Uppity Wisconsin

So Third Eye comes up with a well-reasoned, and detailed, response to Xoff's post and all he does is deflect the argument to something else. Good job, you have a future in the Obama administration. Third Eye, don't be surprised that Xoff selectively uses the facts and misrepresets them in order to push his own agenda, he's made a living out of being a liar.

I find it funny that XOff, with no engineering degree or background, wants everyone to believe he knows this topic better than a UW nuclear engineering grad student that has studied it in excruciating detail. XOff demonstrates this by using selective facts, half-truths, and exaggeration to try to make his case. The comments from the student paper that he mentions are selective to his stance and several are taken completely out of context. Read them yourself and see. He doesn't mention that nearly all the comments on the site are in favor of nuclear power and many seem to be made by folks who are more educated about this than he is. Some actually discuss real solutions that have scientific merit (imagine that). Yes, nuclear waste is dangerous. Everyone at UW-Madison knows this, which is probably why Kiedrowski didn't mention it. What most don't know is how little of it we actually produce, which is what he does talk about. Listening to XOff, you'd think we were pumping out billions of tons of this stuff and are running out of places to put it. Not true. Yes, nuclear power costs money. To argue against it from a purely economical standpoint is ridiculous. With that logic, people should not buy hybrid vehicles because they're more expensive than conventional ones. However, people who do buy these cars see the value in putting fewer greenhouse gases in the air and less money in the hands of the oil companies and their terrorist masters and know that the extra cost is worth it. Similar deal with nuclear power; if you want something better than the norm, it's going to come at a price. As for what fossil fuels are costing us, well, I'm sure XOff can cite the cost of the Iraq War off the top of his head. And that's only a portion of the total; it doesn't include human lives lost, widespread pollution, health risks, and a multitude of other factors associated with coal and oil. Yes, France had a nuclear leak last year and two rivers were made off-limits to fishing and watersports. What XOff does not mention is that the two rivers were opened to human activity again a only a couple weeks later after it was determined there was no threat. He also does not mention that the 'higher' rates of leukemia translate to three per 100,000 persons, which a French medical authority cited as close to the expected rate. These also occurred near a reprocessing plant, which sees far more nuclear waste traffic than a regular power plant. The US does not have reprocessing facilities, thanks to Carter giving in to the nuclear fear mongers back in the 70's. And Jim, you're a bit shaky on your facts as well. While mining and enriching uranium aren't the easiest tasks in the world, we've been doing it for a while and have enough nuclear fuel in the US to last us for years. We'll almost certainly have fusion power before we run out. And as far as engineering graduates having no practical experience, you obviously haven't set foot in an engineering school in a while. Many of the mechanical engineering students at UW-Madison design and build cars, trucks, and airplanes before graduating. As for the nuclear engineering students, they learn how to operate the campus reactor, and are taught by world-class professors that are pioneers in their field. Nuclear power isn't perfect. But if you're interested in getting off fossil fuels, replacing them with a reasonably clean energy source, and still keeping the country powered, I challenge you to find something better.

The problem with nuclear power plants is that they are not cost effective. When you include in the costs, both of decommissioning the power plant and the wages for the guards to keep people away from the waste for a million years in the price of each watt produced it makes no economic sense to build. No utility in its right mind will invest in nuclear power, if they must bear the cost that are generated as a natural consequence. Put money into the large scale deployment of Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage System "SMES" and a new power grid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU05d43dw6g A superconducting power grid with distributed SMES and combined with wind and solar, can meet our energy needs.

We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that there are different types of nuclear power to consider. Slow versus fast neutron, etc. While nuclear technology in use today presents a myriad of challenges and problems - storage, meltdown risk,inefficient use of uranium available, potential terrorist uses of waste, etc. There may be the potential to develop technologies that would make far more efficient use of uranium and result in waste that would only require storage for a few centuries. The waste material would also be realtively safer in terms of potential terrorist usage. Most importantly, there is the potential to develop technologies that do not have the same level of meltdown risk as found in technology currently in use. While there are some types of nuke power technology we should say no to, there are other types that we should encourage research and development efforts.

If all the dreamed-of nuclear plants got the funding and start-up approved, we'd be faced with a few more mountains to climb Capital: XOff thinks it takes 10 years to get one built and on-line. More like 20. Who has capital to invest on such a long timeline? Who has the patience to bet on an iffy prospect and wait 20 years for ROI? Fuel: Uranium is still available, though--just as with Petroleum--the stuff that's left is in inconvenient places, very hard-to-get-to, a lot more expensive to mine, hard to ship. And lots of it is in countries and regions THAT DON'T LIKE US. Skilled Engineers: It will take an army of extremely well trained and experienced engineers to design, build and operate this hallucinated new generation of reactors/power plants. Does anybody see the overflow classes of Engineering students in our engineering schools? How many of the current students and recent graduates have done any study or practical work that involves more that moving pixels around on a screen? Risk Takers: All the visionaries calling for Nuclear Power claim that it is absolutely safe. Nevertheless, they insist we arrange to make the profits private and the risk public.