Fun Stuff > CHATTER
the Chevy Volt (and other "plug-in" cars)
est:
In your facccccccccccccccce
onewheelwizzard:
I'd say that if you take the risk/benefit factors of nuclear power into account, it looks safe enough to use.
I mean, the damage done by a meltdown is pretty terrifying, but if you zoom out from the area of land that a meltdown would destroy and for that matter the impact it would have over time, and you look at how small that footprint is compared to the area of land that it would provide power for, comparing the negative impact of a meltdown to the positive impact of building the reactor is a bit like comparing the negative impact of breaking your ankle or leg to the positive impact of running every day to keep in shape. The damage done by a meltdown can be cripplingly severe, but it is relatively localized, and if we choose our reactor sites wisely (i.e. not near large bodies of running water, not on any animal migration routes, etc.) we can keep it that way, more or less. And when you compare the damage *maybe* done by a meltdown to the damage *definitely* done over time by a strip mine excavation or a drilling and refining project, not to mention the result of actually burning all that stuff, nuclear power seems like a really nice alternative to fossil fuels even taking into consideration the full extent of the risk.
0bsessions:
Concerning the main subject of the thread, this is actually something that's been kicked around for a little while.
This sounds to me like GM actually bought and co-opted AFS Trinity's "extreme hybrid," which was essentially a standard Saturn Vue modified with an off the shelf developed (Made entirely with shit pretty much anyone can make) lithium ion battery pack (Which reduced overheating risks). The concept was initially produced in an SUV, meaning the translation to a sedan would be even more phenomenal.
It's not theoretical or anything, it's been produced and it works. It was covered by more than a few news agencies a few months back and it is a working technology, though it is still in prototype stages, last I checked.
If the US were to finagle their infrastructure a good bit, this could make a viable stopgap measure until a more permanent solution to dependency upon finite resources is found. The primary risk is the idea that the government could get complacent and just ignore the problem again entirely until we're once again in a crisis.
IronOxide:
The thing about nuclear power, for me at least, has absolutely nothing to do with safety. Fuck safety.
The biggest risk with shifting to nuclear power is falling back into the same games we're stuck in right now. Uranium, as of right now, can only be considered a stop-gap at the most optimistic. There is already a significant gap between supply and demand for Uranium, meaning that we are consuming 51 million more kilograms than we are producing, quickly consuming our stockpiles in a non-sustainable manner. The most optimistic of the realistic predictions of peak uranium says we have about 270 years left at current consumption if we discover all of the Uranium in the world and rip it out of the ground. The potential life of Uranium deposits would greatly increase if we were to replace all conventional reactors with fast-breeder reactors, which won't stay open because they are not economically viable. We can add this to the list of all of the things that were not developed until far too late or never developed because they were not economically viable, like hybrid cars, electric cars, 'clean coal' processes, recycling, solar farms, wind farms, and many others.
The fact of the matter is that until something becomes cheap enough to pay for itself, the processes will not be developed until we have already drained the resources that it could conserve.
Ozymandias:
I don't think Christopher Lloyd is the best person to get your science from.
We should've been able to turn on light bulbs by sticking them in our mouths years ago if he were.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version