The Fate of Nuclear Power

[Colonel Sun]

Some historical cultural perspective . . .

[Azrael]

[Colonel Sun]

[Sennacherib]

[Sennacherib]

[Colonel Sun]

[Torchwood]

Was simply upgrading my version of Quicktime, and being somewhat suspicious of control-freak Apple, actually read the licence agreement. Contains the following:

THE APPLE SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS, LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES OR OTHER EQUIPMENT IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE APPLE SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.


Was that the problem, they were trying to run Fukushima - Daiichi on iTunes?

[Colonel Sun]

The Java programming language has a similar disclaimer.

Presumably a RTOS, such as QNX, was used at Fukushima Daiichi.

[Colonel Sun]

So the Germans have announced that they are going to close all their nuclear power stations for fear of earthquakes and tsunamis.

Meanwhile, 10 people have recently died in Germany from eating E. Coli contaminated cucumbers.

Methinks that Germany is in a bit of a pickle . . .

[CgDs]

[Torchwood]

Cynical politics from Merkel. With the FDP heading for electoral oblivion, the only possible Bundestag partners are the Greens.

Where will they get the power from - solar in cool cloudy Germany, or useless pretty windmills? Meanwhile 50% of German electricty is generated from coal.

Well, not cool and cloudy at the moment - but , as the French are short of water to cool their reactors, and hydro power is down. If high pressure stays stuck as at present, the windmills stay idle as well.

[Colonel Sun]

[Colonel Sun]

[Azrael]

[Azrael]

[CgDs]

[Azrael]

Cute trick leaving out most of the cost: Very high capital costs (leading to high yearly depreciation), plus high maintenance costs, plus very high waste disposal costs -- billions here and billions there, pretty soon we're talking real money. And then, when the time comes to decommission the plant, very high decommissioning costs.

If you pretend that the only cost of nuclear power is nuclear fuel of course the cost is low, but that's not the real world. In the real world, everything else costs money, too -- a lot of money. And either the company pays for it, or the customers do (if the company can use "unexpected" costs as an excuse to raise rates), or the taxpayers do.

I live in the real world. You prefer to live in a wingnut fantasy land.

[CgDs]

[Azrael]

I see that reading isn't a strong point of yours.

I said (on this page) that the German government's plan to phase out nuclear power entirely is an overreaction.

I wasn't arguing in favor of tearing down all of the nuclear power plants, so your sunk costs argument is irrelevant.

In the U.S. and other countries, there is a debate over whether to build additional nuclear power plants. Recent events have put those proposals in jeopardy. That's why this thread was started. Your sunk costs argument is irrelevant to that. I guess it's too much for your attention span to handle.

[CgDs]

[Azrael]

I have already said repeatedly that I don't agree with Germany shutting down all of their nuclear power plants, so we're not arguing over that.

You're the one who keeps taking comments on this thread out of context.

[CgDs]

[Azrael]

The whole soil-free farming thing is what you were going on about . . .
a bit of an odd digression; but I guess you can't come up with a more realistic example to make your case.

Well, if the Germans were to drastically increase their production of electricity in order to increase their practice of soil-free farming, that would mean building more power plants. So the very high cost of building nuclear power plants is very relevant, even to your cherry picked scenario.

You can't even follow your own argument.

[CgDs]

[Azrael]