Bill, My answer to Keith will perhaps surprise you a little.
Take a look. Harry -------------------------------------------------------------------- William wrote:
Harry,
It seems you missed the most important point that Keith made:
but it would still need vast government subsidies because private investors can never afford
to cover the costs of cleaning up afterwards.
My youngest son became a Nuke in the Navy. When he went in, he was very pro
nuclear [nucular as W says]. I sent him piles of articles. He now feels the same way
I do about the horrors of nuclear power and the fact that it has been under the
control of fanat
On Fri, 01 Jan 1999 17:40:14 -0800 Harry Pollard <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Keith,
>
> When I was involved with nuclear I ran into an interesting
> comparison in
> Chicago. They used coal, oil, and nuclear power plants. The engineer
> in
> charge made the point that of the three nuclear provided the
> cheapest
> power, and also had the least downtime.
>
> He did point out that had he been able to use local "dirty" coal,
> ten coal
> would have been cheapest. Bringing "clean" coal in from the West
> pushed
> coal power above nuclear.
>
> Two political problems have dogged nuclear. First, keeping a $5
> billion
> plant from operating while 2-3 years of court antics take place is
> no way
> to run a business. The plant is already heavily in debt when it
> finally
> starts operating.
>
> Secondly, if they had been able to drop their spent fuel rods in the
> ocean
> trenches instead of keeping them on site - the present expensive and
> risky
> situation would never have developed.
>
> Also, the new nukes are apparently efficient and very safe. You
> didn't
> believe they could be run with the coolant off, but I've seen it
> happen.
> They don't even need containment shelters. To me, they seem to be
> the key.
> Environmentalists are perhaps in a state of shock - these horrible
> things
> don't even emit that well-known plant food - CO2.
>
> Privatization in Britain demonstrated that the conservatives had no
> firm
> philosophy. This included Thatcher, who did some good things but
> inevitably
> began to guess at what to do in the absence of a solid understanding
> of the
> free market. In any event, I suppose had she tried to do something
> significant, she would have been stopped. Meantime, the idea of
> privatizing
> monopolies is beyond belief.
>
> Harry
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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