Talk:Drill Baby Drill?: Oil vs. Alternative Energy

From YouProduce

[edit] notes on drill baby drill

comments to other folks can go here..

Haym...thanks for updating... if you have a absolute need, feel free to start a new page, and title it about me (or something like that) to find it... markb

If nuclear power can be so safe, why can't any insurance company provide liability insurance against a meltdown that might contaminate several major cities? Many insurance companies will still insure houses built along the hurricane prone Atlantic coast at a very high premium but they do insure them. But nuclear power plants can only be held responsible for limited damage and not for a major catastrophe.

Should the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility be open today, it could not store all the existing spent fuel rods and other high level waste. If the terrorist threat is as serious as it is purported to be, then on-site nuclear waste storage would make them far more vulnerable to terrorist sabotage than a centralized facility. When it comes to the security of such dispersed nuclear waste storage, we only have to look at the record of their private security companies who hire their guards at the lowest possible pay with other qualifications overlooked.

Processing spent fuel rods means shipping this dangerous material around the country or around the world presenting all manner of security problems. There has been some very good discussion of the whole reprocessing issue in the Scientific American December 2005: “Smarter use of Nuclear Waste.”

Since we are seeing considerable resistance to siting the rather benign wind turbines off our coast, can you imagine trying to build a new nuclear power plant or nuclear waste reprocessing plant anywhere near any populated area in the United States. The have to be near some water body for condensing the steam and that makes their siting even more problematic.

I often wonder if the amount of investment and subidies that have gone into the development of nuclear power were invested in wind, solar and thermal energy, how much less dependent on foreign oil today?

[edit] Brazil

Brazil is supposedly Energy independent... I have not heard anything about how they are weathering this now. I assume well... Thus an answer on how we would be doing now if we were Energy independent we can look to them for an answer. This is in response to what they are discussing now...

Dennis K