Kolya on 16/3/2011 at 20:22
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
yes because murphy's law duh
it's
science, man
No, it's fact, QED. And it's a risk I'm not willing to take.
demagogue, cheeseburgers, showers and cigarettes are one's own responsibility and will for the most part result only in damage to yourself. If you don't get why people don't demonstrate against them but do demonstrate against nuclear reactors, I can't help it.
Your risk calculation and denunciation of the anti-nuclear movement as "emotive" is cynical and lacking in logic, it's not like these Japanese were hiding from home accidents or a cheeseburger fallout. Do you understand that there's a difference here? And it's not just one of perspective or emotions.
Briareos H, I wasn't assuming things about you so much, as I know how these discussions go. You say: "Do you have anything to back this up?!" Ignoring that I had just done that when I described the politics taking place here before Fukushima and after, when suddenly it became possible to turn off 7 reactors which before had allegedly been necessary for our energy demands.
Do you really expect me to next hand you a report to pick at? I know there are more than enough scientist who will swear on the mother's grave that nuclear power is completely safe. I also know what I see and that I have witnessed two major nuclear accidents in my short lifespan now. Which should be completely impossible given the risk calculations nuclear proponents like to wield. And I'm not even talking about the hundreds of accidents that never saw such publicity.
Pyrian on 16/3/2011 at 20:41
Quote Posted by Kolya
It ain't over till it's over.
But your mind was made up long since. :p I mean, a lot of sound a fury here, but not much in the way of casualties, or even significant irradiation. Industrial accidents kill people all the time - and usually they didn't have such a huge assist. I've yet to see anything in this incident that makes me think nuclear power is dreadfully unsafe. I'll be sure to revise my opinion if it starts looking a whole lot worse. I'm guessing you won't revise your opinion if it doesn't.
Kolya on 16/3/2011 at 20:49
Congrats, you're the first TTLGer who managed to take a quote out of context and use it to tack on his unrelated opinion. No, I'm kidding you.
That was aimed at the allegations and articles in this thread (by d0om) that Fukushima was absolutely safe and in fact a great sign of how safe nuclear energy is. A few hours later major radiation erupted and now several reactors are unstable. So if anything is certain at this point, it's that Fukushima is not a good case for nuclear energy. Hence my comment.
Starrfall on 16/3/2011 at 23:55
It's fine to talk about alternative sources of energy but if you try to put a solar farm in the desert some people will complain about the San Bernardino Kangargoo Rat and the (
http://current.com/groups/veganism/92903651_endangered-tortoises-displaced-by-san-bernardino-ca-solar-plant-now-sick.htm) Mojave Desert Tortoise, if you try to build wind farms some complain about (
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/protecting_birds_of_prey_at_altamont_pass/) migratory birds, and if you try to build a dam for hydro other people will complain about (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority_v._Hill) endangered aquatic species and natural hydrology. It's not nearly as simple as most of us wish it was. (And I know this because shepherding projects like this through the regulatory process and beyond is part of what I do for a living.)
There are pros and cons to wind and solar power just as there are pros and cons to nuclear power. Balancing them isn't always easy, and you might not get the same answer in every area. New hydro is hugely problematic in California right now for reasons that are so intertwined that I probably wouldn't get into them with you unless you were a paying client or buying the drinks. Solar and wind are more viable, but as above, lots of people are unhappy about the potential costs. Tidal is still a bit of a mystery out here, but I promise you that people will complain about the potential threat to ocean life. Coal is bullshit for many reasons. The hot new method of
producing (
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2011/03/01/report-frackings-radioactive-wastewater-discharged-into-drinking-water-supplies/) natural gas is horrendously understudied and quite arguably carries local risks at least as bad as nuclear, even if burning is cleaner.
Of course, the fact that it's not necessarily easy to get water/wind/solar projects through doesn't mean that it's any easier or better to get nuke projects though. It does mean that, at least around here, progress on alternative energy is quite slow, and not without its own problems.
Nicker on 17/3/2011 at 00:23
Quote Posted by demagogue
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.
Not wanting to run screaming in the streets, apeshit or anything but I don't believe the residue from cheeseburgers can become an airborne pathogen with a half life measured in millennia, if we really want to talk fairly about proportionality. Cheeseburger residue, in the form of my corpulent, plaque encrusted remains, poses only a blink-of-an-eye and largely natural hazard to anyone not also indulging, whereas nuclear waste shares its toxicity on a global and trans-generational scale.
So how do those numbers crunch, proportionally?
Kolya on 17/3/2011 at 00:33
That's hydrofracking, a new and apparently hazardous exploitation of unconventional gas depots. However it has little to do with normal exploitation of natural gas which makes up by far the major part of produced natural gas and is neither understudied nor carries similar risk to nuclear energy.
I'm making that distinction because I mentioned natural gas as a bridging energy source in this thread.
d0om on 17/3/2011 at 11:34
In terms of historic deaths per Mw Hydroelectric is the worst. When a dam breaks, everything downstream is FUCKED. No getting in emergency cooling, no issuing iodine tablets to lower the risk. Just fucked.
Kolya on 17/3/2011 at 13:53
Iodine tablets lower the risk of thyroid cancer immediately after an accident, but they are no effective protection and you're still open to any other type of cancer, permanent immune system damage, spinal marrow damage, DNA damage, etc. Also there's high risk from radioactive food and breast milk which is in many ways worse than external radiation.
You may say more people die drowning in a dam break, just like demagogue jokes about the fact that more people die from obesity than radioactivity but it's a fallacious argument because as Nicker pointed out the consequences are long lasting and much more severe in the end than can be counted by immediate (
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7951-major-un-report-counts-human-cost-of-chernobyl.html) deaths alone. Had a dam broken in Chernobyl in 1986 you wouldn't see stats like this showing the number of thyroid cancer cases in children that are directly related to Chernobyl. And that's with iodine tablets distributed immediately after the accident.
Inline Image:
http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/3336/03172011142013.jpg That's from the official research of Chernobyl by the IAEA. [(
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf) PDF]
And if anyone mentions "cheap" nuclear energy again they might want to look up the estimated costs the Chernobyl accident produced until now in the same (
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf) IAEA document. $235 billion just in Belarus, not counting the other two directly involved states and much less damage in other European countries.
Better than a dam break?
Starrfall on 17/3/2011 at 19:15
Quote Posted by Kolya
However it has little to do with normal exploitation of natural gas which makes up by far the major part of produced natural gas and is neither understudied nor carries similar risk to nuclear energy.
From the article: "The number of active natural gas wells in the U.S. almost doubled between 1990 and 2009, the Times reported, and about 90 percent of the wells have used hydrofracking."
I said "hot new" because a lot of the increase has come in the last few years, probably thanks to our friends in the Bush Administration doing as much as they could to ensure it wouldn't be regulated, but it's far from unusual out here (no idea about europe) and is probably becoming the "normal" way of drilling if it isn't already. This still isn't to say nuclear is necessarily better, just that the trade-offs aren't all that easy.
Kolya on 17/3/2011 at 20:31
The quote from the article doesn't say anything about where most of your natural gas comes from. Don't get me wrong, hydro-fracking is definitely on the rise while conventional resources are slowly declining. But as I said, conventional resources still make up the largest part. Also in the US.
Here's from the (
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/nat_gas.html) International Energy Outlook 2010 by the US Energy Information Administration. In this outlook they are projecting natural gas production and consumption until 2035.
Quote:
North America's natural gas production grows by 18 percent over the projection period. The United States, which is by far the largest producer in North America, accounts for more than 85 percent of the total production growth, with an increase from 19.2 trillion cubic feet in 2007 to 23.4 trillion cubic feet in 2035.
One of the keys to U.S. production growth is advancement in production technologies, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Advances made to date have allowed for the exploitation of vast shale gas resources, which are found in most U.S. production regions but concentrated mainly in the eastern and Gulf Coast States. Rising estimates of shale gas resources have been the primary factor in increasing U.S. technically recoverable natural gas resources by almost 50 percent over the past decade.
U.S. production from shale gas formations is expected to increase more than fivefold between 2007 and 2035, more than offsetting a decline in conventional natural gas production. Increases in Alaskan production and offshore production in the lower 48 States also contribute to the growth. Favorable economic conditions are expected to support the completion of an Alaska pipeline, which in the Reference case begins transporting natural gas to the lower 48 States in 2023.
In 2035, shale gas accounts for 26 percent of total U.S. natural gas production, lower 48 offshore production accounts for 19 percent, and Alaska and coalbed methane resources account for 8 percent each. The remaining 39 percent comes from other associated and nonassociated lower 48 onshore resources.
Shale gas is the one being produced via hydro fracking. Until 2035 it is projected to increase fivefold and then make up 26% of the US gas production, with the remaining 74% still coming from conventional sources.
