Letters to the Editor
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No leaks? RIIIIGHT
I live in WA state, where the attempted clean up of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation has been going on for decades and is failing.
Billions of dollars have been spent and we still have radioactive waste leaking into the basalt around Hanford and eventually into the Columbia river. On top of this, over the lifetime of the plant, so much energy is used to build maintain and decomission the power plants that they barely yeild net energy. There's no free lunch.
Want to spend government money on energy AND defense? Let's GIVE $45 billion in defense money toward putting solar collectors on every roof in the US and training the corp of engineers to do the installs as well as boosting an industry that would employ hundreds of thousands of people for decades.
Why not do this? Because our current government would rather spend the money killing Iragis.
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The Left Wing's Answer to Talk Radio - Earnest Aging Celebrities
We all on the left earnestly debate what Rush, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and the entire Christian right are doing to democracy. We talk about how they over-simplify things, push their own half-cocked agendas, polarize politics so that there is no more rational discourse, and make noise to get attention. That's bad, in fact it's very bad because it is true. But it is only half true, the left just uses celebrities instead of Rush and company.
Let's take a quick spin through the left-wing celebrities who are earnestly pushing various causes Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Stephen Colbert, and these musicians who haven't had a hit since trickle down economics jokes were still funny. Aren't they doing the same thing? I mean it's true, nuclear power has its downsides but it's not all bad either. Besides, are any of them nuclear engineers or even halfway qualified to talk about how a nuclear reactor works? Are they kinda, sorta enjoying the attention? Does this really help the discourse? Is all this well intentioned sarcasm and earnest guitar playing really doing anything but preaching to the choir?
How are they any different from people I refuse to listen on principle, except that they often say things that I agree with, even if I might think they are oversimplifying a tad bit?
Are we at a point where we have to be spoon-fed our opinions by right-wing or left-wing entertainers/talk-show hosts? What if there was a movement that was started by ordinary Americans and not championed by aging hippies and over-earnest actors? Wouldn't more people join in and take it seriously?
In the meantime all you aging hippies the sixties are over and nobody cares about your revolution except for you. If you want a Woodstock museum, raise your own damn money and don't ask for handouts from the government; I'm paying your social security and that's all you get. For all you right-wingers who are smirking over that last bit, stop listening to chicken-hawk liars and cowards, it takes more than just saying "Jesus Christ is my personal savior" to be a Christian, and George Bush is the worst president in history despite the three months following 9/11.
Finally, there's more to democratic politics than some marginal personality, liberal or conservative, yakking away on YouTube. Go out and read a book, you might learn something.
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COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT
If we do not use nuclear power, then we burn fossil fuels.
Nuke technology has advanced a lot to the point where reactors can be built that are goof proof, clean, and efficient.
Give it up people. It is more about the gesture than about reality with you libs.
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So?
Besides, are any of them nuclear engineers or even halfway qualified to talk about how a nuclear reactor works?
Why would they have to be engineers to see the damage done by nuclear energy? Three Mile Island? Chernobyl? Hanford Nuclear Reservation? Should we just trust industry engineers to police everything? Can you say Love Canal? Superfund sites? I hate to be the one to tell you, but it is not the engineers making decisions for the industry. It is pinheads with MBAs, actuaries and accountants making all the decisions. Their primary purpose is not safe energy. Their primary purpose is profit. History has shown that industry will allow massive damage to the environment, which sickens, hurts and even kills people while they are chasing that profit.
That all of the people protesting nuclear power are not engineers has nothing to do with the debate.
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What about the waste?
What about waste that remains deadly for hundreds of thousands of years? Prove you can deal with that, then we'll talk.
And dimbulb, stick to whining on Broadsheet please.
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Hollywood Protesters? China doesn't care.
While we bicker in this country about whether nuclear power should or should not be revived, the debate is long since over in much of the rest of the world. "Pebble Bed Modular Reactors" (PBMRs) are the New Big Thing in nuclear power and the Chinese already have a working prototype up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
Whether these reactors are indeed a safety and/or waste disposal improvement over the conventional control-rod type reactors remains to be seen, but you can be sure that the Chinese government does not give a shit about anything ANYONE in the US has to say about nuclear power, pro or con.
If it can be proven that these reactors are an improvement over the old technology, why not build them here? I think once the Chinese build a few dozen of them inside their own country over the next few decades we'll have a better idea. We outsource so much of our environmental burden to the Chinese as it is that we'll reap some of the "benefits" anyway with continued cheap baubles in our stores.
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Pro-Coal Lobby?
One has to wonder if Bonnie Raitt and co. were hired by coal lobbiests, as they are the only people they are helping. Nuclear power has been kept under wraps for decades because of cheap fossil fuels, mostly natural gas. Now that these are expensive, people worldwide are building nukes.
Rich nations like the US and Germany can muddle along with fossil fuels or by buying power from neighboring nuclear-powered nations, but it is silly. If we choose as a nation to spend the extra money and spew the extra CO2, that is our shame.
Coal is still cheap, so if they scuttle the nuclear plants, we can expect coal instead. Viva the status quo!