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John Quiggin 
@wilful
Wilful @49, see my reply to Fran.
Otherwise, it is clear that corporate ‘communicatons strategists’ are running out of ideas because they still try to influence public opinion with silly labels such as “NIMBY FUD”.
We’ve been there, done that wilful. Its old hat what your are doing.
over the line
@wilful
“Wilful is Wilfully ignorant as well. He asks “How many people have died from nuclear power accidents in the past 40 years, excluding the irrelevant chernobyl?”
You dont know? No, why would you? A. You cant be bothered to look it up? or B. It cant be measured when you take into account cancers diagnosed or not yet diagnosed, and deformities in offspring (It also causes illness not just deaths hence are you including living deaths?)
Even so, why not make an attempt to find out instead of asking silly questions?
Id trust Monbiot though…over you.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/09/07/two-kinds-of-mass-death/
@Ernestine Gross
You miss the key points.
1. People don’t weigh the risks and costs of all technologies by reference to the least impressive examples available but by those which produce the greatest net benefit that people feel they want. Comparing a military grade reactor designed by people with a brief that attached little value to human life or even the operational effectiveness of the reactor at producing power with one designed to make maximum use of the feedstock to produce power and to minimise risk to human life is simply special pleading.
2. The comparisons show that most people are willing to accept some risks to life in order to achieve some benefits, even when those risks materialise, as they do on every day. No person driving or riding in a motor vehicle or walking into places where vehicles are in motion is unaware that motor vehicle operation increases their risk of life-altering or ending injury. It is a requirement that people with registered vehicles insure others as against catastrophic injury for the operation of the insured vehicle. Catastrophic public liability insurance also applies to aircraft. Yet people think these costs and risks are exceeded by the benefits of using motor vehicles and aircraft and tolerating their use.
In short, even allowing that the currently best technology is not risk free people continue using it. What you are saying is that because some past iteration of a technology using a comparable feedstock and operated under a regime that no longer exists, failed, rational people shgould oppose a far better iteration of the technology operated under qualitatively better conditions. That’s not the reasoning that most people use.
Where a nuclear facility replaces a coal facility the risks of the nuclear facility are added to the risk profile of everyone in the footprint and the risks of the coal facility are subtracted. Where the risk is lowered, this trade begins to make sense.
Quite apart from the CO2 and CH4 being added to the atmosphere from mining, transporting and burning the coal, there is also the impact of all the other toxics on those living within the area from fly ash and particulate. This includes, (but is not limited to) radioactive hazmat, mercury (which attacks the central nervous system), So2, lead, and much else. Fly ash is used in building materials and so this low level radioactivity is spread into the houses of those using the material. These are not prospective risks but actual daily impacts. Why a rational person would not prefer the remote, notional and prospective harms of a well run nuclear plant for the manifest and daily actualised harms of coal combustion is hard to fathom, especially when the latter creates a manifest harm to ecosystem services that lasts until rock weathering can sequster the CO2 entirely is hard to fathom.
Well no, of course it doesn’t. We are comparing societies that use cars and aircraft but get their stationary energy from some suite of sources including either nuclear power or fossil fuels in some balance.
I might add though that if the demand for crude oil as a transport fuel feedstock fell sharply, then the transport of crude oil would also fall sharply. That would reduce the number of vehicles on the world’s roads carrying this highly hazardous material and the number of vehicles carrying it as fuel and reduce the exposure of drivers to incineration as a result of uncontrolled fuel ignition or as a result of collision with trucks carrying such fuel. We had one such on the South Coast not so very long ago. So if substantial numbers of motor vehicle operators drew substantial proportions of their energy from the grid and the grid was largely nuclear-powered they would be safer from fuel-carriage-related harms without addiing to the harms of those exposed to the consequences of those exposed to the combustion of coal.
Should vehicle miles nevertheless be reduced if possible? Well of course. Fewer per capita airmiles should be flown and fewer per capita road miles driven. These are rational objectives regardless of the energy source(s). Yet it really says little about the comparative feasibility of nuclear power.
FB 1
EG 0
@Fran Barlow
“Where a nuclear facility replaces a coal facility”
This is the basic flaw in most nuclear proponents arguments.
Why anyone would want to replace coal facilities – as opposed to simply upgrading them with combined cycle, cogen, and solar preheat – is never sufficiently explained (either an economic or environmental standpoint).
So, ernestine, the answer is zero then, from reading Monbiot’s column?
And I can’t believe you honestly think I’m some corproate spin doctor and that’s the reason I’m pro-nuclear. Sorry mate, you’re completely out of the ball-park there.
I’m in favour of nuclear power because I’m deperately afraid of the impacts of climate change on our natural environment, but I think that electricity is really nifty and if we can have lots of it then that is an awesome win for people. Put them together, discard the wishful thinking, and all that’s left is nuclear power.
The known risks of DECT cordless phones and heavy mobile phone use are far higher than the known risks of nuclear power.
Nuclear may make an insignificant and highly uneconomic contribution to reducing an additional 5% of GHG emissions over the next 20-30 years.
Nat gas and renewables may make a much more significant reduction at far less cost (refer Diesendorf which you dismiss without any serious rebuttal). In combination with the Wentworth group’s optimising terrestrial carbon and enegy efficiency you have a reasonable and low cost start to a low carbon future.
Alternatively let’s just have a robust and stable carbon price above $30/tonne and see what wins.
Nuclear proponents may probably better off focussing their efforts on longer term fusion research.
It occurs to me that if I attempt to offer a comprehensive rebuttal of Diesendorf’s claims — the book you refer to is over 400 pages — then I am going to go way beyond the scope of a Monday Message Board.
It might be better to focus on the validity of some of Diesendorf’s foundational claims. If these claims fail, then his thesis on the role that renewables can play in decarbonising the energy system within the timeline we need it to happen fails.
1. Wind/Solar/other intermittents can substantially bear the power load currently borne by fossil fuels in the stationary energy sector at acceptable cost i.e. financial/cost-benefit feasible)within an acceptable time frame. (i.e. schedule feasible)
Related Claim 1.(a) To the extent that they cannot, demand management can reduce the call on power to the power curves the intermittent sector can meet.
Related Claim 1.(b) Slews in the power supply system can be reconciled by resort to geographic dispersal of intermittent energy sources and redundant gas capacity.
Related Claim 1.(b)(i)Resort to redundant gas capacity of between 33% and 50% (according to the extent of geographic dispersal = more redundancy for less dispersal) is technically feasible and capable of being reconciled with a low-enough emissions pathway (i.e is organisationally feasible.)
Claim 2. The approach to meeting power outlined above is feasible for all heavily industrialised and urbanised societies everywhere.
Claim 3. The approach to meeting power outlined above is feasible for less/non industrialised societies who are seeking to increase their life chances through resort to usages that are energy intensive.
Claim 4. The approach to meeting power outlined above is feasible for societies aiming to shift transport energy away from liquid fuels to supply from the grid.
Do you agree that these are Diesendorf’s express or implicit claims and that these are apt tests of their plausibility?
@Fran Barlow
This is Diesendorf’s argument.
Click to access GHsolutionsWithSustEnLatest.pdf
@Fran Barlow
Fran, to cut a long story short, your many words have zero impact on me.
Not long ago you gave me words about a Nash equilibrium which made it perfectly clear that you don’t understand anything about game theory to which the term “Nash equilibrium” belongs.
The other day, in the context of my question on a legal matter, you wrote that dynamic systems are non-linear and therefore causality is difficult to track. I bit my tongue. Not all dynamic systems are non-linear and not all linear systems are easy to analyse (track causalty) but some non-linear systems can be analysed by some people.
Now you tell me that I have missed the point regarding “risk is additive”. You don’t demonstrate this by means of working with the original set of words. No, you give me a new lot of words.
I know from past experience in the blog sphere as well as elsewhere, there is no end to these ‘communication strategies’.
Good luck with your endeavours; I am not a suitable recipiant of your messages.
Wilful is an interesting character. He is interesting in the sense that he names gen3+ and gen 4 nuclear power (technology?) but he apparently does not understand the much simpler technologies involved in his own household decision making problem. How credible is his statement regarding nuclear power?
1. In his post @49, p1, he writes: “Look, there are two and only two substantive potential issues with gen 3+ and gen 4 nuclear power – will it cost too much, and could they be built fast enough in Australia..”
2. In his post @ 27, p1, wilful writes: “(FYI peoples, as stated, I have solar PV – but a) I’m affluent, and b) the government are more about votes than sense, I mean fancy giving me $8000)”
3. In his post 1, wilful says: ” It got down to 30.6 degrees in Melbourne overnight. We don’t have airconditioning, this is a conscious choice we made due to electricity consumption, but I tell you, my sense of smug moral superiority was really tested. Very grumpy today, didn’t get much sleep, and the kids are grumpy too.”
But,
“solar PV” doesn’t cool his house; it is only an alternative source of electricity generation to say coal. Assuming he can’t change the architecture of the house but can’t stand the heat, buying an air conditioning unit is a feasible solution for his home environmental problem. This solution is feasible (air conditioning units are available and by (b) of his 2 he is financially able to buy one). He can rid himself of moral guilt, if any, and he can demonstrate to himself that (his presumption of ) the PV subsidy is a vote buying exercise is wrong by giving the $8000 government subsidy to a charity or returning the amount to the government.
Maybe the heat has affected his cerebral powers. Be it as it may, given
his (1), (2) and (3), I attach zero probability to him having any idea about gen3+ and gen4 nuclear power.
ernestine, the answer to my question is something approximately close to zero. two people died at a fuel preparation plant for an experimental reactor in japan (not power generating) in 1999, three people died at a US miltary experimental reactor in 1961, that’s about all that i can find.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html
It is quite absurd the level of safety that has been achieved, aginst which there are still people who believe that nuclear power is unsafe. This is entirely irrational.
Ernestine, you don’t have to talk about me in the third person, I am right here. but I suppose it helps you to sound patronising, which is the effect you’re after. that said, I cannot for the life of me work out what your ad homonem attack on me is about.
Maybe, in case you’re a bit slow, I need to restate it. I am concerned about carbon emissions, therefore I choose to avoid the purchase of airconditioning, knowing that it will contribute to brown coal emissions from the latrobe valley. In addition, I have also taken steps to reduce my family’s emissions, such as sensible house design (within the context of a hundred year old house and not infinite budgets), and taking advantage of a populist measure, that makes no financial sense for the government, to install PV panels.
It’s really not that hard, i think most people would understand my motivation.
And I certainly don’t profess to be a nuclear engineer, but my grasp of the basics is solid.
For your information, “generation 3 plus” design rectors, so called, are the latest iteration of current reactor technology, with integral fail-safe engineering. They are currently being commissioned around the world. So-called generation 4 reactors are a bit more speculative, they are a different technology, sometimes called fast breeder, that use a much higher proprotion of the available energy in the radioactive fuel, leaving a much smaller waste problem.
Hope you learnt something!
Thank you, ian for this reference.
@Jarrah
Jarrah EG runs rings around all three of you sorry to say – its rather childish to rate like that (J Z).
Wilful – 4th generation may be “a bit more speculative” however not much. Globally we have over 300 reactor years of experience with Fast Breeder power plants.
Alice – EG gave a similar score card in a debate you and I had regrading regulation. And for what it is worth I agree with Jarahs score card. Fran is on the money regarding risk.
@Ernestine Gross
Ernestine…I dont know why you bother…there is so much of this wall of empty noises and patter when it comes to nuclear – we have Wilful, a not terribly interesting character IMHO, wanting to sell us all on the benefits of “generation 3 plus latest iterations of the current reactor technology” and “proportions of energy in the radioactive fuel available”.
Yet this person has no idea at all of how many people have died in the past 40 years from nuclear use (when you add nuclear weaponry its even worse) and when you add deaths to come (and living deaths now).
He has no idea – the sort that would sell the latest technology in torture chamber equipment if he thought it produced greater efficiencies. These types are really peddling the self interests of big business EG, not the interests of mankind. It comes with a snowstorm of meaningless jargon with which they claim a moral superiority on the basis that these inferior creatures are educating you.
Wilful is a troll Ernestine. He knows well there is as much delusionism out there on nuclear deaths over time as there is on climate science. It is in fact a minefield of utter lies and he seeks to push those lies in here.
Wilful – why dont you join Plimer and Monkton?. You would all get on famously.
I also question Fran’s motivations here on nuclear as well. Interestingly enough Fran, you do get on rather well with he hard right ankle biters in this blog dont you?
Alice – do you know what a rhetorical question is? Wait, don’t answer that.
Alice your earlier link to Monbiot doesn’t contain this information. In fact, it doesn’t even make the argument that nuclear power is bad, only that the British government can not be trusted with it as it is not as responsible as the Finnish government, whose nuclear authority he does not fault.
This is not a debate about whether nuclear power is “good” or “bad”, it is a debate about whether it is “better” or “worse” than coal. The toll of death, cancer, deformity and illness arising from coal power is greater than that from nuclear power by an enormous margin; even before you take account of the number of deaths that can be expected by the greenhouse effect. There’s no contest. The only sense in which coal power is safer than nuclear power is weaponization potential, and it the very legitimate fear of nuclear warfare than has contributed to a disproportionate fear of nuclear power with regards to environmental effects – at least disproportionate compared to the public’s tolerant attitude toward coal power. Obviously this does NOT mean that nuclear power is the BEST option, but it is not trolling to point out that coal is WORSE.
@wilful
I suspect that where Alice and Ernestine are going with deaths is Chernobyl. Deaths associated with this, according to GreenPeace in 2006 were
There are reasons to doubt the methodology on which Greenpeace relies (and of course, to reject the ongoing relevance of Chernobyl to current nuclear power practice) but let us set these aside for the moment. Let us grant purely for the sake of argument that the ultimate human cost of Chernobyl will prove to be 200,000 extra deaths and that this should for some reason be added to the human cost of nuclear power.
Here’s what one study by the Clean Air Task Force said of coal in the US …
STUDY SAYS COAL PLANT POLLUTION KILLS 30,000 A YEAR
So even the most extravagant claims about potential deaths associated with Chernobyl would be exceeded during the same time frame by a factor of about 3.25 to 1 in the US alone by coal plant operation alone.
In China, the figures are said to be even worse.
Of course, that is unfair to coal, since Chernobyl was not designed mainly as a power plant and some of China’s deaths are smoking-related (one suspects this is true also within the populations affected by Chernobyl).
This here is interesting
And in China, since 1949, according to official figures, some 250,000 people have died in coal mining accidents — typically gas explosions. We’ve already had our first in China this year — in which 18 were killed. In the first 8 years of this decade something like 5600 Chinese died every year in such accidents and countless others suffered injury. And one may add many more deaths from silicosis, if the reports above are accurate. Doutbtless if we roamed the globe pulling out stats for places like Poland and South Africa and India, things would look even more grim.
Accordingly even if one includes Chernobyl at the most extravagant end of projections, the morbidity per TwH of nuclear power is a tiny fraction of that of coal usage.
It’s interesting that as graphic as the report above was, it didn’t actually pitch for abandoning resort to coal. It merely wanted coal plants to adhere to stricter emission standards.
@gerard
you say “The only sense in which coal power is safer than nuclear power is weaponization potential”
Then there is no contest. Coal is safer. What was the death toll from Hiroshima? Perhaps Wilful can enliighten us all. Have they finished counting yet? So we should advocate all countries that produce emmissions move to nuclear shall we. That includes Iran. Now, I wonder where terrorists can buy their black market uranium? After we do all this and make nuclear even more efficient…just imagine the technology. Terrorists will be able to make their own nasty little surprises from the much bigger and blacker than ever market for radioactive products.
Good luck with it all. Its so deadly efficient isnt it?
@Fran Barlow
Yes of course – we dont want Chernobyl raised while we are supporting nuclear do we? (irony alert). So we just declare Chernobyl irrelevant to today. Yet Chernobyl happened just a little over ten years ago – 1986. That makes it highly relevant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/mar/25/energy.ukraine
Apologies for not being terribly interesting to you Alice. Let me assure you, the respect is mutual.
(odd how you and Ernie both think it’s a useful debating tactic to talk about me not at me).
The number of deaths due to nuclear power, excluding Chernobyl, is very close to zero. About five, and maybe abbout 31 in uranium mining, in the past 40 years. Neither you nor Ernie’s entirely uninformative Monbiot link has provided any other evidence. So there you go.
It’s a funny world view you have, any person who disagrees with you MUST have an ulterior motive. Now Fran is a secret rightie, while I’m a corporate spin doctor. As a matter of fact, I’ve been hanging around these parts, with a consistent view on these matters, far longer than you have.
More on PR-type communications methods:
Fran @21 writes ” I suspect that where Alice and Ernestine …..”
Fran and wilful could use private emails to exchange their of assumptions about other people. But this is not the point of PR-type communicatons.
Soon I have enough material for a whole book on this topic.
@Alice
The occasional visitors here from what I’d call “the hard right” don’t like me one little bit. To imply that Terje or Jarrah are from “the hard right” is simply abuse of the language in the service of a cultural claim. Oddly, at least one such person who came here recently who fits that description rather better was in sympathy with you … Guilt by association is poor methodology though because the mere holding of a view says little in itself about how one arrived at it. Suggesting Wilful joiun Plimer and Monckton when he has explicitly repudiated their general claim though his avowed acts is simply gratuitously nasty.
You know full well that neither wilful nor I have any agenda on this matter beyond wishing to reduce net anthropogenic CO2 and pollution more generally. You implicastion that we might is without merit. Even were I totally wrong on this matter, my view (and I assume that of wilful, gerard, Terje and Jarrah) springs from a sincere desire to underpin human wellbeing. Doubtless each of us will differ on a great many things, but I assume that they are genuine in their difference rather than simply trolling.
Why is that so hard to fathom? Why, without anything more impressive than untutored inference, must you attribute so much to the impact of the malign and self-serving? While your impulse is different, when you speak in this way you sound like nobody so much as those crazed LaRouchies or people convinced that dark conspiracies explain all.
i always love a good climate change argument. Especially when it goes Nuclear.
I love discussing nuclear, as so many pro-nuclear people over simplify their argument and seek to blame the “irrationals” for not beleiving in their wonderful nuclear solution to life, the universe and everything.
While an argument can be mounted that modern nuclear powerplants are quite safe, there remain a number of other issues associated with it’s use as a primary power source. These include (in no particular order):
– they take a really long time to build – recent example in Finland was due to take 4 years and will probably take closer to 8
– they cost a lot – again with the Olkiluoto facility in Finland, they are expecting a 5billion Euro price tag. this means that is costs significantly more than coal to build. Depending on how you cost the clean up and what discount rate you use, the whole of life cost is unlikely to be less than coal
– there remain real concerns about the safety, including environmental safety of mining, processing, reprocessing and storage of material. Waste management costs remain uncertain as the long term management costs are still somewhat speculative.
– nuclear is a well developed, well understood and highly researched industry over a long period – this suggests that there are unlikely to be quantum changes in the technology that will improve efficiency or cost
And dont forget that from a climate change perspective
– renewables, while currently not cost comparable remain laregly a new industry. this creates significant scope for major advancements that will refelct a quantum shift in pricing or performance. It is expected that advancements in solar cell technology are likely to see it become cost competative with coal in less than 5 years.
– estimates are that half of the global warming effect is not from CO2, but rather black carbon, CO and methane. This opens the door to significant global warming improvements without the immediate need for closing every coal fired power station in existance. Programs to reduce the use of biomass and timber for heating and cooking in third world countries, replace with solar cookers, would have a huge impact on black carbon emmission. As would improving diesel emission standards and electrification of rural communities.
So, I for one see no compelling case for nuclear power. Unless you can make fusion work.
23 years is just a little over over ten? Okay.
Do you know anything about Chernobyl, its’ causes? Perhaps you should read more about the how and why of the accident, and ask if any of the conditions that held on that day and leading up to it could ever be replicated in any modern reactor.
Pretty much on the public record.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
The reactor design was highly dangerous, has never been used in the west. The operators were criminally negligent. None of the existing safety procedures were followed.
These conditions have never been and will never be found in a western reactor.
Alice@
From your link
Gosh the structure of the high figure proponents’ argument looks familiar. The scientific consensus is wrong. What does the specialist agency know? The UN? oh dear …
@wilful
I suspect that the people over at LP will be love hearing that someone they fancied was proposing an eat the rich ideology and who opposes private property in land is really a secret rightwinger.
@wilful
what about in a reactor somewhere else in the world?
@wilful
Wilful….maybe you should look at few photos. An entire city destroyed. Yet you want to come in here and sell a more efficient model and suggest “oh we know were they got it all wrong..” Tell that to those who died and the children with leaukaemia and those with thyroid cancers still coming in to doctors and tell it to those who had to leave their homes and their city forever.
Eco insane rationalist warriors.
http://www.englishrussia.com/?p=293
http://englishrussia.com/?p=2343
Hiroshima and nagasaki are reasons for Australia to not have nuclear power? Oh good grief.
By the way, the post 1945 deaths attributable ot the bombs are less than 2000. About 150 250 000 died on the day(s). Source: http://www.rerf.jp/general/qa_e/index.html
I don’t think they died in a more horrific manner than Dresden, for example.
(Not even going to start with the likely death toll of an Operation Downfall)
@JJ
JJ, the RBMK reactor type will never ever be built again. Latest design reactors simply cannot do what that reactor was allowed to do. The human element, in what was still an extraordinary chain of incompetence (in the dying days of the soviet union), can be eliminated to a very large extent.
Alice, look at a few images yourself. Google “climate change”+poverty
Coming all bleeding heart at me over the chernobyl disaster gets you nowhere. It’s demonstrably irrelevant.
PS that was 150 to 250 000 that died in the two nuclear bombs.
@JJ
resisting impulse to talk about your use of the word ‘quantum’, assuming it means ‘very substantial’
At this stage, pretty much every nuclear reactor has been a first of a kind project — rather like making a movie or launching a new kind of space probe. The upfront costs of such exercises, combined with all of the individualised safety and performance testing have to be internalised in the costs of a single project. Imagine if you had an idea for the kind of car you wanted and asked Ford to make just one for you. It would not be cheap. In fact, with cars, you don’t start getting down to a viable product until you can have a production run of about 500,000.
If a single reactor design were the basis for a couple of dozen or more plants, and the parts were highly modularised then the R & D and manufacturing/testing cost would fall considerably. If the burners were installed in replacement of coal burners on an existing brownfield site then the cost would be smaller still.
Has anyone had a chance to view this CNN interview of eyewitnesses who witnessed well-dressed people helpe terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab aboard Flight 253 at Amsterdam Airport? Without their intervention, the airport officials would almost certainly have refused to allow him aboard the flight.
In spite of this bombshell revelation, the couple American attorneys Kurt and Lori Haskell (husband and wife) were not interviewed furhter by the FBI, not the officials at Amsterdam Airport.
And because of this we may soon face the additional impostions at airports including health-threatening full body scans. I have embedded the video tegether with other links including links to articles about full body scanners, in my reposting of the article “Statement of September 11th advocates in response to 12/25 terror attempt”.
@Fran Barlow
Fran, I think Alice needs to get out a bit more if she thinks you’re a capitalist running dog.
@daggett
Daggett, you believe that the 11 September 2001 bombings were staged by the US, don’t you? And are inferring that the christmas day attempt was another plot?
@wilful
Any serious discussion of technology and safety issues needs to consider the wider implications of Ulrich Beck’s “risk society”.
Any discussion of the safety issues of nuclear power, itself, needs to consider that the “next Chernobyl” could be Chernobyl itself; since 97% of the radiation is still inside its crumbling infrastructure. A disaster 30 times the size of the original accident is possible, from the same site.
Nuclear proponents still need to clean up the mess in their own ideological backyards first. Although in our technological risk society this, of course, means adding more risk as a first step.
@Fran Barlow
Oh Fran – so we should just take the view of the UN’s view should we, which conveniently excludes aother nearby counties? Its all in how you count it isnt it? There are other estimates Fran with equally large numbers of scientists and yet still, none of these include the fact that people were ripped out of a city and one nearby and evacuated and its still an ugly destroyed wasted dead zone
Plus – the sarcophagus is not without its problems either. Tha damn thing could collapse again – causing another Cherobyl – whats inside has not turned to dust yet – like some clowns suggested at the time…oh its OK the core will turn to dust in five years time!!
http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/nfc/power/chernobyl/
And I find it hard to fathom where you people who push nuclear energy even come from. Yes – power and profit is more important that people isnt it ???????????
I dont care what party you are in, just remind me not to join it.
@wilful
Yes, especially since I’m against greyhound racing. 😉 I do have four little dogs.
[monty pythonesque voice]
And now for something completely different
Woman drives home with dead pensioner wedged in windscreen
Can’t you imagine being the boyfriend?
Ms Sato: Darling … I’ve had a teensy little accident with my windscreen. Could you pop outside and give me a hand?
Boyfriend: Well there’s your problem. You’ve got a corpse stuck in your windscreen. Didn’t you use the washer?
Ms Sato: I didn’t have any left after I mowed down those kiddies outside the school last week. I maxed out my credit card paying the fine on that one too
@wilful
Im pleased to see at last you looked up some stats on nuclear deaths Wilfully ignorant. Now why dont you go and look up cancer rates in Iraq from the use of depleted uranium and anywhere else. Itll be about as interesting as the us of agent orange and I bet people just as short sighted as you were pushing for the use of that brilliant defoliant technology in 1963 as well. Pure genius. Add it all up Wilful. The benefits of modern technologies.
Educate yourself.
Wilful, have you looked at the YouTube video linked to from my above post?
Why do you think the Kurt and Lori Haskell were not questioned further by the FBI? Why do you think that they have apparently not further questioned the Amsterdam airport employees nor made any attempt to find those people, without whose help Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab could not have boarded flight 253? Why isn’t the newsmedia following this story up?
Are you happy that we now face the prospect of full body scans at airports because of this?
@Fran Barlow
Fran – we have all received pages and pages of posts of your pro nuclear arguments in here time and time again. Im with Ernestine – you are clearly pushing the barrow for someone else on it and Im inclined to agree with Ernestine’s observations of you at post number 9 where EG notes.
“I know from past experience in the blog sphere as well as elsewhere, there is no end to these ‘communication strategies’. ”
Interesting inundation of pro nuclear posts (and I mean inundation) Fran but a barrow load of non recyclable material just the same…or should I say as recyclable as Chernobyl dust?
@Fran Barlow
actually my use of the word quantum was to suggest a step change in peformance. A fairly common usage of the word outside physics circles I believe.
While every reactor is unique there are still many similarities between types of reactors. This is often reflected in the approach adopted based on the contractors used and their experiences. So different companies have different approaches which they will then customise for the specific needs of the client. This level of standardisation is not completely inconsistent with other major powerplant or processing facility, where some elements are consistent but much of the detailed design is project specific.
With 50+ years of major research and development, it is difficult to see where any real step change in cost or benefit is likely to come from. Rather a gradual improvement is more likely to be the case, should policy makers continue to allow it.
Move on Dagget, nothing to see here…
@Fran Barlow
in relation to your comment regarding the potential for cost benefit if a standardised approach was adopted, the Korean experience is relevant. They pretty much have a standardised design, which has been utilised for some time. While they claim significant cost benefits from this, they note in any of their reporting that they exclude decommissioning and clean up costs for nuclear when calculating whole of life costs. This skews the information fairly significantly, especially when noting the recently advised upward forecasts of the biritish nuclear inductry clean up liability estimate (well over 100 bn pounds).
@Alice
As I said Alice, even if one accepts the extravagantly high figures used by Greenpeace or others, resort to coal is more hazardous than resort to nuclear, not merely prospectively but as we are using it. That’s something your “people before profits” mantra evades.
And what makes you think that the operators of coal mines and coal transport and coal-fired power are any less interested in putting profits before people than the operators of nuclear plants? I find that naive in the extreme. I assume that operators of any energy supply service in a capitalist economy will be very profit-focused and interested in people only to the extent that robust regulatory oversight (probably, but not necessarily from the state) and compliance requires them to be so.
Of course, it is in the nature of the feedstock supply chain and the energy-intensity of the feedstock for nuclear plants and their manner of operation that the technical aspects of avoiding injuries to humans now and in the future is far easier than with resort to coal or to gas. Technically simple and economically plausible designs and procedures that would comply are available to operators of nuclear plants. Imposing a similar set of risk profiles on coal or gas would render them uncompetitive which is why the advocates for coal and gas (but especially coal) are focused on avoiding this regulatory compliance or putting a cost on CO2. If one energy source requires a million times the mass in feedstock of another competing energy source, it will be simple to work out which has the easier compliance burden. In the US, something like 40% of the mass of bulk goods carried on rail is coal.
The cost of transport alone tends to force coal operators to build power plants near supplies of coal and acess to water — typically these are rivers — so the pollution being expelled from the plant (including actinides) rapidly contaminates living riparian systems. Why you’d be unaware of or indifferent to this I can’t imagine.
A nuclear plant can be built where it is closest to demand because the feedstock is modest in scale. You can have the plant cooled other than by water, or use the ocean’s waters.
Speaking of Chernbyl …
Well not to the recovering wildlife there.
So human development was worse for biodiversity than a radioactive disaster? What kind of worked for humans didn’t work for wildlife? Who could have guessed?
Alice… there are a lot of useful technologies that can be used to murder people. These potential uses do not make benign uses impossible. Should we ban GPS systems and cell phones?