From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Jun 02 2001 - 00:26:12 MDT
Anne Marie Tobias wrote:
> I think an ethanol economy is an awesome idea... it's renewable,
Much more costly. Do the calculations on how much organics you
need to grow at what input of energy and resources and at what
costs including land costs, labor costs, cultivation costs
(don't forget fertilizers and such), harvesting costs and
processing costs for the equivalent amount of power. It is
quite inferior to any of the major sources today. It might be
reasonable for running fuel cells in vehicles, but not for major
power generation.
you
> can make it from any organic matter, if you use natural organics (lawn
> and tree clippings, kelp, reeds and rushes, farming byproducts, waste
> paper, and organic city refuse (a terrible problem in of itself), you end
> up with no (read 0) green house gas net increase, it's got a high oxygen
> content, and burns very clean with virtually no soot or contamination,
>
> I also agree that nuclear looks excellent off planet, by far the best way
> to go for energy sources on the moon and mars. I still find myself a bit
> squeemish about waste handling, the serptitious use of waste for nukes
> by our government (who by the way has a devastatingly bad rep for
> the improper use, storage, and handling of nuclear materials), and the
> messy process of decomissioning reactors (and despensing with the
> contaminated building materials and reactor site.)
>
If we kept breeder reactors and got our collective head out of
our nether regions we would find that handling nuclear wastes is
a lot simpler than handling the wastes from coal and and
hydrocarbons. There are also other less troublesome nuclear
sources like Thorium which we have a tremendous abundance of.
We have a bad rap on the waste handling because we killed
breeders and never reached an agreement to deal with the wastes
intelligently for mainly political BS reasons. That is not the
fault of nuclear energy. It is the fault of our own
irrationality and of those who manipulated us to turn away from
the superior solution.
We also have a terrible rap for dealing with the contamination
including the radioactive contamination from the mining and
burning of massive amounts of coal.
> We need to look at all the cost/benefits when picking a viable energy
> source... producing nuclear power for pennies isn't cheap if you're up
> to your eyeballs in government subsidized cleanup messes, and eco
> disasters that take your tax dollars to fix. We need to be asking neither
The analysis has been done and nuclear is cheapest and safest of
the major sources that scale today. Or do you think countries
such as France only chose it as their primary source to scare
those that might want to invade them in the future? :-)
> the environmental extremists, nor the businesses with a vested money
> interest, but nonaffiliated scientists who are experts in this field. Ask
> them what makes good sense, and what is economically, socially, and
> enviornmentall viable in the long term. Then compare that against other
> good alternatives.
>
Non-affiliation does not equal truth, affiliation does not equal
deceit. Socially is not relevant to finding the best power
generation solution. We have been running our energy policy on
social/political grounds for far too long in this country. It
is causing us to really eat it in California and many other
parts of this supposedly rich country are not far behind in
self-destructive, cripping energy madness.
- samantha
- samantha
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