I’m unsure Mexico would be interested in becoming the US’s nuclear dumping ground.
Equally, US doesn’t want unsecured nuclear materal. There’s enough sleepless nights over Pakistan.
Or does the OP consider that US power utilities would bring the spent rods into the US for preprocessing and/or safe storage?
Grayson is about the only one you might consider a legit source and even his reporting lacks facts. The articles are sensationalist reporting, the kind that is common in your country, especially regarding Mexico. The articles themselves say there are “rumors” of this type of activity.
It is odd but not surprising how some participants on this thread, who obviously know nothing other than what they read in the American press and even then extremely dubious and shaded sources, post such negativity. Mexico has had an operational nuclear plant for many years without incident. Can the US make that claim?
You know, you actually managed to get me angry. That was one of the least thought through arguments I’ve seen on this board.
OF COURSE the USA has maintained a number of nuclear plants without incident, as you very well know. Your implication to sway the possibly ignorant is shameful. The biggest radioactive leak in America was at Three Mile Island, and that’s been calculated as probably not causing one death in any manner. Here’s a list. I used that detective tool called Google. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/nuke1.html
According to you KTSM, an NBC affiliate, and God help us, the Houston Chronicle are not worthy of your consideration. In fact, the whole American press corps is not worth discussing. In fact, anything negative is apparently close to libel.
Ooh, ooh, I found the story I had mentioned. It’s a thrill to show you this, considering.
In Mexico's drug battle, the public is missing in action
How about the L.A. Times again: In Mexico, Vigilantism Rises on Surge of Crime, Public Disgust
The Huffington Post:Vigilante Justice Spreads Across Mexico | HuffPost The World Post
Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1880450,00.html
NPR: Mexico's Drug Violence Gives Rise To Vigilantism : NPR
Reuters: Shadow of vigilantes appears in Mexico drug war | Reuters
Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/id/56087
Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583232,00.html
GlobalPost.com: Vigilante justice spreads across Mexico | The World from PRX
Associated Press: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/mexico/Bodies_dumped_with_vigilante_warnings_in_Mexico.html
ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=9586598
It’s obvious that you don’t want to face some facts about Mexico. I wish I could love the place, but the plain situation is that for quite a variety of reasons, you’ve got a country that people are almost literally dying to leave. That sucks. It sucks that the government is so ineffectual, and by most accounts, corrupt. I thought the American government stank, but at least the corruption is kept to a dirty little secret most of the time.
Just don’t tell me I’m wrong about facts that can be discovered by anyone with access to Google. That’s all I used.
Mexico cartels post ‘help wanted’ ads
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-24-mexicocartels_N.htm
It is very simple. Wired is talking about Uranium-235, which is only 3% of natural uranium. U-235 is the only naturally occurring fissile isotope. If you build a breeder reactor, then you can convert Uranium-238 to Plutonium and burn the Plutonium for fuel or any of the other actinides created.
This is not only vastly more efficient, but destroys the long half life actinides and the Plutonium and only leaves short half life fission products.
Breeder reactors do involve a higher capital cost, so there hasn’t been much of an incentive to build them while U-235 is still cheap and common, but the technology has been proven in breeders build in the U.S. and Russia.
Thorium is a similar deal, but there the path is Thorium-232 to Uranium-233 which is fissile. Thorium is much more common than Uranium and U-233 is much harder to make into a weapon than Pu-239.
You can read up on any of the things I mentioned in Wikipedia. Obviously things are much more complicated than what my outline covers.
Let’s take the link from ABC as an example, something they pulled from a wire service. Hardly investigative reporting. The dead were victims of the notorious “la Familia” , a drug cartel with a strange philosophy. They will manufacture and sell drugs but will not tolerate drug use by its members nor any crime within their area. They are also known to be very staunch Catholics. They view themselves as the “good guys”. Hardly determined common citizens bent on restoring the order of law to the area.
Here is a link to a Mexican newspaper : http://www.milenio.com/node/371372
Here is a link that explains the situation and position of the mayor of San Pedro Garza García, the NPR link barely scratches the surface of that story:
http://www.reportebrainmedia.com/content/mauricio-y-su-pacto-con-los-beltran-leyva
During his campaign he declared a pact with the Beltran Leyva family, who control his political jurisdiction. In his words they are the “least bad” because they do not kidnap!
Now when your exalted US press can cover the news here in a more thorough manner instead of just bits and pieces aimed at sensationalism you will get a more complete and honest picture of what is truly happening. Then you can talk of “facts”.
Look, I’ll leave this alone now, but you’re making my point for me.
Yeah right. You have a subjective, Americancentric point of view. Look at the uncalled for México bashing in this thread. This is the type of rhetric far too common when people in the US are discussing México. You know only what your press publishes and accept it blindly.
A legit concern in these South and Central American countries is that this international company comes in, spends millions or billions in building things, and then the country has issues and the government nationalizes their investment. Poof.
Happened in Mexico for the oil companies, in fact:
From Wiki, my bolding: [
](Uranium - Wikipedia)
So no, there is not really only 100 years of reserves. Hell, there’s enough uranium sitting in South Africa’s gold mine dumps for several decades of use, at least.
Just for the record, México is neither a South or Central American country.
And also FTR, electrical power generation is already owned and operated by the government, the Comisión Federal de Electricidad, so they won’t be nationalizing it any time soon.
Wired is talking about cheap uranium ores. In any sample of uranium you find, it is approximately 0.7% U-235 (not 3%, btw). It is enriched to about 3-4% for light water reactors, 20-90% for bombs or not at all for heavy water reactors like the CANDU design. When the cheap ore is played out, there will be a market for more expensive ore, seawater extraction or extraction from ordinary rock.
Incidentally, breeder reactors are more efficient in terms of using fuel, but they are not economically efficient. This is the real reason there is no great impetus to develop them, not politics, environmentalism or proliferation concerns.
While thorium is indeed more common in the earth’s crust than uranium (by a factor of three, if memory serves), ores are not evenly distributed around the world. I believe India is the world leader which has led to more active research into the thorium cycle in that country.
FWIW,
Rob
I’m beginning to wonder if this is coming down to the definition of “vigilante”. It means that the common people are taking it upon themselves to murder/arrest the “bad guys.” In the scenario you present the victims are in your own words the bad guys. I agree that they are “hardly determined common citizens bent on restoring the order of law to the area.” They’re the bad guys being murdered by the common folk.
You have completely misunderstood. There is a cartel in the state of Michocan known as “la Familia”. You do know what a drug cartel is? They are the bad guys. But they also frown upon other bad guys commiting other types of crime within their area. They even punish any of their members caught using drugs. They are the ones that killed the criminals (the rateros in one of your reports). They have some kind of perverted image of themselves as the good guys.
To be fair, I did misread that part.
Now, what about the stories about the billboards and the “psychic” mayor?
Assuming what he says is true, it’s a case of members of one cartel being killed by members of another, not common folk.
St Augustine has once observed that there is no fundamental difference between a “gang” and a “State” - they are both essentially armed groups that extort money from the populace in order to spend it the way they feel like. He argued that the difference was a matter of degree and dependent of the particular organization’s following of “justice” principle. And like we like to say nowadays, justice is often in the eyes of the beholder.
Anyway, so those cartels who advertise for members openly sound like on their way to transition towards a local mini “state”. And perhaps in their own way they are more “just” than some existing “states”, like the one led by capo-regime Robert Mugabe.
But one way or the other, delenda est Carthago and we do need more nuclear plants :-). Whether you are ruled by a state, a gang or a mix of them, cheap electricity is still a nice thing to have.
You almost have it. While inter-cartel killings are rampant, in the case of Michoacan and la Familia ,besides the blood fueds with other cartels they enforce their own set of rules on individual criminals who rob or steal. I understand that the links I posted were in Spanish and possibly not understood by posters on this thread but the articles are about these types of “vigilante” justice by la Familia.
I said that I misread your post about that particular “vigilante” killing, but you’ve not responded to several of my points. I want to point this out to anyone still following this thread.
I had already posted a link to the story of the mayor and his pact with the Beltan Leyva cartel.
The billboards? What about them? What is your point? Because a drug gang puts up a billboard (which is immediately removed) means that México is incapable of building nuclear power plants?
Do gangs in Los Angeles paint their messages in graffiti? Can the police there stop them?
You started this by posting your opinion based on oversimplified and sensationalist reporting in the US press. Your stories tried to show some kind of movement towards vigilante justice against the drug cartels. The mayor near Monterrey, eevn if he wanted, doesn’t have the resources to pursue such a goal. Private citizens even less. If the federal governments of both México AND the US cannot defeat the cartels, are you so naive to believe that ordinary citizens will rise against them?