Nuclear Power

[Tero]

D, it's like this. People are against all kinds of big evil things. They are against Big Pharma for instance, and have to grudgingly accept it when they end up on a daily drug for blood pressure or heart disease.

[laklak]

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
For none of them can stop the time

[DRSB]

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
For none of them can stop the time

Fear for or fear of?
And it is nuclear, I had a slip of interference from German when I wrote the initial post.

[Seth]

DB, we will be leaving many more scars in the earth digging for these metals. As China moves toward US minimum wage,we will dig them in the third world
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/19 ... ve-enough/

So what? Minerals are where you find them. We have to dig them where they are found and any "scars" that result are simply the cost of a technological society, so get over it. If you want to give up your computer, and your car, and your house, and your clothes and every other vestige of modern society, don a hair-shirt and retreat to a cave and eat berries then, and only then can you have any moral or ethical basis for bitching about minerals mining.

Otherwise your complaints are merely gross hypocrisy and nobody gives a damned about your whining.

[rainbow]

DB, we will be leaving many more scars in the earth digging for these metals. As China moves toward US minimum wage,we will dig them in the third world
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/19 ... ve-enough/

So what? Minerals are where you find them. We have to dig them where they are found and any "scars" that result are simply the cost of a technological society, so get over it.

Drivel.

If you can't mine without remediation, don't mine.

It really is that simple. I've seen disused mines that have been converted into lakes, and mine dumps turned into parks and forests.

Take a trip up to Climax, near Leadville - and see for yourself, if you can afford the gas.

[pErvinalia]

Nature doesn't deserve remediation. If it can't aderpt or derp under the gentle massaging of a dragline, then it needs to fuck off and die.

[Seth]

DB, we will be leaving many more scars in the earth digging for these metals. As China moves toward US minimum wage,we will dig them in the third world
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/19 ... ve-enough/

So what? Minerals are where you find them. We have to dig them where they are found and any "scars" that result are simply the cost of a technological society, so get over it.

Drivel.

If you can't mine without remediation, don't mine.

Who said anything about not remediating the the mine? That's why I put the word in parentheses.

It really is that simple. I've seen disused mines that have been converted into lakes, and mine dumps turned into parks and forests.

Take a trip up to Climax, near Leadville - and see for yourself, if you can afford the gas.

Been there many times. I have a friend who works at LANL in Los Alamos who used to work for (one of) the companies that owned it. He worked in their pilot plant in Golden.

I wouldn't exactly call Climax a paragon of remediation. It is after all still a working mine, even if it's been mothballed due to low tungsten and moly prices. For those who might not know about the Climax mine, it's where a mountain used to be and it's now a big hole in the ground. Literally. And a big damned mountain at that. The tailings ponds are enormous, but they aren't very "parklike."

Open pit coal mines in Colorado and Wyoming are however good examples. The ones that have been remediated, such as those around Craig, CO, are indistinguishable from the surrounding unmined areas except that they are covered with forbs and grasses rather than decadent sage. They are just somewhat lower in elevation than they were previously.

Then again there are mines like the Kennicott copper mine near Butte, Montana or the gold mine in Lead, ND. Kennicott is visible from space with the naked eye. It's a truly enormous hole in the ground that's impossible to "remediate." It fills with runoff water that leaches stuff out of the rock, creating acidic water that pollutes nearby rivers. They are spending a lot trying to clean up that water and are doing a pretty good job. But it's always going to be a really enormous hole in the ground and thus the kind of "scar" that ecoweenies whine and complain about simply because it's not not a big hole. But, we needed the copper, so it's an environmental sacrifice zone.

[laklak]

Lol. Consumer Reports installed a wind turbine on their offices in New York. Cost them $11,000. They were gonna sell power back to the utility and save a bundle, right?

In the 15 months since the turbine was installed, though, it has delivered less than 4 kWh—enough only to power a 12,000 btu window air conditioner for one afternoon. A company representative in charge of installations worldwide recently visited our offices and confirmed that our test model was correctly installed. What's more, he told us that while the WT6500 should start generating power at about 3 mph, the initial juice goes just to power the system's inverter, which must be running before it supplies any AC power elsewhere. The true wind speed needed to start producing AC while the inverter is on is 6 mph, not far from the 7.5 mph needed by a traditional gearbox wind turbine.
The Honeywell costs $11,000 installed, comes with a five-year warranty and has a 20-year expected product life. But having a thorough site analysis by a manufacturer-authorized installer, backed by your own research on websites such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is vital.
At the rate the WT6500 is delivering power at our test site, it would take several millennia for the product to pay for itself in savings—not the 56 years it would take even with the 1,155 kWh quote we received.

Mind you, this is ancient 2012 technology. I'm sure the latest and greatest (and most expensive) technology is MUCH better, eh? But my advice would be caveat emptor.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news ... /index.htm

I ain't disconnecting from Florida Power's nuke plants yet.

[DRSB]

Exactly my point, I see no alternative to nuclear energy that can meet the ever-growing energy needs of mankind due to global warming. And some technology must retract the CO2 from the atmosphere and no amount of technology can cool up the oceans anyway.

[Seth]

Exactly my point, I see no alternative to nuclear energy that can meet the ever-growing energy needs of mankind due to global warming. And some technology must retract the CO2 from the atmosphere and no amount of technology can cool up the oceans anyway.

Actually, vegetation will take care of the CO2 and the oceans, but we do need to get nuke plants underway right away.

[laklak]

Unfortunately that's unlikely to happen, at least in the U.S. The ignorance of the anti-nuke brigade is too entrenched, and they're so loud and vocal they shout down anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. Nuclear is the safest generation technology, hands down, but it's....it's.....NUCLEAR! RUN! Two-headed babies and giant mushrooms, man. There's a big plant about 90 miles north of us, never caused a lick of trouble. Plus the manatees LOVE the warm water from the cooling towers. There's more than 500 of them up there now, getting out of the cooler Gulf.



Maybe we'll all mutate into humanatees, and spend our lives floating about, munching on hyacinths. Could be worse, eh?

[Animavore]

Nuclear is safe enough, but waste is still a problem. Or is it...?

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists- ... -batteries

[laklak]

The low level stuff can be a bit of a problem, but we've got a lot of desert.

[JimC]

I have no intrinsic objection to nuclear power, as long as the engineering is done expertly, and good systems are in place for waste management.

That is not always the case..

[Hermit]

Even though serious proposals have been tabled recently to bury radioactive waste in my neighbourhood I am in favour of electricity production using nuclear reactors. It is a lot cleaner and safer than any fossil fuel source. Still, looking at the estimated uranium reserves, it can only be a stopgap measure. Even coal and shale oil resources will outlast them.