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I think of these institutions as "Nuclear PROFIT Plants." They were designed to operated for forty years. Most of the plants today are older than forty years. I would say those plants are all unsafe. The worse problem is the one that keeps being kicked down the road. Nuclear Profit Plants produces millions of pounds of waste material annually. Scientists have not discovered a safe and secure way to handle the waste. The toxic and very dangerous waste just keeps accumulating, most of it on the site of the operating plant. These are disasters merely waiting for a moment to ignite them. The problems with nuclear profit plants are endless. Interestingly, we also use nuclear power plants to operate submarines and aircraft carriers. The difference is that the operators live on the ship. They do not cut corners on board a ship without the operators risking their own life.
" Nuclear power is suicide ! All suicide plants should be shut down around the world. Thorium is just as bad !!! This radioactive current junk is just floating all around our atmosphere. Perhaps this is what is heating up our planet ? This stuff is very hot... Its a expansion of high voltage electricity that our bodies can not take.
Is there a super groupcalled Bildiburgers.
Nuclear power = nulear waste = modern man end.
May take a millineum or more but there's no where to store the waste and given mankind's proclivity for papering over cracks in concrete, it's just a matter of time.
The flaw of nuclear power has always been- no plan for disposing of its even more toxic waste. Ideas so far have included sending it to space or shooting it into the earth's core. Where it all is now, up to this point, is anyone's guess, because it is known various rods of radioactive waste material have disappeared. Before long, each nation will accumulate enough radioactive waste to blow itself up in the event of an accident.
Even without tsunamis or earthquakes, and the fact that nuclear plants have been built on fault lines by geophysical engineers, we live in ever present danger of radioactive waste daily, which has been allowed to accumulate for decades without an attenuating solution .
Surely anyone who's been to Yale or Harvard knows this. Give us some answers! Hear! Hear!
Nuclear power isn't the problem any more than blimps are. For blimps it as hydrogen that was the actual danger, replaced by safer Helium. For nuclear power it's the 40 year old Uranium technology, motivated by the cold war military's desire for its bomb-grade byproducts. As a result of bad choices in the 1970's we are decades behind in developing the RIGHT kind of nuclear power.
Thom's understanding of Thorium dangers (Sulfur) is decades out of date. There are several kinds of nuclear technologies under development using Thorium (one of the MOST abundant materials we have) which drastically reduce the "spent fuel" storage problems, eliminate the "melt down" danger, do not produce bomb materials, and require much smaller amounts of uranium.
The only things standing in the way are prevailing attitudes like Thom parrots from his solar sponsor, and the people (GE) who profit from the current way of doing things, with the oil and coal companies as its cheer leaders.
By the way, Thorium technology from an American company is building Thorium power facilities in India, while our first Thorium test facility in Oak Ridge Tennessee, mothballed in the 70's, is being dismantled at a cost of several million dollars, ignoring the cries of the medical community faced with dwindling supplies of critical materials for cancer treatment that Thorium development would provide at low cost in abundance.
Solar requires mountains of rare elements that don't exist in quantities necessary for large scale production. Wind and wave power are nice science fair experiments with severe limitations. Solar and wind are simply not scalable for large demands. Instead we should be shutting down 40 year old nuclear plants and developing the technology to retrofit them to run on Thorium.
YouTube search for "Thorium Energy" and plan to spend a few hours educating yourself in the realities of the only practical and logical alternative to oil, coal, uranium, natural gas, solar, geothermal, wave or wind. The analogy is like a lead-acid battery (uranium) vs a rechargeable (Thorium) battery.
I'm as anti-nuclear power as they come, and the disaster at Fukushima just strengthened my beliefs. But, as a scientist, I urge you to read the Scientific American editorial (linked above) for what I think is a well laid out criticism of the published study. Scientific literature is not meant to be read as "fact", but more like a scientific "argument". In the case of this study and paper, I think the facts that were used are woefully inadequate to prove the case they are making. It is possible that there is a slight statistical change in mortality, and that it might be linked to the nuclear disaster, but this study doesn't do anything to prove or disprove that theory. A better study could be designed to test the theory and should be!
Thank you. Although I am likely left of many on this site, one thing the libs seem to consistently do is screw up the science. Maddow, and Goodman are top offenders, and now I have to add Thom to the list by giving this study more credence than it likely deserves. What is the mechanism of death in these cases? Seems almost as superstitious as ascribing sudden infant death syndrme to black cats who steal the ebreath from babies in the dead of night. Now if the infants died a lingering death of even a few days, attended by the usual symptomology of radiation poisoning, you'd have a story. That the EPA seemingly fell down on the job is regrettable and sadly predictable these days but scarcely a smoking gun.
Thom and friends -
Check stats on infant mortality rates along the US West Coast immediately following the Fukushima disaster. Word is that rates were / are much, much higher than 'normal'.
Nuclear power?
It's giving loaded 50 caliber machine guns to two year old children and saying "... now go play, be safe , and have fun!"
You're gypped only if you quit.
I spent a lot of time sitting-in at Lawrence Livermore Labs, teh SF City Hall and Golden Gate park in the 70s to END nuclear power after Three-Mile Island and Devil's Canyon. I really feel gyped on this one...
Ron Paul has the establishment in panic mode. So this means, all we have to do is pretend he doesn't exist, ignore him. "Gee He only wants to end the suffering from todays war's and bring back sound money, stay out of our wallets and nurture our freedoms we all believe in " O, and bring back law and order in the W.H "Just ignore Ron Paul is one way we can continue our direction we are headed in. I do not agree with everything Ron Paul has to say but we do need to address this industrial military complex. It just seems like we do not have a government any longer. Why? Because it seems that they are just giving eveything to this industry and our laws. All the other candidate act like children trying to sell you a used car. They just don't have a clue ...
Medical Journal Article ~ Fukushima , 14,000 ~ http://www.marketwatch.com/story/medical-journal-article-14000-us-deaths-tied-to-fukushima-reactor-disaster-fallout-2011-12-19
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/12/20/researchers-trumpet-another-flawed-fukushima-death-study/....just sayin.....
Paul is a clown. He votes with republicans on every issue that hurts the regular Joes and enriches the richest. For that alone I have no use for him.
BTW Thom. Youre doing much better in the debates with conservaturds. Way to go.
Ugglesomely ugly? No idea.
"Asperger's" actually has a hard g. Yes, that makes it sound like "ass burgers", but that's the way it is.
"Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to be pro-nuclear. I’m just pro-arithmetic."
— David J. C. MacKay
BOOK REVIEW: Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air:
http://chenangogreens.org/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id...
By the way; I am not a Libertarian, nor a Republican, nor am I any longer a Democrat. What concerns me the most is Empire and the never ending wars, the Federal Reserve, and most of all, my civil liberties!
Berry, I especially like (from the link you provided);
Why is Mr. Paul so popular?
As I pointed out in September, Americans overwhelmingly want:
Paul has consistently championed these three American wishes for three decades. None of the other Republican (or Democratic) candidates are on the right side of history on any of these issues.
Ron Paul ~ Frontrunner> http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/ron-paul-is-now-the-republican-frontrunner.html
Ron Paul 2012 ~ No one is perfect !..
Even if he wins the Iowa caucus, he will not be the eventual nominee.
Re: Thom's comment that Libertarians are Republicans who want to smoke dope & get laid.
Thom, you should read the book Libertarianism Today by Jacob H. Huebert (Jul 1, 2010). You will learn that the Libertarians may share some ideas with the Republicans, (as they do with the Democrats), but they are not Republicans (nor Democrats).
I slipped on a tile floor on the way into work and hurt my elbow.
I'm a temp, so I don't get paid time off. I also don't make enough money to afford health insurance, so I'm working injured today. And I'm hoping that my elbow will be good enough by the end of the day that I can drive home.
Where's that universal health care already?