An old essay of mine is still online at odious debts.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Sweden Scraps Ban On Nuclear Power In Big Reversal
The Swedish government this week announced the reversal of a 30 year old policy banning the use of nuclear power, reportedly in a bid to boost the country's energy security and to address the issue of carbon emissions and global warming. Rolando Simbulan and the anti-nukers won't tell you that nuclear is the greenest of the many alternative sources of energy that we ought to be exploiting as far as the global warming problem is concerned. Much less than solar, wind or tidal which all would require significant infrastructure development for the scale required, compared to nuclear power plants. A recent post at Filipino Voices on the issue comes from Blackshama, Going Nuke.
An old essay of mine is still online at odious debts.
An old essay of mine is still online at odious debts.
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5 comments:
hi dean: im not anti nuke myself. i only have one question: where do we store the nuke waste? I mean, we dont even have a place to throw our garbage.
haha good question, anon. Luckily the problem of nuclear terrorism has been recognized internationally as a major nonproliferation concern. I do believe the IAEA has a regime for managing nuclear wastes collectively. I think it may involve shipping the stuff to Nevada! But this depends on the Obama administration's policies upcoming. Given his Nobel Laureate Energy Secretary, I'm optimistic.
I am afeared that we have a Nobel Nut Case in Dr. Chu. VDH has a good column dissecting his alarmism.
As far as nuclear waste goes: What waste? There ain't no sech animul as radiocative waste. If it is radiocative it is darned useful or at least potentially so.
We have an engineering challenge of how to isolate isotopes from the surrounding material. Once that is done, every 55 gallon drum of waste is reduced to about half a teacup of anything hazardous. Then figure out how to make productive use of said .5 teacup.
The Nevada Facility is called Yucca Mountain. Bechtel hollowed it out to make the outline of a repository. Luddites have fought it every inch of the way. Continue to do so.
My personal hunch is that nanotechnology and nuclear material hold the key to being able to do two things: store huge quantites of electricity in a small space and how to achieve cold fusion as well. Do those two things, and photo propulsion
follows shortly. Care to hop out to the asteroid belt for pizza this evening?
There are certainly valid arguments for nuclear power as a "green" energy source. Whether that translates to a valid argument for resurrecting an antique plant with open questions on build quality is another issue altogether.
With government corruption, a weak military and police, and an inability to handle problems like lack of funding for basic health care, waste disposal, and even water supplies, it's not a good idea to operate a nuclear power plant here.
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