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Solve : Bill Gates talks about Nuclear Power? |
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Answer» Bill Gates talks about Nuclear Power Politics again ? ?Did you hear what he said? It is not about politics in the sense of supporting one ideology over the other. He talks about the lack of good technical research in nuclear energy. He advocates more work should be done in all areas to find non-carbon energy sources. Including g all promising forms of nuclear energy. Hes claims e future has to have some kind of nuclear energy as the main source of power. Balderdash... Just another billionaire telling us how the planet should be run... Similar to how i felt when Al gore stated we should all have solar panels while he's got a 200,000 sq ft mansion that consumes more energy than anyone in his elite neighborhood... I'll leave this open for now...but get ready for it to be locked.Quote from: patio on April 29, 2014, 05:53:39 PM Balderdash... On that note though, we do have "prior art" to consider in this regard. Take Leaded Gasoline. It was found that one COULD add Lead to gasoline and cool, no more knocks. Of course we didn't fully understand the impact that the Leaded gasoline had. Lead suddenly was found everywhere. More interesting was that when it was discovered that this Lead was actually a recent addition by comparing the lead content of places such as the deep ocean and underneath arctic ice, it still took several decades to get the industry to recognize and change, and it still required government bans and international accords. So while one could argue that environmental considerations stem from political motivations, it is already the case that the way things are today are the way they are through politics. And given the history whereby scientific research is refuted by mouthpieces paid by the industries that would be affected by such regulations it bears proper considerations for the motivations of an individual that is essentially saying that "nope, everything is fine". Quote Similar to how i felt when Al gore stated we should all have solar panels while he's got a 200,000 sq ft mansion that consumes more energy than anyone in his elite neighborhood...I agree that one making such claims should lead by example. Additionally he was hardly an environmentalist and one could probably argue that his motivations were political. However I would also argue that this does make his points invalid. It would be a fallacy to do so. There is certainly no doubt That There is a lot of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about Nuclear power as a fuel. IMO a lot of the fear is a lack of understanding. When Bill Gates says there has not been innovation in Nuclear Power since the 70's he is not entirely wrong. The Public against Nuclear Power in the 70's due to incidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island contributed to a public insistence that we ignore the possibilities of Atomic power and instead continue to rely on the power sources that we are already exploiting, despite them having a quantifiable negative effect on the environment. Establishing a Process that works is the first step, making it safe and establishing proper HANDLING and safety for that is another matter. Nuclear Waste, for example, is of course quite dangerous. However the difference, IMO, between Nuclear fission by-products and Fossil fuels is that with Nuclear Fission we can dispose of the waste product more safely, even though it is in general more dangerous. With Fossil fuels "disposal" is basically just tossing it in the air. And even if the emissions are not nearly on the level of nuclear fallout I Do not think it is SOMETHING we should blithely ignore, especially since that call to ignorance is spear-headed by corporate mouthpieces of the likes of those who CLAIMED that Leaded Gasoline had "no negative effect on the environment" and that the problems could be "controlled through self-regulation". This same effect is at play by the industries that would be negatively affected by new power sources. IMO what we have learned from previous Nuclear-related disasters is not that Fission is too dangerous to use as a power source, but that we have been too cavalier so far in our handling of it. It is not a process that should be taken lightly and the repercussions of doing it incorrectly or making mistakes, even in the software, can be catastrophic. What this means is that the system needs more checks and balances, not that it needs to be abandoned. If you want to get right down to it, we are already using a form of nuclear power; Even burning wood or fossil fuels is really just extracting the energy that was originally from Nuclear Fusion in the Sun. If stars can remain as stable, massive Fusion reactors for billions of years using only gravity and nuclear forces, We should be able to, with the proper research and pluckiness, create a safe, clean energy source based on Fission. Breakthroughs always come at a cost, and in many cases we STUMBLED on an unsafe method of doing something before we put our heads together and found a safe way to do the same thing. |
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