Finally - an intelligent environmental regulator

Yes.... I know. :)

We can ask a few folks in Alberta what they think of lower oil prices.
And a few more in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Texas, Australia, Venezuela, and the ME. Don't bother asking the russkies, we're not doing business there. :D
 
The important thing is to maintain balance and think logically. Governments should maintain the public interest uppermost in priority while recognizing this can't be done without also considering corporate interests. If these two, sometimes aligned, sometimes opposed, interests are not balanced you can end with miles of red tape and a business environment where there is no innovation because of barriers that are too costly to get over, or alternatively a situation where corporate interests run roughshod over the environment and the cost of cleaning up the mess is borne by the public. The trick is to avoid either extreme. Although it is probably way too soon to tell, it sounds as though Dr. van der Vaart is going to attempt to strike the proper balance.

With regard to nuclear power, the anti-nuclear interests have succeeded in regulating new nuclear power plants out of existence, aided and abetted of course by absurdly bad, past decisions made by power company Boards' of Directors. If we had proper balance we would have new, somewhat smaller, safer and far less expensive nuclear plants. The technology already exists. We could buy 'blueprints' from the French, and use American materials and labor!
 
The original EPA did a good job of cleaning up the water and air. But that was 1970 and somebody had to say profits must not exceed the environment. 30 years later it is very bad business to pollute whether it is legal or not. The EPA is on auto pilot still trying to clean water that is so pure it could be sold in bottles. But Yes, I agree on the nuclear. There are some fantastic small plant ideas. It's expensive though, and needs some kind of co op to get started, similar to lighting up the rural areas years ago.
 
my father in law was an engineer in the nuke plant building industry.
he says we have the technology here already.

but... since he is my father in law... I don't believe much of what he says anyway. j/k

My view is, that until we figure out how to properly deal with the waste... we really don't know how much a kilowatt hour this energy really costs...

Fukishima and Carlsbad N.M. show us we can't build first and figure out storage later.
It is an existential risk. We still don't really know what fukishima is doing to the ocean and west coast.

You see unlike the anti co2 big govt empowering drones... I actually am conservative (in the true sense of the word) and a conservationist.

The important thing is to maintain balance and think logically. Governments should maintain the public interest uppermost in priority while recognizing this can't be done without also considering corporate interests. If these two, sometimes aligned, sometimes opposed, interests are not balanced you can end with miles of red tape and a business environment where there is no innovation because of barriers that are too costly to get over, or alternatively a situation where corporate interests run roughshod over the environment and the cost of cleaning up the mess is borne by the public. The trick is to avoid either extreme. Although it is probably way too soon to tell, it sounds as though Dr. van der Vaart is going to attempt to strike the proper balance.

With regard to nuclear power, the anti-nuclear interests have succeeded in regulating new nuclear power plants out of existence, aided and abetted of course by absurdly bad, past decisions made by power company Boards' of Directors. If we had proper balance we would have new, somewhat smaller, safer and far less expensive nuclear plants. The technology already exists. We could buy 'blueprints' from the French, and use American materials and labor!
 
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If all the nuclear waste, including that from weapons programs, which is the bulk of it, were to be dumped into any of the major oceans and thoroughly mixed, the level of waste would be well below that permissible in drinking water. Just a thought. The French, so far as I know, still get rid of waste by sealing it in glass casks and dropping it into deep ocean trenches. My information is 40 years old though, so I don't recommend paying too close attention.. At the University of California's Los Alamos lab we got rid of it by absorbing it in vermiculite, mixing the vermiculite with concrete and casting blocks. Then the blocks were stored on the ground under desert conditions. There are innumerable ways to easily and safely dispose of waste. I am reasonably confident that with enough thought we can find the most expensive and least practical way to dispose of it, and adopt that method. Using Rockets to transport it to Pluto should qualify nicely...

Personally, I always thought the old U.S. concrete method was first rate in all respects. You put a layer of cold concrete on the outside of each block. Surrounded the blocks with a fence with some roses growing on it. Any one who wants one of those blocks is pretty stupid, since there are much easier and more efficient ways to come by nuclear material.

The French method was good too, but a bit of unnecessary bother. Those glass casts in deep ocean trenches will be there for a few hundred thousand years minimum.

The Russians scattered reactor waste over the bottom of the arctic ocean, including, I've heard, some old nuclear subs. Probably not the best idea.
 
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