The high cost of energy is the Democrats' fault

[ralph124c]

We have me the enemy, and he is…us!

[Bosstone]

Who needs rockets? One word: Railgun. Point and click, and that waste container gets launched.

Added thought: It would be smart to build the railgun, but store the waste containers. When the aliens finally invade, we have ammunition. Just a thought.

[SmartAleq]

Hey, don’t even think about ruling out solar power. Photovoltaic isn’t the only way to go, y’know.

Wind power, tide power–it’s all useful and the only real objections to it are esthetic; squawking from rich fucks who don’t wanna see any infrastructure out their panoramic windows on the beach…

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@chorpler

Both, essentially – it’s too expensive and risky. On the risk side, putting spent radioactive fuel on top of a giant tube full of explosives and then lighting them off is clearly just not politically feasible – even if you put all the waste in practically indestructible containers, if the rocket blows up it scatters those containers who knows where, potentially making the material available to terrorists. Or even to idiots or tinkerers who just want to take a peek.

Plus, those indestructible containers are probably pretty heavy, significantly reducing the payload of waste you can lift on a single rocket, making it more expensive.

And heck, there’s always the chance that we could develop some new technology that turns today’s waste into valuable fuel.

Which doesn’t even address the problem of having dozens of unguided canisters of radioactive material drifting around in space, bumping into satellites and what not.

[dropzone]

@Digital Stimulus

For instance, from Richard Viguerie, whom I believe is a fairly well-known conservative and has some pull in some circles. There’s a fairly succinct bullet-point list that I’ll quote in full:

Hmmm, first, it takes a pretty solid denial of the anthropogenic aspect of global warming to think that mining and burning more oil, gas, and coal is much of a solution to anything, especially when even our buds, the Saudis, tell us that supply is meeting demand and that high gas prices are because of other things, like our screwed up economy, but Viguerie doesn’t seem to have a problem with that.

Second, are we actually that low on refinery capacity? Yeah, Katrina caused problems, but I was under the impression that oil companies operate under the same economic laws as the rest of us and only built enough refineries to meet demand.

[Baldwin]

Probably a stupid question – can you get any useful energy out of reactor waste with a thermocouple?

[OtakuLoki]

How do you define useful energy?

Here’s the Wikipedia article on Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, which seems to be, at root, a thermocouple providing a constant electrical power supply with little to no supervision. However, at the same time, the Wikipedia article says that typical power outputs from such things is measured in hundreds of watts. Which is a fairly low-level power supply for terrestrial purposes.

[Throatwarbler_Mangrove]

Hmm, I came in here to mention the nuclear lighthouses.

I mean, think about it - nuclear fucking lighthouses! An exncapsulation of everything good and great about the USSR.

[elucidator]

Be OK, so long as they are not located near water.

[Suse]

Can I send my buddy Bob Latta to you guys for some schooling?