Obama announces plans for gravity dams, perpetual motion machines, cold fusion:
U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday criticized his rival John McCain’s proposal to encourage the building of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030.
Obama, a Democrat, said the Republican candidate lacked a plan for storage of the waste. It was among several energy-strategy ideas that Obama said were “not serious energy policies.”
Behold, the power of O!
Related: Arroz by any other name
Serious question: where does France store its nuclear waste? Algeria?
I think every person serious (and not Utopian, or posturing) about alternative energy or energy reform knows that nuclear is the way to go. Combine nuclear with new drilling and clean burning coal technology, and there you have it. We still use oil and natural gas, but we use far less of it — while tapping into far more of it locally.
Obama would have us solve the energy problem how, exactly? But cutting back on productivity and telling us we have no right to go where we want how we want, keep the temperature where we want it in our homes, and then wait for the ethanol revolution?
Howsabout we just have Rezko get us a sweetheart deal on some property, and store the waste there?
Hmmm.
I believe France processes it’s nuclear waste into fuel. Whereas we, because of the anti-nuclear assholes, are legally prevented from doing so.
I guess this is to increase the amount of waste so as to make it more of an issue.
unicorn farts or “alternative energy”. whatevs, neither is viable at the moment.
“Obama, a Democrat, said the Republican candidate lacked a plan for storage of the waste. ”
O! NO
”
McCain’s about-face on Yucca
By Jon Ralston
Wed, May 28, 2008 (2:01 a.m.)
Click here to find out more!
“I would seek to establish an international repository for spent nuclear fuel that could collect and safely store materials overseas that might otherwise be reprocessed to acquire bomb-grade materials. It is even possible that such an international center could make it unnecessary to open the proposed spent nuclear fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.â€Â
 John McCain, 5/27/08″
link
I say we store it in Rezko’s garden.
Can we still say blackout?
How, now?
The US created the technique to reprocess spent fuel, which France correctly uses. If memory serves, the US is prohibited from implementing such a process due to Carter era laws. The reality is that we can recover a lot of usable fuel if we want to. The remnant should then be interred in some sort of vitreous mass, canned and set on the Antarctic ice, where it will melt down the 4 miles or so to the continental shelf, or dropped in a deep oceanic trench.
What the hell do you have against deep-ocean dwellers, physics geek? Poor tubeworms; no more quarter-millenium lifespan for them.
Last I heard France was about where the US is with nuclear waste storage, the waste is currently housed on-site or at an intermediate repository until they can bury it at some future time. Of course this is strongly opposed by the usual enviromentalist concerns and thus what should have been started 20 years ago is still on the drawing board.
perpetual motion machines…lol…
*BELCH*
the article contradicts itself. Obamessiah is quoted in the same article saying that McCain has no “other” plan than storing the waste at Yucca. It is the same double talk bullshit.
“What do you mean, why’s it got to be built? It’s a reactor. You’ve got to build reactors.”
L. Prosser
Let me get this straight…Obama is criticizing someone for LACK OF POLICY DETAILS?
Well, of course O said that… in Nevada.
Sherman, set the Wayback machine for Fri Jun 20, 2008:
Not a panacea. Or a perpetual motion machine.
Or something that requires further study. It is safe, effective, and is opposed by every tree-hugging registered Democrat in at least fifteen parallel universes.
Lisa, are you feeling better than Friday last?
Me, I say seal the waste in ceramic containers and dump them in the Mariana Trench. Or the Puerto Rico trench, if you want closer to home. Who knows, maybe we could breed a real-live Godzilla or Mothra.
Oh, and if anyone’s interested in tickets for Stadium of Fire (July 4, Provo UT, Hannah Montana, Blue Man Group, Glenn Beck), just sail over to eBay and look for what dicentra63 is selling. I’ve got five for just over cost.
Was that off-topic? They’re going to be shooting off lots of fireworks, which puts CO2 into the atmosphere, so that has to do with nuclear waste.
Obama would have us solve the energy problem how, exactly?
unicorn farts or “alternative energyâ€Â. whatevs, neither is viable at the moment.
Renewable energy is the magic word now, maggie. No more details are necessary, just say “renewable energy” and the little proggs start wagging their little tails off.
The remnant should then be interred in some sort of vitreous mass, canned and set on the Antarctic ice, where it will melt down the 4 miles or so to the continental shelf, or dropped in a deep oceanic trench.
I think we should just make a big sling shot and shoot it at the sun.
thanks, B Moe. I often have trouble thinking of the correct words. Renewable renewable renewable. hopefully that sticks.
In containers set along the U.S./Mexico border?
Okay, before you go denouncing me, I mean to kill the pathogens like salmonella and e. coli that cross the border on some of the food we import.
Besides, I denounce myself, anyway.
Well I run the risk of bringing the raunchy, free form rage of thor down on my head but I must rant.
Does this guy have a file cabinet full of 3 x 5 note cards providing him with the proper sound bites for all occasions? No wonder he doesn’t want to get near McCain in a debate. If they get into energy policy, taxes or foreign policy McCain will clean his clock with Lysol and Bleach and give him an enema just to be sure.
France doesn’t have nearly the Nuclear waste problem that the US has because most of their reactors are Pressure Plutonium. I’d have to do some research (I’ve benn out of the industry for many, many years) but Plutoniuim reactors have a longer fuel cycle plus are much easier to reprocess. We don’t have Plutonium Reactors because Nuclear Officer Jimmah decided that Plutonium was too toxic and eeeeevvviiiil!!!
Thus we are still running boiling water and pressure steam reactors. The technology is more than 30 years old and produces way too much waste. We could be building much safer, cleaner and easier to maintain reactors now and, if they don’t get hung up in stupid court cases brought by idiot environmentalists, they could be online in three to five years.
But not this morphing tool. He has to service the environmental lobby which wouldn’t know an electron if it danced a radiation samba on their noses and then served shots of Jack Daniels. This guy is all boilerplate. There is none of the sense of depth of policy knowledge that a Clinton brought to the table. He’s skimming the surface, “feeling” his way (per Michelle) through policy positions, trying to balance the moderates and the moonbats, offering nothing the least bit innovative or even sensible.
Good God he’s a ghost, an apparition, devoid of substance, melding himself into the proper shape to meet the needs of the locals. And they swoon and hope on every word.
This is the guy who wants to run the greatest power on the planet.
Mon Dieu!!!
PS: And the only thing standing in his way is McCain. My mellow is officially harshed.
HTML link close cleanup in aisle 3.
Yeah, the whole approach on the left is all opposition and no solution. Every possible choice is opposed for additional energy for some reason or another.
for some reason or another.
To return to the unspoiled Eden that we all left when we committed the sin of creating an internal combustion engine. Life was more pure and authentic when we had whale-oil lamps, coal-burning stoves in every house, and dysentery around every corner, dontcha know.
Oh, and about 10% of the current population. Gaia knows it’s better to kill the spare ones instead of help them all become wealthy, thus lowering their birthrate.
We just need to tap into the zero-point energy and get free power! That’ll fix those Soddies!
I wouldn’t go there….
“Yeah, the whole approach on the left is all opposition and no solution. Every possible choice is opposed for additional energy for some reason or another.”
And yet…they evidently think this is a winning political strategy.
Am I the only one who remembers Niven & Pournelle?
The Pournelle Method: The ‘No Nukes!’ types tell us that stretches of American desert have allready been rendered useless for thousands of years because thermonuclear bombs were tested there. Let us take them at their word. Cart the nuclear waste out into a patch of cratered desert. Put several miles of fence around it, and signs on the fence: IF YOU CROSS THIS FENCE YOU WILL DIE
Granted, there will be people willing to cross the fence. Think of it as evolution in action. Average human intelligence goes up a fraction of a percent.
“Think of it as evolution in action” remains one of my fondest phrases.
True that, kelly. some people are going to come to the shiney realization that Obama and the Democrat’s proposed energy policy and AGW initiative is going to cost the working class a boatload of money for the forseeable future.
It just blows my mind that they continue to careen down this path and no one seems willing to call halt! It’s like a suicide pact between 15 year olds. Just wierd.
BTW, anybody read Ken Follet’s latest novel, World Without End? A great historical novel and a great read.
But talk about brutish and short lives that were ruled by an unaccountable, unquestioned, far away authority who, with the assistance of the national government dictated pretty much every aspect of your life. You paid a significant sum of your wages to this authority. You could not speak against the authority without severe punishment to yourself, your family, even your neighbors and your town. Complete obeisance was demanded unless your were royalty where you could buy indulgences and live untouched by this authority.
In other words, Al Gore’s orgasmic dream.
How about we tell the Proggs that we’re trying to emulate the French? That should get their support.
I’ll bring the brie and crepes.
I too fail at the closing of the tags. HTML, it does not like the pie I serve.
Comment by memomachine on 6/24 @ 12:46 pm #
“I believe France processes it’s nuclear waste into fuel. Whereas we, because of the anti-nuclear assholes, are legally prevented from doing so.”
Mostly they do… until they’re left with hardly any waste. The point, between the lines, is if we built the new reactors that can use reprocessed fuel, we could get rid of a lot of waste from the older reactors….
I also fail at the Grammar portion of the day…
Agreed, BJT. But ProggZero should show up soon to set us straight.
Nice pickup, Thomas. I had forgotten about that. Imagine, no greenhouse gasses (well, except for water vapor), renewable energy and almost waste free and the ability to process our current nuclear waste.
Thus, enviroweenies will hate it cuz Plutonium is poison!!!! and rsdiation is scary!!!
Renewable energy? That is wood, right? It is renewable, and it can be used to create energy, as can cow chips, which are also renewable.
Then we could also get thousands and thousands of hamsters and harness their little wheels to the generators…
What we need is a good salve.
#26 dicentra – To return to the unspoiled Eden that we all left when we committed the sin of creating an internal combustion engine. Life was more pure and authentic when we had whale-oil lamps, coal-burning stoves in every house, and dysentery around every corner, dontcha know.
Anyone who has spent time on Mackinac Island or at Greenfield Village knows just how much fun the exhaust products of true horsepower are to be around. Someone has to clean the streets, someone has to muck out the stables, and the manure has to go somewhere. My paternal grandparents (now dead) lived until their nineties and were born in the 1890s on farms. I learned a lot from their stories. The industrial revolution was one of the greatest liberating events in human history, and to turn your back on that – as many environmentalists want to do – is insane.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsfVw9xxoNY
BTW, given that I smacked Maverick around on his incoherent energy policy, I note that he did pretty well with a dissenter on nuclear energy at a “Town Hall” meeting on energy in Santa Barbara today. But I really want to quote the dissenter:
ABC didn’t say whether this guy was wearing his Carter-esque hairsweater.
Mikey – they don’t want to “turn their backs” on the Industrial Revolution. They want to reduce the # of people on the planet.
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=168&Itemid=1
(I’m not even going to attempt the HTML again after the French comment.)
http://fatima.freehosting.net/Articles/Art3.htm
That’s a bit better, perhaps.
Speaking of dysentery, the state of Florida will buy back a big chunk of the Everglades from Big Sugar.
Someone’s chuckling evilly, right about now. Imagine: selling swampland at nearly $10k an acre.
Comment by BJTex on 6/24 @ 2:36 pm #
“Nice pickup, Thomas. I had forgotten about that. Imagine, no greenhouse gasses (well, except for water vapor), renewable energy and almost waste free and the ability to process our current nuclear waste.”
Heh, the new reactor designs don’t use water. They use lead, which does not escape. So if something goes wrong you don’t release radioactive water. I hope McCain slams back. This whole waste thing qualifies as another O! gaffe in my book.
Comment by Squid on 6/24 @ 2:15 pm #
Huzzah, Squid.
Huzzah!
(One caveman talking to another.)
“Something’s just not rightâ€â€our air is clean, our water is pure, we all get plenty of exercise, everything we eat is organic and free-range, and yet nobody lives past thirty.â€Â
Good stuff, Thomas. I’ve been out of the business for almost 30 years. I need to do some boning up on new reactor technologies. Got any suggestions of links?
Thanks!
Beware of dyslexic trolls, Happy.
But, how could there be “luxuries only the wealthy can afford” in a worker’s paradise such as Cuba? They have a high literacy rate and good baseball players and free health care, for crying out loud!
Clint – it doesn’t matter – it is the inconvenient people the spokesthings are talking about – the people who are not in the audience, that is, like the people in Africa matoko wants us to not give aid to. To reduce carbon output beyond that the chosen ones have to adopt a pre-industrial revolution lifestyle, an Amish Paradise.
I was playing with the Weird Al video link I embedded.
Comment by BJTex on 6/24 @ 3:35 pm #
“Good stuff, Thomas. I’ve been out of the business for almost 30 years. I need to do some boning up on new reactor technologies. Got any suggestions of links?”
I don’t have a complete link, but popular mechanics has a great article on web (somewhere) about the current reactor class.
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Mikey, I think the Amish (at least all the Amish I knew in Southern Maryland and if them, then likely the others) are way into diesel engines. Granted no electricity going on around there and they use the diesels for weird purposes like driving hydraulic pumps to drive machinery, but still, they won’t much like being forced off crude oil products.
Yes Geezer. Thank you for your kind thoughts and excellent advice (a snifter full of Nyquil).
I am apparently Patient X and spread my plague to the entire office unknowingly. My boss is out sick and I have to go to all of her boring meetings as well as my own (causing me to actually work all day, which I totally denounce). Sigh.
Seriously though, everyone bone up on your zinc and C because that is a nasty flu going around.
LOL @ McGehee. A dyslexic troll, like a heckler with a stutter, would be alarming (but ineffective, alas).
I denounce myself.
I think the Old Ones would not approve.
Folks, it wouldn’t matter if we built more power plants to produce electricity; there’s already a NIMBY/Luddite argument against the power lines we’d need.
Can you imagine the “cancer clusters” they’d gin up if new power lines started going up?
Shit.
In this country, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!