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

To: Krowbar who wrote (46748)	7/24/1999 6:02:00 AM
From: Sidney Reilly	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Del, I think the over all cost of Chernobyl is far more than a few hundred lives. There are still birth defects happening as a result of the accident. Many died over long periods, not immediately after the accident. Hundreds of square miles of land are now uninhabitable. At least one town had to be abandoned. Compare that to Three Mile Island. No deaths, no contamination, no land or real estate had to be abandoned. No one even was injured during the whole event. That's a direct result of the safety features of American nuclear power plants. Now let's tighten up the regulation on Airlines and people who drive cars!! LOL Especially the tractor trailer rigs. They often drive recklessly and nearly out of control trying to make time. I hate that. SR

To: Krowbar who wrote (46748)	7/24/1999 7:55:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Before you make such unqualified statements, you need to read the analyses of total system energy. Nukes have huge capital requirements, steel, concrete, reactors, steam plants, fuel. Each of these requires energy to build. The total system requirements of nuclear plants are several times as much as required for coal, gas, or oil fired plants. The government has guaranteed nuclear damages. Without this guarantee no single corporation would even have considered building a plant. They are "uninsurable" because the risks cannot be known, and no insurance company would insure them. It is only government guarantees and favorable rate treatment (adding CWIP to the rate base) that made it possible for power companies to invest in nuclear. In many instances these investments were terrible mistakes (e.g. WPPS, Clinton). Because no one can say what the accidents and shutdown energy requirements will be, no one can say if the nuclear system produces a net surplus of energy at all. Unless there is a new burst of nuclear power, my not totally amateur guess is that we will have invested more energy in the nuclear power system as a whole than we will ever get out of it. Check some of the work of 20 years ago by Bruce Hannon, Robert Herendeen, and Clark Bullard, and Michael Rieber's Testimony against the Clinton Nuclear Plant.