Consumer embargo against UK

democrates

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

would YOU deny consumers the right to choose?what about poor people who can buy more in tesco?

Classic. I'm expressing my own choices, that's all. Unless of course you see a way that I can be more powerful than Tesco, I'd be very interested to find out out if I have such hidden powers.

Muggy Dev

Thats funny...its gone all dark in here...and smelly...it couldn't be...surely not.......oh ****!...we've dissappeared up our our own a***holes!

Nice one Demo...If you had a brain you would be dangerous.

democrates

Muggy Dev wrote:

Thats funny...its gone all dark in here...and smelly...it couldn't be...surely not.......oh ****!...we've dissappeared up our our own a***holes!

Nice one Demo...If you had a brain you would be dangerous.

I lent my brain to you, when am i getting it back.

SeanW

democrates wrote:

Classic. I'm expressing my own choices, that's all. Unless of course you see a way that I can be more powerful than Tesco, I'd be very interested to find out out if I have such hidden powers.

Well, I think you're "embargo" is a little misguided, actually I'd so far as to say it's completely nuts. But hey, if that's what gets you through the day, so be it.

Lidl FTW

democrates

SeanW wrote:

Well, I think you're "embargo" is a little misguided, actually I'd so far as to say it's completely nuts. But hey, if that's what gets you through the day, so be it.

Lidl FTW

I'm glad someone brought that up. I chose the term embargo because it's usually reserved for governments to apply, but since I see individual sovereignty as more fundamental I use it myself, so I see it as rationalised from first principles rather than misguided.

Academic economics assumes consumers make rational choices based on narrow criteria, but in the real world it is natural that some of us introduce our value system to the equation. In this case we are to be put at additional risk of harm from new nuclear power facilities, and as that is contrary to my best interests I choose not to support their interests and thus contribute to their energy demands.

Even if all Irish consumers did similar I think it would do nothing to reverse the decision. But that's not why I'm doing it. Being true to my beliefs brings a deep contentment, so I don't have to get through my days, I enjoy them and feel good. As an employee for 21 years before I set up my own business I had to compromise in the workplace to secure a roof over my head, it is an absolute luxury I have now of far greater freedom, so I sure won't be a hypocrite and expect everyone else to be of the same disposition.

Also rather than be my own council, I humbly offer my views for discourse, I'm open to persuasion, indeed eager to hear other views. Boards offers great opportunity not just to harvest facts but to study other analyses to see if they can be synthesised in whole or in part with my own, pattern-matching is fuel for creativity with I enjoy immensely. And it's free

fly_agaric

Democrates - about your generally anti-nuclear attitude:

There are billions of people on Earth who use damn all energy compared to the rich consumers [who are mostly in the "Western" countries] and the population of Earth is still increasing quite fast.

Oh, and for better or worse all these people really want to live the high energy life we have in countries like Ireland.
If they all attain it, and are as wasteful as we are and rely as much on fossil fuels as we do, the planet is pretty much screwed - no matter how much we scrimp and save on energy use.

People in the rich countries do not want to turn their back on the industrial, modern lifestyle they've gotten accustomed to. When you were talking of saving energy, you advocated replacement technologies which are more efficient - not doing without.

Even if we free ourselves from the dogma that we must have constant growth, bigger profits, more consumption, use more and more energy etc and manage to reign in our very wasteful lifestyles and stop our energy use growing or decrease it somewhat - the world in future is still not going to be using any less energy than it does today. Unless you think all these people I mentioned should continue to use zero energy.

Now, as was mentioned already I think, if we stop relying so much fossil fuels for transport (we must if we are serious about cutting down the amount of CO2 being dumped into the atmosphere) we are going to have to generate even more electricity than we do currently.

Not every country is blessed that it can devote lots of good agricultural land to growing of biofuel. If arable land grows biofuel crops - where do you grow the food? We are going to need ever-increasing amounts of that too of course.

Can renewables really supply all this energy we will need if we drastically cut back on fossil fuel use? Can they also supply the increasing needs of all these people in developing countries sufficiently well that they can keep their CO2 emissions low?

I suppose we won't know how much energy a mix of different renewables can actually provide until someone tries in a big way, but I'd prefer to have a safety net of other power-generation methods and nuclear (love it or loath it) is an important one of those.

In your sarcastic piece, you also mocked the worries about oil and gas security of supply.

I don't know why. They are not some myth manufactured to frighten everyone.

It is a fact that these resources are concentrated in some of the world's great politically unstable regions (perhaps unstable partly becuase these resources are there, providing a quick source of wealth for despots and an incentive for powerful countries to meddle where they should leave alone).

If you think China, and India are going to be any less rapacious and downright amoral than the US, the UK, and the other European powers and their corporate interests have been in trying to get their hands on these resources for their use you are kidding yourself.

Whatever about Russia, Western countries, as you pointed out, are not exactly well-loved in the Islamic world - the other great oil suppliers. Its entirely possible - maybe even probable the way the world is going - that many of these countries will be run by popular Islamist govt.'s in a few years time.

Draw your own conclusions from all that as to whether its sensible or not to keep the nuclear option open in general and for developed countries like the UK to at least continue to build new plants to replace antiquated ones, and to continue to research and develop nuclear energy.

Sorry about laughing at your "embargo". It's just I'm a deeply cynical person. If you really are committed to trying to live a "green" lifestyle as far as is practicable, fair play to you.

oscarBravo

Muggy Dev wrote:

Nice one Demo...If you had a brain you would be dangerous.

Banned for a week.

LordSutch

democrates wrote:

In response to the UK decision to pursue the building of further nuclear power stations I am boycotting all UK businesses selling into Ireland with the exception of those dedicated to ecological responsibility and fair-trade.

This applies to business as well as personal expenditure.

So you are boycotting all "UK" business & goods from all over the UK? surely not, and why blame the whole of the UK for New Labour's nuclear initiative? I just cant take this boycott idea seriously ~ sorry!

ronbyrne2005

did you know theres areas of the world such as in iran with very high natural radiation levels and the locals seem to have no ill effects from it. the chernobyl and three mile island incidents were /are so overhyped.

democrates

Well put OscarBravo, I see those facts too, I don't dispute them and agree with you and ESSO that biofuels are immoral given starvation, there are other facts, and my conclusion about future options is different.

I did a simple graph back in the 90's projecting resource usage to 2100. At the time average consumption of a US citizen was 400 times subsistence. It was difficult to get a basket of 1970-1996 figures for the rest of the world so I assumed it was already fairly robust, but still the overall trend is staggering and clearly unsustainable. If you project average global resource usage rising to even 100 times subsistence for a population rising to 10Bn that's the equivalent of a trillion hunter-gatherers albeit an over-simplistic view (you can only eat one dinner).

Note that adverse climate effects have occurred since the 1970's, a red line if you will, and there's been a lot of growth in consumption and pollution since and more to come, it's obvious we're headed for many more 'natural' disasters and hundreds of millions will die needlessly, mostly the worlds poor as we see re-runs of 'Trevelyans corn'.

If I could see that coming, so could others, but those who could make a difference don't seem to care much about that.

I'm not surprised that the English establishment with Sir this and Lord that in power positions in many large corporations pursue economic empire. I'm not surprised the European settlers in the USA after the near-genocide of native americans, cling to believing that might is morally right. I'm not surprised that at Bretton Woods, Harry Dexter White on behalf of the USA insisted on a new world order based on concentrating wealth and power, rejecting Keynes breakthrough plan (far beyond traditional Keynsian economics) that would equalise it over time. They claim the British had bamboozled them into agreeing to the Sterling area and that it had contributed to the great depression in the 1930's and thereby WWII.

Given their expressed analysis that trade blocks lead to economic differentials which in turn lead to war, their behaviour since seems puzzling, but in fact is absolutely predictable once you factor in the atom bomb. That changed everything. Now you could have economic differentials and no war, because you could wipe out any enemy in a day and that threat would keep them compliant. Add the fact that western democracies are variously corrupted by private interests while nation-states readily fall at each others throats in the game of international competition and the result is predictable. The cold war put many foreign resources temporarily beyond investor reach but was a great justification for all sorts of other profitable measures.

Since then we have footloose private global capital playing nation against nation, each competing for fdi to bring jobs and prosperity and trying to grow its economy as fast as possible. We have the dirty tricks of paying off despots to get access to their resources, funding militias to overthrow leaders who are not compliant, and green-room strong-arming at the Gatt and now WTO to establish asymmetric trade deals.

Those deals go back further. The old English divide and conquer tactic has been applied during the decline of their empire from Northern Ireland and the Free State to India and Pakistan to Israel and Palestine. With the locals preoccupied fighting each other there is a demand for armaments, and leverage for asymmetric trade 'agreements'.

The Americans were slow at first to get into the game because they had a lot of popular domestic founding father morality to neutralise, but have been dedicated players for many years now and any Presidents who sought to do otherwise have failed, the USA in cahoots with the UK and others have many countries currently lined up for processing as identified by investors.

Iraqs oil is now to come under OPEC control as planned with oil and gas investors set to make out like bandits clicky. [FONT=Georgia,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]

But a comprehensive assessment of Iraq's oil and gas endowment is essential not only for Iraq's future, but also for the economic and strategic security of the United States and the world at large. Iraqi reserve estimates are the basis of economic planning and a decision-making tool for investors.

[/FONT]
That's what the war is about, and it get's better, you lend them money to build infrastructure for your resource extraction which they pay back with interest. But it's always entertaining to hear dubya claiming the triumph of democracy given their own state, the supposed servant of democracy is a puppet of private interests, and the same is planned for Iraq. This injustice will incubate many more Bin Ladens.

Africa has been the worst hit of all. 500 years of resource extraction continues by foreign powers dealing with despots they arm, the reward is bills for Billions payable by the oppressed tribes instead of reparations, and little respite despite the make poverty history hype.

Nuclear power generation is not just scale economies and cover for a nuclear military, it has the double-benefit of allowing benefits now with many costs deferred to future generations. But by insisting upon it as a civilian necessity you also forfeit the case against Iran and every other nation doing likewise, so now you must either make war or buy them off and ensure none of them use it to build nuclear weapons increasing the risk of proliferation to extremists. Either way your taxpayers foot the bill, not investors, as usual.

Just as the investor elite have no compunction enriching themselves over the corpses of their own nations soldiers and foreign victims, they gladly rob future generations. The global investor elite are not evil, some are philathropists, but they are also to various extents blinded by capitalist dogma, psychopathic, nationalistic, and corporatistic.

What the world needs is a global plan for sustainable socio-economic cohesion. IE co-operation on key paramaters and within that capped competition, equalising wealth over time. In that scenario with everyone including Muslims getting a fair deal and so fundamentalists starved of support, if all costs are fully borne by beneficiaries, the technology is safe, and it still compares favourably against alternatives, I would accept nuclear power generation.

But we don't have that. Even if my plans for a worker co-operative without share capital are achieved and matched worldwide tansferring control of production to the people, and swiss-style direct democracy with much greater transparency freed the people of every nation, that still leaves self-interested competition. Hence a longer term goal is to join with others in a worldwide political movement for both direct democracy, and that crucial global compact.

Either we choose co-operation on drastic cutbacks and fair trade for sustainable peace, or, climate destruction, global famine, and potentially nuclear war and/or terrorist attacks yielding multiple Chernobyls. Though investors are the Machiavellian architects of this crisis, most people in developed nations are willing participants, and resist any thought of foregoing their wants. Look how much flak anyone who mentions self restraint gets. It is of course impossible to justify against the backdrop of a growing gap between the rich and the aspirant middle-class, which is why a wealthy elite is socially retrogade and unsustainable. Politicians could start solving it all tomorrow if they had a popular mandate.

My grandiose sounding embargo is such a trivial individual measure it has of course a comedic side, but it joins much more important measures. It's taking time to adjust my lifestyle but I'm on the right track. You don't have to become a hunter-gatherer to improve things, already cashflow is way better so I can give more to charity and get that mortgage paid off early, and I'm much happier without such conflicts between morals and actions. Maybe if saving the world is just an added bonus people might be persuaded to cut back on consumption to reduce their debts. Hope springs eternal, I think it is reasonable to have faith in the better angels of human nature, even if our inner demons are easily amok. It's encouraging that people are ready to discuss, absent that and we'd be lost.

oscarBravo

democrates wrote:

Well put OscarBravo, I see those facts too...

Um, what? What did I put well?

democrates

oscarBravo wrote:

Um, what? What did I put well?

Correction, Fly a garlic...

Dave!

ehhh.....???

SeanW

that biofuels are immoral given starvation

This is fundamentally flawed. In fact it's outright wrong. The problem is not that there is not enough agricultural land and capabilities to feed the peoples of the world, the problem is economics - i.e. the countries and peoples that have starvation do not have the resources to buy food. One of the contributing problems is Western export subsidies, like the recently dissolved Sugarbeet subsidies.

To explain it simply: The EU and US govenrments, rather than allowing the free market to provide for all (which would allow 3rd world agricultural producers and their nations to prosper, because their costs are much lower) have turned the home markets into domestic agriculture friendly secluded 'bubbles'. These are supported in 2 very damaging ways:

1: Import embargos, quotas and other restrictions.
2: Intervention in the national market: Intervention purchase by the governments, keeps the prices of produce in the national market up, therefore keeping X number of farmers in high cost business. However, the produce has no use to the commissioning government and is usually dumped at rock bottom prices on the 3rd world, in doing so the commissioning government makes local producers uncompetitive, devastating the local farming industry. Efforts to tax the dumped produce to give home producers a chance are usually met with threats to suspend aid, loans etc.

I see biofuels as the answer, if the world's economies turned to biofuels for energy (the biofuels economy) there would be plenty of business for all those who wish to farm, and no need for the disasterous and immoral interventions and subsidies by rich world governments. An example would have been if the Irish government had stepped in and, for example, mandated that all petroleum fuels sold in Ireland contain X amount of Irish sugarbeet ethanol - it would have kept our sugar industry alive while letting the 3rd world get into the sugar foodstuff game. Of course that didn't happen

democrates wrote:

Nuclear power generation is not just scale economies and cover for a nuclear military, it has the double-benefit of allowing benefits now with many costs deferred to future generations. But by insisting upon it as a civilian necessity you also forfeit the case against Iran and every other nation doing likewise, so now you must either make war or buy them off and ensure none of them use it to build nuclear weapons increasing the risk of proliferation to extremists. Either way your taxpayers foot the bill, not investors, as usual.

Much as the rest of your post raises a wide range of issues, which themselves are worthy of study and debate, it doesn't REALLY deal with the crunch issue of nuclear power and our need for it in the battle against climate change.

Realistically speaking, there is nothing to suggest that our demands for electricity are going to fall any time soon. Nor is there any indication that there will soon be a huge, wonderous, ultra-green, super-squeaky clean, abundant, sustainable, cheap form of power to satisfy it. Now we debate the reasons why this is for the next 5 years.

For various reasons, the amount of sustainable, plentiful power options are limited to 2: coal and nuclear.

You clearly don't seem to grasp the sheer insanity of relying on the former, it's time to discuss just how bad coal really is. Coal power is the worst per kw/h for CO2 emissions, which contribute to global warming, the worst emitter of Nitrogen Oxides and Sulpher Dioxide, components which become liquid in the atmosphere and cause acid rain, which damages forests and kills everything it touches in lakes and watercourses, although there are temporary, expensive solutions such as liming lakes, which costs the Norwegian government NOK100,000,000 each year, this is asboutely essential to keep its aquatic ecosystems alive. Where do all these acidic compounds come from? Most of it comes upwind from coal burning pollution in more Southern parts of Europe. Coal burning is also a horrifically high source of mercury emissions. This toxin contributes to birth defects and other health problems, and there's a lot more of it out there in lakes and small seas espeically since the Industrial revolution, read, Coal. It also contains arsenic, another toxin, and radioactive element. An ORNL report found that

They concluded that Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations.

in an article: Coal combustion. Coal causes 25,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.

And that's before we look at coal miner deaths, which are staggeringly high in some places. Like China, which loses several thousand miners directly each year.

NONE OF THESE STAGGERING HUMAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS ARE EVER CHARGED OFF AGAINST COAL.

I hope everyone on this thread now realises how fundamentally insane it would be to use more coal in the years ahead, but we run that risk if the FUD about Nuclear power continues to maintain a life of it's own.

ANY alternative to this complete madness, must be seriously considered, and that includes Nuclear Power. It may be the only way produce large amounts of clean, relatively cost-effective, baseline load of electricity.

Bet your 'embargo' isn't looking so good now?

democrates

SeanW, I already agree on the problems of coal (hard to escape these things when you have a subscription to the ecologist) and have never touted it as an option, the black satire post was a lampoon of an extreme position rather than a statement of my position. Maybe Bush is right and any day now they'll have a way to clean burn coal to make hydrogen, but I'm fairly sceptical on that.

I put that point on biofuels hastily and carelessly in fairness, in the current economic situation I can see an immoral aspect, when food is grown for cars while humans starve to death, that's all. You rightly point out that it's asymmetric trade that is the cause of starvation, and the solution is fair trade. So I fully agree with the need for a new economic regime, and a biofuels economy that yields greater agri-employment.

If you add wind, wave, solar, and geothermal to the biofuel economy, develop more efficient technologies that require less power, far cleaner technologies using less of the remaining oil and gas and use CO2 sinks, cut back significantly on general consumption, then it doesn't come down to a simple choice between coal or nuclear as you seem to assert, rather I beleive in time both can be phased out.

But for the reasons I explained I think there is no motivation among investors to reduce the global economy or for changing to renewables, and many people lose the plot at any suggestion of reducing our consumption, hence governments are unlikely to do what's necessary any time soon.

The other aspect is the threat from terrorism, both trying to cause a meltdown and capturing spent fuel rods etc. in transit or storage for bomb-making. The salaries, equipment, and overhead of providing this security, some of it for centuries, should be costed into nuclear, but it is not. It manifests as a stealth tax to fund the general military budget. If the true cost to the taxpayer of nuclear is compared with that for renewables, the fallacy of it being a cheap option is exposed. I wish it was a silver-bullet solution though, and damn Pons and Fleischman for getting our hopes up on cold-fusion.

I saw the Horizon documentary reviewing nuclear and noting the media scaremongering. However some of the science was questionable. Proving that the Hiroshima/Nagasaki distance from ground zero vs cancer risk research was an innaccurate predictor of what to expect from nuclear plant accidents/attacks, was a red herring. Of course there is no comparison between the blast from a nuclear bomb and an explosion and fire at a nuclear plant, they are not the same at all. A key for plant risk vs proximity is how big the explosion is, how much material is available, how fierce the fire and how long it burns, and what way the wind blows.

The ecological health around Chernobly since the very expensive (in both life and money) clean-up was not news to me I've seen that reported before. Sellafield with it's far greater repositories, and proximity to Dublin presents a risk to me. While Chernobyl could be well cleaned I wonder how they'd tackle the Irish Sea.

They used statistics on background radiation from all US States and compared them with background radiation levels. The inverse relationship was taken to suggest that radiation doses below 100 milliSieverts may actually be good for you. Of course the high cancer level states are the ones with the big cities, could it be that urban pollution has something to do with cancers versus clean country living? Maybe that's not the conclusion their research was funded to ascertain.

In other research on genes, they noted radiation activated many of them, and theorised that this may help the body to fight cancer. Maybe, it could cause a lot of other things too, but I'm open to persuasion in the event of better science. And I've also gone for plenty of x-rays before and will again, I'm not phobic on it.

Since I believe I will be at additional risk given this new policy, and it is contrary to what I see as the right way to go, I must report, the embargo stays.

SeanW

democrates wrote:

I put that point on biofuels hastily and carelessly in fairness, in the current economic situation I can see an immoral aspect, when food is grown for cars while humans starve to death, that's all.

Fair enough, but just as long as you realise that it really isn't that simple.

If you add wind, wave, solar, and geothermal to the biofuel economy, develop more efficient technologies that require less power, far cleaner technologies using less of the remaining oil and gas and use CO2 sinks, cut back significantly on general consumption, then it doesn't come down to a simple choice between coal or nuclear as you seem to assert, rather I beleive in time both can be phased out.

With some exceptions, I question the ability of renewables to provide for large amounts of our energy needs. I also do not believe at all, that we can reduce our energy requirements as you claim without seriously damaging our quality of life, which I don't think anyone would support. We're going to need more energy in the future, of that I am certain.

We will realistically never be able to switch off both coal and nuclear. So, at best, we can work at switching off one, and mitigating it's loss. My choice would be coal, without any question.

The other aspect is the threat from terrorism, both trying to cause a meltdown and capturing spent fuel rods etc. in transit or storage for bomb-making. The salaries, equipment, and overhead of providing this security, some of it for centuries, should be costed into nuclear, but it is not. It manifests as a stealth tax to fund the general military budget. If the true cost to the taxpayer of nuclear is compared with that for renewables, the fallacy of it being a cheap option is exposed.

Commerical nuclear power and military weapons are two radically different pursuits. For example, the degree to which Natural Uranium U238 must be enriched to more fissionable U235 - for commerical nuclear power, you need only enrich to 3-5%. For nuclear weapons it's 90%. That's a whole different gig.

As for Chernobyl - Chernobyls don't just uncerimoniously happen. In Chernobyl's case, there were so many problems with the plant itself and so much carelessness and ineptitude running from the top of Soviet society to the lowest trainee operator that a nuclear catastrophe was inevitable. I've done a lot of reasearch into this and it could only have happened in the former USSR. Indeed, the country where the accident happened, now the Ukraine, has continued to embrace nuclear power!! Now they're Chernobyl scarred, financially broke, but have plenty of coal that they could use instead. No dice. They're continuing to invest in nuclear power because it makes sense.

fly_agaric

I'll just say seeing as I brought up the tradeoff between growing biofuels and growing food that I was thinking not of now, but of the time when the world may have to grow enough food for a population 9 or 10 billions.

I have not examined any of the figures involved other than population projections for the world in 50 years time or so, so I don't know how difficult this will be.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html

Maybe we will need to resort to the "evils" of GMO's to get us over that hump. We'll definitely need very efficient and high-yield factory farming (greens don't really like this much either).

fly_agaric

^^Democrates - there is too much in your post (which goes a long way beyond the negatives of nuclear and on into the dire need to improve human nature) to address and too little time so I'll just concentrate on one big negative for nuclear - proliferation of the technologies to nasty people.

Apart from what SeanW posted on this I'd add that nuclear technology exists and the know-how will spread no matter what the gatekeepers do independent of allowing countries that want it to have nuclear energy.

The US has already failed miserably to prevent Israel (well, maybe they didn't mind too much about this one!), S.A., India, Pakistan and probably North Korea from developing fission and even fusion weapons (Israel and India) and they'll probably fail to stop Iran from getting an A-bomb too (well, Israel may start a war with Iran before the latter can finish off their weapon).

democrates

SeanW, a key element in the Chernobly accident was that the supervisor went against the safety warning of subordinates on duty at the time because he was afraid of having to report to his superiors the next day that he had not completed the test. This central command hierarchy is not just a Communistic control mechanism, it is deployed in virtually all western corporations, so a supervisor under pressure in the latest greatest western facility may still take chances. You can state policy all day but you can't predict all human behaviour.

The design of system safety may not foresee all scenarios either, be it snowed in for a week of no-fly blizzard with a salmonella outbreak, a breakdown in the supposed failsafe system itself, or whatever, and anyway could be circumvented by an insider or intruder. I'm not going for edgy here, the odds of meteor stikes or accidental airline collisions are much more remote.

All of the facilities operating for years would appear to be fairly sound in fairness bar two major incidents, and the next Chernobyl is likely to be Chernobyl as the sarchophagus continues to degrade. But we now have fundamentalists within nuclear power countries plotting attacks, the risk scenario is becoming far more adverse.

Ukraine are going for nuclear though they have coal, so is Finland, so is the UK. I argued that it wasn't as simple as coal v nuclear if we did all the other things we could. You say they're doing it because it makes sense, it does based on certain assumptions about national goals and what costs, risks, externalising and deferral are acceptable, but I disagree with those.

For arguments sake if at some time it is established that we have gone too far and coal v nuclear is a choice we have to make to avoid deaths, I too would choose nuclear over coal, despite the risk and gargantuan cost, it is cleaner when done right, so if we can afford it and get away with the gamble over centuries we're fine, whereas with current coal technology horrendous damage is guaranteed. I remember smoggy Dublin winters. No argument if that were the choice, far better for future generations to have an expensive clean-up bill than a poisoned habitat.

But I don't think that's the only possible choice today, I believe we can still choose otherwise, we don't need anything like current energy demand if we cut back on consumption, every car, tv, stereo, newspaper etc cost energy and habitat to produce, I still want to enjoy a few of these things, but I want them to be efficient, repairable, upgradeable, and recycleable so they last for decades rather than get frequently dumped and replaced. There are compromises, it would take another round of resource consumption to get to sustainable.

As for cutbacks affecting quality of life and therefore being unpopular, I think many Irish have gone so far into splash the cash territory and now being the second richest country in the world that they've forgotten that quality of life, after the basic necessities, is all about relationships. We knew that once, but now TV says it's better to be selfish - “it's not your wadi it's mi-wadi”, “There's motherly love and there's Mueller love”, “Hey Debbie, wanna go boogie woogie?”, etc etc. Caring and sharing is yesterday and it's all about me. Greedy single/divorced consumers are more profitable than happy families, as they try to fill the void left behind by quality human interaction, with products.

We're a bit like London in the '80's, New York in the '20's. According to economic statistics and TV ads there's a big rich party going on somewhere and everyone expects to join in, eventually. Woe and betide anyone who says it won't happen for most people, and shouldn't happen. Money is now our God and the car/suv you drive, holidays per year, foreign property, and home help you hire is your statement to your fellow citizens of how you are part of the celtic tiger, you're not a loser, but one of the winners, we've all worked hard and we're worth it. The Irony is that so much of the bling we see paraded about is enabled by debt, the well-to-do accessories are a facade for diminished wretches, struggling victims of the capitalist delusion. So calling for restraint in Irish consumption today invites the simile 'like expecting turkeys to vote for Christmas', though that's far from apt in my view: the consumerist orgy itself is what's bringing Christmas.

Though this elite country of 4m is no barometer of what the rest of earths 6.5Bn are going through, hostility to accepting substantial cutbacks in consumption as a moral imperative is probably just as widespread, too many people have been seduced. Given also the absence of strong and wise political leadership, I'm resigned to the probability of watching avoidable disasters unfold, but I'll do what I can and be content at that.

Fly_Agaric, I agree nuclear proliferation is hard to avoid. I dislike the Capitalist mode because of its wealth concentration, its predator-prey 'ethos', its corruption of markets and democracy, within and between nations. This vast global exercise in anti-social engineering is fomenting extreme vindictiveness in some of its discontented victims, and that makes Nuclear facilities and the weapons they enable much more risky. If we had that plan for sustainable global socio-economic cohesion aka justice, we'd be a lot safer.

As for feeding the worlds billions, I question the sustainability of the GM silver bullet. If you engineer a plant to grow more, it takes more water and nutrients from the soil. Now you need to turbocharge that which provides those inputs, and this cascades to the entire ecosystem. Maybe nature has been slacking off all along, and failed to balance growth, diversity, and resilience. Or maybe we're like chimps climbing a tree thinking they're going to the moon because they're getting closer.

Safety concerns are by no means allayed either, more on this thread. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054927357

The food problem is exacerbated by the fact that all of those excess resources we consume diminish our habitat. This road, infinite growth of consumption and pollution within a limited biosphere, leads to disasters and horrible dilemmas. On the other hand if we work together we can reverse the decline of our biosphere and the fabric of our societies. Place your bets.

bk

democrates wrote:

SeanW, a key element in the Chernobly accident was that the supervisor went against the safety warning of subordinates on duty at the time because he was afraid of having to report to his superiors the next day that he had not completed the test. This central command hierarchy is not just a Communistic control mechanism, it is deployed in virtually all western corporations, so a supervisor under pressure in the latest greatest western facility may still take chances. You can state policy all day but you can't predict all human behaviour.

Sorry Democrates but that is a vast over simplification, that was only one of many, many mistakes made. The biggest mistake was building a RBMK type reactor in the first place. Even before Chernobyl, these reactors were known to be extremely unstable and dangerous, that is why non has ever been built outside of the Soviet Union.

The reason that the Soviet Union knowingly used these type of dangerous reactors was because the primary goal of these plants was not to generate electricity, instead the primary goal was to enrich uranium for the use in Nuclear weapons, which these types of reactors are excellent at doing (but very unsafe).

The reason they are unsafe is:

1) They are so large they can't have a full containment building like all other western nuclear reactors.

2) They have a High Positive Void Coefficient, this means when they start to melt down, they do so very quickly, leaving little time to respond and fix it. Western power plants have a low Positive Void Coefficient which means it takes days for them to meltdown, leaving plenty of time for extra engineers to be brought in to fix the problem and stop it if necessary.

democrates wrote:

The design of system safety may not foresee all scenarios either, be it snowed in for a week of no-fly blizzard with a salmonella outbreak, a breakdown in the supposed failsafe system itself, or whatever, and anyway could be circumvented by an insider or intruder. I'm not going for edgy here, the odds of meteor stikes or accidental airline 'arrivals' are much more remote.

Again in curret western power planets it takes days to melt down and therefore leaves plenty of time to fix them.

It also ignores the new generation of passively safe reactors like the PBRs, basically unlike the current reactors which require manual intervention to shut them down (stop them from melting down) in a case of loss of coolant, passively safe reactors use the laws of physics to shut down if they loose coolant without any manual intervention.

So even if every single person in the plant died or even if some terrorist tried, these plants simply can't melt down, due to the laws of physics. Basically the hotter the temperature gets in the core of the reactor (start of a meltdown) the slower the chain reaction gets and eventually stops the chain reaction.

BTW Most Nuclear plants are designed to withstand a direct hit by the largest plane full of fuel. They are also designed to withstand, tornadoes, earthquakes and hits from bombs and missiles.

democrates wrote:

But I don't think we're that's the only possible choice today, I believe we can still choose otherwise, we don't need anything like current energy demand if we cut back on consumption, every car, tv, stereo, newspaper etc cost energy and habitat to produce, I still want to enjoy a few of these things, but I want them to be efficient, repairable, upgradeable, and recycleable so they last for decades rather than get frequently dumped and replaced. There are compromises, it would take another round of resource consumption to get to sustainable.

While I agree that we can cut down on our energy use, I don't believe it will be enough. The problem I see is that the world population is increasing and more importantly, many formally poor people in Eastern Europe, China, India, etc. are now starting to become rich and want to live the high energy lifestyle of the west. I believe that the best we can hope for is that through reduction in energy use and efficiency we can balance out the increase in the newly rich persons, but that still leaves us with massive energy use and I fear that it simply won't be enough and energy use reduction is a green dream that just isn't practical.

SeanW

SeanW, a key element in the Chernobly accident was that the supervisor went against the safety warning of subordinates on duty at the time because he was afraid of having to report to his superiors the next day that he had not completed the test. This central command hierarchy is not just a Communistic control mechanism, it is deployed in virtually all western corporations, so a supervisor under pressure in the latest greatest western facility may still take chances. You can state policy all day but you can't predict all human behaviour.

I've researched the Chernobyl accident in a good level of detail. And I am satisfied that it cannot happen again, except, as you mentioned, in the remains of the Chernobyl plant.

There was WAY more than one key element that caused the Chernobyl accident, there were more like a dozen, without any of which there would have been no such catastrophe. The whole Soviet Union itself was an ongoing disaster in every respect - it's nuclear programme was no different. I detailed the findings of my research in this old post. Read that and I'm sure you'll agree.

And as for the central command control arrangement, yes it really was that bad in the Soviet Union. You either do what you're told or you end up in a gulag, consequences be damned. Ok maybe it wasn't that bad but not far off. Sometimes we forget that the accident was caused by the failed communist authoritarian regime of the Soviet Union and how bad that truly was.

As for cutbacks affecting quality of life and therefore being unpopular, I think many Irish have gone so far into splash the cash territory and now being the second richest country in the world that they've forgotten that quality of life, after the basic necessities, is all about relationships. We knew that once, but now TV says it's better to be selfish - “it's not your wadi it's mi-wadi”, “There's motherly love and there's Mueller love”, “Hey Debbie, wanna go boogie woogie?”, etc etc. Caring and sharing is yesterday and it's all about me. Greedy single/divorced consumers are more profitable than happy families, as they try to fill the void left behind by quality human interaction, with products.

To a point I agree, but realistically what are the chances of this changing? I mean seriously, what are the ACTUAL chances of people wanting to reduce their consumption for environmental reasons? Sweet FA, I believe is the answer.

Even if noteworthy cutbacks were possible, there would still be a gap between what could eco-sensitively be produced and what the peoples of the world would demand, remember the population of the world is rising and so are the living standards. A gap that can only be filled by a large-scale, clean, efficient very dense energy source.

Realistically I cannot see it being possible to mass switch off both fossil fuels and nuclear power. If you look at the problem in the cold, harsh light of day, I'm sure you'd agree.

Tony Blair knows what needs to be done, and to be fair, his government has a history of doing the business on all these issues AFAIK. So credit where it's due.

democrates

Fly_Agaric, pbr is a step in the right direction, but I'm certainly not convinced it's impervious to meltdown any more than the titanic was unsinkable. Those pebbles may have a shell with a melting point of around 2000 degrees while the negative feedback design stabilises temperature at 1600, fine, and inert helium coolant which can even be turned off without danger, great.

But water cools the helium, and if that system is compromised and water gets into the pebble bin a steam explosion is likely, rupturing pebbles and exposing their fuel. Maybe they're still safe at that and not one will go into meltdown and take the rest with it, I've seen no research either way, not encouraging, so the safety from meltdown in such scenarios remains unproven.

They're convinced it's so safe they're planning to build these plants without secondary containment!!! :eek:

Also if a terrorist gets at the pebble supply either at the plant or en route, a hail of bullets into them and a few thermite grenades sound like an effective way to achieve meltdown. I can't prove it can be done, but again no re-assuring test results available, whether such tests have been carried out or not is another question. Or add conventional explosives to a few pebbles and you have a dirty bomb. So I'd still consider pmbr a significant risk and therefore requiring costly security in the long term.

As for "a key element" in the Chernobyl accident, I wasn't saying that was the sole factor (good old post seanW btw - saw a hair-raising docu-drama going step by step through the nights events a few months back), there were lot's of contributing factors. BUT, if that supervisor followed the safety advice of his subordinates that night Chernobyl could still be operating today, so I think it's fair to call human failure "a key factor" that night, and western energy corporations are not exempt from it.

As for thrifty living you both agree somewhat in principle. We can anticipate the reaction of others by examining our own reactions. I know how hard it is to give up the car, standing at the bus stop as people drive by, and you know some are thinking 'loser', the irony being I may be far more financially secure. So it does take solid backbone in the face of todays fashions, but I've found it very worthwhile.

Thrifty living is in and of itself absolutely practical, far more so than excess. I recognise that the vast majority at this point in civilisation are hooked on consumerism, so yes, as a political objective it looks far from practical, it would be a green dream as you say if I were to actually expect such a drastic turnaround in attitudes and behaviour. It wouldn't be much of an election "let's tighten our belts and get the bus" V "pedal to the metal and party on!". But difficult doesn't mean impossible, it's not so black and white, some progress can definitely be made and that will vary country to country. I just enjoy doing what I think is right.

bk

democrates wrote:

As for thrifty living you both agree somewhat in principle. We can anticipate the reaction of others by examining our own reactions. I know how hard it is to give up the car, standing at the bus stop as people drive by, and you know some are thinking 'loser', the irony being I may be far more financially secure. So it does take solid backbone in the face of todays fashions, but I've found it very worthwhile.

Thrifty living is in and of itself absolutely practical, far more so than excess. I recognise that the vast majority at this point in civilisation are hooked on consumerism, so yes, as a political objective it looks far from practical, it would be a green dream as you say if I were to actually expect such a drastic turnaround in attitudes and behaviour. It wouldn't be much of an election "let's tighten our belts and get the bus" V "pedal to the metal and party on!". But difficult doesn't mean impossible, it's not so black and white, some progress can definitely be made and that will vary country to country. I just enjoy doing what I think is right.

I do to, I don't own a car (despite being able to easily afford one), cycle to work and do what I can to reduce my energy use and recycle. However I'm also a realist and I honestly don't believe that this is practical at a world wide level to reduce our energy needs. There simply aren't enough people like us and the population of the world is increasing far too fast.

I think we need to take a look at all the options including Nuclear in an unemotional and logical manner.

fly_agaric

democrates wrote:

Fly_Agaric, pbr is a step in the right direction, but I'm certainly not convinced it's impervious to meltdown any more than the titanic was unsinkable.

Being a pedant here but that should be addressed to bk!

Anyway - this thread is very interesting. The pebble reactor technology is a new one on me. I'd never even heard of it! Must read something...:(

democrates wrote:

I know how hard it is to give up the car, standing at the bus stop as people drive by, and you know some are thinking 'loser', the irony being I may be far more financially secure. So it does take solid backbone in the face of todays fashions, but I've found it very worthwhile.

I'm lucky in that I can use public transport to get to work and I otherwise avoid driving (walk, use public transport) most of the time.
If it helps - think of yourself as a trend setter. I look around at the massive waste going on as we partake in the consumer capitalism you've been so critical of and I can't help feeling it won't be too much longer before people (in countries like Ireland) are forced to be less profligate anyway. Hopefully as a gradual process of adjustment and adaptation rather than by hitting against a sharp resource-limit that we can't find a technological way to get over.

DublinWriter

democrates wrote:

In response to the UK decision to pursue the building of further nuclear power stations I am boycotting all UK businesses selling into Ireland with the exception of those dedicated to ecological responsibility and fair-trade.

Good for you! Why let facts stand in the way of emotions! More people are killed in the production of fossil fuels than in nuclear power production per annum.

Let's get back to those environmentally friendly carbon-based fuels ASAP!

democrates

DublinWriter wrote:

Good for you! Why let facts stand in the way of emotions! More people are killed in the production of fossil fuels than in nuclear power production per annum.

Let's get back to those environmentally friendly carbon-based fuels ASAP!

The rest of my posts here would enlighten you to the fact that that is not my position, could it be that you have not read them and reacted emotionally to the first... If so, no worries I'm not being snide, there are a lot of long posts here and most people have time constraints.

Fly and bk, apologies for mixing up names twice now, periodic bouts of dyslexia here into the wager. Thanks for the kind words, I'm far behind others in what I'm doing and late in the game to it, the only trend I could claim to set is in my own lifestyle, but in time I hope to entice some converts using online facilities to promote the benefits of thrift.

The pbr idea dates back to the late 1940's I think. One of the original scientists involved in research for the atom bomb came up with it and said his design goal was based on the view that if you couldn't turn off every system, circuit, valve etc and walk away without danger, it wasn't 'inherently safe'. Pbr is the only design that has come close to achieving that. Given that the likelihood is increasing demand for energy and thereby nuclear, and again I wish we would avoid it with thrifty living and supporting renewables r&d, pbr looks a safer bet than water and rods. In any event r&d should continue.