Quote Originally Posted by Lance B View Post
Nuclear. I know I will be lambasted for this, but it is our only real alternative. Please read on.

Did you know that coal kills more poeople due to cancers than every other power source ever used? Yep, it has stored radioactivity in the coal which is released when burnt and this accounts for huge numbers of deaths each year. In fact, nuclear has the lowest death rate per terawatt of electricity production!!

This is just one good article:
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Opi...439/story.html

Take note of the following excerpts:

"Premature deaths as a result of exposure to radiation released during the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor 25 years ago are now predicted for just over 200 people a year. That totals 16,000 deaths by 2065. This looks like a scary figure until you compare it to the premature deaths caused by inhaling fine particulate matter released during the burning of fossil fuels, of which coal is the worst.
Over the same period of time, the number of people dying prematurely from exposure to fossil-fuel pollution will be 108 million. So, for every person killed by radiation from the Chernobyl accident, 6,750 will be killed by coal-fired electrical generating stations, household furnaces, fireplaces, barbecue briquettes, mowing the lawn and, of course, driving to the drugstore to pick up those potassium iodide pills."

And

"One should also, I suppose, add in the 63-million premature deaths that will occur between now and 2065 because of traffic accidents — one more consequence of burning fossil fuels.
So let’s add them up. It turns out that for every person expected to die prematurely because of exposure to radiation from the worst nuclear accident in history, 12,741 will die before their time thanks to exposure to fossil-fuel emissions.
Put another way, the calculation of premature deaths per terawatt hour of energy production comes to this conclusion: for coal, 161; for oil, 36; for biofuels, 12; for natural gas, four; for nuclear, 0.04."

The thing is, everyone focuses on things like ###ishima and the nuclear accident, yet not one person has died from it yet and only a handful will over the comign years, yet everyone has lost sight of the fact that the death rate from the actual tsunami was in the tens of thousands!!!



Asphyxiation due to poor air quality? Hmm, you are way overstating the facts. That will never happen as carbon dioxide accounts for .039% of our atmosphere and mans contribution to that has increased it by a miniscule amount.

Lets look at converting cars to electricity, either by storage battery and running an electric motor, or by converting water into hydrogen and either running the cars via a fuel cell to power an electric motor, or by using an internal combustion motor and burning the hydrogen. All viable alternatives to fossil fuel cars. However, whatever these optioons, they require electricity to function. Where does it come from? From power stations. What fuel will drive these power stations? Nuclear is the only real alternative, and please do not suggest that solar or wind or any other pie in the sky idea will do it. It just can't supply enough power due to present and more importantly future demands of the world.

Let's look at Australia for an example . We currently use 222,000,000,000kwh (222 billion kwh) of electricity per year (http://www.indexmundi.com/australia/...nsumption.html). Now, if we decide to use electric cars and even a minimal 50kw motor, most will need much more, think trucks and buses etc, and there are 16 million cars (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/9309.0/), that equates to 800,000,000kw being used (50kw motor x 16million cars/trucks etc). Now if we all drive the average 15,000kms (average driven by most car owners) at an average 60kmh, then that equates to 250 hours of use. So, 250 x 800,000,000kwh = wait for it........ 200,000,000,000kwh (200 billion) per year, the same as our current consumption of electricity now and we don't even use electric cars yet!! So, we have to double our electricity output just to meet the demands of electric cars!!!!! This would go for the USA, Europe, Japan and all other 1st world countries and we have haven't even factored in the developing nations like China and India just to name the big two!!!!!. And they haven't even begun to use household electricity like we do yet, let alone have more to be able to power up a car!!!

Now, all this pie in the sky talk of solar, wind etc is just that, pie in the sky. How on earth does anyone think we can add double to our worldwide output of electricity without a mix of nuclear somwhere in there?


Yes of course it's safe. Self regulation works beautifully. Oh hang on they do all the checks don’t they. It must work though they had some pretty big buckets of water ready to throw on that nuclear power plant so they must know what they're doing. Money and corruption wouldn't come into it.
You can put on a breathing apparatus if you work in an area of airborne particles. Try seeing how effective that is with radiation.
Maybe you have forgotten about the wonderfull birth defects that go on for generations. Or the fact that the area contaminated cannot be lived in used for farming it's just dead.