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From: dand@tekigm.UUCP (Dan C. Duval)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Lockport Blast: safety of oil vs nuclear power
Message-ID: <142@tekigm.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Aug-84 17:52:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekigm.142
Posted: Wed Aug  1 17:52:24 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Aug-84 00:25:45 EDT
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Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
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Mike Kelly makes two statements about nuclear power that I believe aren't true
under my set of assumptions. Mike says noone can change his mind, so this isn't
an attempt to do so, but to point up the falacy of these two statements under
a different point of view on life, the universe, and everything.

>>1) We don't need it.

There are quite a number of processes which will not work with diffuse power
sources, such as solar, biomass, etc. I have grown fond of steel and aluminum
products(my car, the nails that hold my house together, the plating that makes
this terminal work, etc), petroleum cracking products (gas for my car, paint
for the house, the epoxy the terminal boards are made of, etc), and, even etc.
The concentrated power sources are currently fossil fuels, fission, and
hydro/aero-dynamic power. The West is pretty well fixed with hydropower and
windpower, but the rest of the US is out of luck with those. 
Which brings us to fossil fuels. They are limited in duration ("what the hell,
they'll last a few centuries...I'll be dead by then') and the current plants
seem to have a problem about pumping nitrates and sulfates into the air in
forms that combine with water and strip the leaves from trees (Germany is
trying to figure out how to put the Schwartzwald back together) as well as
causing reductions in crop productivity, not to mention the long-term health
hazards involved with breathing the stuff. Each improvement made in reducing
these air pollution problems means more fuel burned to get the same amount of
energy from the plant (scrubbers are not cheap, to build or operate) and thus
the limited fossil fuels are even more limited. There will be improvements in
the use of fossil fuels, but they haven't arrived on an industrial scale, and
I'd rather have the trees come with leaves, than forests full of firewood
waiting to be blown or cut down.
The nukes suck. Hard radiation will kill you, make you sick, and/or cause
mutations that wouldn't look good in a side-show. I don't want to live next
to a pile of uranium tailings, poorly-operated nuclear power plants, or in
a high-level waste dump, but on the other hand I don't want to live in 1880s
London, either, what with the smog and the lack of technology's benefits, such
as NMR-scanners, microwave communications, farmers that can grow food enough
to feed hundreds of others, and even more etc. There are ways to deal with the
radioactive waste from power plants, the simplest being to scatter it evenly
over the face of the earth -- I don't recommend this method, but it increases
the background radiation flux less than 0.1%, much less than sitting close to
your pre-1975 color television set, or having your dentist take a picture of
your gums.

>>2) The danger is not to people living today, but to the human gene pool.

I hate to put this to you, but it's too late to worry about that. Radiation
mutations started the instant the first nucleotides showed up some number of
billions of years ago. Man is not something set apart from the way the universe
works, but it a part of it. By burning the fossil fuels, we raise the
temperature of the Earth more than if we hadn't. By blocking off rivers, we
prevent the natural flooding that washes millions of tons of topsoil into the
sea. We foul the air with nitric and sulfuric acid that kills the plants that
provide the oxygen that we breathe. We put up solar panels and houses that
prevent the sun from arriving on certain pieces of ground, so only the
shade-loving plants can grow there. The chemicals we use in the normal course
of living are more potent carcinogens than radiation, and not all of them
decay by way of biological or chemical processes -- PCB, DDT, 2,4,5-T, dioxins,
these are going to be with us for awhile. Hell, we're even trying to make the
very ground collapse on itself by pulling all the water from the aquifers.
True, the human future was threatened the first time someone pulled the first
radioactive ore from the ground, but no more than the first time an alchemist
discovered how to make sulfuric acid, or glass and wool were brought together
to make electricity. Harry's point is that you can't point at a single tiny
part of the world and go "Icky, I don't want to have anything to do with that."

So, "we don't need it"... you can live in a cave and eat wild hickory nuts,
but I like to kick back with a fine French Bordeaux and listen to Jethro Tull
or Yes on my stereo; I want to be able to go to a hospital and find a doctor
who can work on me even if it is dark outside; I want to be able to call for an
ambulance to get me to that hospital during an infarct. We need energy to
maintain the standard of living, and you can't convince me that nuclear power
is any more of a threat to future generations (gene pool or THEIR standard of
living) than any of the other concentrated energy sources. Indeed, if we succeed
in killing off all the land plants with the emissions of coal-fired plants,
there won't BE any future generations, and their standard of living is going
to be very low.

Enough. You can't make me fear nuclear power more than I fear the entire
structure of our technology, and I refuse to accept less than we have now.
Indeed, you can't make me fear anything more than I fear the greed and
ignorance of your average human being(How's that for cynical?), but these
are the things we need to get over, not telling other people what toys they
can and can't play with, and how stupid they are for not agreeing with you
or having a different idea of how the universe works.

Needless to say, these opinions do not reflect those of my employers, and I
might not even agree with myself in two weeks. 

Dan C Duval
ISI Engineering
Tektronix, Inc

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