Will Democrats Who Care About The Planet Be Thrown Out Of Office?
If you’re Thomas Perriello, a Democrat from a conservative district, you take your career in your hands if you want to stand up for the environment. Perriello and other Democrats in conservative or mixed districts are being targeted by the right but, to his credit, Perriello says, “There’s got to be something more important than getting reelected.” But the biggest threat to the economy isn’t the climate change bill as Republicans claim, it’s the unstable price of oil and the very real chance that the costs will go up as our dependence on foreign oil increases.
The NRCC target list included some of the most vulnerable Democrats, like Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, Colorado Rep. Betsy Markey and Ohio Reps. John Boccieri, Mary Jo Kilroy and Zack Space. But the campaign committee also went after senior Democrats, like Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher — who negotiated large portions of the bill — Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon of Tennessee and Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri.
Notice how the GOP, always good at spinning language, refers to the energy “plan” as the energy “tax”.
Spinning the language—–you bet.
Disingenuous—–oh yes.
Something new—–oh no.
Daddio Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I assume you are talking about both parties James. After all they are both experts at that.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:02 pm
From the Politico article linked to above:
“It’s unclear whether voters in this part of Virginia, where tobacco farms are shrinking, textile mills have shut down and unemployment remains well above the national average, will embrace Perriello’s optimism about green jobs and cap and trade.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24482.html#ixzz0KDNhbVda&D
If his constituency disagrees with him and votes him out of office, then he SHOULD be “thrown out”. He’s been elected to serve the interests of the people in his district. Perhaps climate change isn’t something they’re interested in bc they don’t believe it’s man-made, or bc they have other priorities, or bc they just don’t care.
If it’s important to his district, he needs to help the constituency see the importance. Ultimately, if they majority of voters don’t care that’s OKAY bc this is a democracy. The majority elects leaders to serve the interests of said majority.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I need to correct my comment – I was thinking rationally for a moment and said that this was a “democracy”. I’m back in my Right, irrational mind and have remembered that this is a Christian conservative theocracy.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 2:15 am
we’re a democratically elected constitutional republic…if you want to get it right.
average james Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 10:48 am
And this is the result of how the ‘we the people’ voted.
This is the new direction, in keeping with our constitutional principles, those elected are now governing.
The right-wing will just have to wait for the next election.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
“‘There’s got to be something more important than getting re-elected,’ Perriello said in an interview with POLITICO. ‘If I lose my seat, and that’s the worst that happens, I could live with that.’”
–from the POLITICO article by Patrick O’Connor
Representative Thomas Perriello: another Profile in Courage. And there’s just too few examples of that in politics.
crh3e Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
much more courageous than Virgil Goode, who we threw out in disgust of his complacency with the status quo in D.C. I’m glad my vote in the 5th district of Virginia helped fire Goode.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
The entire environmental argument should be reframed as concerning the SURVIVAL OF THE HUMAN RACE.
But maybe no one cares if we’re extinct in a hundred years. After all, it won’t affect me personally. I still have my Xbox and my Blackberry. I can still waddle down the road in my bloated gas-guzzling Hummers and Chevy Suburbans. Who gives a crap about the rest of humanity? So what if the next generation drops dead in mid-stride? Screw them.
To hell with the future.
Daddio Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Where do you live Rocky? I mean what state do you live in? Cap and Trade does really matter to those who live in the midwest.
Daddio Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Midwesterners will be heavily impacted by cap and trade. Their energy bills will skyrocket if this goes through. Don’t you give a hoot for those people?
average james Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Willio,
There you go again with “skyrocket”.
Rocky and myself obviously do give a hoot about these people. That is exactly why it is so important to do something about it, now.
Rocky the Liberal Rottweiler Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
“Their energy bills…”
It’s all about money for you. No surprise. You don’t give a damn how many people die. You don’t give a crap about the future of the human race.
You like driving your Suburban and playing with all your toys and to hell with the rest of humanity. You got yours and that’s all that matters.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 2:33 am
cap and trade accomplishes nothing but higher bills…since that is the only thing that will be affected, it’s a legitimate reason to be upset.
Now if we came out with a real plan to reduce greenhouse gases, we’d probably be a lot more likely to be on board.
it’s like saying we don’t like smoking let’s raise taxes so people will stop (oh wait, we already did that).
We are addicted to energy, it’s not going to stop because we make it more expensive.
trees are people too Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Rocky,
In the interest of the trees, plants and animals (non human ones), wouldn’t extermination of the human race be the best thing to ever happen to this planet?
Imagine a world without humans………..
They made a show about that, I was watching it on cable the other day.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 2:17 am
I don’t know about where you live, but my Xbox doesn’t effect global climate change. I’m on 100% non-greenhouse gas energy…and if my electricity goes up because of Cap and Trade, I will lead the revolution.
Rocky the Liberal Rottweiler Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
“…and if my electricity goes up because of Cap and Trade, I will lead the revolution.”
Because it’s all about you.
average james Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
That’s pretty much their mantra Rocky.
Why should I….
What about MY…….
It’s MY right to……..
When do I get MY………
Grade school attitude.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 2:30 am
it’s not all about me???
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Cap and trade is a tax.
Only, it’s a new kind of tax with free market price discovery where Wall Street is now free to skim “their” share off the top because the new things will be traded on an exchange.
The recent swings in oil prices don’t have anything to do with what parts of the world are producing oil. The price swings have nothing to do with supply/demand, we’re awash in oil as demand is shrinking. Commodity de-regulation back in the 90s and the building involvement of paper traders since then have pushed commodity price volatility to their new highs. The price swings will continue until/if the paper traders are reigned in.
They pushed the first phase of Cap and Trade through in the middle of the night, before the bill was even finished … again. We’ve been down this “hurry up and get it done” road several times in the last few years and it’s not worked out well yet.
You’d think we’d learn … but we never do.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 2:18 am
I can’t remember the last time I agreed with you anonymouse, but it’s been a while…anyway, I agree with you.
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I don’t get it.
There is plenty of oil, gas, coal, etc. within our own borders. We are the only country in the world that enforces strict environmental controls over oil companies.
If they drill for oil in the Sudan or the middle east or any other place in the earth, nobody will care if the oil company spills oil, pollutes the local environment or their money is used to finance terrorists, violence on their citizens, drug cartels… It seems that if we are truly concerned about the world, rather than just our own backyard, we would want oil companies to explore here rather than any place else in the world.
It’d not like we are ready to build 300 farms for the production of electricity by wind. It’s not like we want to give up asphalt, plastic, Gore Tex, chemicals, or so many other things that come from oil.
How about Nuclear electric generation. Is that only to be used by Europe, Iran, or North Korea??
You know, I’m guessing that maybe if we took care of our own part of the world; safely use Nuclear energy, carefully drill for the oil we have, use all the money we are spending to develop and promote alternatives…
Why is that so hard?
Daddio Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
My sentiments exactly Helipilot. I don’t get why they don’t get it.
libpatriot Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 1:01 am
Helipilot, there is still all kinds of problems with the storage of nuclear waste (Google “nuclear waste storage” and see for yourself), and France for one is trying to get rid of its nuclear waste by shipping it to Russia whenever possible. There’s problems with possible groundwater contamination, a “not-in-my-backyard” attitude in response to sites being chosen, the fact that people can’t build a facility guaranteed to last for millennia capable of containing long-term nuclear waste, and the concern that the more waste storage units and nuclear power plants we build, the more terrorist targets we’ve created.
And we only have about 3% of the world’s oil. At our present rate of consumption, that wouldn’t last us long. It’s our consumption rate that has to change.
SC Johnson is one company that has switched to making containers that are not petroleum-based. If they can do it, stands to reason that other companies can, as well.
“It seems that if we are truly concerned about the world” that we’ll try to drastically reduce our contribution to global warming.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 2:24 am
libpatriot…the new generation of nuclear energy leaves much less waste because they use much more of the available energy,
and you can thank Harry Reid for not having a safe place to store it…even though we have the technology, ability and infrastructure 99% in place to do it…we’ve even spent billions upon billions of dollars doing it, but y’know Harry Reid really needed the votes of those 8 sheep herders in rural Nevada.
If we have the technology within our grasp to make Nuclear waste pretty much a neglible portion of the Nuclear energy issue.
That being said, Nuclear is the only energy source where ALL of the waste can be 100% contained.
…and if we don’t build something because we’re afraid of terrorists, that means they win.
libpatriot Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 2:43 am
True, Guido, Harry Reid led the charge to delay indefinitely the completion of the Yucca Mountain storage site, but it was under pressure from his constituency, many more people than just 8 rural sheep herders. And even the location of the Yucca Mountain facility, far though it is from underground aquifers, still has a long-term problem in that a fault line runs through it. Hardly a location to guarantee that we can keep the waste safely contained for the millenia it will take for the waste to cease being hazardous. And it’s not just the storage, for the transportation of hazardous wastes to the facility also leaves open the possibility of catastrophic accidents or terrorist attacks with the tankers hauling the waste, which could leave areas uninhabitable for centuries at the very least, more likely millennia. If we don’t build something because we’re afraid of terrorists, that means we’ve denied them the opportunity to strike and win in a way far more devastating to us than the 9/11 attacks ever could be. Just THINK of it: an area radiating poisons for thousands of years…
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 3:05 am
Libpat,
are you familiar with the vitrification process? Just wondering.
If not you should read up on it, also check out the new technologies being implementing in the new nuclear reactors. I don’t know all the technical speak, but apparently they have the ability to burn out 99% of the long lasting bad stuff that makes present nuclear waste so dangerous (it not only makes waste disposal easier, safer, but makes the actual energy production much more cost efficient…of which it already is super efficient)
Now I think we need to expand our use of Solar and Wind as well as renewable and clean Hydropower, the problem with all 3 of these is variable output, which is why we can’t ween ourselves from Coal even if we could produce all our electricity through wind/solar/hydro. The best, cleanest, and safest way to get rid of coal is to build more nuclear. It creates a strong baseline of energy, to which Wind/Solar/Hydro fills in the gaps.
Even with upstream Wind storage (not yet a proven technology) you would have to overproduce wind something like 3 times or more of your annual needs, just to meet basic power needs, that’s a lot of steel (produced in coal energy driven states), not to mention dead birds, then suddenly we’ll find ourselves in the same problem we have with the dams, environmentalists will fight to the death over super clean energy over the lives of Fish (if you really want to get me riled up, push this topic…I have a rant brewing)
That is why even though Holland famously derives 20% of their energy through wind, they have yet to close or slow the output of a single coal power plant.
Lee Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 6:24 am
Personally, I largely agree with Guido in that Nuclear (fission) energy should be used more although it isn’t quite the panacea and has more issues other than waste disposal. Notably it usually requires a water source and that water is not always recyclable (Fresh water is another resource where we have issues). Also, the other key factor is that Uranium is not an infinite resource either.
But again, I agree that we need to use a combination of energy sources to not only wean off oil dependence but also to scale our needs in the future (conservation/efficiency is important too).
This is why Cap and Trade is a good thing. It will probably impact fuel bills at least at first but more importantly it should help stimulate investment and research into cheaper and more efficient energy technologies than the Carbon-based ones we use. Oil for one, is inevitably going to rapidly rise in price soon and the sooner we are prepared for this scenario, the better.
Right now, we urgently need more research into energy production. We need some long-term thinking here and possibly put more effort into technologies like Nuclear Fusion which have generally suffered from research/implementation due to the longer ROI.
What we cannot afford to do is to accept the status quo and keep blaming China/India/whoever as to why we shouldn’t be greener and pretending that everything will just work out fine. We do need to take action right now and thats why I feel the current administration is doing a reasonably good job in marrying this kind of action to actions that will help the economy (at least in the long term).
I strongly recommend “Game Over” by the economist Dr Stephen Leeb. It’s in many ways a more modern (and accurate) update of the classic ‘Limits to Growth’ study done back in the 70’s (which was fascinating to me back then). It is grim reading though so maybe not for the blissful optimists.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 8:53 am
Lee,
There are a different set of challenges associated with Nuclear, but we are more than up to the test to deal with them.
Waste right now is our biggest problem, but we’re finding ways to handle it more safely, vitrification gives us a safe way to store it for a decent amount of time (up to 50 years)and these can be stored in steel canisters in fairly normal fashion, at least as far as hazardous waste goes.
But the truth is, it’s the cleanest way we currently know how to make steady and abundant energy with no greenhouse gases. Hydropower is next on the list, and if we could possibly build more dams we could even mitigate our need for widespread nuclear proliferation…however weak spring run off can really crimp hydropower, especially if it’s in a river with struggling species (like salmon…)
Water is always an issue, but there are many places where we have a proper water source that can handle Nuclear facilities…and as we progress there are going to be more and more ways to use that water wisely,
in semi-related nots, one cool design I’ve seen is the wave power system they are trying to develop in Australia, desalinization stations take a lot of water and a lot of energy to run, this guy is trying to harness the power of waves to run electricity to make potable water, thus using a clean energy source to make more good clean water, it’s still in development, but the science is pretty sound and with some development we should see some promise. alternately the design could also be used as simple energy station. Since waves never stop you could theoretically get a pretty steady energy output, however we’re not sure how much of the coastline we’d have to take over to produce enough large scale energy…
Solar is hampered by cost (and the massive amount of energy it takes to create PV cells) I read somewhere that PV cells can take up to 20 years of production to recoup the energy it takes to maket the cell.
If we could find away to make the net energy more efficient and bring down the costs so someone could fit their house to meet their solar needs in under $10,000 Solar could be a feasible answer.
These mirror power systems, where they use mirrors to create steam and turn a turbine is interesting, but again, no energy output at night…kind of a good time to have lights. and the cost per Kwh is unimpressive.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 9:16 am
scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
here’s an article that will blow your mind about radioactive waste…one more reason to abandon coal for Nuclear to meet our basic energy needs.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 10:07 am
world-nuclear.org/info/inf06app.htm
this is a pretty biased source, but the tables and figures are accurate as far as I can tel.
average james Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 11:22 am
It almost seems like the conservative right is scared of alternative energy.
Why not push forward in solar and wind, for renewable energy sources ?
Renewable and clean, hmmm, scary.
No we can’t come up with solar and wind power generation improvements.
It’s unrealistic to work towards the goal of total energy independence from oil,coal and nuclear.
No we can’t.
Why should we lead the way forward with renewable energy ? Other nations aren’t doing this kind of thing. Which is contrary to the “who gives a sh#t what other nations think” conservative line, whenever it serves their interest.
No we can’t.
Of course the conservatives seem to love the nuclear option.
Short-sighted is putting it mildly, in regards to the waste storage problem.
The right seem unconcerned about possible consequences in regards to this planet.
Immediate gratification, damn the consequences, be it— lowering taxes—bombing the shit out of(fill in the blank)—drill now—torture for intel,we’re in a hurry—cafe standards ????
Then to go and express concern for our children, in regards to national debt ?
How about a planet that can still sustain life ?
The right’s priorities seem wack to me.
I don’t get it.
The forward thinking left must really get under their skin.
craig7120 Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 11:48 am
excellent.. a clear and honest debate, GVH, Lib, Lee ty for educating me a little more on this topic.
Lee Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Guido,
On some points, I guess we have to disagree. Water is a big issue for Nuclear power. Firstly the freshwater we have is used both for drinking and agriculture and we don’t have enough to also use for Nuclear power, certainly not on the scale we need.
Secondly, as I mentioned, Uranium is a problem. Mainly because of the cost. It is already significantly more expensive in the past 10 years and if we suddenly started building nuclear plants the cost would rocket even more.
So yes, there are real problems other than waste disposal.
Then the problems with Solar is not just cost. Most modern solar panels use Tellurium and we simply don’t have enough of this to scale to a significant source of energy. Similarly with wind, the amount of iron needed to build the turbines would also become a real issue if we tried to use this for widespread use.
I agree with more hydro power (but obviously its limited where you can use it).
Right now there is no ‘cure all’ for the issue and we need to use alternatives/so called ‘renewables’ where we can and at the same time use what we have more efficiently. In parallel we need to step up research efforts and figure out a long-term solution which currently, very scarily, does not exist.
libpatriot Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 1:19 am
GuidoVanHorn: “…are you familiar with the vitrification process?”
As I understand the process, Guido, vitrification involves:
A) Having high-level (meaning radioactive for thousands of years) radioactive waste pumped into a rotating tube inside a heated furnace. The liquid radioactive waste (spent fuel from nuclear reactors) is turned into a dried powder from being rotated inside this heated furnace.
B) This dried powder is fed into a melting pot together with glass-making material (such as silica, zinc oxide, aluminum silicate), at a ratio of 25% waste to 75% glass material. The waste powder and glass material fuse together by 8 hours’ time.
C) The resulting nuclear waste powder/glass material fused slurry is then injected into melters. Each melter heats the slurry it recieves up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit by zapping the slurry with 600 kilowatt nickel-based alloy electrodes.
D) The radioactive slurry is mixed up in hot air bubblers.
E) The resultant brew from the hot air bubblers is poured into stainless steel canisters.
F) The canister lids are closed by automatic fusion welding technique. The high-level waste canisters are 2 feet in diameter and 14 1/2 feet long; once filled, they will weigh 4 tons.
G) The canisters for high-level and low-level (radioactive for hundreds of years rather than thousands of years) vitrified radioactive waste can be placed in surface storage for about 50 years, but the stainless steel will stop shielding the radioactivity by that time, and the vitrified canisters MUST BE BURIED. The low-level radioactive canisters produced by vitrification could be buried at the desert around Hanford, NV, where their radioactivity could decay to safe levels in several hundred years (!).
High-level canisters of vitrified radioactive waste must be buried by that 50-year deadline inside a geologic depository far from water aquifers such as Yucca Mountain (the Yucca Mountain depository is hundreds of feet above the water table, but Yucca Mountain encompasses a geologic fault line that has raised questions about that depository’s ability to prevent ground water contamination from occurring after seismic activity–and no one has a replacement site for Yucca Mountain lined up yet). Having a depository we can be sure will continue to be able to prevent water or air contamination for a long time is crucial, because FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, THESE VITRIFIED HIGH-LEVEL WASTE CANISTERS WILL REMAIN RADIOACTIVE ENOUGH TO KILL A PERSON (OR OTHER LIFE FORMS) ON CONTACT.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Hanford isn’t in Nevada….
In 50 years we’ve done amazing things…if all else fails we can wrap them in steel again, buy us another 50 years to figure it out (not my preferred solution, but you do what you have to do)
One issue that those on the left have are mainly issues with past performance, not the promise of the future.
Our nuclear sites (Hanford in particular) have done some really stupid things over the years, mostly because we either didn’t understand or we were trying to understand. We have almost 70 years of practical research and generation, Nuclear energy today is not the same as it was even 20 years ago.
Again, new nuclear reactors are even more efficient and burn radioactive material down to nearly nothing (read…less waste…especially less super dangerous waste)
Even with all the crazy crap Hanford has done since the 40’s they haven’t been able to pinpoint any major health issues that have came about because of it. The biggest issue was a program where our government basically made test subjects out of locals by deliberately releasing radioactive particles into the air, there is slightly higher rate of cancer amongst the downwinders, but even then it’s most prevalent amongst the advanced age population, and some people are doubtful that the exposure is the real culprit. There is a blood disease that has started to show up amongst those that have worked out there for 30 years, but again it is showing up amongst old retired people (not that old people aren’t important, it’s just that old people are more likely to have diseases period…) I live about 20 miles from the outskirts of the Hanford Nuclear site (about 40 from the actual generators and other stuff) We have thriving and safe food and water supplies, literally the only effect Hanford has on my life is low electricity bills. Nobody I know is worried about Hanford.
Again read the links I provided…when compared to Coal, Nuclear is far and away the cleaner and less dangerous form of energy.
If you want to make a quick and immediate impact on the environment, cease coal operations (strip mining, mountain top removal, radioactive ash fly, greenhouse gases, etc….)then build a nuclear generator (which can be built on sites that already have Nuclear clearance, security and resources) and shut down a coal plant.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 2:07 am
Mainly because of the cost. It is already significantly more expensive in the past 10 years and if we suddenly started building nuclear plants the cost would rocket even more.
—–
the good news about higher costs of uranium is that you need significantly less uranium to create loads of energy generation…yes nuclear isn’t sustainable for 1000 years, but we’ll be fine until we develop another form of clean energy that will replace uranium. Our best hope of extending our supply is for scientists to figure out how to turn weapon grade uranium/plutonium into energy production…then we’ll have a real and present reason to decommission our nuclear weapon arsenal (kill two birds with one stone)
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 2:23 am
libpat…I sense that your major issue is safety..
there have been 3 actual nuclear accidents in 70 years and only one of those accidents resulting in deaths…everyone agrees the Russians were morons in this regard, poor safety design/response.
Three Mile Island was a virtual comedy of errors something like 12 fail safes/human errors happened…and still no one died, a lot of money was wasted and the surrounding area is in poor shape, but no one died and no one got sick.
The England episode (can’t remember the name…Blackwell???)was scary but again no real damage occurred and other than freaked out locals you’d have a hard time today trying to prove that anything weird/dangerous happened.
Even occupational hazard illnesses pale in comparison to those of coal (and even hydropower for that matter)
You might say..well we can’t have coal OR nuclear, but lets face it, today’s energies needs can’t realistically be covered by wind/solar/hydro/geothermal/renewable fuel/wave/tidal…yet, and in the meantime if we want to make a real impact closing coal plants is the most immediate and beneficial thing we can do, and the only way to feasibly replace the energy produced by coal plants is nuclear.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 2:28 am
Average James, I don’t get the point of your post…
We’re coming up with solutions to waste disposal…Coal is the biggest polluter the world has ever seen…50 people have died in the nuclear industry since 1977…(47 in one incident)
Unless you can come up with a way to make Solar/Wind/Tidal feasible or come up with an entirely different energy solution your rant has no teeth. (unless of course your solution is that we all regress back to the time before the internal combustion engine)
trees are people too Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 2:30 am
What I want to know is, where are all the 50ft tall people, giant 8ft wide houseflies, and weird mutated life forms (Mothra, Godzilla) and Zombies (Night of the living dead) that science supposed would result from exposure to radiation.
Why aren’t we seeing runaway evolutionary forms?
They must be keeping them hidden at Area 51………….
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 2:35 am
they actually find new species of insects on the Hanford reservation periodically…of course they can’t prove if they are actually mutated species or simply species they’ve never seen before…none of them have been 8 ft wide though.
There’s also an extremely healthy elk population that roams Hanford Reach, I’ve eaten a steak from one of them…I’ve yet to come down with leukemia.
Lee Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 2:50 am
Guido, again I do actually agree with much of what you write. It makes sense to replace coal with nuclear plants not least because coal needs water so you solve that resource problem straightaway.
However, the increased cost of Uranium is a real problem (if we scaled up Nuclear). Another problem though is finding physicists to run these all these new plants.
Nuclear energy, run properly, is safe though and btw I think you were thinking of ‘Windscale’ which renamed itself to Sellafield as the ‘England’ disaster.
The notion that ‘Science will save us’ is an old idea but it doesn’t work in practice unless you create a real incentive.
Another issue, I would put out there is that we need to think about more than just the US. That is, as developing nations become more industrialized and increase their consumptions of natural resources, the competition will become exacerbated. This will accelerate the already relatively short timeframes we believe we have.
Russia and China are already clued into the fact that controlling natural resources is the key to power in the next hundred years. It’s the reason why I’ve personally shifted from my ‘cut the military spending and overseas bases’ liberal attitude to a more conservative stance on that issue that realizes we need to maintain a military edge to protect our future interests.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 3:08 am
Lee,
and I largely agree with you that there are issues that need to be figured out.
Personally I think we are going about waste disposal all wrong (and just not nuclear waste for that matter)
We want to keep all our waste in one little spot so we never see it. When it would probably be healthier for us and the planet if we diffused the waste to less concentrated levels.
I really think with the newer generations of nuclear energy we will be able to cull out and use up the radioactivity of fissionable materials so there is way less waste to dispose of.
I was reading a study about leaching of radioactive particles at Hanford…they had some tank problems a decade or so ago and they were leaking radioactive material into the ground which was leaking into the Columbia, and though they have found trace amounts of material in animal life, it seems the massive amount of water in the Columbia river dilutes the waste to nearly non existent levels. I’m not saying we should dump waste in the river (that would be crazy talk) But I do think a lot of the hysteria is unwarranted.
As far as physicists go…that is a huge problem, fortunately we have the capability to quickly transform our education system to teach new physicists if we ever get to the point where we are serious about building more nuclear.
All those brilliant minds wasting their talent on frivolous Argentine gay sex at bars research…If all else fails we can outsource it to India ;) Hey if Homer Simpson can work in the Nuclear field anyone can!
libpatriot Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 4:03 am
Lee, July 5th @ 6:24 am: “Right now, we urgently need more research into energy production.”
Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico) and Lisa Murkowski(R-Alaska) are respectively working on legislation to re-legalize and finance reprocessing plants in this country. Though reprocessing plants are increasing in importance in France, they have been illegal in the United States since the mid-1970s Ford Administration. The idea is that the nuclear waste of spent reactor fuel can be used once more for energy generation by extracting the plutonium from the spent fuel. The fuel waste left over from reprocessing has a disadvantage in being more radioactive than once-through fuel for the first 150 years of its cooling period. (This is because reprocessing spent fuel produces fuel waste that has more short-lived radioactive isotopes than once-through spent fuel.)
The advantage over a longer period (> 150 years) for the storage of waste from reprocessing versus the storing of the once-through fuel is that the waste fuel after reprocessing becomes less radioactive because it does not have the long-lived isotopes of plutonium and americium (americium is a fission product from plutonium decay). From an environmental standpoint, reducing the physical volume of the spent radioactive fuel isn’t helpful until the radioactivity of the recycled fuel is reduced to at least the level of the once-through spent fuel, which again takes 150 years.
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Lee, July 5th @ 8:03 pm: “In parellel we need to step up research methods and figure out a long-term solution which currently, very scarily, does not exist.”
President Obama seems to be keeping the focus of his nuclear energy policy on research and development of more efficient ways to use nuclear energy and nuclear waste ($192 million in next year’s proposed budget) rather than on completion/construction of nuclear waste storage facilities like Yucca Mountain or in reprocessing centers ($0 for facilities construction in next year’s proposed budget).
Obama’s Energy Secretary Stephen Chu has said the Department Of Energy will continue to research to develop reprocessing methods that are proliferation-resistant, but the technology is not ready yet to have any sort of ‘pilot’ or demonstration facility.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 4:18 am
so libpat…are you for or against using a technology that reduces the harmful effects of radioactive material from 1000 years to 150 years? (we’d only have to encase them in steel 3 times…;)
libpatriot Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 5:09 am
trees are people too Reply @ 2:30 am
LOL, trees! You’re alright (at times and this is one of those times)!!! :v)
“giant 8 ft wide houseflies”
The exoskeletons of insects can’t support the movement (and therefore, maintenance) of the size of an insect increased to the scale of large vertibrate (internal skeleton-supported) animals. Insects at that size level would split apart just trying to move, for gravity wouldn’t let the exoskeleton be anything but fragile at the eight-foot size range. Insects are completely dependant on their exoskeletons for support in movement and will always be naturally restricted in size on this planet, radioactive DNA or no radioactive DNA.
libpatriot Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 5:14 am
GuidoVanHorn, at this point I’d have to say that I am VERY cautiously for it… and that’s the most anybody’s gonna get out of me further tonight :-)
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 5:41 am
yes….I win ;)
also in respect to uranium availability, this is interesting
scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 5:51 am
world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html
here’s a more detailed discussion on fuel…something I learned today was the bit about thorium…which is 3 times more abundant in the earth, and when using a uranium/plutonium trigger picks up another neutron and becomes Uranium and continues the reaction…
Lee Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 6:32 am
Guido,
I think your sources make powerful counter-arguments to the uranium availability issue. However, I would caution on three points:
1) Those numbers are based on ‘current rates of consumption.’ which don’t take into account an explosion (pardon the pun) of nuclear energy usage. This matters particularly for developing nations when oil is no longer available or cheap enough.
2) Although, even your sources imply we may have pricing problems, its particularly vague on this and implies its nothing to worry about without really going into detail why. If the price is not affordable to the average American then its simply not viable, so its a very key issue.
3) With respect ‘Abundance’ itself is not important. What matters is whether economically and from an energy efficiency point of view, the resource can be extracted cheaply enough. This is the same argument which explains why offshore oil resources are rarely viable until we reduce the cost of extraction.
But again, I do agree that right now nuclear power should be a primary tool in our quest for sustainable energy sources. Overall, you make a good argument there.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 7:43 am
I can’t remember if it was in one of the ones I posted, but I was reading somewhere that even if Uranium skyrockets in cost it would actually make more uranium available, since a lot of the world’s uranium is in difficult to extract locations and quantities/purities, the more expensive it is the more likely someone is going to try and extract it. (the same argument is made for oil and renewable fuels like oil shale/ethanol..at $30 a barrel oil shale/ethanol makes no sense…at $90 a barrel oil shale/ethanol is profitable and “boosts” our available oil reserves.
But again with the new technologies like breeder reactors we can boost our energy from available resources to the point where our uranium reserves can last up to 10,000 years (in theory)… again, the further way from present reality the harder it is to speculate.
Lee Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Again, with Uranium it comes down to exactly what the cost will really be versus ‘hand-waving’ that higher prices will be ok. You may be right but equally there is no guarantee it will be energy in an affordable form as we know it.
As for oil shale, a big issue there is actually not price but scarcity of the water needed to extract it. There is not enough water to meet our drinking/agricultural needs and also be used for oil extraction from shale. So until that issue is solved, shale is actually a non-starter. Also ethanol isn’t viable either on a large scale.
Good point though on breeder reactors as maybe thats the way to go, as they seem to offer the promise of a price ‘ceiling’ for nuclear energy. But as I’m sure you know they have more risks than conventional PWR’s etc so security risks here are not trivial. Other than the higher costs, thats probably why we don’t really have any today.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 8:27 am
I think they are on their way…I think it was short sighted of our government to stop the test reactor they were building in the 90’s that they were building, or else we’d probably be using them.
We need to educate everyone on this…turn the tide!
average james Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Yah I guess I’m just short-sighted. Stupid.
I mean 150 yrs. is nothing, right ?
Groundwater and God knows what else is vulnerable to this ‘reduced’ threat.
I must have mistaken the concern for our children and grandchildren as actual concern. Stupid.
Duped again, but wait——
I mean 150yrs. is nothing, right ?
Oil, coal, nuclear-all ugly, polluting unsustainable sources that can and will affect our enviroment detrimentally.
Monies for reseach and developement and a nice hard push could serve us very well.
Remember that the naysayers told us we could never put a man on the moon in ten years. Well, the new naysayers are here and are just as negative as ever. This time I think the stakes are higher, very much higher.
libpatriot Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
craig7120, just wanted to say THANKS for your interest and encouragement on this topic of nuclear power, because it’s true that we don’t get around to discussing it on this level of detail, usually! So thanks again for your encouragement! GuidoVanHorn’s links and Lee’s arguments have persuaded me to give it a chance, but I’m still close to sitting on the fence, because there’s still questions needing answering about final storage and safe transportation. But I’m open to the idea of more nuclear energy to replace coal energy, but we shouldn’t give up on wind/solar/geothermal, not by any means.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 7th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Average James…do your own research, read articles written by people who know what they are talking about.
the real naysayers are those that say no to nuclear…they don’t think through the possibilities other than…radioactive=bad. Actual tests show that Coal plants spew more radioactive and harmful substances than nuclear. Nuclear facilities have the ability to capture and store ALL of their waste (it’s true, in the past we’ve had containment issues, but we’ve learned from those) Also one tidbit I learned about the fast breeder reactors (the next generation of nuclear) is that they are cooled in a different method which reduces the need to run the process through hyper pressurized systems and if there were ever to be a core containment issue, it would actually self contain itself, making incidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island impossibilities. If it broke it would like cleaning up spilled jam oozing out the top of the jar vs cleaning up an uncontained water hose.
Solar/Wind/Geothermal/Hydro/Tidal etc… they are all worthy pursuits, but they simply aren’t cost effective and are unreliable for base power.
So let’s all be realistic, get on the same side, reduce greehouse gases, stop the strip mining and mountain top removal of coal and LETS GET NUCLEAR
Lest we forget James, Solar/Wind etc. are not completely environmentally neutral, it takes a lot of sand and harmful processing (not to mention massive amounts of electricty) to get the raw materials to transform into a PV cell. Have you ever seen a commercial Windmill farm? There’s a lot of Iron ore that needs to be extracted from the earth to build those gigantic steel structures (not to mention the electricity needed to build them…and the fuel to transport)
We should continue our research in these fields, but until we can figure out how to get solar cells to create energy in the dark or wind mills to turn when there’s no wind, we’ll always need a base energy to augment these technologies. “well we can use a battery to store energy” this is a poor way to keep energy as the components of batteries are in themselves pretty harmful to the environment…
There’s also the issue of powerloss in transit. Most wind/solar farms are in remote locations, more power is lost the further it runs through a power line. This can be mitigated by running higher voltage through lines, but wind turbines and solar farms run on a fairly low voltage compared to coal/gas/nuclear facilities.
So let’s all be realistic, get on the same side, reduce greehouse gases, stop the strip mining and mountain top removal of coal and LETS GET NUCLEAR…after we’ve destroyed the “evils” of greenhouse gases, then we can turn all our attention to erradicating nuclear waste.
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:08 pm
This one hits home for me. Periello beat Virgil Goode in the election last year just by a few votes. Goode will be back in 2010, so it’s no surprise we see these attack ads. Goode was a champion of the status quo. He even changed parties to preserve his power. Periello at least is not in support of legislation that supports oil executive and Saudi princes.
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
BTW the NRCC ad attacking Periello got pulled from WDBJ-7 in Roanoke. They cited factual inaccuracies. Go figure
Daddio Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Factual inaccuracies in a political ad??!!!! Who ever heard of such a thing?!! :)
crh3e Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Ah laugh it up, but when an ad is so full of crap that it gets pulled, especially in conservative districts like mine, it’s worthy of attention.
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
“There’s got to be something more important than getting reelected.”
I’d vote for this guy, just for saying stuff like this…I wonder if he believes himself, we’ll see.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:14 am
IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN
KERMIT
average james Reply:
July 4th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Very true RDM.
Kermit the frog rocks.
July 4th, 2009 at 10:57 am
“…safely use Nuclear energy…”
Yeah you probably trust insurance companies to dole out your health care too.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 2:26 am
you are woefully uneducated on the subject.
July 4th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
“Will Democrats Who Care About The Planet Be Thrown Out Of Office?”
I don’t know, hope not; what I do know for sure is I really don’t mind when Democrats who DON’T care about the planet get thrown out of office.
libpatriot Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 5:52 am
But politics is always about “compared to whom”, isn’t it?
July 6th, 2009 at 5:47 am