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Obama’s Nuclear Option
President Barack Obama is going nuclear. He announced the initial $8 billion in loan guarantees for construction of the first new nuclear power plants in the United States in close to three decades. Obama is making good on a campaign pledge, like his promises to escalate the war in Afghanistan and to unilaterally attack in Pakistan. And like his “Af-Pak” war strategy, Obama’s publicly financed resuscitation of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. is bound to fail, another taxpayer bailout waiting to happen.
Opponents of the plan, which includes a tripling of existing nuclear plant construction-loan guarantees to $54.5 billion, span the ideological spectrum. On its most basic level, the economics of nuclear power generation simply doesn’t make sense. The cost to construct these behemoths is so huge, and the risks are so great, that no sensible investor, no banks, no hedge funds will invest in their construction.
No one will loan a power company the money to build a power plant, and the power companies refuse to spend their own money. Obama himself professes a passion for the free market, telling Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “We are fierce advocates for a thriving, dynamic free market.” Well, the free market long ago abandoned nuclear power. The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation remarked, “Expansive loan guarantee programs ... are wrought with problems. At a minimum, they create taxpayer liabilities, give recipients preferential treatment, and distort capital markets.”
Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a longtime critic of the nuclear power industry, told me, “If you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to 10 times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about 20 to 40 times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas.”
In his 2008 report “The Nuclear Illusion,” Lovins writes, “Nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options.”
The White House Office of Management and Budget, in the same statement announcing the $54.5 billion for nuclear power, also listed a “credit subsidy funding of $500 million to support $3 [billion] to $5 billion of loan guarantees for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.” Thus, just one-tenth the amount for nuclear is being dedicated to energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. At the same time, the Obama administration plans to cancel funding for the hugely unpopular Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists told The Christian Science Monitor the Obama administration “doesn’t have a plan for [storing] radioactive waste from a new generation of nuclear power plants. That is irresponsible.”
The waste from nuclear power plants is not only an ecological nightmare, but also increases the threats of nuclear proliferation. Obama said in his recent State of the Union address, “We’re also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people—the threat of nuclear weapons.” Despite this, plans that accompany what Obama has proposed, his “new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,” include increased commercial “nuclear fuel reprocessing,” which the Union of Concerned Scientists calls “dangerous, dirty and expensive,” and which it says would increase the global risks of both nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.
Both Lovins and the Union of Concerned Scientists debunk the myth that nuclear energy is essential to combat global warming. Lovins writes, “Every dollar invested in nuclear expansion will worsen climate change by buying less solution per dollar.” Obama said that this first tranche of public funding, which will benefit the energy giant Southern Co., “will create thousands of construction jobs in the next few years, and some 800 permanent jobs.” Yet investment in solar, wind and cogeneration technologies could do the same thing, quickly creating industries here in the U.S. that are thriving in Europe. What’s more, the risks of failure of a windmill or a solar panel are minute when compared with nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
From economics, to the environment, to the prevention of nuclear threats, Obama’s nuclear loan guarantees fail on all counts.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
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90 Comments so far
Show AllOne word: Fusion.
We need a national effort of $30-$100B to solve this problem, about the same cost as the Apollo Program in today's dollars. The $1.5B/yr that has been spent by the previous administration is less than life support, and so most research has been on hold for over 10 years.
Why are people afraid of this option?
>>Why are people afraid of this option?<<
It would upset the apple carts of nearly all energy companies, truly cheap and green electrical energy is seen as a big threat (while nuclear isn't -- they can crunch the numbers also). Fusion would be developed from non-profit foundation grants and government aid, so wouldn't have the patent protections that industrial developed equipment would, in other words anyone with the technical base could build one.
what a nightmare scenario for Exxon, BY, Chevron, etc. So they've subtly fought against this idea.
Gary
"It sometimes seems necessary to suspend one's normal critical faculties not to find the problems of fusion overwhelming."
— W. E. Metz, Science (1976), reprinted in Ervan G. Garrison, A History of Engineering and Technology
Hmmmm. Energy from fusion would not be cheap, and is way beyond non-profit funding. Even if Bill Gates threw every penny he and Micro$oft owned into the project, we would have a small prototype at best. Unless there is a huge paradigm shift in our way of thinking about fusion containment, this will not be for the faint-hearted (or non-major-industrialized country). But who knows where we will be in 50 years with sustained research funding?
Thanks, Amy... a well-thought out and framed overview of another Obama folly.
Nuclear fusion is really no answer to the energy problem. It may not create as much waste as fission but it does create nuclear waste. Besides, no one has been able to create a reliable working model of a fusion reactor.
Nowhere are the battle lines between the old and new worlds more distinct than in the energy sector, where entrenched interests (fossil fuels and nukes) are spending ungodly amounts of money to stave off transitions to better technologies.
The worst part is that the bad old guys are winning pretty much only in the US (and possibly Israel), which will soon find itself decades behind the rest of the world. Our industries will find other nations boycotting US products to protest our polluting.
In the meantime, we're stuck with the corporate lie machine at Fox News and technocretins like James Inhofe claiming that snowfall proves that there's no global climate change.
q
Nuclear FUSION does NOT create any nuclear waste whatsoever.. Do you even understand the concept?.. We aren't dealing with radioactive isotopes in fusion reactors.. Fusion is the process of converting hydrogen atoms to helium atoms, the same as our own sun. Neither hydrogen nor helium can remotely be considered 'nuclear waste'. You are correct however, that there's no current real world model of such a reactor, and is probably decades away at least.
Why stop at fusion? If you want to spend 8 Billion on a sci fi technology, why not power the US with the engines of the starship enterprise? I saw it on tv!!!
...Then there are existing green technologies, but they aren't so lucrative for Obama's employers.
"Although these types of reactors would not have the fission product waste disposal problem of fission reactors, fusion reactors generate large number of fast neutrons, leading to large quantities of radioactive byproducts."
http://www.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/14/2.html
Also, you failed to address the point that no functional fusion reactor has been developed.
q
As I understand it, the helium 3 based reactor gets rid of most of those neutrons. However, helium 3 is quite scarce on Earth, and as you note, the standard reactor designs haven't yet proven feasible for real power generation. There may (or may not) be hope that some alternate design, such as the Farnsworth Fusor / Bussard reactor may succeed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
>Also, you failed to address the point that no functional fusion reactor has been developed.<
It's the last sentence of my original post, did you even bother reading it?
We have a working fusion reactor. It's called the Sun. It's 93 million miles away, which is a relatively safe distance. I say that as a melanoma survivor. Anyway, it works pretty well and probably will continue to work for another 5 billion years. All we need to do is figure out how to optimize the energy we receive from it, which is all the energy we have ever and will ever receive from anywhere. It's all "solar" energy, traced back to the original source (well maybe you could argue that geothermal is not solar in origin).
Conservation is the least expensive solution and also creates the most employment. How about $8.5 billion in loan guarantees for energy efficient housing?
Very good points, jareilly
10% of the money for nuclear will go to clean green energy.
The people received approximately 5% percent of all bank bailout money.
The education budget is roughly 5% of the 2009 defense budget.
Obama is taking trickle down to new heights undreamt of by Reagan and Bush.
The people suffer and King Obama throws them crumbs.
Your words are sad but true.
"The atomic power corporations are beating on the doors in Washington to make you guarantee their financing for more giant nuclear plants. They are pouring money and applying political muscle to Congress for up to $50 billion in loan guarantees to persuade an uninterested Wall Street that Uncle Sam will pay for any defaults on industry construction loans. . . . The atomic power industry does not give up. Not as long as Uncle Sam can be dragooned to be its subsidizing, immunizing partner. Ever since the first of 100 plants opened in 1957, corporate socialism has fed this insatiable atomic goliath with many types of subsidies."
- Ralph Nader
Staggering numbers
As to the risks, the mainstream media’s handling—or non-handling—of the U.S. government’s most comprehensive study on the consequences of a nuclear plant accident is instructive. Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences 2 (known as CRAC-2) was done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the 1980s. Bill Smirnow, an anti-nuclear activist, has tried for years to interest media in reporting on it—sending out information about it continually.
The study estimates the impacts from a meltdown at each nuclear plant in the U.S. in categories of “peak early fatalities,” “peak early injuries,” “peak cancer deaths” and “costs [in] billions.” (“Peak” refers to the highest calculated value—not a “worst case scenario,” as worse assumptions could have been chosen.) For the Indian Point 3 plant north of New York City, for example, the projection is that a meltdown would cause 50,000 “peak early fatalities,” 141,000 “peak early injuries,” 13,000 “peak cancer deaths,” and $314 billion in property damage—and that’s based on the dollar’s value in 1980, so the cost today would be nearly $1 trillion. For the Salem 2 nuclear plant in New Jersey, the study projects 100,000 “peak early fatalities,” 70,000 “peak early injuries,” 40,000 “peak cancer deaths,” and $155 billion in property damage. The study provides similarly staggering numbers across the country.
On Long Island, in Suffolk County in particular, we are still paying for Shoreham, years after it was shut down, a nuclear power plant which basically never provided power in the first place -- a hugely expensive behemoth that is totally useless. I don't think we're ever going to stop paying for it. I believe we still have the dubious distinction of paying the highest electric rates in the country.
you chose to do that! If you had expeditiously used the plant you probably would have some of the lowest rates in the country..... you traded freedom from unwarranted fears for your high rates. I expect similar concerns about global warming, the environment generally, and picturesque scenery you will always have high rates....that is OK,a choice,
Whoever is advising Obama should be fired.NOW. If there is a galvanizing issue this is it.
Obama your crew loves to CBO score things. How about scoring a program to retro every home in the USA with solar hot water,solar power and or wind. These items must be built in the USA by citizens of this (once) great country.
Where is the vision for a sustainable energy future? What happened to the idea of natural gas to take up the slack while we start this energy transition?
Long story short....if you go nuke it will take years to get the first power from it. Retro and true green options could be ramped up quickly and start putting us back to work.
Jimmy Carter was right in this vision. 30 years of destruction. Can we "change"?
Obama hired the people who are advising him and they are keeping his pipeline of corporate campaign contributions full to overflowing.
Why would he want to fire them?
Yes, where are the CBO scores and all options on the table? How ironic it is that some of the world's biggest corporations and state run banks support the Socialist president's command economy.
Nuclear is centralized planning of massive infrastructure with poorly managed costs going to closely held interests. The public provids a blank check. If all goes well and the investment doesn't destroy their community, the best they can hope for is competitively priced electricity, which is questionable given that the investment itself requires ongoing, open ended funding for maintenance and decommissioning, not to mention still unresolved waste disposal.
If a similar amount of money was spent on conservation, weatherization, solar, wind, passive solar design, hot water, radiant heating, and research and development as well as investment in production, there would be two important differences from the nuclear investment. One, jobs and a diverse stimulus program, which are desperately needed, can begin immediately. And secondly, the investment made produces dividends that increase over time. Furthermore, the return is diverse, with the dividends paid to the people, both the people who made the investment to lower their bills as well as the workers and employers who provided the goods and services.
Similar to healthcare. Medicare for all would diffuse the benefits throughout society, while the command economy of top down government-corporate proprietary solutions always cost the public more.
I really liked this article. It contains a lot of good information. One of my major concerns with going nuclear is the waste. What do we do with the waste? I just feel that there are better and more Green energy sources that we should be developing and like many am disappointed that President Obama has chosen the path he is on.
Even though I didn't vote for him because he hadn't earned my vote, I knew that others who I respect for their work over the years in the Environment, felt that President Obama would push forward and develop Green energy. President Obama is at the helm now, and must start taking responsiblity for his actions. We must stop making excuses and blaming everything on Bush, but start excepting that this President is not going to be the strong Green President that many thought he was going to be. That on the issues of nuclear energy and clean coal that we are going to be fighting each other.
President Obama has made his mind up and is moving in the direction that he believes is best. We Greens and all reasonable people who believe this is insanity must fight this. The chldren of this country deserve better and if we don't fight for them and future generations who will? Common Dreams has some of the best Progressive minds I have seen on the internet. Even though we are on the internet we can network together and brainstorm ideas and in our local communities enact some of the ideas that we come up with on Common Dreams into practice. There is a lot we can do. Yes, we talk and share ideas, we get to know each other through our comments, and hopefullly encourage and inspire each other to keep on fighting against this development of nuclear energy and clean coal. Now is not the time to just give up.
I have seen first hand how networking together on the computer on a site like Common Dreams of people moving their computer activism into real life political activism. These right wing sites get people to be active on their internet site and slowly bring them into real life activism and therefore their power keeps growing. Why can't we Progressives do the same thing for our side and take out of the White Nationalist playbook of what is working for them and make it work for us? Why can't Common Dreams and other Progressive sites be the beginning of Greens and Progressives staging the fight to stop this policy of more nuclear power plants and clean coal?
We all have our gifts and talents we can bring to the fight. I am not a great mind but I do have a heart and I can encourage, inspire, and when we feel like giving up the motivation to keep fighting. Someone else who has a great mind might think of battle plans that we could use in our fight to stop the new nuclear power plants being built. Someone else might have money that they can contribute to the fight in printing up pamplets that other of us can hand out to the people. I like to think that if a wave of people who are willing to each use our gifts and talents for the good of our Cause that we will make a difference and can stop this so called energy plan of President Obama.
"What do we do with the waste?"
The MIC (Military Industrial Complex) will make DU (Depleted Uranium) artillery. It is the perfect solution to the toxic waste from those plants (if you have stock in those plants).
Learn something every day.
The amount of misinformation about nuclear is astounding. Depleted uranium used in artillery shells is basically the natural uranium metal from mined ore that has had some of the particular isotope U235 removed, ie "depleted" in the process of making enriched Uranium fuel for nuclear reactors. The "waste" uranium fuel discharged from nuclear reactors is a "mixture" of all manner of unbelievably radioactive and toxic substances. That "stuff" is not used in armor shells--- the soldiers using ,storing, transporting, and within hundreds of feet of them would die---rather quickly. The depleted uranium used in armor shells is no more radioactive than the stuff right out of the mine, but if you concentrate it into a metal (uranium) and blast it into the air spreading it around in very small inhalable particles, then it becomes dangerous to health much higher than the stuff just lying on or under the ground in its natural ore state.
VERY good, positive ideas. Now HOW DO WE PUT THEM TO WORK?
By the way, it's being taken for granted that many of us know that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLEAN COAL.
I just wonder what Barack and Michelle tell their daughters about the future they envision for them.
How could anyone with children continue to make such ridiculous decisions based upon nothing but greed?? He must really be the Manchurian president.
Will not Melia and Sasha require unpolluted air to breathe? Uncontaminated food to eat? Fresh, clean water to drink?
Do they elites really have some kind of super powers we're unaware of that will enable them to survive the complete degradation of the Earth or a nuclear holocaust??
This kind of insane thinking may extend to Dr. Strangelove's dream
of "survival" in underground bunkers -- ??
Basically, it's more suicidal decision making and they're taking us all with them.
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
After a major nuclear catastrophe, in the future, when Melia and Sasha are older they will probably tell him: " Dad, why did you sell out to Excelon"?
"Will not Melia and Sasha require unpolluted air to breathe? Uncontaminated food to eat? Fresh, clean water to drink?"
So, basically he's too dumb to figure that out.
Remember how we used to ask about Bush, "Is he dumb or evil, dumb or evil?" Can't believe we're doing the same with a supposed Democratic president.
Just for the record, Obama is NOT a Democrat, not in any way, shape, or form.
In time, one of those nuke power plants will melt down, spewing radiation over the area around it. Then the government will require pregnant women to get abortions because of the deformities and sickness caused from radiation.
It will be Armageddon. And the Christians will be howling.
And, I imagine, things will continue to worsen in the
land of Obama --
But, what are we going to do about this --
I don't watch "TV" but I can tell you that the T-baggers
and Dick Armey are all over C-span!!
Evidently, the largest anti-war movement ever and complete
liberal/progressive outrage with this "Democratic" president
warrants no attention!
Where's Plan B -- ???
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Opponents of nuclear power need to read "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air" at http://www.withouthotair.com/. Can any of them rebut careful Mackay's quantitative argument that nuclear power is the only realistic solution?
I started tuning out when he tried to make the point that nuclear energy requires a million times less ore and waste than fossil fuels -- which is nonsense. Nukes work at most a few percent of the TOTAL power available in the destruction of an atom. That takes something like anti-matter/matter and a complete capture of the energy released. All impossible today and the near future. More funny numbers I groaned.
Luckily he put out some real numbers later on. But after that blooper I had to wonder about those as well. So, nuclear energy uses less fuel (but is particularly nasty to mine) than fossil fuels, we all knew this. And we have uranium to burn for quite a while. So? Does that thwart the cost factor, the insurance factor, the disposal factor, the accident factor? No.
Gary
“Nuclear power is not an alternative to the energy problem, neither at the European level nor at the international level.”
-- Jose Bove (who was banned from entering the country in 2006)
It is hard to express my sadness and anger towards Obama. I did not vote for him, as I saw him to be the next reincarnation of Bill Clinton. (And it was Bill that bowed to the Republicans and gave us NAFTA, GATT, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, and also someone who never was behind substantial healthcare reform.) However, knowing where things were headed, and seeing them turn ever darker and corrupted in their realization these days, is a tragedy that is hard to bear.
I think of Kennedy and all the hope and dreams he raised for this country. And looking at his record certainly indicates he followed the course that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI convinced him was best. One only has to look at the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, his indifference to the CIvil Rights Movement, the assassination of South Vietnam's leader two weeks before his own, and the escalation of troops into Vietnam.
So perhaps we have more the second coming of Kennedy in the White House. In the end, all of the history and journalistic insight comes down to one thing: America doesn't have to take this road, and it looks like we the people are going to have to get angry, get together, get organized, and get this country to focus on peace and people, not profit and propaganda.
It seems too often these days that Sisyphus is our guide. I fight this image each day. If I listen closely, I do hear the rumble of action and resistance not only in our borders, but world wide. It is not enough that we fight for the human rights of all Americans. It is time to take it to all of the peoples of the planet. I try to keep in mind Howard Zinn's idea that there is always the hope and reality for possibilities. (His philosophy was not a utopian construct.)
I do not see one politician who is leading the people. John Conyers long past abandoned his own legislation for Single Payer health care reform and said this week he will vote for ANYTHING that Congress and the President put in front of him! The Congressional Black Caucus recently spent outrageously more on the catering for a scholarship event then they passed out in monetary awards. The Congressional Progressive Caucus can't even keep their website up to date in a monthy or yearly order, let alone expect them to support progressive legislation. (See It'sMyCongress.org for extensive critique of "Progressives" and their Progessive performance.)
Criticizing and blaming those in power can have its merits, but also its limitations. As long as we interiorize the fact and fiction of their power, then indeed they hold it as imagined. As a teacher once said to me, "The world is as it is because this is how we have imagined it to be."
I know I keep waiting for the onslaught of greed and corruption and incompetency to stop. But I am beginning to see that the question persists, when are we going to start being Agents of Change. Time to take responsibility for our lives and actions and impact on the planet. What can I do today? It all counts. Just ask a worm as it eats and aerates the dirt and imagines a world of possibility.
Sioux Rose
SLOW: Apart from some expressed sincerity in your "stream of consciousness" post, you really need to read: "JFK & The Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters." You definitely do not have an accurate understanding of this brave man, or a clear awareness of the courage behind his ideals. Your version is newspeak.
I believe in Nuclear Power. I believe it is the solution to all our energy problems.
However, I don't believe in Fission but in Fusion. (Fission is too dangerous.)
Unfortunately we don't know how to make Fusion Power Plants yet and it may take decades or even centuries until we figure out how to do it.
But the good news is we don't have to. We already have an enormous Fusion Power Plant that is raining energy on us 24/7 and it's only eight light minutes away. We will never need to build Fusion Power Plants. All we need to do is build collectors for the energy raining down on us.
The best news is we already know how to make these collectors and we could put them on our houses and even our vehicles. Then we could be energy independent and it would be totally green. Once people had these collectors set up their energy would be free since it is raining down on us all the time.
Yet another item for the Odubya apologists to soft-peddle. Now, remember, you who criticize-- "things could be worse, would you rather have McCain, and you have to be realistic."
This, the mantra of those who, decade after decade, do their share to make sure things keep getting worse. And what do you know--things have gotten worse.
The price we pay for having failed to struggle for and build an independent electoral voice in this nation is the continued degradation of our standard of living and our foreign policy. Figure it out--if there's still enough time.
---------------------------------
I would rather vote for what I want and not get it, than vote for what I don't want and get that. -- Eugene V. Debs
I am getting tired reading the anti-nuclear tirades based on: "it is so expensive that private firms will not invest in it". So what? Building the space station and flying to it is also hugely expensive, hugely risky, and has until today produced almost nothing of value for me but was nevertheless kept alive with billions upon billions of taxpayer moneys. There are numerous valid arguments for and against nuclear energy production that need to be debated rationally. Costs are used as scarecrows.
Nuclear fission is what I'd call a "mature" technology, long understood, with mass implementation. The space station and space technology in general are largely immature and one of a kind construction projects. The exceptions are the older launch rockets, like the Atlas, which originated in the 1950's.
A mature technology shouldn't still require subsidies to be workable ...
The fundamental difference between a nuclear reactor for energy production and the space station is that the former is a "means of production" as defined by Karl Marx and the latter is not. Almost everyone agrees that producing electricity is a necessity for our society. Flying to the space station is not a necessity. You obviously compare apples with oranges. Some "means of production" such as bridges, roads, canals, railroads (in Europe) need taxpayer start-up funding. If one is convinced (I am not) that nuclear is a necessary component in the energy production policy then one does not have to excuse oneself for asking public guarantees. I for one am not demanding that the proponents of nuclear electricity eat crow because these plants are so expensive.
One reason why nuclear technology still requires subsidies even for studies only is the effect of the gigantic and irresponsible scare campaigns by the antis. The life of my wife was saved by the use of a medical radioactivity produced in a nuclear reactor. Yet many antis want to close even these facilities. They are the summit of irresponsibility. They truly are the notorious "death squads".
It's hard to ignore Chernobyl as just a scare campaign, even if Three Mile Island avoided such mass destruction. And as long as the costs of waste disposal aren't included in the operating costs, that's another subsidy.
I'd agree that nuclear energy has some uses, including radioisotopes. Ironically, it's greatest value may be in deep space where contamination and waste are not such risks. But I'd prefer that subsidies now be concentrated on technologies that have a chance of growing out of the subsidy phase, like solar.
I'd maintain that space technology is still in the extremely immature phase, and that it will become a means of production (before this century is out?), possibly beginning with asteroid metal mining operations. Communications satellites are already into that practical phase.
". . . it's greatest value may be in deep space where contamination and waste are not such risks."
How would we get a large amount of nuclear fuel into space?
Can you imagine the fallout - literally and figuratively - from a Challenger-type disaster with a load of enriched uranium scattered for miles along with the rest of the debris?
q
We may find it off planet, perhaps in the asteroid belt. I'll be surprised if we don't ...
One mid-sized asteroid moved into L3 or L5 orbital nexuses (gravitation balance between Earth and Luna) would pay off the world's entire debt in basic metal ore (refined in space using solar furnaces) and rare minerals. We will have the capacity within decades at the most -- if we can go to Mars we can go to the Belt and find such a nice big rock and move it, perhaps using ion propulsion powered by nuclear energy.
Then people will stop fussing about the cost of space travel and see it as one of humankind's smartest investments.
Gary
“We traveled almost 3 billion miles in space. We visited a comet, grabbed a piece of it, and it landed here this morning. It's an incredible thrill.”
-- Don Brownlee
"it is so expensive that private firms will not invest in it". So what? Building the space station and flying to it is also hugely expensive, hugely risky, and has until today produced almost nothing of value for me but was nevertheless kept alive with billions upon billions of taxpayer moneys.
Ah, you have convinced me!! Because the space station is "hugely expensive" to tax-payers and has produced "almost nothing", tax payers should incur the cost of building new nuclear power plants!!! Very strong argument!!
But don't forget, there is another reason the public should foot the bill, the very real chance that these things will go chernobyl on us and kill people!! That is another good pro-nuclear argument for you! But something tells me that the real reason the Democrats want to do this is because it is a massive subsidy to Obama's nuclear industry backers...and it fits into his policy of building new nuclear bombs too.
Obomber's future budget actually shows a 10% increase in the the allotment for nuclear (nucular) weapons. Vote green.
Obama's sidekick David Axelrod is deeply entrenched in the nuke biz. Juan Gonzales had written a story on this issue back during the primaries--too bad I didn't watch/read DemocracyNow.org back then.
Good grief. I voted for this corporate clown.
I'm not particularly in favor of the space station, either, myself. But what risk can you imagine you see in a space station? I suppose it could hit someone on the head.
As to its value, there is some exploration of the surrounding universe and thus some scientific value, conceivably quite a bit, though I'd sooner see the money spent in a social area.
The nukes? Squat: this is recycling 1950's technology that proved faulty before. As to the creation of power, solar and wind are both cheaper and easier and have more potential for advances.
The costs are a valid complaint and a key complaint that shut the plants down in the 80's, though you're certainly correct that there are more critical problems to examine.
The ISS would be great for growing things (pharmaceuticals, electronics, etc) in zero-G. The Russians were way ahead doing this stuff on Mir, but it is not a priority on ISS.
Nukes are just a political stunt by the word man. Obama is from Illinois and I think we have eleven nukes, and we still get more energy from fossil fuels than we do from nukes. Illinois would need fifteen new nukes just to get off coal. The word man sold his soul and now he is throwing us to the dogs. I think it is grab everything you can get time because grabbing in the future will not be so good. I wonder what would happen if it rained every other day until August and our draught resistant hybrid corn would not grow in the mud. No corn from Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio this year, global warming can take us out in three months. Twenty-year nukes, we may be starving by Labor Day, 40 days and 40 nights.