Isn’t that something of a false dichotomy? How does concern for climate change intersect with concern about long term storage and wide-scale transportation of nuclear waste?
We’ll let you know when the subject turns to greenhouse gooses.
Because if you really believe that CO2 is causing GW, and that cutting CO2 will, perhaps, mitigate that warming, then the only technology currently available that can scale up to the levels currently filled by coal is nuclear. Compared to what folks are saying will happen if the planet continues it’s warming trend (and assuming it’s humans doing the warming), long term storage and transport of nuclear waste is spit in a hurricane.
-XT
Not just coal, but all fossil fuels.
True, but cutting down on coal fired power plants, and the associated CO2 is both a short term (well, medium term, considering how long it takes to build nuke plants) thing we can do NOW, plus it will help us later as we transition to some new personal transport technology (hybrids, EV’s, fuel cells, magic ponies, etc). If the US alone could cut our coal fired plants in half, this would be a significant reduction in CO2…and if Europe were to do the same, we would almost be able to reduce enough to compensate for China and India’s increasing reliance on coal…
-XT
Well, just to add in the minority report…me and mine, we been bitching about this shit for years. Forty years in my case, from when I was first old enough to know everything. Back then, we were being told that nukes were really, really great for pretty much the same reasons, and that crack teams were working on a solution for that pesky radwaste thingy. Gonna process it, gonna entomb it, gonna shoot it into space…
Hows that working out, by the way? Need another forty? Or so?
The problem isn’t quite so much using energy as squandering it. And the answer isn’t replacing the energy to waste, the answer is to stop wasting the energy. Will that mean some change. Yep, you betcha, we may have to abandon the American dream of turning everything we can get our hands on into loud, shiny crap and seventeen varieties of cat food. Me, I got no problem with that, the rest of you are a little slow on the uptake.
Its better for an alcoholic to drink brand-name Scotch whiskey rather than Mad Dog 20/20. Still an alcoholic.
After 40 years of obstructionism, law suits, protests, foot dragging, etc etc etc, by the anti-nuclear crowd? Gee, I don’t know…
I guess holding onto the fears of the past is more important than trying to solve this vast problem now though, so I guess we are stuck with hoping this whole Global Warming thingy isn’t too bad after all, because you are right…it will be 40 more years, and the same amount of stubborn stupidity and fear, and we’ll still be right where we are today wrt nuclear energy.
I wish you all the luck in the world getting people to stop wasting energy. I think it’s a good idea, at least in theory…I just don’t think, realistically, that it’s ever going to add up to a significant amount of energy savings to balance CO2 production. Do you have a ball park for how much this could possibly save us? A WAG? And what would it cost? My understanding is the biggest ‘waste’ area is in the infrastructure itself…and it would take hundreds of billions of dollars and decades to overhaul that to a degree that would make a big difference (and I don’t know that transmission technology that will significantly reduce loss is really ready for prime time either, at least not yet).
Well, I drink brand named Scotch whiskey (single malt of course, preferably 15 year old or older), and I’m not an alcoholic. I’m unsure what you are hoping to show with this analogy, however. Unless you believe that somehow you can get society to give up on this whole ‘energy’ thingy as a bad idea and go back to living in caves, I don’t see how it works…after all, an alcoholic who takes even a sip of alcohol is off the wagon again…
-XT
Well, speaking for myself, I think it is ridiculous to oppose nuclear power so please pick a smaller brush instead of the broad one next time.
Seriously…if you don’t oppose nuclear power, how would you be painted with the ‘anti-nuclear crowd’ brush? Makes no sense to me, but perhaps you could explain…?
-XT