Michael Harney wrote: > Trent wrote: > > Why not nuclear power? Less people have died in nuclear accidents > than mining coal. Mining coal is more hazardous to your health than > working in a modern nuclear power plant. It doesn't produce CO2. It > doesn't produce environmental pollution other than the obvious > radioactive waste that is slated to start being stored at Yucca > Mountain starting in a few years, where it won't be a concern for tens > of thousands of years. If the human contribution to global climate > change is significant and is something that can significantly impact > us within the next one or two centuries, then why not trade the more > immediate global problem for one that is more localized and we will > have a much longer time period to solve? > The problem with nuclear power is that we can't get all the uranium we need from reliable countries. A lot of it comes from Russia, the Central Asian Republics, and less stable African states. The ex-Soviet sources are worse for the Europe and the U.S. than Saudi oil since those countries still treat the West as a strategic threat. Saudia Arabia treats America as a necessary evil and a protector, but not a threat. Uranium is a finite resource, and energy use always increases even with improved conservation. As time goes on, access to uranium may become an even bigger energy security problem for the West than it is now. So if your primary motivation is energy security (not climate change), nuclear power is only a marginal improvement over oil.
For America, however, Coal is the ultimate in energy security. It's right here. We can even export the stuff and gain a strategic advantage over other countries by becoming part of their energy supply chain. > Trent Shipley wrote: >> I believe that climate change is true, but that America's response must >> preserve the American way of life or to hell with the planet. >> >> >> So the solution has to be a magic technology fix. We cannot raise the >> cost of energy to solve climate change, especially not before the costs >> of climate change become apparent. Even then it may be more politically >> expedient to build levees than to increase the cost of energy. >> >> >> As for American energy security, that means coal, not uranium. >> _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
