SD on 16/3/2011 at 15:29
Quote Posted by st.patrick
Isn't Sahara a bigass sandy desert? Sand is essentially impure quartz which is silicon oxide.
Quote Posted by pwyll
Don't be so silly, in Earth's crust, silicon is the second most abundant element after oxygen, making up 27.7% of the crust by mass!
Yes, that was the joke.
I am a big fan of desert solar farms. Covering a fraction of the world's otherwise useless deserts with solar panels could provide enough energy to satisfy the needs of the entire planet.
Kolya on 16/3/2011 at 15:34
Come on, ask me why we had 7 old reactors running that we apparently don't need?
I'll tell you. Because a melange of corrupt politicians and industry types kept telling us we need them because Germany could never meet it's energy demands otherwise.
Sound familiar? Again, I guess something like this could never happen in your country.
the_grip on 16/3/2011 at 15:39
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
So any of you armchair pundits actually donated anything yet?
Not yet. I'm still waiting to hear back from the RC that every dollar will go to the relief effort and not coffee for the RC breakrooms.
I'm also trying to find other avenues to donate as time permits.
Briareos H on 16/3/2011 at 15:53
Quote Posted by Kolya
you're still believing the tale that alternative energy sources could not substitute for nuclear energy.
Do you have anything to back up your derogatory use of 'tale'?
What if I want to claim that the ones forging such a tale are the ones who think they'll be able to conceive cost-effective sources of energy with little impact on the environment?
Koki on 16/3/2011 at 17:15
Quote Posted by Kolya
Come on, ask me why we had 7 old reactors running that we apparently don't need?
No.
Inline Image:
http://i56.tinypic.com/2dt7tc9.jpgKolya on 16/3/2011 at 17:25
Briareos H, if I'd give you research and stats, heck even if I could present you with a perfect solution on a silver platter, we both know you would just come up with some different research and walk away, content that you were right all along, meanwhile ignoring the fact that nuclear energy proves to be not quite so "clean" at this very moment.
So let's start another way: I think I've given you some very good reasons why nuclear energy cannot be called a "calculated risk". Actually the ongoing disaster itself should be more than enough for any reasonable person to:
A) Realise that Murphy's Law won't stop before your "low-risk" reactor.
B) Consequentially start thinking about alternative energy sources yourself, instead of challenging others to do it for you.
That is the point where I would be inclined to discuss the topic with you again.
Koki on 16/3/2011 at 17:57
Quote Posted by Kolya
So let's start another way: I think I've given you some very good reasons why nuclear energy cannot be called a "calculated risk".
You did? :confused:
Gingerbread Man on 16/3/2011 at 18:00
yes because murphy's law duh
it's science, man
demagogue on 16/3/2011 at 18:24
Since I do this for a living, I should point out there are two ways to think about "risk", the emotive side and the economic side. Economically, risk is simply [cost of the loss]*[likelihood] (not just cost in $, but including irreducible costs like loss of life, health, well-being, environment & scenic beauty, etc). Emotively, risk is the gut feeling you have, driven largely by our Pleistocene heritage hardcoded into our brains by natural selection, that something is unnatural and not right with the world and mommy I'm afraid. Politics in democracies involves both; regulators focusing on the economic risk, and voters voting based on their gut, along with interest groups (=industry) inevitably trying to push their own agenda in the wiggle room in perfectly predictable ways, and bureaucrat-culture with its inevitable and perfectly predictable foibles, and where they all meet is the policy you get (Political Action Theory).
At least the point I was making is that the two understandings of risk don't overlap, and people should be at least conscious of that to keep things in perspective. But I'll try another tact to make the point:
Let's be clear -- the biggest non-natural killers on our planet are obesity, tobacco, and home & car accidents. So by far the most horrifying things on our planet without question are cheeseburgers, smokes, showers, and cars.
I'm not saying we can't go apeshit over nuclear plants, but we should go apeshit over them in proportion to the 10,000 times more apeshit we should be going over cheeseburgers, smokes, showers, and cars.
If people are marching in the streets over nuclear plants, I want to see them howling in the streets, ripping their clothes in anguished horror and ghastly apocalyptic screams over cheeseburgers, smokes, showers, and cars.
Since I think howling in the streets and ripping clothes is histrionic to the point of the burlesque, I think we should be marching in the streets over the cheeseburgers, smokes, showers, and cars, and treat nuclear plants in proportion, which would be an informed and pushy discussion over the risks we should expect, and demanding to talking candidly about robust safety features and preparing evacuation plans over a 20km radius in the rural areas around the plant and quarantining food and water in a worst-case scenario of the plants we're talking about... not trivial by any means, but something we can be pushy about without going apeshit hysterical.
Quote:
Best of luck, but we're dropping out of this game. It's a german angst thing, you wouldn't understand.
I've researched it enough by now to be pretty familiar with it actually. I deleted my first sentence in my previous post that started off with something like "What is it with Germans going apeshit over nuclear power?" even though I already knew the answer.
The bottom line though, as I understand it there's not much pressure for more nuclear power (beyond what we have currently) going into the future anyway (edit: at least for developed countries; developing countries are their own story). There are independent reasons we probably won't see many more nuclear plants being built and see more of a transition to other forms of green energy as they become more competitive. The debate is largely about what to do with existing aging plants and possibly the transition as some go offline over time. And even then I admit room for a measure of apeshitting pushiness & cynicism like we should have for any and all industries, but keep things in perspective in the way I mentioned above.
Briareos H on 16/3/2011 at 18:52
Kolya, you really ought to stop assuming how people are, how their minds work and what they think just because you have a natural ability to understand the most common patterns. Debate is not winning an argument by default, debate is asserting wrong and shitty opinions and compare them to the wrong and shitty opinions of the other party to progress a bit on the whole.
But you're right, I guess I will "walk away, content", especially when the furthest your arguments and claims went was to call out the "nuclear lobby" instead of discussing why we should or should not accept the nuclear risk.
