Reply #8: This is nonsense typical of all such statements. [View All]

[NNadir]

Chernobyl cannot be viewed in isolation from all other energy operations.

You have zero evidence for the remarks about Indian Point and I note that zero people were killed at Three Mile Island.

The remarks on Indian Point are too ridiculous to dignify with a response.

At the very same time you assert these things about events that occurred two decades ago, you are purposefully ignoring deaths from all other energy operations.

I love to tell this story, because it's pretty telling about the moral position of the anti-nuclear argument. I pleaded with people on this website to give a shit about these 65 Mexican miners:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x43122

These guys, of course, didn't die twenty years ago like the 31 firemen and operators at Chernobyl. They died this year, in February. Of course they are not even close to being the only people killed in coal operations. Tell me again, so I can understand it clearly, why Chernobyl is at your fingertips and these lives aren't. Is this about ethics and morality? Really?

I note in passing, not that you are really aware of nuclear technology, that not all nuclear reactors are alike, any more than all boats are alike. The sinking of the Titanic did not prevent the construction of the Queen Elizabeth II. No one will ever again build a reactor with a positive void coefficient, and the number of reactors with negative void coefficients that have caused a loss of life outside the boundaries of the plant is zero. The number of people who die each year while coal is burned while people talk year after year about the wonderful renewable future - without actually delivering it - numbers in the millions. In fact, it can be easily shown that the number of people who have died from air pollution since 1980 is greater the number of people killed by Stalin and Hitler combined. So much for an ethical position...

The connection between nuclear weapons and nuclear power I have addressed many times and I note they are not anymore logical than calling for the banning of oil because oil is used to make napalm and to power jet bombers. (For the record, I do favor banning oil, but not primarily because of napalm or jet fighters and jet bombers.) Over 50 nations have nuclear power programs. Only 9 nations have nuclear weapons and of those, two (North Korea and Israel) do not have significant commercial nuclear power.

I have noted many times that solar energy is a mindless panacea for wealthy people who want to comfort themselves as they do nothing serious about energy pollution. I remind you that there has never been a series of anti-solar activists who oppose the expansion of solar power. Everybody wants solar power, in fact. A great way to be popular is to say "I like solar power!!!!" All of this has been true for almost 50 years, stretching back into my childhood. Therefore it is difficult to account for the fact that solar energy still doesn't account for 1% of the world's electricity, unless solar power is merely an excuse for rich brats to avoid confronting the implications of their western lifestyles. Solar power is largely exactly what it has been for 50 years - a pipe dream. The first solar powered satellite was launched in 1958, years before the first space based nuclear reactor. If it's so great, why hasn't it become a world standard? Why is it still mostly talk? Could something about it be unrealistic or is it all a big plot by bad guys?

Biofuels are known to be far more dangerous than nuclear power (solar power is moderately more dangerous than nuclear power.) (See the externE report.) Four million people died this year from from biomass burning, but somehow you have a fetish for the Chernobyl deaths (which number far less than 1000) that took place twenty years ago. I would also think that someone who is actively concerned with water quality would have some measure of concern over the vast dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico from agricultural run-off, but I guess not.

I am really sick of hearing the ridiculous "guilt by association" argument that continuously says "Dick Cheney!!!" Maybe you should hang-out more with Professor "JPak," who also takes this sort of poor thinking seriously in spite of my many links to the website that discusses in clear terms, the nature of desperate argument. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html

You may not have noticed this, but one of the biggest advances for the worldwide cause of complete nuclear ignorance was Dick Cheney's ridiculous nonsense about the Niger uranium and Saddam Hussein. I immediately knew this was nonsense because my impressions of nuclear technology do not come unfiltered directly from my television set. I have actually studied the issue of nuclear technology in some detail for some decades. To do this, I have relied in part on the primary scientific literature and not, notably, the Greenpeace and ratical.org website.

Two hundred and thirty new nuclear reactors are under discussion, on order, or under construction. The vast majority of these are in nations that don't give a fuck about what either you or Dick Cheney think about nuclear power. Therefore the Dick Cheney = Nuclear argument is full of holes, 36 of them to be precise, 36 being the number of nations not ruled by Dick Cheney that either have nuclear power plants or announced an intention to build nuclear power plants. I suppose you will announce that Belgium and Switzerland and Finland are about to acquire nuclear weapons under the supervision of Dick Cheney?

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm

Nuclear disarmament is indeed a moral choice, as is the choice to build nuclear weapons. It is exactly the same as the choice to manufacture napalm. However it is not true that napalm can be destroyed by passing it through automobile engines. It is true however that nuclear weapons cores can be destroyed by passing them through nuclear reactors. Indeed, in the 1990's this was the mutual choice of the US and the Russians. Most of the uranium-235 in US nuclear reactors was originally in Soviet nuclear weapons. The treaty to make this happen was negotiated with the direct participation of Al Gore. The text of this treaty reads in part:

...2. 'management of plutonium' means the transformation of plutonium into spent fuel or other forms equally unusable for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, and may include conversion of plutonium and its manufacture into MOX fuel, use of MOX fuel in nuclear reactors, and immobilization of plutonium in various forms...

...a) conversion of metallic plutonium into oxide suitable for the manufacture of MOX fuel for nuclear power reactors of various types;

b) stabilization of unstable forms of plutonium...

http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd28/28usruss.htm

This is hardly a document written by a person who has a visceral and irrational hatred of nuclear power. I think it is a good treaty because among other things, it makes weapons grade material into reactor grade material. This is desirable and sensible.

I note in passing that the only way to destroy weapons grade plutonium is to fission it in a nuclear reactor. If you know anything about reactor physics - and clearly you don't - you will understand that such use makes the reassembly of a nuclear weapon with the residual denatured plutonium very, very, very problematic.

The fact is that the anti-nuclear position is essentially at the same level as the anti-evolution argument. It is faith based and not all connected to data. It is discredited and is not taken seriously by anyone except for people with a particularly dogmatic mindset.

And you wish to lecture me on morality...???...

I have really enjoyed your writings on water. I am surprised to see this side of you which is so readily irrational. Oh well, what can be said? I'm an old man. It isn't the first time I've seen dubious compartmentalization. I am really disappointed to learn of your critical thinking skills. I thought they were much higher.