Bullet trains, solar roadways, national healthcare, quality schools for ALL, non-lethal cops. Yay America! We're number 36! Woot!

On so many levels, too. Someone duped someone.

Or did you not see the strong emphasis distinguishing the two techs in the OP?

I'm inclined to think that the French have looked into the viability if they are moving forward with a plan for 600 miles of this roadway. That is quite a bit beyond the scale used for testing.

And then some. It's a flawed concept. The reason it's happening is...someone fooled someone.

And I'm relatively certain that a project of that scale has enough money on the line to ensure a reasonably thorough review.

That's what I like about engineering. Do the numbers, and there's no argument.

They might not be caring about maximum solar output. But there are so many flaws with this configuration it's not worth pursuing. Pole mounted has none of the disadvantages of sitting flat on the ground. Someone is pushing this. But that's how lots of things are done.

loser.

...leachates in French waterways, and concentrations of metals and organic flame retardants in places like breast milk and childhood livers.

(To be fair, not that our car CULTists care, we already can read tens of thousands of papers on this subject as a result of asphalt and other things related to the cars themselves, in particular, batteries.)

It's a well know effect, distributed material makes distributed pollution and it's been observed with all sorts of products that were supposed to "do good," fabric flame retardants, notably polybrominated diphenyl ethers being one of the most intractable example, although there are many others. There isn't a breast fed baby on this planet (or for that matter a cow milk fed baby on this planet) who doesn't begin his or her life ingesting polybrominated diphenyl ethers.

The stupid people who thought this was a good idea will not read any of this literature. 100% of them are scientifically illiterate. They know nothing technical at all, and in fact, despise technical insight, because they only believe what they want to hear.

The energy produced by this newly manufactured electronic waste will be trivial and very expensive, with the result that poor people who currently enjoy some of the lowest electricity rates in Europe because of France's nuclear power, will be forced to live in even worse conditions than they do now, when this stupid enterprise drives the cost of electricity to something like that in Germany and Denmark.

This is a disgrace. The ignorance that causes things like this will be unforgiven by history.

You are right about one thing though - this is spot on as a self descriptor for your post: "This is a disgrace. The ignorance that causes things like this will be unforgiven by history."

At least in the title of your response you are correct.

I do in fact, think that nuclear energy, the form of energy invented by some of the finest minds of the 20th century, advanced and promoted by Nobel Laureates like Glenn Seaborg, is great.

I have never said anything other than that, and, since I am very well educated, and have almost certainly read or at least scanned tens of thousands of papers on the subject of nuclear energy, I am very unlikely to change my mind.

I consider all of my defense of nuclear technology against dunderheads who hate it (because they know nothing at all about it), to be an ethical issue because...

...nuclear energy saves lives: Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

I would not be able to live with myself if I didn't confront the tiresome little bourgeois electric car worshiping brats who attack a form of energy that saves lives. This is because unlike a dumb anti-nuke who is disinterested in human lives, who for instance doesn't give a fuck about people who die from air pollution, I am interested in human rights and human lives, including the right to live in a clean commons.

As for despising so called "renewables," I will confess that I used to be stupid enough and uninformed enough to think they were a good idea. But yes. Today I despise them. You know, if you spend as much time in the scientific literature as I do; ten to twenty hours a week typically, although not all of it is about energy and the environment though much is, you can't help learning the details of what so called "renewable energy" is and how it works.

I know what cadmium and indium handling involves. I know all about epitaxy and vapor phase deposition, etc, etc.

Now, the defenders of this garbage all demonstrate, repeatedly, that they are unfamiliar with the contents of science books. Therefore it follows that there's not a single one of them who knows how a solar cell is manufactured, the technology on which it relies, and the external cost of said manufacture and the following life cycle.

Only someone with such an indifferent attitude toward human beings could possibly applaud an experiment, under uncontrolled conditions, where a possible leachable and toxic brand new electronic product is covered on roadways with no research into things like it's a) leachability, b) its behavior under extreme conditions such as an automobile fire or a severe accident, c) its response to weather conditions, including its coefficient of friction in the rain, or its behavior under a snow plow, etc, etc, etc.

Now. This dump approach of putting solar garbage on roadways is an experiment involving human lives. It's surprising, and a little appalling actually that no Institutional Review Board has looked into the potential consequences.

The fact is though, through slick marketing worthy of bourgeois brats, the external costs of the solar nightmare have been given a bye. The social costs have as well. It's apparently OK to have poor people subsidize rich people's "renewable energy" fantasies, which by the way have done zero to address climate change, "fuck 'em if they can't afford electricity rates involved in giving subsidies to rich folks who can afford these stupid solar cells."

The really amusing thing about this entire scheme though kind of reminds me of the National Lampoon cover that showed Gerald Ford with an ice cream cone stuck in his forehead. I generally regard the rabid advocates of so called "renewable energy" to be intellectually challenged, particularly the very stupid ones who don't give a shit about dangerous fossil fuels but feel justified in attacking the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy, still, nuclear energy. But one would suspect that even they would be smart enough to consider that solar cells, with already miserable capacity utilization, often at or less than 10% the rated peak power, will function even less well when they're covered with cars stuck in a traffic jam.

But unsurprisingly, they missed the point entirely. They really are as dumb as stumps; although one should not seek to demean stumps.

Have a nice evening.

...one would have an ethical right to hold a discourse on the subject of energy and the environment.

Of course, one might not be a dumb anti-nuke cheering for the tearing up of the planet's surface and mobilizing hundreds of millions of tons of toxic materials to search for an expensive and useless chimera, so called "renewable energy."

On the other hand, if one has routine familiarity with fantasy worlds in TV shows, has wasted one's life on them, and has obviously scrupulously avoided any diversion of said wasted time on becoming educated, one has no ethical position whatsoever to comment on the environmental tragedy before us on this planet.

Despite half a century of stupid remarks about the "exponential growth" of renewable energy - all made by people who one doubts passed 11th grade math in high school and thus are unfamiliar with simple mathematical functions - despite thousands of insipid comments about "the world's largest solar installation," one right after another, and despite ever more stupid proposals for um, things like solar roadways being funded in a paroxysm of mindless lemming faith, the month just passed, December 2015 just came in as the worst December ever recorded in terms of the increase of the dangerous fossil fuel waste, carbon dioxide, as recorded over the previous December.

The worst ever...

It's very clear that the apologists for so called "renewable energy," invested as they are in their Saturday morning cartoon version of the world, the majority of whom I imagine zoned out stoned in front of their TV sets watching B and C grade science fiction, couldn't care less.

Very clear...



Enjoy the weekend.

Yep, there it is. I'll bet that caused blisters on your fingertips, didn't it?

Did you know that one major clue about the ethical boundaries that guide a person is their penchant for deliberately making false statements? In particular I thought the amount of effort you put into creating the document "The Operational Lifetime of Wind Turbines in Denmark: Government Data." was an astonishing insight into how deeply you feel about your preciousness nuclear power. It showed unequivocally that on the topic of your precioussss truth is simply an irrelevant obstacle for you to try and sweep under the rug.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=210662&mesg_id=210750

Let me know if you have trouble recalling any of your other frequent fits of confabulation, OK?
I chose that one (of the many available) because it shows that your use of DATA in any form is not guided by the search for accuracy or informed understanding and any reader of your material should be wary enough to verify literally all of your statements. Nothing can be taken at face value since nothing is too trivial for you to misrepresent.

Have a nice weekend and in the meantime...


http://scroll.in/article/802861/former-atomic-energy-regulator-explains-why-india-needs-to-pause-its-nuclear-power-plans



Excerpt from Dr. Gopalakrishnan's lecture:

“I have spent the last 57 years of my life in nuclear engineering. In all these years, there has not been a single day without doing something or the other nuclear, often things that give a headache to somebody else. For the last one year, I have been watching what the new government will do. I have not written anything since I wrote the three articles expressing concerns over Koodankulam's fate.

“Now, what we thought will happen is happening. I was hoping that Prime Minister Modi would steer the nuclear programme towards a healthier direction. But I was foolish. If anything, the programme that the UPA government set in motion has accelerated further.

“After the Fukushima disaster in March 2011, several countries revisited their nuclear plans. I have visited China on invitation two or three times after Fukushima. There's a lot of opposition to nuclear power even there. But that news doesn't come out because it is a different system there. India is a democracy. Everybody should be able to speak. And regardless of whether it can satisfy everybody, the Government is obliged to listen and respond.

“Germany shut down eight of 17 functioning nuclear plants immediately after Fukushima. They committed to shutting down all remaining plants by 2022, and they have a timeline for doing that. Now, somebody said something about Germany drawing electricity from France which has a large nuclear base. But we have to credit Germany for saying that at least they will not put any more money into nuclear.

“France is hell-bent on selling EPRs (European Pressurised Reactor) to India. But in May 2015, the French parliament approved a bill to reduce dependence on nuclear power from 75% to 50% by 2025. The same bill also aims to increase the proportion of renewables in France's electricity mix to 40 percent by 2030.

“Many other countries have paused [their nuclear programmes]. The cost of nuclear is rising exponentially. But we seem to act as if we have an enormous store of money. When you look at history and how we got here, we can understand. There is a commonality between UPA [the United Progressive Alliance] and this government. Both are close to companies (foreign and Indian) that want to make money.

“The trouble started with the Indo-US nuclear deal. Dr [Manmohan] Singh said he wanted to get India out of the nuclear pariah status. But that was not the real reason. There were powerful forces pushing for the deal. We know that industrialists in India and abroad and industrial federations even put their money to lobby US congress. Our own government spent money to influence the deal.

“But for all the intensity of these efforts, only a handful of people knew the real details of the deal and its justification. Even within the Atomic Energy Commission and the Cabinet, many people were in the dark. The parliament was told that they [United States] will get something out of it and we will get something. We were never told what we were giving them. It was only when US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice responded to a senate question that we found out what was in it for the US. She pointed to a letter from India's foreign secretary that promised the purchase of a minimum of 10,000MW of American reactors. She rattled off how this will generate more business and how many American jobs will be supported. This caused a temporary furore in India, because our parliament never knew. It was never told in the many times that the government was asked.

“The [former] PM appealed to the parliament that if the deal is passed, the Americans will share all nuclear technology – something unheard of since 1974 [when India first tested the nuclear bomb]. This was the carrot. India wanted transfer of technology because we are weak in two areas – Enrichment of uranium and Reprocessing of spent fuel (EnR technology). This was important for the weapons programme and for nuclear power expansion. Nobody will part with these technologies easily because of proliferation concerns. But we promised to buy their nuclear reactors, and it was written in the 123 agreement that they will release this technology.

“But we were fooled by the Americans. Within two months of signing the deal, the US went to the Nuclear Suppliers Group and said EnR technology should not be shared with nations that are not party to the Non Proliferation Treaty. India has been steadfastly anti-NPT. India had been hoodwinked. Our foreign secretary wrote a few letters. But this was the time when the UPA government was in crisis because of all the corruption scams. The US just ignored the letters.

“The present government can justifiably say that it is dealing with a fait accompli, that it is merely executing an intergovernmental agreement. But if I were looking at it from a national interest perspective, I can say this was meant to be a two-way street. I am not going to proceed with the purchase of your reactors until the matter of EnR is handled and resolved.

“I thought that this government would take that route, but industrial forces have prevailed.

The French reactors

“With France too, the same is happening. The French have not released any letters. But the French president Sarkozy and our [former] PM [Dr. Singh] had met two to three times. Some side-letters were signed by the two chiefs with the promise of French reactors. At that time, the French had just finished the paper design of the EPR reactor. We were told that this was the design for us, and we agreed.

“How can a country that prides itself in a nuclear establishment with AERB, Atomic Energy Commission and many capable people commit to a reactor that has never been built and is only on paper? There are no examples of this reactor anywhere in the world. No economic or technical assessment has been done.

“The French nuclear regulator ASN – one of the best in the world – is threatening to decline approval to the EPR design. The EPR has some insurmountable difficulties with its forgings. Even America, which has some of the best forging systems, has not been able to do it because of its complicated geometry. The indications are that the design will not pass. Meanwhile, Areva shares have plummeted, and it has been bought over by Électricité de France. Now both will collapse.

“With this kind of a cloud hanging over the reactor, how can Modi go to France and sign a deal for more reactors? Before the prime minister went to France in April [2015], the French regulator ASN wrote to AERB warning it of EPR's design deficiencies. Areva informed NPCIL [Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd]. They didn't want us to later say that they didn't warn us. I don't know if the news reached the prime minister's office, but surprisingly, the PM delegation went ahead and enhanced the deal from two to six reactors. Thankfully, actual construction is pushed to 2017 to get a final answer from the French regulator.

Make in India

“Amidst all this, this constant talk about Make in India is frightening. Nuclear [technology] is enormously costly. There is no justification in first buying it and then saying you will bring cost down by making in India. Koodankulam is a good example of all that is wrong with make in India. The entire erection and commissioning of the reactors was undertaken by NPCIL and its major local contractors.

“India has built 22 Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR). We are competent in that. But PHWR and VVER [also known as WWER or Water-Water Energetic Reactors] are very different in terms of standards and methods of construction. But here Indian contractors have just gone ahead and followed the instincts they had from the experience of building PHWRs. You may be able to get the [VVER] reactors up and running, but once you get the insides radioactive, you cannot inspect or change things. They have rushed ahead to get the reactor started, and now it is not operational 80 percent of the time.

“In the long run, the Koodankulam reactor will prove to be one of the most dangerous. We don't know what parts have gone in. There is a proven case of corruption – not Indian, but by the Russians – in the sourcing of parts for the reactor.

“In Jaitapur, we are going to make in India from the first reactor onwards. The forgings are so complicated that the French have not been able to make it. But here we are talking about a joint manufacturing of forgings. If something goes wrong, who will bear the liability? In Koodankulam, we have written off all liability for the Russians. In Jaitapur, it will be in dispute.

“We have to try and press this government for a course correction. Telling them to abandon everything, including the nuclear weapons programme will not go down well. Don't club the weapons programme with this. Nuclear power by itself will cause enough problems for the Indian public.”

Dr A Gopalakrishnan's three articles on Koodankulam:

Resolve Koodankulam issues
http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Resolve-Koodankulam-issues/2013/04/19/article1551164.ece

Address concerns on nuke plant
http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Address-concerns-on-nuke-plant/2013/05/15/article1590216.ece

Flaws in Koodankulam plant
http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Flaws-in-Koodankulam-plant/2013/06/19/article1641376.ece

Last edited Sat Feb 6, 2016, 02:39 PM - Edit history (1)

...which has been a life long effort, particularly in connection with energy is not involved with a mindless regurgitation of someone else's statements about the topic.

Unlike some of the dumb anti-nukes one encounters, who cannot make an argument without quoting what someone else has said, I think for myself.

The fact that we have mindless anti-nukes whose "rhetorical" responses - if we wish to be generous and call their repetitions of the herd thinking of such people, "rhetoric"- consist entirely of cut and pasted garbage thinking of other people, shows that these people are constitutionally incapable of generating an original thought.

And that, if not only that, shows why these ethical and intellectual cripples have lead the planet to the abyss as is recorded in straight forward chemical analysis of the planetary atmosphere, measuring carbon dioxide.

Like every other nuclear plant on the surface of this planet, the reactors in India, given that India is coal dependent, will save lives.

I would note that a moral cripple who constantly posts here about electric cars for billionaire and millionaires is completely and totally incompetent to make any statement at all about India or even to choose an ethical statement made by any particular Indian to regurgitate mindlessly. Quoting one Indian at the expense of nearly a billion Indians who spend their lives breathing coal waste is a clear statement about ethical cluelessness.

It happens that there are many Indians who are nuclear physicists and nuclear engineers who are working to save their country. It is without a doubt that the vast majority of these Indian nuclear professionals are clearly better educated than defenders of the failed and expensive so called "renewable energy" scheme. For the trillions of dollars wasted on this failed "technology" in the last ten years, we could have almost doubled the per capita income of Indians, not that the people cheering for this squandering give a rat's ass about Indians, India, or its issues.

I have, in fact, been to India, and I've seen with my own eyes what is happening there. It features very much in my contempt for bourgeois Americans who act as if everyone can afford a McMansion with solar cells on the roof and an electric car in their garage.

Thank you very much for an opportunity to clarify and expand on my use of the word "ethics."

Have a nice weekend.

That says everything anyone needs to know about the ethical world you occupy.

Let me repeat - you routinely and deliberately present data in a way you know is false. **

Why do you do it?

No one can speak to the lack of barriers that allows your behavior, but we know without doubt that the trigger isn't concern about the issues as you claim. For, if your concern were genuine you would be motivated to follow a factually sound path of action. Instead, you pursue an obsession with nuclear power for its own sake.

**Nnads on Vestas


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=261737&mesg_id=262014



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x261737#262053




http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x261737#262052

It seems that we have dumb anti-nukes digging through the files to see if I made a mistake about those cheap carny barkers at Vestas six years ago, who reside in that country in Europe with very high electricity rates, which according to its own country's Energy Agency Website is an offshore oil and gas drilling hellhole.

For the record, not that I feel any responsibility to glorify the carny barkers at the Danish wind energy company, confusing their corporate policies with the policies of their government, there is, in fact, an oil company named VESTA.

It may be true that a little over five years ago, I was briefly being as stupid as a dumb anti-nuke and relying on quick googling to focus on a company that I otherwise hold in contempt, VestaS confusing them with the oil company lacking the S Vesta.

One should be ashamed of behaving like a dumb Google searching anti-nuke, and I certainly apologize for my five year old error, although I'm disinclined to give a shit about the reputations of the carny barking fools at Vestas. As far as I'm concerned, they're selling snake oil.

It matters not a whit, both companies are involved in making the world permanently dependent on dangerous fossil fuels. It seems clear to me, if not to a dumb anti-nuke, that no wind plant on the planet can supply continuous energy since even most first graders are aware that the wind does not always blow, even if wind energy, and the companies that supply their short lived junk facilities blow. Therefore the wind industry would collapse in a New York minute without access to redundant dangerous fossil fuel powered facilities. If you want my opinion, this means that wind energy companies, um, suck.

Nevertheless, it seems that two anti-nukes are filled with moral outrage (which at least one of them) has accessed repeatedly from time to time over the last 5 years in order to call me a liar because I confused Vestas with Vesta.

Well...well...well...

Interestingly when I raise the point repeatedly, in this space and elsewhere, that 7 million people die each year from air pollution, citing the paper authored by an international consortium of researchers, A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (Lancet Volume 380, No. 9859, p2224–2260, 15 December 2012), the number of anti-nukes who show up to express similar outrage to that of "Muriel" (whoever she is) is, um, zero.

Now.

The assholes at the financially struggling piece of shit Danish Wind Turbine manufacturing company get no love from me. I'm not fond of the Danish plan to strip mine Greenland for lanthanides for their stupid turbines and electric cars, now that, with the input of Danish dangerous fossil fuel waste as a small addition to the 30 billion tons of the stuff dumped each year, the ice on that savaged island has melted enough to make such mines feasible.

Elsewhere, in a post with more than 25 references to the primary scientific literature, and other posts to industry data, including the database of the Danish Energy Agency on the performance of every damned wind turbine that benighted country ever built, I wrote the following:

Sustaining the Wind Part 1 – Is So Called “Renewable Energy” the Same as “Sustainable Energy?”

Now, I have no doubt that we'll have dumb anti-nukes marching around that these statement, pulled directly from the database of the Danish Energy Agency Website's database of wind turbine, is a lie, because 5 years ago, 35 million air pollution deaths ago, I confused Vesta with Vestas.

The fact is that the crap manufactured by the assholes at the Vestas Wind Company represents unreliable pieces of shit, operating at 31% capacity utilization and failing on average to last even twenty years before becoming landfill bait.

It is a moral disgrace that on a planet where 2 billion people lack basic sanitation, trillions of dollars are thrown at this worthless crap that has done nothing, nothing at all, to arrest climate change.

But it's not like we're going to have a dumb anti-nuke complain about climate change. Clearly these cartoon worshiping fools couldn't care less about the environment. They're far more concerned with protecting the otherwise awful reputations of the corporate slobs at Vestas.

Be all that as it may, there are zero anti-nukes on this planet who are qualified to state what I do and do not know. It is very clear from their piddling, nonsensical comic book rhetoric, cut and pastes, and links to stupid sci-fi cartoons where they get what they imagine to be an education, that they have never, not once, opened a technical paper or book of any kind.

Many, if not most, of my posts on this website include a reference to the primary scientific literature. For example, I recently quoted a Nature paper confirming the Lancet figures for outdoor air pollution, in fact suggesting that they'd gotten even worse:

Nature: China's annual air pollution deaths now stand at 1.4 million per year.

The number of anti-nukes who showed up in that post to express outrage comparable to their rage at insulting Vestas executives was zero. Again, they couldn't care less about 3.3 million dead, although they're very, very, very, very, very concerned about a misrepresentation of the manufacturers of landfill bait at Vestas.

As far as I'm concerned, it matters not whether Vesta and Vestas are in the same business. The result of their activities is exactly the same, the clear and unabated degradation of the planetary atmosphere, and the deaths, each year, of millions of people from air pollution because Vestas Corporation worshipping uneducated cartoon watching dipshits who childishly carry on about "Golem," (whatever the fuck that is) having never passed an introductory college level physics course, hate nuclear energy.

Give my best regards to Muriel if you hang out with her while watching cartoons and scifi shows!

Have a very pleasant Sunday.

Thank you for demonstrating with that reply just how entrenched is your lack of capacity to feel shame.

If we don't start doing something, the US is going to get left in the dust on clean energy.

It is (IMO) now an unstoppable and ever accelerating process of change.