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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (66641)	5/7/2006 2:22:33 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 361199

Why nuclear power cannot be a major energy source David Fleming, FEASTA It takes a lot of fossil energy to mine uranium, and then to extract and prepare the right isotope for use in a nuclear reactor. It takes even more fossil energy to build the reactor, and, when its life is over, to decommission it and look after its radioactive waste. As a result, with current technology, there is only a limited amount of uranium ore in the world that is rich enough to allow more energy to be produced by the whole nuclear process than the process itself consumes. This amount of ore might be enough to supply the world's total current electricity demand for about six years. Moreover, because of the amount of fossil fuel and fluorine used in the enrichment process, significant quantities of greenhouse gases are released. As a result, nuclear energy is by no means a 'climate-friendly' technology. ... NUCLEAR ENERGY - A Lean Guide 1. Nuclear energy could sustain its present minor contribution of some 2-1/2 percent of global final energy demand for about 75 years, but only by postponing indefinitely the expenditure of energy that would be needed to deal with its waste. 2. Each stage in the nuclear life-cycle, other than fission itself, produces carbon dioxide. 3. The depletion problem facing nuclear power is as pressing as the depletion problem facing oil and gas. 4. The depletion of uranium becomes apparent when nuclear power is considered as a major source of energy. For instance, if required to provide all the electricity used worldwide - while clearing up the new waste it produced - it could (notionally) do so for about six years before it ran out of usable rich uranium ore. 5. Alternative systems of nuclear fission, such as fast-breeders and thorium reactors, do not offer solutions in the short/medium term. 6. The overall climate impact of the nuclear industry, including its use of halogenated compounds with a global warming potential many times that of carbon dioxide, needs to be researched urgently. 7. The option that a nation such as the United Kingdom has of building and fuelling a nuclear energy system on a substantial and useful scale is removed if many other nations attempt to do the same thing. 8. The response must be to develop a programme of "Lean Energy". Lean Energy consists of: (1) energy conservation and efficiency; (2) structural change to build local energy systems; and (3) renewable energy; all within (4) a framework, such as tradable energy quotas (TEQs), leading to deep reductions in energy demand. 9. That response should be developed at all speed, free of the false promise and distraction of nuclear energy. David Fleming delivered the 2001 Feasta Lecture. He is an independent writer in the fields of energy, environment, economics, society and culture and lives in London. He first published proposals for TEQs (formerly Domestic Tradable Quotas - DTQs) in 1996. TEQs are set in their context in his two forthcoming books, The Lean Economy: A Survivor's Guide to a Future that Works, and Lean Logic: The Book of Environmental Manners. He is founder of The Lean Economy Connection, an extended conversation between people who are thinking ahead. (April 2006) Long report. Also available as PDF - 12 pages. energybulletin.net

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (66641)	5/7/2006 2:39:40 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361199

Lovelock has said nuclear is the Only option.. we have run out of time...... looks like.. overshoot and collapse......

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (66641)	5/7/2006 2:41:14 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361199

You keep harping about nuclear waste, all of which can be stored in an area the size of a football field. You complain about global warming, but you won't acknowledge the best alternative to greenhouse gases is clean nuclear energy production. Do you realize that Three Mile Island was a success? It was contained because of it's design. You watched The China Syndrome, a fiction, and a few weeks later you saw Three Mile Island in the news. The big oil companies that you bitch about all the time used that fiction to eliminate new nuclear sites from being built. After all, nuclear would eliminate our need for fossil fuels to power our belching power plants. You bitch about nuclear, and then you bitch about the global warming caused by alternative sources. You have five nuclear power plants in your own state. How many deaths have been caused by them? Nuclear produces no greenhouse gases. It's effluent is clean water. Just ask the manatees outside Crystal River's nuke plant. Coal-fired power plants are ruining your planet.