American Budget Cuts

Semiconductor manufacture involves chemical etching of silicon with some rather nasty stuff. This applies to basically any semiconductor, including computer components.There are ways to clean up the process, and lots of factories use them, like the Intel and AMD plants here in the states.But you're right: lots and lots and lots of solar cells are made in China, and they largely just don't care.Solar is great, and even considering a poor manufacturing process, it still beats the pants off of fossil fuels (mining/drilling for fossil fuels is horrible for the environment, and that's before refinement and actual power production). It very easily allows for better decentralization of the power grid, can easily be installed in rural areas, etc, and the only to real downsides are that solar cells aren't particularly efficient and they're dependent on clear line-of-sight to the Sun. I still wouldn't mind seeing solar cells on most rooftops and solar power plants wherever feasible, but there just isn't any way they can keep up with our power demands, even including wind and wave and geothermal into the grid.The developed and developing worlds are power hungry.Nuclear, by contrast, is extremely clean. When disaster strikes, it's bad, but there has been exactly one significant nuclear disaster, and it involved purposefully trying to test the system by bypassing over a dozen safety mechanisms, and it occurred almost three decades ago. Nuclear power is used in many nations, in some cases even providing more electricity than any other source, without incident. The actual evidence is that a scant few dozen people have ever been killed and just a few hundred injured in a nuclear power plant disaster, while thousands of people work in them every day, and millions receive electricity from them without incident.Contrary to the Simpsons, nuclear plants don;t make fish grow three eyes, don't pump toxic sludge into water supplies, don't make you glow in the dark, and won't give you cancer whether you work in one or live nearby. New fossil fuel recovery techniques, on the other hand, have grown more and more desperate as supplies of easily accessible fuels dry up - just look at the Gulf oil spill. Even another Chernobyl couldn't manage the amount of damage that disaster caused (life in Chernobyl, by the way, has actually re-surged. It still wouldn't be a good idea for humans to live there, but visits are fine, and plants and animals are flourishing in the absence of civilization).What's lacking for nuclear to take over the energy industry is not safety or security. It's political will. Collectively we have an irrational fear of nuclear power - we consider radiation to be more frightening than natural gas explosions or coal fires (a coal fire in the US has been burning since 1962!) even when we can objectively show that the risk is far lower.

Iirc wasn't France having an issue with where to store the waste and wasn't there a fairly recent investigation into nuclear waste management companies (mafia owned?) after one? was found to be taking the waste by boat/ship and then sinking it?By 2020 France is expected to need to dispose of 1.9 million cubic meters annually.I am conflicted about the 'nuclear' issue. On the one hand it seems that in order to combat global warming, nuclear is the most reliable, as far as energy production is concerned. On the other hand, producing 76% of our electricity using Nuclear power, as France does, is fraught with problems for the long term storage of nuclear waste if not the resource limit problem of extracting enough of the uranium to supply such a large demand. In any case, I personally feel that we as a society need to learn to conserve to a much larger degree than we do presently or it will be forced upon humanity regardless.

Sorry about my inability to post this in my previous reply (I'm only human ), but I thought? you might be interested in this post. It's well worth reading imho on the discussion of Nuclear fuel resources.Edited by DBlevins, : Doesn't help when I forget to add the link

Hi DBlevins, I think there should be a lot of talk about alternative nuclear sources rather than assume that because we know how to use Uranium that it is the best long term choice.I also think that the proper use of nuclear fission is to get us to nuclear fusion.However this topic is about Budget Cuts. How about a new topic on the use and misuse of nuclear power?Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : end

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Are you a member of a union?

Your link says "toxic waste." It does not say "nuclear waste." There is a rather large difference between the two - one of them being that "toxic waste" is an awfully broad term of which nuclear waste is a tiny, itty bitty subset.In fact, that's how I know your information is bullshit: From here, in a discussion of the single reprocessing facility that handles all of France's nuclear waste.1.9 million cubic meters/year?! What are you smoking?! Do you have any idea how much uranium it would take to fill that?!Uranium has a density of over 19 metric tons per cubic meter!You're very, very obviously conflating "toxic waste" with "nuclear waste." I suggest you stop doing that, as it makes you very, very wrong.The 23,000 tons of waste that could fuel France for 14 years, by the way, would then occupy only a paltry 1210 cubic meters of volume. That's rather smaller than 1.9 million. And that's for 14 years, which works out to about 86 cubic meters per year.For the entire world, from here:

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As already noted, the volume of nuclear waste produced by the nuclear industry is very small compared with other wastes generated. Each year, nuclear power generation facilities worldwide produce about 200,000 m3 of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste, and about 10,000 m3 of high-level waste including used fuel designated as waste1.

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Where did you get your info? Greenpeace?

resource limit problem of extracting enough of the uranium to supply such a large demand.I think this can be somewhat overcome by breeder reactors. If I understand them correctly they can produce more fissile material than it uses, and creates less waste. It uses an isotope of thorium in addition to uranium. I don't claim to know all there is to know about them but a quick look at wiki will get you going as it did me.
The downside though is we don't want that type of reactor everywhere as it can be used to create weapons grade materials, never a good thing.
I am more worried about long-term storage of waste then anything else.

Sorry ...double post so I erased this one. I am not sure if I can remove a post of mine or not??Edited by fearandloathing, : No reason given.

A union is a way for a group of people to negotiate a better deal than an individual could expect to receive on their own. Its like how group rates are lower in health care than individual rates.Critics argue that unions extort money from corporations, and that the employees need to prove their value in order to earn higher wages, but the question is whom should set and/or determine a value..in dollar terms?At my store, we are already working harder and increasing our value per hour. There is no reason for us to make less than we do now. The next step will be to bring the lesser paid workers up to par with the higher paid workers. That is plan B, and I seek to get appointed to the committee that will help draw up the 2013 contract proposal.

I turn 60 in a few months. I'm not afraid of anything.I agree with Rahvin that nuclear power is the best current answer to climate change and the more immediate problem of fossil fuel pollution of air and water.Nonetheless, I don't think concerns about nuclear waste storage can be shrugged off as mere NIMBYism.The notion that radioactive waste will be stored perfectly for thousands of years by profit-driven entities who typically look no further than the next fiscal quarter seems a bit optimistic.Supporting a global expansion of nuclear power in the face of unproven storage methods of waste (on the time scales required) makes me uneasy, although I do support it because the fossil fuel alternative is clearly catastrophic, and "renewable" energy processes aren't ready for prime-time.I suppose, in the face of climate change and present pollution, I prefer to trust the ingenuity of future scientists and engineers in dealing with stored waste, if needed, rather than the "promise" of clean coal.Still, even geologic storage solutions like Yucca Mountain require a confidence in our ability to predict geologic events for millenia to come.The most germane source of nuclear NIMBYism, I think, is not a mistrust or ignorance of science but rather a mistrust of industry which is warranted by its track record.I might lend credence to assurances from Stephen Hawking, or the persuasive and clearly knowledgeable Rahvin, for example, but I wouldn't trust General Electric anywhere near my backyard.In fact, they devastated my regional backyard (NE) with illegally dumped PCBs and lied about it for decades.P.S. I probably should have posted this reply to Rahvin, but I was reading through the thread and was charmed by your 60-year plan.

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Storing waste for thousands of years isn't that much of a problem.Long before that we'll be digging all that stuff up and reusing it with some still-undiscovered technique.It will be valuable someday! We need to store it where we can get at it easily.

That may be, Coyote, and I hope so.But American industry and its track record with its waste products don't inspire confidence.I don't actually doubt that science can handle the task. I'm just uneasy with how industry will implement and manage it. A better role for environmentalists than obstruction on this issue, I think, would be focusing on strict implementation of safety and storage policies.Yet we are in an era that disdains regulation.Still, as I said, weighing the risks of the known and the unknown, I think nuclear power is the way to go now.And I'm way left of liberal.

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Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?
-Shakespeare

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Real things always push back.
-William James

There's no evidence that Lloyd's wasn't similarly viewed; they simply found it cheaper to take the government's 10% loans than the 14% loans demanded by these Middle East investors, such that Barclays will probably be forced to pay more for capital, and for longer, than its competitors. (Good job morons!)Indeed, the rest of the Barclays investors apparently found these terms so usurious they were prepared to abandon the company completely. I don't know if they ever did. But it's clear that this is just another example of CEO parasitism - the only conceivable reason for Barclays executives to take the dramatically more expensive, longer-term capital was because of dividend and bonus requirements that, in the UK, went along with the cheaper government loans. Taking the government money meant that the top guys couldn't make mad bank as their company folded around them. No, they were investing without regard to risk, so that major UK banks wouldn't have to close. The same thing happened here in the US - banks that were "too big to fail", i.e. such a major and central part of the US finance system that if they went bankrupt, no American corporation could get access to the short-term paper needed to make payroll.Ultimately, just like in the US, the government of the UK actually made money by bailing out the banks:

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Taxpayer to make 27 billion profit from bank bailouts

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The government could make a profit of as much as 27 billion from the bailed out banks Lloyds and RBS over the next five years, according to new analysis.

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Trade magazine The Banker said the taxpayer could make a 19 billion return on its investment as share prices advance, 2 billion in fees for guaranteeing bank bonds, 5 billion from fees for the Asset Protection Scheme (APS) and 1 billion in loan fees.

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The accuracy of the forecast depends on when the government decides to sell and on the pace of economic growth but the magazine's editor Brian Caplen said the outlook is strong 'even if you take a fairly conservative view of the share prices.'

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http://citywire.co.uk/...n-profit-from-bank-bailouts/a426930You're right, you do. So why is it that you don't even spend two minutes Googling before you try to flim-flam me on this? I'm honestly not that smart. You could probably genuinely hoodwink me if the things you tried to say weren't easily contradicted by thirty seconds of research. Did someone break your Googling fingers?

I assure you, stocks are bought and sold for money.Open up a newspaper if you don't believe me. There's all the prices of stocks, in money! That the stock could be sold for a different value than what it was purchased for.The point of buying stocks isn't for the paltry one-tenth of one cent dividends per stock you earn. That's nothing more than an irritant when you have to file your taxes. Nobody owns Google for the dividends - because Google pays no dividends. The point in owning Google stock is speculation. That's why their stock trades at a whopping 600 dollars per share.You seem dictionary-challenged so let me inform you - speculation is a word that means "gambling." No. Are you even reading my posts?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Not at the usurious terms being offered. Lloyds and RBC could certainly have gotten private capital at the same terms Barclays had to, they just opted to save money and take the government loans.At Barclays' executives prized personal compensation practices over business recovery and profitability, with the result that they're paying far more for the same amount of money.When you pass by the student loan office and pay triple the principle at the local payday loan sharks, that's not a "point in favor" of your credit-worthiness. That's prizing the evasion of government regulation at the expense of long-term profitability.