Salon.com February 26, 2009 discussion about nuclear power
Robert Rapier, a Dutch renewable energy advocate who blogs on The Energy Collective made a comment on a post titled Nuclear Power in Tiny Package Versus Nuclear is Huge that was cross posted from Atomic Insights (with permission) to that site.
Robert suggested that I take part in a discussion on Salon.com associated with an article titled Fission here, fission now. I took him up on the invitation and joined in a rather lively discussion. It is often interesting to read through the comment threads on an article like this – the internet is a well suited for debate because it is not space limited or a place where illiterates can impede discussion simply by shouting louder.
The pro-nuclear comments generally are quite accurate and built on a solid foundation of numbers; I believe that the non-committed who spend the time to read through will tend to be persuaded.
Here are direct links to my comments, just in case you do not have the time to dig through the thread but are, for some odd reason, interested.
Update posted on Feb 28, 2009 More links to my comments within the growing thread (more than 150 at last count)
The term “fossil fuel” does not equal “petroleum”
Amory Lovins admits he works for oil companies
Hydrogen production is certainly not “cheap”
In that thread you will find two or three rather dismissive anti-nuclear posters whose main response to any information is to claim that it is irrelevant and whose main sources of information appear to be whatever they happen to find on the Internet that supports their belief system.
I recognize the names of several posters on the correct side of the discussion, who are doing a great job in carefully and completely stating a good reason for using fission as a fossil fuel alternative and explaining why wind, solar and geothermal will not ever serve that need. Congratulations.
