Reply #7: Well great, what would you have us do? (diatribe attached!) [View All]

[ReverendDeuce]

Seriously, this is one area where I might just disagree with many of my fellow DU'ers.

Since we're decades away from fusion power plants, what do we have that is both reasonably safe and cost effective? I'm not talking about Republican-style cost effectiveness, I simply mean something that we can all live with. And I am sure someone will pounce on me with link after link showing stupid shit like "Dr. Ballsenshaft at the University of Humpenlegge has clearly shown that fairy dust and cannabis have the potential to provide electricity for thousands of years! The future is PDP (pixie-dust and pot) reactors, dudes!"

I am going to have to disagree with the three anti-nuclear links (Greenpeace? God bless 'em, but you know their side of the story beforehand!). They are doing precisely what both themselves and similar groups taught the Rebublicans to do... stir up the fear pot with their misinformation stick.

Fission reactors are dangerous. I don't like them one bit. But here we have the opportunity to utilize fissile materials from no-longer-needed nuclear weapons for the creation of relatively cheap and far-more environmentally sound power,l

Shit, these people can flip out about anything... "The terrorists can build a bomb with this! It's easier to refine! Light-water! Weapons grade anus and stuff!" Honestly, it's like they think the fuel spheres will just tumble out the back of the truck while the drivers hauling them stop at McDonalds and "the terrorists" will be there to collect them like loose change...

Of course, I should expect nothing less from some folks here. A couple of months back I posted a message linking to a CNN poll on the Cassini mission to Saturn on the day we landed on Titan where, I felt, too many people were voting for the "waste of money" response. Naively, I assumed that we would all be excited about this success. Instead I was verbally lambasted for supporting scientific progress. I was absolutely floored that so many people were on the NASA hate-wagon here. Science and knowledge be damned because, "oooh noooo we did put a nuker ship into spaaaaace and we all r gonna die!"

For progressives, there sure are a lot of regressive attitudes towards so many things here...