eric1978 Posted January 31, 2011 Posted January 31, 2011 Come on Eric, what do the oil companies have to do with electricity generation? They lobby against alternative energy, and quite effectively.
flytyer57 Posted January 31, 2011 Posted January 31, 2011 The issue of storage of spent fuel was derailed by the senate majority leader, he didn't want it in his desert. And I'm sure you don't want it in your backyard either. There's a fine line between fishing and sitting there looking stupid.
flytyer57 Posted January 31, 2011 Posted January 31, 2011 Who was it that signed NAFTA? (the question was rhetorical we both know who it was) The best republican president we ever had. There's a fine line between fishing and sitting there looking stupid.
Wayne SW/MO Posted January 31, 2011 Posted January 31, 2011 They lobby against alternative energy, and quite effectively. But Eric they aren't that involved in power generation. As far as lobbing goes, no area is exempt and when you add in the political contributions it's hard to find any good guys period. I think that the oil companies can see the hypocrisy of electric cars at this time. The bottom line is that the whole process is a mess. Each political power has a different idea of what we should do about transportation. If they ever settle on a viable alternative to oil for transportation I suspect the oil companies will get on board because they have the distribution system. They will be in the drivers seat for bio diesel, or natural gas. It seems that the South American countries are presently able to work around our technology and offer alternates, but all we have is high dollar polluting electricity as an option. Today's release is tomorrows gift to another fisherman.
Tim Smith Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 Nuclear energy and nuclear waste are misunderstood in ways that have generated irrational policy and public hysteria. If you want out of carbon and petroleum, it is the only cost effective, workable solution given current technology and infrastructure. I, like kev, am not concerned about so much about the carbon. But I would love to use nukes as the solution to part of the oil dependence problem. There is more common ground in this thread than most think. A man-made climate change skeptic does not necessarily disagree with a conservation ethic, reduction of oil use or many of the other policies advocated with climate change crowd. My complaint is the use of a consensus argument as scientific proof of something that is not provable given current climate understanding. Podum, I think the common ground here was established in the first 5 or 6 posts about climate change a few months ago. It seems that most people here have acknowledged and appreciate it. Certainly I do. The problem is that the areas of disagreement are big stumbling blocks in the search for a rational path forward. We're still circling back to learn the differences between climate (long term trends) and weather (short term trends) with people taking offense as if pointing out the distinctions were some kind of ploy. I've got PMs from people with backgrounds in molecular biology backgrounds and no analytical experience in large scale dynamic systems explaining how there's too much variability in the data to really know what is happening. We've got people making outrageous assertions about how American oil is virtually inexhaustable. People are carrying amazing amounts of social baggage into that discussion... ...and its going to take a long time for that to settle down. So you might as well enjoy the ride. And smallie bigs,yes, your weatherman is a joke. Anyone who stands up in the middle of one cold snap on one spot on the globe and uses that as a platform to talk about climate cooling despite powerful long term trends to the contrary simply cannot be listened to. He's a clown. Here are the long term trends for ocean heat. Ignore it if you like, but its published by someone who actually studies CLIMATE, not a TV WEATHERman. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/pdf/nature09043.pdf The ocean started cooling THIS year about mid-way through the year (the only reason the Arctic ice pack didn't set collosal records for summer retreat). That's a short term trend and it's not climate.
podum Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 Tim, I don't want to start an argument for and against the cause of short or long term climate variability. We agree to disagree on that. The point of my post is that the nuclear generation option is both viable, improving as a cost effective option, a hedge against the foreign oil price bomb, and far less an environmental concern than all of the coal, gas, oil extraction impacts that have been discussed in this and other threads. The "not in my backyard" argument on nuclear waste illustrates a misunderstanding of the risks of radiation (much of the uranium that would end up as waste back in Yucca Mtn. came from NV to begin with) and a conflation of nuclear bomb radiation with the waste that comes from nuclear power gen. The two are in different universes. I wish I had more time more than I wish I had more money.
Al Agnew Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 Here I am getting sucked in again. Kev, what we don't need in this or any other debate is name-calling like "leftist eco-nazis", which is probably another Rushbeckian term. Fact is that if you look at the "mainstream" environmental organizations like Sierra Club and Audubon, two of which I'm a member and which are probably two of the most influential, they have been reluctant pushers of cap and trade and they have not unilaterally opposed nuclear power. In fact, there is a major dispute among environmental organizations as to whether nuclear is a viable medium term option or not. And the fact is that there are several reasons why we haven't gone more to nuclear in the last few years, and only one of them has to do with environmental factors like storage of waste, so you can't blame the environmental orgs exclusively for it. The biggest reason is that coal is simply a lot cheaper than nuclear. The initial cost of building a new nuke plant is simply so high that few electric companies are even considering it. Ameren is considering a new plant, but unless they can pass the construction costs on to their customers before the plant gets built, they probably aren't going to do it. And the customers probably aren't going to want to pay what it will cost before they get the benefits. It's going to be a hard sell to convince Ameren customers that sometime in the nebulous future their electric rates might go up even more if the nuke plant isn't built than they most certainly will if the customers have to pay the construction costs up front. Second reason is a feeling among the general public that nuclear isn't safe enough so they don't want it in their area. This is a residue from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and has little basis in reality, but the fear is still out there. A lot of Europeans get power from nuke plants probably because cheap coal has not been as available in Europe, so the cost of nuclear power has been more than competitive, not because the Europeans were just smarter than Americans. But I just get tired of blaming everything on radical environmentalists as if they had some kind of magical powers. Nope, it ain't necessarily the oil companies who have opposed nuclear plants as Eric suggested, but the coal companies and their allies in Congress (a bunch of which are Democrats from coal producing states) have certainly been working to block nuclear plants. Personally, I lean toward favoring nuclear power as one medium term solution, but it is far from a silver bullet. Nuclear power never turns out to be as cheap as advertised (it was originally thought that once we went to nuclear, it would be too cheap to meter), and nuke plants take years to build. Because of the expense of building new nuke plants, it'll probably turn out to be necessary to get major government subsidies to do so. One thing about the Chinese and Indians. They ain't stupid. They know that AT PRESENT, fossil fuel drives their economy as much as it does America's economy, and they are going to ride fossil fuels as long as they have to. But they also know that fossil fuels have environmental costs, and if and when viable alternatives come along, they are going to embrace them. That's why it's so imperative that we (and by we I mean America ideally but SOMEBODY) set the highest priority on those viable alternatives. Because NOBODY is going to willingly go without energy, nor pay more for it than they have to. By the way, I've said this before, but another thing environmentalists get blamed for is the whole cap and trade idea. Thing is, cap and trade has never had more than lukewarm support from the environmental community. I've watched the history of the idea from the standpoint of the environmental organizations, and it has always been only one option. It actually gained momentum because to the industries that would be affected, it was the most palatable option. It was actually an option that they felt they could live with, because if fairly implemented it was a truly capitalist idea. If you were smart enough and efficient enough, you could make money on cap and trade. If you weren't sure you could get efficient enough at using energy to sell your resulting credits, you could weigh the costs between spending the money to get efficient enough to meet your goals or paying the money to buy credits from companies who were doing it better. But cap and trade as it came out of congressional committees where the horse trading was done (by members of both parties) was this monstrosity with sweetheart deals scattered throughout so that the playing field wasn't level. Industry saw the weaknesses and basically decided to oppose cap and trade even though it was industry who originally supported and even pushed the idea. So it ended up with environmental orgs supporting cap and trade because it looked like the only thing they had a chance to get, and industry opposing it because it was looking like they could block it and not have to do anything.
podum Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 Al, we have a leadership crisis on the energy policy issue and have for 40 years. A leader could stand up and explain the NEED for nuclear energy, at least in the near term. A leader could blow up the NRC and start a regulatory agency that addressed safety without huge cost impacts and YEARS being tied up in approval processes. Todays nuke power technology is far beyond the Three Mile Island tech. Lower grade fuel with far low chain reaction speeds. Not to mention Three Mile was a human failure more than a tech failure. I think most rational people believe that Cap and Trade is a disaster waiting to happen if people want to have any job opportunities into the future. I wish I had more time more than I wish I had more money.
jdmidwest Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 I heard a report today that Great Britain's wind farm failed to produce enough electricity this winter to make a difference, no wind. "Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously." — Hunter S. Thompson
gotmuddy Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 One thing about the Chinese and Indians. They ain't stupid. They know that AT PRESENT, fossil fuel drives their economy as much as it does America's economy, and they are going to ride fossil fuels as long as they have to. But they also know that fossil fuels have environmental costs, and if and when viable alternatives come along, they are going to embrace them. That's why it's so imperative that we (and by we I mean America ideally but SOMEBODY) set the highest priority on those viable alternatives. Because NOBODY is going to willingly go without energy, nor pay more for it than they have to. Communism has a long history of not caring about the people(which is ironic). http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/12/chinas_pollution_cost2.php The only way any country will go for another source of energy is if it is cheaper. everything in this post is purely opinion and is said to annoy you.
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