Who will be the Dem candidate?
- Thread starter Kleiner
- Start date
Ah, by your reasoning then, you would vote for Condi over Hillary...because Hillary has served in an elected office....
What was the election did George Washington win before he was anointed by the electoral college as President?
What was the election did George Washington win before he was anointed by the electoral college as President?
You can easily have new highs in price with new highs in inventories as the markets are paranoid about even one incident in the Middle East, and the refinery bottleneck.
That is a market, and that IS why we are at these prices. Once again, the US does not set prices for oil, the market does.
Quote from whitster:
"agree about the anti-nuclear power issue. However, Chernobyl and TMI show the fallacy of just letting the private sector build these things and run them without heavy oversight."
that doesn't make sense. three mile island mayble.. how many died in three mile island?
chernobyl was not run by the PRIVATE SECTOR. it was STATE RUN, in a communist society, that had NEVER had any regard for the safety of their workers, and was in general - technologically inept when compared to the USA. thus, it is a silly comparison imo
furthermore, even GIVEN chernobyl, if you would like to compare the death and/.or accident rate of nuclear workers/citizens around nuke plants to the accident/death rate of those in and around coal mines or oil fields, i'll take you up on that ANY DAY
" They're just too dangerous when they fail. "
the statistics do not support your contention. again, lets compare death/accident rates between coal mining/oil drilling and nukes
i used to feel the exact same way about nukes - until i looked at the facts. talk to the french . they have way more nukes per capita than we do.
Here is a sample Chernobyl report. If you look at/include the estimate for deaths due to cancer from the fallout I think you will agree that the numbers are significantly higher than coal mining accidents. The fallout covered much of Europe and contaminated who knows what. The cause of the accident was human error. Its scope was magnified by incomplete containment -- a cost savings move.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_accident
TMI while not deadly cost a $1B to clean up and took 14 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island
There is no such thing as a foolproof system when humans are involved. Every once in awhile these things will blow and because of how they are fueled the consequences are severe.
If they are not heavily supervised in their construction and ongoing management practices, the chances of an accident go up. It seems pretty straight forward to me.
I'm not against nuclear power at all. In fact, I think it is probably one of the better short term solutions for an energy hungry world. I'm just against unregulated plants. There's a Homer Simpson in every one of them waiting to break free.
there is no such thing as a safe energy source, yes.
but chernobyl is ONE failed reactor, it is not a PRIVATELY run one (which obliterated that point), and still, in the aggregate there is NO comparison
coal mining is one of the most dangerous jobs around. and many oil industry labor jobs are also very dangerous
also, several refineries have literally blown up. refining oil has killed FAR more people than nuclear has.
ditto for coal mining.
so, again. make the comparison
that's my point
crunch the #'s
but chernobyl is ONE failed reactor, it is not a PRIVATELY run one (which obliterated that point), and still, in the aggregate there is NO comparison
coal mining is one of the most dangerous jobs around. and many oil industry labor jobs are also very dangerous
also, several refineries have literally blown up. refining oil has killed FAR more people than nuclear has.
ditto for coal mining.
so, again. make the comparison
that's my point
crunch the #'s
Well, I don't see that. I have looked up oil refinery deaths and you get 10 here and 20 there. Here is a negative article to support your point. But it doesn't show anything like that magnitude. It also indicates that the data is mostly unavailable so what data are you basing your contention on?
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/05/blast/3183356.html
Here is a link to coal mining deaths.
http://www.msha.gov/MSHAINFO/FactSheets/MSHAFCT2.HTM
The numbers are now below 100/annum.
So, it takes 90 years of coal mining deaths to equal one Chernobyl -- using [9K as the low end estimates for attributable deaths.]
So that's the research I have come up with. If you see different please post. I'm not interested in "winning" or arguing as much as educating myself.
With respect to private sector and Chernobyl you are indeed correct that Chernobyl was not built by the "private sector" -- in a country which had none at that time. However, I fail to see how that makes more than a semantic difference as the key issue is effective regulation of these plants as they are dangerous.
Here is a link to a list of worldwide nuclear "accidents."
http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html
You will find all countries represented. I was a bit surprised at the number of accidents but fortunately most of them appear to be in the 60s-70s. Not that there aren't a number from the 90's.
Here is a more general article. One particular point caught my eye. The US doesn't use much oil for electricity generation. Consequently, adding capacity would be a replacement for coal. If we were to switch over to electric cars I suppose it would help with oil use but otherwise it doesn't look like it.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002958091_nuclear28.html
Finally, you really don't want these bad boys being taken down by terrorists. The "fallout" would be nasty.
This was kind of fun. Thanks for challenging my assertions. If you know more spin it around again.
Jay,
When the Bass brothers cornered the Silver market the government took them down as they could manipulate prices endlessly.
What I frequently see here on ET is a blind reliance on the "market" in arguments as if it were the all-knowing price setter.
The problem is people/funds/institutions/large oil companies have been shown to be able to game the market. That's why we have regulatory agencies. Monopolists create market inefficiencies. Think about the stock bubble of the late '90s. The market was most certainly not efficient at that time. This is just another case of the same imo.