Hello Bruce,
I did not sense any anti-nuke sentiment in Bill's comments on the
Monbiot/Caldicott. debate. I happened to listen to the debate on our
students' radio station. I thought Bill's assessment was a good one.
I also agree with Adam's comment on the Guardian's piece " If only this
view were more prevalent". It is important for the public to hear both
points of view and make up their own mind. After listening to the
debate, many will agree that Helen Caldicott did not serve her cause
well by her many interruptions and outbursts.
Esam
On 4/2/2011 9:05 AM, Bill Garland wrote:
Bruce,
Maybe I misunderstand your meaning but to wax poetic to me means to
speak
in favour of effusively. Who on this board speaks in favour of
Helen?
Bill
At 03:56 AM 02/04/2011, Bruce Behrhorst wrote:
Too many
on this board wax
poetic on old anti-nuke media icons like Caldicott. The fact is she
pioneered feeding anti-nuke dis-information decades ago to lamestream
media.
Western media is still after her exaggerated fake nuke health science
information.
The fact is FUKUSHIMA NPP park is stable thanks to good work by
Japanese
nuclear workers and nuke firefighter brigades and it's a question of
clean-up & decommissioning this will take years to accomplish.
Reality is anti-nuke hysteria plays no role is serving developing or
developed nation's economies in delivering safe efficient bulk instant
baseloading electrical energy.
Bruce Behrhorst
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Bill Garland
- To:
cdn-nucl-l@mailman1.CIS.McMaster.CA
- Cc:
CDN-NUCL-L@mailman1.CIS.McMaster.CA
- Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 6:37 PM
- Subject: Re: [cdn-nucl-l] Monbiot vs Caldicott
- As painful as it was I did manage to endure listening to
Helen
"I'm smart, buy my book" Caldicott. George did a fair job
at trying to get her to think in actual quantitative terms but to no
avail. I didn't agree with George though on deferring to scientific
consensus nor with Helen that the debate is over or with her
pronouncement that solar and wind can save the day.
- Bill
- At 04:32 PM 31/03/2011, Robin Collins wrote:
- related debate:
-
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/30/prescription_for_survival_a_debate_on
- "Prescription for Survival": A Debate on the Future of
Nuclear Energy
- Between Anti-Coal Advocate George Monbiot and
Anti-Nuclear
Activist
- Dr. Helen Caldicott
- On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 8:16 PM, Adam McLean
<adam.mclean@utoronto.ca> wrote:
- > Printed in the Guardian on 21 March 2011 and at:
- >
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima
- > If only this view were more prevalent...
- >
- > All the best,
- > Adam
- >
- > ---------------------
- >
- > Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear
power
- > Japan's disaster would weigh more heavily if there
were less
harmful
- > alternatives. Atomic power is part of the mix
- >
- > George Monbiot guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 March 2011
19.43 GMT
Article
- > history
- > Illustration: Daniel Pudles
- >
- > You will not be surprised to hear that the events in
Japan have
changed my
- > view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear
how they
have changed
- > it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am
no
longer
- > nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.
- >
- > A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features
was hit by a
monster
- > earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity
supply failed,
knocking out
- > the cooling system. The reactors began to explode
and melt down.
The
- > disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design
and
corner-cutting. Yet,
- > as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal
dose of
radiation.
- >
- > Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of
radioactive
pollution.
- > For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by
xkcd.com.
It shows that
- > the average total dose from the Three Mile Island
disaster for
someone
- > living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of
the maximum
yearly
- > amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in
turn, is
half of the
- > lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased
cancer risk,
which, in
- > its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal
exposure. I'm not
proposing
- > complacency here. I am proposing perspective.
- >
- > If other forms of energy production caused no
damage, these
impacts would
- > weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if
there are
no
- > side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.
- >
- > Like most greens, I favour a major expansion of
renewables. I
can also
- > sympathise with the complaints of their opponents.
It's not just
the onshore
- > windfarms that bother people, but also the new grid
connections
(pylons and
- > power lines). As the proportion of renewable
electricity on the
grid rises,
- > more pumped storage will be needed to keep the
lights on. That
means
- > reservoirs on mountains: they aren't popular, either.
- >
- > The impacts and costs of renewables rise with the
proportion of
power they
- > supply, as the need for storage and redundancy
increases. It may
well be the
- > case (I have yet to see a comparative study) that up
to a
certain grid
- > penetration - 50% or 70%, perhaps? - renewables have
smaller
carbon impacts
- > than nuclear, while beyond that point, nuclear has
smaller
impacts than
- > renewables.
- >
- > Like others, I have called for renewable power to be
used both
to replace
- > the electricity produced by fossil fuel and to
expand the total
supply,
- > displacing the oil used for transport and the gas
used for
heating fuel. Are
- > we also to demand that it replaces current nuclear
capacity? The
more work
- > we expect renewables to do, the greater the impact
on the
landscape will be,
- > and the tougher the task of public persuasion.
- >
- > But expanding the grid to connect people and
industry to rich,
distant
- > sources of ambient energy is also rejected by most
of the greens
who
- > complained about the blog post I wrote last week in
which I
argued that
- > nuclear remains safer than coal. What they want,
they tell me,
is something
- > quite different: we should power down and produce
our energy
locally. Some
- > have even called for the abandonment of the grid.
Their bucolic
vision
- > sounds lovely, until you read the small print.
- >
- > At high latitudes like ours, most small-scale
ambient power
production is a
- > dead loss. Generating solar power in the UK involves
a
spectacular waste of
- > scarce resources. It's hopelessly inefficient and
poorly matched
to the
- > pattern of demand. Wind power in populated areas is
largely
worthless. This
- > is partly because we have built our settlements in
sheltered
places; partly
- > because turbulence caused by the buildings
interferes with the
airflow and
- > chews up the mechanism. Micro-hydropower might work
for a
farmhouse in
- > Wales, but it's not much use in Birmingham.
- >
- > And how do we drive our textile mills, brick kilns,
blast
furnaces and
- > electric railways - not to mention advanced
industrial
processes? Rooftop
- > solar panels? The moment you consider the demands of
the whole
economy is
- > the moment at which you fall out of love with local
energy
production. A
- > national (or, better still, international) grid is
the
essential
- > prerequisite for a largely renewable energy supply.
- >
- > Some greens go even further: why waste renewable
resources by
turning them
- > into electricity? Why not use them to provide energy
directly?
To answer
- > this question, look at what happened in Britain
before the
industrial
- > revolution.
- >
- > The damming and weiring of British rivers for
watermills was
small-scale,
- > renewable, picturesque and devastating. By blocking
the rivers
and silting
- > up the spawning beds, they helped bring to an end
the gigantic
runs of
- > migratory fish that were once among our great
natural spectacles
and which
- > fed much of Britain - wiping out sturgeon, lampreys
and shad, as
well as
- > most sea trout and salmon.
- >
- > Traction was intimately linked with starvation. The
more land
that was set
- > aside for feeding draft animals for industry and
transport, the
less was
- > available for feeding humans. It was the
17th-century equivalent
of today's
- > biofuels crisis. The same applied to heating fuel.
As EA Wrigley
points out
- > in his book Energy and the English Industrial
Revolution, the
11m tonnes of
- > coal mined in England in 1800 produced as much
energy as 11m
acres of
- > woodland (one third of the land surface) would have
generated.
- >
- > Before coal became widely available, wood was used
not just for
heating
- > homes but also for industrial processes: if half the
land
surface of Britain
- > had been covered with woodland, Wrigley shows, we
could have
made 1.25m
- > tonnes of bar iron a year (a fraction of current
consumption)
and nothing
- > else. Even with a much lower population than
today's,
manufactured goods in
- > the land-based economy were the preserve of the
elite. Deep
green energy
- > production - decentralised, based on the products of
the land -
is far more
- > damaging to humanity than nuclear meltdown.
- >
- > But the energy source to which most economies will
revert if
they shut down
- > their nuclear plants is not wood, water, wind or
sun, but fossil
fuel. On
- > every measure (climate change, mining impact, local
pollution,
industrial
- > injury and death, even radioactive discharges) coal
is 100 times
worse than
- > nuclear power. Thanks to the expansion of shale gas
production,
the impacts
- > of natural gas are catching up fast.
- >
- > Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear
industry. Yes,
I would
- > prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there
were
harmless
- > alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions.
Every energy
technology
- > carries a cost; so does the absence of energy
technologies.
Atomic energy
- > has just been subjected to one of the harshest of
possible
tests, and the
- > impact on people and the planet has been small. The
crisis at
Fukushima has
- > converted me to the cause of nuclear power.
- >
- >
- > _______________________________________________
- > cdn-nucl-l mailing list
- > cdn-nucl-l@mailman.McMaster.CA
- >
http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/cdn-nucl-l
- >
- _______________________________________________
- cdn-nucl-l mailing list
- cdn-nucl-l@mailman.McMaster.CA
-
http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/cdn-nucl-l
BRUCE BEHRHORST
Surrey, B.C.
Ph#:778.395.6646
cell#:604.816.1040
email:
bru_b@shaw.ca
texlixto@yahoo.com
cotopaxi5896@hotmail.com
twitter: Blackbody88
online content:
www.nuclearspace.com
www.nuclearspacetechnology.org/
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