STORAGE chains. Wow. how crazy. and "we" have stopped this nuclear "progress" all over the world, in totalitarian regimes, democracies, you name it, everywhere, until the crunch a couple of years ago that scared everyone into desparation. wow. we're pretty amazing, us rational people.
if you're not going to read your own docs, let me help. if you actually read them, you find the history is less than idyllic. Read about AVR AND the THTR-300 right there.
I am not saying that the technology is doomed, worthless, and never to be used: I am saying that it is not some holy grail magic bullet that will automatically lead us to shangri-la of safe, eternal nuclear power for all, as you "myth and emotion" nuclear types like to pretend.
In other words, we should keep working on the tech, like we've been working on other alternatives over the last few decades. Just please stop pretending it's ready to primetime to save us all. China is apparently making a big gamble on the tech right now. Bully for them. First ones are up in running in 3 years with no slowdowns. MAYBE then they will demonstrate that it is so good at generating energy that they might not shut it down in just a few years, eh? Maybe they will solve the problem that caused all the contamination in the AVR reactor and surrounding groundwater? That Passive Safety worked out real well, eh?
As for waste,
Reducing waste helps, but it does not solve the waste problem. Without reducing it, the situation is so stupid that it borders on the ludicrous: large amounts of material unsafe for THOUSANDS of years? No one with any grasp on reality should even consider that feasible.
With reprocessing, You still need to figure out how you are going to keep the remaining material safe for HUNDREDS of years. The soviets couldn't even keep nuclear warheads safe for DECADES due to completely unforseen issues. problems with/sabotage of/attacks on storage areas, transportation, extraction, processing, OR in energy generation could all cause major problems. Maybe it isn't extremely likely. But then, it's not "likely" than an oil rig is going to explode and destroy the gulf of mexico either. But it is a risk. and given a long enough timeline, all risks will come to reality. There will be a major nuclear system failure, there will be other gigantic oil spills and coal ash avalanches.
There is NO such risk with the clean alternatives. Reasonable people would notice that and perhaps value it. The lack of pollution in energy generation (only occurring during the manufacturing of the equipment) is a major plus too.
So why risk it? Ten years ago you could have said that we had no viable alternatives with some credibility. But now, that just isn't true. it's just a question of not going for the CHEAPEST possible energy... it's all still very viable.
So, let me know when you are interested in posting things *other* than insults. I'll simply stick with the Facts. the facts are clean energy is feasible at a slightly increased cost over current electrical generation methods. Nukes can help keep it cheaper but with risk we can completely avoid. So we should avoid that risk.
Otherwise, please feel free to show me the reactor that generates no dangerous long term nuclear waste (short term is ok, not dangerous is ok as long as volume isn't gigantic) and that cannot contaminate large areas of the earth in case of failure OR attack. ok? just do that, and I'll be on your side.
I apologize, I didn't mean to insinuate that no on reprocesses. I should have said "who is using it to solve their waste problem"? and that answer is "no one", reprocessing does not solve the waste problem, it only reduces it. Specifically it reduces it just to a stupid level of optimism for avoidance of a long term catastrophe or theft, rather than a totally insane level for a nearly eternal protection tiemframe without it.
France still has plenty of nuclear waste to deal with and reprocessing won't get rid of it.
We've had nukes making power on this planet for almost 60 years. and yet in all that time, no one in the world has managed to actually create and put into service a final resting place for the waste that we have not figured out how to avoid making.
a reasonable person might call that a non-trivial obstacle to the long term usage of the technology. But you nuke whackos just ignore it and cry about why we aren't rushing to saddle our great great great great great great great great great great great grandkids with this containment problem.
Instead, WE could just deal with slightly more expensive energy, and never even have to consider the possible problems that nuclear presents from a security or environmental standpoint.
tell me, why are none built yet? plenty of countries around using plenty of nuclear other than US... NONE of them found the tech compelling before now?
Original nukes were supposed to be totally safe and too cheap to meter. So you'll forgive me if I don't just shout hallelujah at more predictions of safety and performance on experimental technology and instead simply ask, where is it working and how it is doing?
Your own links show problems experienced with actual pebble bed reactors led to early shutdown (amazing... ALREADY BUILT and they shut it down! wow, that must have been an AWESOME power plant). Breeder reactors still have a long term containment problem, it's just measured in hundreds instead of thousands of years, whoopee! improvement, but still a long term containment problem since it would take longer than many countries have been around for it to decay to safe levels. See how fast the USSR went from world powerhouse to dissolution. Then go ahead and tell me it could 'never happen here', and that there is no concern with weapons-grade waste laying around for centuries. go ahead. then, perhaps you could top it off by complaining about how I'm the one who is totally idealistic and ignoring reality, as opposed to this incredible world without political instability or major catastrophe the nuke whackos all pretend will exist.
Meanwhile, all the tech I already posted about is real, exists now, and is falling in price. Focusing on clean alternatives can be done. not quite as cheaply as nuclear, of course. but not out of the ballpark either, and with amazingly less peripheral issues to deal with, such as complete environmental devastation, nuclear proliferation and terrorism, etc.
right, there are no problems with Yucca, and it would be absolutely safe for thousands of years. that's why everyone is so hot to finish the project. there aren't any concerns with seismic activity or the like.
I'm not the one saying reprocessing is too dangerous. but who is doing that? No one, really. gosh, I wonder why.
You talk about jack off fantasies and all you can do is say If, If, If... yet countries with very active nuclear industries and plenty of money for them STILL have all the same problems. It's almost like you don't have a clue what you are talking about, or the *entire nuclear industry* doesn't.
meanwhile, the cost of PV fell 30% in the last year and wind generation is growing at tremendous rates. Excuse me while I go jack off.
and yet I still await any working examples of the solutions to the problems your type always indicates are solved.
where are the magical no waste plants?
short of that, where are the long term, workable containment strategies for the massively increased amount of waste you are promoting?
You can wave hands and make pointless ad hominem attacks all you like, but even countries with very active nuclear programs have not solved these problems. Meanwhile, most of our energy needs can be met with a variety of other sources. It would be a bit more expensive, but a lot less likely to result in catastrophic failure or render massive tracts of land uninhabitable.
Hell, vermont is poisoning its ground water (and its neighbors) right now. Pretty hard to imagine how an offshore wind farm, tidal energy plant, onshore wind, solar thermal, distributed PV, hydro, biomass, conservation or geothermal would result in any kind of damage like that.
massive oil spills, flyash floods, centuries at least of containment issues when we can't even keep a nuclear plant from leaking radiation over 30 years in VT... yeah. fuck it, it's cheap, right?
by the time anyone can finish building another round of nuke plants, PV will be half the cost it is now or better.. it's falling at an excellent rate and regular advances make new methods cheaper and easier to obtain. Sinking billions into a dangerous and unmanagable energy source in the long term is just a waste of money, frankly, when we could simply be getting very, very serious about clean sources.
I think you'll find the buddhists tend to work fairly hard and regard it as, at worst, inconsequential to a person's development, or in most cases beneficial. It's hardly an "innovation of the west". I think you're rationalizing a bit there.
Naturally if you do nothing but work, that's a problem. Which is true of everything. But there are plenty of self-improved and even self-educated people who hold jobs irrelevant to their fields of interest without it turning them into bitter piles of mush. You don't have to be jobless to "familiarize yourself with the arts". Responsible people save up to travel... in fact, I know several who have worked chains of random jobs to save up the money to do so repeatedly.
If you want to be a whole human being that includes finding the time and priority needed to support yourself by whatever means you can. If a short, slave-owning period in greece contradicts that, so be it, but I would regard that as a step in philosophical evolution, not the end. Plato has been superseded many times over in the last couple thousand years, you know;)
There are ways you can better yourself without learning about arts. You can even do them while scrubbing floors. So I don't see why you shouldn't be scrubbing some floors while you ask your fellow human beings... some of whom ARE ALREADY scrubbing floors... to support your entitled ass.
well, I thought you might be referring to the nordics, but I wasn't sure if you were referring to some other, more specific research.
I agree that correlation is not causation though and in the nordic cases you can't really single out one policy and say "that is a cause of happiness" when it could be a cause or a result of their overall state of mind and social situation.
But more to the point, while I do agree that human happiness needs to be considered and furthered much more than it is here in america, I don't think that means that it should be unreasonable to expect someone to take what they can get until they can find something better. In fact I consider my own time in that situation, forced to work fast food, a very important lesson in ego reduction. Perhaps people who are made "unhappy" by working "beneath" themselves should find a way to get over it and instead, work on being happy that they are doing what they can in a tough situation to at least contribute to their own support and well being.
while, of course, continuing to look for new opportunity.
Actually, people cannot be made happy by a job. You are either a happy person or you are not. If you are, your job doesn't matter much. If you are not, no job will fix it. Only you can.
not to say some jobs don't suck, but it is most assuredly not better for anyone other than a selfish individual to have people refuse work that is below their arbitrary designation of what is worthy of their interests and qualifications. the proper method is to work, and look for a different job while working, if you don't like the one you have. A very smart man once told me you should *always* be looking for a job, even if you ARE happy. You never know what's out there if you don't look. No reason to sit on your ass and wait.
And work on your personal happiness all the time, rather than waiting for some external force to come along and fix it all for you. Nothing you get externally will make you happy. less stressed, maybe, but not happy.
There are lots of solutions. right now, I could put an array on my roof that would take care of all of my energy usage short of heating/cooling, and right now it would pay for the loan with energy savings at 0.15/kwh. That's about to happen (have to get the financing together). $35k for a office of 6 people.
that's energy usage for an office: perfectly suited for PV, since we're only here during the day. Now, I'm also using an air to water heat pump that will provide all of our heating and cooling at a COP of 3. so no fossil fuels at all are used in our shop except for what our utility uses for electrical generation. They do use a fair amount of natural gas. we spend more to "guarantee" our power is hydro, though the grid doesn't know that when I turn on another computer, of course. but at least we are funding green power companies to keep doing what they are doing. But my total energy usage is much lower than practically any other building of our type by a very large margin. Superinsulated, high efficiency lighting, the whole nine yards. We are limited only by what was possible with our budget. I can't pretend every choice had economic payback, of course, but then, that's because of cheap oil.
A very basic smart grid technology (modems/internet connections and wireless plug adapters) could easily distribute large portions of our loads to times when we have large amounts of available energy, or to off peak times when our baseline capacity is wasted.
ad hoc carpooling could be much better than it is as well. a little internet organization is all it would take. I can't do it by myself, however... I have to work. but I'm sure other people are driving in the same directions I am at roughly the same times. I already carpool a few days a week but it could be much better. minivan owners could be carpool kings. But someone with time and ability to promote this kind of service could do some real good. Perhaps even municipalities looking to reduce wear and tear on roads.
Residentially, there are Electric Thermal Storage systems for home heating, cooling mass storage systems, car battery systems, many things exist right now that can time shift energy usage to better make use of alternatives or reduce wasted off peak capacity. that would be a huge help even without reducing usage at all, just moving around when you use your energy. but they are too expensive relative to oil, and that means not only that people don't buy what is there, but that what is there is not improved or reduced in cost very quickly because it's a waste of money to do so until it looks like expensive oil is here to stay. with distributed capacity we wouldn't even have to upgrade our power lines.
there are tons of smaller solutions that could greatly reduce our need for oil. But they haven't been economical against cheap oil so no one is spending the time, energy, or money to make them happen. There isn't a whole lot individuals can do other than reduce and reuse, which many of us are doing as best we can with the options available to us.
Further, people like you and I might have to move closer to work. Sorry to say that's the way it is. I'm not walking away from my upside down house mortgage right now, bad scene there, but the fact is working a half hour car drive from home is not going to be an option forever. plain and simple.
we should tax the hell out of oil. at least we agree on that. I just disagree that we should exempt oil drilled here.
but the oil we drill here will NOT EVER EVER EVER make a serious dent in our need for oil. Maybe, AFTER we have vastly reduced our oil usage, would it make any sense. right now it's pissing in the wind. or spilling the gulf, as the case may be.
the energy we have is a pittance, relatively speaking, and getting it is not worth it on a cost/benefit analysis. especially if you throw in any more events like the one we are in now.
simply let the cost of oil rise. then all of us that are "complicit" will finally get to see some alternatives brought to market, that currently are not because the people who have to front the money to market new tech can't compete with cheap oil. Oil which is cheap only because we ignore all the other expenses associated with it such as our military presence in the middle east and nearly all the environmental damage it does.
read this again: there aren't other choices not because we don't know of any other choices to make, but simply because no one will finance them as long as they will be crushed by cheap oil.
I didn't say government was better at everything, just a lot of things. Lots of things don't get better when profit is a main driver. Research.. pure research, not development... is one of them.
Your stance is seriously that no research has ever been discovered to be more important than originally thought after the fact? How about the first 50 years of DNA research? Chaos theory research and its contributions to game theory? Nearly all of astronomy outside of basic navigation for the last ten thousand years?
government has more engagement with a wider slice of the populace than any company does, that's why. poor people can still vote you out of office. they can't afford many products and services, however.
once again... the whole point of research is you don't know what value will be produced, how fast it will be produced or who it will benefit. You just know that it will be something, at some speed, that will benefit someone. I will repeat - again - that there is always a more sure return somewhere else in private industry. why would any company engage in such risky propositions when they have dozens of other avenues with much more sure results? it would be stupid, if profit were your only goal, as it is for business of this size.
but that is not the only goal that should interest us as a people.
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there is no understanding of capitalism that would make an owner of an oil well clean up their own mess unless forced to by law.
eventually they would want to cap the well to save the oil, of course. no doubt. but there is no capitalistic force on the planet other than marketing that would make them clean up their own mess.
and in fact, capitalism would hurt them for doing that if it increased the cost of their product. competitors would get the sales.
but nice try!
Radical Terrorists are to Islam, what Totalitarian Regimes have been to Communism, are what White supremacists are to caucasians, are what the Westboro Baptist church is to Christianity.
they are people and groups who use a basic idealogy, harnessed for radical, evil ends. They are no more the "true expression" of an ideology than "Small Government" Nazis would be Republicans. Just because they share something doesn't mean they are the same.
Also, while you champion capitalism, consider the proper capitalist response to the utter destruction of the gulf of mexico would be.... simply... to ignore it and drill through the oil.
Finally, communism is not socialism. which you should understand before trying to critique either one.
Sorry, number 3 was mistaken: that's a response to a different post I read right before yours. my apologies.
I understand why cap and trade sucks if you're the only one doing it. but no one wants to go first.
a critical component would be to enact trade rules requiring other nations to meet your emission standards to sell in your country. but of course the WTO would throw a hissy fit about that.
only as long as people keep seeking the bottom dollar option, true. that is only occurring because of a lack of will to do better.
we can do better. right now. we can do MUCH better with a few years of serious, national effort to do so. and we should.
But nukes aren't "good". they are just "less bad than coal".
clean renewables at 0.25/kwh is "good", not perfect. Perfect would be renewables at current pricing.
bullshit.
the end result of reprocessing still leaves very dangerous material when its done. it's a smaller pile and it doesn't last nearly as long as the waste most of us have now, but even france requires long term geologic storage to deal with waste, and they know a few things about reprocessing. they still have to deal with hundreds of years of protecting a pile of nasty, dangerous junk.
you also have security risks to deal with during the whole extraction, processing, and transportation phases of the fuel's lifespan, not to mention the nuke itself.
meanwhile the clean stuff... well, someone bombing a PV array isn't going to cause much difficulty for us.
why is that important? How about you call me when your fancy nuke energy doesn't require us to guard the waste for hundreds of years?
PV doesn't need a water source, could be installed both centrally and in a distributed fashion, can be implemented as fast as you can manufacture and place the panels, and generates nearly no long term dangerous or toxic waste with a basic recycling program in effect. PV isn't even the cheapest at almost 0.25/kwh, just the easiest to deploy
while we are building out that capacity, we can be working simultaneously on time shifting energy demands (smart grid work, doesn't even need grid upgrades. internet and wireless plug adapters could help quite a lot) and distribution/storage.
no one is ever going to build a nuke in 3 years from "we need to build a nuke" through siting approval and construction. 5 years is wildly optimistic. Maybe, once you have a site and approvals, you can actually build in that fast, but that's not the whole process, now is it?
wtf?
So "cap and trade" impoverishes the masses. by going directly after something they want to control, CO2 emissions, and putting a price tag on it, they are creating a "wealth divide" as companies have to use free market principles to figure out how to meet the new targets.
You advocate a system where the government figures out how to meet the new targets, and forces everyone to use the new techniques.
two problems.
1. cap and trade is a textbook example of using free market principles in an effective way to achieve a result. Don't prescribe methods, prescribe goals, leave methods open. Let the market figure out what works. if you have to do collective action, this is the way it should almost always be done.
2. forcing everyone to use some new, presumably not-free technique, still increases prices and creates a larger "wealth divide".
3. If the rest of your statement is true, calling this an "increase in a wealth divide" is laughable. lowering rich countries and raising poor ones reduces, not increases a wealth divide.
I'm not saying the particular methods in any particular bill are right or wrong. this is top-view of the concept discussion only and your arguments don't make any sense.
Nuclear is not "far safer" than any other energy.
there are about a dozen clean, renewable sources that are infiintely safer and that do not generate waste that can be turned into weapons for hundreds of years after we are done with it.
it can be done for 0.25/kwh or less, right now (just considering solar PV, which isn't even the cheapest, just the most universally deployable), plus some investment in time shifting energy demands and in transmission improvements. by the time nukes are done being built, that number will be significantly less. there are areas of america paying 0.25/kwh right now. it's not the end of society to do that. and it solves all the same problems nukes do (anything that can be powered electricall).
if we don't do cap and trade we should at least add the entire american military budget to our gas taxes.
OR, we can strap our great (x50) grandkids with protecting a pile of weapons grade nuclear waste so we could continue to have "cheap" electricity. hmm. tough choice.
that's the "free market" for you though. do whatever you can pretend is "cheap" as long as you can keep pretending.
-First off, there is nothing wrong with my english, though I have to wonder how even if english is your second language (you write very well considering that fact especially, kudos) how you are claiming my understanding of the issues around the pebble bed reactors is wrong. the article detailed the contamination issues faced in black and white. are you just plugging your ears and chanting, or do you have an actual argument to articulate about that?
-nuclear waste from reprocessing includes material that can more easily be processed into a weapon grade material, that is why I am "equating" the two. We are not just guarding a few football fields of toxic junk for hundreds of years here. That wouldn't be any worse than a landfill, really. We are talking about something very different: protecting a potential stockpile of relatively high grade nuclear material.
Hundreds of years is more reasonable than thousands... definitely true. But it's still a damn long time. Unless you are generating junk you would willingly hand to an enemy or terrorist organization, it's a very long term security issue. we can't even guarantee the existence of our country throughout that kind of timeframe... certainly we can't predict the level of instability we may face in that time.
-with clean energy powering manufacturing, and cradle to grave recycling (thanks First Solar!) issues are then small with solar. Other methods, also with clean energy powering the processes, are far better than current, dirty, dangerous alternatives already in use.
legislation is only needed to prevent in the price of a product from making it appear artificially cheap. as they currently do, IMHO. I'm not otherwise worried about leglislation and I don't know why you even bothered to bring it up since I didn't. I am simply opposed, to the nuke lobby acting like it's the savior of the world and pretending that it's a risk free proposition. it is not.
there is no parsing of this conversation or discussion that results in nuclear being risk free. We are arguing only about grades of risk. I am saying, we don't need to be arguing about risk at all anymore. We should be focusing on the truly risk free alternatives.
something doesn't have to be "very scary" before it's not preferable to "not scary at all".
First off, 'people like me' would be people who don't believe in magic, infallible extraction, generation, reprocessing, and CENTURIES LONG STORAGE chains. Wow. how crazy. and "we" have stopped this nuclear "progress" all over the world, in totalitarian regimes, democracies, you name it, everywhere, until the crunch a couple of years ago that scared everyone into desparation. wow. we're pretty amazing, us rational people.
if you're not going to read your own docs, let me help. if you actually read them, you find the history is less than idyllic. Read about AVR AND the THTR-300 right there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor#Germany
I am not saying that the technology is doomed, worthless, and never to be used: I am saying that it is not some holy grail magic bullet that will automatically lead us to shangri-la of safe, eternal nuclear power for all, as you "myth and emotion" nuclear types like to pretend.
In other words, we should keep working on the tech, like we've been working on other alternatives over the last few decades. Just please stop pretending it's ready to primetime to save us all. China is apparently making a big gamble on the tech right now. Bully for them. First ones are up in running in 3 years with no slowdowns. MAYBE then they will demonstrate that it is so good at generating energy that they might not shut it down in just a few years, eh? Maybe they will solve the problem that caused all the contamination in the AVR reactor and surrounding groundwater? That Passive Safety worked out real well, eh?
As for waste,
Reducing waste helps, but it does not solve the waste problem. Without reducing it, the situation is so stupid that it borders on the ludicrous: large amounts of material unsafe for THOUSANDS of years? No one with any grasp on reality should even consider that feasible.
With reprocessing, You still need to figure out how you are going to keep the remaining material safe for HUNDREDS of years. The soviets couldn't even keep nuclear warheads safe for DECADES due to completely unforseen issues. problems with/sabotage of/attacks on storage areas, transportation, extraction, processing, OR in energy generation could all cause major problems. Maybe it isn't extremely likely. But then, it's not "likely" than an oil rig is going to explode and destroy the gulf of mexico either. But it is a risk. and given a long enough timeline, all risks will come to reality. There will be a major nuclear system failure, there will be other gigantic oil spills and coal ash avalanches.
There is NO such risk with the clean alternatives. Reasonable people would notice that and perhaps value it. The lack of pollution in energy generation (only occurring during the manufacturing of the equipment) is a major plus too.
So why risk it? Ten years ago you could have said that we had no viable alternatives with some credibility. But now, that just isn't true. it's just a question of not going for the CHEAPEST possible energy... it's all still very viable.
So, let me know when you are interested in posting things *other* than insults. I'll simply stick with the Facts. the facts are clean energy is feasible at a slightly increased cost over current electrical generation methods. Nukes can help keep it cheaper but with risk we can completely avoid. So we should avoid that risk.
Otherwise, please feel free to show me the reactor that generates no dangerous long term nuclear waste (short term is ok, not dangerous is ok as long as volume isn't gigantic) and that cannot contaminate large areas of the earth in case of failure OR attack. ok? just do that, and I'll be on your side.
I apologize, I didn't mean to insinuate that no on reprocesses. I should have said "who is using it to solve their waste problem"? and that answer is "no one", reprocessing does not solve the waste problem, it only reduces it. Specifically it reduces it just to a stupid level of optimism for avoidance of a long term catastrophe or theft, rather than a totally insane level for a nearly eternal protection tiemframe without it.
France still has plenty of nuclear waste to deal with and reprocessing won't get rid of it.
We've had nukes making power on this planet for almost 60 years. and yet in all that time, no one in the world has managed to actually create and put into service a final resting place for the waste that we have not figured out how to avoid making.
a reasonable person might call that a non-trivial obstacle to the long term usage of the technology. But you nuke whackos just ignore it and cry about why we aren't rushing to saddle our great great great great great great great great great great great grandkids with this containment problem.
Instead, WE could just deal with slightly more expensive energy, and never even have to consider the possible problems that nuclear presents from a security or environmental standpoint.
crazy talk.
tell me, why are none built yet? plenty of countries around using plenty of nuclear other than US... NONE of them found the tech compelling before now?
Original nukes were supposed to be totally safe and too cheap to meter. So you'll forgive me if I don't just shout hallelujah at more predictions of safety and performance on experimental technology and instead simply ask, where is it working and how it is doing?
Your own links show problems experienced with actual pebble bed reactors led to early shutdown (amazing... ALREADY BUILT and they shut it down! wow, that must have been an AWESOME power plant). Breeder reactors still have a long term containment problem, it's just measured in hundreds instead of thousands of years, whoopee! improvement, but still a long term containment problem since it would take longer than many countries have been around for it to decay to safe levels. See how fast the USSR went from world powerhouse to dissolution. Then go ahead and tell me it could 'never happen here', and that there is no concern with weapons-grade waste laying around for centuries. go ahead. then, perhaps you could top it off by complaining about how I'm the one who is totally idealistic and ignoring reality, as opposed to this incredible world without political instability or major catastrophe the nuke whackos all pretend will exist.
Meanwhile, all the tech I already posted about is real, exists now, and is falling in price. Focusing on clean alternatives can be done. not quite as cheaply as nuclear, of course. but not out of the ballpark either, and with amazingly less peripheral issues to deal with, such as complete environmental devastation, nuclear proliferation and terrorism, etc.
right, there are no problems with Yucca, and it would be absolutely safe for thousands of years. that's why everyone is so hot to finish the project. there aren't any concerns with seismic activity or the like.
I'm not the one saying reprocessing is too dangerous. but who is doing that? No one, really. gosh, I wonder why.
You talk about jack off fantasies and all you can do is say If, If, If... yet countries with very active nuclear industries and plenty of money for them STILL have all the same problems. It's almost like you don't have a clue what you are talking about, or the *entire nuclear industry* doesn't.
meanwhile, the cost of PV fell 30% in the last year and wind generation is growing at tremendous rates. Excuse me while I go jack off.
and yet I still await any working examples of the solutions to the problems your type always indicates are solved.
where are the magical no waste plants?
short of that, where are the long term, workable containment strategies for the massively increased amount of waste you are promoting?
You can wave hands and make pointless ad hominem attacks all you like, but even countries with very active nuclear programs have not solved these problems. Meanwhile, most of our energy needs can be met with a variety of other sources. It would be a bit more expensive, but a lot less likely to result in catastrophic failure or render massive tracts of land uninhabitable.
Hell, vermont is poisoning its ground water (and its neighbors) right now. Pretty hard to imagine how an offshore wind farm, tidal energy plant, onshore wind, solar thermal, distributed PV, hydro, biomass, conservation or geothermal would result in any kind of damage like that.
massive oil spills, flyash floods, centuries at least of containment issues when we can't even keep a nuclear plant from leaking radiation over 30 years in VT... yeah. fuck it, it's cheap, right?
by the time anyone can finish building another round of nuke plants, PV will be half the cost it is now or better.. it's falling at an excellent rate and regular advances make new methods cheaper and easier to obtain. Sinking billions into a dangerous and unmanagable energy source in the long term is just a waste of money, frankly, when we could simply be getting very, very serious about clean sources.
Shill on, whacko.
insert comment regarding danger of nukes and nuclear fuel storage.
insert rebuttal claiming total nuclear safety and the lack of a nuclear fuel storage problem despite real world examples to the contrary.
You bore me, nuke whacko.
I think you'll find the buddhists tend to work fairly hard and regard it as, at worst, inconsequential to a person's development, or in most cases beneficial. It's hardly an "innovation of the west". I think you're rationalizing a bit there.
Naturally if you do nothing but work, that's a problem. Which is true of everything. But there are plenty of self-improved and even self-educated people who hold jobs irrelevant to their fields of interest without it turning them into bitter piles of mush. You don't have to be jobless to "familiarize yourself with the arts". Responsible people save up to travel... in fact, I know several who have worked chains of random jobs to save up the money to do so repeatedly.
If you want to be a whole human being that includes finding the time and priority needed to support yourself by whatever means you can. If a short, slave-owning period in greece contradicts that, so be it, but I would regard that as a step in philosophical evolution, not the end. Plato has been superseded many times over in the last couple thousand years, you know ;)
There are ways you can better yourself without learning about arts. You can even do them while scrubbing floors. So I don't see why you shouldn't be scrubbing some floors while you ask your fellow human beings... some of whom ARE ALREADY scrubbing floors... to support your entitled ass.
well, I thought you might be referring to the nordics, but I wasn't sure if you were referring to some other, more specific research.
I agree that correlation is not causation though and in the nordic cases you can't really single out one policy and say "that is a cause of happiness" when it could be a cause or a result of their overall state of mind and social situation.
But more to the point, while I do agree that human happiness needs to be considered and furthered much more than it is here in america, I don't think that means that it should be unreasonable to expect someone to take what they can get until they can find something better. In fact I consider my own time in that situation, forced to work fast food, a very important lesson in ego reduction. Perhaps people who are made "unhappy" by working "beneath" themselves should find a way to get over it and instead, work on being happy that they are doing what they can in a tough situation to at least contribute to their own support and well being.
while, of course, continuing to look for new opportunity.
citation please?
Actually, people cannot be made happy by a job. You are either a happy person or you are not. If you are, your job doesn't matter much. If you are not, no job will fix it. Only you can.
not to say some jobs don't suck, but it is most assuredly not better for anyone other than a selfish individual to have people refuse work that is below their arbitrary designation of what is worthy of their interests and qualifications. the proper method is to work, and look for a different job while working, if you don't like the one you have. A very smart man once told me you should *always* be looking for a job, even if you ARE happy. You never know what's out there if you don't look. No reason to sit on your ass and wait.
And work on your personal happiness all the time, rather than waiting for some external force to come along and fix it all for you. Nothing you get externally will make you happy. less stressed, maybe, but not happy.
There are lots of solutions. right now, I could put an array on my roof that would take care of all of my energy usage short of heating/cooling, and right now it would pay for the loan with energy savings at 0.15/kwh. That's about to happen (have to get the financing together). $35k for a office of 6 people.
that's energy usage for an office: perfectly suited for PV, since we're only here during the day. Now, I'm also using an air to water heat pump that will provide all of our heating and cooling at a COP of 3. so no fossil fuels at all are used in our shop except for what our utility uses for electrical generation. They do use a fair amount of natural gas. we spend more to "guarantee" our power is hydro, though the grid doesn't know that when I turn on another computer, of course. but at least we are funding green power companies to keep doing what they are doing. But my total energy usage is much lower than practically any other building of our type by a very large margin. Superinsulated, high efficiency lighting, the whole nine yards. We are limited only by what was possible with our budget. I can't pretend every choice had economic payback, of course, but then, that's because of cheap oil.
A very basic smart grid technology (modems/internet connections and wireless plug adapters) could easily distribute large portions of our loads to times when we have large amounts of available energy, or to off peak times when our baseline capacity is wasted.
ad hoc carpooling could be much better than it is as well. a little internet organization is all it would take. I can't do it by myself, however... I have to work. but I'm sure other people are driving in the same directions I am at roughly the same times. I already carpool a few days a week but it could be much better. minivan owners could be carpool kings. But someone with time and ability to promote this kind of service could do some real good. Perhaps even municipalities looking to reduce wear and tear on roads.
Residentially, there are Electric Thermal Storage systems for home heating, cooling mass storage systems, car battery systems, many things exist right now that can time shift energy usage to better make use of alternatives or reduce wasted off peak capacity. that would be a huge help even without reducing usage at all, just moving around when you use your energy. but they are too expensive relative to oil, and that means not only that people don't buy what is there, but that what is there is not improved or reduced in cost very quickly because it's a waste of money to do so until it looks like expensive oil is here to stay. with distributed capacity we wouldn't even have to upgrade our power lines.
there are tons of smaller solutions that could greatly reduce our need for oil. But they haven't been economical against cheap oil so no one is spending the time, energy, or money to make them happen. There isn't a whole lot individuals can do other than reduce and reuse, which many of us are doing as best we can with the options available to us.
Further, people like you and I might have to move closer to work. Sorry to say that's the way it is. I'm not walking away from my upside down house mortgage right now, bad scene there, but the fact is working a half hour car drive from home is not going to be an option forever. plain and simple.
we should tax the hell out of oil. at least we agree on that. I just disagree that we should exempt oil drilled here.
but the oil we drill here will NOT EVER EVER EVER make a serious dent in our need for oil. Maybe, AFTER we have vastly reduced our oil usage, would it make any sense. right now it's pissing in the wind. or spilling the gulf, as the case may be.
the energy we have is a pittance, relatively speaking, and getting it is not worth it on a cost/benefit analysis. especially if you throw in any more events like the one we are in now.
simply let the cost of oil rise. then all of us that are "complicit" will finally get to see some alternatives brought to market, that currently are not because the people who have to front the money to market new tech can't compete with cheap oil. Oil which is cheap only because we ignore all the other expenses associated with it such as our military presence in the middle east and nearly all the environmental damage it does.
read this again: there aren't other choices not because we don't know of any other choices to make, but simply because no one will finance them as long as they will be crushed by cheap oil.
you have control over how much oil you use. you do not have that much control over what kind of health care you need.
I didn't say government was better at everything, just a lot of things. Lots of things don't get better when profit is a main driver. Research.. pure research, not development... is one of them.
Your stance is seriously that no research has ever been discovered to be more important than originally thought after the fact? How about the first 50 years of DNA research? Chaos theory research and its contributions to game theory? Nearly all of astronomy outside of basic navigation for the last ten thousand years?
government has more engagement with a wider slice of the populace than any company does, that's why. poor people can still vote you out of office. they can't afford many products and services, however.
once again... the whole point of research is you don't know what value will be produced, how fast it will be produced or who it will benefit. You just know that it will be something, at some speed, that will benefit someone. I will repeat - again - that there is always a more sure return somewhere else in private industry. why would any company engage in such risky propositions when they have dozens of other avenues with much more sure results? it would be stupid, if profit were your only goal, as it is for business of this size.
but that is not the only goal that should interest us as a people.