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What's your position on nuclear? Just to be sure?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 06:24:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I gather that redstar is on the "cool team", with you and me. He's just joined the club of people that will keep on getting blasted for "total lack of awareness about the dangers of nuclear power".
by Alex in Toulouse on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 06:30:41 PM EST
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Redstar is also alone on the Stalinist corner of the ET political compass.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 06:34:18 PM EST
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The political compass is a bit like a referee in a world cup game siding Italy. A lot of unfair judgments, and no replays. I wish I could join redstar in the Stalinist corner ...
by Alex in Toulouse on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 06:36:08 PM EST
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Did you see you are now in the authoritarian conservative  quadrant?

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 06:51:14 PM EST
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Finally where I belong ;)
It was a long road getting there.
by Alex in Toulouse on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 06:56:12 PM EST
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Let's be fair, eh? This compass thing is a relative compass, if I show up as Stalin on the social scale it might just mean most folks taking that test are dissolute libertines, no?

I'd like to think of my space as the Gramschi space. I'd guess Stalin's probably way higher than me up the y-axe, maybe higher than everyone.

This being said, he probably had the right idea about nuclear power too.

 

Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant

by redstar on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 10:44:35 PM EST
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PS sorry about that ignomy imposed upon your team earlier today.

Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
by redstar on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 10:45:34 PM EST
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I'm not an energy person, my background is in media, but my reading on the subject is that nuclear is a competitive source of electricity, emits no CO2, only two major accidents in the history of the industry and neither in a western democracy with a history of an effective and transparent regulatory and safety regime.

For those who think nuclear is less safe than the alternatives, all I can guess is there are no coal miners in their family tree, or they don't live near a refinery or a gas pipeline.

Many Americans understandably have a phobia about nuclear and I sympathize, since you need to provide stringent safeguards and a regulatory framework around which to build an industry which is safest when standardized. This takes a certain aptitude for the collective which America patently is hopeless at. European countries (other than Belgium and France) have no such excuse except maybe the UK which shares America's economic ideological fetishes to some extent.

But just because it doesn't work in America anymore doesn't mean it shouldn't be a part of our energy future in the West, in much the same way just because gay marriage won't work in Saudi Arabia doesn't mean it isn't an idea whose time has come for advanced Western social democracies.

Sorry I got off topic but that's the pastis and then dinner talking, great game, great game.

Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant

by redstar on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 10:36:09 PM EST
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Nuclear energy accidents are like airplane accidents. It's not how many people are killed, it's the degree of control one has of the situation.

Cars kill lots more people than airplanes no matter how you measure it, but people have no problems driving in cars because "behind the wheel" you feel in control of the situation.

You can choose to go into a coal mine, but you can't choose to not live within 1000 miles of a nuclear power plant. (At least not in North America or Europe.)

It doesn't matter how many nuclear accidents there have been so far, or how many people have been killed (which is a debateable number), but whether you have a choice to live "near" one.

by asdf on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 11:44:08 PM EST
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