On Friday 08 April 2005 18:13, Robin van Spaandonk wrote:
> In reply to Standing Bear's message of Fri, 8 Apr 2005 11:42:28
> -0400:
> Hi,
> [snip]
>
> >mirror fusion engine for main power. It is powered by a nuclear reactor.
> >If these things can get us to the moon where we can mine the tritium, then
> >pure fusion mirror devices become feasible. In any case, the moon's
> > resource of tritium will open up our system to us for exploration as it
> > will be our
>
> [snip]
> I suspect you mean He3.
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Robin van Spaandonk
>
Yes Robin, that is what I really meant, just had not thought of it, and wanted
to get the letter written before going grocery shopping. I read the various
responses to my reply to the battery tech post.
I had heard all of Jed's comments before, but they were out of the mouths of
other people back in the 1970's. It was almost as if it was scripted as an
automatic response to a Pavlovian stimulus.
Nuke plants were expensive for various reasons, not the least of which was
the cost to defend against the various harrassment litigations brought by the
critics of the industry on every pretext imaginable. This litigation expense
was considerable and was borne by the power industry and ultimately its
ratepayers....the defense part of it.
The offense was paid partly from foreign enemy treasuries and partly from
the pockets of useful fools who were taken in by faulted logic based on fear
and half truths. The detractors of nuclear power in this case deliberately
caused financial and legal problems for the industry, and then turned and
slyly stated that the industry's legal problems were reason enough not to
have that industry.
The nuclear power constructing utilities realized that by the
late 60's and early seventies the national political will for further plant
construction had evaporated in the social ferment and draft dodger mentality
of the Viet-Nam war. To build a new nuke plant required many permits, and
the permit process came to be controlled by avowed enemies of the industry,
and in reality, enemies of the people. With no way to legally build plants,
the industry refocused on dirtier but in a twisted logical way still legal
fossil fuel facilities. The industry did want to build these plants; but
they were prevented from doing so by former opponents who had traded
their levis for business suits and their signs for MBA. Then these same
new 'MBA's now come with the empty lies that industry did not want
to do it. I suppose Pol Pot's victims in Cambodia did not want to live
either.
Many of these reluctant fossil fuel plants were coal. Ask any real civil
engineer and he will tell you that coal is a garbage can. More radiation and
certainly more noxious chemicals are released by coal burning facilities
every day than one could plausibly imagine. Coal plants create much
more radiation pollution than any nuclear plant in normal operation. And
this radiation is more insidious. Take radon, for instance. It is a gas!
It is in all coal. And it is released unchanged when coal is burned, as
it is a chemically inactive gas that was trapped in coal bearing seams
where it was created by natural decay of unstable naturally occuring
elements.
The end of the war left a shadow 'army' of luddites and traitors with
idealogically nowhere to go. Rather than see them disperse, their handlers
sought new directions for those that they could hang on to. Anti nuclear
power and environmental concerns fit the bill, as successful campaigns in
this could weaken our energy position, making potentially more valuable the
vast manual labor resources of China. It became a quiet
revolution as operating contrary to our own national interest became
mainstream 'chic'. Veterans were frozen out of the job market by a
button down collar army of former draft dodgers and avoiders who had
gone to college in the war years and got the good jobs and promotions
first, and later set the agenda in local businesses all over the country.
Patriotism was not 'chic'. Quiche was 'chic' Treason had become
mainstream, and quietly validated Von Clausewitz's dictum about what
happens to a state when treason prospers.
China is now selling that labor to an energy starved world. You buy
products of it every day in your local Wal-Mart store. The loss of the war
had another by product. By running away from our
responsibilities in South Viet-Nam, we further lost respect in the world. Now
tin horn dictators everywhere took advantage of the situation. OPEC would
not have dared to do in 1949 what they did in 1973! Neither would we then
in 1949 have stood by while the the Panama Canal was taken from us
the way it was taken in the Carter years by a cabal of tinhorn Panamanian
politicos and internal American traitors masquerading as 'progressive
statesmen'. Now we have the spectacle of Chinese People's Army front
companies operating the Panama Canal. Suppose these folks would be
disposed to allow passage of our military when it became expedient for
us and not so much for them? We pay much more for our petrol than
we did, in part because of our failure in that war, and in part because
of our failure against the enemy within!
Is'nt it odd that nobody seems to notice that China is now building
nuclear plants on an emergency basis. They know that high energy
prices will kill prosperity. Look what they did to us! I bet that very
very few demonstrators against this policy will be allowed the freedoms
in China that we allowed the maoists here. They will rightly be called
economic saboteurs and imprisoned or shot.
Our energy needs expanded while our nuclear generating capacity
lagged. The new energy had to come from somewhere, so it came from
more oil production. But the oil is running out, and there simply is not
enough production to satisfy demand at a stable price, so the price rises.
That goes double because 'environmentalists' shut down refineries in
this country in order to dampen our supplies. This was done years ago
so and the plants were dismantled so that they could not be brought back.
This has hit us hard over the last year. I can assure you that it will hit
poorer nations harder. Had there been more and sufficient nuclear
production, oil prices would have been lower on lower demand requirements;
and the greater energy production in this country would have translated
itself into greater job retention and expansion in our economy. They
wholistically all work together. The piper is now starting to be paid.
Watch how the dollar falls and the others rise. Watch how the Chinese are
buying our commercial paper. They have quite a lot of it now. Only
they know the day and the hour that the new bell of the the new Black
Thursday of 1929 will toll when the Chinese decide to sell. Probably
at the same time they decide to invade Taiwan and South Korea.
I have no beef against wind power. As an engineer, power is power. Wind
farms like the ones around Barstow, California do not pollute. And if some
idiot executive tries to bend the laws of physics with turbine blade
construction like at Rancho Seco in California, the result will be probably
just a malfunctioning tower or two instead of 20 percent of California's
base generating power while the system(s) are down for repair. Yes,
the nuclear power industry has had its share of charlatans seeking glory
on taxpayer and ratepayer funds. Nuclear plants are large
projects. Any project large enough literally swells the gonads of
ambitious souls seeking fortune and/or advantage, and Rancho Seco
and the Silver Bridge are all the same to them.
Personally, I think that electrical power generation is too important to
leave in the hands of private concerns that left to themselves inexorably
become monopolies. This is more the province of government to site
the plants, standardize their design, and run them for the good of all,
not just some favored few.
We will have need of the nuclear option whatever we build. Without
progress in nuclear research, we will never have the space boosters
we need in order to find among our near planetary neighbors the
new resources that we will need. Wind research, while nice, will not
give us our space program. Space is the high ground, and go there
we must, lest we find the Chinese waiting for us there as well. Mandarin
is difficult to learn, I would rather spare my grandchildren the necessity
of learning it, or the cost to them of not learning it in another future
'interesting time'.
Standing Bear
