Bush giving energy speech-"Nuuukuuular"

[AlCzervik]

he keeps saying it and the sheep are happily bleating.

[Fuzz]

1. It's not just that

The whole thing speech is a mess. Hard to watch. Stumbling, bumbling. It's embarrassing.

[AlCzervik]

3. what really bothers me is how happy they all seem about nuclear power

do they want a reactor in their backyard? I don't think so.

[Zynx]

4. Since when do non-supporters get into Bush rallies?

[Roland99]

5. I'd love to see more nuclear power here in the U.S.

Europe does it

Heck, Iran is moving toward it. We have the ability to build them if we could just get past the resistance.

[jpak]

11. ...and they certainly don't want one in I-ran...

n/t

[Lone Pawn]

12. More nuclear power would be great.

It would finally let us ease up on coal and oil, which ACTUALLY harm people.

[MadHound]

13. And how do you deal with the elephant in the room?

IE, what are you going to do about the waste? In addition, no matter how many technological whiz bangs you give a reactor, you can never eliminate the number one cause of nuclear accidents, human error. Until these two problems are solved, nuclear power is the wrong path for the US to take.

Rather than go nuclear, let us go to alternative, renewable energy resources. Hell, the DOE stated in a 1991 report that there is enough harvestable wind energy in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas alone to provide for all of the US's electrical needs through the year 2030. Biodiesel, hooked in with hybrid technology and an extra battery pack would do wonders for our transportation needs. And we haven't even scratched solar yet. Let us invest in these, and leave resources that produce toxic wastes, like coal, oil and nuclear in the past where they belong.

[Zynx]

16. Actually, pebble bed eliminates human error meltdown potential

You can TRY to melt one down and it still won't happen.

[etherealtruth]

2. The fact that he is an inarticulate boob ...

is not endearing, doesn't make him a "regular guy" (why those on the right can accept this I will never know) ... he is an embarrassment!!!

[Bluebear]

8. zzzzzzzzz

One of his biggest duds ever and that is saying alot!

[kliljedahl]

6. I've got this to say about that

Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Bluebear]

7. Everything else aside, is he even making sense?

It reminds me of some 4th grader reading a paper his mother wrote.

[AlCzervik]

9. not really, his war on the english language continues

and i have a really hard time getting past it because he never fiinishes a sentence because of the written in stops for applause.

[CottonBear]

10. LOL! "The war on the english language continues..."

:spray:

[FloridaPat]

14. Nuclear energy is not that great. Sounds good on paper but

it's very costly and very dangerous. First, as someone else pointed out, there is the waste. They are still trying to find a place to dump all the nuclear waste that has been produced so far in it's history. Last I heard Nevada is the dumping grounds. This stuff is highly radioactive for thousands to millions of years. Show me someplace on the planet that could have been a good place to store this crap that has not been under water or in earthquakes or whatever for the last several thousand years.

Another thing is workers. I know people who maintain these things. They work 12 hours shifts for weeks on end. That doesn't sound safe to me. They use water to cool them down from rivers or ocean. The water gets warmer than normal and disrupts the ecology around them. They also add radioactivity to the water. It isn't much, but exactly how much do we need to worry about?

Who is going to maintain these things for the next million years? My feelings are we don't have the technology to make safe nuclear power plants. No one wants them in their back yard. We should be looking at solar and wind to see what we can do with them. Their only problem is once they're in they're too cheap to run.

[megatherium]

15. nuclear engineers say that it's possible to reprocess waste

to mitigate its harm (to shorten the time it must be sequestered away). You separate hot isotopes, which have very short half-lives, from not-so-radioactive isotopes, which you cook in a nuclear reactor to create more fuel. The hot isotopes go away quickly on their own. So the theory goes. But back in the Carter years, the decision was made to not reprocess waste (they thought it would be cheaper to bury it, and reprocessing waste to obtain more fuel was deemed unnecessary because uranium was still abundant). So here we are.

I personally think nuclear might be worth the trouble, but now I'm thinking an aggressive push to wind and solar would provide a similar amount of electricity for a similar price in a similar time-frame. There's a lot of room left in conservation as well -- I read somewhere that compact florescent lamps are in only 6% of US homes. But we need to do something soon, to get away from coal, which is really dirty, and natural gas, which is getting scarce.

[FloridaPat]

17. I personally don't use florescent lamps because I heard they

tire you out faster because they are constantly cycling and you can't see it but your eyes react to it; they aren't full spectrum. Since I suffer from depression I need all the help I can get, which is why I'm in Florida.

I need all the help I can get with my health and those lights are suppose to be unhealthy.

[megatherium]

18. There isn't any flicker with compact florescents,

they have an electronic ballast. It's true the spectrum isn't full, but your vision is basically sensitive to only three broad bands of color anyway, so it's not clear to me why this would matter. But some florescent lights have a more natural color and some don't. You can tell what color they are by looking for their "temperature", which is given in degrees Kelvin; so your bulb might say 5700K or some such. Higher temperature means a bluer light, more like daylight, a lower temperature means oranger, more like an incandescent bulb in color. I've discovered that some brands look better; I've also discovered some brands don't last a long time. (Stay away from the cheap crap CFs sold at Home Depot!)

As far as depression goes, my impression is that light level is the critical thing, especially in the winter. If you fill your living space with bright sun-like light, you can beat back seasonal depression (wintertime depression). I'm not sure compact florescents are up to this application. Three 28 W compact flourescent bulbs put out plenty of light -- but I gather folks who have depression need halogen lamps that really put out bright light. And I admit, the light is much nicer than any florescent.

Best,

megatherium