BLAST FROM THE PAST: Cannikin Atomic Test at Amchitka Island, Alaska

[Cannikin]

http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/SEEJ/amchitka/ Monday, December 17, 2001

A 30-year-old legacy from the Cold War has surfaced on a remote Alaskan island, where scientists and Aleutian natives are concerned that radiation from the largest nuclear weapons blast ever conducted in America could now be leaking into the marine environment.

At precisely 11 a.m. on Nov. 6, 1971, weapons specialists from the Atomic Energy Commission exploded a 5-megaton bomb -- a prototype for a ballistic missile warhead -- inside a mile-deep shaft drilled beneath Amchitka Island only 87 miles from Petropavlovsk, Russia's Siberian naval base.

The thermonuclear blast was almost 400 times more powerful than the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima. Code-named Cannikin, the weapon shattered the shaft's walls and blasted a huge cavern lined with glasslike molten rock. It triggered a rockfall of jagged boulders from a nearby cliff, created a mile- wide crater atop ground zero that filled with water now known as Cannikin Lake,

uplifted a mile of the nearby ground by 20 feet, and vented groundwater through cracks and old seismic faults throughout the site.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2001/12/17/MN12230.DTL

Cannikin Atomic Test at Amchitka Island, Alaska - The Untold Story
http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/SEEJ/amchitka/ Monday, December 17, 2001

[whistle]

1. Great, is that where much of the Pacific salmon come from?

[Sticky]

2. My first protest march

We chanted "Stop Amchika - Stop the bomb" and people from all around drove by to "see the hippies".... I was very young but my parents dragged us along hoping we'd make the news.

[jpak]

3. This test sparked the formation of Greenpeace

http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/history/

....and the rest is history.

[NNadir]

4. That's pretty consistent.

It would be very inconsistent of Greenpeace to actually pay much attention to real environmental problems with real consequences.

It's pretty funny too that they have misspelled the word "prioritises" (sic) on their website. It is exactly the what the fuck is wrong with this collection of clowns and circus performers. They don't know shit about priorities.

[jpak]

5. What environmental group(s) do you support or admire?

n/t

[NNadir]

6. Obviously the folks who run www.ecolo.org appeal to me.

They often feature the work of my environmental hero, Bernard L. Cohen. http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/People/Faculty/BL_Cohen.htm

For many years I was a very proud member of the Sierra club, their differences with some particulars of my environmental views notwithstanding. I believed that they were an important part of another of my pet peeves besides energy and risk/ habitat preservation. The bit about immigration - which is basically about exclusion and sweeping things under the rug - has turned me off. This is not to say that I think that unrestrained population growth is not the MOST important environmental issue there is. I do agree with that statement very much. I just don't happen to agree that shitting on the poor is a particularly impressive way of addressing that issue. It is well understood that the traditional liberal approaches work in addressing this issue: The REDUCTION of poverty (as opposed to the CONCEALING of poverty), raising the status of women, increasing efforts of education, health care for children, the abolition of war, etc, etc, all of these things encourage sane family planning without which we are very clearly doomed.

The American Rivers organization www.amrivers.org appeals to me very much. The destruction of rivers is a matter of urgent importance I think and it is as important almost as the collapse of the atmosphere.

The group behind www.Livingrivers.org who are active in an area dear to my heart - the restoration of the Colorado River basin however unlikely that may be - earn my admiration.

I have understood that one of the founders of Greenpeace has come over to my way of thinking. I forgive him, and welcome him to reality, but I regard that organization as a collection of pathetic dunderheads.

In general though, I don't rely on environmental organizations so much as I attempt on a person to person basis to advance an appreciation of reality as I see it. I also try to learn what I can by assimilating as much high quality thinking as I can.

You may find this surprising, but I have actually understood that I can be wrong about things. For instance, on this website, I used to shit all over the concept of biodiesel on the grounds that it was not as an appealing solution as DME. On consideration of the matter however, I have recognized that while biodiesel is not in any sense a panacea, those who advance this conception are working in a positive way for a positive change. People with whom I've been particular severe taught me that I was wrong.

[struggle4progress]

11. " ... Sierra Club takes no position on United States immigration levels ..

... and policies ..." http://www.sierraclub.org/population/faq.asp

You find that offensive?

[NNadir]

12. I understood that their immigration position was very different.

I stand corrected. I assumed that the slate described in this link was successful http://www.groundswellsierra.org/index.php but apparently I was wrong. They, and their ballot measure were defeated.

In any case, the part of my post that is relevant to my argument is that I do my environmental thinking for myself. I've long since moved passed organizations. No one, for instance, dictated or directed my recent posts on the fission product cesium on the External Energy thread I maintain. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=5609&mesg_id=5609 This is my own thinking, influenced by my readings of course, but it is my own thinking.

Obviously some environmental organizations, Greenpeace for instance, have positions that endorse poverty and thus, for the reasons I have stated in an earlier post in this thread, stand in the way of environmental progress. This is because environmental progress is very closely connected to the size of the human population, which has now exceeded the earth's sustainable carrying capacity. The elimination of poverty is closely connected with reduced birth rates.

As I have repeatedly stated on this website, I regard an anti-nuclear position as anti-environmental. This is clearly the case. No one to my satisfaction has ever addressed any of my questions on this matter, like this one, "Where is an example of a single person in the United States who has died from the storage of commercial nuclear waste?" Greenpeace, in spite of a huge highly advertised and publicized concern for "nuclear waste," doesn't do this. Instead they rely on Bush-like thinking including lots of statements with the words, "could," "might," etc. People often post Greenpeace links, and other fraudulent nonsense when speaking with me of course, which adds significantly to my level of complete contempt for them and their adherents. Indeed, if you engage in critical thinking about the original post to this thread and the Greenpeace links, it is almost laughable. For instance, "Americium was found..." Well how much? More than is in the three smoke detectors in my home? More than is found in Chile because of the world wide distribution of this element from atmospheric nuclear testing? More than is found at Chernobyl? Finally, even if the amount of Americium is significant, and more than is in my smoke detectors, is this an important environmental finding? Has anyone been injured, any habitats been totally destroyed?

For the record, during the final phases of the Shoreham fight, I was a member of the "Union of Concerned Scientists," which by the way did NOT check to see if I WAS a scientist before sending me my membership card. All I had to do was write a check. Since this past membership in that poor thinking organization is now a great embarrassment to me, I have been reluctant to let organizations think for me. In general, the poorest thinking I see on environmental issues and many other issues, in general belongs to persons who cite organizational literature and positions. I used to be a participant in these kinds of religions, but I am not any more.

[struggle4progress]

14. "... UCS is an .. alliance of .. citizens and scientists ... UCS was ...

... founded in 1969 by faculty members and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who were concerned about the misuse of science and technology in society. Their statement called for the redirection of scientific research to pressing environmental and social problems."
http://www.ucsusa.org/ucs/about/index.cfm

So, having once joined an "alliance .. of citizens and scientists," you are now irritated that the organization never checked whether you were a scientist before allowing you to join?


UCS Board Members
Kurt Gottfried (Chair) is emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University ... Peter A. Bradford (Vice-Chair) advises and teaches on utility regulation and energy policy in the United States and overseas ... Thomas Eisner is Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell University and director of the Cornell Institute for Research in Chemical Ecology ... James A. Fay (board member emeritus) is professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ... Richard L. Garwin .. is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine ... Geoffrey M. Heal is Paul Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility and professor of finance and economics at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University, where he was previously Senior Vice Dean ... James S. Hoyte (Treasurer) is the Assistant to the President/Associate Vice President for Equal Opportunity Programs and lecturer in the Environmental Sciences and Public Policy Program at Harvard University ... Anne R. Kapuscinski is Professor of Fisheries and Conservation Biology and Director of the Institute for Social, Economic and Ecological Sustainability at the University of Minnesota ... James J. McCarthy is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography and from 1982 until 2002 he was the Director of Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology ... Mario J. Molina is Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ... Stuart L. Pimm is Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology at Duke University ... Adele Simmons is a senior associate at the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago and vice chair of Chicago Metropolis 2020 ... Ellyn R. Weiss .. served as special counsel and director of the Secretary of Energy's Human Radiation Experiments Initiative and as deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Environment, Safety, and Health within the US Department of Energy.
http://www.ucsusa.org/ucs/about/page.cfm?pageID=769

If you can establish that these folk are sloppy thinkers in aggregate, your scholarly reputation will be established forever ...

[NNadir]

16. One physicist. Two chemists.

Professors of finance, comparative zoology, conservation ecology, biological oceanography...international studies...oh, and one health physicist.

It looks lot like the logical fallacy of "appeal to authority," which consists of citing people who are respected in one area and completely incompetent in another.

I count 15 people on this board. Three of them are likely to have taken a course in nuclear physics. The one who obviously has, Kurt Gottfried, works in particle physics, not nuclear engineering. Notably his remarks in an on line symposium for the American Physical Society, which begins with an analysis of nuclear power that I could have written, concerns nuclear war not nuclear power. http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/2002/april/cap02.cfm I agree with Dr. Gottfried on his analysis of nuclear testing, because I am a pacifist, and because I think we urgently need to sort out what is and is not a nuclear danger if we are to survive more than a few additional decades. (People who don't doodly squat about nuclear issues often try to confuse these two issues, war and power generation, because, I think, their environmental claims are so demonstrably weak and they necessarily grasp at straws. The resumption of nuclear testing would certainly further muddle the issue for our scientifically illiterate public.)

Their positions reflect this. The Union of Concerned Scientists are engaged in poor thinking on the subject of nuclear energy, about which they apparently know very little. The composition of their board reflects this.

[struggle4progress]

18. Assertions without evidence. Physics and chemistry are, of course, ...

... fine subjects, and biology has moved firmly into the hard sciences category since the 1950's. But I should take the view that physicists and chemists are not the only peole who know anything worth knowing about large industrial facilities, their actual operations, the ways in which they are likely to be regulated (or ignored bu regulators), and the impacts that they might exert upon their environs. In any case, here's a slightly expanded look at several of the board members:

Kurt Gottfried .. obtained his doctorate in theoretical nuclear physics at M.I.T under .. Victor Weisskopf ...
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~scol/gott_lec.html

Peter Bradford, former Chair of the New York State Public Service Commission and the Maine Public Utilities Commission; and former Commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Bradford currently advises and teaches on utility regulation, restructuring and energy policy. During his term, the NRC undertook major improvements of its regulatory and enforcement processes in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident.
http://www.eesi.org/briefings/Pre2003/10.04.01brf.htm

Richard L. Garwin ... has made contributions in the design of nuclear weapons, in instruments and electronics for research in nuclear and low-temperature physics, in the establishment of the nonconservation of parity and the demonstration of some of its striking consequences, in computer elements and systems, including superconducting devices, in communication systems, in the behavior of solid helium, in the detection of gravitational radiation, and in military technology. He has published more than 500 papers and been granted 45 U.S. patents ...
http://www.fas.org/rlg/

James A. Fay is Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current field of interest is environmental engineering, and his recent research activities have concentrated on air and water pollution problems, including the dispersion of air pollutants in the atmosphere, acid rain, the safety hazards of liquefied gases, renewable energy (including small scale tidal power) and the spread of oil and other hazardous liquids on the ocean. In previous years he carried out research on combustion and detonation, hypersonic heat transfer, magnetohydrodynamics and plasmadynamics.
http://www-me.mit.edu/people/personal/jfay.htm

Mario Molina Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V115/N48/nobel.48n.html

<Maybe Ellyn Weiss learned something in the course of helping to put this together:>
Human Radiation Experiments Associated with the U.S. Department of Energy
and Its Predecessors
http://www.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/experiments/

<Here's Eisner's Vita. It doesn't suggest that he is a sloppy thinker either:>
http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/eisner/svita.html

We could continue in this manner, but I think that if you wish to discredit these folks you have some hard work to do, which involves something more than sneering at them for perhaps not sharing your messianic view of the nuclear industry ...

[NNadir]

22. I am not discrediting them in their fields. It's about logical fallacy.

You are of course, attempting to discredit me as being "messianic" because you cannot discredit my ideas or my science.

You did not respond to my arguments about cesium on another thread, because you can't.

You did not respond for my call to identify a single person killed by the storage of commercial nuclear fuel because you can't.

You abandoned your arguments about the "serious crisis" of radioactivity of tritium in another thread, because I showed through calculation that your concerns are specious.

So now I must repeat over and over again what the logical fallacy "appeal to authority" consists of, though I have no hope that I can stop the repeating it. I really tire of teaching basic physics, basic chemistry and now basic reasoning, but in these times, when thinking is under serious attack, I feel it must be done. If the age of Bush proves nothing else, it proves that the power of lies must be confronted. So let's review what the logical fallacy of "Appeal to Authority" is:

From the fallacy files, the logical fallacy "Appeal to Authority"

Please pay particular attention to this part of the explanation:

"An appeal to authority may be inappropriate in a couple of ways:
It is unnecessary. If a question can be answered by observation or calculation, an argument from authority is not needed. Since arguments from authority are weaker than more direct evidence, go look or figure it out for yourself. "

It is sloppy thinking to assert that I am saying that all of these folks on the board of the Union of Concerned Scientists are "sloppy thinkers" when I am merely stating that they are sloppy thinkers about nuclear energy. How do I know this? Because their conclusions are wrong. How do I know their conclusions are wrong? Because I have directly shown through calculation and reference to experience (more than 400 operating reactors running for several decades with only one fatal accident) that they are safe.

We can play this game of appeal to authority endlessly. I could cite this article in Physics Today entitled "MIT Study Sees Nuclear Power as Green Weapon Against Global Warming" etc, but it doesn't matter. http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-12/p34.html I could point out this article by the nuclear engineer extraordinaire Alvin Weinberg discusses Weisskopf's colleague and associate Eugene Wigner, who certainly would be as dismissive of you as I am.

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-55/iss-10/p42.html

In another post in this thread of hysterical responses to my remarks, responding to poor thinking, I quoted the Nobel Laureate Glenn Seaborg on nuclear power.

But so what?

This is not a game of whose backers have credentials. If you want to shut me up, then do it this way, respond to my scientific questions. Show me why, for instance the 500 billion curies of radioactivity in the ocean from naturally occuring potassium-40 decay are some how not as bad as the 18 billion curies of cesium-137 decaying in sealed zirconium fuel rods. Posts #104 and #103:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=5609&mesg_id=20190&page=

Address the issue of the fact that rocks that are over three billion years old exist on earth that have retained in the form of the mineral pollucite cesium in an insoluble form. (Post #99, same thread). Explain how it is a certainty then that all of the cesium in the planet will escape into people's bodies if nuclear power is pursued.

Show me why coal, which you and your buddy support as a nuclear alternative, is safer than nuclear energy with an appeal to actual experience on this planet. Show me why the complete collapse of the atmosphere in a runaway greenhouse effect is less dangerous than the (extremely improbable) 18 billion curies of Cesium-137. Demonstrate that you, and not some board member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, have an understanding of what an expectation value is.

Now, I am used to dealing with anti-nuclear anti-environmentalists. I have yet to meet one who didn't get into wiggling around the issues with all sorts of specious unrelated nonsense like the curriculum vitae of an MIT mechanical engineering professor who specializes in fluid mechanics. Usually at some point they try to make it about me, and not about what I say. (Let me help the anti-nuclear anti-environmentalists here; I am a seriously intolerant, mean, arrogant son-of-a-bitch and I am tenacious in my contempt for what I regard as stupidity.)

You need to prove nuclear power is dangerous. Given that we now have thousands of reactor years of experience with this form of energy, given that there are over 400 nuclear reactors in operation today, and another 75 to come on line in a few years, show me where the millions of bodies are, and if, as is the definitely the case, you can't produce any more than the Chernobyl deaths, you'd better damn well explain where they these postulated going to come from, and how they will exceed the hundreds of millions who will die, in Bangladesh alone, when the sea level comes up another 50 centimeters.

If you can't do that, telling me cute stories about the credentials mechanical engineers who specialize in fluid mechanics doesn't mean shit about the viability of nuclear energy or its importance to the future of humanity. It's not even on topic.

[struggle4progress]

24. Research on "hypersonic heat transfer, magnetohydrodynamics and ...

plasmadynamics," which you dismiss as "fluid mechanics," is actually likely to be fusion-related.

I stopped discussing tritium with you elsewhere, because I concluded that your calculations were likely to be simple multiplications, which ignored the difference between internal and external beta emittors and which were therefore irrelevant to any concerns about ingested tritium.

Scientific matters are to be resolved by careful attention to detail. My examination of your posts in this thread suggests some carelessness with respect to detail. You accuse a European group of being unable to spell, because they adopt English (rather than American) usage. You attack the Sierra Club for the views of a rightwing group that attempted (unsuccessfully) to take over the Club. You claim John Gofman (whose insights into the role of lipids in cardiac risk have led to standard testing in medical practice) fell into obscurity, which is simply false and suggests an unwillingness to do even minimal fact-checking before slandering the man.

I have actually given some careful thought to the issue of how someone might carefully discuss the issues of radiation and human health with you, and at present I am unconvinced that such a discussion could be conducted with the required tedious attention to detail after detail after detail.

You continue to claim, when in a tough corner, that I support coal. In fact, I do not: I support conservation and alternatives. You are, of course, right that coal is dirty fuel. But my analysis suggests to me that increased use of nuclear is very unlikely to reduce use of coal, in the long run, and it is also clear that increased use of nuclear will not remediate the past sins of coal, to which you have often pointed. Something else is needed.

As I have indicated elsewhere, remarks such as "Demonstrate that you, and not some board member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, have an understanding of what an expectation value is" do not incline me to take your views more seriously but rather decrease my interest. The notation of "expectation" is of approximately high-school level difficulty and the problems that we actually face will require much deeper insights to solve.

[NNadir]

31. Right attention to detail. Now we're getting somewhere.

You are not however talking about nuclear energy. You are not providing details but generalities "My analysis suggests..." but we see no analysis because you have no analysis.

My discussion of tritium mentioned quite did mention explicitly that potassium-40 is a constituent of all human flesh in post #4, in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x19287 Hell, it's in the title of my post, but if you didn't know I was clearly referring to the internal radiation from potassium-40, and abandoned it on the grounds of some erroneous distinction about internal and external beta emitters, or if you thought of the calculations as "simple multiplications," you have missed a chance demonstrate an appropriate scientific facility with addressing my posts.

Attention to detail, your contempt for it not withstanding, is the big difference between unethical hand waving about energy issues and solving real problems in a timely manner in a time of over-weening crisis. I am sorry that details bug you so much, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't pay attention to them, especially when hundreds of millions of lives, if not all life on the planet is involved.

You can feign that you are disinterested in "expectation values" because of my obnoxious personality, but you do not demonstrate an ability to explain what they are.

What is the analysis that leads you to conclude that coal use will not be reduced by nuclear energy? Do you have calculations? How is it that a fuel with the energy density of uranium, which is a factor of millions higher than that of coal, cannot reduce the use of coal? Are readers expected to embrace your views simply because of a general statement that says "I have concluded..."? Where have you made a post that indicates a qualification or an understanding of an issue deep enough to demonstrate that we should accept your imperious conclusion?

What do we have here? Hand waving elevated over serious scientific argument? References to my arguments about credibility about whether or not the members of the board of the Union of Concerned Science are qualified to rule on nuclear energy issues? A discussion of lipoproteins (Gofman's 1950 discovery - that would be 54 years ago) in a thread about whether nuclear energy is more dangerous than its alternatives?

I really do recall you making an argument about coal and carbon dioxide sequestration, but if you say you didn't, if I confused with a co-religionist, I apologize. I will go further. I will welcome you to the crowd who know that coal use must be stopped NOW!

But I at least do not say "stop coal!" without a serious, detailed analysis of how that might be accomplished.

Now you say that you think our energy and environmental can be solved by conservation and unidentified alternatives alone. What are these alternatives? What is the serious analysis (details required) of their ultimate capacity, and their total environmental cost? Please demonstrate where the conservation energy is going to come from? What energy consumption reductions can be made in time to arrest the greenhouse effect before it kills 100's of millions of people. If the plan is simply to let 100's of millions of people die from either poverty or environmental collapse or war, and thus reduce energy consumption, please state this explicitly.

You are trying to make this conversation about everything but nuclear energy and everything but serious energy alternatives. (As I indicated earlier, almost every antinuclear anti-environmentalist tries at some point to make the conversation about me, and not about my ideas.) The reason for this is simple: It is because you cannot and never will be able to prove that nuclear energy is more dangerous than any of its alternatives.

[struggle4progress]

33. The thread is about the Cannikin nuclear test. My posts here ...

... in this thread have primarily been directed at clarifying the reliability and accuracy of several assertions made in this thread. You may, I suppose, interpret this as "trying to make this conversation about everything but nuclear energy" -- but of course the thread is about the Cannikin nuclear test.

Incidently, the only quantity which is likely to have been calculated (rather than sought in a published table), in post #4 in the thread you mention immediately above, is "500 billion curies of potassium-40 in the seas alone." That, in my view, clearly qualifies as discussion of an external emittor, whether or not you mention flesh somewhere in the post.

If you consider the distinction between external and internal beta emittors "erroneous," we have very little chance of finding enough common ground for productive conversation ...

[NNadir]

37. Oh well then, so much for analytical thinking.

I didn't realize it was necessary to explain that potassium is an element of all living tissue on earth.

Maybe I should have recognized the scientific level to which I was addressing my post, but I really have a hard time getting that primitive. You see, if you do science for a few decades, you get to thinking "as everybody knows..."

The problem is apparently "everybody does NOT know..."

That's actually fine. It's OK to admit to ignorance. I do it all the time in subjects about which I know nothing but in which I have interest. It is only disturbing when one attempts to represent ignorance as knowledge. It's with that last case that I have a problem.

[struggle4progress]

54. You claimed in #15: "Gofman ... apparently fell into ... obscurity."

My purpose in citing his still-celebrated lipid work from fifty years ago was simply to point out that his medical work has NOT been forgotten. Gofman was a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at Berkeley for about thirty years, after which he resigned and was awarded emeritus status (which BTW is NOT automatic). Since then, he has continued research into subjects that interest him. His publication record is quite enviable:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=%22JW+Gofman%22%7C%22J+Gofman%22%7C%22John+Gofman%22&btnG=Search

I'm not citing Gofman to prove anything other than to refute your characterization of him. And I did not introduce Gofman into this thread: as far as I can tell, you did.

[NNadir]

58. Well we have differing views of obscurity.

I introduced him to this thread for a very, very, very specific purpose, to show that he is an incompetant nuclear authority.

This is true.

I personally know a fair amount of biochemistry, since my professional life is involved with it. (No, I do not work in the nuclear industry.) I had no idea that Gofman was connected in any way with the discovery of lipoproteins, but it is completely irrelevant to the topic, except to note that almost every anti-nuclear person on the planet has no actual knowledge of the topic.

Nobel Laureate William Shockley, the discoverer of the transistor, also worked on projects that interested him after retiring from his chosen field. The projects that most interested him of course were proving that persons of African ancestry were genetically inferior to people elsewhere. He was not a competant authority on the subject of genetics, or on population dynamics, and his chosen work. But here is a link anywhere where someone engages in the logical fallacy of "appeal to authority," by claiming that Shockley was somehow a "thinker" http://thescorp.multics.org/19schock.html, and so his work on race must be respected.

Thank you for all the links to Dr. Gofman's work in the 1950's. They're pretty much unimpressive to me, since I'm quite sure that lipoproteins would have been discovered in a thousand different ways if Dr. Gofman had taken up the study of new hypoallergenic eye creams for ten aged girs with acne.

Whatever the case, Gofman's work against the environment has the same ethical standing in my view as Schockley's work on so called "genetics." Both views are pernacious and both injure rather than help humanity.

[struggle4progress]

59. You misrepresent or misunderstand what the sources I've provided say.

Here's a quote from a reasonably recent (2003) Howard Hughes Medical Institute Bulletin summarizing Gofman's early research:

Cholesterol - A Century of Research

... The epidemiologic side of the cholesterol-coronary connection unfolded in 1955 when John Gofman, a biophysicist at the University of California at Berkeley, used the newly developed ultracentrifuge to separate plasma lipoproteins by flotation. Gofman found not only that heart attacks correlated with elevated levels of cholesterol but also that the cholesterol was contained in one lipoprotein particle, LDL. Gofman also observed that heart attacks were less frequent when the blood contained elevated levels of another cholesterol-carrying lipoprotein, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) ...

http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin/sept2003/cholesterol/century.html


If you don't like the man, that's fine with me -- but I find no reason to pay serious attention to your sneers that you aren't impressed by his work ...

[struggle4progress]

34. There's no appeal to authority here: in post #12, you called UCS ...

... a "poor thinking organization." In posts #14 and #18, I simply noted the impressive intellectual credentials of various directors of the organization, commenting that "if you can establish that these folk are sloppy thinkers in aggregate, your scholarly reputation will be established forever" and "if you wish to discredit these folks you have some hard work to do."

You can, of course, sneer all you want about "mechanical engineers who specialize in fluid mechanics," if that makes you happy, but I don't consider that your sneer discredits the man ...

[NNadir]

41. You have accidentally been correct.

When intellectually defeated by the facts, it's good to make a lawyerly appeal to semantic technicalities. It's one way of distracting people from the stark reality that one's argument has no merit.

My statement was, however, as you note, incorrect when I said "poor thinking" in a general way. Some of these people are competant to discuss biology and business ethics or other stuff. I should have said "poor thinking about energy." Had I put that qualifying prepositional phrase in there, my statement would be correct.

Again, you have not answered EVEN ONE scientific question, because, I suspect, well the reason is pretty obvious.

You are trying to make this about credentials of people who are mechanical engineers and repeating ad nasueum the logical fallacy, as if the nature of the fallacy was beyond comprehension.

This is actually incredible since I posted a link describing what the fallacy is. To repeat, what it says in this link, even though repetition will do no good in the present case, since none of this is about thinking or the ability to think, one feature described in the link about the "Appeal to Authority" fallacy is that this fallacy consists in part of the perpetrator appealing to authority (generally incompetent authority) even though calculation or observation can demonstrate the truth or falsity of the argument. If current practice holds true, I'm sure this statement, like every other relevant statement I have made, will be ignored and so I will redirect to the question of calculation.

I've posted thousands of calculations to DU, often in response to clear nonsense. If any of my calculations are incorrect, if the data which was entered into them are incorrect, it is easy for a person who understands them to show definitively how they are so.

Now, let me ask you again in case the question has escaped you. I have calculated with links to every piece of data that there are now more than 500 billion of curies of potassium-40 on the planet. I have asserted that this potassium-40 circulates freely through the biosphere and is found in every piece of living tissue on the earth. I have explained that this is the residue after billions of years of naturally occurring nuclear decay - meaning if you understand radioactivity (present company clearly excepted) that life evolved on earth when there was 2 trillion curies of radioactivity from potassium-40 alone and we're not even talking about any members of the Uranium-235, Uranium-238, or Thorium-232 decay series. I have seen no attempt to assert I'm wrong about any of these facts, but if such an attempt is possible, I would love to hear it. (The nature of this response be further evidence of the depth of understanding of the matter.) Here's the question again in cased you missed it the first 50 times I asked it: How is this 500 billion curies of potassium-40 freely distributed through the biosphere is more dangerous than 18 billion curies of cesium isotopes of so called "nuclear waste" sealed in zirconium spent fuel rods?

I'm sure you'll want to tell me about someone else's credentials in all sorts of areas having nothing to do with the physics and chemistry of potassium, cesium and zirconium. Maybe you'll repeat some useless crap about Dr. Gofman's 55 year old discovery of lipoproteins, before he lapsed in to well deserved scientific obscurity (as opposed to his obvious lack of obscurity to his fellow radiation terrified paranoids). I'll hear all sorts of things that have no bearing on the question. I'm sure we'll hear about what a bad guy I am. I repeat. I'm not a nice guy. I'm very intolerant, especially of people who make assertions they don't understand. I can be quite nasty about it; because lies make me livid. So let's not make the question about me - I concede I suck - but please let's do talk about about the []ideas I have advanced. Come on. Prove my ideas are false. Prove there isn't 500 billion curies of potassium-40 circulating through the biosphere for instance. Come on. Prove me wrong. Show us how you calculate.

Now I don't have a judge to ask the witness simply to answer the question, which is too bad. And although this isn't a legal court, although the rules of evidence, logic and reason cannot be enforced here, please don't ask me to state in the ersatz summation that the witness refused to answer the question, that the witness was unable to answer the question.

[struggle4progress]

48. It happens. Maybe someday you'll accidentally be right, too. eom

[NNadir]

50. Really? How about pointing out where else I've been wrong,

in hard numbers, for instance. The implication is that I am always wrong. I have admitted to a grammatical error in not including the prepositional phrase "about energy" in a sentence saying that the board members of UCS are poor thinkers. That's because we're playing lawyer because only one of us demonstrates an ability to play scientist.

You say nuclear energy is dangerous. Show me the bodies. Come on. Show me how you calculate.

[struggle4progress]

55. "UCS continues to be vigilant in monitoring the performance of nuclear ...

... plants and of their regulators -- the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We continue to find and expose safety problems at individual plants, in industry standards, and in the failure of regulators to take effective action ... Our actions have resulted in safety regulations being upgraded, in plants being shut down, and in important modifications to plant emergency systems and procedures."

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/nuclear_safety/index.cfm

To what, exactly, about UCS monitoring of the NRC etc, do you object?

[NNadir]

61. That they are unqualifed to do what they claim.

I guess I have to point out the "appeal to authority" fallacy again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again...

[struggle4progress]

56. You object to UCS in general? Or are you a "single-issue voter"?

http://www.ucsusa.org/

[NNadir]

60. In the case of UCS, single issue. They will destroy the planet by

an appeal to specious ignorance on a subject on which they are not qualified to speak.

If I examine the four environmental features under most immediate and critical assault, I place them in this order of urgency: air, water, landmass (habitat) and finally species diversity. I order them so because I recognize that without management the previous one in my list, the succeeding one's lose meaning.

Making a great big loud hoopla about species when you are actively working to assure the destruction of the atmosphere, is rather the equivalent is announcing that you are extending peace and freedom my stationing an army in other peoples nation and killing the inhabitants and holding the citizenry uncharged in tortuous prisons while you steal their oil.

Mostly what I hear out of Greenpeace's and UCS mouthes is just uninformed and unenlightened anti-nuclear nonsense. Anything else they say is window dressing. The fact is for the reasons I've stated in thousands of unchallenged posts, nuclear energy is one of the safest forms of energy known. Neither they, nor you, nor your buddy on this thread, answer the question of what is to be done about global climate change. They simply spew out trivial objections to nuclear about issues they ignore for every other form of energy.

This may not just be dumb. It might not just merely be deceitful or pernicious. It may just be fatal. It may be murder. In fact, given what we know about the external costs of energy, it IS murder.

Nuclear energy saves lives.

[struggle4progress]

45. Exactly where in discussing tritium did I use the words "serious crisis"?

[NNadir]

62. Lawyering again?

You started a thread on the SRS restart and I responded with a brief overview to the scientific and technological access to tritium in post #2.

You then responded with some pseudo-scientific nonsense about what happens if tritium gets into someone, which of course, it rarely does in significant quantities.

You concluded that less than realistic post with these words:

"And I find your cheery little paean to tritium to be a bizarre response to the news, that the USA is once again making the stuff to keep its apocalyptic fusion bombs functional ..."

Did you use the exact words "serious crisis?" No. Did you use the word "apocalyptic?" Yes.

Later I on I went on to demonstrate that you only had a low level of understanding of tritium at best, and I pointed out the features I would expect in a person who is qualified to discuss issues involving radiation.

I added a brief overview of why I even bother posting to the meandering tours of a list of logical fallacies, dancing and avoiding questions etc, etc, thread after thread that characterize our interaction.

To wit:

" I put my posts there for people who either have the capability of reading and understanding what they say, or, who have the time to read the links provided to teach themselves how to do the interpret my remarks. Some people have told me they find my remarks useful and others tell me frankly and honestly that they have no clue about what I am saying. A third class of persons demonstrate that they have no clue about what I am saying while insisting that they do understand what I say.

Like everyone else on DU, I am doing the best I can. I have, of course, a very distinct case on the relative risks of energy decisions and frequently I am frustrated by my poor ability to explain what I know in simpler terms than those in which I think and learn. While the third class of readers described above frustrate me even more than my own failings do, one must often deal in public discourse with clueless people who attempt to carry unjustifiable authority. (This for instance, accounts for the person occupying the White House.) Still the purpose of public discourse is not to attempt to educate those who cannot be educated or refuse to be educated, but to effect intercourse with those on such a level as to teach and to be taught, i.e. to engage in a mutual exchange that might help people to develop and disseminate a broad understanding of how we might best respond to the very real crisis we face."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x19287#19299 (Post #6, the last one.)

I used the word "crisis." I believe there is one, but tritium is only peripherally involved in a minor way in the nature of that crisis.

I ask myself why I just don't walk away, why I keep hammering at the truth in the face of persistent demonstrations of incompetance and illiteracy. I guess it's because I loved my country and I loved my planet and it breaks my heart that these things are vanishing in a flash of political and technical incompetance and illiteracy that no thermonuclear weapon has ever matched.

I will be dead in less than thirty years most probably, maybe long before thirty years have passed. If I didn't have two children in the optimistic days of the Clinton administration it would be easy to let this silliness go, and just to let the political and environmental prattling and collapsing go on. But I love my two boys and I want them to know when I face them on my deathbed that I did my best to leave them as much of a world as I could. When they look out over the ravaged and impoverished world they will most likely face, I want to be able to say, "I did my best to stop it..."

[struggle4progress]

63. I object to people putting their words in my mouth, to wit: you said ...

'You abandoned your arguments about the "serious crisis" of radioactivity of tritium ...'

To put the matter charitably, that misrepresented what I said.

[struggle4progress]

46. So it's your view that the "mechanical engineer" James A. Fay

is incompetent to discuss energy issues?

[NNadir]

51. I'm not talking about James A Fay.

I'm asking you if you are competent to discuss energy. How many times do we play "appeal to authority?"

I'm asking you. I have placed calculations all over this web site showing that nuclear energy is NOT more dangerous than any of its alternatives.

Again, and try to read it this time, not that you will:

"An appeal to authority may be inappropriate in a couple of ways:
It is unnecessary. If a question can be answered by observation or calculation, an argument from authority is not needed. Since arguments from authority are weaker than more direct evidence, go look or figure it out for yourself."

I post the link one more time, not that you will open it:

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html


You think you can try to substitute a conversation about human resources for a conversation about science but it doesn't prove anything about science.

I don't know James A. Fay. I'm really not interested in him per se. I simply note that the UCS, which has zero nuclear engineers on its board, seems to consist of people who don't know very much about nuclear power. If you would like to post some papers he has written about nuclear energy in peer reviewed journals and discuss the science therein, please do. I'd be delighted to read it. If James A. Fay has negated any of my arguments, if he is competent to do so, please post a discussion of his work and publications here on the subject, and explain how you understand how James A. Fay's work challenges my calculations.

But I'm not interested in James A. Fay. He is not posting foolish information here on DU, or arguments as silly as those you have posted about Tritium or twisted rationalizations of your posts in the thread you started about the SRS tritium thread. I am challenging you. Come on. Show me how you calculate.

[jpak]

13. The folks that run www.ecolo.org run the Bruno Comby Institute

www.comby.org

Bruno Comby is a "world famous author". His book "Environmentalists for Nuclear Power" is an anti-solar energy pro-nuclear pseudoscience green-wash diatribe...

http://www.comby.org/base/baseen.htm

They sound like a bunch of Lyndon LaRouche wacko cultists to me.

BTW. Bernard Cohen is the darling of the "radiation-is-good-for-you" hormesis crowd. His views, however, are not accepted by the vast majority of the health physics community...

http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q10.html

http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q87.html

http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q299.html

[NNadir]

15. One's view of Professor Emeritus Cohen defines one's view of science.

Who one cites and whether or not one expresses differing views of scientific opinion probably elucidates one's level of thinking more clearly than any thing else. Through just such a procedure rational people - as opposed to irrational people - can distinguish "pseudo-science" from real science.

Dr. Cohen has retired from the University of Pittsburg after writing hundreds of papers in well respected scientific journals. As to what constitutes accepted science and psuedo-science, why not check the "Science Citation Index-Sourcebook." When scientists cite one another, it is a clear representation of the respect and importance of their views.

Here are the citations by several scientists for several periods of Dr. Cohen's career. Included is Ernest Sternglass, the whacko nut job who claims that the measurement of Strontium-90 in baby teeth (the obsession over at the nut case website www.ratical.org) is responsible for elevated cancer rates. He seems particularly to focus on Suffolk County, New York, which interestingly is where I grew up and where I fought - in a bout of youthful stupidity - against the Shoreham nuclear power plant. From Dr. Sternglass's account, I should be dead, but here I am.

Also included are prominent anti-nuclear anti-environmentalists Helen Candicott and John Gofman. To wit let's do it:

1975-1979 1980-1985 1985-1988

Candicott: 3 2 1
Gofman 2 3 0
Sternglass 5 9 4
Bernard L Cohen 65 53 37

John Gofman, anti-nuclear activist, often cites himself as a discoverer of U-233, the important isotope of uranium that will play an important role in energy development in countries that avoid the environmental catastrophe being promoted by the coal apologists. I believe this is true, the now rarely cited Gofman did help to discover this important isotope and then, apparently fell into much deserved obscurity.

Now, I'm sure you will soon get back to me with a description of Nobel Laureate Glenn Seaborg, who discovered hundreds more actinide isotopes than did Dr. Gofman and ten or twelve new elements, as also being a "whacko." Here is what Dr. Seaborg writes in a chapter called "Reflections" in his otherwise scientific monograph "The Elements Beyond Uranium" (John Wiley and Sons, 1990, page 325):

"The present electricity producing nuclear power reactors in the United States and in most other countries, will continue to operate over their design lifetimes. We hope for a return in the United States and elsewhere to nuclear power...There are many reasons for such a return to this safe and reliable source of energy, such as the avoidance of acid rain and air pollution, need to conserve fossil fuels as a source of chemicals...and increasingly, the need to avoid worldwide catastrophe resulting from the 'greenhouse effect..."

As to whether or not Dr. Seaborg, the only man in history to have an element of the periodic table named for him in his lifetime is not respected by any scientific community, including that of health physicists, would probably escape serious analysis of people motivated more by religious thinking than by scientific thinking.

I note once again that while my own posts are scientific in nature and address real calculation, real citations, and serious scientific analysis based on calculations that can be checked by anyone with a computer and a reasonable understanding of nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, the posts of my antagonists here are distinguished by name calling, for instance the calling of the respected scientists I cite, "pseudo-scientific wackos."

I do not know about Dr. Comby, although your contempt for his, how do you put it - "anti-solar energy pro-nuclear pseudoscience green-wash diatribe" - certainly makes me want to check his work out. I suspect that Dr. Comby, particularly if he is associated with Dr. Bernard L. Cohen, is probably distinguished by clear thinking and serious analysis, and a distinguished scientific record.

I've been reading Dr. Cohen for years, and I would hardly characterize him as anti-solar. He simply notes, as I do, that solar energy is not as safe as nuclear energy, nor is it as cheap. (Wind power would be an obvious exception, although wind is intermittent.) I am on record myself, as being a supporter of solar forms of energy, in particular, wind energy. I recognize that all forms of solar energy except wind will probably never be as safe as nuclear power but this does not mean that such power should not be developed. It's renewability makes it attractive vis a vis the safer nuclear alternative. The fact that an ignorant public is more comfortable it because of the poor level of public scientific thinking and the blind unthinking acceptance of urban myths also recommends it under these dire circumstances. (I hate on principle to give in to ignorance, but any ignorance except the type that advances coal or other fossil fuels is acceptable to me if it works toward arresting the total environmental collapse that now seems likely.)

The notion, btw, that being pro-nuclear constitutes "greenwash" is nonsensical. I repeat, and will repeat as often as is necessary, that opposition to nuclear power is a demand for environmental degradation. Already are forests are burning or dying from the introduction of new parasites that survive at ever higher latitudes. Unless we make a serious commitment to nuclear energy, the color of this planet will be anything but green.

[jpak]

17. The number of citations one receives is not a measure of acceptance

by your peers or the validity of your methods, results or conclusions.

In Cohen's case, the number of citations he received was a reflection of the controversy he created and the criticism he received from his peers.

Again, his claims regarding the effects of low-dose radiation are not accepted by the vast majority of his peers.

While Seaborg is not a wacko, he did help create weapons that can indeed "kill millions" (and indeed killed tens-of-thousands of Japanese in WW2). He suffers from the same post-Hiroshima guilt that lead to creation of the "Atoms for Peace" program. His support of nuclear power is derived from that guilt and justifiably so.

Please tell us all about the "peaceful" nuclear programs in North Korea, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, India, pre-Desert Storm Iraq and apartheid South Africa.

And finally, please name one person that has been killed by a passive solar structure, PV array, wind turbine or solar hot water heater.

[NNadir]

23. Really? Cohen is not accepted?

And you're going to provide references? Or do I just have to take your word for it?

As for this nonsense about PV cells, which have almost NO capacity on the planet because they are too expensive, I note that it is very difficult to establish deaths from a form of energy that has the benefit of being in trivial quantities of use.

You are trying to change the argument into one in which I am claiming that solar cells are unacceptably dangerous, rather than the one I originally asked you to prove, to wit: "Nuclear power is dangerous." This you cannot do, so you attempt to assert that I must prove that "solar energy is not dangerous."

That said, I very much doubt that solar cells, if installed at the same level as nuclear power would be free of identifiable deaths. Paul Leigh in "Causes of Death in the Workplace" Quorum Press 1995 notes that cancer rates in coke fired steel plants have very high cancer rates relative to the general public and lets face it, putting millions of tons of solar cells and windmills all over the world will involve some steel. I also note the production of steel according to the stoichiometry (know what that is?) of the reaction requires (if the oxide is the ore reduced) that for every 63 grams of steel produced 37 grams of carbon dioxide must be released, as that's without trucking anything anywhere or building a single energy storage unit (unless of course you are going to tote the solar cells around the planet on your back to avoid the problem of what to do at night).

http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/pdfs/tsuo.pdf

http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/man_pro_implications.html

I also note that the 0.40 cents per kilowatt price of poly silicon will certainly kill poor people who cannot afford access to energy, although I suspect that the anti-environmental anti-nuclear set has any interest whatsoever in poor people.

People are trying to make the now dangerous process of producing solar cells, which involves among other things the potent carcinogen trichlorosilane, less dangerous, but that is no matter. Right now the technology is very dangerous, as includes handling the toxic elements cadmium and tellurium. Even with this huge caveat, none of it however is anywhere as near as dangerous as coal, which you support and I don't.

Thanks for the ad hominem attack on Glenn Seaborg by the way. It's pretty well demonstrates how we're thinking here, and it ain't about science. It's about religion.

[jpak]

35. PV kills poor people???? - more Greenwash lunacy

At $3-4000 per kW, new nuclear capacity is too expensive for the US utility market, yet it is somehow economical for the developing world????

Currently, 2 billion people have no access to electricity and another 2 billion more lack access to electricity they can afford.

Furthermore, most of these people live in countries that do not have extensive reliable electrical grids needed to distribute nuclear generated electricity.

Providing grid power to low-load rural areas costs $0.70 per kWh. The price of electricity from stand-alone PV systems is currently $0.09-0.12 in the US (not the "$0.40 per kW" you incorrectly stated). The most gold-plated American PV system is competitive today with grid power in rural third world.

Furthermore, the cost of a single new nuclear power plant (~$1.6 billion US) would equal or exceed the annual GDP of many smaller developing countries. For these small nations nuclear power is clearly not an option.

To be fair though, some developing countries have embraced nuclear power - for example North Korea, Pakistan and India. These countries, however, used this technology not to provide electricity to their people, but to build weapons to kill large numbers of their neighbors quickly and efficiently.

PV, unfortunately, cannot be used for that purpose.

Half of all global PV capacity is currently installed in developing countries. It is the energy technology of choice for rural electrification in the Third World - period.

Finally "anti-nuclear anti-environmental religion" is the rhetoric of the Fringe (anti-environmental) Right.

It is the language of Rush Limbaugh...

http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Rush_Limbaugh_Environment.htm

It's the language of Michael Chrichton...

http://www.perc.org/publications/articles/Crichtonspeech.php

It's the language of Lyndon LaRouche...

http://selectsmart.com/president/LaRouche.html

It's the language of right-wing bloggers...

http://bidinotto.journalspace.com/?m=4&y=2004

It's language of Greenwash - need I say more????

[NNadir]

36. Logical fallacy: Guilt by association. Still no science.

India and China are actively building new nuclear plants because well, India and China, have a collection of people called "scientists." Now people who don't know science can spout religious crap and invocations, but let's not be distracted by that. They are not building 30 nuclear plants in China because they are rich and stupid like Americans (although Americans have now stumbled their way into yet unrecognized poverty by celebrating mythology - PV power would be a good thing to insert here - over reason). They are building 30 nuclear plants in China because they are poor but smart. They can add and subtract, indeed, unlike antinuclear anti-environmentalists, they can actually do higher math.

Let me ask you what I asked your buddy. It pollucite found in the Canadian Shield system? Do you know what pollucite is?

You can raise all kinds of associations, but you cannot address the science. You can chant "Greenwash!" as if the reciting of this word somehow means something. (It doesn't.)

But you cannot explain why 500 billion curies of radiation derived from K-40, which is BTW, some of which uniformly distributed in ALL living tissue is less dangerous than 18 billion curies of Cesium-137 decaying in zircalloy fuel rods. Why do you insist that it is? Because the response is religious; facts or reason do not matter.

The price of nuclear energy is about 0.04 c per kilowatt hour. Only coal seems cheaper if you are willing to subsidize it with your lungs, your children's future, the earth's water supply etc, etc.

Can you describe the manufacture - and not some theoretical make believe someday system or exotic rarely used pilot system as you do when apologizing for coal - but the routine manufacture of a solar cell? Try it. Come on, before evoking Limbaugh and other double thinkers (and what is an antinuclear response but double think) why don't you give us some manufacturing details. Explain to us the chemistry of Cadmium Telluride and give us a rough calculation of how much of this material will be required to equal the output of one nuclear plant.

Now, I ask you to do this knowing that you can't or won't. We'll hear instead some irrelevant comment about Dick Cheney, who gives lip service to nuclear energy, but NO practical support, just as he gives lip service to peace while making war.

Al Gore has spoken highly of nuclear energy. So have I, and I certainly have no intention of apologizing for my liberalism to a coal promoter. None.

Come on boys. How about it? How much steel does it take to build 1 gigawatt of solar PV power? Show me how you calculate. Show me if you know some math, just a little. I'm not asking for the solution to a differential equation, even a simple separable first order one, I'm just asking for arithmetic. Come on big environmentalist boys, show me how much lead and cadmium it takes to build storage batteries for your solar cells. Show me boys how many metric tons of trichlorosilane it takes to process enough polysilicon to make a PV cells.

And tell me how you can be absolutely certain that none of this waste from solar cells will ever find it's way into the environment, because you insist, completely without evidence, without a single example of a person being killed anywhere in the United States by the storage of commercial nuclear waste - no matter how many thousands of times I ask you to do so that no elemental waste can be contained indefinitely. So now, I note, you propose to distribute millions of metric tons of cadmium selenide across the planet as point source pollutants while saying that I'm as dumb as Rush Limbaugh.

Or is the appropriate response just chanting? Limbaugh! Greenwash! Limbaugh! Greenwash!

How about this: Freedom! Freedom! Now when Bush chants "Freedom! Freedom!" most everyone on this site, except for the completely credulous, know that he is neither advocating freedom nor does he even remotely care about freedom. When he says "Values! Values!" everyone knows that he has no values nor does he care whether anyone else does.

When anti-nuclear anti-environmentalists chant "Greenwash! Greenwash!" I am singularly unimpressed. It's not answering a question, it's chanting.

They used to say "it's better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." But now in the age of Bush, there seems to be a new one: If you don't know what you're talking about, just say you do and no one will notice.

Sorry, but I notice. I understand chemistry. I understand physics. I can talk physics. I can talk chemistry. I can analyze physics. I can analyze chemistry. I've been working with these subjects for decades and I frequently post using those concepts. I invite serious correction, but I have yet to receive one bit of it from the anti-nuclear anti-environmental crowd despite my invitations.

I have repeatedly asked for a detailed analytical response to my scientific posts, for proof that I am wrong in any one of them. Instead I hear nonsense that crudely attempts to associate me with Michael Critchon and Lyndon LaRouche.

There's some kind of QED there. I rest my case.

[jpak]

40. The reasons why China is building 30 nuclear power plants

are known only to them.

China is an authoritarian (neo?)communist state. Their economic philosophy and decision making processes are very different from so-called "free market" economies of the "democratic" West.

The Chinese electrical grid is a state-owned and operated monopoly. Its management decisions are made in secret and no dissent of their decisions is tolerated. If a Chinese scientist or engineer publicly opposed the government's energy policy, they would be imprisoned.

The Chinese government also does not embrace the environmental philosophy of the West. China's air and water are heavily polluted and projects like the Three Rivers Gorge hydro-electrical dam system proceed regardless of their environmental impact.

They are - quite literally - pro-nuclear and anti-environment. It's no surprise then that they are proceeding with their nuclear power program.

The difference between 500 billion curies of 40-K distributed throughout the Earth's crust, oceans and biosphere and 18 billion curies if 137-Cs in spent fuel is this....

I can stand beside a metric ton of seawater, potassium feldspar containing rock or wood ash (potash) indefinitely with no ill effects.

If I stood next to a metric ton of unshielded spent fuel, I would die a horrible death within minutes or hours.

This is typical greenwash nonsense. It compares apples to oranges and obfuscates real-world environmental concerns with pseudo-science bullshit.

PV modules are not made of steel. They are made of silicon and aluminum - the two most abundant elements in the Earth's crust - and they are entirely recyclable. They can be deployed on wooden support structures. Very little steel involved.

Cd/Te PV modules comprise <0.5% of the US PV market and even less of the global PV market. BP Solar recently closed its Cd/Te PV module facility effectively ending production of this type of PV system in the US. The argument is moot.

Finally, I am not a "coal promoter". That is a fucking lie.

[NNadir]

43. Really? Do you know any Chinese scientists? How about Finnish scientists

There is "no steel" in PV cells? Only aluminum? Do we take you on your word as usual, or do you ever bother with references? Is solar power somehow better if you chop down trees to make the wooden stands rather than steel stands?

By the way, do you know how aluminum is made? Come on. Tell us.

Finland has just announced new nuclear power plants to stem global warming. Why? Are the Finns being threatened by guns held by communists? Or is it because the Finns are educated and they actually give a shit about the environment? What about the Indians who also have an agressive nuclear power program. Did India go communist without anyone on this website being informed? Japan? Is Japan a communist country? Do they shoot you in Japan if you oppose nuclear energy?

You are not a coal promoter? My how you guys dance.

Come on. Tell us where your facts come from. Show me a link describing the elimination of CdTe. You're making grand speeches about the efficiency of Solar Cells. Show us some links? What type of solar cells have the vast efficiencies you blab on about. What is their chemistry? Surely as you claim expert status on the matter, you can soberly and clearly demonstrate these things.

By the way, how is that you would want to stand next to a fuel rod? Do you stand on coal slag heaps too? Are slag heaps safe because you don't die instantly? You're telling me that nuclear power is dangerous. Maybe you can offer us a reference showing us how 4 million people a year die (the number currently killed worldwide by air pollution) from standing next to fuel rods.

That's pretty weak, and can only come out of the mouth of someone who is desperately grasping at straws. The fact is that the number of people who have died internationally from placing their silly paranoid asses in close proximity to spent nuclear fuel rods is still ZERO. If I am wrong about this, prove it. Show us a case where anyone in the United States or France, or Germany, or India, or China or Japan has died from this practice on climbing on spent fuel rods. At any time. Anywhere. Where are the millions of persons on the planet just clamoring to get next to fuel rods? Is this a new international trend comparable to telephone pole squatting in the 1920's? Is this the source of your concern?

There is no apparent limit to specious nonsense.

You call me a liar. Prove it. Show us how you calculate. I have on this web site described, in very boring technical scientific detail, the chemistry of just about every single form of matter involved in the production nuclear power. Do the same. Show us that you understand the chemistry of PV cells. Describe the manufacture of PV cells, their cost, and the dispostion of waste materials. And please, because it is relevant to the topic, show us that you understand the chemistry of batteries. Show us that you understand the chemistry of electrical transport systems. Oh, and by the way, people who know science are generally accustomed to something called references. Statements without references are just talking out of one's hat and appealing to one's own ignorance.

I am not impressed with unsupported nonsense. Neither are thinking people anywhere.

[jpak]

52. I've worked with Chinese scientists for 20 years

as a post-doc, as faculty and on several major oceanographic expeditions. We had a Chinese post-doc in my lab last year.

All utility-grade silicon PV panels on the market today consist of low-transmittance glass, Si PV modules and anodized Al frames...

http://www.pvsolarmodules.com/uni-solar.html

http://www.pvsolarmodules.com/siemens.html

http://www.oasismontana.com/newsltr/2000-07/page6.html

http://www.oksolar.com/solar_panels/unisolar_framed.htm

http://www.thesustainablevillage.com/servlet/display/products/byCat/3/33/112/

BP Solar shut down its Fairfield CA Cd/Te production line in November 2004...

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/jan03/nbp.html

BP Solar, however, is still producing monocrystalline and polycrystalline PV panels....

http://www.bpsolar.com/ContentMap.cfm?page=5

Global production of Cd/Te PV modules was ~3 MW in 2003 and projected to be ~6 MW in 2004. None were produced in the US. Global production of all PV modules in 2004 was >800 MW.

Do the math...

http://www.oja-services.nl/iea-pvps/isr/31.htm

...and lay off the personal attacks.

[jpak]

53. typo

that should have read "low-iron high-transmittance glass"

[NNadir]

57. Oh good, 64 watts for $329.00! What an achievement! Rich people

will be so thrilled at this capacity that is available for an average of 12 hours a day on sunny days.

Since you don't do calculations I will. Not counting the batteries and the inefficiency of battery conversion, that's $5.14 per watt, $5140/kilowatt, $5,140,000/Megawatt meaning that to equal a 1000 MWe nuclear plant, not covering the costs of thousands of acres of land, not counting the trucks and installers, not the destroyed habitat, not counting all of the wood that you claim you will support this nonsense on and not counting the fact this capacity is only available half the day on average, and even some of the days because of the existence on things like rain and snow, that would be the equivalent of a $5,184,625,000.00 nuclear plant. This is more expensive than the most expensive nuclear power plant ever built . (Most of that expense mostly arose from assholes - including yours truly - who were protesting the plant without a clue about the real issues.) Worse more than twice the cost of the fabulously functioning French nuclear plants that are exporting electricity to all of Europe. We're not touching the waste pits for mined silicon, the production of chlorosilanes, the cost of trucking this fantastic crap around either. Or the energy cost of reducing silicon dioxide to the element. (Quick, what's the delta G of formation for silicon dioxide?)

Now we want to shut down the more almost 440 operating nuclear plants world wide (Total capacity 365,460 Megawatts) and stop the building of almost 70,000 Megawatts of new nuclear capacity now in the process of being constructed or on order. Let's add up the costs with doing this with silicon PV cells, and now I'm not cutting any absurd break for night time though I will give an absurd break for the existence of clouds, rain, and snow and the inefficiency of attempting to store energy because I wish to avoid confusing the simple minded. Let's see, $10,000,000,000 (again no break on the night) for 1000 MWe X (365.5 1000MWe plants + 70 1000 MWe) plants, that would be roughly 4.4 trillion dollars, or over 40% of the gross national product and that, is cutting all kinds of breaks.

A great deal. Very practical.

Maybe you will now tell us about the 70,000 Megawatts of new PV construction under way, demonstrating the viability and importance of your brilliant plan - in comparison to new nuclear plants - for stopping global warming, PV cells. You've already linked us to 800 Megawatts in your post above. Again, calculating, you've only got 69,200 Megawatts to go.

[jpak]

64. More Greenwash BS

The 2003 US wholesale price for PV modules was ~$3.38 a peak watt or ~$3380 per kW.

The price per peak watt continues to decline...

www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/ page/solarreport/solarsov.pdf

FYI: In 2003 global PV production was 934 MW - equivalent to one large nuclear power plant per year - and global production is growing exponentially.

Someone is buying all those "too expensive" PV modules...

The last few reactors built in the US came in at $4590 per kW (for reactors completed in 1989). That doesn't include the cost of transmission, the cost of plant decommissioning (estimated cost: $325 million per reactor or $23 billion for all US nuclear plants), the cost of spent fuel and depleted UF6 disposal ($60 billion and rising) or the hundreds of millions of dollars DOE spends each year on nuclear power programs.

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www.antenna.nl/wise/325/3249.html

...and all that spent fuel sitting around at US nuclear power plants will magically transport itself to Yucca Mountain in 20 ton casks without the aid of trucks and trains?????

...and the nuclear utilities don't gobble up land for transmission lines and don't use trees for utility poles?????

There's a reason why no nuclear plants have been ordered in the US since 1973 - and it's not due to the activities of "anti-environment anti-nuclear assholes".

Here's the legacy of French uranium mining in Gabon - can you say neo-colonialism?????

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/udec.html#GA

and check out a few of these uranium mining horror stories....

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/udec.html

Why is the World Bank - and not the uranium mining and nuclear industry - funding the decommissioning of uranium mines?????

Is this another hidden cost of nuclear power????

Just an observation...

[NNadir]

66. OK, $3.38/watt instead of $5.30. Do the math. (Include the night.)

Never mind. You won't do the math, because if you did it wouldn't be pretty. This is a religion and nothing else.

For more than thirty years, I've been hearing about the industrial cost of PV cells is coming down. What I haven't seen is it being even remotely - and I do mean remotely - competitive with nuclear power or coal power. Seventy more years and it will be a century. Now either the world will go nuclear before that nonsensical century is reached or it will die. It's really that simple.

You can pretend that the price of solar power is $3.38/watt but you are doing that at the PEAK of daylight on clear days. (That would be day, not midnight.) It's amazing who weak and dishonest this claim is.

Now, I like solar PV and I would install it in my home if I were a rich guy (and I do have a plan to become a rich guy and nuclear energy is not involved), but of course I'd have to cut down hundred year old trees and rebuilt my entire roof to be south facing. I haven't analyzed the carbon cost of such an effort but it is HUGE.

And don't talk about mining or trucking or any of that other crap, since you merely ignore the material cost of handling your solar day dream because you only apply the problems of every form of energy to nuclear because in your religion the same values that apply to EVERY form of energy, mining, waste processing, installation cost, environmental impact get mention when nuclear is involved. It's less than third rate thinking. You will need, along with your wooden - :eyes: - olders, billions of tons of silica and billions of tons of carbon to reduce to silicon. You will have to mine it, truck it, grind it, dissolve it in strong acid, hydrogenate it and dispose of billions of tons of HCl. You will need water to wash off the dust and herbicides to keep you systems and over grown oh, and trillions upon trillions all invested in satiating your rather pedestrian phobia about radiaiton.

PV power is STILL for rich people, and people who think and who have ethics give a rat's ass about POOR people.

The last nuclear power plants were so expensive by the way, because of people like me who were dumb and protested those plants. If solar energy were competitive with nuclear you would have nearly 70,000 MWe of solar power being installed and 800 MWe (Peak of day) of nuclear power. The world has spoken on the matter. The chinese plants will com in at a fraction of the cost, of a prohibitively absurd solar day dream.


It is true that the United States, a greenhouse spitting nation with contempt for the environment, both by pseudo envirnomentalists and greedy people is lagging badly in this nuclear renaissance, but we're going to be third worlders. I wouldn't be surprised if the Mexican Army doesn't drive into Boise Idaho when we're done.

Crap like the thinking here is exactly the reason why.

[jpak]

67. The price of PV has declined by ~50-fold since 1980

and continues to decline today. (google up the titles if the link doesn't work).

PROGRESS IN U.S. PHOTOVOLTAICS: LOOKING BACK 30 YEARS AND LOOKING AHEAD 20

www.nrel.gov/ncpv/thin_film/ pdfs/surek_osaka_talk_final_vgs.pdf

Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic Collector Manufacturing Activity.

www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/ page/solarreport/solarsov.pdf

Global PV production in 2003 was 934 MW. By 2010 Japan's PV manufacturing capacity is expected to be 1200 MW per year and rise to >4 GW per year by 2020 - and that's Japan alone. Global PV production is expected to grow to 200 GW per year by 2020.

By 2020, PV modules will cost <$1.50 per peak watt - you are not going to have to wait 100 years for this to happen....

http://eeru.open.ac.uk/natta/techupdates.html#solar

1 GW of PV capacity could be distributed as 2 kW grid-intertied arrays on 500,000 existing homes.

(Note: there are already 222,000+ PV arrays on US residences, and the Clinton Administration and the Japanese government proposed to deploy PV arrays on 1 million homes. This is not an unreasonable task).

or 100,000 10 kW grid-intertied arrays on existing commercial buildings.

or 10,000 100 kW arrays on exiting agricultural land fence rows.

or a mix of any of the above.

The amount of land required to deploy 1 GW of PV in the US thus zero.

The amount of new transmission lines required = zero.

The amount of wood required for roof-top arrays = zero.

The amount of lead for batteries for grid intertied arrays = zero

Until PV and wind systems comprise 20% of total grid generating capacity - no storage systems will be required.

At capacities > 20% PEM hydrogen electrolyzer/fuel cell systems and low-pressure hydrogen storage tanks could provide distributed load-leveling grid support.

Like the price of PV, the price of PEM fuel cells will drop dramatically in the near future.

Prototype PEM H2 fuel cells currently cost ~$3000 per kW. The DOE, however, estimates that large volume production of existing FC technologies would reduce the price to ~$225 per kW.

Stationary fuel cell economics...

http://www.repp.org/articles/static/1/995303594_7.html#e

DOE Hydrogen Program Overview (google up title if the link doesn't work).

www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/ pdfs/01_paster_hydrogen_prog.pdf -

By 2020 PV will cost < $1500 kW and have no associated fuel costs.

Hydrogen fuel cell storage systems will cost $1-2000 per kW

Total system costs (PV and Fuel Cells) will be ~$2-3500 per kW.

Again, the last few US reactors built in the US came in at ~$5000 per kW.

The cost of canceled French 1,250 MW Super Phenix fast breeder reactor was $10 billion ($8000 per kW).

The estimated cost of completing the canceled 350 MW Clinch River breeder reactor is $4 billion ($11,000 per kW)

How much would a new MOX reactor cost????

Nobody knows. But Virgina Power pulled out of DOE's MOX program because it was uneconomic.

Here's some insight in MOX economics...

http://webhampton.com/grace/nuclearweapons/citizensguidemox.html

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so03reparaz

http://nuclearno.com/text.asp?8491

It will cost the taxpayers $4-8 billion to clean up the West Valley reprocessing plant - a plant that produced ~$20 million dollars worth of plutonium over is operating life.

Japan's Rokkasho reprocessing plant will be the country's largest industrial complex - it will cost an estimated $20 billion.

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj01burnie

How much will it cost to build a lead/bismuth-cooled actinide burning reactor????

Nobody knows.

http://books.nap.edu/books/0309052262/html/13.html#pagetop

How much will it cost to build and operate Yucca Mountain????

Right now it's $60 billion and rising.

Anyway you look at it, nuclear is just too damned expensive compared to renewables.

And no amount of bogus freshman chemistry, hysterical name-calling and Greenwash rhetoric will change that.

[jpak]

65. Here's some insight into India's approach to nuclear safety

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1011/p07s01-wosc.html

<snip>

While the government releases no information about leaks or accidents at its nuclear power plants, Dhirendra Sharma, a scientist who has written extensively on India's atomic-power projects, has compiled figures based on his own reporting. "An estimated 300 incidents of a serious nature have occurred, causing radiation leaks and physical damage to workers," he says. "These have so far remained official secrets."

According to critics like Mr. Gadekar, India's nuclear-power program has always been secretive because politicians use it as a cover for the country's weapons program. "Right from Jawaharlal Nehru onward, our leaders have always claimed that the nuclear-power program is a 'peaceful' program, whereas the weapons implications were always there in the background," says Gadekar. "As a result, secrecy has become a way of life for these people."

<more>

and the impact of the recent tsunami on India's Kalpakkam nuclear complex...

http://www.awakenedwoman.com/sherman_gamble.htm

<snip>

Unknown are long term effects from the tsunami on the Kalpakkam nuclear complex, located on the south coast of India, 80 km from Chennai, a city of 7 million, the fourth largest metropolis in India. At the complex, some 500 homes were destroyed, 60 people killed in the employees' township and another 250 killed in the rest of the area. Given the military nature of all nuclear sites, information on nuclear releases related to the tsunami is hard to get.

We do know that prior to the tsunami, for the period May to October 2003, multiple cancers of the blood and bone in the age group 15 to 50 was 3.0 per 100,000, slightly less than twice the national average, which was 1.7 per 100,000 (J.S. Raman, [e-mail]).

Whether the decision by the Indian government to reject all foreign aid is dictated by its own reserves of funds -- hard to believe, given the grinding poverty of most of India -- or is a way to limit access to critical areas such as the nuclear power plants damaged by the tsunami is in question.

The Madras Atomic Power Station in Kalpakkam, near Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu, is a comprehensive nuclear power production, fuel reprocessing and waste treatment facility that includes plutonium fuel fabrication for fast breeder reactors. Two pressurized heavy water reactors at Kalpakkam started commercial operation in 1984 and 1986.

<more>

and from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists....

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd99rethinaraj

<snip>

One horrific example took place in October 1989 when a reactor technician was inadvertently locked inside a shielded room at Dhruva. The reactor had been hurriedly prepared for startup and no one had checked to see that all the staff had been accounted for. Radiation from a fully operational Dhruva could have killed the worker within minutes. Only the technician's extraordinary presence of mind saved his life. He repeatedly shut off the coolant pump, causing the reactor to trip several times in a row. He was discovered by chance almost an hour later when another technician decided to find out why the reactor was shutting down so frequently.

<more>

and from Business Week...

India's Critical Mess (int'l edition) The country has placed a big bet on nuclear power. It may be a bad move

http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_46/b3655234.htm

<snip>

India does have a regulatory agency for the nuclear power industry, the Atomic Energy Regulation Board. But its scientists and engineers belong to the tightly knit atomic energy fraternity. The board reports directly to the Atomic Energy Commission, whose members include Prasad, the NPC's managing director, and the head of the nuclear weapons program. The board stoutly maintains its integrity and independence. But Adinarayana Gopalakrishnan, a U.S.-trained nuclear engineer who headed the board from 1993 to 1996, says this insular relationship is ''deliberately exploited'' to gloss over potential problems.

<more>

and more...

http://www.satribune.com/archives/feb22_28_04/P1_iyangar.htm

<snip>

The Supreme Court of India ruled in January 2004 that people have no fundamental right to know the true state of affairs relating to safety of nuclear installations. The court dismissed a petition seeking transparency in matters concerning nuclear safety filed by Peoples Union of Civil Liberties and former Chairman of AERB (The US-trained nuclear technologist Gopalakrishnan had been unceremoniously sacked for demanding credible actions to upgrade the currently abysmal standards of safety in India's nuclear installations.)

<more>

....and allegations that India's nuclear establishment employs so-called "glow-slaves" to work in high radiation areas...

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main10.asp?filename=Cr020505A_radioactive.asp

<snip>

Do you employ a thousand ‘glow slaves’ to keep the ‘undocumented radiation release’ under cover?

Nothing happened.

<more>

India's nuclear program: a shocking example the reality of nuclear power in the developing world...

[NNadir]

44. I missed this... Are you claiming that no one ever dies from K-40?

Are you absolutely certain that no one has ever died from standing next to metric tons of Felspar?

Please be clear. I need to hear this.

Is the claim that dilute radiation is safer than concentrated radiation? Come on. Tell us.

Because, as it happens it is very easy to dilute any nuclear material enough so that no one obviously dies from it.

All that said, tell us where anyone has ever died from the storage of concentrated nuclear waste. Anytime. Anywhere. Ever.

[AZCat]

19. I thought Einsteinium was named during Einstein's lifetime

Einsteinium was identified in 1952 and Einstein didn't die until 1955. Wouldn't that qualify Einstein as another person to have an element of the periodic table named after him during his lifetime?

[NNadir]

26. The discovery of Einsteinium in 1952 was classified.

It was not announced in 1952 since it would have provided information about the magnitude of the neutron flux in a thermonuclear explosion. Like all of the transuranium elements, it was simply referred to by its atomic number, as in "element 99" until named.

An account of the discovery and naming of Einsteinium is given by Ghiorso in this article:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/80th/print/einsteiniumfermiumprint.html

It seems that Einsteinium was named in 1955. Einstein died on April 18th of that year. I am sure that the naming of Einsteinium must have been later in the year, after Einstein's death, since a great hoopla was made about the naming of Seaborgium and the honor of it being named for a living person.

http://seaborg.nmu.edu/Seaborg/Seaborgium.html

http://seaborg.nmu.edu/Seaborg/Seaborgium.html

http://seaborg.nmu.edu/Seaborg/Seaborgium.html

I had the honor of sitting a few chairs away from Dr. Seaborg at a symposium at the 1994 ACS meeting in San Diego. He was a very old man, and it's not like we were even remotely connected, so I didn't have the courage to speak to him. I was not at the talk where Seaborgium was named, either, but it was really something to be near him for the talk, which ironically was on the subject of Einsteinium. The talk was a review of einsteinium chemistry focused on the fact that the element was the heaviest element that can ever be isolated in visible amounts.

[AZCat]

32. Cool - thanks for clearing that up. n/t

[NNadir]

38. You're welcome. My pleasure. n/t.

[jpak]

20. "the posts of my antagonists here are distinguished by name calling"

Pot meet Kettle

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

[NNadir]

25. Good point, I think.

I must admit that I have little respect for the scientific ability of my antagonists.

I distinguish myself from them though in that my arguments at least consist of some reference to science, while theirs consist entirely of name calling. This must be so, since my antagonists have NO scientific merit.

[struggle4progress]

21. John Gofman interrupted his medical education to study ...

... physical chemistry at Berkeley, where he did work with Seaborg. He followed his Berkeley Ph.D. with an M.D. We could argue about whether he then actually fell into "much deserved obscurity" as you claim:

Cardiology's 10 Greatest Discoveries of the 20th Century
Nirav J. Mehta, MD and Ijaz A. Khan, MD, FACC

... In 1950, John Gofman and his associates identified the low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol using the ultracentrifuge technique. 17 In addition, they found that 101 of 104 men with myocardial infarction had elevated LDL molecules—a finding which they had also observed in their cholesterol-fed atherosclerotic rabbits. Gofman's group observed an inverse relationship between HDLs and risk of coronary artery disease ...

http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=124754

Gofman was also an early researcher into health issues related to radiation:

HUMAN RADIATION STUDIES: REMEMBERING THE EARLY YEARS
Oral History of Dr. John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D.
http://www.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/histories/0457/0457toc.html

[NNadir]

27. We could argue, but I won't.

Again, I want to have an argument about the science, not the personalities.

Any response on that cesium question? Let me repeat it in case you've forgotten it: Why is 18 billion curies of artificial cesium in zirconium sealed fuel rods is more dangerous than 500 billion curies of naturally occurring potassium-40 dissolved in the ocean?

How about pollucite? Demonstrate that pollucite on the Canadian shield hasn't stabilized cesium (and radioactive rubidium) for over three billion years.

You are asserting that nuclear power is dangerous. Prove it.

[struggle4progress]

29. It is simply not true that "... Ernest Sternglass .. claims ..

.. measurement of Strontium-90 in baby teeth .. is responsible for elevated cancer rates." What a garble!

Sternglass has been collecting baby teeth -- because Sr is chemically similar to calcium, and assaying Sr-90 in baby teeth might provide information about individual radiation exposure of children downwind from reactors. A major difficulty in doing low exposure epidemiology is obtaining some reliable indication of actual individual exposures. Failure to accurately separate different exposure groups blurs the statistics and favors the null hypothesis. The method used by Sternglass has the advantage that it actually measures something about individual radioisotope uptake, rather than trying to infer approximate exposures by length of residence at nearby addresses or some other rather fuzzy method.

[NNadir]

42. Ok here's a link.

http://www.annieappleseedproject.org/stronindecte.html

I think I understand the chemistry of strontium.

I was raised in Suffolk County, Long Island, in the Huntington area. I was born right after the first hydrogen bomb was tested. I have lived through hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests. I'm not necessarily happy about the tests, but my baby teeth, like those of every person I knew when I was growing up, certainly contained Strontium-90. I'm sure my bones do too.

What's more I have actually done counts of radioactivity, including radioactivity in my own thyroid when I was labeling proteins with I-125. I have also checked the background radiation of ordinary people. Surprise. It isn't zero.

What's more, my children are being raised in New Jersey, where we have lots of Radium-226 in the soil owing to the huge quantities of naturally occurring Uranium around here. I'll bet my kids have radium-226 in their teeth. My oldest son, refused to give his baby teeth to the tooth fairy on the grounds they were more precious to him than any money the tooth fairy was handing out. If I ever have access to radiation detection apparatus again, I'll check back with and use the data to address people who may be making wild assertions as a result of their poor understanding of science.

Now, do I need to calculate the total inventory of naturally occurring Radium-226 worldwide as compared to the world inventory of Strontium-90? (I have actually done that for a nuclear paranoid nutcase who used to post here; he just cursed me and left. I remember him very well because he insisted, completely without even the slightest evidence that the decline of Lobsters in the Northeast was the connected with the existence nuclear power - global climate change was, as usual a non-issue with this guy. The adminstrators of this site later banned the guy on the grounds that he completely lost it, apparently on another matter. The same guy was also banned on SmirkingChimp.)

I very much doubt that Ernest Steinglass is competent to tell the difference between Radium-226 and Strontium-90. As I noted elsewhere his papers are almost never cited by serious scientists, although he frequently is cited, often with gibberish that is supposed to sound "scientific," by people who have a very, very, very poor understanding of radiation.

[struggle4progress]

47. Your link supports exactly what I said in #29 about ...

... the garbled version you provided in #15.

[struggle4progress]

49. Sternglass apparently does lots of joint work and gets published:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22EJ+Sternglass%22%7C%22Ernest+Sternglass%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&start=10&sa=N

If he's wrong, of course, that will eventually be thoroughly sorted out in the scholarly literature, with arguments rather more convincing than your "I .. doubt that .. Steinglass is competent ..."

[struggle4progress]

30. The woman's name BTW is "Helen Caldicott" not "Candicott." eom

[Dogmudgeon]

39. Institut Bruno Comby

Actually, he's pretty much a natural-health buff who happens to think that nuclear power isn't a bad thing.

Bruno Comby was born in 1960 in Rochefort (France near Bordeaux). He is a graduate of the highly regarded physics and mathematics university Ecole Polytechnique, with a post-graduate diploma from the University of Advanced Technical Sciences (ENSTA) in Paris, as a nuclear physicist.
http://www.comby.org/biogra/biograen.htm

He also promotes smoking cessation, napping, eating sprouted grains and legumes, relaxation exercises, and eating insects.

Aside from the part about eating bugs ("délicieuses larves d'abeille..." or "tasty bee larvae") he's pretty far afield of Lyndon "Riemann! Schiller! Goethe!" LaRouche.

Europeans tend not to think in the same political terms as "we Americans" do; being pro-nuclear in Europe may not put you on a par with Greens, but it certainly isn't a hard-right position, either.

--p!

[struggle4progress]

7. Isn't "prioritise" the English spelling (as opposed to the American)?

The website also contains spells center "centre," another English usage.

IMHO, this does not actually appear to be evidence of their ignorance.

[NNadir]

8. No, the actual evidence of their ignorance is their behavior.

Whether or not they know how to spell the word "prioritize," they certainly don't know how to engage in the act.

[struggle4progress]

9. Your writing 'they have misspelled ... "prioritises" ' somehow created ...

... an impression in my mind that you were complaining about their spelling ...

[NNadir]

10. If they spelled badly and still managed to think, I would have probably

overlooked the matter. To be perfectly honest, I am a poor speller myself, and often a poor grammarian as well. I frequently need to edit my posts.

I have no idea if there is a British spelling of the word "prioritizes" or not, and whether or not you've managed to be correct in this case. That really isn't the point of my remark.

I can't think of a better example of modern day doublespeak than the web-site of Greenpeace using this word to describe the origins of their organization. In fact the name "Greenpeace" itself is doublespeak. It's roughly comparable to describing the clear cutting of old growth forests as "The Healthy Forests Initiative" or the building of new coal plants as the "The Clear Skies Initiative," although I will concede that it is not quite as oxymoronic as "Clean Coal."

[struggle4progress]

28. "Within two days after the explosion, a crater more than one mile wide ...

... and 40 feet deep formed ..."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/w71.htm

In your view, that's not even potentially a "real environmental problem" with "a real consequence"?

<edit:> You are aware that this was a National Wildlife Refuge before testing began?

[Cannikin]

68. kick