Professor at Einstein's Alma Mater makes the environmental nuclear case.

[NNadir]

This presentation touches on all the points I continually make here and then some:

http://www.lkt.mavt.ethz.ch/Abschied.ppt#1

ETH was the university from which Albert Einstein graduated in 1900, 5 years before publishing his work on special relativity including the famous formula that would lead, ultimately, to the nuclear technology that we must exploit if we are to survive.

[sam sarrha]

1. there is only ~ 14 years of Uranium left if we build the projected amount

the mining will be ramped up and the cost will be prohibitive.

besides..Nuclear energys cost/Watts ratio is less effecient than burning wood. it is said that solar could provide over half to 70%the daytime energy in the usa with 3 or 4 ten mile square sites

there is absolutely NO chance of ever having Hydrogen fuel, it is like you cant ever cap the stuff in.. itis so small it leaks out all the time.. a pipe line would cost in the Trillions..plural.. ihave heard like 7 trillion for just big cities.

it is farce and a give away to the Fascist Corporations.

we need to reduce the population, thus the demand, not open the boarders. tougher decisions than letting 40,000 die in NOLA are near in the future. maybe that was a dry run for the Big One.

[NNadir]

2. Oh good, another one...

:-)

Now I have three, all on the same level.

[jpak]

3. Um...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=29898

[NNadir]

4. Well, well, well. There you go. All three are there.

To tell you the truth, I kind of selectively open these frantic posts, because any one of them is likely to be as dopey as the next. Any time I want to read something dumb, I can almost open one at will. Therefore I missed my new antagonist, who has, apparently been here before.

It's kind of funny, I think, that anti-envirnomental radiation paranoids make this argument that the world is running out of uranium. One would think that their confidence in this case would leave them to ignore the whole issue since - according to their contention - it is going to go away in 14 years.

Of course, radiation paranoid scientific illiterates have been telling us that nuclear power was going to die a natural death for almost as long as they've been telling us about the coming solar nirvana. It's kind of like nuclear fusion - a promise that is always 20 years away - 365.25 days a year, 10 years per decade, 10 decades per century.

It is difficult to reconcile this confidence in the disappearance of (gasp, terror, terror, fear, fear, fear) uranium with the high level of paranoia they express - but I must confess that I am generally unfamiliar with the inner workings of pickled brains. I am completely at a loss to explain such thinking.

Even though some percentage of my helpmates have immediately diverted their attention to crying about the price of the fossil fuels - and who can argue that their real agenda is not keeping fossil fuels around as long as possible lest anyone realize that their 100% solar fantasy is (and long has been) a crock of shit - one expects that they will get back to telling us about the 14 year time limit on uranium. These people of course are totally lacking in moral and intellectual dignity: Like the promotion of the solar fantasy, they'll do it for decade after decade after decade probably for the next several centuries - without any reference to how ridiculous they have been in the past.

[jpak]

5. Some nuclear facilities may soon disappear in a Flash....

Iran to Proceed With Uranium Enrichment

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2005/sep/12/091208629.html

Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001053_pf.html

:nuke:

That should free-up some yellowcake on the global market...

[Massacure]

6. Providing half of our power with solar energy is a farce.

100 watts per meter squared. One meter = 3.3 feet so approximately 10 square feet = 10 watts per square foot.

5280 x 5280 = 27878400 x 10 = 278784000 watts or 278 megawatts. Multiply by 10% efficiency and you are down to 28 megawatts per square mile. You would need 50 square miles to produce a gigawatt the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant. It's far from 50% of the U.S. power consumption, plus those only provide that much power for 4-6 hours per day and 150-300 days per year depending on location. Even if you were to put it in a good spot such as the desert, you couldn't send it more than a few hundred miles because of transmission losses.

I did a post a few months back calculating the replacement of all our energy with solar power at $11 trillion dollars for the PV panels alone. That's not even starting with batteries, transmission losses, etc...

[jpak]

10. Here's an informative read....

How To Build 6,000 Nuclear Plants by 2050

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3225build_6000_nukes.html

[struggle4progress]

7. The ETH folk thought Einstein was a no-talent loser , didn't they?

edit accuracy & link

... Hermann Minkowski referred to his one-time pupil as a "lazy dog". As the biographer Clark wrote, "Einstein became, as far as the professorial staff of the ETH was concerned, one of the awkward scholars who might or might not graduate but who in either case was a great deal of trouble". Professor Pernet at one point suggested to Einstein that he switch to medicine or law rather than physics, saying "You can do what you like, I only wish to warn you in your own interest" ... http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s3-08/3-08.htm

[phantom power]

8. As I recall, that's true. Same for high school.

On the other hand, for every "lazy dog" that eventually turns out to be an Einstein, there are probably 100-thousand who are, in fact, just lazy dogs. So I don't tend to hold it against any academic institution when it turns out they weren't very receptive towards some young turk to later turns out to be brilliant.

[struggle4progress]

9. Perhaps not "same for high school" -- the Germans' complaint ..

seems to have been that he didn't respect authority enough, his distaste for the German secondary school may have been related to the military enlistment requirement at sixteen, and he must have done well enough at the Swiss secondary school in which he enrolled for a year after failing the Polytechnic entrance exam, since he got into ETH which was, of course, competitive.

I've seen enough students in the last quarter century of teaching to agree that impatience with an Einstein or a Galois is entirely understandable -- but I think that historical accuracy is a good reason to consider calling ETH "the school that tried to talk Einstein into a non-physics career." It is also true that after his talent was completely obvious to everyone, the ETH did reach out to him.

[Kellanved]

11. Nuclear power doesn't solve anything

A engineer specialized in nuclear power, who was hired during the height of the "nuclear fairytale" likes nuclear power. The surprise is mindboggling.


The key to reducing CO2 is reducing power consumption.

The current renewable approaches are unable to meet the demand, but so is the existing infrastructure for nuclear power. Sellafield and Le Havre can't manage much more; the logistics and storage solutions are developed on a level comparable to renewables and are not even feasible for the current level of nuclear power. The current development of privatizing power generation in Europe pretty much rules out nuclear anyway, as no private company is able to build a nuke plant.

I don't claim that a renewable-only approach is viable, nor do I claim that nuclear power has to be a bad idea. But blind trust in technology from the 60s and 70s doesn't look like a good idea to me.