California power ... unplugged.

Sun Apr 29 22:11:09 UTC 2001

Pal, 

wacky point of view, huh? ;-)

You're way off base with your hypothesis about waste products of nuclear
power.  And I'm by no means "Green" or whatever else you'd like to call the
treehuggers.  

Sure they manufacture Usomething from another Usomethingelse.  They are 
uniquely different elements and if you don't recognize that, you need to go
check out yourself.  It's interesting stuff, and you mighty learn something.
Uranium, and the isotopes derived from the naturally occuring one, is only one 
of the elements of cause serious concern.  It doesn't take much physics and
chemistry and biology knowledge to fully understand the complex of problems.

The point isn't Uwhatever, the point is the series of waste products generated
during the entire lifecycle of the reactor.  This includes what is generated 
during the course of the operation of the reactor and has to be disassembled 
from time to time for routine maintainence to keep the reactor safe as well
as at the end of the life of a reactor (yes, they have limited lifetimes).
Anything which has been exposed to those amounts of neutron flux common in 
such plants is not something you want to live on.

If you factor it all in for the lifecycle of power generation method x, 
nuclear power is considerably more expensive than any other power generation 
method presently in use.

There are plenty of studies that prove this point, check your favorite public
library for the study and backup materials.

Or, you can just stay ignorant and not consider the entire lifecycle and claim
that nuclear power is cheaper, better, bla bla bla.  Fairy tales do serve their
purpose, I suppose.

Did you know that Chernobyl has to be burried in concrete for the next 25k
years (earliest halflife time of the elements burried in the plant)?  Where 
were you or your ancestors 25k years ago?  

Simply the facts around proper storage for very long periods of time (25k years
or more) should be a hint at the problems around nuclear waste, even though
it isn't an exhaustive one.

I would strongly recommend you do your homework before broadcasting such 
nonsense.

I'm sure I'll just get yet another pointless flame back, but you're so wrong
that I couldn't restraint myself not saying something about all this nonsense.

I suppose it will never cease to amaze me what sort of things are born out of
ignorance...

Anyways, back to our regularly scheduled flamewars...

Cheers,
Chris

On Sun, Apr 29, 2001 at 11:19:54AM -0700, Mike Leber wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, 28 Apr 2001, Roger Marquis wrote:
> > No question nuclear is clean but only if you carefully ignore
> > the danger of depleted uranium.  But I digress, that's a problem
> > for future generations (if we're lucky).
> 
> Here is this wacky view point again... nuclear power plants don't
> manufacture uranium.  It's not like the uranium used didn't exist before
> it was mined.  Would you consider building a housing track in the middle
> of a yellow cake uranium mineral deposit environmentally safe because it
> is naturally occurring?
> 
> This is the "naturally occurring must be good" falacy.  Take radon gas for
> example, though I digress...
> 
> Point is, either way future generations will have the same amount of
> uranium or less.
> 
> I've allways found it hypocritical how antinuclear people support coal
> burning power plants that release more material into the air than nuclear
> power plants output.  I find it an interesting example of human social
> studies.
> 
> This being considered, I've been wondering about whether Internet industry
> lobbying organizations like CIX or the CISPA should have a energy policy.
> My cynical side says that economic darwinism will ensure that people that
> don't have an energy policy will end up in businesses that don't rely on
> power.  i.e. You don't like power plants?  Don't worry, in a little more
> time you won't have to worry about a job that depends as much on
> electricity.  California has allways had a large amount of fruit picking
> jobs.  ;)
> 
> Heh, when the availability and price of electricity start affecting
> decisions involving your operations, you are being an ostritch if you
> don't atleast examine the possible solutions and develop and opinion.
> 
> Mike. :)
> 
> > 
> > Roger
> > 
> > > Sorry, but nukes are clean and safe. Sure people have died from nukes,
> > > but millions have died from producing coal for plants. Why do we build
> > > coal plants and not nukes? Because people don't care if OTHERS die, if
> > > 100,000 people a year die from digging coal they are not in your
> > > community, that is better then the risk to THEM however small.
> > 
> > 
> 
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-- 
Christian Kuhtz <ck at arch.bellsouth.net> -wk, <ck at gnu.org> -hm
Sr. Architect, Engineering & Architecture, BellSouth.net, Atlanta, GA, U.S.
"I speak for myself only.""