Good note, but the newspaper test could help in this case. I work supplying defense equipment, and support it. I think most of us would. Not many like working on IED protection.

One of the best arguments on this subject I personally witnessed, was between a young anti-nuclear person and a similarly young submarine first class (E5) at our rugby game. The anti nuke started out asking "Do you know what that stuff is doing to you down there?" The submariner replied "I absolutely know what it does, and how much I received, and what it is. Can you say the same? On patrol I receive less that you out in the sun, or a transcontinental flight..." he went on and one, and the anti-nuke just stood there with his mouth open, completely stumped.

What did you do in the nuclear industry? I've worked on submarines one way or another pretty much my entire career.

But that would threaten all those jobs in the military industrial complex! (You remember, the CEOs who sent thousands of bags of cash to my campaign fund and the gang members who laundered it.)
- - - nameless con-gresscritter 2015

Yes. The problem in both cases is fear coming from ignorance, not unlike homophobia.

It sounds like you are describing is what Milton Friedman would have done to resolve pollution. I get this idea, and agree it is more effective than the EPA or tax credits for electric vehicles. This is a better way to deal with a problem. Of course we already severely tax gas, misspend the tax revenue, and it has done practically nothing to curb the demand.

Again though, you are asserting there is sufficient information to levy a burden on others. You seems to be avoiding pointing me to fundamental technical arguments demonstrating the need for this action. Are you taking the position that enough people have agree, therefore it must be correct?

You and I know that, Thoritsu, but the general public is willfully energy illiterate. BTW, I worked in the nuclear business in 1997-1998.

Radiation is scary because people don't understand the difference between alpha particles, beta radiation, and ionizing EM radiation; and they don't understand radioactive decay. I'm not minimizing the actual danger of radiation travelling through you or ingesting radioactive material, but I think it would seem more scary if it just seemed like dark magic. In this case you know it can destroy bodily processes leaving someone feeling okay at first but dying within days, but you don't know the difference between that kind of radiation and what's inside a smoke detector.

A few years ago I interviewed a well-meaning activist who thought the ISM-band signals from wireless water meters posed a health risk.
http://www.element14.com/community/commu...
It opened my eyes to how scary the world can be to well-meaning people who don't understand science.

I don't think we should do any of that subsidy and sacrificing freedoms. I think we can calculate, very roughly, the cost to others of burning stuff and tax emissions commensurate with those costs. I think we should treat local emissions the same way. If we can compare similar properties but one near some type of pollution, we can work out the cost of the pollution and charge the polluter. This way we don't stop economic activity that generates more value than cost. In general I want taxes to come down drastically. If we need them at all, I'd like them to come from things like this, taxing things commensurate with their costs to other people. That's much better than taxing work and investing. This seems better than having everyone affected by a particular pollution suing the people who did it to cover their loss.

I would extend this argument to what you said on Middle East national security issues. Using Middle Eastern oil for fuel or plastics has costs that should be borne by those who do it.

...and the sum of them released a fraction of the radiation released from C14 from coal plants, or to the general public by taking a transcontinental or international flight.

I hear you Sax Russell (still reading your series), but I need to see the data/models/discussion.

Show me the models predicting where we are from where we were. Show me that someone can prove they understand the physical system well enough that we should entrust our freedoms to them. Show me that I should pay $7,500 to someone buying a Tesla, that the EPA should have power to legislate CO2, or that we should have invested $400M in Solyndra.

The only obvious benefit from reducing our CO2 emissions is an corresponding increase in national security by reducing the strength of our asymmetric enemies in the Middle East.

If this could really be shown then given necessity, Nuclear Power MUST take off. It is clearly the only option to address the need, and in doing so, we trivialize the Middle East Threat.

Because it is not obvious, it makes the overall response lackadaisical, which is inefficient in cost and time, and worse, points the consequential investment to longer-term, unaffordable renewable sources. If you are right, we are doing the wrong thing. Convince me and I'll become a vocal supporter, as any good skeptic should do.

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima have long legacies.

Please point me to real data supporting human-based change. Everything I find reads like Leviticus.

I even have a work buddy whose wife is a professor of climatology, but absolutely nothing she has pointed me too is more than coincidence and appealing to the potential risk IF the coincidence is correct. "Adjusting"prior temperature data from which Global Cooling was prophetized in the 70s is really not helping my suspicions that this is anything but a power play by the Greenies.

It is the safest energy around. Just review the record of the Nuclear Navy. 75 reactors cruising around in submarines today, many more in the past, plus aircraft carriers with 2, 4 or 8 reactors apeice (depending on the class). No nuclear incidents in 60 years of service.

There is no question in my mind that one of the first priorities of national defense should be to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. If one views this as a asymmetric warfare problem, making them economically irrelevant is the fastest path to success.
Gotta keep reading on Thorium reactors.

Yeah, VetteGuy. While I don't recall reading or hearing about it at the time, Wm is fond of mentioning that at one point, electricity that cost less to produce than it did to bill was in our future. It was the Ecology movement (I DO remember that) that made villains of the nuclear industry...and here we are today.

I have read speculation that if not for the anti-technology movement of the late 1960's, we might already be living in an enclave that is what we consider our dream-future. I am glad that we saved the whales; I am not glad that it was at the expense of our dreams

Jan

It is right on the path I want to travel - nuclear power, preferably Thorium (your namesake, almost). It would pull the rug right out from under the Middle East financial model. Our local petroleum would do quite well for industrial use.

So many benefits - all 'they' (gov) have to do is go away and let us achieve for a while.

Thanks for starting this thread.

Jan

That is a positive statement. Thanks Jan. Sorry I missed your post.

Hi Jan,
I read that article when you posted it yesterday, and it's always good to hear someone (besides me) who realizes the benefits of nuclear power.

Today's regulatory environment (partly spurred on by the incident at Fukishima) drives up the cost of nuclear plants almost to the point of economic non-viability. I still remember (barely) when the advent of nuclear plants was going to drive the cost of electricity to be "too cheap to meter". If the regulators and some members of the public could put aside their irrational fears, it still could be ... and still be one of the safest energy sources around!

Oh, and by the way, no CO2 emissions...

Re-read Howard Roark's trial speech. The objective of the Marxist/enviro freaks is to halt all man-,made energy. If they succeed and Earth's population is reduced to less than 100 million(or some such low number), they believe then all will be in balance with Nature.

Increasingly, they are, Thoritsu.

The Ecomodernist Manifesto that I linked to (yesterday?) has quotes such as, "Urbanization, agricultural intensification, nuclear power, aquaculture, and desalination are all processes with a demonstrated potential to reduce human demands on the environment, allowing more room for non-human species. Suburbanization, low-yield farming, and many forms of renewable energy production, in contrast, generally require more land and resources and leave less room for nature. " and "Nuclear fission today represents the only present-day zero-carbon technology with the demonstrated ability to meet most, if not all, of the energy demands of a modern economy. However, a variety of social, economic, and institutional challenges make deployment of present-day nuclear technologies at scales necessary to achieve significant climate mitigation unlikely. A new generation of nuclear technologies that are safer and cheaper will likely be necessary for nuclear energy to meet its full potential as a critical climate mitigation technology...In the long run, next-generation solar, advanced nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion represent the most plausible pathways toward the joint goals of climate stabilization and radical decoupling of humans from nature. "

Here is a link to that document. http://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto
I think this is a definite 'things are looking up' moment.

Jan