<DrumBeat: August 2, 2007 The Oil Drum DrumBeat: August 3, 2007>

447 comments on Why Not Nuclear Power?

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SailDog on August 3, 2007 - 3:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Wretched Excess

How many years have you people been yammering about a peak in a finite resource? What do you think is used to make nuclear reactors?

For all the brain power supposedly in cahoots here, you all fall several standard deviations short in common sense. It should be enough to observe the data flowing in from petroleum related activities for light to have dawned on Marblehead. Shoulda could woulda. Here's the crimp note:

The problem is not our activity, it's our proclivity.

You can wank away at alternatives all you want.......

I am not sure that rudeness, name calling and profanity are called for. Personally, "wretched excess", I found this comment offensive.

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Big Gav on August 3, 2007 - 8:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Offensive yes, but also totally inaccurate.

I'm no fan of nuclear power, but if I thought we had a choice between collapse / reversion to a pre-industrial world and using nuclear power to get us through the next 50 years, I'd reluctantly say lets starting building lots of nukes.

Fortunately I don't think that's necessary - we can meet all our current and projected energy needs with a combination of renewables and efficiency measures.

Go and do the sums...

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oilmanbob on August 3, 2007 - 9:50am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Saildog,

Wretched excess has been a member for 19 hours, yet he criticizes TOD as though he has been a member for years.
The Oil Drm was started in 2005, so on the face of his comment, its a lie.

Its pretty clear that he's either an old troll returning or a new troll, possibly paid. At any rate the best policy is to ignore him, especially since he semms to want to start a flame war..Bob Ebersole

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LevinK on August 3, 2007 - 10:04am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

With all due respect I'm more offended from people that tell me what I have to want and what I have to need.

I say enough of self-appointed demiurges.

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trollingfordollars on August 3, 2007 - 2:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Personally, ... I found this comment offensive.

Its pretty clear that he's either an old troll returning or a new troll, possibly paid.

With all due respect I'm more offended from people that tell me what I have to want and what I have to need.

Yes, when the binky is pulled from an unprepared mouth screams will ensue. Sorry to disturb your slumber but a clue by four is sometimes the only method for bringing about a shift in perceptions. Time is not for dainty conversation over petit-fours. Time is to get serious. The only thing being done here is desperately trying to preserve the halcyon daze. The sooner the collective "in the know" step away from the bong the better. Do the freaking literature review before writing your treatise.

I'm an old troll; and if you think that anyone would pay to have this board disrupted your sense of self importance is way out of whack. Been poking your tender underside since the day you opened your door back on blogspot. Been resource scarcity aware for much longer. Been reading about civilization, energy use and political history even longer. Of course my thesis is going to rupture the committee. It don't toe the line. Then again most real breakthroughs in understanding never have. Get used to it. Of course if you are really sensitive you could try and play whack a troll and ban my MAC. That will be interesting in a lab of 200+ machines...

I took some calculations that Robert and Nick started and polished (well at least sanded) them a little. Getting sustainable is pretty easy and saves money all along the way.

Wrong. Getting sustainable will require the sobering drying up of use of finite materials. Again, the wizardry of technology is not going to grow off of berry bushes. All the maths show that even at complete utilization of available fixes will not cover even half of what is currently the norm. The way is not through seeking continuity, the way is complete change.

One of the problems with many nuclear proponents is an almost blind refusal to accept that we are part of a greater set of interrelated systems - not separate from the world. Anyone advocating anything close to current lifestyles is a psychopath.

Uh oh, psychopath label, better get out the troll stamp. How convenient that cliche is. Just label anyone who might have a dissenting viewpoint and we can all get back to the delusions. Unfortunately, delusions are not solutions.

Do we take some responsibility for what we are doing or not?

If the majority of the posters here are a representative sample, the resounding answer is no. Levin would have us believe that it is perfectly reasonable to think that the way we currently live is done to meet needs. Wrong. The way we currently live is in thrall to desires fed by a completely untenable level of consumption; unless of course your goal is to eradicate most life off the face of the planet.

Sometime in the future, people will be looking to groups like this for answers to what has happened and solutions. What currently passes for reasoned debate is really no more than replacing the whip at the back of the lemming pack for a dog whistle at the front. You are still headed for the cliff. So much for evolution.

Every single individual that continues the lie that what we have become accustomed to can be patched sustainably is another voice of hegemony that will lead to a barren wasteland. Witness Iraq. Do you think wars will end because you put up solar panels? Wars will end when we stop being rapacious. Whatever slew of alternatives you propose will require inputs. Inputs that will not always be available in the quantity desired at the local level. Enter colonialism. We've been doing it for so long people no longer even bother to recognize it.

Just how do you think the shelves are stocked and the lights remain on in la la land? It is because in addition to the slaves we harness from hydrocarbons, we additionally rely upon the deprivation of billions across the globe to refine raw materials into widgets sans ecological impact considerations. Every single one of us is responsible currently for the conditions that exist in the slums and backwaters across the globe because of the lifestyle we are so irrationally attached to. That same lifestyle that we are trying desperately to maintain for the future generations. Bunk. The madness that is the civilized world is a madness that will render future generations impossible.

Go ahead be offended. The offense is actually yours...

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Gaianne on August 5, 2007 - 12:07am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Agreed, trolling-for-dollars.

Indeed, wretched-excess has gone on a rant, but in his defense, wisdom on this thread is not high. If we understand that oil is a finite resource, then why can we not understand that other resources, too, are finite. Only when resources are used at a rate less than replenishment is activity sustainable.

And that takes us to the crux: Our civilization uses more energy per day than comes to us from ANY combination of sources. Coal, oil, uranium--these are all drawing on the past to try to EXCEED sustainability. We can do it--indeed we have done it--but only temporarily. Our civilization is absolutely guaranteed to end, and all our quick fixes are just a junky who has run out of heroin mainlining ludes. It is sure to end badly.

Some people take offense at the idea of living like our ancestors. The truth is, we could do worse. Mid paleolithic people had a ten-hour work week, plentiful food (most of the time) and a network of meaningful relationships. Yes, frankly, their life was physically arduous, but humans are designed for that.

Of course, our life is comfortable, but that is not what is at stake. What is at stake is the simple fact that our comfortable way of life is going to end, and the most likely scenerio for its ending--a frantic consumption to exhaustion of available resources--will leave a desertified world with MUCH fewer survival possibilities than were offered to our paleolithic ancestors.

The most likely model for US is Easter Island. It would be very good to avoid doing what they did, but at this moment Easter Island is certainly what we are collectively trying for. It would be a mistake.

Nuclear power of course consumes large quantities of non-nuclear energy in plant construction, and in many peripheral activities. But the heart of the problem is that it is a literal dead end. When we say that the waste disposal is unsolved--after more than fifty years!--why would you understand that it will BE solved the day after tomorrow? Between the known laws of physics and nuclear energy's own history, the odds are that it will not. Ever. By the way, do you understand the effects of elevated radiation on human beings? Cancer is the least. Birth defects and immune disease are the real problems, and they never end. Unlike cockroaches and most other insects, humans just are not designed for the world we are invoking when we consider nuclear power. The outlook for cockroaches is good. The outlook for humans is not--and nothing will reduce our long term prospects more permanently or thoroughly than the nuclear route.

There is an attitude on this thread which just leaves me shaking my head--that we can tell nature what to do. Are you nuts? I can assure you it is the other way around, as we will learn, the easy way or the hard way. We can comply with nature's constraints, or we can die. It's a free choice.

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447 comments on Why Not Nuclear Power?

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