“There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well chosen,” he said.”

Great, these ass holes couldn’t wait until the end of the year and I wanted to see Palin as our first women president; debatable if she would be our stupidest after G.W. Bush; but fittingly our last. (I like to predict things too!)

Yes, lets talk about the apocalypse, I know the Mormons have their planets sorted and picked out, and St Peter is hiring some part time help, now the devil is really pissed off, because his goons in the Republican Party are all coming home to roost!

You know, if you have seen one reactor, you have seen them all…...Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, Bockman, the governor of Wisconson!

Rico, you got my point.  You just don’t realize yet that you got my point.

gerard:

“Probably if the bombs had never been dropped, the risk of “going nuclear” would be an even greater problem for the world to decide. The horror of that
particular “experiment” prejudiced its chances from the beginning,”

If I read you right you contradicted yourself. If the bombs hadn’t been dropped, IMO, the world would see nuclear energy as an entirely more benign and acceptable power source. Opponents are forever linking power plants with mushroom clouds. Very unfortunate.

There are “research reactors” operating all over the world, used for medical research and manufacturing process developement, etc, and no one seems to be too exercised over those. Why not?

Whomever would be at the helm of this country should DEMAND that all nuclear facilities be systematically shut down starting immediately ( or have a horizon time-line of no more than 180 days ).

The immediate push to implement solar, wind, and all other alternative types of energy should be brought enforce to replace the dangerous and extinction-able capabilities these unstable creations of man have.

Obama should be the voice of this, since he does sit in that office… but he or another would quickly be called an obvious dictator / tyrant / whatever… but we must ask ourselves:

Is the risk worth the juice? 

Can the Amerikan public sustain what we are witnessing in Japan?

****************

I would think setting up a network of 40 or 50 nuclear reactors
just north of Memphis, TN would be the best idea to provide
much needed energy to the north, east, south and west from a
centralized location. That would be the safest place in america to
utilized nuclear power plants for the benefit of americans.

Rico, it’s all gambling, using human beings for chips.  Whether coal, nuclear,
automobiles, planes, wars—some people, very often motivated by money,
decide that “it’s worth the risk” that tens of thousands of other people will die in
order to pursue any of these causes of mass death.  Some activities have
statistically more killing power than others. (Starvation ranks way up there, and
is also something some people decide while those affected are never asked, or
even considered.)

Some activities are more attractive than others and so go unchallenged—seem
more “worth the risk” than others (except to those whom that pursuit kills, and
their families).  A million things influence what happens to whom, some
controllable, some uncontrollable.  All we can do is make the wisest choices for
the most people who will be affected for good and for bad. (Which we don’t
bother to do, and which makes us indirectly guilty of great wrongs.)

Statistically, nuclear has not only a bad reputation but its way of killing is
peculiarly devious, gruesome and unpredictable.  (Nobody who ever saw an A-
bomb victim and heard his/her story could deny that.)  Because nuclear is not
well understood it is still high risk and appears to be very difficult if not
impossible to completely “control”.  In addition to that, the public is more or less
excluded from judging nuclear because it’s complicated.  Its gruesome nature
means that knowledge about it is easily suppressed. (Even our own recent ivy
college graduate President couldn’t pronounce it correctly!)

Probably if the bombs had never been dropped, the risk of “going nuclear”
would be an even greater problem for the world to decide.  The horror of that
particular “experiment” prejudiced its chances from the beginning, and it may be
that was a good thing for us, though about 200,000+ people paid the price
without ever having a chance to say “Please, No!”

gerard:

I never implied or stated that any accidental deaths are “ok.” I’m just curious as to why, when nuclear related deaths occur, there is great gnashing of teeth about shutting down the entire industry, but when coal mining deaths occur, all we do is beat up management. No call to stop using coal altogether. Besides, I could just as easily beat up Rich Trumka’s old outfit, the UMW, for not insisting on more rigorous safety standards before it let its miners go to work.

There are some activities which are inherently dangerous. That doesn’t excuse or condone the expectation of death and injury, nor should it be an excuse for quitting the activity altogether.

We get in our cars every day. Some of us might die by doing so. We know this, yet the benefit of the use of that car outweighs the risk of using it or else we wouldn’t have cars.

Rico: My posts show up twice because I’m working now on a more sensitive
keyboard than my own, and I have to be very careful not to come down too hard
on the key.  Sorry.  Now back to more important issues:
1.  Of course maybe more people have died of coal mining (thanks to the utter
carelessness of mine owners) but we’ve been mining coal for how many years in
how many places?  Besides, that doesn’t make nuclear-induced deaths and
illnesses okay, does sit?  It’s like trying to justify one war because it killed fewer
people than some other war. 
2. I’m glad to note that you did some research on after-effects and the statistical
vagueness indicating a number of unknowns.
3,  At this point I must ask you to refer to “black lung disease” with regard to coal
mining, and I’ll sign off with that—and try to be careful when I hit “submit”.

gerard:

I was talking about the habitability of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombs. The area was NOT a radiation-ridden dead zone for untold decades, as people were told to expect.

There are countless studies which address the effects of varying doses of radiation. Some very high doses can in fact kill you within minutes, with symptoms mimicking chemical or thermal burns. Lesser doses, with no immediate outward manifestations, can kill you in hours to days, usually due to internal hemorrhaging. Longer term survivors, while not succumbing to radiation directly, usually risk higher incidences of cancers, particularly thyroid cancer, which is why people are advised to take iodine as a precaution.

And there is the problem with measuring, especially years and decades later- what really caused John Doe’s cancer? It’s the cigarette debate all over again.

We also don’t know what all the long term health consequences of mining coal are either. Do we shut down the mines?

And how come your posts show up twice? Show up twice?

Nuclear waste is the gift that keeps on giving.

Thanks, Rico, for showing us what someone who knows the
costs of everything but the value of nothing looks
like.  Spoken like a true psychopath.  Cheers.  You
must be so proud of yourself.  I’ll bet you consider
yourself a big shot, in your costume… think you are
one of the elite, even.  Vile.

@gerard

Total deaths Hiroshima 202,118 http://www.warbirdforum.com/hirodead.htm

Total deaths Nagasaki ~100,000 couldn’t find any one item like I did for Hiroshima, but over time estimates track at about 50% of Hiroshima

Total deaths Chernobyl - who knows 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, 1,000,000, depends who you want to believe.

We do know this though. In 1975, the Banqiao hydroelectric dam in China collapsed during a typhoon, this caused several other dams downstream to collapse. 26,000 people were killed as a direct result of the dam collapsing. Another 145,000 deaths were caused indirectly, due to disease and famine created by the disaster; giving a total of 171,000.

rico, I’m utterly surprised by your ignorance of nuclear illnesses.  Most of them
take years to develop unless the original dose was very large.  They don’t show
up till long after exposure—unless in the case of unborn infants.  I believe I
heard somewhere that difficulties show up rather more quickly, the younger
the victim.

Also the variety of health problems are baffling, and all of the damage that
accrues is incurable.  Add to that the element of uncertainty of measurement
instruments so that some nuclear-related diseases may not be recognized as
such.

You need to learn more about the subject, even though much more is NOT
known than known.  And it might be a good idea for you to plan a trip to Japan
and visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Almost nobody with radiation sickness dies
in five days, unless they are burned to death in actual fire.  You give yourself
away there.

rico, I’m utterly surprised by your ignorance of nuclear illnesses.  Most of them
take years to develop unless the original dose was very large.  They don’t show
up till long after exposure—unless in the case of unborn infants.  I believe I
heard somewhere that difficulties show up rather more quickly, the younger
the victim.

Also the variety of health problems are baffling, and all of the damage that
accrues is incurable.  Add to that the element of uncertainty of measurement
instruments so that some nuclear-related diseases may not be recognized as
such.

You need to learn more about the subject, even though much more is NOT
known than known.  And it might be a good idea for you to plan a trip to Japan
and visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Almost nobody with radiation sickness dies
in five days, unless they are burned to death in actual fire.  You give yourself
away there.

PS. I would venture to say that more people worldwide have died from coal mining related accidents and diseases in the last five DAYS than have died from nuclear power accidents, including falling off a ladder at a nuke plant while changing a lightbulb, since Chernobyl.

We’ve had three big nuclear power accidents in, what, 50 years of nuclear power plant history. Three Mile Island- zero fatalities. Chernobyl- ?. Fukushima- zero and counting.

Yes, France gets 80% of its electricity from nukes. How many deaths and how much global warming has French electricity generation produced?  The US gets 80% of its electricity from carbon. How many deaths and how much global warming has US electricity generation produced? (Feel free to adjust for GDP/population.)

Maybe if we had more nukes in this country, that BP oil rig, or that coal mine in West Virginia, would have been unnecessary.

Anybody have stats to prove I’m wrong?

“There is talk of an apocalypse” indeed. From the luddite loonie left.

This is day what? Five? How many nuclear deaths so far?

Oettinger’s a colleague of Baron von Googleburg, so he probably copy/pasted his statement from the Greens manifesto.

The EU’s problem is that it has a surplus of unelected sufferers of Attention Deficit Disorder. 

@TDoff, please don’t nuke all the EU nukes. Nuke the EU Commission HQ, then nuke the EU Parliament Precincts in Strasbourg, Luxembourg & Brussels - game over. 

And if you’ve got a spare nuke, drop it on FIFA HQ in Geneva.

Now this is really silly, some might say stupid, that ‘Europe Hits the Panic Button Over Nuclear Power’. If there is a real problem or concern with the EU’s nuclear reactors, all it would take is the US, Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia, North Korea, the UK, France, and China to collaborate (perhaps with Iran, Venezuela, AIPAC, AEI, and Eastern Samoa, if needed) to have enough nukes to blast all the potentially troublesome EU nuclear reactors right off the face of the Earth.

Case closed, ain’t no problem can’t be solved.