Call me the devil's advocate...

Flooding previously dry land reduces the trees and plants which were previously removing CO2 from the system. The resulting submerged and rotting vegetation (ie: "stump farms," et al), release high levels of CH4, which skew the greenhouse gas equation even further...

 

devil's advocate

We are getting slightly OT but I've got to believe that algae growth offsets rotting at least somewhat.

I can't believe that people in general are not more creative and jump straight to nuclear as the only short term option. Nuke plants are not cheap. I also can't believe how alternate options are poo-poohed and nit-picked.

Solar Towers will reportedly work day and night. Consentrated Solar can store heat in the from of molten salt and continue working hours after the sun goes down. Sure a single windmill will lose power if it is too windy or not windy enough but with a distributed field of windmills you increase the chances of finding usable wind. Offshore is another great spot that it blows most of the time, including at night. Pumped water storage is another way of storing energy for night time use. Besides all that the energy demand is highest for airconditioning during bright sunny days. There is a very strong correlation between solar sources and demand during the Summer.

 

Ha, Tell that to the victims of dams that have failed. You cannot predict what is going to always happen. And not all governments can afford to relocate historic sites.

I'm not comparing nuclear to dams as far as which one is worse.... I'm pointing out that dams come at a cost too, it's not win/win everywhere.

 

lakedude- all of your points about the benefits of renewable energy sources are excellent ones, and I think you're absolutely right that people nit-pick their problems and underutilize their capacity. Even so, I think livvie took the words right out of my keyboard when she talked about how some of the environmental problems of hydropower can be pretty severe. However, I would agree with you that in most cases, those problems are offset by the benefits of hydro, and that we shouldn't condemn an entire technology because of certain, reasonably predictable, problems, which we can often remediate with a little work (ie: historic sites can be moved, algae offsets some carbon storage loss, etc.).

It's my opinion that the nuclear power, in exactly the same way, can have some pretty severe environmental consequences, but that we shouldn't condemn the entire enterprise because of it. You say that the two things aren't even comparable, but I think they are. Ask people in many developing countries, like India or China, how their lives changed, their lands gone, their villages wiped out, their families killed, by poorly planned dams that swamped vast areas in unpredictable ways and triggered epidemics that ravaged communities. I'm not making this up, though these kinds of disasters don't get a lot of media coverage here in the U.S.

It takes a lot of education, planning, experience, work and money to get it done right- and centuries of dams have been built. Why would nuclear be easier? It's not an excuse for past mistakes, but it is a reason to check any instinctive distrust for the various 'new' technologies without considering all the possibilities and potentials.

I'm very aware of the hazards of radiological work. I was trained in radiation safety for a summer job at a lab once, and my grandfather wrote a whole two-volume book on the subject of accidents in the workplace for radiological workers. But thanks to the work of people like him, these things have changed. Times have changed. Nuclear power is much safer than it used to be. France is a pretty good example. Nothing is foolproof, of course, and I'll leave the vast issues of waste disposal and security to people who know much more about it than me, but on the whole, a carbon-free energy source that is technologically feasible, and not cost-prohibitive, sounds like a good idea to me. Of course I'd like to see solar and wind power take up a much bigger chunk of the energy market, too- but it's not either-or, and nuclear is just one stick in the bundle. I'd compare nuclear favorably to the coal and oil options out there.

 

Anyone know the biggest US nuclear accident?

By that I mean irridating people from any radioactive source.

 

I believe the worst nuclear power plant accident in the world was probably Chelyabinsk, rather than Chernobyl. Both were in the USSR- I mean worst in terms of the number of people killed by the radiation directly, as well as exposed to radiation. Some information is on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayak --apparently about 200 people died (compared to 56 directly from Chernobyl) and 470,000 were exposed (compared to several million estimated from Chernobyl). So either could be the 'biggest.' However, two other major nuclear accidents also happened at Chelyabinsk, irradiating as many as hundreds of thousands at a time, so it probably has the 'record' for the most nuclear pollution.

In the US, Three Mile Island's accident resulted in the exposure of two million people to low levels of radiation, but there were no immediate fatalities and the deaths predicted as a result of the exposure are very low- approximately one. So it's the 'biggest' in a way, but it depends on what you're counting.

Honestly, if I were to just go strictly by your criteria, irradiating people from any radioactive source, I'd have to say the worst problem is when the sun rises in the morning.

 

Many consider Castle Bravo the worst US radiological incident. It was the largest US blast ever and the 1st test of a droppable H-bomb. Due to the underestimates of the 15MT yield and ignoring shifting winds, a Japanese fishing boat was irradiated - one died.

Also, three servicement died in 1960 from radiation of a low-power nuclear reactor - SL-1

 

Do you mean to tell me that FOUR or FIVE people have died in the US due to radiation in the last 75 years?!? OMG, I need to change my vote!

No nukes! No nukes!

I'd rather freeze to death in the dark (which is quite likely)...

 

One here, 5 there, 2.8 million there . .

The whole point is the matter of scale. While it's a valid argument that no form of power generation, renewable or otherwise comes without some sort of environmental or aesthetic cost, I KNOW that compared to nuclear, renewables have the least potential costs in terms of catastrophic failure.

A windmill falling over isn't going to have the potential to kill anybody outside of it's height, nor is it going to poison the water we drink, the air we breath, or render countless square miles uninhabitable for at least 200 generations of mankind. A solar array might at worst make it difficult for an overflying pilot to look at the ground due to the refelcting sun. A hydroelectric dam bursting? Come on. If we invested just a tiny portion our attention to maintaing hydro projects vs. what it takes to keep nuclear going, that's just a red herring argument. Even so, millions will not die, nor will the land not be reclaimable for future use.

This argument for nuclear power is like saying that because one is an expert driver, driving the finest car, on the best tires, that they should be allowed to drive as fast as they want wherever they go. What that argument leaves out is that things happen that are 100% out of your control, and it does not matter how good you or your equipment are, and however cautious you may try to be, eventually luck will not be in your favor and catastrophy will strike - and it may be the last thing one ever does.

 

Ahhh...the issue of "magnitude vs. probability" is back. Now I'll be up all night worrying about asteroid-impact extinctions and supervolcano events.

I do not believe that risk assessments can be over-simplified like this. It leads to an emotional, rather than a logical conclusion. Unless, of course, we're talking about the fear of flying commercial aircraft...lol