[Leanan]

I am not anti-nuclear. Heck, I almost took a job in a nuclear power plant a few years ago. I currently live near a nuclear power plant. (We occasionally have nuclear accident/terrorist attack drills, especially since 9/11.) It doesn't keep me up nights.

But nuclear has not lived up to its promise. It's not just American paranoia about nuclear power. They've built breeder reactors in other countries, and found they aren't competitive. They're being shut down, not because of fear of nuclear waste, but because of expense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

Don't get me wrong; nuclear may well be the energy of the future. But it won't be easy, and it won't be a better energy source than oil.

[pup55]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow fast can R grow (2%, 3%, 6%?), and how big can it get?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PhilBiker', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')lease direct me to some information which explains in detail why nuclear waste is no big deal.

[PhilBiker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut nuclear has not lived up to its promise. It's not just American paranoia about nuclear power. They've built breeder reactors in other countries, and found they aren't competitive. They're being shut down, not because of fear of nuclear waste, but because of expense.

[PhilBiker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', 'I') am not anti-nuclear. Heck, I almost took a job in a nuclear power plant a few years ago. I currently live near a nuclear power plant. (We occasionally have nuclear accident/terrorist attack drills, especially since 9/11.) It doesn't keep me up nights.

But nuclear has not lived up to its promise. It's not just American paranoia about nuclear power. They've built breeder reactors in other countries, and found they aren't competitive. They're being shut down, not because of fear of nuclear waste, but because of expense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

Don't get me wrong; nuclear may well be the energy of the future. But it won't be easy, and it won't be a better energy source than oil.

[reggieUK]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mercani', '
')As you can see just by switching car manufacturing from pure internal-consumption cars to hybrid cars, 1st year of depletion is handled. I didn't even talk about efficiency improvements in other areas. Of course in the long run (10-15 years), personal car use would need to be dramatically reduced.

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')It's not a permanent thing, once the mining and refining starts again in earnest, breeders are going to make a hell of a lot of sense again.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('reggieUK', '
')These calculations never seem to take into account that China will HAVE TO acquire a good proportion of what the US currently gets and forecasts it will carry on getting!

anyone agree?

[Andy]

Why do we keep comparing radioactive waste to chemical waste like Dioxin. Dioxin, with political will, effort and resources can be cleaned up. There are many approaches to breaking it down like specialized bacteria among others. Radioactive waste is dealt with by waiting in out. We can try transmutation to shorter decay products etc. but as far as I am aware, that effort has not yet been successful to the point where we can say it is a tried, commercial solution. Can't we see that this difference extremely significant.?

As long as that is the case, nuclear fission will be a problem. The process, even with breeder reactors and reprocessed plutonium necessarily produces waste that has long lifespans that have to be waited out. Medical evidence has shown that even the low level radiation pollution from reprocessing facilitiies like La Hague and Sellafield have had negative effects on human health. We may well go with nuclear plants to try to offset the energy crunch but we will necessarily be sacrificing our long-term health, just as with coal etc.

That approach to me does not make sense when there are less problematic approaches. Simply limiting our energy use through conservation/ efficiency/ scaledown and going with the renewables makes more sense to me. I agree however that we are likely to go the polluting route with all its attendant consequences. I wish us the best through this transition.

[PhilBiker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('reggieUK', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mercani', '
')As you can see just by switching car manufacturing from pure internal-consumption cars to hybrid cars, 1st year of depletion is handled. I didn't even talk about efficiency improvements in other areas. Of course in the long run (10-15 years), personal car use would need to be dramatically reduced.

[PhilBiker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')It's not a permanent thing, once the mining and refining starts again in earnest, breeders are going to make a hell of a lot of sense again.

[PhilBiker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Andy', 'W')hy do we keep comparing radioactive waste to chemical waste like Dioxin. Dioxin, with political will, effort and resources can be cleaned up. There are many approaches to breaking it down like specialized bacteria among others. Radioactive waste is dealt with by waiting in out. We can try transmutation to shorter decay products etc. but as far as I am aware, that effort has not yet been successful to the point where we can say it is a tried, commercial solution. Can't we see that this difference extremely significant.?

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PhilBiker', 'I')t may seem "simple" to you and me and most on this board who understand that our energy footprint has to dramatically decrease, but to the masses, I don't know how that will sell.

[NeoLotus]

On the question of a rebound, not as much as you think. Industrialism has reached its endpoint and we will return to the way things were before all this coal and oil. Rome did quite well and so did many other civilizations prior to the modern industrial era.

On the use of uranium, that is truly a pandora's box of woe. I was engaged in a discussion on a somewhat related topic regarding the use of depleted uranium as ammunition in Iraq War I & II. Depleted uranium is the waste leftover from the purification process to get the good stuff used in the nuclear rods.

Anyway, part of the DU discussion can be found here: http://www.soldierforum.org/forum/viewt ... =1507#1507

Another discussion on DU is here:
http://www.soldierforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=416

It is true that substances like dioxin, PCBs, and other fat-soluble toxic pesticides and the like are very hard to get rid of once it's in the food chain (and it always ends up in the food chain being organo-philic), it is at least tolerable in the human body, though much less so in other creatures. This makes the presence of such substances at least tolerable because death is not inevitable just because you have it in your body. It is stored in the liver and the fat and is thus sequestered from normal body functioning, although if any of it is mobilized out of the fat it will act as a hormone mimicker and can cause sexual organ cancers or fetal problems in pregnant women. But these are not inevitable simply because you have any of these substances in your body.

However, radiation poisoning is not survivable let alone tolerable. If what is happening to our soldiers and the people of Iraq are any indication, once this stuff hits the water supply, what little potable water we have left will be more or less permanently contaminated with radioactive particles that will bring on an epidemic of cancers like the Black Death plagues of Europe.

The only true answer to what we face is to learn to live within the earth's limits and to re-prioritize our values from a materialistic to a more aesthetic, social, and spiritual view of our existence. To me, this is where the real shock awaits when the materialism of Western civilization must confront its own greed.

Lastly, I don't like the way we live. It is wholly unnatural and the breakdown of society is evidence of this folly. We must return to communal agrarianism and learn to value and respect what the earth provides for our needs in food and water all by itself. Horses, oxen, and water buffalo are naturally solar powered (they eat plants which grow because of chlorophyll and sunlight) with the added benefit of pooping out natural fertilizers. All this labor saving industrialism and cheap oil is but a blip in the history of humankind. Unfortunately, its effects are going to be extremely far reaching for a great many generations to come, if we live that long.

I suggest reading E.F. Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered" for a real understanding of what we face and the choices we will have to make. I also suggest Wendell Berry's "Another Turn of the Crank" in addition to his "The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture."

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')n the question of a rebound, not as much as you think. Industrialism has reached its endpoint and we will return to the way things were before all this coal and oil. Rome did quite well and so did many other civilizations prior to the modern industrial era.