![Ansel%20Adams,%201984[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/ansel20adams2019841.jpg?quality=83)
Go back and re-watch Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth from 2006 and you’ll find that he never once voices the word “nuclear” although there is a long visual scene of a nuclear warhead exploding and the subsequent mushroom cloud filling the screen. Early AGW enthusiasts never seemed to acknowledge that if fossil fuels were the problem, nuclear power would be the solution that would work.
But now it seems environmentalists are being told that nuclear power is not so bad after all. The current movie, Pandora’s Promise (http://pandoraspromise.com/), has as its major theme that nuclear power and radiation are not so scary, really. This is of course true, reiterating arguments that pro-nuclear advocates have been making for 70 years.
The selling point is that nuclear power will not lead to global climate change. Another webpage from the Breakthrough Institute is entitled Liberals and Progressives for Nuclear (http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/liberals-and-progressives-for-nuclear/). Quoting such luminaries as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, it argues for the coming “Atomic Age,” again, because of the “urgency of climate change.” Even Al Gore (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/) seems to be slyly acknowledging nuclear’s possible role.
As a long-suffering nuclear engineer, I have to ask (in a conservative webzine, American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/nuclear_powers_new_friends.html), is it in nuclear power’s best interest to make public alliance with the climate change crowd? I say no, citing the growing awareness of the “tells” on display, i. e. signs of fraud, we see documented here on WUWT and elsewhere. “Lie down with the dogs and get up with fleas” is my warning. Of course, any rational environmentalist SHOULD embrace nuclear just on its relative conventional pollutant profile and would be welcome to say kind words about nuclear – just don‘t ask that the support be reciprocated.
Yet, others in the nuclear power community disagree (http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2013/08/progressives-for-nuclear-progress.html#.Uf7Ly23pySr) (and here (http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/)) and embrace our new Best Friends Forever (BFFs). Many are sincere believers in climate change themselves, as I had been until I read the 2001 IPCC technical reports. Others just seemed hopeful that we might no longer be the pariahs of polite (PC) company.
Yet, my simple question is, should nuclear reactor manufacturers like Toshiba, General Electric, Areva, Bill Gates, Hitachi, Rosatom, etc publicly advertise that their products can help prevent climate change? Besides the expectation of further public trust deterioration for climate change, one has to look at the companies that would buy a nuclear power reactor. Almost without exception, they also have substantial fossil fuel powered generation assets.
Plus, environmentalists, like revolutionaries, have a habit of changing their minds as to who was good and who was bad. Probably the most infamous event was when Ansel Adams resigned from the board of directors of the Sierra Club over his support of nuclear power (http://www.anseladams.com/ansel-adams-the-role-of-the-artist-in-the-environmental-movement/).
The Sierra Club had been generally pro-nuclear although they could oppose specific plants on specific grounds, like the Bodega Bay nuke to be build about 400 yards from the surface trace of the San Andreas fault in the bay‘s headlands. To this day, the foundation diggings are called “the hole in the Head.” But a tide of anti-nuclear feeling swept over the organization and Adams gave up his seat on the board in 1971 due to the ill will and back biting.
My take-away lesson is political winds change, and so do the policies of environmental groups. I’d rather nuclear power not get involved.
Along with Crosspatch’s excellent posts, I would like ANYONE to post information on the death rates for cancer in the towns and cities downwind of Chernobyl. Nuclear accidents causing death and disease has been an interest of mine so I tried to follow the results of Chernobyl.
Let me remind everyone that unlike 3 Mile Island, Fukushima dai-Ichi and the rest of the rational world, Russia actually built some reactors with NO CONTAINMENT VESSELS! The reactor core sat at the bottom of a pool of water that blocked the radiation. When they screwed up their experiment and allowed the water level to fall too far the reactor core overheated and blew CORE MATERIAL INTO THE ATMOSPHERE!!!! (notice no nuclear explosion or China Syndrome even then!!) That’s right, not just small amounts of isotopes, but, CHUNKS OF THE CORE along with a huge amount of vaporized radioactive isotopes!!
If radiation in lesser amounts is ANYTHING like the alarmists believe the death rates for Cancers and other radiation diseases should be easily identified in the cities downwind and close to Chernobyl! Please show me the actual death rates and NOT the MODELLED ASSUMPTIONS in those cities!! I can’t find it. Maybe you can.
I remember them tracking the cloud of isotopes around the world on the jet stream and wondering how many would die. Still wondering. Must not have been very many.
The only solid numbers I found were a number of children in the village close to Chernobyl who hcontracted Thyroid cancer and were successfully treated. Interestingly enough, the cancers were a couple years earlier than expected from experience.
Rom,
My bet would be that the Lockheed Skunkworks project would be similar to the Polywell/EMC2 project that was being financed by the Navy until last year!!
http://kairosfocus.blogspot.com/2012/01/capacity-focus-30-polywell-polyhedral.html
@wws says: 8/7 5:27 am: RE: Last time you saw “China Syndrome”
Actually, ask yourself when was the last time you saw any movie from the 70′s on a TV listing, especially those from the Carter years. (Excepting “Star Wars”, of course, but that’s sui generis) It’s like the entire decade is being flushed down the memory hole,
http://www.imdb.com/list/3OARpt_adhI/ (a list of 275 1970’s movies)
Here are 50 from the list that I remember seeing listed recently.
Barry Lyndon (1), The Sting, Star Wars, Rocky, Jaws, A Clockwork Orange (1), Network (My personal all time favorite!), Dirty Harry, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Westworld, Young Frankenstein, Willy Wonka…, American Graffiti, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Spy Who Loved Me, Magnum Force, Man with the Golden Gun, Three Days of the Condor, Murder by Death, Silver Streak, Saturday Night Fever, Greese, Patton, The Last Detail (1), Towering Inferno, Day of the Jackel, Jeremiah Johnson, Bad News Bears, Airport 1975, Live and Let Die, Airport, Soylent Green, Blazing Saddles, Rollerball, Heaven Can Wait, Muppet Movie, Tora Tora Tora, The Jerk, Every Which Way But Loose, Smoky and the Bandit, The Cowboys, Dimonds are Forever, Murder on the Orient Express, Mad Max, Rocky II, MASH, Midway, Earthquake, Moonraker.
(1) I remember my surprise seeing the listing very recently, though I’ve never seen them.
But you do have a point, wss. Here are other movies from the 70s that don’t get the air play I’d expect.
The Godfather, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Godfather II, Sleuth, Deliverance, Exorcist, Papillion, French Connection, The Conversation ,
Dog Day Afternoon, Caberet, Nashville, Apocalypse Now, Paper Chase,
Kramer vs Kramer, Stepford Wives, The Shootist, Capricorn One, Oh, God!, The Out of Towners, Brian’s Song, Shaft, and China Syndrome.
That leaves about 200 movies from the 1970’s that do seem to be “flushed down the drain”. Their absence from the airways are not missed by me, including anything by Woody Allen, a bunch of Jack Nickolson, Altman, Hoffman, and Di Nero movies.
And a bunch with Jane Fonda… Which might explain China Syndrome’s absence.
@Doug Huffman 2:37 pm
Michael J. Dunn says: August 7, 2013 at 1:02 pm “Granite is composed of quartz, feldspar, and pitchblende. ” Perhaps you mean mica rather than uraninite?
More likely hornblende
an isomorphous mixture of three molecules; a calcium-iron-magnesium silicate, an aluminium-iron-magnesium silicate, and an iron-magnesium silicate. The general formula can be given as (Ca,Na)2–3(Mg,Fe,Al)5(Al,Si)8O22(OH,F)2. No uranium.
Some granites contain around 10 to 20 parts per million of uranium. By contrast, more mafic rocks such as tonalite, gabbro or diorite have 1 to 5 PPM uranium….. Thorium occurs in all granites as well.[14] Conway granite has been noted for its relatively high thorium concentration of 56 (±6) PPM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granite#Natural_radiation
Potassium is also a component of feldspars (K-spars, the pink mineral) in Granites and Diorites. Potassium-40 is 0.012% (120 ppm) of all potassium. It’s relative abundance means that about 3/4 of natural radioactivity comes from Potassium-40. http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm
I once worked for the special effects designer for “The China Syndrome.” I got to do a show-and-tell for the Industrial Light and Magic folks working on the second Star Wars sequel, “The Empire Strikes Back.” The images of the explosions were my contribution, having studied nuclear engineering under a plasma guy.
It is just an afternoon’s work, but it looks GREAT on the resume!
Friends:
Yesterday Roger Sowell posted falsehoods about me on another thread and I posted a rebuttal in reply. That rebuttal has not appeared despite my stating in that thread that the rebuttal had not appeared.
Today Roger Sowell has posted falsehoods about me on this thread and I have posted a rebuttal here. This rebuttal seems to have vanished in the ‘bin’.
I will post my rebuttal again in an hour if it has not then appeared.
I consider it to be reprehensible that falsehoods about me are published in WUWT threads but my rebuttals of those falsehoods do not appear when I post them in the threads.
Richard
@Joseph Somsel 11:21 pm
It is just an afternoon’s work, but it looks GREAT on the resume!
Ned Beatty once remarked that actors should never turn down work. Beatty further observed, “I worked a day on ‘Network’ and got an Oscar nomination for it”.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/trivia
I made a little money investing in uranium minors when many were pumping it was going to get scarce. If you’re not watchful though, a decent profit can turn into a gargantuan loss in a hurry. It looks really promising, maybe 100 years from now, when natural gas gets expensive. So I’m not looking to reenter this trade. If carbon emissions go out of vogue, uranium and nuclear power could lose demand – regardless of its merits.
Gold gets low enough, I will be enlightened.
Friends:
More than an hour has passed so – as I said I would – I am about to again post my rebuttal to Sowell.
Richard
Roger Sowell:
I am copying all of your false and infantile post at August 7, 2013 at 7:33 pm to aid everybody in seeing the reality of your behaviour and thus recognising why your posts should be ignored or reviled.
I have not “failed” with respect to any thermodynamical law. You have not – and you cannot – cite an example where I have because I have not.
Apologise for your unsubstantiated smear.
To answer your stated question, yes, I know you find the subject of thermodynamics “confusing”, but that is a result of your limited scientific knowledge and your complete lack of scientific understanding. I cannot help you with that.
I have never claimed that “Thermo is [my] best subject” (it is not) but I can assist you to understand thermodynamics if you are capable of formulating questions which say what you want to know. There, I have offered to try to assist you in overcoming some of your severe limitations, and I think that removes any reason for you to think I “should be ashamed” for pointing out those limitations.
Your post which I here quote is hypocritical and is untrue.
You posted it for all to see. I have copied it in full to maximise exposure of it.
I strongly recommend that you ask your Mummy to set a rule on how long you can play with your computer in your bedroom because it is way past your proper bedtime.
Richard
Thanks for the corrections, Doug Huffman & Stephan Rasey, on my misunderstanding over the source of radioactivity in granite. (I’ve misunderstood that for a LONG time, I guess.) But it doesn’t diminish the mischief when the counter reacts to the counter.
I should also mention that the results about dissolved radioactive elements in seawater were strictly for transuranics. I didn’t bother to go after potassium-40, which should also be a huge quantity. Or carbon-14.
Crosspatch, can you please advise
I have been battling the doomsayers and we all dead mob re Fukushima. They responded with that video endorsed by Gorbachev?
Thanks
Steve P says:
August 7, 2013 at 9:21 am\
“….400 tons…”
Should be 300 tons.
In my opinion, we have neither the experience nor the knowledge to rule-out long term damage to the human genome through increasing exposure to radiation.
Steve P,
I notice you say INCREASING exposure to radiation. Would you like to take this from the usual alarmist arm waving pie in the sky unlimited term to something realistic?? The genome is self repairing within limits. If you wish to specify radiation exposure past those limits I am sure most of us would agree with you. As is you really haven’t said anything as you provided no numbers as to what is typical NORMAL background radiation, what is approaching the actual genome damage limit, and what we are being exposed to in areas where man has actually increased that background exposure significantly.
If you actually READ the links I posted earlier in the thread you would KNOW that much higher exposure from Cobalt60 contamination did NOT cause genetic damage in people who lived in the buildings for up to 20 years!!!
Adendum to Stephen Rasey 10:31 pm
Here are other movies from the 70s that don’t get the air play I’d expect.
Andromeda Strain (1971).
Just watched that on Netflix last night. It holds up well for a 42 year old Sci Fi movie.
But I can see why it doesn’t get much air play… Those lab scenes with the rats and rhesus ARE (not may be) “too intense for children”
Kuhncat,
Interesting material. Contrast Chen et al and the other arguments for radiation hormesis with the fairly recent press release from the ADA, which begins:
CHICAGO, Dec. 5, 2012 – In an effort to decrease radiation exposure to patients…
http://www.ada.org/8006.aspx
I don’t know the numbers. My beliefs about radiation have been based on the linear no-threshold model, which seems to be reflected in the ADA press release, but which have been bashed pretty significantly by Chen et al, and some of the other evidence for radiation hormesis noted in your other links. My beliefs and the LNR getting the dents, making them a little wobbly.
I recognize the benefits of mental and physical exercise. Use it or lose it. It’s possible this same principle is universal with cells. A cell’s ability to fight back is enhanced after being put to the test, so to say, and what doesn’t kill you does indeed make you stronger.
I guess the French study gets the last word here:
–Wikipedia, ibid
Thanks for your input.
.
.