Compare the energy mix of any other OECD nation with that of France, and it becomes VERY clear - opposition to nuclear power IS SUPPORT FOR COAL, whether or not you understand that that is what you are doing.
And the word is 'Kowtow'.
That is pure bullshit. Not supporting Nuclear has NOTHING TO DO WITH SUPPORTING COAL.
Yes, it really does. That you don't grasp this is truly sad.
What you are describing is insufficient support for alternatives and insufficient support for conservation. This has been the case as long as I can remember.
Yes, exactly. For AS LONG AS YOU CAN REMEMBER, opposition to nuclear has been tantamount to support for coal, because alternatives to these have not been considered viable for base load power. Your opposition to nuclear power has not caused one windmill or solar panel to be installed; These things have been adopted only as they became economically viable - and only to the extent that they are economically viable. Meanwhile, the demand for continuous, reliable, electrical power has been met by coal - due to your lobbying against the only other viable continuous power source.
That you think this might suddenly change, just because you don't want to admit that your activism has been supporting the coal industry, is pure cognitive dissonance.
The only reason we still generate MOST of the world's electricity from coal is that you and your comrades in the anti-nuclear lobby have been so successful.
France is a shining example of what a country that has marginalised and ignored the anti-nuclear lobby looks like; they generate almost all of their electricity
without any carbon emissions at all.
I suspect you would know how to spell words connoting frightened submissive obedience considering your country's treatment of its native peoples.
Why? The racists in Australia don't like the Chinese either - and "Kowtow" is a Chinese word.
You really shouldn't use words you don't fully understand - it makes you look foolish. And when called on it, a lame ad-hominem response makes you look childish too. You really don't want to take all of the crimes of the USA on your own shoulders, do you? Because if you don't, trying to place the crimes of other Australians at my door is unwarranted. Grow up.
Energy mixes are the result of NO PROGRAM TO CONTROL CARBON AND NUCLEAR POLLUTION.
Do you really live in a universe where you imagine that effects are the result of the lack of a cause? Your brain is a seriously weird place.
Energy mixes are the result of a variety of pressures; Those - the vast majority - that include a lot of coal burning are, in large part, the result of anti-nuclear lobbying, which makes nuclear power both less politically attractive, and more expensive. Well done on that - you and your comrades have successfully kept most of the world burning coal for at least four decades longer than necessary. You can be proud of the fact that you were responsible for the overheated future of our globe.
We are at the beginning of a process which should in all rights be much further along, but thanks to denialists like yourself it is way behind schedule.
Ha! Your mirror is in the way again - the entire OECD should have a generation mix like France's, with almost zero carbon emissions; but thanks to fantasists and conspiracy theorists like yourself, we are all still burning coal.
We cannot blame people for not knowing where these technologies (fossils and nukes) would eventually take our society, but when we finally find out, then there is blame that can be assigned to those who deny the handwriting on the wall for SHORT TERM PROFITS.
Or indeed due to an IRRATIONAL FEAR of nuclear power that is based in the anti-nuclear WEAPONS ideals of the 1960s. Those nuclear disarmament advocates saw opposition to nuclear power as a way to cut off the supply of bomb making materials to the military; but sadly for the planet, they were unaware that the biggest threat was not the USSR and USA lobbing nukes at each other, but in fact was carbon dioxide.
In the world of the Cuban Missile Crisis, that was an understandable error; it seemed then that nuclear weapons were a huge and imminent threat, and the long term effects of CO
2 on climate were not then known - and even had they been, it is hard to think long term when the world might end next week.
But that excuse expired with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. There is no excuse for not changing your position when faced with a dramatic change in circumstances; But your anti-nuclear propaganda was too powerful to escape. So here you are making fact-free claims to oppose a technology that can save the planet from a problem you yourself agree is the biggest issue of our time.
That's truly sad.
The problems with the nukes were apparent BEFORE there was widespread knowledge and proof of the CO2 effect.
Apart from 'They can make material for bombs', there ARE no problems with nukes that come anywhere CLOSE to the problems with coal.
Alternative advocacy has always been here.
Sure. But the technology to make solar or wind effective for continuous supply of power has not; and still is not.
I was part of it in the 60's. I ran a solar water distiller company in the 80's. I really am aware of the economic constraints that have been applied to alternative energy projects. These economic restraints were accompanied by public relations character assassinations proffered widely by fossil fuel companies and nuke companies.
Sure; It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. Which is why the coal lobbyists love you and your comrades so much.
Wind and Solar have their place; I am glad to see them being more widely used. But there is a reason why even countries like the UK, who are heavily invested in wind power, still need to burn coal. Lots of coal. Because it is the only viable alternative to the nuclear power to which you and your comrades stand opposed.
The only places in Europe where renewables have made a really big inroad into the coal power industry are those that supplement their renewables with power bought from France.
Can you guess how the French make that carbon neutral electricity? It begins with an 'N'.
The earliest objections to coal were already sufficient in terms of heavy metals emissions and particulate emissions, but the coal people relocated many of their projects far from cities which temporarily were not directly experiencing the air pollution.
Yes.
You are just an extension of that press for more and more power consumptive lives and I have seen and known of attitudes like yours for the better part of fifty years.
This is a fantasy of yours; I have told you several times in this thread that it isn't true; and you have zero evidence for it. So please stop. Attacking me personally doesn't strengthen the logic of your position.
I have the privilege of having known an ex-nuclear mining engineer and we have discussed what his job was about....air circulation in uranium mine to remove radon gas. He very frankly told me that that part of the business was the most difficult and subject to failure a lot. He quit that line and went into city planning.
Yes, it's a fairly tricky problem. ALL technologies have tricky problems, that need smart people to solve them.
The radon gas was pumped to our atmosphere outside, to join with all the other air pollutants.
Radon has a half-life of less than four days; it is only a hazard if it can accumulate, and as it is VERY dense, it is therefore a non-issue anywhere where it cannot pool. Pumping it into the air disperses it rendering it safe - the solution to pollution is dilution - and in a few days, it disappears all by itself.
That's one of the big benefits of nuclear pollution - unlike most chemical pollution, a large part of it just goes away if you wait a while.
Of course, if you don't know, and don't care to find out the basic physics of the materials you rail against, you can imagine all kinds of grisly outcomes.
You want to say those who get sick and die from this stuff are just collateral damage.
...and there you go. No, I don't 'want to say' anything of the sort - I am telling you, from a fact-based position, that Radon in the atmosphere outside an enclosed low-lying area is not a hazard at all. You needn't take my word for it; Go learn the physics yourself.
The deaths from solar power are more per TWh than from nuclear; do you want to say that the people who die in the solar power industry are just collateral damage; Or do you instead treat yourself more humanely (but less justly) and say that they are far fewer in number than deaths from coal power, so it is better to have the lesser of two evils?
Because goose sauce is gander sauce; If the handful of deaths from solar power are preferable to the tens of thousands of deaths from coal power, then so must be the even fewer deaths from nuclear power.
Let me remind you we have to stop being on a war footing with our environment.
Let me remind you that your ideas about what I have 'forgotten' are pure fantasy, and exist only as a result of your cognitive dissonance.
I am not on a war footing with anything; Your imagining that I must be is just part of your attempt to grasp for a reason why I don't agree with you, that doesn't also entail your being factually wrong. But you ARE wrong, so there is no need for these increasingly bizarre guesses about my motivations; I have the same motivations you have - we both want the same results. But you have a factually flawed set of premises that leads you to oppose the best available solution; and I do not.
It isn't just a matter of short term safety but rather of conceptualization of how we live our lives and how those who follow us will be living theirs. In that territory we all have a certain amount of blindness, but we can see that cumilative long term environmental destruction cannot do anything but make future lives more difficult and threatened with our toxic waste.
Absolutely. And that is why we MUST replace coal burning with nuclear power as a matter of urgency.
I really understand your position.
I really, really doubt that.
It just appears to me to be saying..."Just a little more...we need some more...anything for short term expediency in generating profits.
Wow. Way to prove yourself wrong. My position is THE SAME AS YOURS - we MUST stop global warming. The only difference between us is that we don't agree on how to REACH our desired objective - I have NO argument with you regarding ends, only means.
I am not sure if you are aware of the racism in your own country that is constant being applied to native peoples in the pursuit of mineral exploitation
Of course I am; We have already discussed it in this thread. And here too, I completely agree with you.
...and yes, one of the worst cases is uranium mining.
Except that it isn't. The WORST cases are coal and iron. By FAR. Uranium mining has a lot of problems for the aborigines; but no more so than other forms of mining - and the amount of mining needed per unit of power generated from nuclear is TINY compared with that required for coal.
The problems caused by mining companies would be massively lessened if we switched from coal to nuclear for our power, even if all else remained the same. Of course, I hope, vote, and lobby, for the abuses of the mining industry to stop; but the idea that uranium mining is as big a problem as coal in this country is so backwards as to be insane.
You people have real problems with water and you are running up against environmental feed back in more than one area of industrial endeavor.
Almost none of which has anything to do with the nuclear industry; and many of which would be mitigated to some extent by a switch from coal to uranium, all else being equal.
Your rice farmers are going under in a drought, just like ours here in California.
All the more reason to prevent severe climate change by switching from coal to nuclear.
Your voice just calling for just a little more is loud and clear here and we are still quite resistant to the reality of what we need to be doing.
I am not calling for more; I am calling for a switch from coal to nuclear - which means LESS mining, LESS pollution, LESS injury, illness and death and LESS carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Whatever level of power use we might have in the future, generating that power from nuclear, and not from coal, is a MASSIVE plus for the planet and its people.
But still you support coal. And you don't even realise that you are. That's really sad.
