How they learned to stop worrying and love nuclear

New York Post ^ | June 9, 2013 | Kyle Smith

[presidio9]

‘Nobody can look you in the eye and say you shouldn’t be worried” about nuclear energy, says British environmentalist author Mark Lynas in the new documentary “Pandora’s Promise,” which opens Friday.

Lynas is shown putting on a hazmat suit and visiting the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, where three nuclear reactors melted down completely in 2011 after being ravaged by an earthquake and a tsunami. A huge area was evacuated due to the fear of radiation poisoning and cancer.

“There’s no other energy source that can do this,” Lynas says, referring to the fallout. As his radiation detector beeps madly, he says, “I would say I’m having a wobble.”

Who wouldn’t? Nuclear energy isn’t like coal or gas or oil or even wind turbines or solar panels. It’s complicated. To most of us, it’s opaque. And from the lonely bald man in Sector 7G on “The Simpsons” to “The China Syndrome,” the no-nukes movement and many environmental groups, the anti-nuke camp blasts us with the notion that nuclear power plants are going to give us cancer, poison our water, create demon mutant fish and, every so often, melt down catastrophically as thousands, maybe millions, die or are seriously sickened. Most of us simply don’t follow nuclear power closely enough to have an informed opinion about it. So we let the culture do the work for us.

And the culture is unanimous: Nuclear power is scary.

But we love our iPhones, each one of which (when you account for the harvesting of the materials that went into it, its production, the servers that feed it, etc.) uses as much energy as a refrigerator. The rich world keeps consuming more energy, and hundreds of millions in Brazil, India and China are joining the global middle class. Worldwide, energy use is projected to

[Kickass Conservative]

Now they will be shutting down the San Onofre Nuclear Plant.
Recent faulty (non radioactive) piping issues have doomed the Plant.

Since this is Commiefornia, the “activists’ have been licking their lips waiting for a reason to pounce.

It seems like yesterday when I watched them building the #2 and #3 Reactor Containment Domes, or as us locals refer to them, the perfect pair.

[Kevmo]

The future of nuclear power is LENR.

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/coldfusion/index

[Pontiac]

Germany, which has vowed to ditch nuclear power in an irrational post-Fukushima panic, has massively ramped up its solar usage (to about 5% of the country’s power) but is building huge coal plants to make up the difference.

Well I have nothing against coal but when was the last time Germany was hit by magnitude 9 Earth quake and 30 foot tsunami wave in the same day?

It seems a bit of an over reaction.

[aquila48]

I never thought I ‘d see the day when so called “enviromentalists” would accept reality and reason.

[kidd]

After the Fukushima meltdown, where the amount of radiation released into the air was about one-fifth that of Chernobyl, George Monbiot, another environmental writer with a huge following, pointed out in The Guardian: “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.”

“Atomic energy,” Monbiot continues, “has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.”

I disagree with Monbiot on one aspect. Fukushima had a big impact on the local population. They had to evacuate, and many may not be able to return for several years.

However, the nuclear industry has been given a huge case of lessons learned, without anyone dying.

Here in the US nealy every utility is investigating and implementing alternate cooling sources. The program is called FLEX, and it is huge. Each plant is identifying local, alternate cooling sources, and how the plant will have to operate with these other non-optimal water sources. They are also identifying, and purchasing, portable deisel generators that can be made available to a plant within a matter of hours.

[Leto]

Well these were second Gen plants, all the first and second gen nuclear plants need to be phased out for the safer 4th gen plants.

The real solution is Thorium plants with some 4th Gen breeder reactors to ‘feed’ the Thorium plants.

Until someone solves the Fusion Problem. Lockheed Skunks works thinks they will have a Fusion reactor ready to go by 2017. If they are correct the rest is mute.

[presidio9]

I am an enviornmentalist who listens to reality and reason. This is what one looks like.

Among other things I accept that nuclear power is the obvious best answer to the necessary evil fact that ALL energy sources change the enviorment. Including wind power.

[TArcher]

I am an enviornmentalist who listens to reality and reason. This is what one looks like.

"enviorment"
"enviornmentalist "

 

LOL -- What does one who can spell environment look like?

[presidio9]

Please refer to the third line of my home page:

Spelling corrections are not to be confused with relevant points.

[TArcher]

LOL.

[presidio9]

LOL.

Also not a point.

You're two for two on this thread.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

If they can just get it to work.

[TArcher]

>>Also not a point.

LOL++

And now you’ve got two.

[presidio9]

Correction, not points. Now you're Oh for three.

[Cyber Liberty]

Hey...is there a hockey game about to break out here?

[presidio9]

All I know is some wierdo ramdomly appeared on this important thread to talk about typos. Make sense of it if you can. I can not.

[presidio9]

I suppose it bugs me particularly that I about six times a year I post an intelligently written article about nuclear power and it is always one of the least trafficed threads. This is one of the subjects we should be talking about MOST on this website. It is a winning political issues for us if conservatives would take the time to understand the facts thoroughly and educate their neighbors on it.

[Cyber Liberty]

I agree with you, but the opposition to nukes is religious-like, as with the AGW fans. There are promising plans like the Thorium or pebble-bed reactors I’d like to see more press for. Not going to dismiss LENR out of hand either, I just want to see what develops.

[presidio9]

People are terrified of nuclear energy because they don't have all the relevant facts. The way to change that is to start repeating them.

When I explained the actual death figures at Three Mile Island, Cherynoble, and Fukishima to my liberal co-workers, at first they refused to believe me. But they generally listen to me, because I pick my spots and respect their opinions, no matter how wrong they are. So when I came back at them with hard numbers, from sources they respect (the NY Times, for instance) they began to see things differently. The fringe benefit of dealing with liberals this way is that they begin to wonder what else they don't have the whole story on.

All I'm saying is that when you are dealing with people who have been brainwashed into believing they have to be obsessed with CO2 levels in order to be good citizens, this is a natural place to start.