I find it amazing that companies facing bankruptcy has millions and millions of dollars to bribe republicans to do their bidding.

and it is getting no traction

Sues Greitens’ Dark Money Group

Then I saw it was about the nuke plants there. They’ve been stained by corruption from the beginning and we're talking big bucks.

that those "Xtian, moral, upstanding, honorable, God-fearing, righteous" Retrumplicans still HATE the gays.

I'm embarrassed to say Ohio was my home.

I went there briefly last year for a visit. I still have a sister there but don’t think I’ll ever go back again.

That being said I was born in Illinois but grew up in Ohio. My wife and I moved back after 15 years in Illinois. Ohio turned to shit politically. It seems they want to try and match Illinois’ cesspool.

There's a lot of people's jobs involved with these nuclear and coal-fired power plants. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants employ hundreds of people and a nuclear plant calls in thousands of worker for fuel rod changes. Combined cycle natural gas plants are cheaper to build, employ dozens (at most) people and are more efficient. Wind and solar are becoming cheaper over time (the problem is scale; renewable power generation is a fraction of the current size of nuclear and coal power plants but there are projects on the drawing board off the east coast that are close to the sizes of these large power plants). When there's this many people's jobs on the line it's bound to become political.

Seems the government of Ohio chose to "bail out" the utilities caught holding these dinosaurs. So much for capitalism and the market (invisible hand) guiding how power generation will change in the future.

First Energy CEO Charles Jones saying he didn’t know anything about this in this interview given to the Cleveland Plain Dealer

https://www.cleveland.com/business/2020/07/firstenergy-ceo-charles-jones-tells-investors-that-company-acted-properly-in-supporting-nuclear-power-bail-out.html

With Jeff Longstreth....it’s fitting.

They just don't want to pay for their own stupidity.

...is very much a lie.

The wind industry is a crime against all future generations.

It is a sign of the times, that people need to be bribed with money and with photographs of these huge pieces of wasted metal, the wind turbines, to embrace nuclear energy - which do provide clean air on a significant level.

Bribery is a crime, but when we embrace the unsustainable wind industry - the worldwide enthusiasm for doing so very much withstanding - we are destroying the future. The ultimate outcome of the wind industry is simply to sustain the gas industry, without which the wind industry would collapse in a New York minute.

The wind industry has soaked up trillions of dollars in this century. It has never, not once, produced 10% of what the aging nuclear industry produces year after year, using technology developed in the 1950's and 1960's, albeit among some of the finest minds that ever existed.

The rate at which the atmosphere is collapsing is now 2.4 ppm per year increases of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide per year. This is the fastest rate of increase every observed, and the rate of increase of the increase, the second derivative is also positive.

We have all taken a bribe, to buy into the rhetoric of anti-nukes, and history will not forgive us, nor should it.

Nuclear power plants are the cleanest form of energy on earth; they save lives.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

along with the horrors of having to deal with nuclear power plant accidents such as what happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the Fukushima Daiichi plant, then yes, nuclear power plants can seem pretty darn clean.

Last edited Sun Jul 26, 2020, 03:05 PM - Edit history (1)

...associated with air pollution each year?

It's between six and seven million per year.

Here is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.

How many people, exactly, have died from so called "nuclear waste" since the founding of the industry in the mid 1950's, since you're so damned concerned?

As many as will die today from air pollution? That would be around 19,000 human beings, dead from air pollution more people than will die worldwide from Covid-19 days.

Is there some reason I, as a scientist, should credit your selective attention.

Frankly, I am spectacularly disinterested in people who raise the issue of Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island...because I know that combined they did not lead to the loss of life that not using nuclear power has caused by appeals to fear and ignorance.

These specious and frankly dangerous rote associations in my opinion are extremely immoral. They kill people.

Again, from one of the most prominent environmental scientific journals in the world, here is an open sourced, widely read, and widely cited paper coauthored one of the world's most prominent climate scientists in the world:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Whether the people carrying on about so called "nuclear waste" - a subject about which they uniformly know zero since they never open science books - know it, dangerous fossil fuel waste is not only killing people, it is killing the planet, actively, aggressively in its normal operations. Climate change is real, and we are not doing anything to address it.

Nuclear power need not be without risk, it need not be perfect, to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is.

I have been discussing the chemistry and physics of used nuclear fuels for more than 18 years in this space, and much, much longer elsewhere. I find people who raise the issue as if it were some kind of Trump card are decidedly Trumpian since they hold forth on a subject about which they have no knowledge or insight.

I invite anti-nukes to let me know when they give a shit, but over the years, I've observed, uniformly, they won't. Like Trump, they parade their ignorance, their "alternate facts."

I have disagreed. Sometimes, I have taught them things. Sometimes, they have taught me things. Sometimes, we both have learned something new. It can be a great exercise in using one's mind.

You, however, probably very rarely have long, drawn-out discussions with people about issues. I say this because you have been repeatedly insulting. Most of the people that I know tend to drop conversations with insulting people very quickly because few positives ever seem to come out of such discussions.

If your desire was to convince others of your point of view, you probably would avoid insulting people. If your purpose were to see if someone else might have a point that you had not considered, you probably would avoid insulting people. So, what exactly is the purpose of your post? Well, as near as I can guess, you actually enjoy insulting people.

You also seem to enjoy either stating or implying that you are highly educated and that people who disagree with you are either stupid or ignorant. The only people that I have ever met in my life that insult people as freely as you do have been all very unhappy. If you are this unhappy, I am sorry.

Since, over the years, I have found that debating people who prefer insults to facts to be a real waste of time, I wish you improved happiness, a good life, and a good day.

However, most of these discussions are highly technical, and most often involve people with a modicum of technical knowledge.

It is not my job to beg people to think. Many people seem to think that this is so, but I learned to think on my own. I started, like many good liberals, as a dumb ass anti-nuke, but when I looked into the matter, independently and deeply, I found that my claim was unsupportable.

It is insulting to my more than 30 years of hard work studying issues in energy and the environment to have people expect me to kiss their asses when they make rote statements and tell me that I have to be nice to them because...because...because...well, why?

Anti-nuclear rhetoric, as I made clear, kills people.

My most important long and deep discussions, do not, in general, take place with people who want to raise their deep concern over Three Mile Island, for example, when since 2010 something like 60 or 70 million people have died from air pollution, and many hundreds of millions since Three Mile Island in 1976.

I do not expect that I have anything to learn from anyone starting with an evocation of so called "nuclear waste," when the planet is dying from climate change - dangerous fossil fuel waste. My journal in this space is filled with hundreds upon hundreds of commentaries on papers in the primary scientific literature, which is where I work my ass off to learn, by highly technical reading. Many of these journal entries concern the specific elements in used nuclear fuel, others involve other issues in science, not limited to but certainly including climate change.

We are seeing with Trump the Dunning-Kruger effect played out in a tragic display. I would submit that anyone who offers that we should accept 60 to 70 million deaths per decade from air pollution because nuclear waste is "dangerous" in their mind is definitely in Dunning-Kruger territory.

I have nothing to say to anyone in that territory, and certainly there is nothing in which I might be remotely interested, that anyone there can teach me.

since it's become a rat's nest of corruption. But at the very least fix 501(c)(4). It is legal bribery sanctioned by SCOTUS. Require disclosure, especially in every political ad run by these groups. Sure, under Buckley v. Valeo you can spend whatever your want on political campaigns or ads, but you can't do it secretly, even if you're not supporting a specific candidate. Anonymity of speech in this case is not in the public's interest and in my mind is more dangerous than yelling fire in a crowded theater. Anonymity is exactly what makes this legal bribery.

all thugs, crooks, and liars - the whole lot of them. This includes their spineless, enabling GOP in Congress.

the previous Speaker of the House, Cliff Rosenberger, is still apparently under federal investigation for a pay-to-play scheme with the payday lending leeches. Also, Householder had been formerly investigated by the FBI for campaign irregularities. Ohio is extremely corrupt and fanatically pro-business (NET revenue less than $250,000 is not taxed - meaning there are business/individuals making millions and not paying any state income tax). Meanwhile, they just love screwing wage earners, retirees, homeowners, and consumers. It's too bad that the state is such a political hellhole, because it has great potential (which will probably never be realized). Can't wait to escape this nightmare.

“It’s a secret, a (c)(4) is secret,” Clark told Householder in another recorded conversation. “Nobody knows the money goes to the speaker’s account, (or that) it is controlled by his people.”

Starting with $250,000 on March 16, 2017, FirstEnergy began secretly wiring money into Generation Now’s accounts, according to the complaint. On Oct. 10, 2019, it sent $10 million, its largest single deposit, records show.

The organization was swimming in dark money — enough to pay 15 signature-collection firms a total of $450,000 just so that they wouldn’t work for opposition groups trying to overturn the nuclear bailout, Clark bragged in a taped conversation. His claim was confirmed by bank records, the complaint said.

Clark said he had “spent close to $20 million in the last eight weeks,” calling the Householder account “unlimited,” the complaint said.

Did he know the house of cards was tipping?