trentster

Hi there csekavec, First up apologies for the huge delay in responding to your post, I need to adjust notification options so that I get an email for all responses. Secondly thank you for taking the time to reply in such a detailed and succinct fashion, I really enjoyed reading your intelligent response and ingesting your knowledge. Yes, you are correct, I have fairly recently started researching this subject, prompted after the Fukushima incident and later from research and watching symposium speakers like the "Symposium: the Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Co-Sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility". So about 5 years of interest and reading thus far. Although the world currently faces a lot of challenges (e.g. Rampant Islamization and fall of the west) I can say this subject is one that I am extremely passionate and concerned about, second only to a war involving the use of Nuclear weapons. In regards to the science and your presented points, I agree with you on the majority of your facts. Let's be clear, as you rightly mention neither you nor I are Nuclear engineers, nor can we be sure that any of the facts we research or expert opinions we are exposed to are 1) 100% factually correct 2) free of bias 3) not influenced by political or industry affiliations. That being said, I do try and get research and opinions from the most expert sources I can find, from people who do have the right credentials and experience that as far as I can tell are as closely aligned to points 1) 2) 3) above as possible. I also like to rely on empirical evidence namely: Chernobyl, 3 Mile, Fukushima disasters have all occurred and we are still dealing with the consequences. The fact that they did occur, do exist and can be observed today can not be contested and the consensus is with all of them we have been extremely lucky, the consequences could have been far far worse. For the sake of simplicity lets not argue whether Nuclear power is safe when everything goes right under optimal conditions. My point is not talking about the merits of Coal plants vs Nuclear Plants when operating normally. My concern is what happens when they do not operate normally and when something goes wrong, which history has shown does occur and will inevitably occur once again. The likelihood of this happening in the future is increasing. Look at the data about the recent attacks in Belgium and how we now know their original target was to bomb a Brussels Nuclear Reactor. So for the purpose of this discussion lets talk about risks associated when things do not go according to plan: Blow up a Coal Power Plant and the result will be a power station that needs repair. Blow up a Nuclear Power Plant and the result could be deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, mass permanent evacuations of entire cities or states, the loss of huge geographic regions for potentially thousands of years and ramifications of mass cancers and long term implications of radiation in the food chain. Hundreds of Billions of $ in continual clean up costs. We are talking hundreds of generations here and the potential loss of an entire country. Have to abandon a Coal Power Plant in a time of war and the result will be an abandoned power plant. Have to abandon a Nuclear Power Plant in a time of war and the result will be a core meltdown and see point 1 for implications. Natural disaster takes down a Coal Power Plant and the result will be a temporary disruption of power. Natural disaster takes down a Nuclear Power Plant and the result could be a core meltdown and see point 1 for implications. Terrorist gets hold of Coal Power Plant by-products he has some scary grey mud ash. Terrorist gets hold of tiny amount of Nuclear Power Plant by-products he has some material to make a Dirty Bomb and take out a % of a city and make it permanently uninhabitable. My point about Central Park comes to mind here where as little as 1/3 of a gram can make it uninhabitable. I could go on, but I think you get my point. It's about the risks my friend, and the consequences of those risks when things inevitably do go wrong. You are 100% right, this is not rocket science ;-) Potentially - yes it is conceivable to build safer Nuclear Power plants and as you say have a , but this is not the reality for the vast majority of Nuclear plants scattered all over the world Today that is subject to severe risk implications. It is also true that we can not get rid of the waste and can not even be sure that burying it deep underground for 100 thousand years is safe. We can not be sure that the evil doers will not get hold of it. For me, I'd far rather have no coal at all. But given the alternatives currently available, I'll choose readily the option that keeps the coal burning, wind turbines turning, sun shining and get rid of a risk that I think any sane informed human being would find simply unacceptable.

Fantastic - looks like we have a bit of a group forming :-) Anyone keen on a meetup towards the end of the Month? If so I will start a FreeDomainRadio Vic Group on meetup.com and we can plan accordingly. On the local front, there seems to be a lot of interest and growth around the ALA party, change is coming. I really enjoyed watching this and reading their "Values and Core Policies" https://vimeo.com/163614665 http://www.australianlibertyalliance.org.au/values-and-policies/values-and-core-policies

For any folks still interested in this topic, I have just published an article on Medium.com : Spent Nuclear Fuel which has some opinions and content applicable to this thread topic.

Yeah, I know quite a few folks in Australia that are originally from the Ukraine and Poland. When Chernobyl disaster occurred the world was fortunate that Soviet-era Russia had the ability the mobilize hundreds of thousands of people and leverage the might of the military to try and deal with the issue. I think if Chernobyl occurred today with current politics the situation would be so much worse. When I watch people filming in Pripyat today it reminds me of some kind of post apocalyptic movie scene like "Book of Eli". Check out this documentary of a guy visiting the most radioactive places on earth - he visits the basement of hospital in Pripyat where some of the firemen removed their clothing. you can see the radiation detectors going crazy! - it starts around the 8 minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRL7o2kPqw0 My view on newer reactor technology is pretty simple. Until they know how to deal with spent fuel, radioactive waste and by-products as well as all the issues related to uranium mining, I am not in favour of any technology that uses Nuclear Fission for energy production period. Yes there are better reactor designs and technology now compared to 30 years ago - but this still does not mitigate the huge risk and consequences felt over thousands of years surrounding spent fuel, human health consequences and impact on the environment.

This is an excellent video - which really helps the average person digest these unfathomably large numbers, like people in their Billions. I agree with everything he says except for the part where he mentions that the smarter or more talented people, should rather prefer to stay put and fix their own countries. I think this is not a realistic expectation. Having myself immigrated from South Africa - I know first hand it's not as simple as black and white (excuse the pun) Human nature and biology will always tend to trump any expectation of what one should do. As convenient as it is to factor millions of people into gumballs, it ultimately comes down to the individual who will always put their own family and children's physical safety and security above all else. Intrinsically we all arrive at the point where the decision comes down to "what is best for me and my own" In the past first world countries a.k.a "The West" further differentiated themselves by striving to be better. This striving to be better, attracted talented smart people and in-turn the talented smart people made their new countries even better. This is not what is going on now, now the global policy is one of dilution. This means instead of saying let's keep our drinking water clean and try and make more clean drinking water, we are told that it's unfair that some people have clean water and some do not, and therefore the solution is that we should mix bad water into the good. This just results in everyone drinking dirty water and forcing societies that have already successfully progressed - back into the dark ages. I have seen the effects of the "water analogy" first hand in South Africa, where instead of focusing on uplifting people, they instead found it easier to lower the bar and drop the level for everyone. This is why now the pass rate for high school is now 1% and university degrees are the equivalent of toilet paper. 25 years ago, South African university degrees were extremely sought after and highly rated all over the world. This was the same education system that forged people such as "Elon Musk" and Mark Shuttleworth". PS, Europe and America - this "toilet paper" stage is now the waters into which you are currently wading - if you are not hearing alarm bells going off in your head, you should get your batteries checked ;-) In my opinion, the mass importation of unqualified and culturally incompatible third world people into first world countries is a recipe for disaster and a kick in the nuts to all the previous generations who bled and fought for the countries we have today. The West would be wise to reverting back to the model of only accepting highly skilled and the best of the best that the world has to offer. How on Earth can you ever help others up, out the Mud if you are stuck down in the bog with them. The bottom line is, poverty is growing in-line with population growth and we would be better off trying to figure out how we stop the squandering our finite resources and preserve our small little planet for whatever future the planet has in store for us. If as a civilization, we decided to employed a fraction of the money we waste right now - and rather use it towards researching science, space flight and new technologies, we may as a species actually make it to the point where we can become interplanetary and spread our species across the galaxy. I fear the way we are going right now, we will just blink out like an extinguished candle and fade back into the galactical ether like a "once was" - a civilization who no-one knew ever existed.

Implications of Radiation on Health and the environment. Here are a couple more video resources for anyone interested in hearing / learning about the long-term consequences and ramifications for ourselves, our children and future generations. I try and learn from experts in the field who have been doing this research for a long time, unfortunately, a most of the time their voices simply never get heard and they never receive any mainstream media attention. My hope is that this thread puts this issue on Stefan Molyneux's radar and results in him covering the topic at some point. I really value his opinion, meticulous research and brevity when it comes to telling folks about issues. I would love to hear his opinion and research on the subject. Youtube: Dr. Helen Caldicott: The Medical Implications of Fukushima Youtube: Steven Starr : Implications of the Massive Contamination of Japan with Radioactive Cesium Symposium: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Co-Sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility

Hi there, I am in Bentleigh to you ever venture out to this neck of the woods?

Thanks for taking the time and initiative to investigate further and do some of your own research. Sometimes the burden of having an enquiring mind is not being able to unlearn something you wish you could after you have discovered them ;-) That being said, in my opinion, it's always better to live an informed life - rather than one of ignorant bliss. Yeah - the stuff that government's get away with, specifically in Japan regarding the ongoing Fukushima incident is astonishing. My particular favourites (sarcasm are) : Arbitrarily changing the law around safe doses of radiation so that they do not have to pay to relocate millions of people. I guess people's lives are truly worth nothing when it comes with a price tag. Rather than evacuate these areas, Japan chose to rather raise the safety limit 20X from 1 millisievert to 20 millisievert’s exposure per year. They decided it is/was good science to take hundreds of different radiation readings and report the lowest reading recorded in the dataset as the average. I guess my 3rd-grade maths teacher would have something to say about this. They also used detection equipment that could only detect a certain max threshold of radiation and reported these levels. This is like putting a kitchen thermometer into a furnace and concluding that the temperature is only 80 Degrees C because the kitchen thermometer can not display higher than that. When all else fails, they simply make it illegal to report anything negative about the situation and make it a jailable offence. Bye bye "free press" and the right to be informed and inform others. There has also been a major relaxing of food testing by Japan and other countries in order to get Japanese food sold world-wide without ringing any alarm bells. In some situations this was not even necessary e.g. Like in the US where radiation limits for food are much higher and food that can not be sold in Japan as radioactive can be sold in the United states. Forcing people back into contaminated areas by telling them if they want to continue receiving reparation payments from the government they have to go and live back in the contamination zone. This to me is truly despicable, deplorable strongarm tactics deployed by a goverment against their own citizens to knowingly force folks into harms way. I could go on, but I am sure you get the idea :-)

You would do way better trying to enlighten us with some facts as I have done, by citing sources and linking to relevant articles that you consider authoritative. If you have counter evidence to prove that I should have no need to grind an axe on this subject - then please by all means present it. Resorting to mockery and attempts to belittle others are traits of a schoolyard bully and not someone who is looking for truth and enlightenment. If you have something intelligent to say in the form of a counter argument backed by some data - and not a pie in the sky, poorly thumb sucked feeble retort aimed at eliciting a response- then please present it. Until such time, this will be the last direct response you will receive from me.

Is Nuclear Power really so cheap? We have now discussed the financing of "Risk" and have thus far not seen any data put forward by any fellow forum members to refute this, I would like to touch a bit more on the economic side. I would like to link to some recent studies and articles citing additional data around the subject. Would love to hear your data, thoughts and views regarding the video lectures below: The Economics of Nuclear About the Author: Arnie Gunderson Lecture: World Uranium Symposium April 2015 Arnie Gundersen has more than 40-years of nuclear power engineering experience. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he earned his Bachelor Degree cum laude while also becoming the recipient of a prestigious Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship for his Master Degree in nuclear engineering. Arnie holds a nuclear safety patent, was a licensed reactor operator, and is a former nuclear industry senior vice president. During his nuclear power industry career, Arnie also managed and coordinated projects at 70-nuclear power plants in the US. Part One: Economics Of Nuclear Power with Arnie Gundersen Part Two: Economics of Nuclear Power with Mycle Schneider About the Author: Mycle Schneider Mycle Schneider, an independent international energy and nuclear policy consultant, Nuclear analyst and lead author of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report, provides an economic analysis of the cost of nuclear power including data using charts and graphs. Mycle has been an advisor to members of the European Parliment on energy issues for more than 20 years.

csekavec, Let's not confuse regulation with the artificial propping up via forced government grants, incentives that are underpinned by making the buck stop with the mandatory taxation of the individual in society. This is true for both the grants and incentives as well as for any clean up or liability issues should things go awry. So in essence, this proves contrary to your point that the government is holding back the industry with too many regulations. This is simply not factually true and in reality, it's the government funded grants and offsetting of financial risks to the tax-payer that makes them viable in the first place. Without this, no free market organization would touch them. There are many economical reasons that in a free market, no company would consider building and running a nuclear power plant - but the main show stopper would be risk / liability. No board of directors would ever in a million years allow a CEO to take on that kind of risk or liability period.

Hmmm, I consider good points ones that are supported with data or studies. Don't get me wrong I am just as happy to have a barn burner of an intelligent debate as the next guy - but please let's keep it on valid points rooted in reality and keep it to facts devoid of sweeping opinions or statements without a factual basis. The debate is really on the consequences of should we be doing it, not hey China is doing it we better do it too to compete ;-) or hey going for a swim in an erupting volcano is a great idea cause I don't have to pay for the energy for the bath, is a non-sensical argument. If you think Nuclear power is good in any form, regardless of the type of reactor, then prove it, or at least to do so by quoting studies or data that supports your opinion or invalidates points I have made. When you say sweeping statements like the below one - without any proof or data to back it up, you frankly just sound like a PR person waxing lyrical for the Nuclear Industry Lobby: "The bottom line is that nuclear is the only process that we know of dense enough, cheap enough, plentiful enough, clean enough, and reliable enough to bring all the earth's population to and industrial standard of living." I would love to see your data on how its no biggie to process spent fuel as well as your justification that it's the only feasible source of energy for our needs when there has been multiple studies conducted that say otherwise. I guess countries like Germany and other parts of the world are phasing out Nuclear because it's so awesomely cheap, safe and easy to get rid of the by-products. If you look at the trend worldwide where Nuclear is on the decline this contradicts your conjecture and shows that it's factually just not the case. PS "Here is a documentary for you to watch on spent fuel - one that comes to the conclusion no-one on the planet wants to or knows how to process the waste and the fact that there is essentially nowhere safe to put it. Yes hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on studies to find isolated regions to put it with the conclusion there is nowhere safe for geologic time periods that are required" Journey to the Safest Place on Earth Here is the trailer, I highly recommend watching it on Netflix and if you do I would love to debate your facts about what you feel is inaccurately presented.

Hi there pretzelogik, thanks for your comment. Yes there is a lot of evidence. I would start with reading the link to that article I wrote, which was meticulously researched and has links to all sources and studies listed at the bottom of the article. Should you wish to read it and can get through it, as admittedly it's a long article and a lot of information to ingest - then I would welcome any of your comment or critique on its contents :-) http://blog.smartcore.net.au/fukushima-reality-dysfunction/ Also the article is now a few years old and the situation there is worse than it was when the article was written. Sad I know!

To be fair, if you are going to try and dissect a figure e.g $2.41 Billion for a protective shell for Chernobyl which occurred 30 years ago which was only cited in support of the fact that the costs associated with a reactor incident NEVER goes away, then you should be equally willing to dissect the other figure that I mentioned, namely $1 Trillion dollars for medium term Fukushima clean up. We can not cherry pick one figure while ignoring the other entirely - especially when the main one quoted is not a trivial amount. A point that was further driven home by me suggesting it could put solar arrays on every house on the planet. Also remember there have been 5 reactor meltdowns in 30 years. not a very good record- considering how lucky they got with Japan, if the event occurred at night or one of the storage pools was damaged - then essentially it would have been bye bye for most of Japan, with significant consequences for a big portion of the northern hemisphere. You also seem to skip over the statement and linked video by the Prime minister of Japan at the time of Fukushima occurring who stated how they came scarily close to being forced to evacuate Tokyo a city of 13 Million people. Which is not a trivial number of people either. If you are going to try and cite health issues around normal fossil fuel power stations then you should factor in the number of people who have been affected by Chernobyl and Fukushima as well. But really this is not the main point of the discussion. Which is if a normal power plant explodes and kills thousands of people, it's a disaster - that sucks, YES - but one that will pass, you will mourn the deaths and rebuild or the society will move on. With a nuclear incident there is no recovery, plus you lose vast areas of land permanently and have health ramifications for thousands of years. We have not had an onsite spent fuel storage pool fail yet. The implications of that will make Chernobyl look like a paper cut in comparison. There are over 400 nuclear power stations on the planet. A lot of them are on fault lines, near the ocean, in war-torn areas. There will be more incidents, especially extreme weather, war, terrorism, human error, earthquakes, tsunamis. It's a numbers game, we have had 5 incidents already - let's hope the next one is not a country ender.

First up, thanks for your suggested discussion points. Let's examine them, each in isolation as well as cumulatively. I will try and cover one aspect reply in this thread per day as this is a major topic with a lot of information. I think a good starting place would be to examine the financial realities associated with the commonly held notion that Nuclear power is inexpensive. Is Nuclear Power really so cheap? A good measuring stick of a technology or service, is to ask ourselves if it could stand up on its own merit and remain economically viable and profitable if run purely as a business in a free market economy. In other words, if we could remove government from the equation, would private industry be able to, or choose to provide Nuclear power and as a feasible, sustainable business model and be able to derive profit from it. If the answer to this question is "NO" and that business would choose other forms of power generation as a business model, then by inference we can deduce that there are better or cheaper forms of energy production. So with that in mind, let's look at how the industry is currently funded and incentivized by big government. Risk: The cost implications resulting from something going wrong with a nuclear power plant is prohibitively high. So much so, that the only way they could get any businesses to agree to build and run a power plant is for governments to limit their liability and to get you, yes "YOU" the taxpayer to foot the bill for the majority of any cleanup costs. To give you an idea, the conservative estimate for mid-term cleanup costs of the Fukushima incident in Japan is probably in the order of $1 trillion dollars. This is probably enough money to put solar panels on every house on the planet. Of particular note is the cleanup costs never go away and will require active servicing in perpetuity. e.g. As I type this, They are right at this moment, currently building the second "sarcophagus" or shell around the Chernobyl reactor building at a cost of $2.41 Billion USD. It is now almost 30 years after the actual reactor meltdown event occurred. This is the second shell that is being built over the first one and has been designed to hopefully last 100 Years - until such time as the 3rd shell construction project commences in 2117. This will continue on into the future, with each future generation reading about their iteration of the next sarcophagus being built. Even more notable is the fact that Chernobyl is actually considered way less severe than the current Fukushima incident with 3 reactors suffering a meltdown and all 3 reactor cores lost beneath the containment chambers - plus the fact that the nuclear material is being carried into the sea, every single way and they have no idea how to stop it. This never happened in Chernobyl who managed to encapsulate the "Corium" within the reactor building itself. Tomorrow, the following days, I will try and touch on: - How much does it cost to build a nuclear power station. - How much does it cost to process Nuclear Fuel. - How much does it cost to decommission a power plant. - The unsolved problem and enormous costs of what to do with spent Nuclear fuel and long-lived radioactive by-products. I will then move onto the other implications related to Nuclear power and the high likelihood / probability of future events which may have cascading failure implications. We can also into the cost and viability of alternatives energy technologies.

I am in Melbourne, Australia. Wondering if there are any local meetups already in place or if any of you Melbs are interested in a meet up for chats, discourse and intelligent debate?

Anyone from Melbourne - or are there any current Melbourne meetups already in place? I am always interested in having a good chat with like minded folks.

I have only recently discovered Stefan. Since stumbling upon him, I have been voraciously devouring his content and enjoying the fruits of his finely honed intellect that has made him, in my opinion, a true master of philosophy and a great steward for the good of humanity. He has covered so many important topics and important discussion points ranging from the human condition to the many the threats and challenges humanity is currently facing. That being said, I would love to see him cover what I consider, perhaps the most significant threat to the long-term viability of humanity. This is a topic that frankly gets very little coverage, yet it is what I consider the most realistic threat to the long-term viability of the human race. This is the threat of Nuclear Power and the severe consequences that a single reactor event / accident can have for many thousands of years. We have just seen the tip of the iceberg with Chernobyl and ongoing Fukushima saga. Most folks do not realize how close Japan came to having to permanently evacuate Tokyo, a city of 13 Million people. You can listen to the Former Prime Minister of Japan (Naoto KAN) talk about how they came within inches of losing Tokyo during the Fukushima incident when one of the spent fuel pools came close to failing https://youtu.be/eYv3w63us5k Over time, humanity has faced many challenges - history is rife with the ebb and flow of civilizations and culture lost to the likes of genocidal atrocities, war, strife, religion, greed - all stemming from the seemingly inexhastable supply of human stupidity. We have seen that history repeats itself, yet we do not seem to learn from these past mistakes. Thus far they have all ultimately been recoverable events, forgotten over time as the survivors rise from the ashes and rebuild. The dangers of Nuclear power and spent nuclear fuel does not fall into this above category. It has the probability of consequences measured in the many tens of thousands of years and the ability to pose a real existential threat to humanity. I have written about this extensively from a scientific perspective in an effort to explain to folks the inner workings of what radiation actually is and the processes involved in boiling water from the splitting of the atom as well as the physics involved in nuclear fission as well as spent fuel. I would encourage dialog on this issue and really would hope that Stefan would cover this issue. I think it's one of the most fundamental problems we face now and for every future generation. My posts for those interested below: Fukushima-Reality-Dysfunction is-Elon-Musk-correct-that-AI-is-Humanities-Biggest-Existential-Threat Thanks Mark