More Obama lies...ignored by the MSMFollow

Those weren't weapons of mass destruction, they were lots and lots of weapons of very localized destruction.

I suppose you could count the Russian winter as a weapon of mass destruction.

Or even worse, the way the Russians would tape kitchen knives to polar bears and make them charge the German soldiers.

Jophiel,

She is awesome isn't.

True. Honestly though, the waste, and the cost to deal with the waste is far less of an environmental problem than any viable alternative we have available to us right now. Also, in terms of volume nuclear waste is very very minimal. This issue is really just an offshoot of the "no nukes" stigma that nuclear power has in this country. It's bizarre IMO.



Civilian reactors are just as efficient as those used by the military. Honestly, nuclear power generation really just isn't that complicated at all. There are tradeoffs based on maximum and sustained output desired and longevity and maintenance costs that drive the method of reaction and the type of reactor. The reason military reactors seem so efficient is because they are designed for a completely different purpose. They're relatively enclosed idiot-boxes which produce a relatively small amount of power/heat for a relatively long period of time before they are replaced. They're essentially nuclear batteries.

That works great if you're using them as effectively plug-in power modules for something the size of a ship. If you want to power a city, you need something larger with a much much higher maximum power output. That's going to require a more active reactor, greater reactor output range, a whole host of components to regulate the output, and a mechanism to refuel the reactor that doesn't require simply building another one and plugging it in. Hence, fuel rods. That's an element of the efficiency of a civilian reactor, not the other way around. We re-use the bulk of the reactor components and just replace the nuclear fuel itself. A military reactor is simply replaced entirely when it's no longer able to produce sufficient power. You don't know, much less see where they store those, so you don't think about it.


It would be much much more "efficient" for military reactors to use a fuel rod system as well. But this would require building reactors which could be refueled in port, rather than in drydock, which would make the reactors themselves more susceptible to damage during battle. Which is a "bad thing". Military reactors used on ships are not designed for efficiency, but for absolute security and stability.



Again. Those have nothing to do with some super-secret military technology. The design for large city-powering nuclear reactors are the way they are because that is the best way to fulfill the needs of those reactors. Technology and design has improved over the last 40 years, as has safety. Civilian reactors are absolutely fine for generating power IMO.



As am I. I'm frankly mystified as to why this is even a question. The efficiency, total power, cost, and environmental impact are all positives in favor of nuclear power. If we could just get past the knee-jerk reactions and look at them realistically in the context of the alternatives.

Edited, Jun 4th 2009 9:21am by Tzemesce[/quote]

Yes, but the air raid siren warning test performed at 3am without notice is rather annoying.

To be honest, I'm not sure why the idea of just using several dozen (or even several hundred) plug-in modules, which if something goes wrong cause much less, and much more localized, damage, isn't preferable to one monolithic structure that provides all the power at once.

In fact, I'd think that putting these plug-in modules near substations would help increase reliability of the overall electricity infrastructure - you don't have to worry about Random Squirrel X shorting out the line from the plant and making a couple of million people lose power; if the squirrel does the same thing in this case, you lose power to a quarter of those people or (more likely) less.

Granted, you then have the cost of having to rebuild a new unit from scratch every 20-30 years, but that allows you to take advantage of any improvements in the technology in that time frame...

Soooo....

There's something in Israel's long and well-established history of moderate and reasoned responses to terrorist attacks upon their citizens that makes you believe that they'd make any effort whatsoever to distinguish between the terrorists who used the bomb and the Iranians who supplied it to them?

Uh-huh. Right.

zepoodle,



Glad to see you're relying on the goodwill of the Iranians.



You mean like we asked about Saddams using WMD's in the first gulf war?

Not so much "goodwill" as "nonretardedness". You, well, I don't rely on you for anything. The only constant with you is that you are constantly retarded.



Saddam bought his weapons from America. Of course America's not going to go prying.

Depends on their target. Point being, you could trace it back. Odds are if India is bombed, it's Pakistan. If Israel is bombed, Iran. If South Korea, it's DPRK. If it's America, then we investigate :D