Here's a thought: Why don't we make schools about things kids DON'T see on television or the radio - like Reading, Writing, and Math. Gosh. What a concept.;-)
Another thought, let's cut funding for reading and writing too. Big Bird, Elmer, and a bunch of other TV characters teach those. I think there are shows that teach math too.
I agree that law enforcement can be wasted on minor vices, but a lot of laws which involve non-violence need to be enforced, such as traffic, fraud, corruption, health codes, etc.
The US has one of if not the highest per capita prison populations and something like half of them are in prison for nonviolent drug offices. Just possession can mean years in gaol. On the other hand without these victim-less crimes on the books not only would the prison population be cut in half but they free would be paying taxes. And if these drugs were legal then they could be taxed as well.
An unelected private organization you can decide not the do business with. You can't decide not to do business with the government, not unless you fancy jackbooted storm trooper thugs at your door.
Pretty great for a while. Less great when the roads start falling apart, criminals realize the police can't afford bullets, the jails have to release all the inmates at once, the number of under-educated people around you starts increasing because the schools have shut down
Tax on fuel should pay for roads and property tax pay for law enforcement, the fire department, and schools. With people keeping more of the money they work to earn they can use it to pay for more higher education.
It's not like bailouts are the only thing we fund with taxes, you know. There are actually a hell of a lot of services that benefit you directly on a daily basis. Eliminate taxes and you'll end up either losing those services entirely, or else paying for them out of pocket anyway.
What are these services? A cut in defense spending can be paid for by a sales tax. Many of the other federal agencies and departments are not constitutionally authorized. Others like the Agricultural department can have their budgets cut, congress has given big businesses like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill billions of taxpayer dollars, in January 2008 congress passed a farm bill with about $200 billion in subsidies. Agricultural subsidies, which were supposed to be temporary, are nothing more than Corporate Welfare.
I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand. For some reason, they think that consumption drives the economy
Because in the modern world consumption does drive the economy. A subsistence farmer who grows enough of his or own food is considered poor even though there's shelter, food, and medical care. In economics only when said farmer has enough to sell and uses the money to consume things is he not considered poor.
With politicians at least you have democratic accountability. What have your dollars decided if they are gambled or literally burned by people that should have known better?
With my own money I can decide who I will invest with, but when government takes my money I can't decide.
How about we close the DHS, cut military spending by 10%, and use that money to introduce a universal healthcare solution (that does NOT have to mean putting private insurance out of business either)
I agree except we already have universal healthcare through different programs. What we really need is a free market in health care, and no we do not have one, with a safety net for those who slip through.
If the government has less of "our" money they can do less stupid stuff like this. Imagine if you will a balanced budget amendment and a true flat tax.
I agree with smaller government, but disagree with a balanced budget. If by flat tax what is meant is an income tax, I disagree with that as well. Income shouldn't be taxed period. Instead user fees and taxes should be used instead. A fuel tax should pay for roads for instance. The more you drive and use the roads the more you pay.
The ridiculous pension problem that all three American car companies are saddled with kills them.
The auto companies signed contracts, and just as I would be required to honour a contract I signed so should they. If these businesses had went through bankruptcy then the union could have been forced to renegotiate the terms of their contracts.
Please note that I never said that American cars are "junk" or bad in any way.
I will say that they are not what people are willing to buy. This isn't the first tyme it happened. In the '70s US auto makers were told they had to build fuel efficient vehicles but they didn't so Japanese makers ate their lunch during and after the oil crisis.
the TARP program mostly involved capital injections in exchange for equity in the companies
TARP, Troubled Assets Relief Program was originally supposed to buy troubled assets from banks but instead the money was given to banks without any strings. What did banks do with the money? They used to buy other banks.
Well, if TeeVee does dry up, it wouldnt be that bad of a thing. TeeVee has always been the great pacifier, even though it was heralded as a unique education instrument when it was first created. Now, it has went from "wholesome shows" to "Whos your daddy" Maury Povich and other ilk.
While there are as you say junk shows on TV there are also educational stations such as the Discovery Channel and the History Channel.
Ever dub one of those vinyl records to a reel without written permission?
Yes I have, when I bought a new record the first tyme I played it I recorded it on tape then listened to the tape. This is creating a backup. But even if it isn't legal it's still not pirating. Piracy would be then selling the recording I made as though they were my own. Of course the DMCA, which became law in 1998 changed that. However seeing as I lost my tape deck years before I didn't break that law.
reel-to-reel is still used extensively at radio stations. It's not quite dead yet
I've been looking for new reel-to-reel decks but the only ones I've found are commercial quality decks. However I've found new turntables in stores, more and more are carrying them. Best Buy lists 7. It's seems half of them have USB ports so they can be plugged right into a computer. I want to hook mine, when I get one, to an amp. Maybe a preamp first depending on if a preamp is built in or not.
I don't know if the effort for the Wikipedia link was necessary;-) I'm not quite that young.
I didn't know how old you are or if you knew about reel-to-reels. There are people over 40 who don't know what they are, I wouldn't be surprised if people over 50 don't know about them. I do because my dad had one he got in Japan when he was stationed there while in the US Air Force. I got mine when I was stationed in Germany. Way back when, it seems longer than it really is, 8 track tapes are what were popular.
There are at least 4 shops within a couple of miles of me that sell vinyl. At one someone told me vinyl was popular with local artists.
There's also one thing I'd love to see happen from the government's end, which would be to reinstate the radio station ownership rules. It used to be, there were over 5000 different radio companies in the US. Now, 98% of the US market is owned by only 5 companies;
Which rules are you talking about? The rules I'll support are those used before the FRC, Federal Radio Commission, which was the predecessor to the FCC. Back then radiowaves were homesteaded. The first person to use a radio frequency was allowed to use that frequency in that area. If someone came along after and started broadcasting and it interfered with the first broadcaster the second station had to move to another frequency or stop broadcasting. And the courts were applying the common law theory of property rights to this. It was after Radio Act of 1927 which created the FRC that airwaves were licensed.
You haven't proved capacity yet - that we'd be able to economically more than quadruple our harvesting of NG. I'll make no argument about being able to convert coal plants to NG, I'm arguing that we wouldn't be able to mine enough for long enough to make it economical.
"North American LNG Outlook:"
"Liquefied natural gas (LNG) capacity expected to surge by 2010, but LNG will not be a panacea for North American natural gas shortfall".
"LNG capacity to rocket"
"Major liquefied natural gas projects in the Middle East are set to boost output capacity by 74m tonnes in the next five years according to an industry report cited by the Gulf News. The study by the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation highlighted expansion in Qatar, Oman and Egypt, with Yemen, Algeria and Libya also aiming to boost production. Qatar is set to be the world's biggest LNG producer by 2011."
Breeder reactors, on site reprocessing, modern methods. While it indeed 'doesn't reduce radioactivity', it changes the nature - pulling out the stuff with longer halflives to use as fuel, leaving behind stuff with shorter half lives, that doesn't need to be buried for as long.
Honestly, I don't know one single person who doesn't have an illegitimate copy of something.
Try to find a movie or music that was not embedded in a webpage on my computer. I have several cds and tapes I legally bought or was given as a gift that I have not listened to in years. If I were to play music, I'd rather be the one playing it myself, I have a flute I want to learn to play, or I'd play a vinyl record on a turntable or on a reel-to-reel tape deck. On the other hand I have hundred of DVDs and tapes of movies I legally bought or was given as gifts I do watch, on TV not my computer. Not one disk has been put into the DVD/CD drive in my computer.
An unlicensed Windows install on an old piece of crap Pentium II in the closet. An old bootleg cassette from a friend. A bad VHS copy of a movie. Everyone has pirated something at some point.
That's awful arrogant to say everyone has pirated something.
France has managed to run an economical electric grid off of mostly nuclear power for generations.
France also leads the world in reprocessing, which I think John McCain pointed out during the campaign, however they still don't have it worked out. The article "Nuclear Reprocessing Poses Risks for S.C." goes over this. One quote is "Denmark, Norway and Ireland have sought the closure of reprocessing plants in France and Great Britain because of radioactive waste washing up on their shores."
Until energy storage is solved I'd rather have natural gas power plants serve as a baseload.
Do you have any idea how much NG that would take? We don't have the generation capacity
Actually we do have the capacity. Behind coal natural gas (LNG), linked to from Electricity generation, is the largest source of fuel in the US producing 20% the the electricity. However if it isn't enough electrical generation, then coal fired power plants can be converted to burn LNG. If geothermal, solar, and wind power are deployed this should be enough for the baseload generation. According to the Department of Energy the US only imports 16% of the LNG used, and most of that from Canada. The Picken's Plan calls for LNG plants be closed then LNG to be used as fuel for transportation.
I'd much rather have to deal with a few coal trains worth of nuclear waste a year than all the very real pollution of coal.
And I'd rather LNG be used for the baseload, if it's really needed, as it's less polluting than coal. Unlike coal, the mining of which is destructive, LNG is pumped from wells. While I don't particularly like drilling it's better than coal mining.
For the storage, well, we've proposed the solutions a number of times. Reprocess or run a breeder reactor, like France, Japan, and Russia.
All of which, as I said above about France, stull have trouble with reprocessing.
Compare that to solar $2.9 Billion subsidy package for California alone.
Thanks. Well it was proposed the state give subsidies to nuclear power as well: "these nuclear subsidies would cost over $2 billion. " This says "In California they have brought the cost of windpower down to 4 cents per kilowatt. (14) The National Energy Board of Canada says that windpower, now costs between $50 and $100 per megawatt/hour (MW/h), and expects that it will be down to $40 per MW/h by 2020." I don't know about that myself, I'd like to see where they came up with that, where I live a lot of electricity comes from the wind but I pay about 10 cents a KWH.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't install wind/solar, but I believe that nuclear should be a larger portion of the solution.
Unless and until I see hard evidence storage of waste won't be a problem I don't accept nuclear. Until energy storage is solved I'd rather have natural gas power plants serve as a baseload.
It can be but typically isn't 50%. On a $50,000 system you may get $10,000, but you'd be pushing it to get $20,000. Of course a big part of how much it comes to is the location. In the US some states have little to no rebates whereas other states offer more. Oh, and no I don't think 50% is that much, coal pays nothing for the CO2 they emit, and the coal mining companies don't either. Heck, mountain top removal levels mountains, what the company doesn't want they dump into valleys and stream polluting the water and blocking fish.
Haven't actually read about the price-anderson act, have you? $300 million per reactor, $11.6 Billion coop insurance, only then would the feds take over. Superfund would take over earlier for any other industry.
Yes, I have, though it's been quite a while. I don't like Superfund either, those who pollute and create waste should be the ones to clean it up, or pay for someone else to clean it up. As someone once said "I don't blame people for making mistakes, I only ask that they pay for it."
Why should the insurance be so high? It's essentially been free money for the insurance companies for decades.
Ah, but do nuclear power plant operators and owners pay for insurance? I know they pay into a fund for disposal but I don't recall them paying for insurance.
Except environmentalists are supporting nuclear power.
That's certainly not my experience here in the UK. For example, Friends of the Earth are distinctly anti-nuclear and seem to believe that a bunch of wind turbines can solve the whole of the UK's power needs.
More and more environmentalists do support nuclear power, Bjorn Lomborg "The Skeptical Environmentalist" has had an impact on at least some people.
You need a lot less power transmission infrastructure to connect a 3GW power station to the grid than close to a thousand wind turbines spread over a large area. Especially if those turbines happen to be off-shore
Not if they're located near where the power will be used. Centralized power generation I think is a big problem, power should be generated near where it's used. Instead of having large power stations, we should have distributed power generation. Not only will power loss from transmission be cut but coengeration can be done. For instance the steam from a plant can be used to heat buildings near it.
Wind generation and built up areas don't mix - you're not going to be able to site wind turbines in a city.
You can mount solar panels on roofs. New York Michael Bloomberg wants to use off-shore wind farms, small-scale wind installations, and tidal power systems. Actually one of the proposals for the reconstruction of the WTC had a turbine mounted between two towers. It's not the same but I found this: "World Trade Center's Freedom Tower to Feature Wind Turbines". And Bahrain has done something similar.
If you plan to store power you need more wind-turbines in order to over-produce and give you power to store.
Why are you stuck on wind? Other energy sources can be used.
Maybe not, bigger isn't always better, more efficient.
However it is, nuclear power would not be profitable and Wall Street would not pay for it if government did not subsidize it.
You do realize that you can say the exact same thing for wind/solar, right?
While solar and wind are subsidized, Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency has the incentives per state, it's individuals or those who have them installed who get the subsidies. And those subsidies aren't that much though it may cut the cost in half. Large corporations don't get them. If it was me, and I hope to install PVs myself, I could choose what company I buy the panels from.
The only power generation types that get less subsidies than nuclear is NG and dirty coal. Solar and wind generally get at least an order of magnitude more subsidy than nuclear.
Only if you don't cut the limited liability nuclear has. No other type of energy gets limited liability. Now if instead nuclear power plants had to pay for insurance then the price per kilowatthour would be high I bet.
Your construction project is also going to have to hardware to link up 240 generators to the grid. Also they probably arn't going to be able to generate their rated power at all times.
I doubt it actually takes 23 years to construct a nuclear power plant.
Did you also read about the 5 megawatt wind turbines and how fast power capacity can be added?
Also you arn't restricted to windy places to build them
That's alright, some places are good for wind, others are good for geothermal, solar, or tidal. Geothermal energy produced produced 13,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in California in 2007. On the Big Island of Hawaii geothermal energy produced 25% of the electricity. Houses in New York City are heated by geothermal energy. From British Columbia to Southern California along the Pacific Coast solar is widely available. Here's a list of states with good solar potential: "Solar takes no shine to Nevada". The title refers to the solar industry not wanting to go to Nevada because right across the state line in California the state has a number of incentives to encourage solar. Simply use whatever type of energy an area has.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a thought: Why don't we make schools about things kids DON'T see on television or the radio - like Reading, Writing, and Math. Gosh. What a concept. ;-)
Another thought, let's cut funding for reading and writing too. Big Bird, Elmer, and a bunch of other TV characters teach those. I think there are shows that teach math too.
Falcon
"School taxes"? Where do you pay "school taxes"? Money for schools comes from state (and to a lesser and more indirect extent, federal) income taxes.
Property tax pays for schools and education.
Falcon
crinimials
I agree that law enforcement can be wasted on minor vices, but a lot of laws which involve non-violence need to be enforced, such as traffic, fraud, corruption, health codes, etc.
The US has one of if not the highest per capita prison populations and something like half of them are in prison for nonviolent drug offices. Just possession can mean years in gaol. On the other hand without these victim-less crimes on the books not only would the prison population be cut in half but they free would be paying taxes. And if these drugs were legal then they could be taxed as well.
Falcon
An unelected private organization you can decide not the do business with. You can't decide not to do business with the government, not unless you fancy jackbooted storm trooper thugs at your door.
Falcon
Pretty great for a while. Less great when the roads start falling apart, criminals realize the police can't afford bullets, the jails have to release all the inmates at once, the number of under-educated people around you starts increasing because the schools have shut down
Tax on fuel should pay for roads and property tax pay for law enforcement, the fire department, and schools. With people keeping more of the money they work to earn they can use it to pay for more higher education.
It's not like bailouts are the only thing we fund with taxes, you know. There are actually a hell of a lot of services that benefit you directly on a daily basis. Eliminate taxes and you'll end up either losing those services entirely, or else paying for them out of pocket anyway.
What are these services? A cut in defense spending can be paid for by a sales tax. Many of the other federal agencies and departments are not constitutionally authorized. Others like the Agricultural department can have their budgets cut, congress has given big businesses like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill billions of taxpayer dollars, in January 2008 congress passed a farm bill with about $200 billion in subsidies. Agricultural subsidies, which were supposed to be temporary, are nothing more than Corporate Welfare.
Falcon
I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand. For some reason, they think that consumption drives the economy
Because in the modern world consumption does drive the economy. A subsistence farmer who grows enough of his or own food is considered poor even though there's shelter, food, and medical care. In economics only when said farmer has enough to sell and uses the money to consume things is he not considered poor.
Falcon
With politicians at least you have democratic accountability. What have your dollars decided if they are gambled or literally burned by people that should have known better?
With my own money I can decide who I will invest with, but when government takes my money I can't decide.
Falcon
How about we close the DHS, cut military spending by 10%, and use that money to introduce a universal healthcare solution (that does NOT have to mean putting private insurance out of business either)
I agree except we already have universal healthcare through different programs. What we really need is a free market in health care, and no we do not have one, with a safety net for those who slip through.
Falcon
If the government has less of "our" money they can do less stupid stuff like this. Imagine if you will a balanced budget amendment and a true flat tax.
I agree with smaller government, but disagree with a balanced budget. If by flat tax what is meant is an income tax, I disagree with that as well. Income shouldn't be taxed period. Instead user fees and taxes should be used instead. A fuel tax should pay for roads for instance. The more you drive and use the roads the more you pay.
The ridiculous pension problem that all three American car companies are saddled with kills them.
The auto companies signed contracts, and just as I would be required to honour a contract I signed so should they. If these businesses had went through bankruptcy then the union could have been forced to renegotiate the terms of their contracts.
Please note that I never said that American cars are "junk" or bad in any way.
I will say that they are not what people are willing to buy. This isn't the first tyme it happened. In the '70s US auto makers were told they had to build fuel efficient vehicles but they didn't so Japanese makers ate their lunch during and after the oil crisis.
Falcon
the TARP program mostly involved capital injections in exchange for equity in the companies
TARP, Troubled Assets Relief Program was originally supposed to buy troubled assets from banks but instead the money was given to banks without any strings. What did banks do with the money? They used to buy other banks.
Falcon
You're right it is, however it shouldn't getting taxpayer dollars either.
Falcon
Well, if TeeVee does dry up, it wouldnt be that bad of a thing. TeeVee has always been the great pacifier, even though it was heralded as a unique education instrument when it was first created. Now, it has went from "wholesome shows" to "Whos your daddy" Maury Povich and other ilk.
While there are as you say junk shows on TV there are also educational stations such as the Discovery Channel and the History Channel.
Falcon
Ever dub one of those vinyl records to a reel without written permission?
Yes I have, when I bought a new record the first tyme I played it I recorded it on tape then listened to the tape. This is creating a backup. But even if it isn't legal it's still not pirating. Piracy would be then selling the recording I made as though they were my own. Of course the DMCA, which became law in 1998 changed that. However seeing as I lost my tape deck years before I didn't break that law.
reel-to-reel is still used extensively at radio stations. It's not quite dead yet
I've been looking for new reel-to-reel decks but the only ones I've found are commercial quality decks. However I've found new turntables in stores, more and more are carrying them. Best Buy lists 7. It's seems half of them have USB ports so they can be plugged right into a computer. I want to hook mine, when I get one, to an amp. Maybe a preamp first depending on if a preamp is built in or not.
I don't know if the effort for the Wikipedia link was necessary ;-) I'm not quite that young.
I didn't know how old you are or if you knew about reel-to-reels. There are people over 40 who don't know what they are, I wouldn't be surprised if people over 50 don't know about them. I do because my dad had one he got in Japan when he was stationed there while in the US Air Force. I got mine when I was stationed in Germany. Way back when, it seems longer than it really is, 8 track tapes are what were popular.
Falcon
Hear hear. What I wouldn't give to have some new music mastered as well as Pink Floyd used to be.
Are you Off the Wall? I'd love to hear some BTO.
Falcon
worthwhile again. This means put in proper cover art, lyric sheets, etc rather than just a tiny scrap of paper.
I'd substitute vinyl records for CDs. Here'a an interesting article from "Wired", "Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin". Best Buy and Costco are starting to sell vinyl.
Sign some fucking new artists for god's sakes.
There are at least 4 shops within a couple of miles of me that sell vinyl. At one someone told me vinyl was popular with local artists.
There's also one thing I'd love to see happen from the government's end, which would be to reinstate the radio station ownership rules. It used to be, there were over 5000 different radio companies in the US. Now, 98% of the US market is owned by only 5 companies;
Which rules are you talking about? The rules I'll support are those used before the FRC, Federal Radio Commission, which was the predecessor to the FCC. Back then radiowaves were homesteaded. The first person to use a radio frequency was allowed to use that frequency in that area. If someone came along after and started broadcasting and it interfered with the first broadcaster the second station had to move to another frequency or stop broadcasting. And the courts were applying the common law theory of property rights to this. It was after Radio Act of 1927 which created the FRC that airwaves were licensed.
Falcon
You haven't proved capacity yet - that we'd be able to economically more than quadruple our harvesting of NG. I'll make no argument about being able to convert coal plants to NG, I'm arguing that we wouldn't be able to mine enough for long enough to make it economical.
"Liquefied natural gas (LNG) capacity expected to surge by 2010, but LNG will not be a panacea for North American natural gas shortfall".
"Major liquefied natural gas projects in the Middle East are set to boost output capacity by 74m tonnes in the next five years according to an industry report cited by the Gulf News. The study by the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation highlighted expansion in Qatar, Oman and Egypt, with Yemen, Algeria and Libya also aiming to boost production. Qatar is set to be the world's biggest LNG producer by 2011."
The gas is there.
Breeder reactors, on site reprocessing, modern methods. While it indeed 'doesn't reduce radioactivity', it changes the nature - pulling out the stuff with longer halflives to use as fuel, leaving behind stuff with shorter half lives, that doesn't need to be buried for as long.
It still needs to be buried.
Falcon
I shouldn't be forced to pay for music I don't listen to.
Falcon
Honestly, I don't know one single person who doesn't have an illegitimate copy of something.
Try to find a movie or music that was not embedded in a webpage on my computer. I have several cds and tapes I legally bought or was given as a gift that I have not listened to in years. If I were to play music, I'd rather be the one playing it myself, I have a flute I want to learn to play, or I'd play a vinyl record on a turntable or on a reel-to-reel tape deck. On the other hand I have hundred of DVDs and tapes of movies I legally bought or was given as gifts I do watch, on TV not my computer. Not one disk has been put into the DVD/CD drive in my computer.
An unlicensed Windows install on an old piece of crap Pentium II in the closet. An old bootleg cassette from a friend. A bad VHS copy of a movie. Everyone has pirated something at some point.
That's awful arrogant to say everyone has pirated something.
Falcon
Would you have bought that media without the tax being introduced?
I only listen the music on the radio, or tv, and I see no reason I should be forced to stuff money in the RIAA's pockets to access the net.
Falcon
France has managed to run an economical electric grid off of mostly nuclear power for generations.
France also leads the world in reprocessing, which I think John McCain pointed out during the campaign, however they still don't have it worked out. The article "Nuclear Reprocessing Poses Risks for S.C." goes over this. One quote is "Denmark, Norway and Ireland have sought the closure of reprocessing plants in France and Great Britain because of radioactive waste washing up on their shores."
Until energy storage is solved I'd rather have natural gas power plants serve as a baseload.
Do you have any idea how much NG that would take? We don't have the generation capacity
Actually we do have the capacity. Behind coal natural gas (LNG), linked to from Electricity generation, is the largest source of fuel in the US producing 20% the the electricity. However if it isn't enough electrical generation, then coal fired power plants can be converted to burn LNG. If geothermal, solar, and wind power are deployed this should be enough for the baseload generation. According to the Department of Energy the US only imports 16% of the LNG used, and most of that from Canada. The Picken's Plan calls for LNG plants be closed then LNG to be used as fuel for transportation.
I'd much rather have to deal with a few coal trains worth of nuclear waste a year than all the very real pollution of coal.
And I'd rather LNG be used for the baseload, if it's really needed, as it's less polluting than coal. Unlike coal, the mining of which is destructive, LNG is pumped from wells. While I don't particularly like drilling it's better than coal mining.
For the storage, well, we've proposed the solutions a number of times. Reprocess or run a breeder reactor, like France, Japan, and Russia.
All of which, as I said above about France, stull have trouble with reprocessing.
Falcon
Compare that to solar $2.9 Billion subsidy package for California alone.
Thanks. Well it was proposed the state give subsidies to nuclear power as well: "these nuclear subsidies would cost over $2 billion. " This says "In California they have brought the cost of windpower down to 4 cents per kilowatt. (14) The National Energy Board of Canada says that windpower, now costs between $50 and $100 per megawatt/hour (MW/h), and expects that it will be down to $40 per MW/h by 2020." I don't know about that myself, I'd like to see where they came up with that, where I live a lot of electricity comes from the wind but I pay about 10 cents a KWH.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't install wind/solar, but I believe that nuclear should be a larger portion of the solution.
Unless and until I see hard evidence storage of waste won't be a problem I don't accept nuclear. Until energy storage is solved I'd rather have natural gas power plants serve as a baseload.
Falcon
You don't think a 50% subsidy isn't that much?
It can be but typically isn't 50%. On a $50,000 system you may get $10,000, but you'd be pushing it to get $20,000. Of course a big part of how much it comes to is the location. In the US some states have little to no rebates whereas other states offer more. Oh, and no I don't think 50% is that much, coal pays nothing for the CO2 they emit, and the coal mining companies don't either. Heck, mountain top removal levels mountains, what the company doesn't want they dump into valleys and stream polluting the water and blocking fish.
Haven't actually read about the price-anderson act, have you? $300 million per reactor, $11.6 Billion coop insurance, only then would the feds take over. Superfund would take over earlier for any other industry.
Yes, I have, though it's been quite a while. I don't like Superfund either, those who pollute and create waste should be the ones to clean it up, or pay for someone else to clean it up. As someone once said "I don't blame people for making mistakes, I only ask that they pay for it."
Why should the insurance be so high? It's essentially been free money for the insurance companies for decades.
Ah, but do nuclear power plant operators and owners pay for insurance? I know they pay into a fund for disposal but I don't recall them paying for insurance.
Falcon
Except environmentalists are supporting nuclear power.
That's certainly not my experience here in the UK. For example, Friends of the Earth are distinctly anti-nuclear and seem to believe that a bunch of wind turbines can solve the whole of the UK's power needs.
More and more environmentalists do support nuclear power, Bjorn Lomborg "The Skeptical Environmentalist" has had an impact on at least some people.
You need a lot less power transmission infrastructure to connect a 3GW power station to the grid than close to a thousand wind turbines spread over a large area. Especially if those turbines happen to be off-shore
Not if they're located near where the power will be used. Centralized power generation I think is a big problem, power should be generated near where it's used. Instead of having large power stations, we should have distributed power generation. Not only will power loss from transmission be cut but coengeration can be done. For instance the steam from a plant can be used to heat buildings near it.
Wind generation and built up areas don't mix - you're not going to be able to site wind turbines in a city.
You can mount solar panels on roofs. New York Michael Bloomberg wants to use off-shore wind farms, small-scale wind installations, and tidal power systems. Actually one of the proposals for the reconstruction of the WTC had a turbine mounted between two towers. It's not the same but I found this: "World Trade Center's Freedom Tower to Feature Wind Turbines". And Bahrain has done something similar.
If you plan to store power you need more wind-turbines in order to over-produce and give you power to store.
Why are you stuck on wind? Other energy sources can be used.
Falcon
Larger turbines are more efficient
Maybe not, bigger isn't always better, more efficient.
However it is, nuclear power would not be profitable and Wall Street would not pay for it if government did not subsidize it.
You do realize that you can say the exact same thing for wind/solar, right?
While solar and wind are subsidized, Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency has the incentives per state, it's individuals or those who have them installed who get the subsidies. And those subsidies aren't that much though it may cut the cost in half. Large corporations don't get them. If it was me, and I hope to install PVs myself, I could choose what company I buy the panels from.
The only power generation types that get less subsidies than nuclear is NG and dirty coal. Solar and wind generally get at least an order of magnitude more subsidy than nuclear.
Only if you don't cut the limited liability nuclear has. No other type of energy gets limited liability. Now if instead nuclear power plants had to pay for insurance then the price per kilowatthour would be high I bet.
Falcon
Your construction project is also going to have to hardware to link up 240 generators to the grid. Also they probably arn't going to be able to generate their rated power at all times.
That's no problem, that's already being done. " U.S. Wind Energy Installations Top 20 Gigawatts". Here's a chart of how much each state generates: "10 Gigawatts of wind power (AWEA)".
I doubt it actually takes 23 years to construct a nuclear power plant.
Did you also read about the 5 megawatt wind turbines and how fast power capacity can be added?
Also you arn't restricted to windy places to build them
That's alright, some places are good for wind, others are good for geothermal, solar, or tidal. Geothermal energy produced produced 13,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in California in 2007. On the Big Island of Hawaii geothermal energy produced 25% of the electricity. Houses in New York City are heated by geothermal energy. From British Columbia to Southern California along the Pacific Coast solar is widely available. Here's a list of states with good solar potential: "Solar takes no shine to Nevada". The title refers to the solar industry not wanting to go to Nevada because right across the state line in California the state has a number of incentives to encourage solar. Simply use whatever type of energy an area has.
Falcon