Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

Post by yardie » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 6:55 AM UTC

deskglass wrote: post #71

ChuckMcM wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in they actually advocate it? One of my misfeatures is that I tend to ask annoying questions of powerful people, and really pissed off the Mayor of Sunnyvale one year when they were advocating re-developing school property into commercial real estate. I think I said, "Are you saying it would be better for my children if there kids, my grandchildren, had no where to go to school but could hang out at a Target?"

That redevelopment would have been extremely reasonable if they were the mayor of Sunnydale. Also, unless that were the only school in the area, your question may have been unproductive. The marginal value to society of a commercial installation can be greater than that of a school.

Post by Squarel » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 7:18 AM UTC

techdmn wrote: post #82

ars wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear. And it requires lots of land. Solar thermal is much more efficient but it's expensive and no one seems to be doing it in scale. And it too requires lots of land. And don't say we have lots of land, we do, but it's remote, so you need a lot of infrastructure to make use of it. We can do that (we did for hydrocarbons), but it's not a slam dunk. Becaus…

I continue to be confused about how nuclear can be considered better / cheaper / cleaner without factoring the cost of storing the waste for 10,000 years. We seem to struggle with unintended consequences of waste management on the decade scale, let alone several millennia.

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 7:50 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #161

pdonis wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

poor management -- it's a major risk factor This is true of any field in which, in the words of Feynman in his report on the Challenger disaster, "reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled". the man who made that happen argued strongly against nuclear power. As the Rickover quote you give shows, Rickover thought of "radiation" as having magical powers, like many members of the un…

This is true of any field There are some technologies which are inherently riskier than others. A solar meltdown or wind fuel spill isn't going to risk tens of thousands to hundreds of millions as a nuke plant incident could. [Rickover's] arguments on such grounds are not cogent. Y'know, blithely saying that of someone who spent 35 years in the nuclear industry, pretty much creating it, shows ... a certain hubris. I'…

Post by ergoproxy » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 8:44 AM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #17

For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That, plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers below it could only contain poor-quality water, led regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs…

Post by spikels » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 10:19 AM UTC