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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: A naval presence in the arctic
Message-ID: <5975@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Sep-85 14:16:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5975
Posted: Tue Sep 17 14:16:21 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Sep-85 14:16:21 EDT
References: <1386@utcsri.UUCP> <5952@utzoo.UUCP> <820@water.UUCP> <5965@utzoo.UUCP>, <2196@mnetor.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 45

> ...  But I don't
> think we should get involved with nuclear plants at all, exactly
> because we have this tremendous capacity for stupidity!

By the same argument, there are many other things we should not get
involved with.  Surely airliners are too dangerous to be allowed.

> > ...The Three Mile Island
> >incident would not have been one-tenth as serious if the stupid operators
> >had simply kept their hands off and let the automatic machinery do its job!
> 
>     Good point if it is true!

Consult any good technical discussion of the TMI incident for verification.
The one in IEEE Spectrum was excellent.

> >The arsenic compounds and other chemical toxins in stack-scrubber sludge
> >are composed of stable elements; they will be around *forever*!!!... 
> 
>     Forever is a long time, but I can allow that they can be a nuisance
> for quite a while...

They're about as close to permanent as one can get:  stable compounds of
stable elements.

> ... Hydro power, and solar power are reasonably clean,

Hydro power does ecological damage of its own, although it's localized.
Solar power plants alter the heat balance of the Earth, since they absorb
solar energy that would otherwise mostly go back out into space.  Lesser
effects, but not zero.	Neither one is terribly safe, since industrial
accidents happen everywhere (especially with things like solar power,
where the power source is dispersed enough to need lots and lots of
equipment for useful power output).  I won't :-) even mention dam failures.

> ... just about anything we do on a massive scale is going to
> impact on the environment.

Precisely.  So we come down to comparing amounts of damage, rather than
claiming that method X has impact and method Y has none.  Guess which
method of large-scale power generation has the least impact?  (Look at
the *numbers*, not the hysteria.)
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry