Tanada wrote:GHung wrote:Therefor if the cowards who refuse to accept reality today succeed that just means our descendants get the benefit after the interregnum.
Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning Tanada? Is it cowardice to state that we have not come up with very long-term solutions for storing lethal nuclear wastes and by-products? Is it cowardice to point out that the first two new reactors to be built in the US in decades are severely over budget and behind schedule, with rate-payers on the hook for those overages? Or that Westinghouse went bust largely due to those $9 billion in overages? Is it cowardice to remind folks that US tax-payers are on the hook for liabilities because no companies will cover insurance risk?
I'm likely the only person on this board who spent years sleeping less than 50 feet from a reactor core, and really don't give a hoot if someone calls me a 'coward'. That shoe simply won't fit.
Yup, so you were in the service and it made you bitter. Not an uncommon reaction. The so called problem of storage for long term waste is a canard as you should well know. There are and have been technologies for storing materials for incredibly long periods for a very long time and in the most wasteful option glassification into a stainless steel cylinder is always an option, though our government is too backwards minded to even do that. The pods used by civilian nuclear plants are perfectly sound methods for retrievable storage and the government own millions of acres of unused land in the high desert where the climate is an additional preservative. Of course that is only necessary for those too cowardly to recycle spent fuel and retrieve all of the valuable chemicals within it including the next set of fuel and many metals both precious and common.
As for the BS excuse about civilian systems being over budget and under preforming that is an artifact of the American Legal System and politics, not physics or real world issues. No country that actually decided to deploy nuclear fission at the upper levels has these problems because they don't let the politics and ignorance rule how they behave.
A coward is anyone who runs away from a problem they can defeat if they stand up and face it. If that shoe fit you that is your problem, not mine. I did not call anyone a coward, I call out a group of narrow minded people who refuse to see reality due to blind fear based on Hollywood myths cowards. If you are part of that group, well that is your choice.
Yup, so you were in the service and it made you bitter. Not an uncommon reaction.
You start out with a very false assumption. I enjoyed my time in the service and would do it again.
As for the options you mention for storage, etc. sure, there are options. My point is we aren't doing those things, at least, not on a scale that matters compared to the problem. We've been kicking that can for decades. Know this: If I lived somewhere near Yucca Mountain, I would have still been in favor of its completion and utilization because I know that, for now, it is the least worst choice for centralized sequestration of these wastes. Leaving them scattered around the country in various types of storage, mostly in open air facilities, is a bad call on a number of levels.
A coward is anyone who runs away from a problem they can defeat if they stand up and face it.
More dribble. When I decided that fission and coal didn't meet my long term criteria of current generations not foisting their indecision and poor decisions on future generations, I, more than most here, "defeated" that problem by changing my lifestyle and energy sources, at no small personal cost. Looking back, that took quite a bit of courage at the time.
Cowardice is trying to maintain one's short-term lifestyle and status quo while creating very real risks to those who don't have a vote as to whether or not they want accept those risks and costs. We have plenty of energy if we don't squander it, and if we use it wisely. I personally don't give a damn if someone makes their living putting up giant electronic billboards or want to ride their personal watercraft. Courage is calling out wasteful lifestyles that require growth on a finite planet. Courage is not dumping costs of that growth - for what are essentially chosen selfish concerns - on the future when the severe liabilities of those choices have yet to be addressed.
You want to promote those things? Solve those problems first, and get it done. Then we can have an honest conversation. I made my choices, and they generally include not dumping the consequences and costs on people I will never meet. There are no perfect choices, but some are less perfect than others. I at least try to take responsibility for my own energy sources and consumption. Most of you don't own it beyond writing a check and bitching about others who do.
/rant