Reptile & Amphibian Forums

You made a lot of opposing points, so I will probably miss some in this rebuttal, but consider this.

One of the main costs of nuclear plants is all the law suits and delays caused by these suits. This is happening while about 90% of the public supports nuclear plants and 10% don't.--so much for democracy in an environmentalists world. (A recent poll I heard about and haven't been able to find a reference to yet.) So basically, you are saying it is too expensive solely because environmentalists oppose it for no good reason. The same argument I have been making in many, many other post. Lawyers like to sue because they get paid by the hour. The longer and more convoluted they can make a case, the more money they make and the more likely they are to sway a judge over to their side. Keep it simple and short and the lawyers not only loose the suit, but a great deal of money as well.

It is kind of like the argument that it is cheaper to keep someone in prison for the rest of his life than to kill him. If killing someone was so expensive, how can the humane society afford to put to sleep the many hundreds of thousands of animals they do every year? There wouldn't be enough money in the country to pay for just one large humane society operation. (It is probably more like the millions to tens of millions of animals.) Putting an animal or a convicted criminal down costs less than $2 per. It's all the lawsuits that are costing so much--not the plants themselves. Even considering disposal of the plant in 30 years (which so far has been show to be unnecessary until at least twice that time, costs of storage of the waste (which could be cut by 90%), the building of the plants, and unbelievable insurance costs (again due to some public concerns due to falsehoods told by environmentalist), it comes out cheaper per kilowatt produced than current coal plants-when you eliminate all the suits. Do you know how many years of law suits its takes to get approval to build a plant in any highly liberal state? And then, even after all the suits, and a plant is completed, another suit can call for it's removal after it has already been approved? I really don't understand why nuclear power has become a political argument. It is either good for the environment or it is not. It is either good for us, or it is not. Everything I have read from science reports and conservatives says that it is good, while everything I have heard from liberal sources say it is bad.

Nuclear plants that were built around 30 years ago have been inspected and shown that they are good for at least another 30 years. And think about that too--30 year old technology is still considered very safe and modern plants are a lot safer. Another thing that costs so much is removing plants. Here in California, we have had plants that were over 90% completed and they had to be removed due to lawsuits from environmentalist. The poor taxpayers had to pay both for the plants, for the plants removal, and then pay even more when we were having an energy shortage last year due to a lack of local plants. Also, the costs of plants have been overestimated due to the fact that they are lasting much longer than in the original cost estimates.

One argument heard over and over again by activists is, "What are you going to do with all the nuclear waste?" There have even been ideas of shooting it out into space or into the sun. If volume of the waste isn't a problem, why do they argue this so vehemently? If you could reduce the waste that results from anything you do by 90%, why wouldn't you? Especially when it doesn't cost any more than refining ore, and the storage costs will drop by a considerable margin.

If it is too concentrated to bury safely in your opinion, wouldn't it be extremely easy to de-concentrate it and then bury it? I have never seen a process where it is more difficult to make something more dilute than more concentrated.

The point about burning coal laced with plutonium was to point out that it is far more dangerous and deleterious to pump plutonium into the atmosphere where everyone breaths it and it contaminates the entire area with radioactivity when you can bury it in basically "solid" lumps where it won't come into contact with anything living. Why would you want to aerosolize it when you consider it to be so dangerous? Did you know that coal burning plants have less stringent government regulations regarding radioactivity in the surrounding area than nuclear plants? (another unnecessary cost in nuclear plants that could be cut if they used regulations similar to coal plants--remember, we are also comparing costs so you must use the same standards for each type of plant to make a relevant argument for costs) Did you know that you can measure higher radioactivity levels around any coal plant than you can around any nuclear plant?

Why do you think it is dangerous to bury it? Do you think it would somehow become a nuclear bomb if left in its concentrated form? If it is burried deep, it won't affect anything.

Here is a good site with a lot of evidence as to what I am saying.

http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

And think about other impacts as well. Currently, hydrogen power is totally unfeasible. Who wants to burn so much energy to create hydrogen that it will cost many times the price of gasoline per mile traveled--not to mention all the problems with storage, etc. If nuclear plants were used to make electricity during the day for consumers and business, those same plants could make energy at night for the production of hydrogen--or even electric cars. (then we would only have to work out the safety and storage issues of hydrogen). Currently, we have to burn gas or coal to make the electricity to charge electric cars, making electric cars very dirty indeed. Not zero emissions like some environmentalists like to claim.

Rodney

This should have been under your rebuttal pulatus , but when I logged back in, it came up as a new post.

Rodney

For the record: The reason why it is more expensive to execute someone than to keep them in prison-is the appeals process. The legal fees are astronomical!
(I have this on good authority...My brother was a prosecuter with the Florida Attorney General's office for 20 years. He handled Ted Bundy's appeals).
Frank
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"The luxury of not getting involved departed with the last lifeboat Skipper..."

Actually, there is one nuclear power facility that is well received by both sides of this issue.
The Turkey Point nuclear facility, in South Dade Co. Florida. Remember, it is the last remaining breeding ground, and protected as such, for the American Crocodile.
Some times, not often, compromises can be made that can benefit both the society and the environment. Who was it that said, Mans greatest challenge is to live on a piece of land, without spoiling it??
Also, look at some of the environmental programs NASA is conducting at their sites. The military in general for that matter,has been establishing captive propagation and re-introduction of several reptile and ave species, but these programs rarely get recognition or merit in such debates.
Just my humble $0.02

Take care all,
Jeff

You seem to be unwilling or unable to understand the cost of risk.

You insist that "environmentalists" are all against nuclear power, but your generalizations make you seem less than articulate - many environmental groups have no problem with nuclear.

Nuclear energy is clean and relatively cheap to produce. But the risk to society is great. Any cost/benefit analysis has to consider the risk potential.

Some environmental groups say the risk is worthwhile, others say the risk is too great. Its a debatable point - if you simplify it too much, it turns out your not being honest.

Joe

Well, sort of, except...

I have never heard of any group being against nuclear power other than "environmentalist" groups and I have heard of plenty of suits being filed on their behalf. (except for some homeowner groups, and they aren't against them, they are just against them in their back yard.) And certainly no groups file suit after suit after suit to block them like environmentalist groups do, or file suits to have them removed after they have already been built and already gone through all the red tape and the various suits to stop them form originally being built. In fact, I doubt that there are any other groups out there that have the kind of money the environmentalist groups do to bring all these suits. I was shocked to hear that the nature conservancy has over 2 billion in assets and they bring in about 750 million a year, especially when they do some of the things they do.

Kind of like terrorists. I have heard of many, many Muslim suicide bombers, but I have never heard of a Christian suicide bomber or a Jewish suicide bomber. Doesn't mean all Muslims are suicide bombers, but it does mean that Christians and Jews aren't suicide bombers. (at least not yet).

Second, we already know that coal plants are far more of a health risk. In fact when both plants are in perfect working order, the coal plants already produce far, far more radiation than any nuclear plant does--not to mention all the soot and CO2 that environmentalist are constantly complaining about, and yet they are accepted by the public because many "environmental" groups mislead the public into thinking that nuclear plants are worse. How many lives have been lost because of nuclear power world wide? How many have been lost due to coal powered plants? There is no comparison. I can guarantee you that far more coal miners have died from black lung in just the U.S., than every death world wide from nuclear plants-including meltdowns from the very poorly designed plants of yesterday. And that doesn't even take into account that today, modern nuke plants are far safer than the ones designed 30 years ago. You are comparing ancient nuclear plants to modern coal plants, not modern nuclear plant to modern coal plants. (Coal plants can't really be modernized that much). Add that in, and nuclear plants blow coal plants away as far as safety is concerned. Plus, it is far easier to build a nuclear plant in almost any country than it is in the U.S.. and we are the ones who design and build them! (except for the countries that are know for terrorism that the U.N. tries to stop). I know someone who designs the cores for nuclear plants (G.E. designs and builds them) The material to contain the cores is already many times thicker than it needs to be to contain a problem, and there are many redundant systems in place. Nuclear plant are very heavily inspected and regulated by the government, far more so than the coal plants that are causing so many problems already.

Why be so concerned about a very small risk, when we know we already have a hugh problem with something else (coal) that is working like it is designed to? If you had an old car that had problems everyday and was expected to have problems all the time, would you not trade it in for a car that might have a problem once a year because you are worried it may be harder to fix? (another car analogy.. Did you know it costs more to maintain a Yugo than a Mercedes due to all the problems a Yugo has? Many poor people bought Yugos, and couldn't afford to keep them running. I saw a lot of Yugos when they first came out, I haven't seen one in years. But every day I see a lot of old Mercedes that run great. Yugos remind me of a coal burning plant.--and not just because of all the soot! Come to think of it, diesel Mercedes remind me of coal burning plants too-LOL )

Sure there are some extremely small risks with nuclear power, but with modern designs, they are far far less risky than they were 30 years ago and look how few problems there were even with those plants.

How many disasters has France had with their nuclear plants? I don't know of a one. They rely on them a lot more than we do and they seem to be doing great with them.

Also consider that nuclear plants were a very new technology 30 years ago. As a result, almost every plant in the U.S. is of a different design. The modern plants in France are all standardized. (so people who work in one can go to another without problems-also a lot safer.) And these would be the kinds of plants we would be building today, if we could just get past all the law suits!

I think that ignoring all the horrendous problems with coal plants that we already know about is far less honest intellectually than worring about the minimal treat of modern nuclear plants.

Rodney

I'll try this one more time Rodney, then give up.

You are ignoring the potential risks - that is what has stalled nuclear energy development. Nuclear energy is relatively cheap and clean - but there is the potential for disaster that many people are not comfortable with.

There are environmental groups that are against it, and some that are for it. But no environmental group would be able to stop it if it didn't present a massive risk that many, many people are wary of. We make the laws, the people, not the environmental groups. If we had cheap, clean energy available we would pass whatever laws we needed to get access to it. But...

Nuclear energy has the potential to do more harm than any good it brings us. So when people get together to talk about its cost/benefits they get nervous. Thats not the doing of environementalists. Environmental groups only do what we (those that support them) want them to do. They represent the interests of those who send them checks.
So why focus so much of your energy on those groups? They would be impotent if we didn't approve of their actions, and support them with our money.

Joe

I'm not ignoring any potential risks, just not blowing them all out of proportion. There are right around 103 nuclear plants running in the U.S. The vast majority are quite old (in the 30-40 year range). With all those old nuclear plants, and all the ones in other countries, how many disasters have there been? Most people can only name 2. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Chernobyl was a very poorly designed plant and tree mile island was a combination computer and human error problem. How many people were adversely affected by those disasters? Now compare that amazing safety record to how much safer the new power plants are and consider how few people even those "disasters" affected.

Now, compare that to the 2,000 tons of radioactive material that is blown into the atmosphere for everyone to breath every year from coal plants and the dangers of coal mining. There is more radioactive material blown into the atmosphere from coal burning plants every year than there is nuclear waste produced! And, the nuclear plant waste isn't being blown into the air for us to breath. (Given a choice, I'd rather have solid nuclear material laying on the ground in smaller volumes than having nuclear material in the air where we draw the particles into our lungs.) When you add it all up, we know nuclear is very safe, and even in an accident, doesn't produce as much dangerous radioactive material as normally running coal plants.

Rodney