Massive nationwide protests call for an immediate end to nuclear energy

[harvey007]

Source: Deutsche-Welle

More than 100,000 demonstrators took to the streets in 20 cities across Germany on Saturday to call for a rapid end to nuclear power, even as a government-sponsored national commission is expected to recommend that Berlin abolish nuclear energy within a decade.

Read more: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15114349,00.html

[earcandle]

1. Yeah Germany for your ability to get your peeps on the same page!

[DissedByBush]

11. Cool, end it tomorrow, just put all these people

In those places that will be without power, and let them pay for the increased power bills for everybody.

[JackRiddler]

22. This is the pro-nuclear equivalent of "Go back to Russia!"

Thanks for a thoroughly useless contribution to this discussion.

[Confusious]

30. It's only usless if you don't like facts

What have you got against facts? I thought that was a repug stance.

[JackRiddler]

31. The facts are that nuclear power is a disaster and a dead end.

The facts are that hydrocarbons and nuclear power are both replaceable over a 30-year process of conversion, if only societies treat the BP poisoning of the Gulf and the Fukushima meltdowns as the "Pearl Harbor" events that they, in fact, represent.

The facts are also that the partisans of nuclear power don't care about facts and rely on naked assertion and low-level sloganeering, as in your post.

See? You seem to think saying "facts" is magic.

[Confusious]

35. Everything is replaceable over 30 years

and hopefully it will be.

Shutting it down immediately will create problems. Right now, they are getting the extra power they need from France and the Czechs, both countries which predominately use nuclear.

Of course, trying to replace nuclear first instead of coal just means 30 years more of burning coal, which doesn't help the disappearing ice shelves, if you hadn't noticed.

"The facts are also that the partisans of nuclear power don't care about facts and rely on naked assertion and low-level sloganeering, as in your post. "

I guess you can't even recognize facts when spoon feed to you. I notice more sloganeering from anti-nukes then I ever see from nuclear supporters.

They seem to like facts, while anti-nuclear supporters deal in fear, as evidenced by your post.

[wordpix]

79. +1000 ---the nuke industry cannot even afford to build its own plants

so we the taxpayers are asked to bail them out AHEAD OF TIME with $36 billion in guaranteed loans as per Obama's proposal.

Then there's the nuke waste storage problem, with "temporary" used fuel rod storage pools filled to capacity decades ago and nowhere to put them.

Oh yea, and then there's Fuku, Chernobyl and TMI accidents plus the many dozens of near-accidents that have occurred.

But it's the energy solution for the future!!! :sarcasm: No, it's not and that's why after the '70's no new nukes were built

[DissedByBush]

46. No, if they want it gone now

Then THEY can deal with the consequences, nobody else.

Or THEY can pony up the money to replace the capacity and compensate their fellow citizens for their higher energy costs.

But of course they won't.

They'll protest about this, and then go on to the next anti-human protest.

[Celefin]

87. That darn democracy

where the majority gets to decide what is best and not the energy lobby. Terrible, really.
The latest poll in Germany shows 56% support for shutting down all reactors within the next 5 years. Approval of the 2022 date is in the high 70s.
and that does mean support for massive investments in smart power grids, pushing renewables to 25% by 2022 and an increase in energy prices.
so... what is there to bitch about?

[plumbob]

2. Excellent! More like this, please!

We all need to rid ourselves of this antique, filthy, and horribly expensive way to boil water. It's the worst.

[Shining Jack]

3. K&R n/t

[Hubert Flottz]

4. K&R

And even though I can see what coal mining is doing to my state's beautiful mountains, I agree with the 100,000 demonstrators.

Atomic energy is the "Destroyer Of Worlds"

[MasonJar]

5. Until the scientific community finds a way to dispose of the nuclear

waste (which will probably be never) nuclear energy must go.

[XemaSab]

6. Yay coal!

:party:

[wordpix]

80. Yay simplistic solutions without knowing what you're talking about

[They_Live]

7. Good!

This is one the most important issues in the world right now. No Nukes!

[NNadir]

8. One hundred thousand dumb people marching in favor of coal.

This is hardly a surprise. Undoubtedly the dumb protesters drove to their dumb protests, dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste in the atmosphere so they could express their religious contempt for science.

Five thousand people die every day from dangerous fossil fuel waste, most of it dumped by illiterate and indifferant consumers.

But I'll bet you tons of money that they, like all of the asses who applaud this tragic display of public ignorance in Germany, that everyone who died in Japan was killed by radiation sickness.

The actual radiological death toll: zero.

Yesterday was the hundredth anniversary of Rutherford's publication of the planetary theory of the atom, the scientific event that gave birth to nuclear technology. How tragic!

Humanity deserves what is going to get, mostly because of the strength of ignorance and superstion.

[JackRiddler]

24. Shame on you for this tired false dichotomy.

Malaria and cancer are not the only choices.

Germany will lead the world in the alternative energy sector.

[Name removed]

81. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[StarsInHerHair]

57. wow, kinda missed the reports of a worker collapsing & dying at Fukushima

but then, you also missed the deaths of the others too; that guy that got impaled in a nuke power plant, others....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/mar/14/nuclear-power-plant-accidents-list-rank


http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jmoilane/nuclear/Accidents.html
1986
April 26, Chernobyl, nr. Kiev, former U.S.S.R.: explosion and fire in the graphite core of one of four reactors released radioactive material that spread over part of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and later Western Europe. 31 claimed dead. Total casualties are unknown and estimates run into the thousands. Worst such accident to date.

[jpak]

89. Nuclear power still sucks

yup

:rofl:

[InvisibleTouch]

9. We need to do the same here.

It's a completely false dichotomy to claim it's nuclear or coal or nothing at all.

[nonperson]

10. Coal is the new excuse du jour for nuclear death plants

And you're right. It is a completely false dichotomy. If the money the world has WASTED on nuclear death plants had been spend on alternate energy sources energy wouldn't even be an issue anymore. But they scream "COAL" every time it becomes even more apparent that people want nuclear shut down for good.

[wordpix]

82. +1, previously it was "nukes are the safe, cheap answer" but after FUKU, it's now "coal"

[Taft_Bathtub]

13. No, no it isn't.

Enjoy more Coal and Gas!

[immoderate]

15. The sun delivers more energy each minute than humans could use in a day.

You think it can't be collected? :shrug:

Smart people could do it.

--imm

[Taft_Bathtub]

21. And solar panels cannot collect it

The same smart people say so.

[immoderate]

26. Why not?

I am not aware of any natural limit, unlike with carbon.

--imm

[Confusious]

28. Land

How much are you willing to use?

An area the size of a quarter of Arizona, just for the united states?

It can be done, but how much are you willing to give up?

[liberation]

34. Noooooo, all that prime real estate in uninhabitable desert

The terrarist will win if we have to give up a few square miles of that!

It is not like there are no other renewable sources of energy or anything...

[Confusious]

Really, I live in that "uninhabitable desert"

Why do you want to take my home?

[liberation]

39. Yeah, of all the land in this country... sure we have to take your "home" LOL

Great red herring BTW... good form and style!

[Confusious]

42. I don't think you really have any idea how much land that is.

Environmentalists have already challenged solar projects because of small animals and plants.

http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_renewable03.3cc481c.html

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/12/23/california-ground-zero-for-solar-battles/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20110427/us-solar-project-tortoise/

[liberation]

49. Wait, I thought we was talking about people coming over to take your home to put solar panels...

it is hard to follow your point with all the tangents. Where are we now?

[Confusious]

55. We was?

We was talking about taking land to build solar, and the problem that would be.

[liberation]

56. Yes, the problem being that they were gonna take your house away no?

but that was before you switched red herrings, ergo my query.

Cheers.

[Confusious]

61. You used the words "Yeah, of all the land in this country"

I gave examples of where that might be a problem.

Since you keep bringing up the "my home" part I'm going to assume you have no response to the articles I posted, and your next post will, again, be about "my home" to deflect.

[immoderate]

38. I figured rooftops would do it twenty years ago.

The last really cool proposal I saw was roads. Solar collecting roads. They would form their own grid. There are ather good ideas, but they won't come from corporate minds.

BTW I used to live in Arizona. What would we be giving up? :)

--imm

[Confusious]

40. I hope that was a joke.

I like my part of the state, which is not phoenix.

The roads is a neat idea, though I doubt it will come to pass. Something transparent that can withstand the wear of millions of cars, make my spaceship out of that!

[immoderate]

66. It was, but don't read that as a love for Phoenix

In any case, you express an extreme, worst-case scenario, which along with your 1950s energy sensibilities, presents an unrealistic picture.

There is a lot of information on solar roads. Here is some: http://www.solarroadways.com/main.html

You didn't comment on roof tops. Every building has one. If they were solar panels, they would provide all the energy we need. There are other considerations about storage and distribution. But this is opportunity. We should think a century ahead, not behind.

--imm

[Confusious]

72. No, I expressed a realistic view

If it can't handle the wear from cars equal to concrete or asphalt then it will have to be replaced more often, causing more energy usage and problems then it creates and fixes.

I also didn't comment on multilevel buildings, factories, steel or aluminum foundries.

[immoderate]

76. Not to worry. Your comments are information free.

:)

--imm

[Taft_Bathtub]

45. It would probably require more square miles than that

And it would also require numerous installations to maintain the panels, and the roads needed to access them, and then we need to address just how this power is going to get to other parts of the country? You can't just plug New York City into Arizona -- power traveling that great a distance requires energy. Also what happens if it is overcast? Should the country just shut down? "Sorry, there's a dust storm over Arizona right now, you're going to have to freeze in Minnesota."

[wordpix]

83. you can put panels up on top/sides of buildings and roofs, you don't need land

I mean, once the land is already developed

[RC]

67. Because the Earth is a mere dot of less than 1 degree across from the Sun

No way can we collect anywhere near all the energy that strikes the earth, let alone the any real percentage of what the sun puts out.

[immoderate]

69. We're a dot, are we?

Well, this "dot" receives an average of 1000 W/m² and counting for atmospherics and angles is effectively 250 W/m². And there are lots of square meters.

No we can't collect it all. That's silly. But we already collect a "real percentage" however small.

Where's your numbers?

When all the carbon has burned, and the nukes have melted down, how ya gonna go?

--imm

[StarsInHerHair]

53. ah, another 1 from the "horse & buggy" crowd! don't get how green tech

has been blockaded, probably didn't see "who Killed the Electric Car" either.

[StarsInHerHair]

60. solar panel trees in all parking lots say otherwise

nt

[StarsInHerHair]

59. don't have to!

bye!

[yurbud]

65. or natural gas, oil, or tar sands

[DeSwiss]

12. K&R

[Taft_Bathtub]

14. It's refreshing to see that Germans are just as ignorant of science and prone to hysteria

just like Americans. Phew!

[SpiralHawk]

16. It's sad to see StoogeClowns propping up perverted CorporOscience against the will

of an informed citizenry. Goes to show you their are Suckers and Suckerpuppets everywhere...

[Taft_Bathtub]

19. Oh nice, an atom bomb, that is definitely what nuclear energy is!

I rest my case.

[wordpix]

84. +1 and nice photo, Spiralhawk

[liberation]

17. Yeah, what do Germans know about physics anyway?

Have you ever heard of a good German physicist, mathematician or engineer? Yeah, me neither...

[SpiralHawk]

18. "Jawhol. Vee know nutting. Smirk." - AE

[Taft_Bathtub]

20. Every German is a physicist, clearly

All 81,000,000 of them.

[immoderate]

27. Well, more so than yourself, apparently.

--imm

[liberation]

32. Obviously not since all 81,000,000 of those Germans are "ignorant of science and prone to hysteria"

according to you.

[Taft_Bathtub]

37. Nice strawman!

:thumbsup:

[liberation]

41. I was simply recycling yours, so I can understand the bias

LOL

[Taft_Bathtub]

44. You were recycling your own.

Finally, a renewable source of energy!

[liberation]

48. Yawn...

laaaaaame.

Hey, if you do not like generalizations, here is a simple solution: don't use them.

[Taft_Bathtub]

50. Pretty hypocritical

To be giving out advice when you're guilty of it yourself.

Jeeze, what political party does that remind me of?! Hmm...

[liberation]

52. For such an eminent scientist, not grasping basic sarcasm seems unbecoming.

Oh, dear what a pity!


Or was it projection? never mind... a pity anyways.

[DeSwiss]

91. Nothing is more stupid.....

...than boiling water with uranium.

[Confusious]

29. Yes, I'm sure they are all physicist, mathematician or engineers.

and each and every german has a nobel prize.

Then again, they were the country that elected Hitler...

[liberation]

33. Woooossshhhh there flieth my point at high altitude and supersonic speed

Oh, and say "hit" to Goodwin BTW.

[Confusious]

36. Doesn't apply

I'm questioning the intelligence of part of Germany, not calling them Nazis.

[liberation]

47. You based your ad hominem around Hitler

sorry, Godwin already moved in... and he's such a pest as a guest. Won't leave after saying "hi!"

[Confusious]

58. ad hominem

is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.<1> The ad hominem is normally described as a logical fallacy,<2> but it is not always fallacious; in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue.<3>

Intelligence of a segment of Germany, electing Hitler would be an example of stupid.

Ad hominem would be something of no relevance, e.g. He likes Britney spears, so he can't be trusted with the nuclear codes, etc.

Please use these things correctly

[WatsonT]

78. And every Frenchman is a winemaker

every Italian a cook, every Swede a so-so furniture maker, every Spaniard a bull-fighter, and every single person in the Netherlands smokes pot all day.

Don't even get me started on the Poles.

The great thing about national stereotypes is that they are always, 100% true.

[PuffedMica]

23. K&R

[JackRiddler]

25. I see the period of silence by the pro-nuclears following the recent TEPCO admissions has ended.

They're back with the usual technosophistry.

[lovuian]

43. Yep

Europe is a nuclear nightmare

I had no idea how much they depend on Nuclear
they see that they are really sitting on their own Nukes ready to destroy their people and country

Japan has been the example

[defendandprotect]

51. Americans need to end our nuclear reactor error and shut them down ...

Imagine -- using nuclear reactors -- atomic power -- to boil water for steam!!

And Obama wants to subsidize nuclear power industry for a new generation of nukes here

in US!!

We have aged nuclear reactors which need to be shut down -- some built on faults --

about two in every state -- usually near water because these reactors need a lot of water

to operate! Two in Ohio are built on Lake Erie -- a source of drinking water!!


Yikes!!


:nuke:

[FranMonet]

54. we need more Thorium reactors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LeM-Dyuk6g

Thorium Nuclear Reactor Designs Advancing
The use of thorium to power nuclear reactors holds out the prospect of a huge reduction in nuclear wastes, a nuclear fuel cycle that is much more proliferation resistant, lower costs, and a fuel that is many times more plentiful than uranium. Australian science writer Tim Dean examines the prospects for thorium reactors in a recent article and finds two avenues of technological advance that might make thorium powered nuclear reactors feasible. The more immediately promising approach uses a mixture of thorium with other radioactive materials.

The main stumbling block until now has been how to provide thorium fuel with enough neutrons to keep the reaction going, and do so in an efficient and economical way.

In recent years two new technologies have been developed to do just this.

One company that has already begun developing thorium-fuelled nuclear power is the aptly named Thorium Power, based just outside Washington DC. The way Thorium Power gets around the sub-criticality of thorium is to create mixed fuels using a combination of enriched uranium, plutonium and thorium.

At the centre of the fuel rod is the 'seed' for the reaction, which contains plutonium.

Wrapped around the core is the 'blanket', which is made from a mixture of uranium and thorium. The seed then provides the necessary neutrons to the blanket to kick-start the thorium fuel cycle. Meanwhile, the plutonium and uranium are also undergoing fission.

The primary benefit of Thorium Power's system is that it can be used in existing nuclear plants with slight modification, such as Russian VVER-1000 reactors. Seth Grae, president and chief executive of Thorium Power, and his team are actively working with the Russians to develop a commercial product by the end of this decade. They already have thorium fuel running in the IR-8 research reactor at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow.

The potential to use existing reactors to burn thorium lowers the barrier to use of thorium. Success in existing reactors could catalyze the construction of new reactors designed to use thorium from their start.

He also goes over Carlo Rubbia's proposal to use a particle accelerator to shoot a stream of protons into a thorium reactor.

AN ALTERNATIVE DESIGN does away with the requirements for uranium or plutonium altogether, and relies on thorium as its primary fuel source. This design, which was originally dubbed an Energy Amplifier but has more recently been named an Accelerator Driven System (ADS), was proposed by Italian Nobel physics laureate Carlos Rubbia, a former director of one of the world's leading nuclear physics labs, CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.

An ADS reactor is sub-critical, which means it needs help to get the thorium to react. To do this, a particle accelerator fires protons at a lead target. When struck by high-energy protons the lead, called a spallation target, releases neutrons that collide with nuclei in the thorium fuel, which begins the fuel cycle that ends in the fission of U-233.

Governments should accelerate research into new nuclear reactor designs that promise to lower wastes and reduce costs

[Taft_Bathtub]

63. Thanks for this video

:)

[FranMonet]

64. if you like that here is a more full video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8&feature=related

[Psephos]

71. That way lies the future. n/t

[BreweryYardRat]

73. That's been my line in a few other posts.

Nice to see I'm not alone.

[trud]

62. sure, bring on that global warming, lets burn more coal. n/t

[primavera]

68. What we really need to do is nationalize energy resources

The inevitable criticism of alternative clean energy sources is that their implementation on a large scale is too far off in the future, that the research and development isn't ready to assume the burden of meeting an entire nation's energy needs at this time. And I daresay that's true, because R&D in alternative energy constitutes only a tiny portion of what we spend on supplying the nation with energy, it's the black sheep, not the mainstream.

What I can't help thinking about though is how the mainstream oil and gas industry has, in a remarkably short period of time, managed to build fracking stations that destroy the environment, at a density of, oh, about one per block, across nearly a third of the country. The resources that are being expended to destroy the environment through fracking are staggering, trucks by the thousands working around the clock to transport all of the toxic pollutants to be injected into the ground, along with all of the heavy equipment needed, it just takes your breath away. Yet it's but chump change to the oil and gas industry that makes hundreds of billions in pure profit every year by raping the planet.

I have to wonder: if we were investing those kinds of funds into clean alternative sources of energy, would we still have an energy crisis? People used to talk about fusion as a potentially much safer and more ecofriendly alternative to fission reactors. According to Wikipedia, fusion remains a theoretically wonderful alternative to fission, but the research and development into how to make it viable in practice is such that it isn't expected to be available for another 30 years at the earliest. Yet, if we were to divert even a quarter of the money from oil and gas into fusion, I bet we could have fusion reactors running by Christmas. If we were to take another quarter of the money we spend on oil and gas, I'd wager we could have a solar roof on every home in America within a few years. Hell, I even read a while back that someone was exploring using nanotechnology to make a photovoltaic paint. Just imagine how much electricity one could generate if every painted surface in the country converted solar energy into electricity! A fantasy? Maybe, but even if photovoltaic paint is just a pipedream, I'll bet the research into the application of nanotechnology to solar energy production would be incredibly useful to other more conventional methods of collecting solar energy.

The point is, we're never going to get there as long as alternative energy remains largely the province of a handful of small institutes and eccentric inventors working out of their garages. It's got to be researched and developed seriously, with resources appropriate for a top national priority. And we can't afford to do that as long as the oil and gas industry has all of our money. Bottom line is, we've got to regain control over our nation's wealth so that it can be invested in beneficial activities as opposed to being pillaged by profiteers. Piracy is a crime recognized around the world; it's time we we opened our eyes and recognized Big Oil for what it is.

[individual rights]

70. Oh...Germany...

It's confirmed--the US is not the only country in the world where idiots reside.

[NickB79]

74. 3/4 of Germany's nuclear reactors are currently shut down. The results haven't been so great

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/05/23/us-germany-power-nuclear-idUKTRE74M4BD20110523

"(Reuters) - Germany is coping without about three quarters of its nuclear power capacity by burning more climate-warming coal, reaping the rewards of renewables investments, and importing more French atomic energy.

The shutdown over the weekend of another nuclear plant means almost 16 gigawatts (GW) of German nuclear power capacity was offline Monday, with nearly half of the capacity ordered to shut by the government in reaction to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March."


Good work, Germany. Sending your cash to France (to buy their nuclear-generated electricity) and sending your CO2 up the smokestacks to pollute the world's atmosphere.

[plumbob]

75. Wind turbines are the way to go. You'll note that the Japanese wind farms

are still generating completely safely.

In my own area, one single wind farm of 300 acres generates enough electricity for this town of 100,000+.

This is today's technology. Last fall, there were several days when wind turbines accounted for 25% of all Texas electrical production. And now that three huge transmission lines are being completed, thousands of generators in place but offline can start turning as well.

On the other hand, during the last huge cold snap in Texas, more than 50 natural gas and coal plants were offline because their cooling pipes froze.

[wordpix]

86. what's best is what renewable works in local area, but that doesn't fit centralized corporate models

Decentralization and local entrepeneurship and control is definitely not to the corporocracy's liking

[plumbob]

90. Yes, and that's the best part. Like Adam Smith, the father of economics,

I favor outlawing the corporation as a legal form of business. They don't work to provide us with things - they're just a way to steal from those who work.

[WatsonT]

77. The great thing about basic realities is that if your intentions are good you can completely ignore

them and suffer no consequences!

So as long as you want an end to nuclear for good reasons then the sudden removal of that power source will have absolutely no adverse effects! It's truly amazing.

[Never Stop Dancin]

85. so burn more fossil fuels instead?

fantastic idea, no?

[WatsonT]

88. Or continue using nuclear power

[defendandprotect]

92. kr