Only nuclear power can stop global warming, says British environmentalist (Lovelock)

Yahoo! News ^ | 5/24/04 | AFP - London

[biblewonk]

If windmills are so good, how much of your retirement is invested in them? I suspect it is close to zero as that is the predicted net income from such mechanisms without the incentives of tax policy.

I would love to invest in wind but GE and Shell are much too diluted to be a real wind power investment.

Another problem is that windmills are not good peak power producers nor are they dependable in all weather conditions,

That would actually mean something if we were talking about one giant windmill.

[Final Authority]

Your last sentence on reply 41 is indicative of the problem investors have with wind power, that is, if one has to have a constant and reliable source of power from wind then one must consider the variable power source, weather, and that requires one to invest in many more power plants than one would otherwise when the power source is predictable. It dilutes the investment further from the ideal condition thereby reducing ones potential for income from such investment. I remember there was a time where it was postulated that all homes would have a panel or two of PVs on the roof and that would be all we would need to get cheap energy. After years of experiments it was determined that such a system does produce power but at levels that still require homes to be connected to the grid. Then we find out that PVs lose efficiency over time making the original investment and solution expensive and nearly useless. The point here is that good intentions do not make for good solutions, good economics and engineering do.

[Final Authority]

You say you would love to invest in wind. Go ahead and buy yourself a wind powered generator. You need some property though and if one lives in an apartment or some sort of a planned community it is out of the question. I do not have a wind powered generator because it is too expensive, it is a poor investment, and if I can say, ugly. So much for wind power, right now anyway.

[steveyp]

Explain to me how a Chernobyl type accident can be initiated and then proceed at a US nuclear power plant.

I'll even let you ignore the containment and biological shielding.

Good Luck.

Start with your guess as to how many pounds of graphite exists in a US LWR core.

[steveyp]

You don't play CombatMission do you, JasonC?

[Willie Green]

Nuclear power is simply vile. Look at Chernobyl(sp)

Why don't we look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki instead?
Believe it or not, neither is the vast nuclear wasteland that anti-nuke activists would have you believe.

Both cities were rebuilt soon after the war and have become important industrial centres. The population of Hiroshima has grown to over one million and that of Nagasaki to 440,000.
Nuclear energy has come to be an important part of the life of each city in a totally new way: today one quarter of Hiroshima's electricity is from nuclear power and half of that for Nagasaki is nuclear. Both cities are testimony to the positive benefits of a technological society which applies available energy resources to the needs of urban populations and industry.

[RightWhale]

If windmills are so good, how much of your retirement is invested in them?

You might be surprised. Myself, there is no wind here, and no sun most of the time. Looks like a nuke would fit behind the outhouse and stil leave room for moose to get by when they go wherever they go.

[biblewonk]

http://www.jxj.com/magsandj/rew/2004_03/paying_wind.html

Here is a little piece about wind power investment if you really want to know about the topic. Investers are cropping up everywhere. It is no longer a fringe zone experiment but it is becoming mainstream. This could only be so if it were profitable. Wind power today costs as much as the fuel alone for a natural gas fired plant.

[biblewonk]

Sorry, I simply don't have 10 million dollars.

[biblewonk]

Sure, it could never happen here, and if anyone thinks it could, they just don't know enough about nukes. Right.

[biblewonk]

Yes, because a bomb leaves an entirely different kind of waste than a powerplant failure.

[steveyp]

Not good enough, biblewonk.

I'll make it easier. Just consider the socio-economic construct-- comparing a communist state and a capitalistic state-- and whether the accident in one is replicable here. That way we can leave out the nasty and boring discussion of physics, and the elemental design and operational differences between the Soviet LWGR and a US LWR.

Perhaps you could start with the TMI accident; that was pretty bad. They destroyed a good deal of the core, with a fair bit relocating to the bottom of the reactor vessel.

Expound on the safety systems that prevented a worse accident at TMI, despite all the human and mechanical failures. Characterize how much land was made uninhabitable after this classic core melt accident here in the US relative to the Ukraine.

Then perhaps delve into how the industry responded to this accident, increasing design requirements and cost-- even during the construction of units. Perhaps discuss how the industry responded with watch-dog oranizations to promote best practices, critical evaluation of failures, and self-generated improvement in design and operation. Lastly, discuss the improved performance of nuclear station's in the US.

I'll even let you grandstand a bit on the breakdown at Davis Besse that almost provided the industry with good data for a rod ejection accident.

On the other hand, it is so much easier to resort to hyperbolic language, isn't it?

[E Rocc]

Lovelock jumped on this thing when "environmentalism" was still mostly a scientific movement. It is no longer - it is a social movement now, complete with tribalism and hidden agendae and all the baggage of the post-Cold War wreckage of socialist utopianism. How else to explain the determined anti-capitalist and redistributionist elements of a topic that had very little to do with either when Lovelock first started?

It isn't about the environment anymore, it's all about power now, a collectivist end-run around existing political and economic venues in which socialism has consistently failed. Its precepts now have the force of holy canon, and Lovelock will be regarded as a heretic. Watch it happen.

It's no coincidence that when the Soviet Union collapsed and it became obvious to even the most willfully obtuse that socialism was a failure, environmentalism became the new raison d'atre of a good portion of the left.

Paul Ehrlich (who has likely been provably wrong more times than any person alive today) said in 1991 that "giving society cheap abundant energy at this point would be equivalent to giving an idiot child a machine gun." This sums up the mindset of the modern greenies: control (by them and their allies) is more important than prosperity. That's why they hate nuclear power so much.

-Eric

[biblewonk]

Nothing could ever go wrong here. Right.

[steveyp]

Biblewonk. I just stated that Davis Besse almost had created conditions that would produce what would have been considered a virtually impossible event-- a rod ejection accident. Would it have produced a hell of an accident-- you bet ya. Would it have rendered miles and miles of land uninhabitable? No way.

So where did I state that accidents can't happen?

I asked you to tell me how a US plant could produce a chernobyl type accident. Notably I wanted to know what kind of graphite fire a US LWR would have and how a US LWR could lose its coolant and have even the slightest probability of continued criticality. Especially if it had lost geometry!

I just wanted to prove you don't know what the crap you're talking about.

I consider that effort accomplished.

Do come back to play again some time.