I have been watching these people for some time. A lot of them actually do look, sound, and…smell like the crazy hippies hrkening back to the ’60s.

As rich and powerful as GM, Ford, AIG or Citicorp? How about Wal-Mart? It’s so “powerful” that there are hundreds of communities all over the country where it can’t even get permission to build a store.

McKibben reveals a lot about his mindset and his prejudices with statements like that. Makes one wonder if he even understands that those utilities have their rates set by state regulators.

Beware the evil corporations! [and all our family, friends and neighbors who work for those companies or own stock therein through their 401(k)s.]

I agree. To his credit, Dr. Hansen advocates the rapid development of “green” nuclear (i.e. LFTR). LFTR is much greener than current nuclear and of course is low cost and clean. We can have our cake and eat it too.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081229_Obama_revised.pdf

“The Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) is a thorium reactor concept that uses a chemically-stable fluoride salt for the medium in which nuclear reactions take place. This fuel form yields flexibility of operation and eliminates the need to fabricate fuel elements. This feature solves most concerns that have prevented thorium from being used in solid-fueled reactors. The fluid fuel in LFTR is also easy to process and to separate useful fission products, both stable and radioactive. LFTR also has the potential to destroy existing nuclear waste, albeit with less efficiency than in a fast reactor such as IFR.

Both IFR and LFTR operate at low pressure and high temperatures, unlike today’s LWR’s. Operation at low pressures alleviates much of the accident risk with LWR. Higher temperatures enable more of the reactor heat to be converted to electricity (40% in IFR, 50% in LFTR vs 35% in LWR). Both IFR and LFTR have the potential to be air-cooled and to use waste heat for desalinating water.

Both IFR and LFTR are 100-300 times more fuel efficient than LWRs. In addition to solving the nuclear waste problem, they can operate for several centuries using only uranium and thorium that has already been mined. Thus they eliminate the criticism that mining for nuclear fuel will use fossil fuels and add to the greenhouse effect.

The presently proposed Yucca Mountain “solution” for dealing with nuclear waste should be opposed, in my opinion. Creation of a large volume of waste with lifetime of the order of 100,000 years is not necessary. There is a far more effective way to use the $25 billion collected from utilities over the past 40 years to deal with waste disposal. This fund should be used to develop fast reactors that consume nuclear waste, and thorium reactors to prevent the creation of new long-lived nuclear waste. By law the federal government must take responsibility for existing spent nuclear fuel, so inaction is not an option. Accelerated development of fast and thorium reactors will allow the US to fulfill its obligations to dispose of the nuclear waste, and open up a source of carbon-free energy that can last centuries, even millennia.”

see

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/

http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com/aimhigh

I wonder what it is to “believe in science?” Does that mean suspending disbelief where “science” is concerned? And isn’t the ultimate scientific principle that theories must be proven in the real world? So isn’t the need to “believe in science” a paradox?

I would prefer scientific advisors whose attitudes were founded in facts and not beliefs.. but perhaps that’s just me..:)