DGS49
Diamond Member
Is it not striking to recall the events of last March, when we all fretted over the endless news about the nuclear "catastrophe" in Japan. Hundreds of thousands were evacuated, workers were in peril, we were looking at a MELTDOWN. The Japanese were talking about the "America Syndrome"! (Just kidding).
But now the dust has died down and we learn that nobody died from nuclear radiation. Nobody got sick. There is no credible evidence that anyone in Japan or elsewhere is any more likely to die of some radiation-related illness or cancer, ever.
According to every quantitative analysis imaginable, this was a singular catastrophe, caused by a literally unbelievable coming together of several different extremely improbable and rare events, the peculiar physical location of those couple plants, and some just plain bad luck. One hesitates to use the word, "never," but statistically speaking, the possibility of this ever happening again is so close to zero that it is incalculable.
And yet the anti-nuke forces of the world were able to exploit this one instance and employ empty-headed, nonsensical scare tactics to seemingly turn the whole world against nuclear power. There are no nuclear plants currently operating in Japan right now, and it would take a lot of politicians with a lot of balls even to try to get them started up again. And such people have not shown up so far.
In Germany, they are now committed - against all logic - to shutting down all of their commercial reactors within ten years. They speak of a pipedream that the power generation can be replaced by "renewables" or wind or some sort of magic, but even the ones saying this know that the only viable option is burning carbon. You can build windmills until you capture every zephyr that flows across the North Sea, but the wind doesn't blow all the time, so you need baseload. Burning stuff. They talk about CO2 sequestration, but the caverns where they would store it are currently filled with Russian natural gas. Sorry.
While nuclear power plants are insanely expensive to build, once operating, they are the least expensive and cleanest source of base-load energy known to man. The made-up problem of storage of nuclear waste is just that: made up. It is more accurately called "spent fuel,' and we have the technology to reprocess spent fuel virtually forever. Rest assured that all the spent fuel we are worrying about now and storing in caves and whatnot will one day be pulled back out to be reprocessed. The only reason we are not doing it now is because reprocessing facilities can also make bomb materials, and politicians are uncomfortable with that fact.
I'm not personally all that concerned about "global warming," but the abandonment of Nuke will inevitably result in dramatic increases of CO2 and other greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. Even natural gas generates tons of CO2.
We have world energy policies being driven by junk science and irrational fear. Pretty sad, really.
But now the dust has died down and we learn that nobody died from nuclear radiation. Nobody got sick. There is no credible evidence that anyone in Japan or elsewhere is any more likely to die of some radiation-related illness or cancer, ever.
According to every quantitative analysis imaginable, this was a singular catastrophe, caused by a literally unbelievable coming together of several different extremely improbable and rare events, the peculiar physical location of those couple plants, and some just plain bad luck. One hesitates to use the word, "never," but statistically speaking, the possibility of this ever happening again is so close to zero that it is incalculable.
And yet the anti-nuke forces of the world were able to exploit this one instance and employ empty-headed, nonsensical scare tactics to seemingly turn the whole world against nuclear power. There are no nuclear plants currently operating in Japan right now, and it would take a lot of politicians with a lot of balls even to try to get them started up again. And such people have not shown up so far.
In Germany, they are now committed - against all logic - to shutting down all of their commercial reactors within ten years. They speak of a pipedream that the power generation can be replaced by "renewables" or wind or some sort of magic, but even the ones saying this know that the only viable option is burning carbon. You can build windmills until you capture every zephyr that flows across the North Sea, but the wind doesn't blow all the time, so you need baseload. Burning stuff. They talk about CO2 sequestration, but the caverns where they would store it are currently filled with Russian natural gas. Sorry.
While nuclear power plants are insanely expensive to build, once operating, they are the least expensive and cleanest source of base-load energy known to man. The made-up problem of storage of nuclear waste is just that: made up. It is more accurately called "spent fuel,' and we have the technology to reprocess spent fuel virtually forever. Rest assured that all the spent fuel we are worrying about now and storing in caves and whatnot will one day be pulled back out to be reprocessed. The only reason we are not doing it now is because reprocessing facilities can also make bomb materials, and politicians are uncomfortable with that fact.
I'm not personally all that concerned about "global warming," but the abandonment of Nuke will inevitably result in dramatic increases of CO2 and other greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. Even natural gas generates tons of CO2.
We have world energy policies being driven by junk science and irrational fear. Pretty sad, really.