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Tom Friedman's Idiocy Atomique
France's atomic power industry is a failed radioactive flame. Its 58
reactors are unpopular, unsafe, uneconomical, dirty, direct agents of
global warming, weapons proliferators and major generators of atomic
waste for which there is no management solution.
But self-proclaimed "green advocate" Thomas Friedman seems to think
otherwise. In his just published New York Times op ed "Real Men Tax
Gas" Friedman applies the term "wimp" to those who fail to fight global
warming. But in true corporate style, he can't face the hard truths
about France's industrie atomique. To wit:
1) In denial verging on psychosis, Friedman says France has "managed to
deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or
panic." In fact, France's unsolved waste problem has thousands of
ultra-hot fuel rods building up at reactor sites, just like here. Its
hugely expensive attempts to reprocess spent fuel cause devastating
radiation releases into the English Channel and elsewhere, prompting
continual demands from around Europe that they stop.
2) Friedman says "France today generates nearly 80 percent of its
electricity from nuclear power plants." But he ignores "wimpy" French
public opinion that has turned decisively against building new reactors
while strongly approving new wind production. The big "Non" to new
nukes stems in part from massively inefficient, unreliable reactors,
some of which have recently been forced shut because they are
overheating the rivers meant to cool them. Is this Friedman's "macho"
solution to global warming?
3) Friedman complains that the US has "not been able or willing to
build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in
1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant
workers or neighbors." Friedman misses those 2400 "wimpy" central
Pennsylvania families who sued for widespread death and disease they
suffered after TMI's radiation releases showered their homes and
fields. The utility responsible quietly paid out more than $15 million
in secret settlements.
Friedman has also missed important new findings by nuclear engineer
Arnie Gundersen and epidemiologist Stephen Wing indicating far more
extensive TMI radiation releases and far more widespread health impacts
than previously believed.
4) Friedman complains that "we're too afraid to store nuclear waste
deep in Nevada's Yucca Mountain — totally safe — at a time when French
mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs." But
Yucca's ability to store anything except rusting rail lines is as yet
untested. The earthquake fault that runs through it is tangible and
visible. So is perched water that threatens to rain down on any
radioactive waste stored there. Yucca is surrounded by dormant
volcanoes---and by 80% opposition from "wimpy" Nevadans angry for a
wide variety of economic, health, safety and geological reasons. Nobody
in France is planning on storing high level radioactive waste in their
town squares and nobody else---here or there---wants it.
5) Friedman says "the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power,
despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover."
France's first shot at a "new generation" reactor---in Finland---is an
engineering, economic and ecological catastrophe. French taxpayers are
enraged about funding an Olkiluoto project that's years behind budget
and billions of Euros over budget. Anne Lauvergeon, the chief of
AREVA---France's nuclear front group---told me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v43ahQHvObI)
she blames Finland's regulatory framework for her woes. But a parallel
project at Flamanville, France, isn't faring much better. AREVA's
fortunes have plummeted, throwing the government-controlled agency into
deep financial crisis.
6) Friedman goes on to laud "Little Denmark" for imposing "a carbon
tax, a roughly $5-a-gallon gasoline tax." He fails to credit its
"wimpy" but fiercely effective No Nukes movement, which has kept
Denmark totally free of atomic reactors, while moving it further into
wind power percentage-wise than any other nation on Earth. Angry Danish
opposition has helped force neighboring Sweden to shut its Barsebaeck
reactors, upwind from Copenhagen.
Friedman's bizarre reactor advocacy reflects a corporate mindset too
wimpy to embrace the true Solartopian solution to our energy crisis.
Mycle Schneider, Paris-based author of WHAT FRANCE GOT WRONG (http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2053958)
in NUCLEAR ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL, gets it right: "For least cost
and greatest security, the energy future lies in affordable,
distributed, superefficient technologies, smart grids and sustainable
urbanism. France's centralised, autocratic nuclear policy symbolizes
the opposite."
The true green technologies of a Solartopian Revolution are proven,
ecologically sound and economically essential. They are also ready for
rapid installation.
But they are decentralized and subject to community control rather than
corporate domination. While Friedman and his moneyed elite continue to
grasp at the failed, centralized straw of atomic energy, technology and
history have passed them by.
"Real men"---and women---know we will never get to a green-powered
Earth by trying to ride a dead radioactive horse---even if it's French.
- Posted in
70 Comments so far
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Show me something Friedman is right about.
"The world is flat." Yeah, flattened by runaway unfettered capitalist greed.
Tom the "Friedman Unit" thinks he is the world. Hence his head is flat.
Sioux Rose
Friedman, like most mouthpieces of the MSM just takes the stance that if he says something--that lie told often enough--it will be perceived as true. That's good enough for him. As long as he gets his, the man is utterly devoid of the slightest sentiment that would issue from a soul that gave a damn about others... those likely to be exposed to radiation leaks. How about those Somali "pirates" who are fed up with seeing radioactive debris from France's plants wash up on their shores and kill the fish their natives depend upon?
Because so many right wing and/or pro-corporate types have major voices/columns/TV shows and dominate the media, it's gotten to the point where their mutual validation of false information becomes THE standard for far too many people. Since these granters of false witness are so prominently on display, the audience takes them for legitimate experts. Then if someone from our forum seeks to inform such persons by setting forth a challenge to the "official data," we're generally perceived as just one of the "little people" who are in no position to counter the arguments of these celebrity "journalists" and "well-respected" thinkers.
Harvey: Thank you for your tireless work on behalf of a thriving, sustainable Green earth, and the populations it would ideally nurture.
Thanks for your insight, Sioux, as always. Your second paragraph sums up the current dead-end of mainstream information sources:
"Because so many right wing and/or pro-corporate types have major voices/columns/TV shows and dominate the media, it's gotten to the point where their mutual validation of false information becomes THE standard for far too many people."
You could almost call it the pseudo-democratization of the "Goebbels principle."
Witness what's going on today with the "breaking news" about a new "secret" uranium-enrichment plant in Iran. The very articles screaming booga-booga in our faces actually say, if one bothers to read far enough into them, that even this "secret" plant is only engaging in 5 percent enrichment, not the 90 percent enrichment needed to develop weapons. And never mind the IAEA's repeated reports, and the new National Intelligence Estimate's reiteration, that there IS NO EVIDENCE THAT IRAN IS DEVELOPING NUCLEAR WEAPONS. It still won't prevent the MSM, and their enablers in government at home and abroad, from rattling their sabres, shaking their pseudo-voodoo dolls, and spewing their poison across the collective consciousness.
And Obama plays right along.
This has got to stop.
Sioux Rose
CLOVIS: I like that "pseudo-democratization of the Goebbel's Principle." Indeed! It's such a huge Pavlovian experiment underway. A population is for the most part kept inside a self-deceiving feedback loop, infused with 88% false information, assisted in its interpretation of tainted data by a legion of well-paid, nicely attired "experts," and then POLLED on how they respond to this faux data-stream as if their opinions represent anything remotely related to TRUTH! Goebbels, if he's observing from the other side, would probably feel like the petty criminal who learns more about the "art of crime" from others, those more established in these elaborate fictions, currently (or should I say virtually) residing on his cell-block.
This process has been going on for some 40 + years. Pour a truckload of misinfomation and falsehoods into a head from birth and you can create the perfect model Citizen.
The words anti-american or un-american are just a way this conditioning manifests itself in public discourse. People who use such terms tend to be close minded and myopic. These words are used to enforce compliance using shame as a mechanism.
It becomes un-american to try and think for oneself. This simply because thinking for oneself and questioning the viewpoints that are being spoonfed the public is a danger to the system.
It more then a little likely that at the close of second World War , when the United States was sneaking all those ex-nazis into the country to help build up the Military Industrial Complex, they bought with them a lot of the propaganda experts.
Operation Mockingbird was exposed many years ago. Many Americans are STILL not aware of what it entailed. It never really ended.
Sioux Rose
GW NORTH: All too true; but let us also remember, as per the insights revealed by John Dean in his book, "Conservatives without Conscience," that there is a natural segment of any given population that gravitates towards authority figures and strict, authoritarian protocols. There are millions in the US who think it's "God's will" that this land become a Christian theocracy. Many in these ranks are poor readers and not especially bright, and they thus believe the dis-information campaign that alleges the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation. The separation of church from state as a response to the persecutions in Europe is one facet of history that utterly escapes this crowd. That its numbers are significant in the military, the air force in particular, is troubling to me as far too many persons skilled with weapons have lost the capacity to differentiate between the faintest notion of a genuine "enemy," and that citizen who speaks out against the authority (corrupt government officials who clearly abuse the Bill of Rights and Constitution in a trail of precedents that would make a totalitarian dictator envious) of the times. Any who don't see the shadow of fascism, and/or too many ominous parallels in our homeland security state with the covert creep of Naziism into German society are asleep at the wheel, or enjoying too much their anti-depressant medication dosage.
At the time John Dean wrote that book, it sounded right but this year alone there are even supposed liberals and progressives in Congress who won't use their conscious and go progressive on the issues in general. Health care, war spending, and defunding ACORN are glaring examples. This year's surprise is bigger than any other year because I am finding even social conservatives who actually support single payer health care, hemp for industrial and medical purposes, no more corporate welfare, getting rid of the Patriot Act and restoring at least some civil liberties if not all of them, and even ending the wars and occupations themselves. I hope you weren't offended the other day when I wrote that I was sick and tired of pols carrying conservative, liberal, progressive, etc ... labels but this was why. When said about the "shadow of fascism", I thought that maybe it is the politics of wearing ideological labels to attain power that's keeping people from seeing the shadow. Sometimes, I don't know what really passes for conservative, progressive, liberal, etc ... anymore when both sides amaze us with odd support or opposition issue after issue. It is hard to know who to trust anymore.
A better title I would suggest for that book is "Politicking without Conscience".
Sioux Rose
JB: You're better informed than most people. I agree that the waters are muddied insofar as political titles/designations are concerned. This is why BEFORKIDS' idea for a "Main Street Party" was and remains a solid good one. I wish her luck! KIVALS has also shared wise arguments in this forum speaking to the need for persons across the spectrum to unite given that their basic needs and liberties are being bartered dangerously away. In other words, there is significant reason(s) to find common cause with those we normally depart company from.
The sun is now in Libra, the sign that empowers skillful negotiation and strategic compromises. It prompts the perception of WE instead of I, and represents a zone ruled by Venus and in direct opposition--or challenge--to our nation's far more pervasive Mars' rules. I hope to see some progress, although there will be ego-driven fireworks around the Aries full moon on October 3-4.
On the last sentence of your first paragraph, telling even my progressive and liberal friends and coworkers about that when they discuss politics makes them hiss. The other day I got into a political fight with someone at work and again with another that night when they called me a backdoor Republican posing as a Naderite ! Both of them voted for Obama and tried to lecture me on compromise. For one of them, I was able to argue enough with him and then confess that yes, I don't speak very well for or push third parties and that all I do is go by issues. He would still give me a laughing tone about "third parties can never win" and despite my trying to tell him that for 20 years trying to push the Democratic Party to the left has done nothing, he still insists on "being practical". He also thinks that political success is important versus anything else for which I told him that "yes, I don't believe in political success because who really wins?" On the bright side, getting into that fight finally made me realize why I never want to run for office. George Markley once told me that people elect politicians rather than real leaders. On your first sentence, thanks. I think that when all is said and done, growing up with and/or meeting people associated with various political ideologies that share some common ideas is a blessing in disguise. I take it that you also grew up with a variety of people associated with various political ideologies.
On your second paragraph, thanks for another homework assignment for me to think about. Take care. :)
Jennifer Bedingfield,
Don't let anyone scold you about voting third party. I've been doing it since I had the right to vote, I'm 29 now. Neither you, I or anyone else needs to accept the outrageous idea that we ought to vote for the lesser of two evils. Morally prosperous people genuinely interested in changing the world into a better place for everyone will recognize that, at least as far as the US and its actions are concerned, the two-party duopoly absolutely will not bring change especially in and of the fact that these two-parties are little different, if at all. It's the illusion that they are that keeps Americans in this morally decrepit state.
Hi "I voted Nader",
Me too. Pleased to meet you. :)
My main reason I vote third party on all levels has nothing to do with who is affiliated with what party but instead on the issues. 9 out of 10 times, when I vote based on the issues, I rarely vote Democrat or Republican. Ralph Nader was a special case. I have discussed this before in the past but in case it's tough to find it in the archives, to make it brief, when I got to study Nader a lot as the 2000 election was getting more boring, there was so much about his lifetime records of courage, fighting spirit, and more that I had a heart for him. I knew that I get scolded across the political spectrum from my Republican leaning parents to my supposed progressive/liberal friends and coworkers but I didn't and still don't mind it. I just can't feel comfortable picking a perceived "winner" and then having buyer's remorse for 4 or 8 years. I don't care what party or ideology label one wears but what it is they have to show for their candidacy. I don't judge books by their book covers but by their contents. But that doesn't mean I don't keep a more suspicious eye on the Republican and Democrat candidates. With those two parties, nothing but hot air comes out of it. There's more to write about all this but I thought I'd give a start.
There are a growing number of remorseful voters who wished they hadn't voted Obama. I'm willing to forgive them if I can sense that they really mean it. Given the way things are going, I myself am quite surprised that Obama and his party would do so bad so fast even though this was third time I voted Nader.
P.S.: You are one year above my age. I'm happy to meet people around our ages here. :)
Get a copy of the film "Arsenal of Hypocrisy" from the Global Network for lots of detail about the importation of NAZIs after WWII and the effect this has had on US policy and propaganda: www.space4peace.org.
For a weasel who is both neoconservative and neoliberal in one, I am not surprised. His perverse logic of thinking both on foreign policy and economic policy is consistent but strongly biased. It's "grow" and kill at all costs just to fluff and puff what he values more in his prejudiced mind.
As if Friedman wasn't enough of a charlatan on economic issues his new found career as an environmentalist moves us from the sublime to the ridiculous. Resolved: Friedman is an environmentalist in the same way golf courses are conserving nature.
Fore!
If there were a Nobel Prize for Flogging the Dead Horse of Utter Bullshit, Tom (Tough Hombre) Friedman would already have won it numerous times. Of all the execrable MoFo's, guttersnipes, cabrones and paskudnyaks in the United States, this little punk takes the three layer cake.
Ah, nuke plants ... I remember, as a kid, the miracle of atomic energy. Radiation could make plants grow bigger and faster, cure disease, and reduce our utility bills to pennies. And, even better, radiation could kill anything it touched, cause some very nasty cancers, and vaporize entire cities. And this wonderful gift never goes away. Atoms for Peace - what a concept!.
Sioux Rose
SMIP: Adding to your post: "Now part of this delicious new toothpaste! Who says the DOD doesn't recycle?! And it's green, to boot!"
Ah, and radium dials on wrist watches!
Remember "The Friendly Atom" and all those "educational" films - put out by General Electric, fancy that.
I, too, remember the development of nuclear energy in the fifties. It was going to be "too cheap to meter".
"Friedman has also missed important new findings by nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen and epidemiologist Stephen Wing indicating far more extensive TMI radiation releases and far more widespread health impacts than previously believed."
In Syracuse, NY, a physicist at Syracuse University measured increased background radiation levels during the TMI "incident". He was muzzled very quickly.
Hey, billionaire by marriage Tom Friedman! SUCK. ON. THIS.
Funny article. No facts, only hearsay and innuendo. Look at the title...
It's a well known fact that coal power plants release more radioactive materials in the air than the nuclear plants ship to safe storage. What is less known is that oil is responsible for direct nuclear pollution. How so? The answer is resource wars. In the absence of a new radical scientific discovery, there are only two options, peace nukes or war nukes - with or without actual nuclear weapons.
Conventional resource wars create many times more nuclear pollution than anything else related to nuclear power. The US expended 2000 tons of depleted uranium just in the Iraq war, that makes, at a concentration of 0.2%, 4,000 kilograms of pure U-235. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima contained about 25 kilograms U-235.
So the oil in Iraq costs the unburned fuel of 160 Hiroshima size bombs dispersed over agricultural areas, plus many tons of other radioactive materials. You might be getting some of the food produced there, courtesy of globalization. Not to speak about the fate of soldiers and civilians on the ground - from both sides. Depleted uranium was used also in the first Iraq war, in the war against Serbia and in Afghanistan. Add it up, to glimpse at only a small part of the future without peace nukes.
Ok Arktig, I see you are a big enthusiast of nuclear energy but let's get some more facts straight. In addition to the issues of waste storage and disposal, there is another disadvantage of going nuclear (courtesy of an older post by my older friend JWVerez from a long time ago). He has studied a lot of physics courses earlier in his life before getting to computer engineering. He had this to say when he emailed me.
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Nuclear waste can build up and the military will be ready to request that they be allowed the privilege of using it for warfare. They could easily churn up some deals with the energy companies. From there, the energy companies can then invent an energy crisis and price gounge customers. In the meantime, the waste is redirected to nuclear WMDs. The energy companies and the military industrial complex win but the customers lose. Safety and health are critical but as such, one is generally not covered when it comes to nuclear. Even Wall Street opposes nuclear technologies for energy.
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P.S.: No, we do not support fossil fuel waste technologies either. Both nuclear and fossil fuels are dangerous long term. I'll take solar and wind any day.
Thanks JB.
Arktig will simply assert "those problems are resolved" or "there is nothing difficult about that" without actually acknowledging or refuting anything anyone says about serious problems with nuclear power. Probably impossible to have a discussion with him/her, but important to keep pointing out real problems with nukes.
When i pointed out that byproducts of nuclear processing are used in depleted uranium weapons, he/she just said that the military can get uranium if it wants to, ignoring the fact that the military IS WEAPONIZING byproducts of nuclear processing, and not explaining how this will change or how resource wars will end when we build more nukes.
Leave it in the ground.
I have heard lots of arguments for and against nuclear. Unfortunately, those who go enthusiastic for nuclear energy as the energy solver go insenstive on the health and safety issues associated with nuclear. It's bad enough that the military here and around the world is capable of misusing nuclear waste for weaponry. Adding more of this will only make nuclear wars even more likely. I don't feel comfortable going nuclear much as I hate staying status quo with fossil fuels. Both are equally dangerous. I'm sure there are some issues that Arktig and us can agree on but the nuclear issue just isn't one of them.
A lot of the health and safety issues have received little publicity, even now.
The logistics involved in the various class action suits that might conceivably come to light are considerable, but the culpability of industry and particularly government is immense, particularly since the damage is and will continue to be ongoing - our children's children's children on for thousands of years.
Uranium at various stages of enrichment can be produced in large quantities specifically for the purpose of "depleted" munition manufacturing and for bomb manufacturing. There is no shortage of uranium and other heavy but radioactive materials outside the power generation industry. You have no argument here, What the military want, they get.
I promote nuclear because I go by the numbers. I also wish we had some magical solution which didn't involve nuclear energy. I sure hope for solar, wind or fusion to show some real results of scale. But I'm not seeing them at the moment. There is nothing else, unfortunately.
Wall Street opposes nuclear technologies because they want to manipulate the lucrative oil market. Check out how much they make there.
I support everyone's right to head back to the trees, get off the grid or compassionately save the world according to the vogue of the day... ON INDIVIDUAL BASIS! I also support everyone's right to invent something better than we have now, double that. Everything else is off limits.
"There is no shortage of uranium and other heavy but radioactive materials outside the power generation industry. You have no argument here, What the military want, they get."
I may not have served in the military but my older friend who lost his limbs to this bloody Vietnam War has better knowledge of this matter and he can smell foul play likely to come up with a bad idea any day. I wished he'd show up and explain the numbers to you but all he has time to do is email on the occasion now that he's finally back to life.
"Wall Street opposes nuclear technologies because they want to manipulate the lucrative oil market. Check out how much they make there."
That would be true except that nuclear energy will not get us off our dependence on oil. As a matter of fact, more fossil fuels will need to be burned to build, maintain, and operate the nuclear facilities. I'll stick to solar(once I can move to an HOA free house) and conservation and fuel efficiency.
There's no reason to believe societies would not fight for uranium resources just like hydrocarbon resources.
There's no reason to believe that the US, to choose the lead example, is fighting to get carbon resources that they could buy for far less. No, those wars are to stop the flow of these resources to other countries. If other resources become popular, the motive to fight in other places to shut other resources off remains the same.
The only solution actual energy independence, not re-fixing one's dependence on a new and yet more dangerous material, like uranium.
There's no reason to imagine that the only alternatives are coal | nukes. Neither could be shut down tomorrow without problems, but both could be taken down over a very few years.
also very well put. to me the PRIMARY problem with fission is that it has a fuel. Indeed, that's probably why it gets so much promotion from the 'powers that be'. These same powers know that all power and wealth is RELATIVE. The easiest way to extract tribute from others is to own the resource they need to do EVERTHING THAT TAKES ENERGY TO DO (which is everything). So of course they don't want solar, wind, wave, hydro, etc. Those power sources are available to anyone with the ability to front the initial cost of the energy absorber technology.
Well put.
I froth at the mouth if I read Friedman, so I appreciate Wasserman filling me in on what I missed...or didn't, of course...
we need this planet...in working order...our business only make things worse...
conclusion? we must stop...
Arktig---
Even if I take your stats on depleted uranium on faith, you are setting up a false dichotomy. For example, where do you think the "depleted uranium" came from in the first place? Nuclear power plants!
But to cut to the chase, you really do need to read Harvey Wasserman's book, Solartopia..., to comprehend why we don't need Iraq's oil or the other highly polluting hydrocarbons on which our protofascist society has been made dependent. He has been researching and writing about nuclear energy over more time than Tom Friedman has, but because his conclusions differ from those who profit from poison (including those who manufacture weapons of mass destruction from nuclear "waste"), his views are suppressed while the views of the dilettante Friedman are given currency from on high.
Or, to turn an old axiom (Truth is the first casualty of war) on its head, War is the first casualty of truth. Wasserman opposed war on Iraq; Friedman enthusiastically endorsed it. Wasserman is humanitarian and global in his thinking and has been an environmental activist for decades; Friedman's recent greeniness came very late to the party and then only when it became corporately trendy (like the BP logo). Friedman is really just a glib troglodyte on meth or the corporate equivalent his NYTimes health-care plan affords him.
Here is something you'll never see: Friedman and Wasserman debating on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS!!!
But to return to your stats on depleted uranium in Iraq, we have contaminated an entire global region with an invisible radioactive toxic waste, contaminating the gene pool of every vertebrate in the region. An international war crime. So much for our government's respect for life. "God told me to invade Iraq." "He tried to kill my daddy." Truly infantile; may Dubya spend the remainder of his life in Crawford curled in a fetal position in Laura's lap as she strokes his temple cooing, "there there."
-30-
I already replied to similar concerns but I'll repeat it here, sorry about that.
Uranium at various stages of enrichment can be produced in large quantities specifically for the purpose of "depleted" munition manufacturing or for nuclear bombs. There is no shortage of uranium ore and other heavy but radioactive materials outside the power generation industry. What the military want, they get.
I promote nuclear because I go by the numbers. I also wish we had some magical solution which didn't involve nuclear energy. I sure hope for solar, wind or fusion to show some real results of scale. But I'm not seeing them at the moment. There is nothing else, unfortunately.
Well you seem to assume that you can stop the wars... or you can live with drastically reduced energy footprint... all I can say... try it, it hasn't worked until now, but may be you are the lucky one...
I support everyone's right to head back to the trees, get off the grid or compassionately save the world according to the vogue of the day... ON INDIVIDUAL BASIS! I also support everyone's right to invent something better than we have now, double that. Everything else is off limits.
There is no mass uranium enrichment outside of the preparation for plants and war. Certainly the military gets what they want. That is part of the problem, not an indication that the industry is benign.
If you promote nuclear power, you must have the wrong numbers. Development didn't stop in the '80's because Westinghouse, Bechtel, and GE got sentimental. I happened because certain radioactive byproducts that they released got rated over 100,000 times more deadly than they had previously been, and they stood to lose a lot of money.
Sun, wind, and water are not "magic." These options all generate electricity - where they are used and when they are used. So does reducing energy footprint: the US burns more, but lives less well than most industrial nations. And Americans are only slightly more bought into fallacies of consumption than Europeans.
The energy problem will require solutions whatever happens to the wars. These may determine who uses energy, but they will create none.
Talk of "off limits" seems spurious, frankly.
A homeowner can now invest in photovoltaic cells and make money back on his investment over the course of a couple years. What that means is that solar has already become cheaper to the public than current power methods, even if you discount the huge public subsidy of the nuclear power industry and its failure to dispose of its waste, or the huge subsidy of the coal industry by the refusal to charge it for its damage to the planet.
Big power companies would have to invest in more land to do that, so the economic picture is different for them than for individuals. Nuclear and wind power require the relative disenfranchisement of big electric companies, so they don't like it as a large-scale solution.
No magic there.
Ah technocrats.
No you don't "go by the numbers". You "go by the numbers in your simplistic reductionist model". There's a difference. Anything that technocrats cannot account for, cannot quantify properly, do not know how to quantify properly, they assume does not matter, and do not include in their models.
At least France has free healthcare to treat all the cancers produced by nukes.
One big advantage of nukes you forgot to mention is that the nuke industry is not liable for the forever increasing cancers they produce.
Don't tell me Big Nuclear is paying you to talk like this.
Sorry Bill, nuclear power generates a wide variety of radioactive waste, that all emit pollution of a type which cannot be dealt with in an expeditious way, now or in the future. The nature and the danger of nuclear material, whether used as a fuel or left in its natural state is immutable; radioactive decay rates and gamma ray emissions cannot be altered in an appreciable manner by any science. At least with hydrocarbons, we have a handle on the science in dealing with its waste products, CO2, NO2, and so on. It is only a matter of will and a certain degree of compromise and sacrifice, albeit a large and growing one, to bringing the problem under control and at the same time introduce less innocuous alternatives, perhaps even a better way of life.
Nuclear on the other hand, and the amount of radioactive pollution generated by the thousands of reactors that would be needed, yes thousands, would be a disaster and in a world where a handful of fanatics can turn the world upside down with their insanity and a couple of planes, the security of all life on the planet could ultimately be at risk. I don't want that world, but it may already be an inchoate reality. Look at how easy the mafia in Italy injected itself into the disposal of nuke waste, that now sits, in thirty ships, at the bottom of the Mediterranean; there is no procedures in existence to mitigate this, what may end up being the biggest environmental disaster ever.
As it is, we can only be held ransom by our current use of oil, but to replace it with nuclear could lead to a threat from under which we may never emerge. However, I do commend you on your position and concern on global warming, but what we are faced with goes far beyond simply finding a replacement for oil, indeed we may necessarily need to change our basic understanding of what is important to ours and the planets survival. Nuclear has its place, don't get me wrong, but as a technology to become dependent on, it can only make fools of us all, especially in light of how we became dependant on oil and the disaster it has caused.
"There are several different schemes whereby it can be safely modified.'
Sir, you are biased because you gain income from the Nuclear industry. When you no longer depend or your sustenance from said industry, then you might be objective.
Why don't you take a look at Kramer Junction, California to see what the future holds. Yes, I know that pay in the nuclear industry is quite lucrative compared with solar and wind, but those are the breaks of the game. Nuclear is no longer in the game. Retrain and survive.
1. If the current fleet of reactors in France are uneconomical, how can France have the lowest electricity costs in Europe?
The companies do not pay the majority of the costs.
Most costs, such as the cost of waste storage and medical problems, are government subsidies that you're not counting in costs. The problems of waste storage are mostly postponed, given that we have many thousands of years of storage to pay for.
2. Just because a government does something is no indication that it's correct or safe.
3. CO2 emissions are not the general problem with nuclear plants. Radioactive emissions, waste disposal, the probability of continued catastrophic accidents over the thousands of years when the material must be rehandled need be factored into your analysis.
As to Mr. Wasserman's being "disengenuous," let's try this:
Light water reactors do not make fissionable uranium. However, not all nuclear plants are light water reactors, and not all arms involving plant products are nuclear bombs. The US is rendering huge amounts of the Middle East uninhabitable from the effects of DU ammunition, with the support of the nuclear energy industry.
Limits on "thermal pollution" from nuclear plants exist, but get violated fairly regularly. The allowed thermal pollution is still considerable, though this is a light problem compared to the others that the plants cause.
Friedman, being not much taller than Robert Reich (who doesn't worry whether he's a real man or not), constantly needs machismo projects & the "real man" rhetoric to pump up his image -- most notoriously, the Tom Selleck-like photo that accompanied his column for years.
Having been the Whoop-It-Up-Bomb-Iraq-To-Show-We-Mean-Business Liar-in-Chief for the Times under the Bush junta, Tiny Fleeman has been trying to skitter back to some sort of civilized posture, tho' I expect in a day or so we'll get something urging us to BOMB BOMB BOMB Iran NOW to prove that REAL MEN arent afraid of their mistakes . . .
wtf. your 'height' bias reminds me of other peoples race bias. Grow up.
Billy asks:
"If the current fleet of reactors in France are uneconomical, how can France have the lowest electricity costs in Europe?"
Ever hear of government subsidies?
Regarding cooling "thermal power plants" Billy writes:
"France doesn't have a problem with coal plants because they don't have any." Actually, France has almost no coal, which is one strategic reason they went for nuclear in the first place.
Also, Billy's paragraph starting with "All thermal power plants require cooling water..." demonstrates real ignorance regarding the various energy production processes he names.
Finally, as to the economies of nuclear power plants, decommissioning of them, which is inevitable, is treated as an economic externality, as is the need to store their radioactive waste products for what in human time amounts to an eternity.
-30-
I don't believe for a second that Frances low energy costs are due to subsidies. You can subsidize all sorts of things, but energy is the bedrock on which a society is built. There is no hiding it, if it's too expensive.
That's right. The question is where would France get the subsidies from? France has trade deficit... they don't print the world currency as we do (shaky as it is)... There is nothing that France can use to subsidize its energy. If they didn't have nuclear energy, they would be long bankrupt.
Gasoline, $7.00/gallon
Stig, this might be educational for you:
Gas prices around the world, March, 2005
Netherlands Amsterdam $6.48
Norway Oslo $6.27
Italy Milan $5.96
Denmark Copenhagen $5.93
Belgium Brussels $5.91
Sweden Stockholm $5.80
United Kingdom London $5.79
Germany Frankfurt $5.57
France Paris $5.54
Portugal Lisbon $5.35
Hungary Budapest $4.94
Luxembourg $4.82
Croatia Zagreb $4.81
Ireland Dublin $4.78
Switzerland Geneva $4.74
Spain Madrid $4.55
Japan Tokyo $4.24
Czech Republic Prague $4.19
Romania Bucharest $4.09
Andorra $4.08
Estonia Tallinn $3.62
Bulgaria Sofia $3.52
Brazil Brasilia $3.12
Cuba Havana $3.03
Taiwan Taipei $2.84
Lebanon Beirut $2.63
South Africa Johannesburg $2.62
Nicaragua Managua $2.61
Panama Panama City $2.19
Russia Moscow $2.10
Puerto Rico San Juan $1.74
Saudi Arabia Riyadh $0.91
Kuwait Kuwait City $0.78
Egypt Cairo $0.65
Nigeria Lagos $0.38
Venezuela Caracas $0.12
Dept. of Energy, 9/21/09, five days ago.
Belgium $7.03
France $6.83, wow, you're right it isn't $7.00/gallon
Germany $7.16
Italy $7.04
Netherlands $7.60
UK $6.49
US $2.79
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/gas1.h
Get lost? LOL. Now, look at that bottom number; although it doesn't indicate a comparable tax burden on the American consumer, it does represent a subsidy, and a price support system that encourages an unconscionable waste, that places it as the number one greenhouse gas emitter on the planet. That low price is a subsidy and for Americans, a license to directly pollute the environment in a way that, in the future will be seen as genocidal.