The Lousiana oil rig failure...

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by August

Won't those tend to break up and disperse the slick?

Or drive them further inland. In any case, storms will make it harder to contain and remove the oil.

I am afraid this is going to get worse before it gets better.

On a related note.

I would like to hear from the anti-nuke people how nuclear power is not safe for the environment. Seems to me that we have had more environmental disasters with non-nuclear industries than we have had with nuclear industries. The US nuclear reactor safety record is pretty good.

We really need to build more nuclear reactors that are smaller, more efficient, and safer than the current old reactors we have today.

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Or drive them further inland. In any case, storms will make it harder to contain and remove the oil.

I am afraid this is going to get worse before it gets better.

On a related note.

I would like to hear from the anti-nuke people how nuclear power is not safe for the environment. Seems to me that we have had more environmental disasters with non-nuclear industries than we have had with nuclear industries. The US nuclear reactor safety record is pretty good.

We really need to build more nuclear reactors that are smaller, more efficient, and safer than the current old reactors we have today.

It never ceases to amaze me how people are comfortable with thousands of deaths per year due to coal mining, oil transport accidents, and the like - but mention nuclear power and they start to rage. Three Mile Island didn't kill anyone, and Chernobyl only happened b/c of a bad reactor design that IIRC has never been used in the US.

[CaptainHaplo]

No No No.... you guys have not been properly reprogrammed.... uh indoctrinated... uhm brainwashed....no, educated? - yea thats it- educated!

We all need to start doing away will those horrible things of technology and return to a simpler life, where people compost their own waste, ride their bikes to work, and go to sleep when its dark. This is how we will save mother earth from our excessive gluttony.

If you try - you can already feel the love Mother Earth has for us all when we do things like this.

[August]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

We all need to start doing away will those horrible things of technology and return to a simpler life, where people compost their own waste, ride their bikes to work, and go to sleep when its dark. This is how we will save mother earth from our excessive gluttony.

Well, the return to the pre-industrial age would likely solve the overpopulation problem which is the real cause of global warming.

[tater]

Originally Posted by August

Well, the return to the pre-industrial age would likely solve the overpopulation problem which is the real cause of global warming.

There is no overpopulation.

Also, all the population trend lines are showing a change. The 1st world is not even replacing itself. We're contracting. Even the 3d world rates are not only lower than they were (a lot) than 50 years ago, all the trend lines on the rate of change are pointing to world population stabilizing, then actually decreasing.

The simple reality is that there was a time when having more kids was virtually always an economic positive (agrarian societies with poor medical care, lack of labor saving equipment, etc). This is no longer true. Urban societies have incentives for smaller, not larger families. Better medical care—even in the 3d world they have antibiotics, etc—means better childhood mortality. Readily available birth control... everything is driving birth rates down.

[August]

Originally Posted by tater

There is no overpopulation.

We're at 6.8 billion and you don't consider that over populated? Far from stabilizing as you claim world population is expected to rise to 9 Billion over the next 30-40 years. I mean I'd like you to be right but I just don't see it happening.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by tater

There is no overpopulation.

Also, all the population trend lines are showing a change. The 1st world is not even replacing itself. We're contracting. Even the 3d world rates are not only lower than they were (a lot) than 50 years ago, all the trend lines on the rate of change are pointing to world population stabilizing, then actually decreasing.

The simple reality is that there was a time when having more kids was virtually always an economic positive (agrarian societies with poor medical care, lack of labor saving equipment, etc). This is no longer true. Urban societies have incentives for smaller, not larger families. Better medical care—even in the 3d world they have antibiotics, etc—means better childhood mortality. Readily available birth control... everything is driving birth rates down.

Where do you get your numbers, man? World population is exploding! Even if birth rates are down, there are simply more people contributing to said rates.

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

No No No.... you guys have not been properly reprogrammed.... uh indoctrinated... uhm brainwashed....no, educated? - yea thats it- educated!

Hey, if you say so friend.

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

We all need to start doing away will those horrible things of technology and return to a simpler life,

If it's simpler but better for us all and the place we inhabit in the long run, then I'm totally for it.

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

where people compost their own waste, ride their bikes to work, and go to sleep when its dark.

Ok... what exactly is bad about doing this kind of stuff? I mean, composting is a good way to recycle organic/biological materials, getting more people to ride bikes would eventually lead to better general health amongst the population and reduce somewhat the number of overweight people outright, and well... going to sleep when it's dark is kind of rhetorical.

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

This is how we will save mother earth from our excessive gluttony.

It's certainly a good start.

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

If you try - you can already feel the love Mother Earth has for us all when we do things like this.

Well if you want to be spiritual about it yeah. Or you could just stand back and look at it all falling into place, with the knowledge and satisfaction that the species is no longer overpopulating and polluting the only place in this entire universe we CAN inhabit right now...

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

It never ceases to amaze me how people are comfortable with thousands of deaths per year due to coal mining, oil transport accidents, and the like -

Actually there's only about 50-70 deaths on average per year in the coal mining industry related to accidents, not thousands as it was well over a hundred years ago.

http://www.msha.gov/MSHAINFO/FactSheets/MSHAFCT2.HTM

And as far as oil transport accidents go, there are far less killed than the coal mining statistic.

http://www.offshore-environment.com/accidents.html

Originally Posted by Platapus

I would like to hear from the anti-nuke people how nuclear power is not safe for the environment. Seems to me that we have had more environmental disasters with non-nuclear industries than we have had with nuclear industries.

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

but mention nuclear power and they start to rage.

Really there's a better alternative to both nuclear power and non-renewable energy resources (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.): sustainable energy. Investing in synthetic, biological, natural/renewable fuels (i.e. biological matter, solar energy, wind energy, hydro energy, geothermal energy).

While you can gain more energy from nuclear fission methods, the waste they produce is very difficult to dispose of properly, and the facilities themselves are far more dangerous. This is atomic energy you are toying with here. Radioactive elements, massive explosions, nuclear fallout, etc.

Originally Posted by Platapus

The US nuclear reactor safety record is pretty good.

Somewhat true, but the more facilities you build, the greater the risk something will go wrong in one of them. The United States really doesn't have the most nuclear reactors in the world compared to contemporary Western nations. The thing about nuclear energy is that, anytime you have a problem, it's serious. It's a race against the clock until something melts down, And when the problem elevates to disaster- it's huge. It's ALWAYS global. With Chernobyl, radioactive materials were spread all over the world, nevermind the surrounding blast area. It's really not any different with an atomic weapon explosion: the nasty stuff is spread everywhere.

http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/glbrad.html

Messing with atomic physics like this is dangerous. There's no need to increase the number of reactors from what we already have. Move to sustainable energy, maintain the current number of nuclear reactors, invest in nuclear fusion energy-generating methods.

Originally Posted by Platapus

We really need to build more nuclear reactors that are smaller, more efficient, and safer than the current old reactors we have today.

That's obvious. People have been saying this for decades now. The problem is that it's not that simple. Again, nuclear physics is a very dangerous and complicated field- not even touching upon research that has to be done into the elements to be used for fuel, the particle studies, etc.

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

Three Mile Island didn't kill anyone,

There were actually quite a few cancer deaths later on, not considering the environmental effects of 13 million curies of radioactive gases being leaked into the atmosphere and radioisotopes.

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

and Chernobyl only happened b/c of a bad reactor design that IIRC has never been used in the US.

Actually Chernobyl's reactor melted down because the operators failed to carry through with an inexcusable number of rules and regulations in place to prevent exactly this kind of disaster from occurring and because the ECCS was shut off (the coolant system reactors use)- which led to an increase in steam formation and therefore temperature, slowing down the effectiveness of the control rods. With that said, exactly such a disaster is a possibility, of a higher quantity with the more reactors you construct, not only with human error being a possibility but also mechanical failure in the reactor itself. Chernobyl alone caused over 4,000 deaths in a remote area of Russia; imagine how many would have died if it had been in an urban area- nevermind Russia but what it would be like in the United States. And the environmental effects are still being felt today.

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yo...hernobyl2.html

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by August

We're at 6.8 billion and you don't consider that over populated? Far from stabilizing as you claim world population is expected to rise to 9 Billion over the next 30-40 years. I mean I'd like you to be right but I just don't see it happening.

It'll stabilize as the food supply loses ground agains the population and third-world countries grow poorer and can't afford to buy GM crops from the west. GM crops are very efficent when it comes to land usage, but they are also very expensive to grow. All of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" crops (crops made tolerant to Roundup pesticide) are quite pricey, and you have to purchase new seed every year and plant a "stock" crop to make sure that pests and weeds that are resistant to Roundup and other pesticides get to breed with non-resistant varieties. Otherwise the GM seed would be useless in a matter of a few years. Third-world farmers can't afford that stuff, and even if they could, they lack the mechanization to apply it effectively.

True, the west often supplies food to the poorest and most overpopulated countries, but they can only do that for so long, and pressures on food surplus are mounting. The organic food craze and the ethanol fuel travesty are wasting untold hectares of good, arable land for very little return. Even worse, the food shipments only encourage the rampant population growth, and simply delay mass starvation. Furthermore, most prosperous countries have a very low or negative birth rate, which will eventually start to undermine the demand for food production, resulting in greater shortages in the third world.

Combine all this with other factors contributiing to high mortality rates like disease, resource and ethnic wars, poverty, lack of drinking water, and the nigh-universal presence of the corrupt and oppressive government in the third world, and you have a recipe for rapid population stabilization, and my guess would be at no more than 10 billion, if even that, the vast, vast majority of which will be impoverished. That's not even taking into account the damage that Western nations are doing to their own economies through wasteful government spending. At some point, that is going to produce a very severe economic backlash for them, resulting in even less food production. It already has, to some degree, and it isn't over yet. And the next one will be worse.

The brutal truth is that the world's population will be stabilized more by tremendous amounts of death than by anything else, and there is nothing we can do about it. Most attempts to reverse this trend thus far have been based on the "give a man a fish" policy, and even where they teach people to fish it will do no good if the state steals their catch and then kills them, or they die of disease. There is not enough wealth in the entire world to make a broken system work, no matter how it is distributed.

Overpopulation itself isn't actually a problem until you start talking about really, really huge numbers of people. Hong Kong has a population density twenty times that of India, produces almost no food, has no resources to speak of, and is just fine. Tokyo is doing fine, albeit a bit cramped. New York City is a bastion of socialism by American standards and it's doing relatively ok, though those budget shortfalls and taxes are going to catch up with it at some point.

By comparison, India is full of starving, diseased, impoverished, dying people because it is a socialist democracy. It is a rich nation in terms of resources, but it has long been suffering from mass starvation and absurd mortality rates. Like Hong Kong, it was a British colony until recently. In fact, Hong Kong belonged to the British far longer, until 1999. Pretty much all of sub-saharan Africa is a hellhole, even though some nations have less population density than Texas and more natural resources. China is the most populated nation in the world, but the special economic zones, where free trade is permitted (to some degree) is fine, but the Communist part of the nation is desperately poor and hungry.

The key here is government and economic freedom. Until the harmfully overpopulated nations of the world figure that out, they are going to die in filthy heaps outside the door. Barring a sudden reversal of policy in China and India, or a continent-spanning reform movement in Africa, you'll see the population stabilize a lot more quickly and brutally than it otherwise would.

[Bubblehead Nuke]

Pardon the noise as I bring out my soapbox.

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter

While you can gain more energy from nuclear fission methods, the waste they produce is very difficult to dispose of properly, and the facilities themselves are far more dangerous. This is atomic energy you are toying with here. Radioactive elements, massive explosions, nuclear fallout, etc.

Poppycock.... Pure unadulterated poppycock. Go back and learn something and forget all that trash that Greenpeace spouts.

Massive explosions? Nuclear fallout????? How may I ask? Please, back it up. How many megatons are you going to get out of a PWR plant? How about a BWR? Come on, give me a guess. Describe the situation that would result in an uncontrolled chain reaction that creates a nuclear detonation. How about during a loss of coolant accident? How about in a prompt critical situation? Stuck rod? How about a dropped rod? A cold water accident? Do you even know the difference between a controlled nuclear reaction vs a prompt critical one?

You comment on the amount of waste gererated by an atoic power plant.. The fact is, the amout of waste generated from nuclear energy is FAR FAR lower then the comparable amount of waste generated by a comparably sized fossil plant. A nuclear reactor will generate several tons over its lifetime. Fossil fuels will generate several tons of waste yearly. The toxins released by coal are bio hazards. Just look at all the ash, CO2, and other waste products that are produced

Current technology in renewable energy can not generate anywhere NEAR the amount of power to compare. I am a HUGE supported of renewable energy, but currently the tech is not there to replace more conventional means. That WILL change in the future, but how far in the future?

The thing about nuclear energy is that, anytime you have a problem, it's serious. It's a race against the clock until something melts down, And when the problem elevates to disaster- it's huge. It's ALWAYS global. With Chernobyl, radioactive materials were spread all over the world, never mind the surrounding blast area. It's really not any different with an atomic weapon explosion: the nasty stuff is spread everywhere.

Not true. Granted, Chernobyl was supreme stupidity. We had to study it. When I studied it it was still being investigated. We did not talk about it in terms of what happened. We did it in equations.

We were walking into a situation and walked step by step into the operation of a BWR. Then they turned off the pump with a subsequent failure to insert enough negative reactivity into the core during a scram. In fact, instead of negative reactivity, they initially inserted POSITIVE reactivity. Our eyes absolutely BOGGLED at what we were seeing in the math. To us it was just a equation to solve. Then then wrote the name of the place on the blackboard. We were stunned. We realized that that the problem we worked was not hypothetical, but real. We were stunned because they failed in EVERY tennent of reactor operations that we were learning. Fankly, they deserved what they got. Nobody questioned what was going on.

With that being said, there has to be multiple failures of both human and machinery to cause a serious failure. People have to ignore alarms, override safety features, and have to be basically stupid to really screw things up.

That's obvious. People have been saying this for decades now. The problem is that it's not that simple. Again, nuclear physics is a very dangerous and complicated field- not even touching upon research that has to be done into the elements to be used for fuel, the particle studies, etc.

:haha :

Oh man.. you KILL me.

A reactor is SIMPLE physics. We are talking HIGH SCHOOL stuff here. There is no mystery in how it works. They are incredibly predicable, they will do the same thing EVERY time. But they do it VERY fast. It is that SPEED at which things change that can make them dangerous.

Now the research into particles, that is some mind bending stuff. Research reactors?? They are the same as a power reactor, they are just using the neutron flux to create radioactive isotopes.

[Platapus]

As far as I have been able to find out, the United States death toll from Nuclear power reactors is 3 in 1961 (SL-1 Incident)

Our worst nuclear reactor accident was Three Mile Island and that resulted in zero deaths. More people have been killed in the construction and operation of hydro-electric dams than have been killed in nuclear power plants in the United States.

Nuclear power has the potential of being dangerous, but that danger can be mitigated. What is more scary is that we have some very old nuclear reactors operating in the US. When one of them fails due to old age/old technology, the anti-Nuke people will proudly claim "see, we told you"

We need to shut down the older reactors and build many smaller, safer, more efficient nuclear reactors.

Nuclear power is not easy. It takes careful planning, and regulation. But it can be a safe and controllable source of power.

Fission is not the ultimate answer. But it will serve us well until we can develop other means of obtaining power.

[Bubblehead Nuke]

Originally Posted by Platapus

As far as I have been able to find out, the United States death toll from Nuclear power reactors is 3 in 1961 (SL-1 Incident)

Our worst nuclear reactor accident was Three Mile Island and that resulted in zero deaths. More people have been killed in the construction and operation of hydro-electric dams than have been killed in nuclear power plants in the United States.

Nuclear power has the potential of being dangerous, but that danger can be mitigated. What is more scary is that we have some very old nuclear reactors operating in the US. When one of them fails due to old age/old technology, the anti-Nuke people will proudly claim "see, we told you"

We need to shut down the older reactors and build many smaller, safer, more efficient nuclear reactors.

Nuclear power is not easy. It takes careful planning, and regulation. But it can be a safe and controllable source of power.

Fission is not the ultimate answer. But it will serve us well until we can develop other means of obtaining power.

A learned one.. I applaud you for learning. SL-1 was bad. It was needed to teach us the dangers. That is what started the whole "EVERYONE has to know what they are doing, not just those in supervisory positions' attititude.

The old reactors NEED to go away. Just like the cars, planes, trains, and such of yesteryear, they have served their purpose and need to make way for more efficient technology. Granted, something needs to be said for the robust over engineering they have in them.

We need to make a standardized design with common training and procedures. You can then standardize the training, testing, and certification. Currently, you are certified for ONE plant. Not one facility, but ONE plant. The one on the other side of the parking lot is off limits if you are not certified on it.

You are correct on the many small plants. It allows for more controlled maintenance and repairs. If need 1 gigawatt, you put 3 or more 500 megawatt plants on site. You can then shut down one without overstraining the grid. If you need extra power, you can bring more power on-line. If you have a problem with one you shut it down without crippling the grid.

More important, if something bad DOES happen, you can bring in BUS LOADS of trained qualified people who can help immediately without have to undergo familiarization.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Or drive them further inland. In any case, storms will make it harder to contain and remove the oil.

I am afraid this is going to get worse before it gets better.

On a related note.

I would like to hear from the anti-nuke people how nuclear power is not safe for the environment. Seems to me that we have had more environmental disasters with non-nuclear industries than we have had with nuclear industries. The US nuclear reactor safety record is pretty good.

We really need to build more nuclear reactors that are smaller, more efficient, and safer than the current old reactors we have today.

I'm totally for nuclear energy.

However, our real problem is people breeding like roaches. For some stupid reason, impregnated/being impregnated is some sacred right everyone's allowed to do as often as they want even if their genes are nothing special (or, indeed, less than special).

What about the cancers that were caused by the nuke tests? Some say that even the Duke (John Wayne) succumbed to cancer he got from the radiation while filming near a nuclear test site.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

What about the cancers that were caused by the nuke tests? Some say that even the Duke (John Wayne) succumbed to cancer he got from the radiation while filming near a nuclear test site.

Yes the smoking had nothing to do with his lung cancer