Oh I agree. I get tired of hearing “wind turbines kill birds” and similar nonsense. I suspect many of them want us to just wear loincloths and make love to trees before committing collective suicide so nature can continue its ultimately meaningless purposelessness.
So what we’re saying here is when we are led to believe the hippy protesters are screwing up progress it’s really just ultra-rich globalized corporations attacking each other to protect their own profits and market share and making it look like it’s the hippy protesters.
Yes. I would rather have nukes than coal, I’d rather use uranium than natural gas, but if you cut corners, or you keep them up too long, or you’re just unlucky enough to be at ground zero of a big quake—or possibly even a powerful tornado?—you’ll regret that nuke plant, and so will everyone within 100 miles.
To those talking about fusion, you need to understand that cold fusion isn’t happening. But solar power exists, and it is essentially an existing fusion reactor we can tap.
The rest of the solution is large energy storage batteries. Batteries to store energy from fossil fuels would have been silly and wasteful. But if we’re just grabbing free solar output, then large overnight energy storage systems start to make more sense than running a gas plant alongside.
As opposed to wearing acrylic faux-fur and making love to latex dolls in between obliterating entire habitats so more humans can live to continue their meaningless purposelessness?
I’m in California. This plant, like San Onofre reactor, are going dead because it’s impossible to bring them up to modern safety standards because they are too old, not because of them damn hippies. Without getting into the whole deal about the decontamination issues rendering these nuclear zits on our coast for, basically, forever, California will never have another nuclear plant. It isn’t up to me, you don’t need my permission. There simply is no place to build one. We have no major rivers or lakes. Nuke plants need a lot of cold water. Lake Tahoe Nuclear Generating Station anyone? That leaves the coast. The very seismically active beautiful California coast. Put them in Florida. They got water. What could possibly go wrong?
I was indeed replying to your point. you were wrong in assuming that to get electricity to that quarter that they will be forced to get that electricity mainly by using fossil fuels.
Uh, that is the price to pay, but as pointed many times before in past conversations, it is when big industry is committed to apply the changes it usually makes the change cheaper to all rather than the haphazard point/accusation that individuals should change first.
Well one thing that many in discussions like this seem to fall (and there was a very notorious poster that demonstrated how he missed the changes and afford-ability that solar power is unlocking) is to not look at the changes that are happening right now.
I do think that nuclear will play a part on stopping a lot of the carbon emissions in the future, alongside solar and wind power… but I would not be surprised that when battery technology catches up to make that nuclear part an item that is not 100% necessary.
Let me clarify, you’re contending I said something I didn’t and arguing against whatever makeup point you want to believe I’ve made. The people aren’t just going to show up at the power plants with baskets to carry home the electricity they need for the day. They’ll need a thing called an “electrical distribution network”. Not only is that expensive to build, that aluminum has a scrap value … you’re going to have to guard the grid. If the winds doesn’t blow at night, then there is no electricity … because I know you’re not suggesting we build a nuclear power plant anywhere close to areas of Boko Haram control.
Real poverty, my friend, the likes the industrialize world hasn’t seen since WWII.
My mother remembers when her childhood home finally got electricity, one outlet in the living room ceiling. Grandpa had to drive 75 miles in an old Ford Model T to buy an electric iron for grandma, that’s all they could afford.
I was correct indeed, you are not aware of what is going on, starting with your old fashion “electrical distribution network” that misses how technology is advancing. The leapfrog that is being seen on places that had no electricity until recently does not depend on that.
Related to that, a lot of people are getting access to cell phones (or we should say, computers now) and developing countries do not need to put costly wire for hundreds of miles to communicate with each other. The future is less expensive to build and harder to take down BTW.
One and a half billion people in the world have no access to electric power … cell phones and laptops won’t work. These people burn wood for cooking, clear cutting their forests. Now if you want to cry “bullshit” on the citation, please make your case. The ten million in your cite is less than 1% the need, I’m not impressed. Are they all still cooking with wood?
The carbon pollution problem is strictly from the industrialized world … I have enough compassion in my heart to allow the desperately poor a little pollution to feed their children. When there’s a solar panel on every house in Europe, North America and China … then we’ll worry about Africa and the rest of Asia.
Europe, North America and China will have to change their lifestyles … please don’t expect industry to lead the way.
You are only repeating the problem like if would deny what I pointed out.
Again the repeated incantation of the problem does not magically make others ignore the solutions that are being considered or going on, even if you do not want to see it. And you are moving the goal post here, you were talking about the developing nations.
Sorry, I will because it happened when dealing with acid rain, ozone depletion, phosphorous algae growth in rivers and lakes, and although prodded along with government action in the following and mentioned items, also the current water works in our developed cities.
What individuals do is important, but it is not the main reason for wide range changes seen in the past.
That’s my point, nothing more nothing less … you’re free to argue to the wind about anything you’d like … CO[sub]2[/sub] is safer than Cs[sup]137[/sup] in the atmosphere.
How strange that instead of realizing you were just a bit wrong on the issue of developing nations being forced to create wired networks or reach for coal to deliver electricity to all you instead demand a strawman out of me. I’m not opposed to nuclear power and Cecil is talking there about what developed nations should do, not what undeveloped ones should.
(and common sense would tell us already that all those megatons of cables and towers that are not needed to be build are also making a dent in costs for developing nations and their emissions)
As pointed before your point is a straw man. Nothing less. You were wrong about developing nations being forced to use coal or other fossil fuel to develop. Technology transfers need to be accelerated to minimize the use of coal and other fossil fuels in the developing world and in the developed one Nuclear power should complement solar and wind that, as pointed before, there have been recent breakthroughs that Cecil did not know about.
You can’t fit a single reactor in all of California?
My disagreement with anti-nukers was summed up by tim314:
I understand that nuclear power is not 100% safe but it’s still better than all the other (current) alternatives. People who don’t understand the distinction just don’t understand the science.
