On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
<paraphrase>
> I like nukes [in principle].
Dwayne, I think you're being a bit of a noodnik here. If you're against nuclear power under capitalism, then you're against it, since capitalism ain't going anywhere anytime soon. So the conversation boils down to
Dwayne: I'm for nuclear power [in an alternative universe].
Organic friend: What? Did you just say you were for nuclear power?
Dwayne: Do you think it should be wrong in all alternative universes? Tut tut. How closed minded.
Organic Friend: Sputter!
This seems to be an equivocation subtly crafted solely for the purpose of needling your friends.
Secondly, I'm not sure this "in a capitalist universe" stuff flies.
Leave to one side that management in the Soviet Union was pretty awful too.
IIUC, several of the worst nuclear waste products last over 10,000 years. (And of course if we ramp up nuke power big enough to save us from global warming, this will be a quantitatively bigger problem.)
Now in 10,000 years, on past practice -- IF civilization lasts that long, a huge if -- humankind will have social systems vastly different than anything we can imagine. Just look at the distance between us and Mesopotamia. It's hard. Most of us don't know much about Mesopotamia and find it hard to empathize with them when we do. And that's only 5,000 years. And for 4,500 years of that, things barely changed from century to century by modern standards.
So it seems a safe bet that after 10,000 years at the modern rate of change -- hard for any mind that has ever existed to grasp, really, no one ever having experienced it -- we can assert absolute zip about society. Except that no one but scholars will understand a thing we are saying today.
>From this I take away that any solution to the long-term nuclear waste
problem has to be social system independent. If keeping the stuff safe
depends on there being a specific social system -- and one that will
endure for 10,000 years -- it won't be safe.
Viewed from this angle, nuclear power is like hydrogen fusion: solve that tech problem and get back to me. And no point talking about it as a practical solution until then.
This brings me to my last point: this is precisely the opposite of the way all of today's advocates of nuclear as a solution to global warming present it. Staring with James "inventor of the Gaia theory" Lovelock, they find the whole appeal -- the whole necessity -- of nuclear power precisely in the "fact" that it's shovel ready right now -- that there's nothing crucial to figure out, unlike with the other techs. That's why we *must* use it *immediately* *on a grand scale* because time's a wasting.
>From this angle -- the present debate -- you're also on the "against it"
side. You reject the nuclear advocates' main premise.
So only in an alternative universe do you seem to be for it, you needling noodnik.
Or am I missing something?
Michael