"With the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, and the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, I feel it is now the responsibility of Japan as the only nation to suffer major radiation exposure on three separate occasions as well as a contribution to the international community to say to the entire world that mankind cannot live in this world with nuclear energy, be it in the form of weapons or as a form of power generation." Ryuichi Sakamoto, in a commentary published by Asahi Shimbun.

  • Alan Ball

    Pandora’s box is already opened, and it’s capable of being one of the cleanest sources of energy we have. We just have to focus on actually having higher safety standards.  The Fukushima plants were built to withstand earthquakes but not the size of the one that was hit. That’s shortsighted given that nuclear power plants stay around for very long times, and earthquakes tend to happen in Japan. 

    The fact is that Coal energy kills thousands of lives a year, whereas nuclear power takes a handful. 

    • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

      Exactly; nuclear is dangerous, yeah; fossil fuels are way worse.  Pursuing wind & solar & hydro & geo is all well & good; heck, sign me up!  Heck, I am signed up, I get my home electricity from windmills.  That said, I think the handwringing over nuclear is misplaced.

      • Cowicide

        I think the handwringing over nuclear is misplaced.

        Maybe you should personally help with the cleanup operations in Japan? Where others fear to tread, I guess you’ll step right up?

        • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

          Dude, I don’t want to live in Centralia, either, or go swimming during the Gulf spill, so maybe…I don’t get your point?

          • Cowicide

            When you call the concerns over nuclear energy “misplaced handwringing”, it seems to me that you are discounting valid concerns about it. That’s my point.

          • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

            No, I’m saying undue weight is being put on it, & that other energy alternatives offer their own worse dangers.

          • Cowicide

            Which other alternatives? Coal and other fossil fuels? Yes. Solar, Wind, Tidal.. worse dangers? No. Actually, there’s almost no comparison in relative dangers. And on top of that as we actually research these more sustainable alternatives we’re finding ways to make them even safer.

            Observe:
            New Inexpensive and More Environmentally Friendly Solar Cell

          • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

            What, somebody should have mentioned something about that in their original comment! Oh wait, right, that was me, I did, but hey, if you ignore that, you’ve totally got me! Listen, I’m all for a massive public infrastructure investment towards sustainable energy. Rather than just talking about it on the internet, I even get my power from a wind plant. That being said, I’m not talking about theoretical future infrastructure investments; I’m looking at actual existing energy policy.

          • Cowicide

            I even get my power from a wind plant.

            That’s great! I read that previously and thinks it’s commendable that you’re doing your part in your own way.

            That being said, I’m not talking about theoretical future infrastructure investments; I’m looking at actual existing energy policy.

            I feel like you’re changing the subject of our conservation here. You’re losing me here. You started by saying that nuclear worries are overblown and I called you out on that with valid concerns. Now you’re going off into some other territory… I think at this point we can just agree to disagree about something or another and at the same time agree that your windmill kicks ass. Deal?

    • Mitchell Glaser

      Somebody please enlighten me: why don’t we embark on a Manhattan Project sized effort to develop solar energy? The possible benefits are so profound: massive reduction in pollution, the end of reliance on foreign energy sources (from both a political and economic point of view), the huge improvement in the reliability of the electrical grid from massively distributed sources (think about the millions of people without power on the east coast right now!)… the list goes on and on.

      And don’t bother to critique the effectivity of solar power: without a huge investigation into it neither you nor I can honestly say how good it might become. After all, great strides are being made almost daily without the investment it deserves.

      • catherinecc

        Because the Chinese will take what we design and replicate it, undercutting us and flooding the market. That’s what has happened thus far.

        Call me paranoid, but I honestly think that our friends at the NSA/CIA are happy with the situation as is. Reliance is arguably a good thing when it comes to the game of international politics.

        And we will still need power at night.

        • Mitchell Glaser

          It wouldn’t matter if China ripped off the technology. All of the benefits would still apply, and we should be our own best customer for solar products so as not to replace dependence on foreign energy with dependence on foreign technology.

          As for power at night, that is a related issue that should be dealt with in the research project. A major leap forward in battery technology would make electric cars reasonable even without solar energy. And there are numerous methods to store energy aside from batteries, even with existing technology. Plus, we can always use the cleanest parts of our current power grid, like hydroelectric and such, at night.

        • penguinchris

          The point of any Manhattan Project type proposal is not payoff to the stockholders, it’s prevention of things that threaten the earth itself. 

          • Mitchell Glaser

            Yes, like trying to reverse man-made climate change, precisely. That’s why we need it.

          • catherinecc

             Yes, but the Americans are unlikely to do anything so long as someone doesn’t get stinking rich out of it.

        • Cowicide

          And we will still need power at night.

          Sigh, you should educate yourself.  Reserve solar energy can be stored…

          http://lmgtfy.com/?q=store+solar+power

          No wonder the USA is shrinking in science, we appear to be losing our collective imagination daily and resorting to ignorance as the new normal.

          • catherinecc

            I just don’t see storage costs decreasing to the point where generation + storage is cheaper than generation via our standard sources.

            You can be all snarky, but storage is expensive and will remain so. Molten salt still isn’t perfect. Neither are the other options we have right now.

          • Cowicide

            You can be all snarky, but storage is expensive and will remain so.

            I’m sorry that I was snarky, but you’re seriously underestimating the power of technological research.

            Maybe you’re too young to remember the leaps we’ve gone through in the last 15-20 years in computer technology. I can remember when the amount of RAM I currently have in my laptop would have cost me nearly 1 million dollars and it would have been running at a fraction of the speed it’s rated at now and much larger in size as well. And, I won’t even get into hard drives!

            Technology isn’t slowing down here…

            Solar storage research is ongoing. You may not have heard of a company called Halotechnics.

            http://www.halotechnics.com/

            Their hybrid molten salt operates at the same temperature as other traditional molten salts, but it costs a full 20% less. This saves millions of dollars at each and every solar plant.

            So how much did their research cost so far in total? Only 6 million bucks!

            Can you imagine how much further we could go in making cheaper, better materials if we dedicated a massive Manhattan Project research program to this and more? I hope you can.

            And, please trust me… if you broaden your horizons a bit, you’ll find that this is just the tip of the iceberg of what we CAN do right now:

            http://www.fastcompany.com/1706032/solar-power-enabled-by-human-waste

            Molten salt still isn’t perfect.

            Compared to what? Toxic hell coming from coal plants and other fossil fuels? I’m not sure you have very wide perspective on this. Also, rising sea levels, wildfires, devastating category 4 & 5 hurricanes, LAND hurricanes (yes, we’re having them now), F5 tornadoes, etc. They ain’t cheap either.

            I’ve been staring at hazy, sickening white skies in Denver, CO from all the smoke from widespread wildfires from Wyoming to CO. I know people that have lost their homes. It ain’t cheap… and it ain’t going to get cheaper as time goes on.

            The time for action is NOW.

      • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

        I used to think this too, until I spoke to a dozen industry scientists and execs.  These are people who have everything to gain if Solar does well and gets cheaper, but they all said the same thing: Solar Energy is not cost effective, and probably won’t be cost effective for at least a decade, EVEN WITH a large increase of government funding.

        And none of them seemed very hopeful about that government funding coming anytime soon….

        • johnnylloydrollins

          From what I understand after reading into the actual cost of solar panels, their prices are so high mainly because of specific rare earth metals that are mainly found in China.  China limits their exports and controls over half the solar panel industry.  

          • Cowicide

            And the sad truth is if the USA would take solar energy research more seriously (collectively as a nation) we wouldn’t need China in the first place.

            http://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/24/new-inexpensive-environmentally-friendly-solar-cell/

          • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

            This is true in part, but the reality is that rare earth elements are actually rare; they’re spread all around the world in varying quantities.  There are a vast number on the shallow sea floors near Japan, for instance, and the US used to mine them before China out-competed us.  They are rare because their ore has only tiny fractions of them per unit mined, so they’re expensive to get at.  If all of a sudden electricity was two or three times the current price you would see mines opening up all over the world (which, on a side note, would make Afghanistan into another Saudi Arabia).

            But if the cost of power rose that much, the entire world would be instantly thrown into a depression, the likes of which probably have never been seen in the history of the world.  I would be surprised if war are revolution wouldn’t sweep most of Africa and Asia, and you can bet the house that all ideas of Clean Energy would be tossed out the window to avoid famines from killing hundreds of millions.  Or maybe even billions.

            Which is not to say that Solar should not be pursued, funded more, and used for power, just that it is a long term solution at best.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            Which is not to say that Solar should not be pursued, funded more, and used for power, just that it is a long term solution at best.

            DEAR ABBY: I am a 36-year-old college dropout whose lifelong ambition was to be a physician. I have a very good job selling pharmaceutical supplies, but my heart is still in the practice of medicine. I do volunteer work at the local hospital on my time off, and people tell me I would have made a wonderful doctor.

            If I go back to college and get my degree, then go to medical school, do my internship and finally get into the actual practice of medicine, it will take me seven years! But, Abby, in seven years I will be 43 years old. What do you think? — UNFULFILLED IN PHILLY

            DEAR UNFULFILLED: And how old will you be in seven years if you don’t go to medical school?

          • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

            DEAR ABBY: I am a 36-year-old college dropout whose lifelong ambition was to be a physician. I have a very good job selling pharmaceutical supplies, but my heart is still in the practice of medicine. I do volunteer work at the local hospital on my time off, and people tell me I would have made a wonderful doctor.  

            My dog “Lasse” is very sick; she has a heart condition that gets worse every time she doesn’t get her medicine.  When I become a doctor, I will have enough skill points in “craft-medicine” to completely heal here, but for now the medicine costs money.  The republicans got control of congress so now student loans are illegal.  
            If I go back to college and get my degree, then go to medical school, do my internship and finally get into the actual practice of medicine, it will take me seven years.  But if I do all that and keep the part-time job that keeps me fed and Lassie alive, it will take me nine!   But, Abby, in nine years I will be 45 years old. What do you think? — UNFULFILLED IN YORKSHIRE
            DEAR UNFULFILLED: And how old will you be when your dog dies?  Old enough to take a metaphor online and make it realllllly strained to try and make your point?  Probably at least that old, maybe older.  Maybe you should just give up now and go sell toothpaste to homeless people.

        • http://profiles.google.com/macrumpton Michael Crumpton

           If you forced coal producers and power plant operators to pay for the environmental and health damages they cause, coal would not be cost effective either. I suspect the same applies to nuclear if you include the costs of cleaning and/guarding  the toxic waste and contaminated sites for the decades required before they are safe to be around.

          • Cowicide

            If you forced coal producers and power plant operators to pay for the environmental and health damages they cause, coal would not be cost effective either

            Thank you, Michael!

            That always seems to be lost on people like @google-ec88587b867c47ffd61c3942dd3ff89a:disqus and @R_Young:disqus .

            Somehow all the externalities vanish into thin air for them.  That’s why I find it difficult to debate with many libertarians because of their difficulty in seeing externalities/realities (big picture) beyond their corporatist talking points.

          • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

            Natural Gas would though.  we have 200 years +/1 a couple decades in US reserves alone, and they’ve only started getting the techniques to efficiency.  While it only admits about 1/3 of the CO2 emissions that coal does, the methane releases are often huge, and very difficult to actually measure since the whole system is under industry blackout, as sponsored by our republican house and a smattering of blue-dog-democrats.  

            GOD BLESS THE USA, WHERE AT LEAST I KNOW MY CORPORATIONS ARE FREE FROM ANY REAL OVERSIGHT!!!

          • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

            Cowicide, see my answer above: natural gas.  

            And I really want to thank you.  I don’t think I’ve ever been called a libertarian in my entire life, and the experience, while bizarre, is a bit exhilarating.  

            I’m a pragmatic liberal, but the pragmatism usually outweighs the liberal nomer.  I would like nothing less to have every oil company in the world nationalized and their executives tried for every sin against humanity they’ve committed.  Which is a lot.  But that’s never going to happen in a million years, and if you want to keep dreaming I will gladly support your endeavor, but continue to work on methods that I think will have an actual chance of working.

          • Cowicide

            @R_Young:disqus said:

            I don’t think I’ve ever been called a libertarian

            Then you still haven’t.  I wasn’t calling you a libertarian.  I was just comparing you to one because of your relatively narrow approach to this issue.

            I would like nothing less to have every oil company in the world nationalized and their executives tried for every sin against humanity they’ve committed.  Which is a lot.  But that’s never going to happen in a million years, and if you want to keep dreaming I will gladly support your endeavor

            I don’t know where you got that idea.  Funding research to help make this planet more habitable isn’t some pie-in-the-sky, pipe dream approach to reality here.

            I could give a rat’s ass what happens to oil execs one way or the other.  I’m focused on what really matters and as we get more goddam land hurricanes that roar across the United States, many more Americans are going to wake the fuck up and get right on focused with me.

            It’s inevitable.  I and others will just make damn sure we get on this sooner than later.  I’m not some hippy who hopes to sell hemp necklaces to support this shit, friend.  I’ve worked with some of the largest corporations in the United States and have sold a company to one of them as well.  I’ve destroyed people in business because they were in my way.  I’m not a babe in the woods here.

            The biggest hurdle is getting past all the corporatist babble that says alternative energy isn’t practical and can’t be so in the near term.

            You may have talked with industry researchers and execs about this, but that doesn’t mean they were honest with you and/or understood what’s going on at the very top.

            The reality is that the top corporatists are dragging their feet on alternative energy for one reason and one reason ONLY and that’s because they are trying to milk their current infrastructure to the last drop.  And with our current corporate structure it’s literally impossible for even the best-hearted CEO to stop the machine from doing this.  It’s literally illegal for them to do so and I’m not planning on waiting until the American corporate structure is changed; That’s going to take a very long, long time (at least decades).

            And, this is exactly why we have to raise awareness and publicly fund the research ASAP.  It’s already happening, but it needs to happen on a much larger scale and soon.

            If we can put a man on the Moon and split the atom… we will do this as well.  We have to, really.

      • jhertzli

         Why we don’t have Manhattan Project to develop solar energy: The first man-made nuclear reactors was built by scholars who were trained in the age of “love and string and sealing wax” and cost $8000. The second man-made nuclear reactor was built by the same people who were now thinking like government employees. It cost millions.

        • penguinchris

          We haven’t had anything Manhattan Project-like since the actual Manhattan Project (and, well, the space/doomsday race during the cold war I guess) because there’s no short-term threat, and those in positions of power are chronically short-sighted. 

          The reason they got anything they needed to build the bomb is because the Axis was an immediate threat to the world. The energy situation is an even bigger crisis (IMO) but it will play out over the next few decades, not immediately, so we won’t get funding to develop solutions until it’s too late.

      • AnthonyC

        Because the Manhattan Project, or the Apollo project for that matter, would be far, far too small for that. This is a tens-of trillions-of-dollars goal you’ve set, which will take decades to complete.

        To replace fossil fuels with solar, the world would need about 10 TW of solar panels (damn capacity factor) and readily scalable energy storage (you can push that need back a ways by intelligently combining wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, etc. to match the local supply and demand curves, and by connecting more distant regions of the grid, but we aren’t doing that). We don’t have the production capacity for the former or the technology for the latter – yet. So any project would need to be on the research side rather than the implementation side.

        But the prices of solar panels are already dropping, and you can now buy them below $1/peak watt. Balance-of-system costs are now the majority of a solar installation’s price. Innovation in panels, materials, and conversion efficiency are important, but grid upgrades, energy storage research, and reducing the cost of installations, inverters, and so on are more important.

        • Cowicide

          This is a tens-of trillions-of-dollars goal you’ve set

          [citations welcome]

          • AnthonyC

            No citation, just calculation. Because of the 24 hour day, solar panels aren’t going to have an average capacity factor much over 25%  even in optimal weather conditions. So to provide the ~2.3 TW of electricity the world uses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption#World_Electricity_Consumption_Highlights_in_2009 , we would need at least 9TW of solar panels. And while you can buy the panels themselves at <$1/watt wholesale (google it), the whole installed system costs more. As of early 2012, an installed home-scale system (unsubsidized) cost about $7 to $9 per peak watt. Industrial scale is more cost effective, in some cases as low as $2 per peak watt. That puts the generating equipment cost at currently $18-81 trillion.

            Of course, if you wanted to go all solar you'd also need energy storage available. There isn't enough pumpe hydro-suitable geography for more than a tiny fraction of that,, so you'd need to go for compressed air, molten salt, hot oil, or batteries. Today, these cost http://fgamedia.org/faculty/afirouzi/ENGR600/lesson07/reading/Cost%20Analysis%20of%20Electricity%20Storage.pdf several hundred dollars per kWh. That means storing the world's electricity use for just 16 hours (i.e. overnight) would cost $7-18 trillion, and that wouldn't be enough grid stability for a national energy system, we'd need several days' worth.

            Note: these aren't arguments against solar. In the long run, all our energy is and will be solar. Solar is the biggest source available, and we need to use much more of it. And yes, these costs are continually falling do to a combination of invention, innovation, and production scale-up.  This is just an argument against saying, "All solar, now," and against the idea that a "Manhattan project" can get us to that point.

          • Cowicide

            Thank you for your detailed response, Anthony. You’re leaving out a tremendous amount of factors, but I’ll just focus on some of the more important ones here:

            • When you give the costs of the “Manhattan Project” for more sustainable energy, you shouldn’t include the costs of constructing and implementing it worldwide (or even nationwide). The “Manhatten Project” I’m referring to is to be government funded research, and not responsible for wide-scale implementation. The data will be shared with Americans who can take it from there. If foreign countries would also like some first dibs on the valuable research, they can help fund our project. In other words, this can be a multinational project, but if that turns out to be too cumbersome to start, then America will take the lead (like we used to do with things).

            • When you mention the amount of electricity the world uses and refer to solar capabilities, that’s leaving out the reality of other sources of more sustainable energy and also solar’s rapidly expanding efficiency (despite the dearth of funding for research compared to fossil fuel subsidies, etc.). But anyway, I don’t think anyone is saying that we should focus only on solar energy alone. It’s also not clear if you are addressing the most recent advances in storing excess solar energy or not (for one thing, your link is broken).

            • When referring to the “Manhattan Project”, I should make it clear that the majority of us are referring to other sources of cleaner energy as well, not just solar. Solar energy is only an integral part of a larger research project.

            • You do mention it at the end, but I don’t think you’re factoring in how FAST prices drastically reduce as they spread through the market. What’s expensive because of demand, nascent research and quantity today is the cheap, mass-produced iPod shuffles of tomorrow. Solar will not stay expensive for very long especially when we have so much research behind it through our “Sustainable Energy Manhattan Project”.

            • No one is saying switch our entire energy grid to solar next Tuesday. But, what we need to do RIGHT NOW is start the “Sustainable Energy Manhattan Project” in the USA. We Americans have done amazing things before and we’ll do them again.

          • AnthonyC

            First, I agree with everything you said in your reply to me.

            Second, the link is broken because I put it in parentheses, and the comment system thought the right parenthesis was part of the link.

            A few caveats. If you are going to talk about how fast prices are already coming down (and they are- I’ve read solar industry reports that say they’ll reach parity with coal in <10 yrs (not counting storage), even less for wind), then it sounds like additional research funding, while a good idea, is not actually going to buy much additional speed. 

            As for other sources of energy: of course, I agree. There's wind, geothermal, hydro, wave, tidal, and nuclear. But people seem not to like nuclear, wind has the same intermittency issues as solar, wave and tidal have never been tested at scale (and have global theoretical maximum capacities of <3TW each), a majority of good hydropower is already developed, and I worry that geothermal can trigger earthquakes. What we ought to have been doing is developing all of these in parallel, because used in combination they can mitigate each other's weaknesses (reducing the need for storage, for example), but then we need seven Manhattan projects.

            And I am skeptical that a single huge research project will actually generate improvements more efficiently than actual companies competing in a market, or that you can readily separate research from production at scale. With the Manhattan and Apollo projects the goal was to reach a single goal one time (end the war, go to the moon) regardless of cost. With energy, lower cost (LCOE) *is* the goal. There are plenty of fancy ideas and high efficiency cells in the lab already, financed by governments and industry, but until you actually try to go build a production-scale (or at least pilot) facility you really don't know whether it is going to make economic sense.

            For energy storage: when geological conditions are perfect, I've heard pumped hydro can be <$10/kWh, and compressed air <$40/kWh. But I don't know how much cheap compressed air storage there can be worldwide, and the estimates I've seen for how much potential there is for pumped hydro isn't enough for any all-renewable grid. 

            Also, slightly more speculatively, over the next 100 years  if all goes well the world will be using several times more power than it does now (currently 15TW), and a much larger fraction of that (currently <20%) will be electrical rather than heat. The challenge is enormous even if we could afford to burn fossil fuels with abandon.

          • Cowicide

            additional research funding, while a good idea, is not actually going to buy much additional speed.

            It has for just about every other technology I can think of. R&D is the first step to making products more efficient and less costly and we’ve already seen how even our very limited uptick in solar panel research has already brought down costs significantly.

            We spend very little on research right now to our own detriment while we chuck huge amounts of money to subsidize fossil fuels… yet there’s still progress despite those limitations.

            I worry that geothermal can trigger earthquakes.

            The actual science says that’s overblown. It’s not just like fracking for natural gas. If you keep the fractures small and choose sites wisely, it’s relatively safe.

            Plus, this is yet another reason for the Manhatten Project. With more research we can figure out ways to do geothermal drilling in places that aren’t already prone to earthquakes. And places that aren’t great for it can still provide geothermal heating instead of producing electricity by turning huge turbines (especially as we apply more research into it).

            And I am skeptical that a single huge research project will actually generate improvements more efficiently than actual companies competing in a market,

            Research won’t stop companies from competing in a market. American companies will vastly benefit from the government research and it’ll give them an edge over other countries like China. Similar to how the military industrial complex has pushed technology forward (except without all the nasty side effects).

            But, which “free market” are you talking about? The free market died a long time ago in the USA and it’s now controlled by huge mega-corporations that attempt to thwart the free market any chance they get with monopolistic collusion.

            It’s been known by industry insiders for many years that fossil fuel companies are purposefully dragging their feet on alternative energy so they can milk their current infrastructure to its last drop. Counting on corporations to “do the right thing” hasn’t worked out and with the way corporations are set up in this day and age they never will, that’s for sure.

            The very nature of how corporations are structured makes it literally illegal for them to do the right thing when it comes to investing in alternative energy research. We can’t count on them for that, we need to publicly fund it for the good of all.

            With energy, lower cost (LCOE) *is* the goal.

            Well, I think more is at stake considering the suffering climate change will cause (and already is causing) humanity. But, you also have to look at the bigger picture. Rising sea levels will have a tremendous financial toll not just in the USA, but all over the globe. And, violent weather cleanup and fires aren’t cheap either.

            [cow looks up at the sky in Colorado filled with haze from wildfires and sighs]

            The one group of corporations that’s actually honest about global climate change is the insurance industry. They were one of the only major industries to actually acknowledge how dire (and REAL) climate change is out of their own self interests (which is one of the only times you can trust corporations).

            But, anyway, this isn’t just about making alternative energy more cost-efficient to produce than fossil fuels; It’s much more than that.

            Also, slightly more speculatively, over the next 100 years if all goes well the world will be using several times more power than it does now

            Maybe not as bad as you think. Look at how much drastically less power a laptop with an LCD consumes compared to a desktop computer with a CRT monitor. As time goes on, we’re making things consume less power. And, once again, we can thank research and development for that along with adoption in the market.

            we need seven Manhattan projects.

            Sounds like a plan.

      • Charlie B

         If we did that for fusion power, or put in place tax-sponsored incentives for sustainable biofuels equivalent to the government-created cost externalizations that technologies like fracking enjoy, the USA could stop our breakneck race for third-world country status.

        Not trying to say solar is a bad idea, just pointing out it’s one of many technologies our govenrment is disincentivizing by sponsoring nukes and petrofuels.

    • http://profiles.google.com/churba Churba S

       Not to mention, the Fukushima plants were built a long time ago – 1971, in fact, before Chernobyl was even built. And they worked perfectly well for this long, until they were hit by an unforeseeably large earthquake, AND a tidal wave – the Earthquake alone wasn’t enough to do the job.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        Not to mention, the Fukushima plants were built a long time ago – 1971, in fact, before Chernobyl was even built. And they worked perfectly well for this long, until they were hit by an unforeseeably large earthquake, AND a tidal wave – the Earthquake alone wasn’t enough to do the job.

        In other words, this happened in reality, with a number of real world events and conditions coming together to produce a real world result.

        • http://profiles.google.com/churba Churba S

           Ant, Historian’s fallacy. When the plant was designed, more than 40 years ago, they didn’t have the same information, technology, or knowledge that we do, both in geology and nuclear power design. When I say it was unforeseeable, I’m not just trying to make an excuse – I have no doubt that when this plant was designed, they genuinely thought that it was a good, safe place to put it.

          Even if you wanted to take a surprisingly uncharacteristic turn, and go the corporate conspiracy route, it still wouldn’t make sense, because why would they not put their insanely expensive project in the safest place they could think of at the time?

          • Antinous / Moderator

            And you think that we have now “foreseen” everything that could happen to damage a nuclear plant?

          • http://profiles.google.com/churba Churba S

             @Antinous_Moderator:disqus  Probably not, but to think that’s a yes/no answer is creating a false Dichotomy. Sure, we don’t know everything – But we know a shitload more than we did in the 1970s, just like they knew more in the 1970s than the 1870s, and how they’ll know shitloads more than us in 2052.

            We can’t ever make them 100% safe, any more than we could make anything 100% safe, by that metric.

            But we can certainly make it safer, and build in safer fail-states. The plant designs and procedures we have now are much, much safer than the procedures of 40 years ago. 40 years from now – presuming we still use nuclear power, which is likely in some form – it’ll be safer again. Nuclear power is not a story of instant perfection, it’s a case of incremental improvement with occasional large leaps, like everything else.

            I mean, people through this thread are using Fukushima for an example, and you’ll commonly see people use Chernobyl as an anti-nuclear example, as if we’re still creaking along with 40+ year old Russian and American designs, as if we never learn anything when accidents occur. I’d wager that the next generation of nuclear power, which I doubt is far off, would take what happened to the Fukushima plant, shrug it off, and if not keep ticking, fail in a safe manner.

      • Cowicide

        hit by an unforeseeably large earthquake

        O’RLY?

        Please get your facts straight.  Here, I’ll help you:

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8384059/Japan-earthquake-Japan-warned-over-nuclear-plants-WikiLeaks-cables-show.html

        And… here’s why it’s a “fantastic idea” to build more nukes, right?

        http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/01/23/big-tokyo-quake-forecast-by-2016/

         No warnings again, correct??

    • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

      The Fukushima plant would have been fine were it not for

      A) The plant being passed it’s initially scheduled due date
      B) Excessive corporate corruption
      C) A massive Tsunami AFTER an earthquake
      E) Some idiot who decided to put the backup generators in the basement instead of the roof
      D) Ironically, if they had just left the plant on, the cooling system probably would have worked long enough to get the reactors shut down safely.
      So we live and learn.  I understand that a nuclear meltdown is not something that we can just let happen, but this was a 40 year-old plant that should have been discontinued a while ago.  

      • http://profiles.google.com/macrumpton Michael Crumpton

         Hindsight at least seems 20/20, although the tsunami would have probably killed the generators on the roof as well.
        The truth of the matter is that there are some things like a loaded gun that are far more likely to be part of a disaster than not, and they should be avoided if at all possible.

      • Cowicide

        The Fukushima plant would have been fine were it not for

        A) The plant being passed it’s initially scheduled due date
        B) Excessive corporate corruption
        C) A massive Tsunami AFTER an earthquake
        E) Some idiot who decided to put the backup generators in the basement instead of the roof
        D) Ironically, if they had just left the plant on, the cooling system probably would have worked long enough to get the reactors shut down safely.

        Yes, except for the fact that humans are responsible for building and maintaining nuclear reactors, they are perfectly safe.

        • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

          How does that not apply to every single machine ever built by humans?  Cars kill 20,oo0 + people in the US, yet we still use them all the time, for everything.  Coal kills vastly more people across the world every week than Nuclear power has killed in ever.  Even wind turbines have the real risk of breaking and sending a giant steel razor blade spinning into residential areas.  All technology should be means tested and planned to affect the least harm possible, how is nuclear any different?  The new reactors have a chance of catastrophic accident of 1 in a number big enough to be similar to an asteroid wiping out all life on earth.

          • Cowicide

            Come on now, you’re smarter than that. When you wreck a car, the spot isn’t usually deemed uninhabitable for generations to come, is it? Coal sucks, but it’s not the only alternative…

            Yes, The Giant Steel Razor Blade Disaster of 2009 should have taught us all not to put large wind turbines smack in the middle of residential areas even though they are such fantastic spots for wind turbines because with all those houses it really makes the wind push through those areas efficiently.

            ಠ_ಠ

            The new reactors have a chance of catastrophic accident of 1 in a number big enough to be similar to an asteroid wiping out all life on earth.

            New reactors are massively expensive and many were saying the same bullshit about the reactors in Japan and STILL are despite this fact:

            http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/01/23/big-tokyo-quake-forecast-by-2016/

          • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

            Cowicide; How is comparing a car crash at all relevant to the risks of a world-wide energy system?   I was simply pointing out that every human system has risks, and I would argue that the risks of a medium-term nuclear solution are considerably less than trying to change the entire world energy market system.  I would love if I could click the heels of my BoingBoing-brand Armchair-Expert Ruby Slippers(TM) and have every government in the world pass a carbon tax big enough to massively decrease petroleum usage.  However I still haven’t received my Slippers.   (
            Antinous , get on it!)

            We can argue about new green energy developments till the sun burns out, but people have been making “fabulous technology advances” in solar and wind for over a decade now, and the only place they’re economically viable are either Liberal Utopias with carbon taxes (or who happen to be on top of geothermal sources), or countries whose geopolitical position makes oil more expensive.   So while I would love the ‘perfect breakthrough’ to occur tomorrow to give us cheap, green power the world over, I’m not holding my breath.

            We’ll have to wait and see.  One of us will probably be right, I just hope it’s before 6 degrees of warming.

          • Cowicide

            the only place they’re economically viable are either Liberal Utopias

            Welp, you’ve certainly got your corporatist talking points ingrained.  Do you feel the same way about a single payer system for health care because the corporatists got to you there as well?

            Cowicide; How is comparing a car crash at all relevant to the risks of a world-wide energy system?

            Um, I’ll just quote you below and you can just argue with yourself from here on out…

            Cars kill 20,oo0 + people in the US

          • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

            “Um, I’ll just quote you below and you can just argue with yourself from here on out…”

            You should definitely do that, since completely side-stepping my point like a republican and going with the “he said the private sector is doing fine!  he said the private sector is doing fine!  he said…” 8th-grade-debate-approach actually can’t hurt the value of this since it doesn’t appear to have one.

            And Blast!  You’ve caught me!  I’m just a corporotist lackey, bought and paid for by Exxon Mobile!  Or was it Goldman Sax?  BP?  Curse it; I whore myself out to too many Corporate masters, I love getting dominated so much.

            Seriously dude, do you ever read your comment out-loud to yourself and think “how can I sound shriller and more self-congratulating?”

          • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

            Cowicide; that’s a very interesting interview, I hadn’t heard about it before.  It’s a bit unfortunate that guy decided to speak up AFTER all chances of decent  healthcare reform were dashed to pieces by his company, industry and the GOP.

            No, in my metaphor, I was drawing on the classics, the quote just before this scene: 
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrUm0KY8dJA&feature=related 

    • Cowicide

      it’s capable of being one of the cleanest sources of energy we have.

      That’s a ridiculous statement.  The cleaner sources of energy we have is clearly wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, etc. and as Mitchell Glaser has mentioned to you, we should be embarking on a Manhatten Project dedicated to it instead of spending mountains of money on nuclear.

      Leaving out cleaner energy while mentioning “the cleanest source of energy” is very telling.

      • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

        Ummm no it’s not?

        last time I checked, saying “my apartment is one of the cleanest on the block” does not, by contractual law, require me to list all the the apartments that *are* cleaner.  

        • Cowicide

          [cow pokes R_Young with stick.. runs away...]

  • Stacey G

    Tesla would beg to differ.  The time for clean safe Earth-friendly energy generating is NOW, stop the suppression.

  • http://twitter.com/belgo Christopher Shepherd

    As a not-quite-religious proponent of nuclear energy, I was hoping for more compelling arguments (I would have accepted unknowable environmental complexity, for example, or at least appreciated it). The emotional appeal is not so convincing.

    • CognitiveDissident

      You want a compelling argument? How ’bout some Nuclear Power Corporations don’t even have a backup plan (i.e. diesel backup generators), they’re too busy shoveling taxpayer money down their gullets…

      Greg Palast – The Lies and Fraud Behind Nuclear Plants
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xlz7yIVtdnk

      (When they falsify safety reports and steal from the taxpayers, I kinda-sorta think that their priorities are twisted like damaged double-helixes.)

      I’m sure that Homeland Security will be all over this threat to society, oh wait, it’s a corporation with deep pockets and connections, not an individual or group of individuals, never mind.

      • Rob Butler

        Isn’t that really more the fault of the nuclear corporations rather than the technology itself?

        If TEPCO had put as much money into planning for any possible scenario as they did for aesthetics, this wouldn’t be an issue.

        What we need is to learn from past mistakes and make sure they don’t happen again as well as actually listen to the scientists rather than just paying them. Corruption is the problem, not radiation.

        • CognitiveDissident

          As soon as they create corruption-proof Nuclear Power corporations (and outlaw/dismantle the current status quo) because of enforced sensible regulations and oversight, give me a call, because you know as well as I do, this technology has no room for error. Either it’s safe or it ain’t.

          I think they are accidents waiting to happen, even if Thorium Reactors are completely safe, the way it is now, the NRC and these corps. have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted, even if the public has their beaks in the sand and thinks they’re dandy!

          • http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland

            “Either it’s safe or it ain’t” is an awesomely false dichotomy.

            Safety is not a binary state.  You can be “safer than” or “less safe than” something else.  Cars are demonstrably safer today than they were 50 years ago (in terms of occupant crash survivability, for example), but people still die in car accidents.  

            Nuclear power plants can be made safer.  The fact that they are not and have not been perfectly safe in the past is not a signal that they cannot be made safer.  The question is whether they can be made safe enough to warrant their use.  

            I’m not suggesting that we wholeheartedly embrace one technology or another, or that Fukushima et al. wasn’t a disaster.  I’m just saying that the argument “x is inherently unsafe, abandon it” is ludicrous.

        • Antinous / Moderator

          Nuclear power is the Right Choice™ for Plato’s Republic.

      • Adela Doiron

         None of the power industries have back up plans; they are all corrupt. Ahem BP. All are under regulated and all have bought off politicians. You should be anti corporate rather than anti nuke. Ever seen the falsified safety reports for chemical plants?

        • CognitiveDissident

          So, I should be Anti-corporate and pro-nuke, apparently. Even if Thorium reactors are wonderful, I don’t want these corrupt corporations building them. And even if there are wonderfully safe Thorium Nuclear Plant Construction Firms, what’s to prevent a bad firm from cutting corners, i.e. basic human nature? I guess the good firms will be good role models for the bad firms, maybe? The revolving-door NRC is gonna make everything OK!
          Yes, and you’re right about the other industries, I don’t think there is a government agency that is not owned by the industry they’re supposed to regulate, and pollution is bad, but nuclear waste could make whole areas around them unlivable for centuries, I’d say that is exponentially worse.

          (We need good corporations to do the right thing, not only that, but call out their competitors when the competitors do the WRONG thing!)

      • http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

         that’s a fundamentally political issue. Stop this small-government crap and fix it.

      • autark

        Those don’t sound like problems with Nuclear Power… they sound like problems with greedy for profit corporations.

        In order to fix the problem you have to correctly identify the cause.

    • gtrjnky

       Can we store the waste in your garage?

      • AlexG55

        No, it’s a waste to store it. Reprocess it until it’s not radioactive enough to be dangerous.

        • AnthonyC

          Exactly. If it’s still radioactive, it’s still giving off energy.

  • dire

    Of course if Thorium reactors had the same investment that Plutonium generating energy enjoyed we might have a different view of nuclear power.

    • bcsizemo

      But, but we can’t make weapons with Thorium…?

  • mrfixitrick

    It’s silly to call all nuclear power wrong, just because “we” chose to make bomb-grade material from the wrong type reactors. 

    Thorium reactors mean no bombs, but I can live with that…literally!

  • Daemonworks

    Fusion, if any of the current theories pan out, will be pretty safe.

  • Mitchell Glaser

    What a flea market of misinformation and bad logic this article contains. It’s a prime example of why it is not any more (or less) useful to listen to the opinions of artists (and I love Sakamoto’s music) on topics outside of art than it is to listen to the bus driver’s opinion. Yet we are constantly bombarded with articles like these. You might as well explore (as Monty Python did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ9myHhpS9s ) Karl Marx’s views on soccer.

    I had to laugh when Sakamoto said that living in New York during 9/11 gave him firsthand experience of living with “civil war”. Of all the nutty conspiracy theories about 9/11 being an inside job, I never heard it called that.

    • http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

       ”I became convinced that under a condition of tension of either kill or be killed it was impossible to create and enjoy music.”

      that must be some great crack he’s smoking.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/3XLUOLFYZCOGKXHLV4PJBPF47E Larry

    It’s always possible to do something badly.  The Japanese reactors that were involved in the recent disaster were antiquated, and should have been retired, and replaced, ages ago.  The Chernobyl reactors were even worse, having not even an attempt at a containment vessel.  These are not good examples to use in making decisions about our energy future. We don’t really have a lot of options for meeting the world’s future energy requirements, and all of them (including renewables) have warts.  Let’s not make decisions based on emotion, please. 

    • rocobo9

      and if every rooftop was made of solar panels? clean, renewable energy can work it just hasn’t been invested in as much as it should have to advance the technologies.

      i mean i remember seeing solar panels 25 years ago (and i’m sure they’ve been around a lot longer – just can’t be bothered to google it right now). i find their current level of efficiency to be totally unacceptable given that we’ve had TWENTY FIVE YEARS to develop them.

  • John Pastore

    The human species will be extinct soon. The only question is, when is “soon”. 

    The only real distinguishing feature of this type of animal is the power of its brain. It can use this organ to create sophisticated technologies, such as nuclear powered energy sources, and nuclear powered bombs. Either of which has the potential to bring about the extinction of the species more quickly.

    It is possible that nuclear power could delay the inevitable extinction. But this animal would actually have to utilize the power of the brain organ in two different ways. First it would have to develop complementary and supplementary technologies that will prevent nuclear power from extinguishing the species, which seems potentially doable (although Japan brings even this into question).

    But also the human animals would have to interact amongst themselves in such a way that these technologies are actually implemented. These animals interact in a “society” governed by very complex and typically nonsensical rules, often called “politics”, that most certainly do NOT rank survival of the species as the most important factor.

    Historically the human animals always rank importance first by the individual animal, and then the immediate familial unit members, and then some larger grouping such as a “state” or a “country” or a “race” or a “religion”.  This has led to countless conflicts where these animals kill each other off in order to protect “their own” (the definition of which changes dramatically based on changing circumstances).

    The evidence that human animals are more concerned with survival of “their own” rather than the species, is the incredibly petty and merciless — and ongoing to this day — killing off of “the other”, rather than banding together to actually work on issues concerning species survival.

    It is likely that the very features of the brain organ (intellectual creativity, and societies) that have allowed the humanoid to become one of the more successful animals on this particular planet will also give rise to its downfall.

    The ability to build technologies that are potentially species-extinguishing, yet the inability to actually act and interact in ways that consider the species as a whole, will likely lead to the elimination of the species from the planet much sooner than other means.

    Only if something dramatic were to change about the human animals themselves, such that these animals rank survival of the species above the individual or miscellaneous sub-groupings, might this animal survive its own creativity. There are other animals such as ants that do just this sort of thing.

    But it is difficult to imagine the human species evolving to become more ant-like. This would require a dramatic change in each individual animal — it would have to evolve, thereby becoming a new species. 

    It certainly seems as if, one way or another, the human species will be extinct soon.

    • atimoshenko

      Sadly, the biggest problem is not that we privilege personal interests over common interests (while true, this tendency can be overcome), the biggest problem is that even when we want to pursue common interests, we cannot agree on what they are or how to best pursue them.

    • rocobo9

      quite simply, our problem is that every single decision we make as a race is governed by financial restraint and driven by financial reward. we can never truly develop as a species until we break free from those shackles.

  • darkangelx

    What people need to realize is there is more than one way to use nuclear energy.  Heavy water  based reactors – yes they are bad.  LFTR is not.  google it and learn how much safer it would be than the old school reactors under pressure that require constant attention.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CDBCSJ67QEF6I5EBWZLVPZB5K4 william shannon

      Without exception, [thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.’

      Peter Karamoskos, of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

      Oliver Tickell, author of Kyoto2, says the fission materials produced from thorium are of a different spectrum to those from uranium-235, but ‘include many dangerous-to-health alpha and beta emitters’. Tickell says thorium reactors would not reduce the volume of waste from uranium reactors. ‘It will create a whole new volume of radioactive waste from previously radio-inert thorium, on top of the waste from uranium reactors. Looked at in these terms, it’s a way of multiplying the volume of radioactive waste humanity can create several times over.’

      Thorium cannot in itself power a reactor; unlike natural uranium, it does not contain enough fissile material to initiate a nuclear chain reaction. As a result it must first be bombarded with neutrons to produce the highly radioactive isotope uranium-233 – ‘so these are really U-233 reactors,’ says Karamoskos. This isotope is more hazardous than the U-235 used in conventional reactors, he adds, because it produces U-232 as a side effect (half life: 160,000 years), on top of familiar fission by-products such as technetium-99 (half life: up to 300,000 years) and iodine-129 (half life: 15.7 million years).Add in actinides such as protactinium-231 (half life: 33,000 years) and it soon becomes apparent that thorium’s superficial cleanliness will still depend on digging some pretty deep holes to bury the highly radioactive waste.

      from
      Don’t believe the spin on thorium being a greener nuclear optionEifion Rees for the Ecologist

      guardian.co.uk,
      Thursday 23 June 2011 11.52 EDT

  • CognitiveDissident

    Relevant:
    Why Should Nuke Guarantees Cost Less Than Home or Student Loans?
    http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/03

    Relevant:
    The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Myths-August-Personal-Exploration/dp/0813525462
    (how can you know where you’re going if you forget where you’ve been?)

    When those old reactors were built, I’m sure that they thought they were on the right path, too.
    (You shouldn’t just be sure, you should be DAMN sure. The lack of devil’s advocates within the nuclear industry IS reason to worry.)

  • CognitiveDissident

    from Greg Palast – Vulture’s Picnic
    Page 310
    “But then, who regulates the regulators? Well, Shaw Construction for one. Shaw is now constructing a plant that will turn plutonium from old atomic waste into nuclear plant fuel. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission exempted Shaw’s bombs-to-nukes plant from anti-terror security measures. A commissioner who voted for this take-a-terrorist-to-tea exemption, Jeffery Merrifield, now works for Shaw. And the Secretary of Energy who promoted the plan, Spencer Abraham, is now Chairman of Areva USA, partner in Shaw Areva MOX Services.”

    So, which is it, we don’t need no stinkin’ anti-terror secur‎ity measures because the threat is exaggerated, or public officials put personal gain above the citizens’ safety?

    Page 309:
    “The human animal will do things behind a corporate shield we would never dream of doing if we were face-to-face with our victims.”

    • jhertzli

       Shorter Palast: The government is horribly corrupt and we need more government.

      • CognitiveDissident

        Even Shorter Palast: Crooked Corporations Corrupt Government.

  • http://tryingsense.blogspot.com/ R_Young

    The situation seems pretty simple; we need a short-to-medium term solution until we can get Solar and Wind off the ground.  Even with a decent-sized carbon tax and additional funding, Wind and Solar are not going to be competetive with Coil anytime soon, and now we have the HUGE problem of fracking; not only is it pretty terrible to the local environment, it’s making natural gas massively cheaper and we have centuries worth of it in our country alone.So if natural gas will be cheaper than Solar or Wind or whatever, Nuclear seems like the most obvious solution to me.  It comes with a huge risk, but more people die from falling off roofs while installing solar panels every year than have died from nuclear power in all of history.

  • catgrin

    I live on the west coast of the United States, near a few nuclear reactors that were currently operational – until Fukushima happened and got people to note a few things:

    1. American plants are older than most people realize. Half of the reactors in the U.S. are over 30 years old. Nuclear reactors are built to be in service for a LOT of years. They don’t start making money right away, and so the ROI requires that they stay up and running possibly longer than they should. Especially when you consider that nuclear reactors typically sit on or near water (commonly salt water) which degrades building with metals rapidly.

    Not only that – the original licenses for operation for most reactors were only for 20 years, and then most either have been given (or have pending) a 20 year extension. This article discusses the age of the plants and how they stay open. http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/15/news/economy/nuclear_plants_us/index.htm

    2. At some locations, we have EXACTLY the same reactors in service in places in the U.S. that were involved in Fukushima. Not similar, the same – with the same fatal flaws (those idiotic backup generators in the basement, and more). While the plants are inspected before they are given new licenses, their flaws have not been changed since the disaster.

    3. Backup energy. A major problem that occurred at Fukushima was that when they could get to the backup, it was only set to provide electricity for 24 hours. The same is true at many American nuclear plants. Meanwhile, best guesses from most emergency departments say that a minimum of 72-hours is the time required to safely get an hazardous situation under control and get a plant either safely shut down or back online. The generators at the plants are simply not sufficient for safety.

    Here’s an article posted just an hour ago in the NYTimes about the physical problems with the currently damaged and shut down San Onofre plant in California. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/us/san-onofre-could-hint-at-a-non-nuclear-future.html

    San Onofre has already had leak problems, and was shut down to review and, if possible, repair. Even though we desperately need the electricity in California, the risk of that plant going back online may simply be too great. It’s not the only hazardous plant here either. 

    Diablo Canyon sits higher north on the coast, about halfway between L.A. and San Francisco. It was knocked offline earlier this year by an invasion of salps – small, jellyfish-like creatures. They clogged intake screens forcing a wait for them to pass and a maintenance outage. Back in 2008, actual jellyfish caused a shutdown. That’s minor, and just functional. Diablo Canyon is a terrifically risky place to put something you don’t want broken. Diablo sits about a mile away from a fault line projected to be able to produce a 6.5 Richter earthquake.

    • teapot

      3. Backup energy. A major problem that occurred at Fukushima was that when they could get to the backup, it was only set to provide electricity for 24 hours.

      IMO this is the crux of the problem at Fukushima. When they knew the backup generators were screwed they should’ve made it their #1 priority to run emergency power to the plant from the electricity grid. They didn’t even bother doing this until March 18 – a full week after the earthquake. Had all efforts been made to run power to the plant there is a good chance we wouldn’t even be here discussing this.

      I think the problem stemmed from the relevant TEPCO employee’s reluctance to admit how serious the situation was. In Japan you won’t often get a person shouting and screaming at you if something is seriously wrong, they just go silent. That, combined with Japan’s notoriously complex bureaucracy, should also be included as key causes of the Fukushima disaster.

  • teapot

    Sweet.. now that we’ve got a musician’s opinion on nuclear power maybe we can get all those useless nuclear scientists carrying Sakamoto’s gear or something?

    What’s up tomorrow on BB? We gonna get a cross-stitch expert’s take on defeating AIDS? Puh-leez.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CDBCSJ67QEF6I5EBWZLVPZB5K4 william shannon

      It does not take scientific intelligence to comprehend that the risk to benefit ratio of nuclear power is severely tilted into the negative, especially when the impact of catastrophic failure of multiple reactors and waste Mox fuel storage is factored in. Your argument “teapot” that lay opinions are irrelevant is profoundly misguided. One need only look to the demonstrations in Japan to observe that, like it or not, opinions about nuclear power are a peoples issue. People who have lost their land for generations, their food sources and their very lives. If you do any reading beyond the cheerleaders of nuclear power that make up mainstream media you will find that principled nuclear scientist that are against nuclear power consider the abolition of nuclear power a common sense issue, not one of technical hairsplitting that only other nuclear scientist would comprehend. While the entire northern hemisphere sits on the precipice of an incomprehensibly destructive disaster from the potential collapse of Fukushima fuel pool 4, the profit motivated corporations built up around nuclear ( primarily military industrial ) spread the only useful message they have -Doubt of the Science behind Arguments Against Nuclear- Even if the doubt is unfounded it is enough. This same strategy is used by industries behind Fracking, Mountain Top Removal and GMO’s. So, to make my point relevant to yours what if the cross-stitch expert had AIDS and survived the disease and felt that her expertise was relevant. If we left all knowledge up to scientist what of the midwife? What of Reiki or Acupuncture. Scientist have created a technology they cannot control. The reality fo fukushima is these supposed scientist with all the answers are in uncharted territory. Their prized robots are melting. Their existing calculations no longer apply. 

      • teapot

        It does not take scientific intelligence to comprehend that the risk to benefit ratio of nuclear power is severely tilted into the negative 

        Again: That’s a nice opinion you got there. Unless you’ve got a relevant degree or some statistical analysis to show me I take your opinion on the issue to be as valuable as Sakamoto’s. I’m not saying mine is more important, I’m just saying that one lay person’s opinion is merely that.

        Do you let the postman give you dentistry advice?

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CDBCSJ67QEF6I5EBWZLVPZB5K4 william shannon

          “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. ”
                                                       -Bob Dylan Subterranean Homesick Blues

          teapot. if the postman had a dentist stab him in the face and then told me to stay away from that same dentist then YES in that case I would take that particular dentistry advice from the postman because that advice is also Common Sense and does not require dental knowledge.

          Nuclear power is stabbing the world in the face. This is not an opinion it is a fact. They built reactors on a fault line that went pop and your arguing that you cannot have an opinion about it unless your a nuclear scientist. Meanwhile these scientist are in so far over their heads they are literally as helpless as newborn babies… 

    • Paul Johnson

      I apologise,  but anyone who uses “puh-leez” has less of a valid opinion than even a musician.

      I see where you’re coming from, it is a valid point. But your manner is offensive, and no one likes that, so why do it?

  • Paul Johnson

    I can imagine nuclear power to be a huge advantage to our power hungry race. But installing nuclear power plants in high-risk earthquake zones, to me, seems to be a ludicrous decision.
    Just take a look at this awesome map showing earthquakes since 1898
    http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/EarthquakesSince1898_4fe85a7b5319b.jpg 
    I mean, Japan has had so many!

    Imagine a world where everything runs off electricity (not really a hard task). Imagine if we could harness nuclear power in very remote and deserted areas and then transport the energy (maybe in advanced batteries) to areas that need it. Then launch all waste into space to be incinerated by the sun. That’s just a very uneducated, possibly equally ludicrous idea, but we shouldn’t write off early innovations just because of poor executions. We really shouldn’t burn coal forever, or even that much longer if we can help it!

  • Charlie B

    Part of the goal is to make it impossible to obtain clean air or water without charge.  How many times will they need to wave “the tragedy of the commons” and “atlas shrugged” at you before you bother to read them?  These people are opposed to all things that cannot be privately owned; natural commons are anathema to them, and they wish to destroy them.  And political parties have little or nothing to do with it.

    Paraphrasing Bobby Kennedy, but he was right.