[pp.int.general] Don't roast our planet

Sat May 19 13:37:05 CEST 2012

Nuclear raises an institutionalized paranoia that ranges on the obscene, yes, definitely.

And what causes that paranoia is nothing else but the fact that... you can not hide military nuclear facilities if it is not behind the radiation background of civil nuclear facilities. That is the only reason why Germany can agree to dismantle civil nuclear facilities (because they have no military nuclear facilities of their own to hide) and no other country (USA, GB, IL, FR, RU, ...) is anyway near considering it possible.

The rest of the story is a plain propaganda smokescreen to hide behind conveniently.

Date: Sat, 19 May 2012 12:46:21 +0200
From: charly.pache at gmail.com
To: pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] Don't roast our planet

Andrew, thanks for your input, I read once 'nuclear' electricity was cheaper because the costs of the storage and re-treatment were not included in the electricity bill but were paid by the states, is it true? 

About the deaths/serious injuries after a major nuclear incident, i guess you should consider the higher number of people who get cancer and die from it into the figures. And the population is still contaminated many decades after the accident, like in Tshernobyl. The worst report talks about '985,000 deaths as a result of the radioactivity released' [1]. Fukushima consequences will be probably terrible as well and it's no wonder they stopped all their nuclear plants in Japan. In my opinion, the risk is to high. Better a life with less confort than a life with cancer.

But you're right about the wind energy, i heard that the big companies just do it to to make money with public subventions, they don't really care about being green or efficient.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#New_York_Academy_of_Sciences_publication

On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 9:47 PM, Andrew Norton <ktetch at gmail.com> wrote:

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On 5/18/2012 5:49 AM, Kenneth Peiruza wrote:

> Right now, Spain is producing 10% of it's energy with renewable sources,

> and 11% of its electricity with wind power. Wind power is (as stated by

> US dpt. of Energy) significantly cheaper than nuclear power, and below

> market-prices. The cheapest source is advanced combined cycle, which

> will increase its price in the next years, as it's based in fossil fuels.

>

Ooh boy. You combined the W and the N in a statement, and oh boy...

First, Nuclear is expensive, yes, why? Because of an institutionalized

paranoia that ranges on the obscene. Were we to submit any other form of

electricity generation to it, nuclear would be the cheapest.

We had a major nuclear incident last year. Despite that, the

deaths/serious injuries at nuclear power locations remains? Oh, Zero.

How many fatalities have there been at wind power sites in, say, 2011?

ELEVEN!

Oh my.

Do you know what constitutes a 'leak' at a nuclear power station? If you

take a smoke detector in, it will flag a leak alarm. If you carry a

bunch of bananas, it will trigger a leak alarm, you have a handful of

brazilnuts? leak alarm...

I haven't actually checked this but some very rough calculations

indicate to me that if you take a wind power turbine, and put it in a

nuclear power site, it will set off the leak alarms.

THIS IS WHY IT'S SO EXPENSIVE.

When you have people making policy that don't understand the science,

then you have serious problems. I live in Georgia. We're actually

getting a new nuclear plant built here (albeit many many miles from me).

There's lots of nuclear protesters around there. About 20-25 miles away

is a coal plant (one of the biggest in the US - Georgia Power's plant

Scherer) and there's NO nuclear protesters there. Obvious you might

think. Just one problem - residents around plant Scherer, are starting

to suffer from Uranium poisoning, as the ash pool leeches into groundwater.

I have no worries about nuclear power. Perhaps because about 10 years

ago, i did some design work at a nuclear power plant+reprocessor. Last

September, I sat next to (or withing 5 meters of, at all times) a

nuclear reactor. Not just ANY reactor though, but one a 17yo kid had

built himself. here it is -

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d32/ktetch/0903011932a.jpg (that

bright spot on the left side of the pic is from my laptop, which is

where I was sitting, working the mixer desk) and here's a video of it in

action, showing it's radiation output with a Geiger-Muller counter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbgIQ8X3uc

Of course, all this is because I understand radiation, and nuclear power

(really, it's not that hard. and the day before, I'd led a panel on a

particle accelerator that has uses including dealing with nuclear waste)

But Wind? Wind scares the crap out of me. If there's no wind, it

generates nothing. If there's too much wind, it generates nothing

because they have to stop it so it doesn't break. If the brakes fail, it

catches fire, and spews huge amounts of toxic smoke. These fires are

usually left to burn because they're incredibly difficult to put out,

and very high up (and fanned by the high winds that started it). And if

the fire spreads it can be VERY nasty; one wind-turbine wildfire in

Australia torched an area of national park roughly the same size as the

Fukushima exclusion zone. Then there's the blades - In Germany it's been

shown that bits of blades can embed themselves in house roofs kilometers

away. If it gets cold, they can throw big ice chunks just as far.

then there's effectiveness. A study by the UK National Grid found that

wind turbines provided only an average around 23% of their rated

generation capacity. So you have to build even MORE. That's more

expense, and of course, that's not usable all the time.

The UK was also looking at, I believe, cutting the heavy subsidies paid

to wind generators, who were being paid even if they were generating

NOTHING.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9076458/Wind-industrys-extensive-lobbying-to-preserve-subsidies-and-defeat-local-resistance-to-turbines.html

But seriously, if you want to talk about cost, make sure you understand

ALL the facts, especially those facts which drive the costs. Know your

facts, know your science, know that nuclear is the best option at present.

- --

Andrew Norton

http://ktetch.co.uk

Tel: +1(352)6-KTETCH [+1-352-658-3824]

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