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[quote user="DSchmitt"][quote user="futuremodal"]   Don't sweat the anthropogenic climate change claims, our nation has more important survival battles to address, energy independence being the most critical economic battle we face.  Anything that reduces the need to import energy from potentially unfriendly nations while at the same time addressing the need for energy is a good thing.  The more coal fired power plants, coal fired biofuels refineries, coal liquification plants, etc. we can get built and running, the better off we'll be. [/quote]   <A href="http://www.kgoam810.com/viewentry.asp?ID=347253&PT=PERSONALITIES">http://www.kgoam810.com/viewentry.asp?ID=347253&PT=PERSONALITIES</A> "Going Nuclear - A 'Green' Makes the Case By Patrick Moore The Washington Post Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page B01 In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change."   Actually I believe  "catastrophic climate change" is a lot of hype and very little science, but nuclear energy is less poluting than other sources, and has proven safer too. Japan and France have been using nuclear energy for years  (using US developed technology for both plant design and "waste" storage/disposal).  The nuclear "waste" problem is hype.  Most of the "waste" is actually a valuable resource and there are safe ways to handle the very little that is left.  The really bad stuff is dangerous for less than 50 years not the 100's of thousands of years that has been claimed.  I am not a "small is beautiful environmentalist" (most of the stuff espoused by them is nonsence, based on shallow "feel good" thinking, not science), but I do want people to have a better life in a cleaner world and to protect the environment.  [/quote] Hey, don't forget hydropower!  It is the cleanest source of generating large scale volumes of electricity known to man.  Nuclear is a distant second in terms of cleanliness.  But of course for new electric generation much of the hydropower potential has been used up already, which leaves nuclear as the clean choice. But neither hydropower nor nuclear power can address the need for transportation fuels in the here and now, not to mention the next 50 or so years.  You can string catenary for railways, but not for highways, waterways, or airways.  For the continued use of hydrocarbon liquids as transportation fuels, we will need to utilize coal in great quantities if we want true energy independence. For that reason, it would be wise for the nation's energy planners to begin to push nuclear for all new electric generation, and save coal for conversion into transportation fuels.  We need to analyze a policy in which we convert current coal fired power plants to nuclear plants, or convert them into coal liquification plants, or even convert them to biofuels plants. There will always be significant petroleum sources from "friendly" areas for the Western World for centuries to come, but those sources will always be overshadowed by the unfriendly petroleum sources.  Better to rid ourselves of the need for such sources now, rather than having to deal with it later on their terms.
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