First, to answer "Modulas" what you write is factually accurate. But the costs to extract uranium from seawater is about 10x what the current price-per-pound is, or even more. The article is a good one and both the Chinese and Japanese are working on this technology. So, technically, uranium is a renewable resource with with hundreds of thousands of tons of uranium in fresh water runoff into the ocean each year. There is one ton of uranium in each cubic km of ocean water. When one swims in the ocean we are swimming in a uranium soup.
Mark: > > > Do you think WE on this list have a common goal with THEY who produce > energy commodities? According to THEM, energy is needed for one thing only > and that is the production of commodities. > > Yes...that is true and I noted that all of this takes place, be it investor owned utilities or state owned enterprises, in the context of commodity production. And...so we oppose subsidies to state owned mass transit systems since ALL of them were built to get workers to their place of work in order to further the production of commodities? Energy is what makes any material gains possible for the working class and our species more generally. It is like opposing advancements in computer technology because it...is for the "production of commodities". Are you making an argument at all? Is it Luddism (in the coloquial sense) that are advocating? I don't know about your Mark but I don't like black outs. We all grind to a halt. So YES, we really do need energy and a lot of it to advance our species. We prefer it under a wise use scenario under a socialist economy, of course. But arguing against energy is not a serious political position, IMO. > > Don't you agree, David, that the crises with "health care, education, > etc." are not due to a shortage of energy? Very little of the energy that > they create for the tech industry and other commodities will trickle down > for social welfare. It seems like we have a big disagreement over what > capitalism is. > Who even implied it "trickles down" Mark? It is about jobs (under capitalism OR socialism), maintaining civilization, maintaining "social welfare". Does the tech industry use energy? How about the health care industry? How about transportation? If we argue for expansion of these socially important industries then we argue for more, not less energy. > > It is not a manageable problem and hasn't been since the second world war. > 80 years later, we have a toxic "sacrifice zone" by the most important > waterway in the Pacific Northwest. The Hanford Site in Washington State, > located along the Columbia River, remains a significant storage location > for radioactive waste. Established during World War II for plutonium > production, Hanford has accumulated approximately 56 million gallons of > radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks. > Yes, the largest Super-Fund site in the U.S. I think. All of this was not part of what I advocate for. This was not part of any commercial nuclear energy program but for nuclear weapons, and solely for nuclear WMD. I'm for converting all fissionable material used in weapons into fuel for nuclear plants, as occurred under Clinton's administration which down blended older Soviet WMD uranium and plutonium into commercial reactor fuel. During the 1990s and 2000s 10% of all U.S. electricity was generated by the "Megatons-to-Megawatts" program. I'm for *expanding* this...don't you? It is the only way to get rid of WMD currently in any event. > > Who is going use these "stranded assets" and for what purposes? > > The impetus for restarting mothballed reactors is the huge increase in load expected from "AI" and other technology related energy needs. From the capitalist POV, this means that the various forms of high energy tech like data-mining needs more energy. Since electrical demand is going up anyway, they wanted to insure they have access to an expanded electricity grid. I can't argue this wouldn't be the case under socialism so I look at is as any other load (demand) increase with the added benefit that generation would be expanding anyway and that it should be low carbon: that is, nuclear. > > You assume that we can solve this problem without a revolution. Why assume > something like that? Why such faith in the rationality of the system that > created this crisis? > From the standpoint of this list, calling for nuclear power to solve only > the most obvious symptom of capitalism's ecology crisis is putting the > cart before the horse. > > Of course much of the issue of immediate environmental degradation and and long term climate change can be solved under capitalism. Otherwise why support this or that demand by various environmental groups at all? The fact is that our air IS cleaner thanks the 60 era clean air act(s). Did it require a socialist revolution to reduce noxious pollution from our highways? No it didn't. It is called "immediate demands" and, "transitional demands" you should be familiar with. But more importantly and immediately the need to start NOW to lower GHG emissions is a scientific fact. That means going after low-hanging fruit, like electricity generation which accounts for double-digit sources of GHGs. Can this be done? Sure, look at Ontario, Sweden and of course France, all of which have virtually eliminated their generation CO2 footprint with nuclear energy. Why is that a bad thing, Mark? Look at wind crazy Denmark, Germany, Spain, and Italy and compare them to the aforementioned states. The ONE difference is nuclear energy. If France can do it under then Gaulist capitalism, so can the rest of the world. David > > > > > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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