Motive? Probably not. The results if you get your way? Certainly.
And I notice that you carefully avoid actually trying to counter the arguments of the other side. You just make exaggerated speeches about how awful nuclear is, and don’t even acknowledge the existence the problems of the alternatives.
No, he was referring to the “people of the State of Nevada” so to speak. And so was I. And not the left, but the anti-nuke crowd.
Cecil investigated it as well, and found little evidence for allegations of massive cancer deaths. The China (Flats) Syndrome: Was there a reactor meltdown in Southern California? - The Straight Dope
Magnetism?
To transport it? 7.42% is an incredible quantity?
I don’t know if you’re being intentionally obtuse and dishonest. I very clearly stated that the risk of disaster was a very minor argument against nuclear power, mentioned two major and three other minor reasons. What I came back to in my reply was the trivialization of the Chernobyl disaster. It’s not something to be flippant about. It’s incredibly disrespectful. The fact that I happen to have personal experience of the victims does not influence my opinion on the seperate issue of modern nuclear power very much. I still see the reactor safety issue as being of less importance than price and renewability when evaluating nuclear viability.
Frankly I’m not really against the US investing in more nuclear power. The more the US invests, the less viable the option will be to my country. And a reactor will last for 50 years or more, meaning that while the US is locked into its energy strategy for the forseeable future, other nations will leap ahead w/r/t renewable energy sources. I’m hoping my nation happens to be the one to take the lead on this.
I was involved with an NGO Belarus effort to collect relief for these orphanages about ten years ago. My opinion on this matter is based on experience, not articles or studies so I have no cites for you.
And your data was a bunch of “won’t someone think of the children” propaganda that folks have pointed out is greatly exaggerated, if not outright wrong.
You name just about anything and I can find a bunch of depressing photos of maimed, dead, or parentless children or dead or maimed adults that were the result of “it”.
There is nothing special or sacred about Chernobyl misery. And in the big picture human misery wise its about in the noise.
“You guys” are like argueing with my grandmother. One of her favorite phrases was “I am not going to argue with you” immediately followed by arguing.
You guys always bring up Chernobyl. We point out how its not nearly as bad as pop culture would have you believe. It was a horrible design nobody in the West would even consider, much less build, that something on that scale is a virtual impossibility (hell, the Russians couldnt have made it worse if they had tried), and even then its not even that bad compared to lots of supposedly safer technologies (if not actually safer).
Then you guys begrudgingly go “Okay, its not really about Chernobyl, its about something else…”
Then, when the nuclear debate comes up again (if not just five minutes later in the same debate), the first damn thing outa your mouths is “But Chernobyl!” followed by the same crap/ignorance we dispelled last time/five minutes ago.
The main issues to me are still price and lack of sustainability. Nuclear power is expensive and not renewable. Cheap and not renewable is ok. Expensive and renewable is ok. Expensive and not renewable is not OK. Nobody has (yet) claimed that it is renewable, so that is yet to be dispelled. The financial cost is also not ‘dispelled’. It’s expensive, centralised and on a massive scale.
I don’t know what you mean when you say “You guys”. I am saying that being flippant about the victims of Chernobyl is disrespectful, and you’re being a cunt about it.
Not cool.
This is not helpful, billfish678. Please leave out the personal comments.
And this is against the rules. Don’t insult other posters unless you’re in the Pit, Stoneburg. This is a formal warning not to do this again.
I apologize, Billfish, it’s an emotional subject for me but I shouldn’t have said that.
This is something that always baffles me about these debates. There’s this assumption going around that Energy Production is zero-sum–EITHER we invest in nukes OR we go full renewable OR we drill. Why is this? Why does everyone think that if a country starts building nuclear plants, they can’t invest in solar? Or in reducing energy consumption? It’s doubly ridiculous, because a combinatorial solution is almost certainly the best way to go. Without significant improvements that we don’t know about yet, nothing scales up like coal or nuclear. But neither are renewable. Furthermore, every energy consumption method costs resources, reducing total consumption would help any plan. Meanwhile, aid and education programs can lower population growth worldwide. And of course, further technological research gets us closer to those dreams of Nuclear Fusion, and the grand-daddy pipe dreams of free-energy and matter transformation units. And then we build spaceships and fill them with middle-aged guys wearing sweaters and rubber ears. Or something. You get the idea. There’s no reason to commit to THE ONE TRUE [del]FAITH[/del] energy system.
Again, I can’t take US Americans seriously when they talk about wanting nuclear power to be absolutely safe, when they don’t give the tiniest rat’s ass about how unsafe driving is. 42,000 dead Americans every single year means nothing, but the thought of a single accident in a nuclear plant drives everyone into a froth? There’s a disconnect here that I’m just not getting.
It is that nuclear is so damn expensive and well connected politically, that the real energies of the future will be ignored. Perhaps the idea of a huge plant is obsolete. We may have solar panels and other forms of energy at every home someday. GE won’t like that.
Not just Chernobly. There have been 9 partial meltdown in America and we are pretty stringent on our requirements. If I listed the near misses and other incidents ,you would have a big list to manage. California built a plant right on a fault line for instance.
The Fermi plant had a partial meltdown and never got up to full power. Is that settled technology in your book?
On one hand people argue that Chernobly was due to Russia not having stringent rules. Then others argue that our rules make plants more expensive and harder to construct. You can not win. They want us to be more lax so we can build them quicker. But of course make them perfectly safe. Nice trick.
I think it’s a lack of trust of the industry - there are cases of illegal dumping of waste, for example. Nuclear can be safe when the proper regulations are upheld, but can be dangerous if the plant is run by people who are incompetent, lazy, into excessive cost-cutting, or people with malicious intent. The potential for a serious incident appears much higher than with coal, or any renewable source.
The main problem is high level waste - if some of it lasts 10,000 years, imagine how much waste we will have produced by the time the first bit is safe. It may be a short term solution until we can find a clean energy solution, but unless we can figure a way to eliminate the waste problem, its ridiculous to think we can just keep burying it forever.
If people had lifespans of ten thousand years, I don’t think we’d be ruining the planet the way we are. But we’ll all be dead, so who cares if we wreck the world for our descendants?
Excuse me, but how is nuclear waste (exhausted fuel) any worse that uranium ore and radium in the ground already?
The Yucca Mountain site is deep underground, and the caskets containing the waste are damn near unbreakable. The really deadly stuff decays away in a few decades, which leaves the long-lived alpha emitters. The radiation from these is blocked by a few inches of rock.
Moreover, the tunnels containg the waste could be reopened, and the waste removed at a furure time.
Really, you are more at risk from the naturally occuring radoon gas (present in areas with granite bedrock) than from any (next to impossible) leakage from a secure site like Yucca Mountain.
Oops. I was just looking quickly for the highest number of attributable deaths and mis-read it. Your correction makes my original point stronger. 
An estimated two million people die every year from air pollution. Coal-fired plants are likely one of the biggest contributors of this. Why aren’t you trying to shut down coal plants?
It’s better than sticking shit into the atmosphere, which is what we currently do.
If it’s so well connected politically, how come it’s been 14 years since the last commercial reactor was built? Your argument reminds me of those conspiracy theories that rely on a shadowy organisation competent enough to run everything, but incompetent enough to blow their cover.
There is a middle ground between “don’t build any nuclear power plants, ever again” and “build shoddy plants based on inferior designs and manned by morons”, you know.
How many people have died as a result of these alleged meltdowns in the US? Dozens of Americans die every year from coal mining.
And it’s Chernobyl.
Regards,
Shodan