Elinda wrote:
Tarv, I wasn't arguing for or against nuclear power. I did want to point out though, that catastrophic accidents of the nuclear type are possible. Yoyo makes another good point, fossil fuel powered plants have their own health hazards. Heck I'm sure if we put some sort of large-scale solar power plant on line it would have hazards too.[/link]
Biggest drawback to solar is cost, health would be totally minimal relative to fossil fuel.
Yes, fossil fuel isn't so much a hazard as a given, which we accept daily. It is news when radiation leaks, not when air pollution leaks constantly. So naturally people are more afraid of the radiation (can't sense it, after all).
Ya teh Assylum is good at hijacking threads. Anyone up for India again?
Wind is a serious contender. As I've posted here at least twice before, T. Boone Pickens has plans to produce 20% of the US energy needs from wind. All he needs congress to do is to help pay for fat energy pipes from the middle of the nation to the coasts. He is a right wing Republican (help paid for swiftboat ads IIRC) and is a very wealthy oil man. His strategy is as follows: take all natural gas used for electricity (about 20% of electric power) replace that electric power with wind, use some or all of that natural gas to power cars and thus buy either: less foreign natural gas or less foreign oil. Either way, the US wins.
But it is less of a health cost then burning fossil fuels.
[quote=Elinda]Edit to add, I wouldn't consider nuclear plants as a 'tide over'. They are either part of the big energy plan or they aren't. Tide-me-over policies are rarely efficient, economical, or successful.
Biggest drawback to solar is cost, health would be totally minimal relative to fossil fuel.
Yes, fossil fuel isn't so much a hazard as a given, which we accept daily. It is news when radiation leaks, not when air pollution leaks constantly. So naturally people are more afraid of the radiation (can't sense it, after all).
Elinda wrote:
This post was about selling nuclear technology to India, but folks wanted to talk about alternative energy. Yet no one had mentioned wind power. It's BIG in my local news right now because of the governor/premier summit etc.
Ya teh Assylum is good at hijacking threads. Anyone up for India again?
Wind is a serious contender. As I've posted here at least twice before, T. Boone Pickens has plans to produce 20% of the US energy needs from wind. All he needs congress to do is to help pay for fat energy pipes from the middle of the nation to the coasts. He is a right wing Republican (help paid for swiftboat ads IIRC) and is a very wealthy oil man. His strategy is as follows: take all natural gas used for electricity (about 20% of electric power) replace that electric power with wind, use some or all of that natural gas to power cars and thus buy either: less foreign natural gas or less foreign oil. Either way, the US wins.
Elinda wrote:
Nuclear power is just as viable as any other, but it's not risk free.
But it is less of a health cost then burning fossil fuels.
[quote=Elinda]Edit to add, I wouldn't consider nuclear plants as a 'tide over'. They are either part of the big energy plan or they aren't. Tide-me-over policies are rarely efficient, economical, or successful.
True. It would take decades to pay off the initial costs. Also, we are going to use up the easily fission materials soon. At that point, we'll have to reprocess which is vastly messier then operating the plant in the first place.
