Republicans aren't alone in ignoring or distorting science for political gain

Global warming is the biggest distortion of science. Your article is based on a flawed premise.

Tom Still once again champions nuclear energy. I only wish his fine work for WTC would be more reflected in his arguments regarding this subject.

Easily found are some on the ‘political left’, like Sen. Barack Obama who is quoted saying, “I actually think that we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix,” and the UK’s Tony Blair, who included nuclear energy in his “open-minded” debate on energy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4216302.stm

Funding for free-fuel energy from wind and solar are not being financed at a ‘Manhattan Project’ level, and so we see ‘slow and steady’ increases in their use.

‘Safe and efficient’ third-generation designs? Hardly even approaching a consensus view.

http://www.news.com/Nuke+power+not+so+clean+or+green+-+page+2/2008-11392_3-6189817-2.html?tag=st.next

Available today? Where is that happening? Not something one can buy at the local hardware store, go home, and plug in. Sources say just building a new nuclear plant would take three years, and that’s after finding a site.

http://www.news.com/Nuclear+power+looks+for+comeback+in+U.S./2100-11392-6207899.html?part=dht&tag=nl.e703

I attended a discussion with State Rep. Jim Ott, a strong nuclear power advocate, at MATC Mequon campus Sept. 7. When asked where in his district he supported building a nuclear plant, he answered near the lake, requiring the taking of homes. In Mequon by the lake? About as likely there as anywhere else.

Waste storage? Just part of a costly fuel cycle that doesn’t exist at all for wind and solar. Earthquakes at Yucca Mountain? How would one know if damage occurred in a vast repository of thousands of casks? At least we can keep watch on piecemeal above-ground casks – even if it costs us for tens of thousands of years.

Bjorn Lomborg testified before a Congressional committee a while back, shown on CSPAN. I recall he wasn’t quite so sure when pummeled with skeptical questioning. After all, reassurances and fear-mongering go both ways – remember ‘too cheap to meter’ and ‘slam dunk’ weapons of mass destruction?

Now that bald eagles are, after a DDT ban, achieving sustainable populations and are being de-listed as endangered after having their eggshells thinned by consuming DDT-laced food, it’s perhaps an odd time to acknowledge some agreement between Dr. Baldwin and Rachael Carson regarding the misuse of pesticides (and herbicides and fertilizers and bioengineered plants). Dose does matter, and their disagreements and characterizations over dosage don’t negate dangers, precautionary concerns and safety measures.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have massive efforts to find anti-malaria strategies that don’t wipe out people’s supporting ecosystems, so it’s not like Carson’s warnings about pesticides have stopped all efforts to solve pest problems. And when we consider distressed bee colonies and other pollinators that cut into crop productivity, we should use all due caution to help insure we don’t suffer a “Silent Spring” and a hungry harvest.

Best take former US Surgeon General Carmona’s words to heart, “Anything that doesn't fit into [an] agenda is often ignored, marginalized, or simply buried,” leave the political labeling out of such advocacy, and dig a little deeper for both sides of this, and other, issues.

Ecologists are leftists? Not too hard to tell what color glasses your looking through. Last winter utility executives held secret (meaning no media coverage) of plans around new tech that will be able to reduce electric consumption by 50%. Those fill-in-the-blank types have been pushing for this for years.

It is known almost everywhere but in the U.S. that solar will be able to compete directly big grid power within a few years.

Now think real hard. What does this mean?

Why rent electricity from a big company when you can own it yourself!

The just completed UK debate included the fact that nuclear would only reduce CO2 by 4%.

We were supposed to be working together on this, not listening to labels! :)

In the last 6 months the real estimates of new reactor construction went from $1,500 per kw to over $3,000, with the head of American Electric Power suggesting prices could go over $5,000!

Is this why Congress is trying to sneak in over $54 billion in loan guarantees?

I like the new Republican agenda. Welfare for the rich, Big government, and what a deal did George sell us on Iraq! Now you wanna buy another lemon from him?

10,000 year storage isn't what we should be focusing on right now. We are not sufficently advanced to build it yet - but our great-grandchildren might be.

No matter what we do, our great-grandchildren are going to have to deal with our nuclear waste. We would serve them best by designing a solution that will make it easier for them to access the waste with the technology of the future.

If we bury it in Yucca Mountain, and it leaks in 100 or 200 years, our descendants will have a tremendously difficult time cleaning it up. If we store it containers designed to last 100 years but still be accessible, we give them options. Who knows how far material science will have advanced by the 22nd century. Perhaps then a Yucca Mountain type facility will be feasible. Even better, the most highly radioactive isotopes will have broken down, and the waste will be cooler and easier to manage.

It is a shame to pass the buck to our children, but in this case we need fission power to bootstrap ourselves into the fusion world. It is better than pouring huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Interesting that the statement is made, below the article, that the views expressed don't necessarily represent the opinions of WTN -- but WTN could have chosen not to publish such trash in the first place -- trash where the devil in the hand (dry cask storage) is called "infinitely worse" than the devil in the bush (Yucca Mountain). Infinitely? It IS worse, but "infinitely" is pure hyperbole! They both are horrific solutions to an intractable problem. The physics of radioactive decay make ALL solutions other than stopping the manufacturing of nuclear waste far too risky. Yes, we're stuck having to do SOMETHING, but not making MORE waste is the #1 thing we need to do!

Back in the day, when we were told nukes would be "too cheap to meter" by the Atomic Energy Commission (forerunner of the DOE and the NRC), we were also told we could probably just rocket the waste into outer space. Columbia and Challenger and 1000 other rocket failures -- including SNAP-9A -- proved that solution was not going to work, and no other solution has worked, either.

Way back in 1978 the NRC ADMITTED that there is no known threshold for radioactive waste -- no safe dose. This was re-affirmed in the most recent National Academy of Sciences' BEIR VII report. Yet now, nearly 30 years later, pro-nukers still believe a little radiation is good for you because, they say, it "stimulates the immune system." THAT is junk science! But it allows all releases to be ignored as "safe" as long as you dilute the waste stream with enough clean water, clean air, and clean dirt. But all that really does is spread the poisons around and hide the deaths it causes.

As for cost, think of the cost of the 1,100 square miles of once-fertile cropland now laid waste by Chernobyl -- AND the "exclusion zone" should really be much larger than that. The place is a mess; the animals there are deformed, their DNA damaged permanently. And the animals weren't told about the exclusion zone and constantly walk, run, crawl, and fly into and out of it, spreading the poisons and the deformities still further. Winds continue to carry the poisons around the globe. And the half-billion dollar new sarcophagus France offered to build will only hold for a few decades, and then they'll need another, and another, and another.

And our plants are hardly immune to meltdowns, even if they can't have one exactly like Chernobyl's. Just study Davis-Besse's nearly catastrophic accident in 2002, or the true details of what happened at Three Mile Island. Between the two, Davis-Besse was more nearly a meltdown, but both came within a hare's breath of the ultimate failure of technology.

Think too of the cost of cancer, leukemia, heart disease, birth defects, and a thousand other ailments -- all caused by radiation.

The reason nuclear appears economical is because the plant operators -- mega-corporations -- don't pay for the illnesses, pay but a piddling amount for the waste problem, will pay but fractions of a penny on the C-note after an accident, and didn't pay for the research that developed the nuke technology in the first place. Human suffering is the major cost; we all will pay that.

Lastly, calling the current generation of nukes the "third generation" is just an artificial place-keeper: There are several generations operating now; the GE Mark-1 Boiling Water Reactors are particularly dangerous, with their (chock-full) spent fuel pools located dangerously ABOVE THE REACTOR. But the other types we currently use are also anything but safe and clean. The whole cycle releases radiation AND greenhouse gases -- the mining, the processing, the transport of the waste, and the 1,000 or so workers at each plant, who drive to work each day (nuke plants are notoriously labor-intensive ways of generating electricity).

The only scientifically-sound thing to do with nukes is shut them down and admit it was a big, big mistake -- the worst mistake in history.