Re: Time to talk about Global Warming [was Re: Maccies aren't fanatical? (by the way, what is a "Maccie?)]

ZnU wrote:

In article <B9-dnc9c8YaU8efZRVn-jA@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
GreyCloud <mist@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Wegie wrote:


[snip]


best thing to do is start a mass building project of 200 nuclear power plants, to be completed in 15 years, and then a near total phase out of all oil / coal burning in the next 50.


That would be nice, if they know what to do with the radioactive wastes involved with nuclear power.


They do. Fast breeder reactors vastly reduce its quality and life span, while generating more power.

At one time I advocated for breeder reactors, but the problems of waste disposal still remains.

After that, there are technically feasible ways to burry it in vast, lifeless mud flats on ocean bottoms.

There is where you'll meet the environmentalists.

Ironically, fear of nuclear power results in nuclear power being much more dangerous than it needs to be, because nobody is willing to try newer, safer approaches.


They'll only work if the scientists first figure out a way to neutralize the waste so that it isn't radioactive.

Not that nuclear power (at least as implemented in the West) is particularly dangerous. No member of the general public has ever been killed as a result of a nuclear accident at a Western civilian power reactor.


Not on any civilian reactors, no. There has been one major incident that the government tried to keep covered up at Post Falls, Idaho tho.
It was a Navy experimental reactor that blew it guts out over the local landscape. A few of the workers died from that one.

In contrast, hydroelectric power has killed several thousand people, and burning coal has contributed to hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths. (It's not particularly unreasonable to say that pretty much everyone who dies of old age would have lived at least a bit longer on a parallel Earth where coal wasn't burned in large quantities.)


Washington State did try to make a nuclear power reservation known as Woops. (sp?) It almost made it, but greed and corruption killed off that project.


No one wants a waste repository in their backyard and will fight it tooth and nail. Take a look at Chernobyl.


Not sure what a poorly designed and incompetently operated nuclear power reactor has to do with nuclear waste storage.


People have a fear now of nuclear power. Near Mesa, AZ, the people are fighting to keep a nuclear waste repository from being built.
This is the biggest hurdle.


The scientific question I'd have is this: how big does the global population have to be before disaster strikes?


With our current fuel sources, it's probably already large enough that, given enough time, there will be fairly disastrous consequences.

With sufficiently large amounts of cheap, clean energy, though, and foreseeable advances in e.g. genetic engineering of food crops, the maximum carrying capacity of the Earth is almost arbitrarily high.


Scientifically... no one knows the number.



--
Where are we going?
And why am I in this handbasket?
.

Relevant Pages

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