🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5vunru$dvv@flatland.dimensional.com>,
Hyperion Systems <hyperion@dimensional.com> wrote:
>In article <5vuhtp$jda@acmey.gatech.edu>,
>Adam Moore <gt4551d@prism.gatech.edu> wrote:
>>Pointing at Chernobyl as an indication that nuclear power is unclean is
>>like saying that a dam breaking and flooding the valey below would
>>indicate that hydro-electric is unclean.
>
>What I am saying is that nuclear energy is nice and clean, until the
>byproducts leave the reactor either by rail or by explosion.  Building
>nuclear reactors and then arrogantly assuming that they will withstand
>everything that nature can throw at them, forever, is just absurd. 
>Assuming that humans cannot make a big enough mistake to melt one down is
>absurd.  

I say again, that pointing to Chernobyl as an indication that nuclear
power is unclean is misleading and misguided.  Chernobyl was unclean.
Huge, incredibly stupid mistakes are unclean.  But, nuclear power
genreation, in and of itself, is not unclean because Chernobyl, a hugrly
moronic mistake, is unclean.

>Taking the waste, burying it in a big hole, and hoping it never
>gets disturbed is absurd. 
>
>If we had spent as much money devloping solar and wind power as we have
>spent to get oil out of the ground and trying to decide what to do with
>nuclear waste, we would all be probably paying next to nothing for
>non-polluting energy by now.  

That or living in something like the time before or during the industrial
revolution.  If we deverted the money that has, over the years, been
applied to oil drilling and refining, etc, and applied it to solar energy,
we wouldn't be here today.  In part because we'd have a helluva lot less
oil available to us, and a helluva lot less to do with it.  Sure, solar
power would be more efficine than it is today (ignoring the setbacks to
such research that would result from effective use of oil having never
been developed), but it still wouldn't be enough to make up for the oil.
It seems to me that money that has been spent on oil related research has
been higher yield per dollar than money spent on solar research.  

>THOSE are clean energy.  It's amazing, you
>walk outside on a sunny day, and you can literally FEEL the energy raining
>down from the sun, yet we use very little of it in that form.

The transfer is somewhat innefficient.  You can't turn the enregy carried
by the sun's radiation into electrical power as easy as it can be
converted to heat as it burns your flesh.  But, if you really wanted to
harness the suns power efficiently, why not set up something like a little
sun here on earth, one that we can control and design an efficient
trnasfer for.  Yeah, good idea!  Somtheing that uses the same principals
as the sun, but here on earth...

>
>How stupid are we?

That doesn't quite rate a response, but I couldn't cut it either.

>
>- John

===============================Adam=Moore=================================
-Adam Moore  Hopeful Romantic  _            0))__)>   
 gt4551d@prism.gatech.edu  |\/|_)  "I've been a right bastard!"
                           |  |-\     -Jesus, in "The Spirit of Christmas"
                                                         /~(_)~\     ,,
"Let me kiss your mind, bathe your soul..."    `//::::: (=<|===|=====II}
      -Me'Shell N'deg�Ocello                   //-`'DVC  \_(~)_/     ''
==========================================================================