From: GERALD LEVY (gerald_a_levy@msn.com)
Date: Fri Feb 15 2008 - 08:45:04 EST
> I put nuclear first, because it is the only currently proven and viable alternative> for large scale 24/7 electricity generation to coal and oil. Hi Paul C: Proven to do what? There are _thousands_ of examples of "accidents" at nuclear power plants. When these accidents occur, the potential immediate and long-term damage to the environment is much greater than an industrial accident in a coal mine or oil refinery (although, oil spills in the ocean can wreck havoc on ocean life). Remember Detroit. Three Mile Island. CHERNOBYL! >From the very start, it has been the US government - through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - which has promoted this energy source. For many decades they tried to hide from public knowledge the extent to which nuclear power is unsafe and has hurt the health of communities and other species in almost *every* instance where a nuclear power plant was built. Indeed, there has been no genuine oversight and independent regulation of the nuclear power industry since the power companies and states are generally in bed with each other. And what do you do with the spent fuel? I recall *back in the 1960's* we were assured that although there wasn't an effective and environmentally safe way of disposing nuclear fuel, there _would_ be. Talk about hiding an issue under the rug and the optimism that future developments will produce a "technological fix"! Here we are all those decades later and they still don't have a solution to that question! You put forward nuclear power as a "transitional demand". I'm not sure in what sense you meant that. If you meant it as a demand that would require a revolution and a post-capitalist society to be effected, then I think we should remember the problems of "internalities" and "Departmentalism" experienced in the former USSR and other "socialist" nations. > We know from France that it is possible to run an electical generation system> reliably on predominantly nuclear power, it remains to be proven that this can> be done with non nuclear technologies. What do we know from Chernobyl? > Bio fuels are as Castro points out, genocidal in their implications. Then let us recall that the nuclear power industry was the by-product of a _truly_ genocidal technology: the nuclear bomb! Indeed, the development of the nuclear power industry was historically a cover and rationalization for additional spending on nuclear weapons. In solidarity, Jerry _______________________________________________ ope mailing list ope@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
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