Nuclear Power v FIRE

For all the nay-saying about high risks associated with nuclear power, I have but one question.  Should we prohibit the use of Fire?  Every year hundreds of thousands of people are injured or killed by FIRE.  Should we prohibit Fire? 

In our modern, 7 billion person world, nuclear power is EVERY BIT as necessary as Fire.   We can not sustain much less grow unless we start, RIGHT NOW, to exploit nuclear power. 

Japan is going to teach us something about nuclear power.  The biggest and the most important difference between Chernobyl and the the Dai-Ichi nuclear plant is not the magnitude of the radiation, but the price of real-estate.  In Chernobyl the failing Soviet economy found it cheaper to abandon the site as opposed to redevelop it.  Japan will not have that option.  The cost of real-estate is Japan is much higher and thus there will be remedial efforts made to abate and dispose of the toxic waste.  That will be a good thing.  The reports that Chernobyl, while drawing tourist toady, will not be able to safely support life as we know it for 3,000 years is economic, not a physical limitation.

We need to learn to handle Nuclear Power much like we currently have learned to safely handle FIRE.  I can only imagine the trouble the first cave person had when he tried to bring fire into the cave for the first time. 

We need to get past OUR IRRATIONAL fear nuclear power. The so called GREEN energy alternatives, solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal maybe generate some energy, but we will out strip that capacity before we fully integrate it. 

It takes for example a million kilowatts to great one wind mill that may over its lifetime generate 4-3 million watts, that seems like a plus.  But in actuality our needs are growing beyond that.  We need to excesses of nuclear power to sustain our growth.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.  Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” Marie Curie (1867 – 1934 Polish and naturalized-French TWO TIME Nobel Prize Winning physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity.)

We need to start to think outside the box… "Fire in the Cave and Nuclear Power in the Modern World" 

http://dgjeep.blogspot.com/2011/03/fire-in-cave-and-nuclear-power-in.html

Thanks in advance,

To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Denial of Due Process

"Agere sequitur esse"

"Time is  of the essence"

David G. Jeep

http://dgjeep.blogspot.com/

E-mail is preferred Dave@DGJeep.com, DGJeep@DGJeep.com

(314) 514-5228

David G. Jeep

c/o The Bridge

1610 Olive Street,

Saint Louis, MO63103-2316

Fire in the cave And Nuclear Power in the Modern World

Fire in the cave

And

Nuclear Power in the Modern World

"Lastly, we have to rethink the price we pay for fission power. Faust, for example, was the mythical figure who sold his soul to the devil for unlimited power. Are we willing to make a Faustian bargain?"[1]

I appreciate Mr. Kaku's "Faustian" analogy but I think a more accurate analogy would be the cave person's discovery of Fire.  Imagine the trouble the first cave person would have had bringing "Fire" into the cave.  It smoked, it burned, it killed, but its rewards were irresistible. 

Exploitation of Nuclear power is not a bargain with the devil it is a learning experience.  Nuclear Power while somewhat new and un-explored on this planet is the natural SOURCE of ALL POWER in the universe.  I stress it is NATURAL!

We are currently burning up our fossil fuels at an unsustainable rate.  The proposed "safe" green energies… wind, geothermal, tidal and solar all have their source in the nuclear power of the Sun.  The distance from the source consumes efficiency and sometimes the inefficiency makes them inefficient to the point of economically problematic.  They consume more energy than they produce.  We need to get to the source to better exploit the potential. 

Look at fire today, if we had not become accustom to the sometimes deadly effects of fire today, think of how in our all too insulated world it would be viewed, the cooking fires, car fires, house fires, forest fires. We would never have been ale to exploit our fossil fuels without the real yet accepted risk of fire. 

We have to get past the fear of Nuclear power.  Look at Japan today, the only country to have ever survived a tactical nuclear weapon attack.  Look specifically at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; they have redeveloped, they are safe, people are living at GROUND ZERO today.  Nuclear Power in Japan is utilized effectively, efficiently and safely to power their production based economy. 

Yes the recent earthquake has overcome their first line safety designs, but they will overcome.  They will learn from the accident, just as we have learned how to contain fire in our caves with chimneys, fireplaces, ovens and stove-top-burners.

We need to see the potential for Nuclear Power.  America is in the dark ages of Nuclear Power utilization.  We need to have the courage of the cave person to bring the "fire" of nuclear power into our caves so we can utilize it to create the virtually unlimited power of the "Faustian bargain" without the unfounded irrational so called supernatural fear of the devil.  Nuclear Power is the source of all energy in the universe.  If we are to sustain ourselves beyond our fossil fuel reserves we have to learn how to utilize it safely.  There will be risk, there will be losses but in the end we will have an unlimited source of power that can feed our ovens, our computers centers, and our hydrogen fuel cells FOREVER. 

The potential is there.  We can overcome our fear.  We need to learn from our experiences both with nuclear weapons and civilized nuclear power for the betterment of mankind. 

We overcame our irrational fear of FIRE; we can overcome our irrational fear of NUCLEAR POWER.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.  Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” Marie Curie (1867 – 1934 Polish and naturalized-French TWO TIME Nobel Prize Winning physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity.)

We need to start to think outside the box… "Fire in the Cave and Nuclear Power in the Modern World" 

On a separate note, I would contend that we do not have any individual rights in this country, "Everybody, BUT the innocent victim, has "ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY"" for the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America e.g.,  "To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Denial of Due Process"; but that is another story.

DGJeep"The Earth and everything that's in it" (http://dgjeep.blogspot.com/)

Monday, March 14, 2011, 5:38:05 PM

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[1] Faust and Fission Power, NYTimes March 13, 2011, Michio Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York. He is the author, most recently, of "Physics of the Impossible."

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Thanks in advance,

To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Denial of Due Process

"Agere sequitur esse"
"Time is  of the essence"
David G. Jeep
http://dgjeep.blogspot.com/
E-mail is preferred Dave@DGJeep.com, DGJeep@DGJeep.com
(314) 514-5228

David G. Jeep
c/o The Bridge
1610 Olive Street,
Saint Louis, MO63103-2316