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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (46745)	7/23/1999 11:57:00 PM
From: Krowbar	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

I did not say that we should be careless with nuclear power, only that it is unreasonable and unfair to demand 100% safety from nuclear plants, which of course can't be guaranteed. A coal fired plant involves all of us by spewing out huge amounts of CO2 and pollutants. There is a real possibility to have a runaway greenhouse effect that kills us all. Someone could hijack an airliner and plow it into the Super Bowl. These kinds of events are improbable, but not impossible, yet we don't demand the end of flying or coal plants. We do lose, in aggregate, about 50,000 people a year in cars. Chernobyl was about as bad a nuclear accident as you'll probably ever see, yet how many died? A few hundred? That plant had no containment building, and was sloppily built and run. It did not kill or maim an unlimited number of people. I consider myself an ecologist, and I prefer nuclear over fossil fuels. Del

To: Ilaine who wrote (46745)	7/24/1999 12:05:00 AM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

A nuclear accident involves an unlimited number of people, for an unlimited time. Actually, no. There is no such thing as an unlimited number of people. People are finite and there is always a limit. Let's not be careless about our use of English, please. <bg> But back to your point, it appears that Three Mile Island had fewer negative consequences, on fewer people, than Love Canal, a non-nuclear environmental disaster. Even the worst accident at a nuclear power plant would probably be less devastating to fewer people than the damage we intentionally inflicted on Serbia and Kosovo this Spring. But how much attention have YOU seen paid to the environmental damage we caused there? (Aside: ah ha, another example of the bias of the liberal media in failing to cover that. Hee hee!) Are the long-term environmental and health effects of Chernobyle (sp) greater than the long-term environmental and health effects of burning coal and oil to replace that power? (Include the deaths from mining and drilling for the replacement coal and oil, the environmental destruction from the digging and mine tailings, the health effects of smog and particulates, and the contribution of heat to the greenhouse effect, among all the other effects.) I have seen no studies on that. Oh, Joan, resident research expert, any help here??