Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time
I was but a babe when the Atomic Age began -- babe in the infant sense, babe -- and a mere tot when the decision was made to tame the mighty atom. Viewed from this distance, Atoms for Peace (as the taming project was called) seems impossibly wrongheaded, an invitation to mischief, suspicions of mischief and mischievous suspicions of mischief.
Atoms for Peace, announced with grandiose fanfare by President Eisenhower, was the launching of the civilian nuclear-power industry. No longer was the split atom to be the symbol only of hideous warfare on a scale unimaginable to humans before Hiroshima; now our smiling atomic friend was to power the all-electric homes of our future, a cheerful accomplice to nothing more threatening than Westinghouse and General Electric. Better yet, countries that cowered in fear of our nuclear might would soon become happy customers of our nuclear bounty.
Flash forward half a century, and both Iran and, more recently, Syria stand as testimony to the lunatic flaw in that strategy. If the same technology, embodied in the same infrastructure, can be used either (or both) for peace and war, one's ability to detect preparations for war is seriously, if not fatally, compromised. And a country which intends nothing more than the ego boost (and power boost) of a civilian nuke plant may not mind a bit of vagueness about whether the centrifuge array can enrich to greater than three percent, the way Saddam didn't mind a bit of vagueness about his capabilities, just to keep the nasty neighbors in check. When the vagueness proves to be, or can be used to seem, truly threatening, as we learned in 2003, it can be too late for all concerned.
How much easier this current moment would have been if nukes were weapons of war, period. Of course, then we wouldn't be looking at a nearly $60 billion bill for the country's only high-level nuclear waste disposal facility, Yucca Mountain, years away from opening, and only a couple of decades from closing, having reached its storage capacity. Then, while the Mountain only has to protect its contents for the next several thousand years (warning signs are to be erected in less than a dozen current human languages -- save your dictionaries, folks), our mid-century quest will be for the next storage site, and the next.
But how much easier life on the world stage would be, as well. Indonesia wouldn't at this very moment be contemplating nuclear plants near the site of active volcanoes, and A.Q. Khan might be far better known (and perhaps even prosecuted) as a lunatic rogue threat to world peace, having sold or given nuclear knowhow and technology to, among others, Libya, North Korea and Iran, from his position as the father of Pakistan's A-bomb.
Atoms for Peace allowed everything to be fudged. We just need a clean source of electricity, the plant-builders say. They're hiding their true intentions, the war-mongers say.
And we, trapped in the great middle, can just say, "Thanks a lot, Ike. Next life, try promoting Heroin for Peace."
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"Flash forward half a century, and both Iran and, more recently, Syria stand as testimony to the lunatic flaw in that strategy."
Oh, how?
Are you saying they aren't allowed to produce electricity from nuclear materials?
Or are you saying that since they didn't get permission from Israel and the U S A they aren't entitled to the economic benefits of clean cheap energy?
HARRY RESPONDS: Neither. I'm saying it's neither clean nor cheap, when you factor in all the environmental costs, and the vagueness of the technology--which often can be "dual use"--feeds the creation of tension. No one would use the building of a coal plant as an excuse to attack Iran.
The laugh of all this manure heap is that Israel has been given the technology and materiel to produce and hoard 350-400 nuclear bombs, right out of Dimona. And you are absolutely crazy if you trust those Israelis who happen to be at the extreme right end of their spectrum, the Likudniks
FRANCE Nuclear Energy experiment:
To say that France is dependent on nuclear energy would be an understatement. Over 35% of France’s total energy requirement and over 78% of French electricity demands are met by nuclear energy. In 1999, France generated 375 billion kWh of electricity from its fifty-eight pressurized water reactors currently in operation. The electrical generation capacity of these plants is 65,702 MWe. France also operates one fast reactor, which generates 250 MWe of energy1. Because of their large operation capacity, the French also export energy, mainly to the rest of Europe, roughly 72.1 TWh per year. This large amount of energy generation allows France to be more energy self-sufficient than most European countries. In fact, France is over 50% able to meet its own energy needs, an incredibly large percentage for a modernized, western country. In comparison, Italy is only 18% energy self-sufficient. This was one of the goals of the French Nuclear program, to decrease French dependence on foreign energy sources2.
Continue: http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/research/OPs/Pederson/html/contents/sect2.html
Civaux in southwestern France is a stereotypical rural French village with a square, a church and a small school. On a typical day, Monsieur Rambault, the baker, is up before dawn turning out baguettes and croissants. Shortly after, teacher Rene Barc opens the small school. There is a blacksmith, a hairdresser, a post office, a general store and a couple of bars. But overlooking the picturesque hamlet are two giant cooling towers from a nuclear plant, still under construction, a half-mile away. When the Civaux nuclear power plant comes on line sometime in the next 12 months, France will have 56 working nuclear plants, generating 76% of her electricity.
Continue: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reactio
n/readings/french.html
HARRY INQUIRES: And where, pray tell, is the waste? Might France be exporting it to one of her former African colonies? Or is it sitting in a cement-lined "temporary" pond just outside the picturesque village?
France chose the closed fuel cycle at the very beginning of its nuclear program, involving reprocessing used fuel so as to recover uranium and plutonium for re-use and to reduce the volume of high-level wastes for disposal. Recycling allows 30% more energy to be extracted from the original uranium and leads to a great reduction in the amount of wastes to be disposed of. Overall the closed fuel cycle cost is assessed as comparable with that for direct disposal of used fuel, and preserves a resource which may become more valuable in the future. Back end services are carried out by Areva NC.
Read more: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html
Scroll down to "Fuel Cycle: Back end"
Apparemtly France funds agences 24/7 working at dealing with WASTE effectively, less danger to the populace all the time. I think of it as science and a lab. Ultimately you come up with a cure for polio and AIDS. Or arrest the development so everybody can forever live a long life free from mutation or burning to a cinder.
But after all, look at the billions and billions of premature deaths oil/coal/fire brought us. Until we learned to control what we wrought eh. Big joke.
People make whatever source wars up nations like gold corrupts but fuels our progress overwhelming progress as our future is in more and more progress evermore, regardless the blistering skin cost to become really, really comfortable and safely human.
You didn't mention that all the research into disease prevention also led to bacterial and viral knowledge that allowed more efficient biological warfare.
There is no silver bullet right now to produce electricity cleanly.
But eventually the oil will run out...
Oil is seldom used to generate electricity; it's primarily used for heating and transportation. Natural gas is the most efficient and environmentally friendly fossil fuel for generating electricity. General Electric makes a combined-cycle natural gas generator that averages 61% well-to-grid efficiency. The U.S. electric grid, which is 55% coal-fired, averages 52% efficiency from the well.
We owe it to our planet to set a timeline for reaching 70% efficiency. We can incrementally improve our modern natural gas generation to get most of the way and supplement the rest with renewable energy sources.
I won't say it's silver bullet because of the initial cost, but photovoltaic and photothermal electric generation is clean and completely feasible. This country has millions and millions of acres of wide open space that are generously doused in radiant energy from the Sun. Further, this is the kind of high-tech, highly-automated manufacturing process that America is still good at. Making solar panels is a lot like making microprocessors, except much larger and simpler.
Yeah, and and using the heat from the molten earth's core to boil water to steam for turbine generators makes way more sense than all of these.
Geothermal energy, windfarms, solar panels. These are all good ideas. People have put up barriers to windfarms because of noise. Geothermal would not be cost effective ( and the rising cost of oil is?). And solar panels, they work best in the more open areas out west, but why not?
Oil and natural gas will run out. As long as we have the sun and the wind we will have alternatives. And considering Wyoming is a
seething caldera, why not use an available source
of heat and power, at least in the western US?
I was thinking into the future when plug in hybrid cars might replace the old gas guzzlers. I was in fact aware that around 50% of US electricity is generated from coal fired stations, but that at least is produced domestically.
I think the answers lie in increased efficiency of use and pursuit of many other production techniques including nuclear.
Remember back when the national dialogue was all about how congested the cities were with all the horses and livestock we had in our urban centers? Or who was going to pay for all those train stations we were building in the modern future cities of our nation, cities like Cincinati, OH, and DeBuque Iowa! Of course you don't...and one day we won't remember this constant hubbub over energy. What is going to happen is a revolution in energy production where it will, like the old saw goes, be too cheap to meter. It will be hydrogen fusion, it will be essentially non-radioactive, and it will provide for our planet an option to get the worst of our industrial activities off the planet where exposure to gravity, oxygen and people cause so many problems for so many of our essential systems on the planet. The perfect place to make steel though is only 100 miles from Gary Indiana...straight up.
Free non-polluting energy won't solve all our problems and will cause quite a few others,just like the invention of fire, or agriculture or almost free and ubiquitous computing power and memory (which not long ago were also very limited and very expensive). The trick will be getting to the future and in order to do this it takes an intelligent perspective, but forget that crap...what's up with Katie Couric and OJ and Britaney? Nothing? Well, keep watching.
Cold fusion works. This much is now irrefutable. The first problem is that we don't understand exactly why or how it works. This complicates the analysis of the second problem, which is that sometimes it doesn't work. There is obviously some missing piece of the puzzle, and solving it would go a lot quicker if the academic establishment wasn't so opposed to studying unexplained phenomena.
That's just the cold fusion cells, which actually produce tritium and helium from what we can only assume is the fusion of hydrogen in water. There are all sorts of other free energy devices that harness the resonant energy of empty space, the quantum vacuum. These "zero-point" energy cells are remarkably effective. They've been known to produce 1000 times as much power as they are supplied and continue to do so for many hours after the input electricity is cut.
As I said before, the central problem with these devices is that there are several competing theories for how they work, and none of them have made any significant headway in the mainstream scientific community. Academia is inclined to conclude that since we can't explain this anomalous energy output, it must not actually exist.
Yes, the ability to harness large amounts of energy necessitates a certain kind of responsibility that I'm not sure we possess. This was a troubling issue for Nikola Tesla, who saw that his revolutionary energy devices would be exploited for military purposes before they would be allowed to benefit humanity. It's somehow inevitable that any revolutionary energy source will be used to build weapons before it is used to power civil society.
until congress figures out how to rip off the people with new energy sources we won't get them if we could get something to run on hot air we could make a fortune in Washington. they can't agree on anything well, keep taking bribes from lobbyists, the computer has allowed us to see where the money trail leads remove their self appointed pay raises, remove their health care, level the playing field give them the Average Weekly Pay of an American worker. then maybe they will do the job they have been elected for, if not in November we will elect another group of crooks.
As to cold fusion, several years ago i was at a Seth Conference in Louisville Ky where I met Marcel Vogel a top scientist for IBM who worked with liquid crystals. He had a session with John
and at that time he revealed that he had come into possession of a piece of a ufo taken by the government and they had given his two small pieces of the craft to determine what kind of metal it was as it was totally unfamiliar to their scientists. Vogel said he examined it and was stunned to see that it was made through a
cold fusion process that was unknown on earth.
He said that after some time the metal pieces disappeared but he was adamant as to their
being made from a cold fusion process.
I hope you are right about cold-fusion.
Your "Tesla" zero point energy source is tapping electricity out of the earth's magnetic field which (given that it is our radiation shield against the fatal blast of particles and x-rays coming from the sun) qualifies using it as a very bad idea.
Be careful what you mess with. Global warming isn't anywhere near the threat to all life on this earth that unfiltered solar radiation is.
The solution to most of the world's problems, from poverty to pollution from power plants, is human-powered electricity.
It is a supreme irony that the theme for Chevron's new ad campaign is "Human Energy".
Human powered electricity?
Does that mean pedal while you blog ?
Can the millions of exercising machines be modified to put energy back onto the grid?
[It is a supreme irony that the theme for Chevron's new ad campaign is "Human Energy".]
Not when you consider Chevron's support for the brutal military regime in Burma.
BTW...how about a Nuclear Burma?
http://www.aungzaw.net/2007/Suspicion_Hardens_over_Burma_Nuclear_Ambitions.html
Everybody remembers Burma right? The monks? Democracy?
I agree.
The July 16th earthquake in Kashiwasaki-Kariwa,
Japan and the subsequent radioactive leakage,
proves this.
Media coverage was sparse so they tried to minimize
the initial damage report.The residents demanded
answers,so for the first time,outside experts were
called in.The plant will now be closed for a year.
Consequently,this summer in Tokyo we had our
share of power cuts, as much of our energy
comes from this NPP.
Japan is a country of endless earthquakes,so
finding another alternative would be much
appreciated in the long run.
Who knows what could happen if the prediction
of the "Big One" should happen anytime soon?
Japan should devote more of its resources to geothermal energy - wouldn't it make sense to tap into such a resource if you're sitting on what's known as the pacific rim's "ring of fire"?
Ditto for California and some parts of the Rockies. Geothermal is a much-overlooked energy source.
They've been doing that (and bitching at us for not doing so-especially about not tapping Yellowstone) for decades.
Japan has a number of very large geothermal plants. So does Iceland.
I can do without the Nuke plants, but, why you gotta pick on heroin?
Brilliant piece. Ike biographers and historians, take note!
Its over for America Harry. Look at the big picture. This disgusting Nation has onley been around a few hundred yeears.
Forget all the WW II Patriotic Bullshit. America is the new Nazi Germanny. Best thing is for it to go.
Congratulations! You will be guaranteed to be quoted on every right-wing blog, and the O'Reilly show. Freedom of speech and all that, but that's really crap.
By the time Ike was talking about Nukes For Happiness (or whatever), the G-E was out of the lead-impregnated bottle. As they say.
There were going to be nuke power plants whether the US had any or not, and there were going to be nuke weapons out there in the world, too. Ike didn't make it happen.
But imagine with me, if you will...
We build the space ladder (google it if you don't know already), and just start spooging the heavens with nuclear waste. If we do it right, we might even end up with a nice lovely glowing ring, kind of like one of those glow bracelets you get at dance clubs. Like Saturn, except making our own light.
Maybe Bush could promote this idea, much as Ike did in his day. But it would have to have a military metaphor, because nothing happens in the US these days without military metaphors: Operation Glowing Sky.
(No one needs to tell me that nuclear waste doesn't really glow. OK? OK.)
Harry, it seemed inappropriate elsewhere.
So, however out of place this may seem, I ask,...
Why is the Republican Party so dereft as to provide the RETARDS currently availavable.?
This is in ALL races.
This is not to denigrate genuinely mentally deficient persons. Typically, they are kind, considerate, and do not over-reach.
NOT THE REPUKE-TARDS!
They THINK they are smarter than everyone else, when clearly they are dumber than the dumbest.
You ridcule the deficient right wing mobsters, with alacrity and humor.
But, there are just too many of them.
They do not respond to reason, they do not change.
the ONLY alternative is to quickly negate these anchors on civilization.
First, France gets it electricity, not all its energy, from nuclear plants. Moreover, it is not a good example for us as it is a small country with far less electricity needs than America.
Second, in addition to the complication of storage, the enormous cost over the years of government subsidies and the difficulty in locating plants away from large population areas are why nukes are not the answer to global warming.
Third, Yucca Mountain is not only a risky place for storing nuclear waste, transporting all the waste to one spot is a nightmarish problem. Not only might accidents occur, but each truck represents a terrorists wet dream opportunity and there would be thousands of trucks needing to cross great distances.
Finally, we need to solve the global warming issue soon and that means finding an alternative to coal-fired plants for us, China and other nations but nuclear isn't the answer. It is still a major problem. What we need to do is tax gas and other carbon sources, while rebating money to the poor, so we can make investment in alternative energy sources viable. Moreover, we need to focus on solar, geo-thermal, and wind until we come up with something new.
The most exciting new idea is building a satellite that can capture energy from the Sun - a self-renewing source of energy - and beam it in microwaves to sites on earth where it can then be transferred to our grids. The technology is close but the current cost is high. Still, it presents an exciting thought for the future.
In the meantime, we need to do what we can - like demanding high mileage vehicles - and stop proving incentives for people to live in areas that are on the verge of being washed away.
So, Harry, I love your article but I would really love to know what you think of the future of certain areas of New Orleans and other vulnerable areas. Shouldn't we start preparing for the worst as we seek ways to abate it?
HARRY RESPONDS: As soon as low-lying areas of the East Coast sign up to be evacuated, we can talk about New Orleans.
We don't need to put the sterling engines in orbit; they work just fine on the Earth where they can plug directly into the grid. Although some of the Sun's energy is reflected by the atmosphere, this isn't a great reason for the outrageous expense of putting satellites in orbit and beaming energy down to earth. The only justification for this is to fatten the coffers of the military-industrial complex.
Instead of using photovoltaic cells, sterling engines use much more cost-effective arrays of mirrors. They focus the heat from the Sun on a cylinder filled with hydrogen gas. The expansion and contraction of the gas pushes a piston than drives a generator and produces electricity. The sterling engine is a brilliant design because it doesn't require any supply of fuels, water, or electricity. It simply converts the radiant energy of the Sun into electricity.
Also, sterling engines are especially quiet in operation. That's why they are used in American nuclear submarines to harness the heat energy from their fission reactors. Can't have any noisy steam engines blowing our cover.
I appreciate where you are coming from on this. Why should New Orleans go first? Well, not that I have anything against New Orleans, but when Dems take over the White House we will be spending billions to rehabilitate it. Wouldn't you agree that we should spend that money wisely in light of what the future is likely to hold for New Orleans?
Living there, you know best. Can all of New Orleans be saved or does New Orleans need to be reconfigured in some way?
HARRY RESPONDS: Given the lack of alacrity toward the problem of the federal levees shown by the Democratic-controlled Congress, I (and the rest of the city, I'd suggest) are a bit dubious regarding your assumption about a Democratic president. But, as Dr. Ivor van Heerden of the LSU Hurricane Center suggests, what's happening to Louisiana--in terms of coastal erosion in the face of rising seas--is in the future for many parts, particularly ports, of the US. Louisiana can be the laboratory for the future, in terms of relatively simple remediation techniques--building up barrier islands, rebuilding coastal wetlands through smart dispersion of river sediments, and the judicious building of protective structures.
I am convinced that Hillary, Barack and especially John Edwards would take a more direct hand in moving the ball forward in New Orleans.
I am sure part of the problem is the Bush administration but I'm guessing that division amongst some as to how to spend those expected billions is also causing delay. After all, just rebuilding the WTC in NYC has taken years because of all the parties that have a say in its outcome.
Anyway, I hope you are right and we can use New Orleans as a lab and make it a shining example of what America can do when it wants to do be an example to the world.
Hey, while we are at it, why don't we try to use the energy produced from the water flowing into the Gulf or the hurricanes trapped in the Gulf to generate electricity? Do you know of any scientists thing along those lines?
You know, Harry, you can either use a hammer to help build a house or bash out your next-door neighbor's brain.
It's not the tool, it's the action of hand wielding it.
HARRY RESPONDS: Cool. So I'll be using my AK-47 and my Bradley fighting vehicle to remodel my living room.
Well, they'll do a good job on gutting it anyway.
Seriously, ever tried to let a cat back into a bag? Wonder, at least, why that never became a cliche? Fission was already a known process even before WWII. Nazi Germany was working on an atomic bomb - we beat them to it, with help from some good saboteurs who did in the Trondheim heavy water plant. And Germany was preparing to provide Japan with nuke technology as well - U-boats were on their way in the waning days of the war.
This is not going away. We'd better become wiser within ourselves, it's getting kind of important.
It never became a cliche because it's not nearly as clever as you think it is. Feel free to crank out the bumper stickers, though...
Actually the heavy water plant was to be used to provide fuel for a fusion device (H-bomb). The Germans were never very close to getting ahead of us on this project because they were headed in the wrong direction.
Max Plank and his cohorts had the Nazi's working in that direction as he knew they wouldn't achieve fusion without a fission trigger and he didn't want Hitler to get the bomb.
The fission devices that could be produced in the 1940's were huge and heavy (even our B-29's had to take off relatively close and had to be almost completely stripped down to make it to Japan).
They convinced Der Fuhrer they could ignite a much smaller, more powerful fusion device that the rockets and planes they had available would be capable of carrying to the US mainland.
I think Ahmedinajad also has renovations planned. His wife wants a new kitchen. Maybe you two should talk? And while you're at it, they could use some help with the designs for the new uranium reprocessing plant in their basement. His wife has just started an online business importing low grade spent nuclear fuel from the Stans. Hubby AJ, as she calls him, has fronted the cash for the website.
www.webuynukefuelforcash.com
To paraphrase Churchill on democracy, nuclear power might well be the worst system, until one considers all the others.
The "strategy", if it could be called that, was to recruit European scientists who could reach critical mass (literally) for the Allies before the Germans published their own mushroom clouds first.
Imagine how flawed the strategy would have seemed had the Nazis prevailed. Or, more precisely, vorstellen, wie fehlerhaft würde die Strategie haben schien, hatten die Nazis herrschten.
I can't blame Ike for trying to turn this science toward constructive use. France seems to have done it, producing 79% of their power in accident-free plants that have been standardized by French law. They even export 18% of that power to their neighbors. I suspect their energy independence was one factor in their ability to resist following all their neighbors in lockstep to Iraq.
Ike at the end of his tenure foresaw the emerging threat from the "military-industrial complex", which has evolved from an old general's vague worry to full personification in the current Vice President and mercenary forces beyond the reach of any country's laws.
Ike did err in betting on the Shah of Iran in 1952. Had we made better choices, Iran today might seem to Americans to be as sinister a nuclear power as France, resolutions by Bob "Freedom Fries" Ney notwithstanding.
Nuclear power's problems with waste and weaponry are real, but nearly every energy production technology has a dark side. The ever popular methods requiring the burning of carbon have been found to leave a big footprint. Hydroelectric dams put entire valleys under water and have limited potential. Other alternatives, while promising, would make prohibitively expensive all those electrons bringing Huffington Post to the dear reader.
To me, France looks like the success story in all this. What do you think?
HARRY ASKS: What's France doing with its high-level nuclear waste? What's France's record--our is dismal--with safeguarding these facilities from terrorist attack, by ground or air? My opinion, ultimately, is that it's a hell of a lot of trouble to go to just to boil water.
France is storing waste "temporarily" at facilities while trying to figure out what to do. I have no idea how they safeguard any of it. (Not a good or thorough answer, but it's all I have.)
Which of the following methods for boiling water are *not* a lot of trouble?
Coal: Mining, CO2
Oil: Bad geopolitics, CO2
Natural Gas: CO2, getting more expensive as fields are deeper and more remote
Solar: Very expensive without any breakthroughs on horizon. Who pays?
Wind: Expensive, and we are starting to see NIMBY (or NWIMBY, "no windmills in my backyard")
Geothermal: Expensive, especially in large scale.
Hydroelectric: Environmental disaster for valley dwellers, limited availability
Nuclear: Permanent lethal waste, can be weaponized
I admit that building potential Doomsday Machines strikes me as more serious than nearly all the other issues. To pay a $2000/month electric bill, face a foot or two of additional sea level, or lose a mountaintop here and there--bad as they all are--none trumps grisly death from radiation illness or nuclear war.
I do worry about how Yucca Mountain is (or is not) being designed. Our track record of late has not been so good: with levees, we learned that engineers could overlook basic soil mechanics and structural design in favor of lunch. On the Shuttle, quite a few people wore blinders to long-known problems with booster seals and flaking foam insulation.
What might they be ignoring out at Yucca Mountain?
Even with the elephant of waste disposal on the table, I don't see nuclear power going away. I expect the waste will be sitting at the plants for generations.
Actually solar power is becoming less and less expensive. They sell kits now where you can put solar panels on the roof of your house that will provide all the electricity you need. This can be done as a renovation/upgrade, or as part of the construction of new homes for as little as $9,000 depending on the size of the roof and number of panels. $9,000 sounds like a lot, but if I install a $9,000 kit on the roof of my little townhouse, it would pay for itself in about 3.5 years since I wouldn't have to pay an electric bill every month. And while this doesn't solve the need for carbon-based fuels in automobiles, it can take the place of carbon-based electrical power for homes and offices.
Check out http://www.solarhome.org/solarhomekits.html for more info.
Weeeellll, for starters France ships tons of waste to Russia...
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31466
http://www.green.tv/greenpeace_france_nuclear_waste
http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0530-03.htm
http://www.iht.com/articles/2002/08/26/rnuke_ed3_.php
Poor post Harry.
What you should call for in the face of rising CO2 levels in the introduction of reactors that cannot be used for military purposes (Canada has one developed as does Israel). As for waste, nuclear waste holds over 90% of its energy producing potential and Israel has just developed a method to recycle it. Sure there is waste, but I would rather have in deep in the ground under a mountain than in the air I breathe everyday like I do with air pollution that is the by product of the burning of carbon for energy.
You need to do some research before you put out a hippy dippy post like that.
HARRY RESPONDS: Good on the name-calling, poor on the facts. How does one guarantee that a reactor cannot be used for military purposes? And, wherever you might prefer to have your waste, it is irresponsible to the point of criminal to "entomb" (the Energy Department's term) highly radioactive waste in a situation--demanding thousands of years of security--that no human has ever experienced, let alone can guarantee.
The problem of rising CO2 levels can be solved WITHOUT nuclear power in the sense that we know it today. The technology is all there, we just need to put it all together. If humanity were to use just a fraction of the pure energy that the earth itself produces, let alone the sun, we could completely forget about splicing atoms.
Also, as Harry points out, I don't think you realize that thousands of years is a pretty long freaking time. To put it in context, the only civilizations that existed relatively intact for several thousand years were Sumer and India. Others, mainly 2 thousand years or so, and they underwent considerable amounts of upheaval and change...and the trend in this world with growing population for sociopolitical upheaval has grown fairly exponentially. Civilizations just don't remain intact as often anymore.
That means that at some point, someone is going to forget about that mountain, and someone else is going to crack it open and unleash one heck of a major catastrophe. But hey, you'll all be long dead before then, right? So you probably don't care one way or the other.
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Posted October 14, 2007 | 08:35 PM (EST)