NUCLEAR DENIAL & DEBATE
source: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/30/prescription_for_survival_a_debate_on
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- coolplanet
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The crisis in Japan has refueled the rigorous global debate about the viability of nuclear power. Japan remains in a "state of maximum alert" as the experts scramble to contain radiation that is leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Nuclear energy remains a controversial topic in climate change discourse, as environmental activists argue how to best reduce the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere—often the debate pits one non-renewable energy against another as renewable energy technology and research remains underfunded. Democracy Now! hosts a debate today about the future of nuclear energy between British journalist George Monbiot and Dr. Helen Caldicott. Monbiot has written extensively about the environmental and health dangers caused by burning coal for energy, and despite the Fukushima catastrophe, stands behind nuclear power. Caldicott is a world-renowned anti-nuclear advocate who has spent decades warning of the medical hazards posed by nuclear technologies, and while agreeing about the dangers of burning coal, insists the best option is to ban nuclear power.
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- groups:
- Green, Nuclear News
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- tags:
- Science, Upstream, Global Warming, Cancer, 4 more
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IceKat
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Is this going to be another story you post, comment on and then delete as soon as an alternative viewpoint is raised, you know, like your story about Hansen that you deleted yesterday as soon as I wrote a comment?
- 1 year ago
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IceKat
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coolplanet
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IceKat:
I didn't delete the story I posted about Hansen, Solutions to the Climate Crisis.
It might have been pulled by Current for possible copyright infringrment as I quoted several paragraphs from Hansen's new book.
I'll have to check. - 1 year ago
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coolplanet
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coolplanet
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODS-jBsjOtc
Lecture by Burton Richter, Emeritus Director of the SLAC National Accelerator, at Stanford University, May 5, 2010
At least listen to Richter's clear argument for nuclear energy.
Keeping an open mind is the difference between science and dogma. - 1 year ago
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coolplanet
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coolplanet
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coolplanet:
James Hansen is the man who first alerted the world to global warming in 1988 with his testimony before the US Senate (invited by Al Gore). He has been NASAs leading climate scientist for the past 40 years and is the most respected climatologist in the world today.
In 2009 he wrote his first book, “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.”
Here is an important excerpt addressing nuclear energy:
“When asked about nuclear power, I am usually noncommittal, rattling off pros and cons. However, there is an aspect of the nuclear story that deserves much greater public attention. I first learned about it in 2008, when I read an early copy of ‘Prescription for the Planet,’ by Tom Blees, who had stumbled onto a secret with enormous ramifications…
Nuclear waste problems are the biggest drawback of nuclear power. Unnecessarily so. Nuclear experts at the premier research laboratories have long realized that there is a solution to the waste problems, and the solution can be designed with some very attractive features.
I am referring to ‘fast’ nuclear reactors. Fast reactors allow the neurons to move at higher speed. The result in a fast nuclear reactor is that the reactions ‘burn’ not only the uranium fuel but also all of the transuranic actinides--which form the long-lived waste that causes so much heartburn. Fast reactors can burn about 99 percent of the uranium that is mined, compared with the less than 1 percent extracted by [current] light water reactors…
We already have enough fuel stockpiled, in nuclear waste and by-products of nuclear weapons production, to supply all of our fuel needs for about a thousand years.
In fact, given that fast reactors make it economical to extract uranium from seawater, we now have enough fuel, in theory, to run nuclear power plants for several billion years. In other words, nuclear fuel is inexhaustible, putting it in the same category as renewable solar energy.”
(pp. 196-201) - 1 year ago
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coolplanet
