Blog Responses

First Response to: http://inuclear.blogspot.com/

I'm ecstatic that you brought this up in your post. I have been a huge proponent of expanding our Nuclear Energy program in the US, since I learned of its tremendous potential to generate a ton of clean energy.

Like North Coast, I agree that there is an unnecessary stigma associated with Nuclear Energy. If you ask someone walking down the street, why or why not to use nuclear energy, they would most likely respond negatively citing Chernobyl or the Mile Island disaster as a reason to forgo this alternative to fossil fuels. This is not their fault. The media in the US loves to prey on the fears of its citizens, because you don’t sell ad spots on CNN by presenting stories that don’t scare your viewer to the point that he cant change the channel. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this finger crippling fear, keeps us away from a safe, viable, and real opportunity to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. So hopefully some useful facts that I will present will put a ray of light in the night and scare away the dark.

An article put out in 2008 by Mark Z. Jacobsen offers some needed insight into the world of energy generation. To summarize, he assumes that all vehicles in the US are battery electric (BEV) and calculates the ability, of a multitude of power generation platforms, to successfully power all of the vehicles in the US. He looks at a host different criteria ranging from emissions per Kilowatt Hour (KWh) to the amount of land needed to power the whole US vehicle fleet.

In this article, he is pretty hard on Nuclear, but for all of the wrong reasons. He considers terrorism, nuclear war etc. in his analysis of nuclear, but if you look past those figures, you begin to see how good nuclear energy could be for our future. Here are some things I have found.

The US is the leading generator of nuclear power in the world, producing about 29.2% of the world total in 2005. France generates more than 79% of their total energy from nuclear power plants. The uranium reserves could theoretically sustain the world’s energy generation for 90-300yrs, and this is not including uranium found in the ocean and breeder reactor technology. Nuclear power produces from 9-70g CO₂ per KWh, compared to coal (w/ carbon sequestration) 255-440g CO₂ per KWh, and wind, which produces 2.8-7.4g CO₂ per KWh. The land needed to generate enough electricity to sustain the whole US vehicle, for wind, 9-13% of the US, for nuclear, .045%-.061%.

In my opinion it’s a no brainer. Let’s go nuclear.

Second Response: http://food-ethics.com/2010/08/24/gmo-vigilantes/#comment-274

I’m glad there is someone out there fighting for the rights of natural plants. I just don’t understand why we have to spend so much money funding these programs to build, on a genetic level, new plants. Is it just me, or is there something seriously wrong with the way we view the world. Nature has perfected its genome through millions of years of evolution, and within 200,000 years of Homo sapiens existence, we attempt to mess with something that is already perfect. I really don’t get it. If we spent half the money and knowledge put into GMO’s on improving agricultural practices, wouldn’t we have the same results? Not to mention, we have no idea the extent to which eating GMO’s can affect our health. There have been no real studies done about the consumption of large quantities of GMO’s on our own health. I feel like it might be a good idea to test these freakish products before the general public can consume them. On top of that, the audacity these companies have to try and get their products to be sold without any kind of label. Outrage. I feel like it is my right as a consumer to know what I am putting in body, and I don’t want to eat an orange that was grown in a lab, when I have the opportunity to eat an orange from the tree. I don’t get our obsession with GMO’s and again, I’m glad there’s someone else out there that dislikes them as much as I do.