Topic: Hippies
started by: CatKnight
quote:
Nuclear power comes from splitting uranium or plutonium atoms. Although generating electricity from nuclear fuels emits no CO2, SO2, or NOx, nuclear power nevertheless poses grave risks to both human health and the environment. Operating nuclear power plants is always risky -- an accident, however unlikely, would spew radioactive materials into the atmosphere, causing catastrophic damage. The Chernobyl disaster killed dozens of people, and medical experts estimate that many thousands will die prematurely as a result of the radiation released by the accident.Safely storing nuclear waste is a less spectacular, but perhaps more difficult problem. Nuclear fission creates materials that will remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. Current proposals would store these wastes in an underground storage site. It is impossible, however, to ensure that any site will be safe for such a long period of time.
Far from fulfilling its promise of providing "electricity too cheap to meter," nuclear power is an expensive form of energy. Although supplies of uranium and plutonium should last for more than a century,[b] no more nuclear plants are being built, because of the [b]high costs. Nuclear power currently provides 22\% of electricity generated in the U.S.
- nuclear power does not pose "grave risks" to the environment or people. this is just plain ignorance to how nuclear reactors and radiation work.
- operating nuclear plants is NOT risky. it is orders of magnitudes more likely that workers will be killed in car accidents on the way to the plant then die of cancer due to radiation. same goes for people who live near by.
- the cherynobyl accident killed 12 plant workers due to the explosion and the high radiation of the exposed reactor. if a coal plant boiler exploded, just as many if not more would be killed. furthermore, a similar accident will never happen simply because of the way american reactors are built.
- it is very easy to ensure radioactive waste sites will be protected for centuries. they are buried in the desert, surrounded by granite, encased in layers upon layers of concrete and steel. there is zero chance for ground water contamination, mainly because there is no ground water to contaminate.
- nuclear plants are so expensive to build because of ignorant fools who think 10 millirems per year is horribly dangerous and that policies such as "as low as possible" are implemented, at a cost of billions of dollars per +/- 1 life saved.
This message has been edited by CatKnight on June 12, 2001 at 10:45 AM
the reason chenobyl happened was because the reactor wasnt built properly and badly maintained
this is why i bitch slap someone into a comma when they try arguing a case for why GM food should be banned. ITS COS THEY KNOW FUCK ALL ABOUT HOW TINGS WORK THEY JUST LISTEN TO THE PRESS AND THEIR PREJUDICES AND THESE ARE THE SAME PREJUDICES THAT CAUSE THINGS LIKE RACISM so those hippies can go kiss my ass
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not many cars to nick here so instead they hijack pedestrians
and run them around at terrifying leg speeds
its called git surfing
all too often the git is one of their own mothers
the latest trick? catapult them into a shop
Anywaze... I totally agree with Cat-man, and I've been saying this same stuff for years! I suppose it's possible that Homer has given nuclear power a bad name...
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"OH GGOD!!! NOT THE HYLIGHTER AGAIN!!! GO AWAY YOU LITTLE PEANUT HEDGEHOG!!!"
"The only thread about ME likened me to poo shaped mummy."
"Have a nice day, because monkeys don't."
-< PersonGuy >
This message has been edited by PersonGuy on June 12, 2001 at 06:24 PM
and i say we shove all the nuclear waste onto a spaceship and sent it to jupiter.
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quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight Bob:
does anyone not notcie that sithee isnt actually talking out of his ass like a lot of people here
quote:
Originally posted by Sithiee:
didnt the chernobyl thing happen because the two head scientists turned off all the coolant, and the safety stuff, and started trying to make the reactor overload???
I did a report on it a long time ago. What I remember is that there's a bunch of stuff that reacts... and there's hundereds of rods they put in there to make it react slower. So if you need more power you pull the rods out a little bit. Anyway, someone accidently took the rods ALL THE WAY OUT and <leeloo>Biiiig Baaaadaaa BOOM!</leeloo>!
quote:
Originally posted by Sithiee:
i say we shove all the nuclear waste onto a spaceship and sent it to jupiter.
I can't remember the exact number... but I costs a TON of money PER POUND to send something into space!! Not practicle... Besides the used fuel and explosion from the rocket to send it is worse for the environment than the stuff we're sending! How stupid it that!
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"OH GGOD!!! NOT THE HYLIGHTER AGAIN!!! GO AWAY YOU LITTLE PEANUT HEDGEHOG!!!"
"The only thread about ME likened me to poo shaped mummy."
"Have a nice day, because monkeys don't."
-< PersonGuy >
As for storage, I agree with you quote on this one. What right do we have to store large amounts of extremely radioactive matterial in the ground, properly protected or not, when it will be dangerous to biological systems for thousands of years? Can you GUARENTY the for that entire time there won't be a leak or some other event that would expose large amounts of people to the waste? We can't.
quote:
CatKnight, I'd like to know why you think radiation isn't harmfull to the environment. I know that you are a physist, and do know these kinds of things. I've had some nuclear physics and quantum physics, and I've learned that radiation is a dangerous thing to biological systems. Yes, we are already constantly being exposed to low level backgroung radiation. I think that what most people fear about nuclear plants, is that the extremely high levels of radiation foudn in the reactor might get out, through poor engineering or acident. You are right though, an American nuclear reactor, properly built, would not have these problems.
the amount of radiation past the reactor building is undetectable behind normal background. in other words, spending money to reduce it is POINTLESS. sort of like spending a billion dollars specially outfitting one single car to be completely crash-proof, while ignoring the other 100 million cars and assuming they are perfectly safe. as for the reactor cores and high level waste, well the core has double and triple backups including 3 back-up diesel generators to power the cooling systems incase the first 4 break (hint-not a likely occurance). also new reactor designs, (mainly the pebble-bed class reactor) are 100\% physically impossible to meltdown or release radiation.
quote:
What right do we have to store large amounts of extremely radioactive matterial in the ground, properly protected or not, when it will be dangerous to biological systems for thousands of years?
as opposed to the billions of tons of CO2, NOx's, CFC's, O3, etc, we already release daily? the environmental impact of a small high-radiation-release accident is infintessimal compared to DESTROYING THE ENTIRE ATMOSPHERE AND ENDING ALL LIFE ON EARTH. and far far less likely even.
quote:
Can you GUARENTY the for that entire time there won't be a leak or some other event that would expose large amounts of people to the waste?
i can. even if some of the waste was release, there is nothing within like 100 miles of it that could be damaged. it's in a barren desert. oh no we irradiated the dirt! run for your lives! we're doomed! (also am extremely unlikely event).
If your all worried about it build them out in the desert. You could build the reactors and the spent fuel storage in the same place.
Im tired of paying through the nose for power that i know can be made cheaper.
Hey CK, you mentioned a coal boiler explosion being able to kill more people. Im remembering something about a coal BIN exploding someplace and taking out a corner of a town. Killed a bunch of people. Just cant get more out of my poor abused brain.
quote:
You could build the reactors and the spent fuel storage in the same place.
thats what they do now. they stick the spent fuel rods underwater in a pool on site. once it cools they put it in dry containers.
as for sending waste to space, you might as well just shoot it into the sun. the best way to do it would be to make some sort of big rail gun and shoot them so their trajectory takes them right into the sun, using small payloads at a time. you could also stick jesse jackson, kathy lee gifford, and a few others up ther too.
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quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight Bob:
does anyone not notcie that sithee isnt actually talking out of his ass like a lot of people here
(Edit - Need caffeine. Not awake yet.)
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I don't believe in stereotypes. I prefer to hate people on a much more personal level.
This message has been edited by The_Stomper on June 13, 2001 at 07:19 AM
and you should eat stuff made by kosher companies. its better than non kosher, because the standards for kosher food are usually much higher, so its less chancy. you wont find any pig meat either. as an added side bonus, its blessed by a rabbi! (yay!)
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quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight Bob:
does anyone not notcie that sithee isnt actually talking out of his ass like a lot of people here
/me briefly considers becoming Jewish.
/me likes his penis intact, not mutilated.
/me decides to just eat kosher food instead.
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I don't believe in stereotypes. I prefer to hate people on a much more personal level.
quote:
Originally posted by The_Stomper:
(as in fucked with at the genetic level)
ok now see you've just proven that you're talking bollox. its that kind of prejudice against sceince just cos people dont know how stuff works that they automatically think its bad. i mean for christs sake we share 30\% of our dna with plants so putting a few genes of pig dna into a plant isnt going to automaticaly give u an allergic reaction.
we've been eating "fucked up" food for years well for ever actually havent you ever heard of cross pollination?!?!!? its like how we get different breeds of plants all the scientists are doing is chooseing the best ones for us. and its not like we dont know what we're doing 15 years of research have gone into this. its not like on the movies where they realease this stuff untested a billion dollar company can go bankrupt if ONE of their drugs ends up killing people.
scientists know EXACTLY what the gene they splice does. theres no 50/50 guessing they know!!. they've discovered and analysed the whole human geneome FFS.
U may have just been fucking about when you said that but dont do it to me in person cos its like the incredible hulk meets darwin
"don't make me angry you wont like me when i get angry" i go off the handle when people try arguing against it.
oh look i forgot to mention it is the cure to world hunger dont ask me ask the countries who ARE 3rd world and THEY say so too!!!!
here endeth the lesson
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not many cars to nick here so instead they hijack pedestrians
and run them around at terrifying leg speeds
its called git surfing
all too often the git is one of their own mothers
the latest trick? catapult them into a shop
Second, scientists do not know everything that will happen with these GM foods. There have been zero long term studies done on how these plants will effect their environment and animals that eat them. There was a pesticide back in the 50's that scientists were sure was the safest pesticide ever. I've seen videos of big groups of people just sitting there as the've been sprayed with the stuff. Only after using if for a while did we find out it's reall side-affects. We had deformed babies, whole specisies of animals almost whipped out because the damn pesticide was obsorbed into the food chain and fucked with it in a way that the scientists never thought of before. Now matter how much we may think we know something, we can't predict every since combination of events and/or reactions. These GM foods may seem safe now, but who knows what we'll find out 10 years from now. I'm not planning of buying any stock in companies that grow GM foods.
bollox
This message has been edited by demonk on June 13, 2001 at 11:05 PM
quote:
Originally posted by demonk:
First, we have the entire human gnome, but we don't know what order the genes go in, and we don't know what each one does.
Am I crazy, or is that the definition of mapping a human genome. We know where the genes are and what they look like (ie, the base-pairs that compose the gene).
quote:
There was a pesticide back in the 50's that scientists were sure was the safest pesticide ever.
...
Now[sic] matter how much we may think we know something, we can't predict every since combination of events and/or reactions.
Maybe not all permutations, but because of incidences like that (Silent Spring, etc) and many other engineering disasters, we're becoming better engineers. I trust today's engineers more because of failures and mistakes than if they had never happened.
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight Bob
ok now see you've just proven that you're talking bollox. its that kind of prejudice against sceince just cos people dont know how stuff works that they automatically think its bad.
Well, I figured that "fucked with at the genetic level" would be easier than the LONG explanation, but since you insist on claiming that I'm "prejudiced against science" and "talking bollox", here goes :
Genetic engineers isolate the gene they want, and "shoot" it into a host cell of the species they wish to transform. The host cell grows into a living organism, and if all goes well, the grown organism and its future generations will contain the gene and subsequently its characteristics.
I hope that's simple enough. That's a HELL of a lot more dangerous than crossbreeding (which occurs in nature).
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight Bob
i mean for christs sake we share 30\% of our dna with plants so putting a few genes of pig dna into a plant isnt going to automaticaly give u an allergic reaction.
Who are you, Carl Sagan? Do you know one hundred percent that it won't? No? I'd really prefer not to have to "test" every food I want to eat and (if I'm wrong) end up puking for half a week I try something new.
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight Bob:
U may have just been fucking about when you said that but dont do it to me in person cos its like the incredible hulk meets darwin
"don't make me angry you wont like me when i get angry" i go off the handle when people try arguing against it.
Since you live in Australia, there's not much chance of me meeting you face-to-face. If you're all for GM food - knock yourself out and start eating. And as for this "Incredible Hulk meets Darwin" bit - < don't make me angry you wont like me when i get angry >
(Edit - UBB code and quotes don't mix.)
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I don't believe in stereotypes. I prefer to hate people on a much more personal level.
This message has been edited by The_Stomper on June 14, 2001 at 03:22 PM
scientists are the last people to make a decisive decision about things cos they always like to be 100\% certain. you go on about the 50's poisoning. oh so that must mean that we dont learn from our mistakes and we must still be tesing our nuclear warheads by whacking them with a hammer. WTF? look how far technology has come since then. you are still letting you prejudices get in the way of FACT <----look its the word you havent being using!!!! ahhh i've gone all green ripped my shirt off and started running in sloooow moootiooon
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not many cars to nick here so instead they hijack pedestrians
and run them around at terrifying leg speeds
its called git surfing
all too often the git is one of their own mothers
the latest trick? catapult them into a shop
wtf is a bollox anyway
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I don't believe in stereotypes. I prefer to hate people on a much more personal level.
YOU SORRY PEICE OF PATHETIC DOG FETUS!!!!YOU MUST LIVE GLUED TO YOUR FUCKIN MONITOR OR ELSE YOU JUST SIMPLY SNIFF GLUE!!YOUR MOTHER AND FATHER PROBABLY ABANDONED YOU AS THEIR PERSONAL BASTARD CHILD OF LATER DAY SINNERS DIDNT THEY??GET A LIFE YOU POOR EXCUSE FOR HUMAN FLESH!!!!GODDAMNIT!!!!!!YOU SUCK!!!!!FUCK OFF AND DIE!!!!!!
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THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE HARDCORE ICON WRESTLER OF THE MIAMI VALLEY!!IF YA DONT LIKE ME...BITE ME.BUT YOU SHURE AS HELL DONT WANT TO FIGHT ME!!!!
where the hell did THAT come from?!?
if im correct (which i think i am), doesnt the US store its nuclear waste in Nevada? no one lives out in those desserts anyways.
and another point on the storage thing. they store them underground in non-earthquake zones. even with all the steel and concrete and granite, a powerful earthquake could crack one of those things.
i heard something on the news yesterday that theyre thinking of building an ABOVE ground nuclear waste storage center in San Annoffrey (spelling?). thats in California. California gets earthquakes. bad idea. and its ABOVE ground. around lots of people. very bad idea.
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I may be paranoid, but not an Andriod.
As for GM foods, can we all at least agree that is would be nice if it had to be labeled as such? A simple "(GM)" after GM ingredients would do... the ingredient list for potato chips, for example, would read
INGREDIENTS : potatoes (GM), partially hydrogenated soybean oil (GM), salt.
The Ayn Rand freaks would of course throw a fit, but the rest of us would be pleased.
Note : I personally don't have too many objections to GM food per se- love them super ripe red tomatoes - but it would be nice if it was a little more regulated.
Current problems with GM foods :
- The products don't go through a whole lot of testing. You could argue that cross-breeding doesn't go through ANY testing, but cross-breeding has a much more limited scope than GM. You can't cross-breed bacteria with plants, but GM regularly inserts bacterial genes into our food supply - and we DON'T know exactly what it will do to us or the environment.
- GM is an experimental technology, yet GM foods aren't required to be labeled as such. No matter how stupid you think they are for opposing / fearing this or that, people have a right to know what they're putting in their mouths!
- Companies that produce GM seeds are just as bad, if not worse, than IT companies when it comes to protecting their intellectual property and making insane profits off their patents. The food that's supposed to save the world by Feeding The Poor can't be afforded by the people who need to grow it, they can't share seed, they can't use seed produced by their own crops... what kind of bullshit is that?
The Oklo reactor in Gabon, Africa isa good one to look at. This reactor started up about 2 billion yrs ago and wen for about 200 million yrs. Out of all the decay products, the furtherest that any got was 100 m, and that was along a crack in the rock.
This sort of containment, where the daughter products are actually in the crystal lattice of the stuff holding it, rather that just being covered by it, is being trialled in Lucas Heights in Sydney (thats our research reactor). So far, it looks pretty good.
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"Once you have pulled the pin from Mr. Grenade, he is no longer your friend."
-Unknown (cited in nene, 2001)
quote:
if im correct (which i think i am), doesnt the US store its nuclear waste in Nevada? no one lives out in those desserts anyways.and another point on the storage thing. they store them underground in non-earthquake zones. even with all the steel and concrete and granite, a powerful earthquake could crack one of those things.
the US is currently building and trying to get approved for use the Yucca Mountain storage facility in nevada. it isn't used yet (by the way it was surveyed for geological stability, and it is perfectly save for thousands of years). right now, all high level waste is stored ON SITE, which is somewhat vulnerable to natural disasters, etc.
It was the French that were mining the deposit in Africa. They discovered that the U that they got out was depleted. They were mining a reactor.
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"Once you have pulled the pin from Mr. Grenade, he is no longer your friend."
-Unknown (cited in nene, 2001)