Think about the modern industrial state, and how quickly it built up. Were all these developments truly thought through? No. And a lot of the experts -- or would-be experts -- don't care much about contrasting opinions, or feel the need to have their own opinions explained to you. That's why they are "experts," after all. Point out flaws in designs or intentions? Well, who cares? Those are surely just isolated incidents, and we're so much more advanced now.Quote by: Hermenutic
Grandpa h.
Post by post, building his arguments by smashing a couple of theirs -- for America.
There is a remarkable book by Eric Hobsbawn titled 'The Age of Capital' that reveals the relationships involved in the industrial process. It focuses on the years 1848 - 1875 and explains how industry expanded. It was not a good time to be a child in Manchester England.
Another book on topic is: 'The Unbound Prometheus' by David S. Landes. This deals specifically with technological development from 1750. Both books deal with deciphering the political landscape during the time dealt with. As we know technology and politics are are a Jekyll and Hyde combination. The Landes book was not so hard a read.
I've known 2 top notch experts one a food scientist who went to my church, and one who chairs a department in physics and married my nephew. These experts and they truly are experts are quite ordinary people. If you did not know my nephews wife and saw her cooking a pie you would never know she chaired a department of such prestige.
The problem with experts is those who brag about them as if they were gods and then influence others to accept their designation. The experts I'v met are just down to earth normal people. I suppose it is possible for a genuine expert to be a jerk but the ones I have had contact with have not puffed themselves up the way those who refer to them do.
Dont forget that every nuke plant that we have in the country is going on 40 years old (if not already there), because we have not built a single new plant in that time. We have designs that have been tested that fail a hell of a lot safer than plants like Chernobyl did, and a hell of a lot better understanding on how to actually run the plants.
There's some funny stuff in this thread.
Nuclear waste is supposed to be rendered insoluble in water by bonding it into glass, producing huge slabs that are permanently warm to the touch for the next few thousand years. Our descendants would probably be unable to resist the temptation to make creepy statues and ritual obsidian knives out of the ever-burning glass trees left behind by the First Machine People, but as ideas go waste glassification is relatively cheap and chemically stable if done right.
The problem is, making and shipping giant chunks of radioactive glass isn't really fun or profitable by itself. In other words, it doesn't get done and when it is done the glass stays so hot that the metals leach out of it in water because someone wants to save money on glass.
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/ava...thesis-old.pdf
Instead it mostly just sits unglassified in pools and dumps that are barely prepared to protect it in the present, and with the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain project there's absolutely no plan to do anything but ignore it for as long as possible. It's a pity we didn't finish Yucca Mountain; now there are zero long-term waste storage sites instead of one overfull one.
The more you complain, the less I care about your problems.
True. Maybe if we DID start building some new designs, we could at least start to take care of some of the waste in the form of fuel for breeder reactors. We dont extract NEARLY the full yield from the fuel that we use. Even just reprocessing could help things along.
the politics surrounding nuclear really suck, and have stuck us in a place where a good, very energy dense, and relatively clean form of power production is basically stagnant. (yes, I said relatively clean. WE have waste, but its not waste that is particularly difficult to contain under normal circumstances on the surface, and if buried correctly, is essentially safe.)
I looked into the author and found this:
"Perhaps Mr. Tony Blair, who must take final responsibility for
the honours lists he puts out in the Queen's name, will explain to us
why he [chose] to confer such a distinction on a writer who still
defends Stalin's Russia. After all, these are national awards:
by selecting Hobsbawm for such an accolade, Mr Blair appears to
suggest that the British people associate themselves with the
crimes of a human monster. In the mean-time, it is those
innumerable Russians who resisted Stalin and died for it, and now
lie unremembered in unmarked graves, who arc the true Companions
of Honour."
http://hvk.org/archive/1998/0198/0053.html
Of course, you'll find all kinds of weird things about any political theorist.
For example:
"Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the
sanctity of human life." --Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
Anyway, the "industrial process" could undoubtedly be changed.
Managers, property owners, big banks and big investors call a lot of the shots now, thanks largely to legal rights they've accumulated over the years.
Grandpa h.
Post by post, building his arguments by smashing a couple of theirs -- for America.
I think we were sacrificing that due to NIMBY, fuelled not necessarily by naivete and paranoia, but genuine concerns that should eb well known by now. Concerns of babies having birth defects (and things of that nature) are actually pretty well-founded and serious, and shouldn't really be dismissed.
I've seen so many dismissals over the years that it's rather sickening. For example, people who are concerned about certain munitions used
by the US military have been dismissed. Not only have people defended Depleted Uranium, but obviously regressive things like landmines, which are practically designed for indiscriminate and mindless killing. Add all these dismissals together and you get a really sickening and dismal picture of various state-developed technologies, and their loyal defenders.
Grandpa h.
Post by post, building his arguments by smashing a couple of theirs -- for America.
It was a book I was had to read when i went back to college in the 80's. I also read Harry Braverman's book 'Labor and Monopoly Capital. This is still considered one of the best looks at the process of the management of labor. He was a Marxist as was the author in question.
As a Marxist historian so he sees history the way a Marxist would see it. I hope you are not one of those who discredit information from someone who has a pov you disagree with. Having been working class all my life I understand the contentious relationships between labor and capital quite well on a personal rather than intellectual level. But now that I understand it intellectually I understand them much better and am able to apply them to real life experience.
We feel the same way about our heroes don't we. it is not unusual for those sentiments to come to be when you cherish your history. Think about all the heroes in U.S. history. Like George Custer, or Eisenhower. We look at them and think highly of them because they represent our ideals. I doubt it is unusual for the author to have similar feelings.
There is more than one way to analyze a problem. Marxism has done quite a job at analyzing the historical process and mans place in it as homo economicus.
I am not a Marxist by any means. They believe like capitalists that a central clearing house called government gives citizens the right to do things. As a result they regard themselves as citizens who think they must serve the government. Which in turn makes them regard themselves as subjects of the state. Such a notion if it is believed long enough engenders a sense of loyalty that makes the individual forget he exists as a human being. He loses his identity in the group he has identified with and little by little his human values are replaced with the values of the state sponsored society.
Human history is the result of people who have done just that.
I dont challenge the idea that nuclear has problems. but they are problems that are manageable, if we were actually allowed to take care of them. Yucca mountain would have been wonderful, because it would have essentially rendered nuclear waste safe.
Not only that, but the waste is still radioactive because it still has quite a bit of nuclear fuel in it as well. Most reactors are thermal reactors, which cannot run on natural uranium, as the ratio of U-235 (which is much more fissile than 238, and releases neutrons after its fission, continuing the reaction, where 238 does not). Newer , fast reactor designs CAN run on natural uranium, and could actually use the waste that we have such a problem with now to fuel the reactor, as well.
And while there are concerns with birth defects are valid, they are only so if there is an accident or a release of radiation, which is far less likely with newer designs.
Not only that, but one nuke plant, for its size, can produce a FUCKTON of energy, and can do so for YEARS without actually releasing much (if anything) in the way of CO2 or methane. compare nuclear with nearly any other power generation method, and you will find that nuclear's biggest disadvantage is the political situation, at least at this point.
And on safety: Chernobyl was a bad design complicated by disregard of regulations. They had the control rods COMPLETELY out of the reactor. When the power shot back up, they tried to reinsert the rods, and the damn things melted due to the surge to (if i remember correctly) 30 gigawatts output in thermal energy, where the design was only able to handle 3GW.
Fukushima was problematic because of the location of the backup pumps. They put them in a basement that was prone to flooding. The most recent incident was not the first time those pumps had been problematic due to flooding, either. Also, they ignored warnings that the analysis of the susceptibility to tsunami damage was underestimated, as well.
But these are two major accidents out of 40-60 years of running nuclear reactors. There was three mile island, but that didnt result in much radioactivity release, so little, in fact, that the increase in cancer rates was essentially negligible. There was a partial meltdown, but it was entirely contained within the containement vessel.
Honestly, I wasn't being too serious there. There are Marxist writings I've been through before, and Marxists can make good points often enough.
I actually lean in a libertarian communist direction, so although there's some common ground, I tend to strongly dislike state communist theories. This goes beyond any specific, concrete experiments launched in the name of "communism".
Grandpa h.
Post by post, building his arguments by smashing a couple of theirs -- for America.
There's this constant feeling that "They'll get after that pretty soon," as if we can just go ahead with these plans on the upbeat notion that we'll cope with whatever problems lie ahead. The problem is obvious, though: Life often doesn't go as planned, and sometimes issues are overlooked. You mention Yucca Mountain, which I first read about years ago. It was noted that the location is near some fault lines. Now call me a pessimist, but that sounds like a mess waiting to happen.
And you say things like "The increase in cancer rates was essentially negligible." Maybe for you.
UPDATE:
TOKYO--The cooling system for the spent fuel pool at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant's No. 4 reactor automatically suspended operation Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said, Kyodo News reported Saturday.
Fukushima reactor cooling system suspended: Kyodo - MarketWatch
Grandpa h.
Post by post, building his arguments by smashing a couple of theirs -- for America.
Meh. Nobody really wants a nuclear-powered jacuzzi of the gods running all the time in the basement because of humidity issues, but I'm sure the Japanese will figure out why the cooling system shut itself down before they run out of ice to chuck into the pool.
It's a pity they couldn't build it to use passive cooling instead of relying on active systems to keep it from ever overheating. The whole pool is also directly under the reactor to save on real estate footprint, and for a while there were fears the damaged reactor would drop into the pool with dire consequences. This whole incident is a valuable lesson on why not to over-optimize things you cannot afford to have break.
The more you complain, the less I care about your problems.
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