Posted on 03/23/2011 7:34:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.
A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.
Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.
If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.
Like most greens, I favour a major expansion of renewables. I can also sympathise with the complaints of their opponents. It's not just the onshore windfarms that bother people, but also the new grid connections (pylons and power lines). As the proportion of renewable electricity on the grid rises, more pumped storage will be needed to keep the lights on. That means reservoirs on mountains:
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
The real problem appears to be the placement of the emergency generators and their fuel tanks. If these were placed above the tsunami waters, we wouldn't be talking about this now.
Remember, these plants have been running for 40 years. There is much better technology today. There are also Thorium reactors, which we invented, and the Chinese have the wisdom to build for themselves. These plants are super safe.
Nuclear has to be part of the solution to the energy dilemma. Remember, there are those who want us (the serfs) to go back to a late 1800’s lifestyle.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/
The concept may have some potential, but at this point, there are some major technical issues that need to be overcome as well as finding a way to make the design commercially viable. One thing for sure, it is not some magic bullet.
“Okay,,, if the Brits were eatin’ Lampreys, they’re officially nutz!”
The pilgrims probably ate eel at the first Thanksgiving, too ;)
King Henry I of England is said to have died from eating “a surfeit of lampreys”.
Guess I’ll have to try them then! I’ve had Eel, just not Lampreys. Eels are really hard to clean, si I usually have the Chinese fish monger do that part.
When I was a kid at Boy Scout camp on Cape Cod, MA, someone caught an eel. We cleaned it, put it on a stick and cooked it over a campfire. It tasted like chicken.
Yeah, I’ve never had them, I just remember that they found remains of cooked eels when they did some dig at Plymouth Rock back in the 80’s or so. I tend to stay away from most seafood except fish, and I really don’t even like that much.
I go to the Chinese grocery for my fish. I can get Tilapia and eels live. They clean them, I eat ‘em! The good thing is, they don’t come from China, they come from Erie, Pa..
Yeah, seafood from China would be dodgy to say the least.
There’s a Philipino store near my work that carries all that stuff. I can smell the place from a block away if I’m downwind.
One thing I really like is that the fruit and veggies are abdo-lutely first class, and the prices are MUCH lower than in my local Giant Eagle.
I wish there was a safe way to process the waste. All we are doing now is stockpiling it. This stuff as is will be toxic for thousands of years. Just sayin’.
But expanding the grid to connect people and industry to rich, distant sources of ambient energy is also rejected by most of the greens who complained about the blog post I wrote last week in which I argued that nuclear remains safer than coal. What they want, they tell me, is something quite different: we should power down and produce our energy locally. Some have even called for the abandonment of the grid. Their bucolic vision sounds lovely, until you read the small print.Moonbat Monbiot couldn't care less about humanity's health. He's probably a Malthusian who wants more death anyhow. It's all about centralized control of energy, making masses dependent upon a few elite experts.
At high latitudes like ours, most small-scale ambient power production is a dead loss.
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