OT: Good news on the energy front!

Think of all the R&D - that we continue to pay for. All the work developing waste treatment methods & facilities. A large part of the US DoE has, for many years gone towards nuclear energy. And related to "lawsuits" - the US government is - by statute - limits the liability of nuclear power facilities. It doesn't protect the nuclear industry from "little" lawsuits, but if they screw up big-time - you stand to pay for it, not the companies that made the mess. But the nuclear industry tells us they can't proceed without these corporate liability limits. Why is that?

IIRC you are old enough to remember the slogan "to cheap to meter". Yeah, and we'll get all our money back from Bush's TARP program, too.

See:

When we think back to how the US government (mostly through military and space programs) developed technologies that became the basis of the electronics industry -I suspect that most of us would agree that this "investment" paid of well in many ways. Many companies now sell devices and products free of government involvment in their development or production. It's past time for the nuclear power industry to get off the dole.

Yep.

Bad timing. That's when the world is supposed to end.

Hawke

That's when CERN will finally be running at full power.

And makes little black holes all over the place

What if the calendar ends at 2012 just because that's where the mathematicians decided they'd calculated it far enough and went out for a beer or a good ball game?

Well, do you put your faith in the musings of a people aptly portrayed in Mel Gibson's movie?

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Nuclear is a sham. It just looks better than it really is.

I'm a victim of the 'inevitable' conclusion to a nuclear power plant. Defer the end by refurbishing, 'if possible', or decommission?

Both procedures practically cost the price of building a new one.

Refurbishment is more theoretical than practical since the first generation of reactors are just coming to that 'inevitable' conclusion.

We're trying it here in Atlantic Canada, the Candu 6 at Point LePreau in New Brunswick. We're paying $20m a month (insured) for replacement power from Quebec (probably), the project is definitely nine months behind schedule, at the moment, and may be as long as a year before it's done. IF IT CAN BE! If NOT then somebody has to pay (again) for the decommissioning. Any guess who that might be?

Hydro, tidal (for coastal regions), wind and solar power are the only way to go for a sustainable future. Nuclear is going to be a very messy cleanup for somebody's grandchildren.

The transition from fossil and nuclear to green will be difficult, as is already proving, but some generation is going to have to bear the brunt of it. That generation should be us before we go too far the other way.

I'm not a Yank but I couldn't agree more. :)

The US government invented tubes, diodes, transistors, photolithography, and ICs?

First I've heard of it.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

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Not a problem, they made a movie about it:

don

On Nov 3, 12:14=A0pm, Rich Grise wrote: > On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:34:14 +0000, Jan Panteltje wrote: > > But I am all for nuke power, always was, more people die in coal mining > > each year then have ever been killed by nuke accidents. >

Thanks Rich !!! I needed a good laugh.

G=B2

Not those particular things, but take a good look at the things discovered / created by (essentially 100%) Federally funded research. Several still patented drugs, much of current surface mount technology (monolithic multilayer chip capacitors in particular), et frigging cetera.

I think Russia beat them to it.

But they invented Al Gore first.

I thought he was invented by Google.